The Innovation in Digital Banking Awards submissions covered a wide range of banking services. While digital transformation remains a constant, many banks are working on generative artificial intelligence, tokenisation and enabling an expansive and changing marketplace to gain access to a wide range of financial services.
The 2024 awards received 132 submissions across 18 categories worldwide from a variety of banks and technology providers, and innovative products and services covered sectors including retail, payments, wholesale and investment banking.
A mix of external and internal judges considered each entry against a range of variables: impact on a local domestic market; demonstrable impact on specific market segments; proven performance metrics; and a creative approach to product development and customer problems. Judges also rated the banks that have embraced modern workflows and emerging technology to create a more future looking organisation.
The high number of quality submissions made putting together even a shortlist extremely difficult. Insights from our external judging panel were instrumental in determining the final winners from a competitive and crowded field. We would like to extend our thanks to our independent judging panel of industry experts for their efforts.
In 2024, digital transformation garnered the greatest number of submissions. However, close behind were submissions related to projects exploring the opportunities presented by the exploration of generative AI. Our global winner not only won both our Transformation projects and AI and machine learning awards, but is recognised for its innovative approach to democratising investment banking access.
Financial inclusion remained part of many submissions this year. However, projects aimed at achieving net-zero emissions, climate action and carbon reduction — which figured prominently in last year’s awards — were thin on the ground.
For the fourth year in a row, we have invited banks to submit an entry for Chief Innovation/Information Officer of the Year, the only Innovation in Digital Banking award given to an individual. All the entries were examples of leaders whose teams and banks are visualising a new era for banking. Our CIO of 2024 views innovation as the providence of the entire bank and actively engages in activities to promote innovation culture and reach out to underrepresented communities in tech.
Congratulations to all the winners in this year’s Innovation in Digital Banking Awards.
Judges
- Francesco Burelli, partner, Arkwright Consulting
- Alessandro Hatami, founder, Pacemakers
- Virginie O’Shea, founder and CEO, Firebrand Research
- Roberta Profeta, financial services executive — digital transformation and innovation consultant
- Liz Lumley, deputy editor, The Banker
Regions
Global
Winner: Bradesco
Projects: Expansion of generative AI in various applications; Investment recommendations project Bradesco Artificial Intelligence on WhatsApp; Bradesco Expresso Digital Platform
In addition to being our winner for artificial intelligence and machine learning, investment and transformational projects, Brazilian bank Bradesco scored very highly in every category it entered.
Bradesco has been using AI since 2016 with its Bradesco Artificial Intelligence cognitive virtual assistant. In June 2023, the bank conducted a diagnosis to reveal gaps in bureaucratic and repetitive processes that suited the application of generative AI. A hackathon was held internally to discover ideas and identify potential artificial general intelligence applications at the bank.
At the end of 2023, BIA Branches was launched, the first project related to the initiative to use AGI to assist managers in customer service, collecting information about the bank’s products and services from documents and standards. But broadening the context, the application also covered employees, who answered questions about internal processes and procedures.
In the second quarter of 2024, the bank started the pilot for BIA Customer, where the client can consult BIA about all information skills, with answers prepared by AGI. Currently, AGI projects involve continuous work, which is guided using an agile methodology with defined value deliverables and monthly releases, in waves of one to three months.
The Investments Village, part of the Banco Bradesco investment department, developed and launched the investment recommendations project with Bradesco Artificial Intelligence on WhatsApp.
This project began with the bank creating an end-to-end digital investment recommendation journey, using AI combined with the expertise and experience of investment specialists. By identifying and organising clients based on their investor profile, behaviour, relevant events and similarity to other clients, the bank identified the investment options of more interest for each group from their transaction history.
Additionally, with BIA on WhatsApp, the portfolio recommended by specialists is offered to clients seeking investment guidance, allowing them to have individual consultations with an investment specialist and a seamless experience. Through BIA and digital channels, all Bradesco clients — regardless of their investment potential and level of knowledge — can receive these recommendations.
The first pilot was launched in early 2023 with selected branches. In February 2023, the project was expanded to include the entire portfolio, while the development of the dashboard for tracking applications conducted through the digital journey was completed to ensure the solution’s performance. The model was updated in August to enhance the recommendations, and in February 2024, the solution with the integration of BIA was delivered.
Launched this year, the Bradesco Expresso Digital Platform is a hub designed for marketing financial and non-financial products to all customers. It leverages a network of more than 37,000 banking correspondents, called corbans, across Brazil. These corbans are companies authorised to mediate the offering of products and services between financial institutions and their customers. Typically located in accessible places such as shopping malls, supermarkets, and petrol stations, they offer more flexible operating hours than traditional bank branches so are both practical and convenient for customers.
The Bradesco Expresso Digital Platform provides personalised offers and streamlined customer journeys, offering all products and services in one place. This has reduced account opening time by 30 per cent; enabled same-day credit card issuance; simplified personal credit offers with funds released into the current account in up to five minutes; and allowed for authentication via facial biometrics.
