Published

  • 02:00 am
  • Founded in Ireland, ID-Pal supports SMEs and enterprises across Ireland, the US, EU and UK
  • Rising levels of identity fraud and the increasing complexity of regulation leaves businesses vulnerable to financial crime and the rising cost of compliance
  • ID-Pal’s technology-first approach offers global coverage of over 6000 ID documents across 200 countries and jurisdictions

ID-Pal, a leading identity verification provider, has today announced it is formally entering the UK market following six years of exponential growth. The Dublin-based technology company supports businesses of all sizes in more than 30 sectors, across Ireland, the US, EU and UK. Current clients include large enterprises such as Grant Thornton and Zurich International, as well as SMEs such as UK Adviser and Trust My Travel. It was also the winner of Best Customer Facing Experience at the 2021 Pay360 Awards and Its most recent awards include Best Customer Facing Experience at the Pay360 Awards and IT & Fintech category winner at the Irish Times Innovation Awards 2022.

The accelerated move to online during the pandemic, paired with the recent growth in new legislation including potentially conflicting regimes such as 6AMLD and GDPR, has made businesses and their customers particularly vulnerable to the reputational and monetary damage caused by financial crime.

Led by Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Colum Lyons, ID-Pal has developed a fully customisable solution for identity and address verification to protect businesses against these risks, available off-the-shelf or as an API/SDK. The GDPR-compliant solution is ISO 27001 certified and can be configured for any jurisdiction or legal requirement in any language in just minutes, offering more robust compliance that is adaptable to support SMEs as well as large, enterprise scale firms.

ID-Pal offers coverage of over 6000 ID documents across 200 countries and jurisdictions using a multi-layered approach that includes Biometric, Facial Matching, Liveness Testing, Address verification and Document checks.

Colum Lyons, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, said:

“The way in which identity verification has been done historically is just not sustainable in our digital-first mobile-ready world. Verifying identity documents manually is inefficient and insecure, and the risk of data flight and simple human error can make businesses vulnerable to fraud. Our unique blend of ID checks, all powered by a completely technology-first process, means multi-layered verification takes place on any ID document in real time. Using AI and machine-learning offers greater accuracy in correctly classifying a document and reduces the margin for error and need for manual intervention.”

“We’re looking forward to officially launching in the UK market and empowering more businesses with simple, secure convenient identity verification for their business and their customers. ”

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  • 03:00 am

Mollie offers flexible online payments to help BigCommerce merchants ignite growth

Mollie, one of Europe’s fastest growing payment service providers, today announced it has been named a Preferred Technology Partner by BigCommerce, a leading Open SaaS ecommerce platform for fast-growing and established B2C and B2B brands. The partnership provides approximately 60,000 BigCommerce merchants access to its simplified, easy to use payments gateway. BigCommerce customers can activate Mollie’s services through the payment settings in BigCommerce. 

“We’re delighted to be named as an official BigCommerce Preferred Technology Partner as we continue to work together to create a new era of ecommerce,” said Ken Serdons, Chief Commercial Officer at Mollie. “For small and medium-sized ecommerce merchants, building high-conversion webshops has never been more important. Together, BigCommerce and Mollie offer our customers an outstanding, localised ecommerce experience – from first touch to checkout. We look forward to our partnership growing from strength to strength.”

BigCommerce’s integration with Mollie supports the leading payment methods across Europe automatically, such as Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Bancontact and iDEAL. New methods can be toggled on in seconds and customers can quickly accept payments via all the major global and local payment methods, which helps SMEs grow and scale into multiple markets, and improve conversion. Mollie also supports seamless chargebacks, re-orders, changes and cancellations. The processes are pre-built and ready to use. 

The integration offers convenience since set-up can be achieved quickly through a single click, connecting the customer’s BigCommerce account to Mollie. Customers can also keep track of orders and payments in real-time in their Mollie dashboards. Multilingual customer service and technical teams are also available on standby to support customers.

“Our partnership with Mollie further illustrates our commitment to providing merchants access to the highest-caliber technologies and service providers available in the industry,” said Jim Herbert, GM and vice president of BigCommerce, EMEA.Mollie shares our desire to help merchants sell more and grow faster to maximize success, and we look forward to working together to mutually support customers.”

