Barclays secures home banking

British bank Barclays is issuing half-a-million smart card readers to customers to secure home banking, reports CardTechnology. The readers will be supplied by France's smart card vendor, Gemalto.

The readers aim to reduce the risk of online banking fraud. The product, PINsentry, requires the user's debit card, as well as the passwords.

To date, banks in such countries as Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland have issued handheld readers to customers.

Guaranty Trust Bank has introduced its GT Bank on Wheel mobile banking product, says The Tide Online.

This is a roving mini-bank, which allows customers to perform the same transactions as in a bank branch, equipped with two tellers and two ATMs.

It was, however, disclosed that for now the ATM will not perform the service of deposit, in order to minimise queues.

Microsoft says SEC SERVIZI, an IT outsourcing consortium to the Italian banking and financial market, has gone live with its data warehousing solution, developed in conjunction with RDB and Open systems, reports Assodigitale.

Developed to comply with the Basel II directive, the solution is based on Microsoft's SQL Server 2005.

This solution will allow customer banks to run credit risk analysis, provide certified data and reports to its risk management desks, and collect and manage all the required information to comply with the EU financial markets directive.

Fiserv CBS Worldwide, a business unit of Fiserv, is providing banking core, treasury, anti-money laundering and risk management solutions to Banco Ahorro Famsa, says finextra.

Banco Ahorro Famsa opened its first seven bank branches in January 2007 in the city of Torre'on, located in the northern state of Coahuila in Mexico, with more on the way throughout Mexico.

The bank's processes and procedures, as well as all Fiserv solutions, were certified as regulatory compliant, including core banking, treasury, anti-money laundering and risk management.