Bitwage, a Silicon Valley start-up launched in May of 2014, announced that the company has won a French Tech Ticket competition. The company will be further granted with €57,000 from BPI France, a large public investment bank owned by French government.

Cobalt DL, the FX post-trade processing network based on distributed ledger technology, today announced that Citi has become an investor and one of the launch clients for their Cobalt FX post trade solution.

Cobalt DL has commenced beta testing with a number of leading FX participants on its private peer-to-peer network that uses distributed ledger technology to significantly reduce risk and cut post-trade costs by up to 80%. Cobalt DL’s FX solution is set to launch in 2017, with 15 leading institutional FX participants already committed to the service.

EverCompliant, the cyber intelligence company, pioneer and industry leader of transaction laundering detection and prevention, announced today the completion of a $9.5 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Arbor Ventures and included existing investors Carmel Ventures, StarFarm Ventures and Nyca Partners. With this investment, Melissa Guzy of Arbor Ventures has joined the Board of Directors of EverCompliant.

IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO), a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions, today announced that Markit FRTB Studio, an aggregation and capital analytics engine, has processed a portfolio of one million trades in single digit seconds on a European bank’s Hadoop infrastructure as part of a successful proof-of-concept. This high-speed performance enables banks to understand the capital implications of business decisions in near real-time in relation to the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB) standards.

Financial innovation firm R3 has announced Credicorp as the first Spanish-speaking Latin American financial institution to join its consortium to design and apply distributed and shared ledger-inspired technologies to global financial markets.

Demand for multi-asset trading on the buy-side has “renewed” the importance of the execution management system’s role on buy-side trading desks in the battle for screen-based real estate.

However, listed derivatives centric trading platforms may no longer be the solution that clients are seeking, according to a recent Aite Group’s report, “Buy-Side Trading Technology: Multi-Asset EMSs’ Listed Derivatives Functionalities.”

FIME’s chip payment test platform Savvi – used by acquirers, processors and merchants globally for terminal integration testing – now supports China UnionPay (UnionPay) certification. The new certification process requires merchants and acquirers to confirm that a terminal meets UnionPay’s credit and debit card standards and will successfully integrate with the payment infrastructure. 

Difficult Second Album, Sophomore Slump, Second Year Blues - it’s not easy maintaining success.

Happily, following its breakout year in 2015, the mobile payments industry has seen continued innovation and growth in 2016.

So, as we approach the end of the year, what are the key trends and technologies that will shape the industry into 2017?

IoT and ‘invisible payments’

While we have all been enjoying a life online, an awkward truth threatens to wreck everything. It is this: a password is the same irrespective of who enters it. This means that when an organisation asks for passwords or other ‘memorable’ information for verification purposes, it is unable to tell the difference between their customer and an impostor.

So why do organisations persist in asking their customers to do something that a fraudster can also do?

• Open online in less than 5 minutes
• No conditions or hidden fees
• In partnership with BNP Paribas for the sequestration of funds

The solution consists of a web and mobile online account to cash and withdraw money, process transfers and receive withdrawals, up to 4 MasterCard cards with optional travel insurance to settle expenses and make withdrawals, as well as a range of additional services to save money and better manage its budget.