You’d need to be living on a remote island, without electricity or internet to not be aware of what the world is going through right now – a medical crisis that has spread across the world and disrupted supply chains, goods and services production, financial markets and most importantly for millions of people, the ability to go about their daily lives. Last week the Dow Jones and other US-based trading platforms took a massive tumble, and yesterday it was Europe’s turn with the worst drops in history – US markets even temporarily stopped trading as a result.

Wirecard, the global innovation leader for digital financial technology, is launching an initiative to support businesses of all sizes and industries: Together with Futur/io, Wirecard is launching the “Innovation for Now” platform where merchants can find assistance packages from leading companies like SAP and Wirecard. The aim of the initiative is to bundle the offerings of all major tech companies in Germany and make them more easily accessible to merchants affected by COVID-19.

EMVCo is encouraging domestic payment systems (and other similar entities) to use its new EMV® terminal integration testing framework to reduce the time needed to get new and updated acceptance terminals live and operational.  

Wolters Kluwer’s Finance, Risk & Reporting (FRR) business is hosting a webinar on April 7^th, devoted to discussing the implementation of Basel IV in the Asia Pacific (APAC) Region.

RSA Security’s Fraud & Risk Intelligence (FRI) Unit has today released details of recently-uncovered scams and cybercriminal activity, providing a snapshot of the cyber-fraud environment from behind enemy lines. The team have identified tens of thousands of newly-registered domains that contained the words “coronavirus” and/or “COVID-19” as far back as January 2020, demonstrating that fraudsters have been well-prepared to profit from the pandemic. Furthermore, the team has highlighted eight specific digital risks that it has seen emerge in the wake of the pandemic, including:

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COVID-19 is obviously changing many aspects of daily life. Some will be short term measures to see us all through these times, although I wonder how many will become more permanent fixtures in our lives.

Acronis, a global leader in cyber protection, marked its inaugural World Cyber Protection Week by revealing that 42% of companies experienced a data loss event that resulted in downtime in 2019.