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Hedera Hashgraph chose Google Cloud Platform as its preferred cloud provider for deploying its public networks. Google commends Hedera for the choice, while revealing that it is taking an active stake in the project's governance.

The Association for Financial Markets in Europe has released a new paper which highlights the minimal use of the cloud among capital markets firms - with over two-thirds of AFME members questioned estimating that only 1 - 10% of their bank's current workload was using some level of public cloud.

The Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) has released a new paper which highlights the minimal use of the cloud among capital markets firms - with over two-thirds of AFME members questioned estimating that only 1 - 10% of their bank's current workload was using some level of public cloud.

Financial institutions are increasingly outsourcing information technology to the cloud, motivated by efficiency, security, and cost. This column argues that the consequence is likely to be short- and medium-term stability at the cost of the increased likelihood of catastrophic systemic events. Cloud providers are systemically important and should be regulated as such.

TransferWise is the first firm to pilot the Visa Cloud Connect platform, which provides a secure cloud-based connection to VisaNet, including a unified certification and testing framework, Visa-hosted security services such as transaction encryption and PIN key management, and simplified settlement in local markets. This will enable TransferWise to expand its debit card program that accompanies its multi-currency account.

"Cyber incidents are becoming more sophisticated and their costs difficult to quantify. Using a unique database of more than 100,000 cyber events across sectors, we document the characteristics of cyber incidents. Cyber costs are higher for larger firms and for incidents that impact several organisations simultaneously. The financial sector is exposed to a larger number of cyber attacks but suffers lower costs, on average, thanks to proportionately greater investment in information technology (IT) security. The use of cloud services is associated with lower costs, especially when cyber incidents are relatively small. As cloud providers become systemically important, cloud dependence is likely to increase tail risks. Crypto-related activities, which are largely unregulated, are particularly vulnerable to cyber attacks."

The Financial Stability Board published two reports that consider the financial stability implications from an increasing offering of financial services by BigTech firms, and the adoption of cloud computing and data services across a range of functions at financial institutions.

Ant Financial Services Group has seen a surge in banks interested in its digital technology. The number of customers paying for Ant to help them build mobile apps and provide cloud computing power jumped by 175% in the two months through April, and it's now working with more than 200 lenders, according to the company. Inquiries to collaborate with the tech giant increased by 400% over the period.

JP Morgan is tapping Microsoft's Azure cloud-based services to boost its blockchain-based Quorum platform, aiming to make it easier, faster and cheaper for companies to build and deploy blockchain applications.

Digital assets and cryptocurrencies make estate planning complex. You need to track where assets exist online and how to access them. If you fail to do proper planning, your digital footprint and assets will likely be stuck in the cloud forever.

In Facebook's vision, the actual end-to-end encryption client itself such as WhatsApp will include embedded content moderation and blacklist filtering algorithms. These algorithms will be continually updated from a central cloud service, but will run locally on the user's device, scanning each cleartext message before it is sent and each encrypted message after it is decrypted... Of course alternatives like Signal will exist for those who don't want to be subject to Facebook's content moderation, but what happens when this filtering technology is built into operating systems?

The Bank of Ghana has launched a new regulatory and innovation sandbox to provide a controlled testing environment for new financial products and services, in partnership with US-based technology firm Emtech. Emtech has built cloud-based software specifically for central banks. It said the sandbox would allow financial firms to interact with the central bank to test digital financial products while evolving [an] enabling regulatory environment. The sandbox is open to banks, specialised deposit-taking institutions and payment service providers. https://www.bog.gov.gh/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/PRESS-RELEASE-BANK-OF-GHANA-SANDBOX-PILOT.pdf

PayPal announced that it has agreed to acquire Curv to accelerate and expand its initiatives to support cryptocurrencies and digital assets. Curv is a leading provider of cloud-based infrastructure for digital asset security based in Tel Aviv, Israel.

The BSN is a cross-cloud, cross-portal, cross-framework global infrastructure network used to deploy and operate all types of blockchain applications. It provides a shared blockchain resource environment with the twin goals of reducing the cost of technology adoption and supporting interoperability between different blockchain applications (DApps).

PBOC VP Yifei Fan said the bank aims to better regulate new technologies applied across the financial industry. Blockchain is among 17 categories of financial technologies, including cloud services and artificial intelligence, to be regulated under the new standards.

As a result of the digitization and datafication of finance, combined with new technologies, cybersecurity and technological risks are now evolving into major threats to financial stability and national security. In addition, the entry of major technology firms into finance - TechFins - brings new issues. The first arises in the context of new forms of potentially systemically important infrastructure (such as data and cloud services providers). The second arises because data - like finance - benefits from economies of scope and scale and from network effects and - even more than finance - tends towards monopolistic or oligopolistic outcomes, resulting in the potential for systemic risk from new forms of "Too Big to Fail" and "Too Connected to Fail" phenomena. This paper suggests some basic principles about how such risks can be monitored and addressed, focusing in particular on the role of regulatory technology ("RegTech").

Blockchain technology may offer greater levels of security than the internet at large, but a new research paper claims its approach to privacy may be in violation of European "right to be forgotten" laws. Once someone's details are embedded in a blockchain, the system never forgets. Those details might be encrypted, but they are also part of an irreversible ledger, and one that's on the cloud. As long as a blockchain is in existence, it clashes with the European ruling that people have the right to retract data. All of this leaves the blockchain industry in a massive quandary, because the technology's transparency and immutability is one of its biggest selling points. https://journal.acs.org.au/index.php/ajis/article/view/2801

Facebook is also working with Visa to power the new payments feature on WhatsApp in Brazil. Payments on WhatsApp are made possible by Visa Direct, Visa's real-time push payments technology, and newly launched Visa Cloud Tokenization, that protects and removes sensitive payment information by converting the data to tokens and storing them securely.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) has reportedly added Chengdu to the list of regions carrying out fintech innovation supervision pilots. The city is reportedly focusing on big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and blockchain technologies. The other eight regions participating in the pilot program are Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Xiongan New District, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Guangzhou.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) launched a S$1.75 million MAS Global FinTech Innovation Challenge to seek innovative solutions that can help financial institutions respond to COVID-19 and climate change challenges. It will be hosted entirely on the API Exchange (APIX), a cloud-based innovation platform, which will allow these solutions to be curated, contextualised, and validated.