On 28th June 2023, the European Commission (EC) set out its proposals for ‘modernising payment services and opening financial services data’. The proposals for payments – referred to as ‘PSD3’ –essentially reflect…

At a recent payments forum hosted by the Bank of Finland, ECB board member Fabio Panetta signalled commercial banks must make instant payments ‘cheap and easy to use’. While on the operational…

How many people have heard of Kathleen Booth or Margaret Hamilton? Chances are not many. But why not? These two women achieved two significant firsts. Kathleen invented the first assembly language and Margaret,…

In the fourth part of our series exploring the motivations, architecture and principles driving the development of IPF, Tom Beadman, Principal Engineer at Icon Solutions, discusses the benefits of using Domain-Specific Languages…

As competition in payments has increased, data has long been touted as the cure-all for incumbent banks. If banks could charge a transaction fee for every time they are told that ‘data…

Remaining competitive in payments is the key to future relevance and profitability for incumbent banks. But with incumbents now competing on multiple fronts against various players, how can they stay ahead of…

For several decades, incumbent banks have held a comfortable leadership position in payments. But the rapid growth of digital payments has signalled opportunity for new market entrants to attack this status quo….

In July 2020, a group of sixteen major European banks from five Euro countries announced the launch of the European Payments Initiative (EPI) with the aim of creating a unified payment solution…

Setting the scene In the third part of our series exploring the motivations, architecture and principles driving the development of IPF, Pat Altaie, Senior Consultant, discusses the benefits of using interoperable programming…

It has been said that prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future. The unprecedented events of 2020 demonstrated quite how difficult it can be. The monumental uplifts in digital…

In the second part of our series exploring the motivations, architecture and principles driving the development of IPF, Sirin Sevinc, Senior Solution Architect, explains the roles CQRS and Event Sourcing play in…

Standardisation, regulation and technological innovation means payments are well on the way to becoming instant, invisible and free. This is good news for everybody. Well, not quite everybody. Banks are now faced…

Over the past 20+ years, I have been deeply involved in designing, building and delivering systems in a few different sectors across a multitude of technologies and methodologies, varying team sizes and…

As part of Icon Solutions’ thought leadership in the world of payments, our latest webinar, ‘Busting the Myths of Payments Transformation’, delved into the noise and misnomers in the payments transformation space and…

‘Payments transformation’ has emerged as perhaps the single biggest opportunity for banks. But getting payments transformation right is no easy task. With only 9% of banks nearing completion in their transformation efforts,…

Instant payments are the ‘new normal’. The last decade saw a ramp-up in adoption as regulation, customer expectation and technology dovetailed to create immediate, 24/7 demand for financial services. This means that…

As traditional financial institutions compete with big tech and fintech players, gaining access to and extracting value from payments data has become paramount. In fact, the Economist recently described data as now the most…

Find out how Icon helped a leading UK financial institution with a savings and mortgage customer base of over 15 million facing challenges around the performance and resiliency of their payments systems.

Discover how Icon delivered APIs for a leading UK bank in record time, helping them avoid breaching CMA and PSD2 regulations.

Read about how Icon Solutions designed, developed and led this Tier 1 Bank’s App-to-App programme in response to PSD2/CMA Open Banking regulation.

Find out how Icon ensured a new core banking platform was integrated into the UK’s largest retail and commercial bank’s existing systems landscape.