SWIFT announces today that global transaction banks are actively using SWIFT’s new global payments innovation (gpi) service, which opened for live payments in January 2017. ABN AMRO, Bank of China, BBVA, Citi, Danske Bank, DBS Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, ING Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, Nordea Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and UniCredit are live with SWIFT gpi, exchanging gpi payments across 60 country corridors. Numerous additional banks will follow in the coming months.

OpenLink, the global leader in trading, treasury and risk management solutions for the energy, commodities, corporate and financial services industries, has won the prestigious Central Banking Award 2017 in the ‘Risk Management Services Provider of the Year’ category.

SETL, the financial blockchain specialist, today announced the opening of its Global Engineering Centre in Ipswich, UK. Ten new staff have been recruited to work in the new office and to support SETL’s international expansion, bringing SETL’s total worldwide workforce to 24. The centre was officially opened by Ben Gummer, Member of Parliament for Ipswich and Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General and by Chairman of the SETL board Sir David Walker.

 Xura, a leading provider of secure digital communications services for Communication Service Providers, has a history of innovation, and for some time been delivering security products that utilize machine-learning.  At MWC 2017, Xura will demonstrate how self-learning machines have helped its customers combat grey-route and SIM-box messaging fraud, and how it helps protect revenues and subscribers from threats carried via signaling, such as denial-of-service attacks, fraud, and privacy invasion.

TerraPay, a mobile-first international payment network, today announced that it has partnered with MoneyTrans, a leading Money Transfer company established in Europe and Africa as well as Paga, Nigeria’s pioneering payments and financial services company to launch cross-border remittances from Spain to mobile wallets in Nigeria.

The Fund Technology and Wall Street Letter (WSL) Awards have awarded Vela Trading Technologies, marketing data technology and high performance trading company, as “Best Data Provider – Equities” for its consolidated market data feed. 

These awards acknowledge providers catering to asset managers and institutional traders that have demonstrated exceptional customer service and innovative product development over the past 12 months.

Redwood Software, enterprise robotic process automation specialist, has been named as a Strong Performer in the Forrester Research, Inc. report: “The Forrester Wave™: Robotic Process Automation, Q1 2017”.

This edition of Financial IT, the first for 2017, is one of the most important that we have ever produced. Yet again, the articles and interviews that are included cover a huge variety of topics that are relevant to the intersection of financial services with IT.