Feature and comment articles from the July/August issue of Banking Technology magazine are now available to read online.

Is your outsourcing strategy taking you in the right direction?

How far can any business outsource functions and processes before it loses the defining characteristics of its industry? As business process outsourcing is succeeded by knowledge process outsourcing, David Bannister wonders where the boundaries are.

Contactless payments: better late than never?

As commercial deployment of contactless card payments finally appears to be picking up pace globally, Fabien Buliard charts regional differences and the reasons behind them.

Boundless energy

The energy markets are burgeoning, but their disparate and complex needs mean that technology solutions have to be hybrid, finds Sherree DeCovny.

Clarity needed for carbon

As is typical with any new market, straight-through processing rates are very low in the carbon trading markets. The rapidly growing markets - which grew 68% to €94 billion in 2009 according to Point Carbon, a consulting service for power, gas and carbon markets - are characterised by manual processing and its associated risk, writes Heather McKenzie.

Business continuity

A successful business continuity strategy means thinking about the unthinkable, says Frank Booty

Plus views and comments from industry participants:

• Michel Akkermans of Clear2Pay on why Sibos 2010 being in Amsterdam provides a case study in payments unification
• Fred Bar of VocaLink looks at new entrants to the payments market
• David Sear of Travelex Global Business Payments says some of the barriers to adoption of electronic payments are finally being eroded

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