The project began in March 2023, with development focused on delivering products and services for a better experience for both end customers and corbans. By November 2023, more than 22 deliveries and 150 features had been made, initially used by 70 corbans in 13 of Brazil’s states. In April 2024, availability was expanded to 1,000 corbans and currently, 2,800 of them are already benefiting from the implemented improvements.
Additionally, the platform provides a training module for product sales, management of correspondent users, and digitally signed service marketing addendums for correspondents.
Furthermore, the bank integrated technologies and architectural models, such as adaptive/responsive micro front-end and microservices, enabling it to overcome challenges posed by low-speed networks in certain regions of the country. Bradesco also implemented security enhancements, including end-to-end encryption, facial biometrics and integration with peripherals devices.
The platform is accessible on various devices including computers, tablets and mobile phones. Consequently, it has expanded the market share of Bradesco Expresso, to 37,000 banking correspondents in a market of 540,000 correspondents.
Latin America
Winner: Grupo Financiero Banorte
Banorte’s innovation drive is focused on customer experiences. The bank has introduced a virtual assistant to enhance customer interactions and streamline service delivery, and now offers advanced payment options, digital fund investment and omnichannel experiences for loan products.
In January 2024, Banorte launched a fully digital bank named bineo, which allowed the 120-year-old bank to build on more than 15 years’ experience of mobile banking.
The new digital bank has various technological features, such as artificial intelligence, behavioural analytics, data science, cyber security and authentication biometrics. These advanced features ensure the bank provides a highly innovative, user-friendly, secure and self-servicing platform, which is designed to serve customers anytime, anywhere and in any way they want.
Apart from the core advantage of gaining a deeper understanding of customers through data-driven hyper-personalised offerings, the bank can build a comprehensive business relationship with them based on its omnichannel architecture.
Banorte has also integrated its Maya Chat virtual assistant across digital channels. Maya Chat is an emotionally responsive avatar, which handles more than 2.2mn monthly messages through mobile and internet banking platforms and the public website. Furthermore, Maya has been integrated into digital banking for both larger businesses and small and medium-sized enterprises, expanding coverage of information about products and services for these segments.
Banorte also introduced payment solutions for merchants in its digital banking initiatives to enhance transaction processes and improve customer convenience. In the e-commerce window, Banorte implemented a solution that offers interest-free monthly instalment payments based on specific variables, giving merchants more flexibility in processing transactions. Additionally, the bank also incorporated contactless card technology for American Express cards, enhancing the payment experience for cardholders and registered merchants.
The bank has introduced a voucher QR code feature to enable automatic input of authorisation numbers and amounts into merchant systems, simplifying account reconciliation and improving operational efficiency.
With digital sales accounting for more than 43 per cent of total sales in products such as payroll loans, credit cards, funds and insurance, Banorte has leveraged digital platforms to drive customer engagement and increase product adoption. By offering 100 per cent digital fund investment options, as well as enabling customers to buy and sell investment funds and acquire promissory notes through the mobile app, Banorte has provided customers with convenient and secure investment services.
Moreover, introducing new auto loan products that combine digital and in-branch processes reflects the bank’s commitment to offering a seamless omnichannel banking experience.
Asia-Pacific
Winner: E. Sun
Since 2021, E.Sun, one of the largest banks in Taiwan, has been working within its Digital Banking Blueprint, which aims to provide customers with simple and smooth experiences across all digital channels.
The Digital Banking Blueprint outlines several customer strategies, including building ecosystems with non-bank partners, creating a unified onboarding process, personalised product offerings and increasing customer loyalty.
Three digital platforms have been realised in the past year as part of this plan.
The bank’s Unified Application Platform went live in December 2023. The UAP provides a one-stop shopping experience that allows customers to apply for as many as seven products in a single application without having to fill out multiple forms or submit the same supporting document multiple times.
Since its December 2023 launch, the bank’s credit card cross-sell rate has tripled, and brokerage account cross-sell has grown by more than 75 per cent. More than 60 per cent of customers now choose to apply for multiple products in a single application.
Additionally, UAP has partner APIs through E.Sun’s open banking framework, including e-payment networks PXPay and PlusPay, as well as Pocket Securities, a digital-only securities firm.
E.Sun’s new mobile and internet banking platform reduces the complexity of the digital channels by consolidating functions and simplifying user experience. Taking foreign currency exchange as an example, since launch the average conversion rate for FX transactions has consistently been above 60 per cent — a significant boost from about 35 per cent in the months prior to the platform’s launch.
The new platform successfully went live in January 2024 with two new services, account summary and FX buy and sell. In the next two years, the team will roll out new services every month until all services are replaced.
The bank’s Platform for Interactive Communications is powered by E.Sun’s Recommendation System, leveraging machine learning to predict the best action for 8mn bank customers. The bank established the project in 2023, with the first phase going live in April 2024.
Since then, more than 5mn interactions have been recommended by the service each month, on average, with an increase of about 30 per cent in click-through rate over the control group, which received randomised messages.
