Today in Europe, the Middle East and Africa news, U.K. bank NatWest announced a new partnership with Vodeno to establish a Banking-as-a-Service business, and Amazon has filed new lawsuits against review brokers in Spain and Italy.
NatWest, Vodeno Enter BaaS Partnership
NatWest Group announced a partnership with Vodeno Group to create a Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) business in the U.K.
NatWest said the planned BaaS business will focus on developing embedded financial services products by leveraging Vodeno’s BaaS technology and NatWest’s banking systems and U.K. licenses.
Hermes to Boost Prices Amid Continued Luxury Resilience
Luxury brand Hermes said it plans to raise prices next year, after reporting what it called “very good sales momentum” and continued buying power among affluent consumers in the face of inflation.
Hermes Executive Vice President of Finance Eric du Halgouet said the company would likely increase prices between 5% and 10%. He cited rising costs and currency fluctuations as the reasons for the price increases.
According to the French company’s third-quarter earnings report, Hermes enjoyed a 24% increase in revenue for the quarter.
Amazon Ramps Lawsuits Against Fake Review Sites
Amazon has filed a host of legal challenges in Europe as part of ongoing efforts to stop fake review brokers.
The company said in a press release that it has filed its first criminal complaint in Italy and first civil case in Spain against the review sites.
Amazon said in the release it has also recently filed 10 new lawsuits in the United States, going after “bad actors that operate more than 11,000 websites and social media groups that attempt to orchestrate fake reviews on Amazon and other stores in exchange for money or free products.”
The company’s Italian criminal complaint is against a broker who it accuses of selling fake reviews.
The civil complaint in Spain is against a website called Agencia Reviews, which Amazon said in the release targets sellers and customers on its Spanish site, reimbursing them for their fake reviews.
BoE Official: ‘Serious Deficiencies’ in Crypto Governance
Speaking to an audience at the University College London (UCL) Centre for Blockchain Technologies yesterday, Carolyn Wilkins of the Bank of England’s (BoE) Financial Policy Committee discussed crypto governance, DeFi and the need for regulatory oversight of both.
During the speech, she cautioned that there are “serious deficiencies in governance in the crypto ecosystem.”
Moreover, Wilkins said there are “hard limits to how decentralized a system can become in practice.”
She argued that centralized governance mechanisms create an important protection against crypto-populism. She said they are useful when it isn’t practically feasible to gain the consensus of an entire community in the needed timeframe.
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