US Retail Sales Drop; PPI Prices Rise, EUR Flat, AUD Slips

Upflow has raised $15m to revolutionize how B2B companies get paid. The company provides a SaaS solution that enables companies to radically modernize their entire cash-cycle, and effortlessly collect customer payments. Upflow now processes more than $200m worth of invoices a month, for over 1.5m transacting companies.

Earlier this month, The Bank of Thailand contracted with a firm they tasked with developing a proof-of-concept for a Thai CBDC, settling on development costs of 10 million baht. This announcement comes as other countries are busy planning for their own financial futures. Recently, Ghana announced that the country is approaching the pilot testing phase for its own CBDC, while the president of El Salvador announced that he aimed to make Bitcoin an official currency for his Central American nation.

ESG has gone mainstream but the journey to adoption is full of complex and difficult challenges.  At the heart of the mission is technology and data.

Data management for ESG is a newly emerging and dynamic area.  Both buy-side and sell-side financial institutions cite data as one of the most intractable problems they face in implementing ESG.

ION, the largest global provider of trading, analytics, treasury, and risk management solutions for capital markets, commodities, and treasury management, today announced that ION Markets' ION Fixed Income has been named Best Trading Solution for Fixed Income by TradingTech Insight (TTI) Awards USA. This award is ION Fixed Income's second such win for the year, having been named Best Trading Solution for Fixed Income by TTI Awards Europe in February 2021. 

Global risk analytics consultancy, 4most, has announced the provision of its USA CECL Economics Service to BancorpSouth Bank amidst the ongoing pandemic. The partnership sees 4most supporting the Bank through the pandemic recovery period while gauging new risks, as part of its range of credit risk initiatives.

TransferMate Global Payments, the world’s leading provider of payments  infrastructure as a service, today announced a new collaboration to introduce its simple cross-border payment experience to sellers and buyers of Alibaba.com, a leading ecommerce platform for global  wholesale trade. Customers of Alibaba.com can use TransferMate’s award-winning platform to receive  and make payments, benefitting from preferential FX rates, quick transaction times and no wire transfer  fees.

In response to increased demand for intercompany financial management (IFM), FourQ has launched a global partner program designed to drive collaboration and engagement with technology providers, consulting firms, and professional services firms.

VALK, the London and Zurich-based creators of a market-leading digital platform designed to enable users to capitalise on a global surge in private trading activity has secured a prestigious place in the Financial Conduct Authority’s regulatory sandbox.

Few businesses are more old-school than organisations that have historically operated in the financial services sector, although many today are making moves to prove otherwise.