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Weekly Lists
December 21, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 28
bne:TMT Security concerns
surface as Russia digitises its economy
As Russia moves towards digitisation, security concerns have arisen due to the failure of government agencies to foot the security bill in timely fashion.
The government-funded "Digital Economy" programme, aimed at speeding up digitisation of Russian enterprises and public- sector organisations, consists of several initiatives, one of which is specifically focused on information security.
The initiative was supposed to be jointly funded by the communica- tions ministry and the industry ministry, but the funding, scheduled to be disbursed in the third quarter of 2018, never arrived, accord- ing to Vedomosti.
The two agencies were supposed to provide RUB363.6mn ($5.5mn) to the autonomous non-commercial organisation Digital Economy, which is in charge of carrying out the national digitisation scheme, and another agency, the Centre for Import Substitution, before the end of September. However, the cash was never disbursed.
London-based fintech company Revolut has obtained a European banking licence from the Bank of Lithuania that will allow it to operate across the European Union. The company, which started out offering a prepaid card service for foreign currency payments, will now be able to offer banking services such as current accounts, loans and overdrafts.
A Revolut spokesperson told Bloomberg that the company chose Lithuania both because of the “incredibly fintech friendly” regulato- ry environment and because it has 150,000 customers in the Baltic country.
With Brexit looming in 2019, the Financial Times reports that Revolut is also planning to apply for a UK banking licence to ensure it can continue to operate both in its home market and in EU countries.
More than one million websites using the .IR domain affix are now operational in Iran, Mehr News Agency reported on December 16.
Iran has a burgeoning website industry particularly as e-commerce companies offer everything from ride-hailing and e-retail to price comparison services. However, the industry suffers from a lack of wider visibility due to the .IR domain not appearing in the results of foreign search engine sites including Google due to US sanctions directed at the country.
Lithuanian central bank issues banking licence to fast-growing fintech company Revolut
.IR domain crosses the 1mn websites threshold