Dear Subscriber,

Fresh from attending Finovate, we picked out the hottest trends from the event such as intelligent banking and the surge in personal finance management apps. Elsewhere in the newsletter, with the mayoral race heating up, we consider how each candidate will sustain growth in London’s burgeoning FinTech scene. But it’s not the only thing heating up now as this weekend it’s Valentine’s Day. To mark the occasion we looked at how people around the world prefer to spend money in the run up to 14th February.

We also bring you an interview with Stefan Happ, currently serving as EVP and GM of American Express’ Global Emerging Payments division. He shares his thoughts on building out American Express’ prepaid business and what lies ahead for this industry.

The momentum of London’s FinTech ecosystem over the past few years has played a huge role in putting the capital’s tech scene on the global map. But unless its next mayor addresses a number of key hurdles facing companies it will stunt the city’s tech community and make it harder to launch, execute and scale the next TransferWise, Funding Circle or Nutmeg.

Prepaid cards are only getting more popular among consumers and businesses and American Express is a key player in this space. Stefan Happ, currently serving as EVP and GM of the company’s Global Emerging Payments division, was part of the initial roll out and development of American Express’ prepaid card business as it evolved from pure play gift cards.

With Valentine’s Day getting ever closer, you would think that, as with most last-minute shopping, people would turn to their trust keyboard and make purchases online. Turns out that may not be the case as new research shows shoppers prefer to buy in-store rather than online for the most romantic day of the year.

This week PaymentEye attended Finovate Europe and saw some very exciting companies showcasing their products. We saw some early trends coming out that are set to dominate this year. From financial institutions getting personal, to person finance management getting intelligent, here are the five hottest trends for 2016.

It seems the mobile payments space will continue to get busier and more fragmented before it (inevitably) consolidates, with Australian bank ANZ the latest to launch its own contactless payments service. The firm just unveiled its ANZ Mobile Pay app for Android devices, which enables customers to tap their phone to make payments and withdraw cash from contactless-enabled ANZ ATMs. Users can add their existing ANZ Visa and American Express credit and debit cards.