Co-founding Strands came as a natural next step for me after a degree in computer science from the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the EPFL in Switzerland.

Prior to setting up Strands with Francisco Martin in the US, Professor Boi Faltings and I had co-created and sold a company using AI for travel planning, which at the time was a huge step in innovation.

We predicted that 2017 would be the year of ‘Mobile Payments 2.0’, with seamless payment methods, value-added services and alternative payment channels coming to the fore. As we move into the second half of 2017, what better time to take a moment to reflect on what we have learned from the year so far, and the key trends and technologies driving progress and innovation.

The importance of VAS

On September 7, Daniel Zakrisson, one of Cofound.it’s founders, will share his experience in conducting a successful crowdsale campaign and reveal the ICO opportunities at Blockchain & Bitcoin Сonference Stockholm.  

In June 2017, his own Cofound.it platform, designed for investment seeking and startup financing (the project was designed by the team of ICONOMI blockchain project), raised 15 million dollars within the ICO.   

Pelican, a global provider of Artificial Intelligence powered payments and financial crime compliance solutions for banks and corporates, today announced its expansion into Asia Pacific with the opening of a new office in Hong Kong.  As part of this move, Pelican has appointed Colin Camp to lead the growth in the region.

Verifi, Inc., a leading provider of 

> Most Common Passwords 

Looking at the list of 2016’s most common passwords, we couldn’t stop shaking our heads. Nearly 17 percent of people are safeguarding their accounts with “123456.” What really perplexed us is that so many website operators are not enforcing password security best practices.

Using external, public data sources we scoured 10 million passwords from data breaches that happened in 2016. A few things jumped out:

Wolters Kluwer’s Finance, Risk & Reporting business today announced that Chartis Research has named the company a Category Leader in its Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II) Report for 2017. Chartis uses in-depth research and a clear scoring system to determine which MiFID II solutions can best meet an organization’s needs. 

Actiance, the leader in communications compliance, archiving, and analytics, today announced support for the capture of encrypted messaging platforms WeChat and WhatsApp via Socialite ─ its platform for compliance across public social media channels. 

Vela Trading Technologies LLC (Vela), a global leader in high performance trading, market data, and analytics technology, is pleased to announce that Jennifer Nayar, CEO at Vela, has joined the Board of Directors of the Security Traders Association of New York (STANY) starting from August 1, 2017 for a three-year term. 

Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), the International Financial Centre in Abu Dhabi, and the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) Kenya signed a Cooperation Agreement which provides a framework for cooperation to support financial innovation in each jurisdiction.