“Guided by its 5A Digital Blueprint: Access-Acquire-Activate-Adhere-Advocate, E.Sun is transforming digital banking on four new platforms: E.Sun Design System ensures consistent cross-channel experience, Unified Application Platform drastically boosted cross-sell, MIB significantly shortens time-to-market for app functions thanks to the leading-edge micro-frontend architecture, and finally AI-powered EPIC platform delivers the right message to the right customers,” says E.Sun’s chief digital officer Danny Tang.
Western Europe
Winner: illimity Bank
Illimity calls itself a new paradigm bank, and has operated since 2019 without any legacy constraints as a fully digital, cloud-based model. From June 2023 to June 2024, illimity expanded its overall digital banking strategy by transforming its IT infrastructure into a profit centre.
This transformation was largely enabled through an agreement whereby illimity sold a copy of its platform source code to the Italian digital transformation consultancy Engineering Group; this enabled illimity to monetise its digital architecture.
Illimity will receive €55.5mn by 2032, accounted for in 2023 and paid over the 2023–26 period. An extra €4.5mn may be added from 2024 to 2032 if Engineering Group opts for further platform upgrades, provided by illimity. Engineering Group will also pay the bank significant royalties on profits from offering the IT platform to third parties as an on-premises, software-as-a-service or banking-as-a-service solution from 2023 to 2032.
Additionally, the bank has integrated artificial intelligence to streamline payment processes and enhance the productivity of the bank team. These systems use natural language processing to understand and respond to customer queries in real time.
Customers interacting with the digital platforms experience immediate assistance, whether they are seeking information about account balances, transaction histories or loan products. The AI system learns from each interaction, continually improving its accuracy and relevance, which enhances customer satisfaction and reduces the workload on human customer service agents.
The bank has also sustained the momentum of its digital ventures: b-ilty, which provides digital banking services for small enterprises; Hype, a platform for retail customers in Italy; and Quimmo, a proptech for real estate brokerage. Hype has increased its customer numbers to 1.8mn; b-ilty broken even, securing customer loans of €154mn; while Quimmo’s strategic partnership in real estate brokerage with Coima has paved the way for a pipeline of potential projects worth more than €1bn.
“This recognition highlights illimity’s commitment to pioneering a cloud-based banking model that drives both innovation and growth. Our cutting-edge IT infrastructure and architecture combined with AI capabilities empower us to deliver tailored solutions to Italian SMEs, which are the backbone of Italian economy,” says Corrado Passera, CEO of illimity Bank. “By providing essential access to credit and advanced digital tools, we support their growth and enhance their competitiveness in an evolving market.”
Middle East
Winner: Bank ABC
From June 2023 to June 2024, Bank ABC accelerated the execution of its multi-year group digital transformation programme, with a particular focus on wholesale banking. The bank enhanced its global transaction banking business to offer a seamless customer experience journey across all product streams. This encompassed 23 releases across its global network over the past year.
In September 2023, the bank launched ABC Trade, a cloud-based platform offering an enriched documentary trade product suite. The platform provides an end-to-end life-cycle functionality across all trade instruments, such as imports, exports and collections, including digital exchange of trade documents, instructions, and free format communication.
Meanwhile, the bank continued to enhance its Corporate Portal digital gateway, as well as its supply chain finance, and cash management platforms. It also digitised its customer onboarding process.
Internally, Bank ABC deployed its artificial intelligence-powered frontline platform, enabling its relationship managers to generate tailored presentations, provide call summaries with key insights, and load financial statements to give a 360-degree view of existing and prospective customers.
In partnership with JPMorgan and the Central Bank of Bahrain, Bank ABC went live in September 2023 with a soft launch of its blockchain-based cross-border payment service, leveraging JPMorgan’s Coin System. This seamless service transmits funds between countries in less than two minutes versus hours/days previously. Meanwhile, the bank’s digital mobile-only Ila Bank continued to evolve, deploying 42 personalised app releases from July 2023 to June 2024.
Bank ABC’s agile digital innovation strategy has driven a surge in net profit of 53 per cent and 25 per cent respectively. “Our agile digital strategy is a cornerstone of our ambition as MENA’s International Bank of the Future. We integrate best-of-breed technology to drive efficiency and deliver greater value for all our stakeholders. We are honoured to win The Banker’s Innovation in Digital Banking award for the Middle East, which is testament to our commitment to enabling a digitally-empowered financial services ecosystem in the region,” says Sael Al Waary, group CEO of Bank ABC.
North America
Winner: Bank of New York Mellon
This January, Bank of New York Mellon launched its virtual account-based solutions, which provided enhanced cash administration activities and reporting capabilities to improve cash segregation, reconciliation, creation of bespoke liquidity structures and to support clients.
Virtual accounts are linked to physical accounts within BNY. They allow incoming or outgoing payments to be reflected in real time, to maintain a virtual sub-ledger that provides a continuously updated transaction and balance history, delivering transparency into company-wide cash flows. The accounts have a unique account number accessible on various payment networks, are self-serviced and managed, and can be established to reflect a client’s business needs or ideal liquidity structure.
