Crypto Facilities, a world-leading cryptocurrency trading platform, today announced the launch of futures for Ethereum. The new derivatives contract will start trading at 4pm UK time today. 

The first Ethereum futures to be offered by a regulated firm, the products will enable market participants to take a long or short position in the cryptocurrency, allowing them to broaden investment opportunities and manage risks more effectively.

Exchanges are required to obtain licensing as a payment institution in Japan to operate their business (see previous article covered by Bitlegal for background information). This is a short note that Japanese FSA has a Fintech Support Desk to assist with any enquiries for licensing. In addition, the FSA has signed fintech cooperation agreements with Singapore MAS and UK FCA. This should make the process easier for market entry. A UK firm or Singapore firm will through their regulator seek a referral to the JFSA.

Adyen, the payments platform of choice for the world’s leading companies, has partnered with Retail Pro International to help retailers provide the ultimate in-store experience for customers.  The partnership will be rolled out across markets in Europe, Singapore and Australia, to deliver a unified retail experience for customers across all channels.

Trade finance software firm Traydstream has announced the executive appointment of Shishir Vyas as the firm's Chief Client Experience & Digitisation Officer.

As the fintech continues to expand its core offering to banks and corporates of automating the critical processes that underpin trade finance, the appointment signals the next stage in the company’s progress from pilots to commercial mandates.

RBR observes strong growth in spending on European commercial cards as a result of increasing use of virtual cards for travel-related and B2B payments

According to RBR’s Commercial Cards in Europe 2018, there were 58 million commercial cards in Europe in 2016, up 6% on the previous year. Commercial cards represent just 4% of all cards and with many businesses not yet offering commercial cards, there is much opportunity for expansion.

Commercial cards tend to be used for high-value purchases

GDPR introduces ten new rights to data subjects.

Chapter III of GDPR, Section 1 provides for some of the transparency requirements placed upon data controllers as they communicate with data subjects. It explicitly refers to several Articles 13 – 22 and Article 34. In plain English, that means:

1. The controller has to provide certain information to data subjects depending on whether the personal data was collected from the data subject or was obtained elsewhere (Art. 13 & 14). 

Wealth management fintech firm, JHC Systems (JHC) has announced today that it has partnered with US fintech firm Vertical Management Systems (VMS) to provide customers with high quality and efficient market data. 

Metamako, the acknowledged leader in the low-latency, FPGA-enabled network solutions space, has now entered the security space with the announcement of its MetaProtect™ Firewall solution.

Cinkciarz.pl wins against MasterCard. The company refuted MasterCard's objections against the registration of the Cinkciarz.pl company trademarks. In Europe alone Cinkciarz.pl has won every one of the 12 proceedings in which a decision has been made.

Nucleus Software, a leading lending and transaction banking solutions provider, today announced that HDB Financial Services Limited(HDBFS), one of the leading Non-Banking Financial company (NBFC) in India, has selected their lending analytics solution to help them leverage the insights provided by their data and make faster and more informed lending decisions.