IBM Watch: Day 5

More important news from International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM), in this case from Geneva.

IBM is one of the oldest and most storied companies in America. Despite recent troubles, it remains one of the largest public companies in the United States, as well as among the largest employers. It is number 31 on the current Fortune 500 list, though in 2000 it was number six on the list.

This IBM announcement is for a product built for commercial banks, but apparently it does not have a customer, yet, which makes the public relation release timing odd:

GENEVA – 26 Sep 2016: SIBOS IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new offerings to help commercial banks rapidly provide new services for customers by using real-time payments. This will allow banks to take advantage of new immediate payments schemes now in development across the United States, Europe and Asia. Once these immediate payment networks are fully in place, consumer transactions will clear in seconds, speeding access to funds such as payroll and insurance claims reimbursements.

When available, IBM Financial Transaction Manager (FTM) for Immediate Payments will support new global payment initiatives such as The Clearing House (TCH) in the United States and the Pan-European Instant Payment scheme in Europe.

The move to immediate payments highlights the transformation that banks and Fintechs are currently undergoing to become cognitive banks. One attribute of a cognitive bank is the ability to provide faster and safer payments, immediate counter fraud and financial crime detection, and vastly improved and simplified regulatory compliance.

SIBOS is a gathering for financial services companies, and its large meeting is in progress now.

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Also from the event:

Geneva, Switzerland – 27 Sep 2016: CLS Group (CLS), a leading provider of risk management and operational services for the global foreign exchange (FX) market, has announced its intent to release a payment netting service, CLS Netting, for buy-side and sell-side institutions’ FX trades that are settled outside the CLS settlement service.

The global FX market is limited by the lack of a standardized payment netting process for trades not settled within CLS. In many cases, institutions are forced to intervene manually to complete the process. This leads to inconsistent and bespoke approaches to netting throughout the market, resulting in higher costs and increased intra-day liquidity demands.

CLS claims to be the top FX settlement firm in the world.

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