The bank has a strategic alliance with MoCaFi — a Black-founded fintech platform leading financial empowerment for traditionally underserved communities — to extend payment options to unbanked and underbanked US communities. Announced in June 2023, the collaboration will provide federal, state and local governments, as well as corporate clients, with a digital disbursement payment service to reach individuals who have no access to basic financial services.
The new disbursement service, offered through BNY’s Vaia platform, allows the seamless distribution of payments and disbursements, such as disaster relief financial aid and employee payroll. These often-vital cash injections can now reach the communities where they are needed most, in a timely and effective manner. The opportunity to also receive basic banking services, including a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation-insured account and a debit card and credit reporting capabilities, will also be available for unbanked and underbanked individuals through the MoCaFi platform.
The platform has more than 95,000 users, though the alliance aims to extend its potentially life-changing capabilities to a much wider pool of people, harnessing BNY’s network and valuable client base to support as many communities and individuals as possible. It offers key features such as a prepaid debit card, one-time or recurring payments, restricted payments, an educational resource, access to ATMs, and online and mobile payments.
Central and eastern Europe
Winner: Tatra banka
Tatra banka has introduced digital innovations aimed at enhancing the banking experience, streamlining operations, and setting new industry benchmarks. They include instant payments, a light version of the bank’s main application tailored to students and young people, and online account opening for self-employed individuals.
The Tabi app is designed for children (under 15s) and features a digital character/avatar known as Tabi, which users can customise and upgrade to their preference.
The app is divided into two sections, banking and education. The banking section gives children an overview of their finances, enabling them to manage their account, savings and cards; since it works with real client data, it can only be activated by a parent who has a child account with Tatra. In the educational section, children can learn financial topics through simple, playful stories and games.
Meanwhile, the preparation and implementation of the bank-wide artificial intelligence enablement strategy is part of Tatra’s ongoing “Future Ready 2025” innovation and digital transformation strategy. This is built on four key pillars: AI governance and technology; change management and education; business value and use cases; and data readiness.
The bank has also launched a customer support tool, Spending PlanTB. It provides clients with an estimate of their account balance until the next payday and highlights upcoming regular recurring expenses, such as loan repayments, standing orders and direct debits.
Using machine learning, Spending PlanTB can identify recurring expenses, such as subscriptions to various services, payments to operators and other service providers, insurance premiums and school fees. It can also remind clients about less frequent payments, such as annual insurance premiums.
The inspiration for this functionality came from features such as car range estimates and battery life indicators on smartphones, which provide users with information derived from previous behaviour. Spending PlanTB was activated by more than 40,000 customers in the first few months after deployment and numbers are steadily increasing.
Africa
Winner: Banque Populaire
Over the past year, Banque Populaire has pursued a digital banking strategy focused on enhancing customer experience, increasing financial inclusion, and leveraging advanced technologies to offer innovative solutions tailored to the North African market. Strategic initiatives include launching the virtual assistant Smart Horse; full digital account creation; and the credit simulator — all designed to give customers more control over their finances, to streamline banking processes, and to provide quick and reliable financial solutions.
Smart Horse leverages machine-learning algorithms to provide personalised financial advice, and can analyse users’ spending patterns, offer budgeting tips, and issue alerts to potential savings opportunities.
The full digital account creation initiative allows customers in Morocco to open and manage their accounts entirely online. This feature includes biometric verification and a user-friendly interface designed to accommodate all customers, including those with disabilities. Banque Populaire enables customers to verify their identity directly through the Direction générale de la Sûreté nationale; the process can be completed within minutes, providing immediate access to banking services without a physical branch visit.
The credit simulator uses advanced algorithms to assess creditworthiness in real-time, ensuring quick and accurate loan decisions for customers. By inputting basic financial information, users can also see personalised loan offers, including interest rates and repayment terms.
Categories
CIO of the Year
Winner: Daniel Minarik, chief data and innovation officer, Tatra banka
Tatra banka believes that for a large, established bank, innovation is no longer just about the functionalities it offers clients in a mobile application, or how it automates processes. To ensure it remains innovative, therefore, the bank has expanded its outlook. Its major strategic objective — to deliver disruptive innovation of its products, services and the business model — is led by chief data and innovation officer Daniel Minarik.
The new innovation strategy, which aims to “create an age of new pioneers”, is called Ventures 2030 and consists of three pillars: innovation ecosystem: creating a pool of talents and ideas; venture building: establishing autonomous and seamless delivery capabilities; accelerating: acting as a catalyst and providing access to capital.
To ensure speed, future scalability and the commercialisation of innovations, the bank is exploring the Venture operating model, which establishes the environment, processes and structure to accelerate the growth of new market innovations.
An important part of making this happen is the organisation’s setup, with innovations, advanced analytics and data governance led by the chief data and innovation officer, who oversees multiple bank strategies, including artificial intelligence enablement and the data and innovation strategy.
The most notable strategic activity led by Minarik, which impacts clients and employees, is the preparation and implementation of the bank-wide AI enablement strategy. This new strategy focuses on opportunities and navigating through the regulatory landscape and hype around generative AI.
