Technologie

Demand for instant payments, an area in which certain corners of Europe have lagged other parts of the globe, is, according to PwC, disrupting Luxembourg’s payments ecosystem, as well as putting strain on the existing infrastructure. At the same time, innovation in B2B payments the new frontier of payments.

These changes in payments and others are taking place against the hugely increased profitability of the Luxembourg banking market, which collectively recorded a 2021 net profit of 30.8 percent.

BlocHome, a Luxembourg blockchain real estate investment platform, has arranged a  guarantee that will allow it to finance the first security token-based residential project in Europe, an eight million euro housing project in Luxembourg known as the «Clapton Residence», without waiting for further fund-raising. The guarantee was arranged after the firms’s first project attracted 2.15 million euros in tokenised investments from 280 investors.

The concept of abstracting the ownership of a thing from the thing itself using blockchain technology, known in the digital realm as “tokenisation”, is taking off with supportive legislation, to judge from the experience of VP Bank, one of the three main banks in Liechtenstein. Inheritance planning is one area where tokenisation can provide benefits, the experience in the Alpine state shows.

Romain Swertvaeger has been appointed as head of fintech at EY Luxembourg. He takes over from Gaël Denis, who earlier was appointed as chief operating officer at the firm.

Swertvaeger will lead EY’s fintech practice, which provides services ranging from digital transformation, process management, regulatory compliance and audit, fundraising and valuation support, to tax services and technology risk management. 

On a residential street in Cessange, a residential district in southwest Luxembourg City, a four-storey apartment building is under renovation. But this isn’t just like any other such building. This is the Clapton Residence (photo), BlocHome’s pilot project for a new approach to home ownership where investors can buy small fragments of the building – the minimum investment is 1,000 euros  –  through the tokenisation allowed by blockchain technology. 

Small and medium enterprises are seen as the backbone of the net zero approach to the climate. But the vast majority of them lack the financing to implement their environmental, social, and governance ( ESG) programmes. A New York City based start-up named Marco Polo Exchange (MPX) is rolling out its POLO marketplace to help at least 150,000 SMEs overcome these challenges. 

Private consumers seeking to invest in virtual assets through investment funds, despite the massive losses incurred by investors in certain cryptocurrencies, should be aware they are doing so without the protection of financial regulatory oversight, Luxembourg financial regulator the CSSF said.

The CSSF document was entitled “Notice to private consumers in the context of investment funds providing exposure to virtual assets”. 

Apex Group on Monday said it has been appointed to provide corporate, administrative and trustee services to the Nasdaq-listed Luxembourg platform of Eqonex Limited, a digital assets financial services company. Eqonex recently launched an Exchange Traded Note  in bitcoin on Frankfurt’s Xetra market.

A recent European Union agreement to crack down on the “wild west” in international crypto markets is “not a threat for the Luxembourg crypto market,” according to a senior official at international fund services firm Apex Group.

Representatives of the European Council and the EU parliament have reached a political agreement on the Markets in Crypto Assets proposal, known as MiCA, which covers issuers of unbacked crypto-assets, and so-called stablecoins, as well as the trading venues and the wallets where crypto-assets are held. 

Luxembourg’s banking association ABBL is encouraging its members to overcome their reluctance and embrace the cloud computing revolution in order to remain “agile and innovative”, especially now that the CSSF has improved its regulatory framework for cloud banking.  A recent ABBL-KPMG survey shows that banks in the Grand Duchy are slow to take up cloud services.