Bank of England opens payments system to banks` competitors

The Bank of England is also setting up a unit to work with fintech companies to tackle central banking problems in areas such as data security and analysis, including spotting anomalies and patterns in large sets of data, reuters.com reports.

Britain accounts for about half of European fintech start-ups, which use technology ranging from cloud data storage to smartphones to provide loans, insurance and payment services as well as more business-focused needs. The Bank of England is also planning to launch a fintech accelerator and fintech businesses will be invited to carry out proof of concept trials with the Bank of England

Fintech startups will succeed if they apply the following 5 point plan: access to the central banks payment settlement systems, still restricted to 48 big firms; openess to startups looking to use the central banks payment settlement service for securities and stock transactions; the use of distributed ledger technology in its own activities; the launch of the fintech accelerator; a reasonable regulatory approach to the new sector.