The innovation team focuses on empowering talents within the organisation to be able to think, create and innovate. The bank’s leadership feels that in order to generate new ideas, it needs an innovative culture that encourages colleagues to explore new business models, be inspired, look beyond their departments, and not to be afraid to take risks and share their thoughts openly.
Activities that are part of the innovation culture include innovation morning coffee meet ups, hands-on technology workshops, an annual innovation day, regular innovation challenges and an innovation newsletter.
The bank managed to gather more than 261 ideas from various fields such as responsible AI, operations, embedded finance or climate fintech, financial literacy marketing and beyond banking coming from 156 colleagues across the whole bank. More than 88 per cent of them declared an interest in personally participating in the development of their ideas and more than 40 ideas were successfully transferred to other relevant internal departments in the bank to start or continue to implement the ideas.
Tatra is also committed to reaching out to startups and women in tech. The bank’s flagship activity in this area is the FinTech Scouts project. The purpose of this community is to monitor and evaluate new use cases for the financial industry in emerging technology fields, through the lens of pre-seed/seed startup communities. Some other events include: student’s ventures and Girls Day to enable training programs for women in IT.
“Over the past few years, our primary focus has been on digitalisation and improvement of customer experience, advancing cloud technologies and artificial intelligence. As the digital assets space and the ecosystem economy continue to grow, we believe innovations in these areas have the potential to transform the financial industry,” says Minarik.
AI & Machine Learning
Winner: Bradesco
Project: Expansion of Generative AI in various applications
Bradesco has been using the Bradesco artificial intelligence cognitive virtual assistant since 2016. Initially an internal experiment, BIA was extended to the customer and has now had more than 2.3bn interactions.
The bank has created a project development team to work with this technology, using generative AI to automate procedures and repetitive jobs. The focus includes development teams, training of people, space for rapid testing and the creation of an internal generative AI platform where use-cases can be safely experimented with, developed and taken into production safely, ensuring governance and scalability.
There are several examples where the initial application of GenAI has proved benefits: in customer services, where the manager needs to collect information in documents and norms to inform about products and services; in legal and ombudsman processes, which have many stages related to textual analysis; consulting internal files, such as development best practices; as well as manager’s record notes described in norms, issuing a statement and decision.
In June 2023, the bank conducted a diagnosis to reveal gaps in bureaucratic and repetitive processes that suited the application of GenAI. A hackathon was held internally to discover ideas and identify potential artificial general intelligence applications at the bank.
The following month, the selected ideas began to be developed for implementation at the beginning of 2024. Those included support for the bank’s various departments, such as cards and customer service application, ombudsman and business operations, digital consortium sales, legal reports, public bidding and the Research and Economic Studies Department.
At the end of 2023, BIA Branches was launched, the first project related to the initiative to use AGI to assist managers in customer service, collecting information about the bank’s products and services from documents and standards. But broadening the context, the application also covered the employees themselves, also answering questions about internal processes and procedures.
In the second quarter of 2024, the bank started the pilot for BIA Customer, where the client can consult BIA about all information skills, with answers prepared by AGI. Currently, AGI projects involve continuous work, guided using an agile methodology with defined value deliverables and monthly releases — in waves of one to three months.
The Generative AI platform has advanced the development of cases by 10 times using question and answer. Time optimisation in software development activities, such as coding, test scenario generation has been reduced by 30 to 50 per cent less. It has increased the efficiency of document processing in the back office by around 80 per cent, while maintaining the level of accuracy. The time to analyse requests at call centres reduced from 80 to just 15 seconds.
Financial Wellness
Winner: Bank of New York Mellon
Project: Financial inclusion for the African American community
Partner: Mobility Capital Finance
In June 2023, BNY announced a strategic alliance with Mobility Capital Finance — a Black-led fintech platform focused on addressing economic hardship — to extend payment options to unbanked and underbanked individuals and communities in the US.
Through this collaboration, BNY’s treasury services business will provide federal, state and local governments, and corporate clients, with a digital disbursement payment service that reaches individuals that have no access to basic financial services, using MoCaFi’s offering. The alliance reflects BNY’s broader commitment to financial inclusion, helping to connect unbanked and underbanked individuals and communities to high-quality financial services.
BNY engaged in this partnership because it believes it has the opportunity and ability to help close the wealth gap through its business relationships and by advocating for financial inclusion across its markets. MoCaFi used its capabilities to provide needed support for the Emergency Rental Assistance Program. Many states experience issues that prevent them from disbursing Erap funds efficiently.
The new disbursement service, offered through BNY’s Vaia platform, allows governments, higher education and corporate clients, to name a few, to seamlessly distribute payments and disbursements, such as disaster relief financial aid and employee payroll to individuals without financial services access. These cash injections can now reach the communities where they are needed most, timely and effectively. The opportunity to also receive basic banking services — including a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation-insured account as well as a debit card and credit reporting capabilities — will also be available for unbanked and underbanked individuals through the MoCaFi platform.
MoCaFi’s platform has more than 95,000 users, although this alliance aims to extend the platform’s potentially life changing capabilities to a much wider pool of people, harnessing BNY’s network and valuable client base to support as many communities and individuals as possible.
