PanXchange, a physical commodities OTC market structure solutions provider, today announced the launch of the industry’s first institutional-grade industrial hemp exchange. The marketplace will allow producers, processors, trade houses and end-users to participate in a transparent and efficient cash market for industrial hemp products and will ultimately pave the way for the creation of hemp derivatives contracts.

EMVCo has advanced its testing programme to streamline the deployment and acceptance of contactless payment technologies worldwide. The work addresses emerging interoperability needs between EMV® acceptance devices and increasingly diverse contactless payment form factors, such as smartphones and wearables.

FNA today announces closure of a $5.5m Series A investment round led by IQ Capital, with participation from GETTYLAB. The funds will be used to further develop the FNA platform and solutions to help financial regulators and institutions operationalise advanced data analytics, identify fault lines in the financial system and prepare better for financial crisis and cyber threats. 

Solactive is pleased to announce that asset manager and ETF provider FinEx ETF Limited completed its index switches in favor of Solactive for six country benchmarks as well as a US Large & Mid Cap technology index. The adoption of these seven Solactive indices marks yet another milestone for the trend of index users switching to high-quality benchmarks at lower costs. With eight out of twelve indices, Solactive now provides the lion’s share of underlyings for Russia’s ETF market leader.

Refinitiv, one of the world’s largest providers of financial markets data and infrastructure, today announces that its shareholders have agreed definitive terms with the London Stock Exchange Group plc (“LSEG”) under which LSEG will acquire Refinitiv in an all share transaction for a total enterprise value of approximately US$27 billion. The full LSEG announcement can be found here.

Boris Johnson has recently pledged to scrap the UK’s Stamp Duty tax, which currently slaps a 0.5% tax on equities trades over £1,000. Undoubtedly this will be met fondly from the industry, but when it comes to taxes, banks need to look more closely at pending implementations, rather than cuts.

Mindtree, a global technology services and digital transformation company, announced that it has joined Hyperledger, an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. Joining as a general member enables Mindtree to accelerate the development of its capabilities around Hyperledger and offer industry-specific blockchain solutions to prospective clients.

Featurespace, the leading provider of Adaptive Behavioral Analytics for fraud detection and risk management, announced the seamless, 92-day, on-premise enterprise delivery of its ARIC Fraud Hub with Contis, an award-winning banking, payments and processing solution provider.

FIS (NYSE: FIS) today announced the closing of its acquisition of global payments leader Worldpay, Inc., creating a global leader in technology and solutions for merchants, banks and capital markets.

The combined company will have over $12 billion in pro forma revenue and more than 55,000 employees.  With a best-in-class portfolio of solutions for payments, banking and capital markets, FIS is positioned to accelerate its growth and advance the way the world pays, banks and invests.