As part of the launch of the new offering, BNY supported MoCaFi’s “Creating Pathways To Wealth for All of Harlem”, the company’s first “On Our Block Pop-Up” theme in New York City at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. At this event, MoCaFi connected with people in the neighbourhood and distributed the prepaid debit card.
As of April 2023, MoCaFi had distributed $100mn in government and philanthropic funds through its financial services as infrastructure platform. MoCaFi continues to expand, focusing its efforts in California.
“Our commitment to making money work for the world drives how we work with clients and partners to build a more inclusive economy by extending the payment rails to unbanked and underbanked communities through our collaboration with MoCaFi,” says Jennifer Barker, global head of treasury services and depositary receipts at BNY. “This collaboration can further help economic mobility by improving understanding and engagement with financial products, services, and solutions. There is so much untapped potential in achieving financial inclusion — from economic growth to helping communities build generational wealth — I am so proud that BNY plays an active role in making our economies more inclusive.”
Investment
Winner: Bradesco
Project: Bradesco Artificial Intelligence on WhatsApp
Partner: IBM
The Investments Village, part of the investment department of Banco Bradesco, is composed of a multidisciplinary team that works primarily in partnership with other areas of the bank, taking advantage of resources in the development and agile delivery process. In this context, the investment recommendations project with Bradesco Artificial Intelligence on WhatsApp substantially relied on internal structures and the support of IBM, an external partner company.
This project started with the bank creating an end-to-end digital investment recommendation journey using AI combined with the expertise and experience of investment specialists. By identifying and organising clients based on their investor profile, behaviour, relevant events, and similarity to other clients, the bank identified the investment options of more interest for each group from their transaction history.
Based on the recommended portfolio provided monthly by the Investment Advisory Team for each class of interest, the recommendation engine evaluates each client’s portfolio individually and selects four products from the created list, generating diversified recommendations aligned with the client’s interests and risk profile. These recommendations are updated daily by the engine and made available to the client through the bank’s digital channels, the Bradesco app, internet banking, and to the commercial team.
Additionally, with BIA on WhatsApp, the recommended portfolio by specialists is offered to clients seeking investment guidance, allowing them to have seamless journeys and individual consultations with an investment specialist. Through BIA and digital channels, all Bradesco clients, regardless of their investment potential and level of knowledge, can receive these recommendations.
The first pilot was launched in early 2023 with selected branches. In February 2023, the project was expanded to include the entire portfolio, and the development of the dashboard for tracking applications conducted through the channel was completed to ensure the solution’s performance. In August 2023, the model was updated to enhance the recommendations. In February 2024, the solution with the integration of BIA was delivered.
There are three offerings as part of this service: monthly recommended investment portfolios, expanded recommendations via digital investment channels, and personalised recommendations based on client investment product consumption.
Open Banking
Winner: Arab Bank
Project: Omnify, a new-generation embedded finance platform
Arab Bank introduced Omnify as a new-generation embedded finance platform to the Middle East and north African region. Omnify was launched by ACABES for Technology, the technology provider for Arab Bank, as its first application programming platform designed for banking-as-a-service for selected markets in the Mena region. Businesses of all types can incorporate financial service into their applications. The platform’s user interface design, along with a developer portal, enables seamless integration, as well as a user-friendly sandbox environment for efficient testing, ensuring an intuitive experience for users.
Via Omnify, Arab Bank offers the following financial products:
- Know-your-customer services offering bank-grade level to security and screening, for customer onboarding.
- Accounts and virtual IBAN-enabling wallets, and payments and settlement services.
- Customisable virtual and physical cards-as-a-service.
- Cross-border payments services.
- Loyalty engines that offer flexible redemption options, allowing customers to earn points and redeem them for cash, online purchases or at partner points of sale.
Omnify started its pilot phase in 2023, and entered a full-scale launch in 2024 in selected markets.
Omnify by ACABES operates under Arab Bank and will allow non-banking entities to access financial services in a unified way across the Mena region, either from Arab Bank (including its subsidiaries), or from other service providers. Through Omnify, third-party partners can leverage the bank’s platform to offer financial services without the burden of building infrastructure, handling operations or navigating regulatory and licensing complexities. This streamlines their path to growth, allowing them to diversify revenue streams, enhance customer engagement, and ultimately, increase customer stickiness.
This project enabled the bank’s digital transformation by enabling the complete digitisation of its service portfolio, addressing challenges that traditional methods could not overcome. These digitised services are now offered through application programming interfaces, allowing integration and consumption by third-party applications.
Deputy CEO and chief operating officer Eric Modave says: “The bank has received numerous awards recognising its innovation spirit and digital transformation achievements. Our Omnify platform has enabled open banking, embedded finance and banking as a service to fintechs and other startups that can seamlessly integrate product and services APIs and offer such products to their end customers.
“Omnify embodies the bank’s continued willingness to enable innovation at pace in a fast-moving financial service industry, in collaboration with its trusted partners.”
Payments
Winner: Santander
Project: PagoNxt Payments Hub Platform
Payments Hub is a proprietary global technology platform developed by PagoNxt Payments, which is part of the Santander Group. The platform provides an innovative solution for financial institutions to process and manage account-to-account payments in an effective, efficient and secure way.
The platform serves to overcome the common problems that FIs face in the payments space, such as the changing regulatory requirements and the expectation of consumers and businesses alike for real-time payments.
These problems are compounded by having to accommodate the rapid growth of electronic payments volumes, which increases cost and risk given the current outdated systems.
PagoNxt Payments developed its own brand-new global A2A payments platform to support end-to-end payments processing. The new Payments Hub platform is cloud-native and scalable, and establishes a connection between multiple local and regional payments schemes in Europe and the Americas (such as Sepa, Iberpay, Faster Payments, Bizum, PIX, SPEI and Swift) in a single platform.
The platform has been built from the outset with the objective to serve not only Santander, but also the wider market, acting as a technology processor provider for FIs.
The global Payments Hub is a multi-year project which started back in 2022. In the period running between June 2023 and June 2024, the bank completed an important phase including the delivery of functionality supporting instant payments, credit transfers, direct debits and international payments in multiple geographies.
Four regions are now in operation in the cloud covering Europe, UK, North America and South America. During the first half of 2024, the number of processed transactions globally has surpassed the 1bn per year landmark. As the platform scales up, the overall cost per transaction is reduced, thanks to the shift to a software-as-a-service paradigm that centralises and absorbs a significant amount of maintenance and evolution costs, the efficient share of technical resources and the re-usability of the code. As a result, savings-wise, a multi-million cost reduction is being achieved by the decommissioning of legacy systems and rationalisation of resources, according to the bank.
“Payments Hub brings together the foundational capabilities required to deliver highly innovative services to our clients on a single platform,” José Luis Calderón, PagoNxt Payments CEO says. “Our streamlined payments processing in the cloud facilitates the value-added services we are integrating into the platform, such as instant payments, real-time foreign exchange, AI to combat fraud and financial crime, and more.”
Transformation Project
Winner: Bradesco
Project: Bradesco Expresso Digital Platform
The Bradesco Expresso Digital Platform is a hub designed for marketing financial and non-financial products to all customers, leveraging a network of more than 37,000 banking correspondents, called “corbans”, across Brazil. Corbans are companies authorised to mediate the offering of products and services between financial institutions and their customers, providing convenience and practicality. They are typically located in accessible places like shopping malls, supermarkets, and petrol stations, offering more flexible operating hours than traditional bank branches.
The platform provides personalised offers and streamlined customer journeys, offering all products and services in one place. This reduces account opening time by 30 per cent, enables same-day credit card issuance, simplifies personal credit offers with funds released into the current account in up to five minutes, and allows authentication via facial biometrics.
The platform provides a comprehensive 360-degree view, including onboarding, training, management and support for corbans and the agency network. It improves the offer using CRM to obtain information on pre-approved products for the client, leading to a 7 per cent increase in sales conversion. It also allows online control of the operational limit balance, relieving 60 per cent of the network’s administrative burden. The new registration format for corbans results in a 30 per cent reduction in filling time and a decrease from 15 to five fields, along with the use of digital additives, signatures and online product releases.
The project began in March 2023, with development focused on delivering products and services for a better experience for both the end customer and the corbans. By November 2023, more than 22 deliveries and 150 features had been made, initially used by 70 corbans in 13 different states of Brazil. In April 2024, the availability was expanded to 1,000 corbans. Currently, 2,800 corbans are already benefiting from the implemented improvements.
The adoption of cloud-native technologies was instrumental in enhancing the bank’s agility and efficiency. The platform was meticulously engineered for scalability and flexibility, enabling the bank to accommodate new profiles of companies aspiring to become banking correspondents. It streamlined product and services offerings, as well as the contracting process for customers.
Additionally, it provides a training module for product sales, management of correspondent users, and digitally signed service marketing addendums for correspondents.
Furthermore, the bank integrated technologies and architectural models, such as adaptive/responsive micro front-end and microservices. These innovations enabled the bank to overcome challenges posed by low-speed networks in certain regions of Brazil. Additionally, Bradesco implemented security enhancements, including end-to-end encryption, facial biometrics, and integration with peripherals devices.
The platform is accessible on various devices including computers, tablets and mobile phones. Consequently, it has expanded the market share of Bradesco Expresso to 37,000 banking correspondents in a market of 540,000 correspondents.
Bank/Fintech Partnerships
Winner: Bank of New York Mellon
Partnership: Mobility Capital Finance
In June 2023, BNY announced a strategic alliance with Mobility Capital Finance, a Black-founded and led fintech platform focused on addressing economic hardship, to help extend payment options to unbanked and underbanked individuals and communities in the US.
Through this collaboration, BNY’s Treasury Services business will now provide federal, state and local governments, as well as corporate clients, with a digital disbursement payment service that reaches individuals without current access to basic financial services through MoCaFi’s offering. The alliance reflects BNY’s broader commitment to financial inclusion, helping to connect unbanked and underbanked individuals and communities to high-quality financial services.
The new disbursement service, offered through BNY’s Vaia platform, allows governments, higher education and corporate clients, to name a few, to seamlessly distribute payments and disbursements, such as disaster relief financial aid and employee payroll to individuals without financial services access. These cash injections can now reach the communities where they are needed most, timely and effectively. The opportunity to also receive basic banking services — including a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation-insured account as well as a debit card and credit reporting capabilities — will also be available for unbanked and underbanked individuals through the MoCaFi platform.
MoCaFi’s platform has more than 95,000 users, and this alliance aims to extend the platform’s potentially life changing capabilities to a much wider pool of people, harnessing BNY’s network and valuable client base to support as many communities and individuals as possible.
Initial conversations began when MoCaFi in December 2021. BNY was interested in being able to secure a digital disbursement solution to reach the un and underbanked communities, which do not directly benefit from innovations on bank account enabled payment types.
As part of the launch of the new offering, BNY supported MoCaFi’s “Creating Pathways To Wealth for All of Harlem”, the company’s first “On Our Block Pop-Up” theme in New York City at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. At this event MoCaFI connected with people in the neighbourhood and distributed the prepaid debit card.
As of April 2023, MoCaFi had distributed $100mn in government and philanthropic funds through its financial services as infrastructure platform. MoCaFi continues to expand, focusing its efforts in California.
Cyber security
Winner: Industrial and Commercial Bank of China
Project: Unified application security R&D support platform
Based on the Security Development Lifecycle and DevSecOps theory, ICBC established a security system in 2021 covering the full lifecycle of research and development for self-developed application systems of large financial institutions. It embeds security awareness into the whole R&D process and provides automated security capabilities and closed-loop security management covering the full lifecycle of the application.
In 2024, the support platform, security detection tools and security metrics were expanded to the whole of ICBC. This enabled security measures at all stages of ICBC R&D, and initiated the construction of R&D security intelligence; intelligent models for the requirements, design, development and test stages; and implemented security intelligence services covering the entire R&D lifecycle.
The project mainly addresses problems, such as high vulnerability repair cost, high manpower cost for security work and security compliance risks, and further improves the Application Security Lifecycle Management System.
This project uses artificial intelligence to train security professional models to enhance the security quality and control capability of ICBC’s R&D process as a whole by precipitating and solidifying the experience of security specialists, creating an intelligent assistant for security R&D, and strengthening the detection capability of security tools.
Through measures such as security development process control and moving forward of security works, more security risks can be identified or detected at an early stage, significantly reducing the risks before application release.
With the help of a unified application security R&D support platform and a security testing tool chain, all the work that originally relied on individual experience and skills can be carried out in a highly automated and standardised way. In personal mobile banking, with the same security development work, the efficiency of the development team has improved by more than 50 per cent.
Mobile
Winner: Akbank
Project: Akbank Mobile on Togg T10X
Partner: Togg, Turkey’s Automobile Industry and Trade Enterprise Group
Akbank and Togg, Turkey’s Automobile Industry and Trade Enterprise Group, have partnered to provide Togg’s smart device experience via the bank’s mobile application.
The embedding banking partnership allows Akbank Mobile customers to access mobile banking transactions via Togg smart devices. New functions will be added to increase Internet of Things use cases by integrating voice assistants to make the lives of customers easier.
As part of this project, Akbank created a real-world asset token allowing Togg smart devices to be represented on blockchain as a digital value. Digital assets representing ownership of Togg smart devices are created, stored and shared. First, a non-fungible token, which represents a Togg smart device, is minted on the Avalanche blockchain. For a car-sharing scenario, a command is given to create fractional NFTs. For building trust and safety, the NFT is sent to Akbank as guarantor for custody. Fractions of NFTs representing smart devices are distributed to users’ digital wallets.
With this collaboration, the bank enables customers to reach mobility and finance simultaneously beyond traditional channels. Moreover, with the help of tokenisation, Akbank becomes the custodian of digital assets representing ownership of Togg smart devices to support secure car-sharing scenarios in the future.
Customers who use Akbank Mobile on their Togg smart devices can access their banks, view account information, transfer money and make payments from their Togg smart devices without being connected to their mobile phones. The most important example of this would be toll roads payments and vehicle taxes.
This tokenisation project showcases that Togg ownership and usage rights can be managed by digital assets. This leads the bank to a bigger picture for the future of finance and liquidity of non-financial assets in real time. In the long term, it is expected to pave the way for many financial services such as safe payment methods in car sales, building pay-as-you-go pricing models in car rentals and easy access to instant auto loans.
“We believe that Akbank customers should be able to access financial services anywhere, anytime. We created superior experience in mobility where our customers can access bank accounts, transfer money and make payments from their Togg smart devices. We will continue to add value by new IoT use cases like integrating voice assistants and our visionary tokenisation projects together,” says Burcu Civelek Yüce, Akbank’s executive vice-president of consumer banking and digital solutions.
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