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  • 07:00 am

One of the world’s fully vertically integrated omnichannel payments companies selected Signifyd’s technology as its commerce protection solution to increase conversion and reduce fraud for merchants in its ecosystem

Signifyd, the market leader in ecommerce fraud protection, has announced it will be DNA Payments’ exclusive integrated fraud protection technology, signalling Signifyd’s expanding role in serving as the fraud solution provider for future-focused payment service providers.

“DNA Payments’ selection of Signifyd as a fraud solution for its customers demonstrates the market’s confidence in Signifyd’s commerce protection technology,” Signifyd CEO and Co-founder Raj Ramanand said. “This partnership means that thousands of additional merchants will be able to immediately unlock revenue that they’ve been leaving behind with outdated fraud solutions.”

The partnership amplifies the two partners’ transaction intelligence, providing through DNA a precise measure of the level of risk involved with each order and a recommendation to ship it or not depending on that risk. The high-quality decisions mean DNA’s merchant customers are passing cleaner transaction traffic on to their banks, which is one key to keeping their authorisation rates high.

DNA Payments’ deeper intelligence and reliable decisioning provide the payment service provider with a distinct competitive advantage when merchants have an abundance of choices when selecting a payment service provider.

“The powerful partnership joins one of the world’s fastest-growing payment companies with the industry leader in ecommerce fraud protection. This pairing brings together two powerful sources of transaction intelligence — the DNA data stream produced from processing £900 million in orders a month and Signifyd’s network of thousands of merchants worldwide. Together, the intelligence is unmatched.” said Mark Whybrow, head of ecommerce sales for DNA Payments.

Signifyd’s fraud protection technology has helped thousands of merchants avoid chargebacks, dramatically reduce false declines and eliminate manual review, while demonstrating the ability to increase the number of approved orders by an average of 5% to 9%.

Together Signifyd and DNA Payments are tackling one of ecommerce’s most nettlesome balancing acts in a new and innovative way. Merchants and their technology partners must provide a seamless buying journey while protecting the enterprise from fraud. While fraud accounted for about 2% of online transactions in 2021, according to an analysis of Signifyd data, merchants routinely reject 14% of orders, many in an overzealous attempt to avoid fraud, according to 451 Research.

The fear of fraud sets off a downward spiral. Global payments consultancy CMSPI estimates that 20% of declines in Europe are false declines, meaning a lost sale and possibly a lost customer for life. Add to that the money spent to acquire those disappointed customers in the first place and the spending it will take to replace the lost customers and the costs continue to mount.

Signifyd’s fraud protection technology avoids detrimental legacy payment practices by relying on machine learning and a vast amount of transaction intelligence to understand the identity and intent behind each order. The solution relies on transaction intelligence from Signifyd’s Commerce Network, a network of thousands of merchants and gateways worldwide.

That intelligence, coupled with dynamic machine learning models, means that Signifyd’s technology can sort legitimate from fraudulent orders instantly, ensuring that order fulfilment is not delayed by lengthy reviews.

Adding the precision and speed of Signifyd’s technology to DNA Payments’ own intelligence from its 65,000 customers is a significant step into the future of payments. 

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  • 01:00 am

Appointment marks drive to scale Nucoro partnership ecosystem

Leading wealthtech platform provider, Nucoro, has today announced the appointment of Steve Hoy as its Head of Partnerships, bringing with him over 30 years’ experience in financial services.

Within his new role, Steve will be responsible for Nucoro’s partnerships strategy and initiatives, and for building and scaling relationships with channel partners, technology partners and system integrators.

Lennart Asshoff, CEO, Nucoro said: “To ensure we keep growing in the right direction, we need to continue scaling our existing partnerships and the Nucoro partnership ecosystem. We were looking for a proven leader with specific experience in this area and Steve ticks those boxes and more. We are excited to have him on board as our Head of Partnerships, benefitting from his expertise and knowledge in creating a powerful network of partners.”

Before joining Nucoro, Steve was Head of Partnerships at Minna Technologies and Director of Partnerships at Thought Machine. At Thought Machine, he built an international team of 15 people in London, Singapore, and New York to serve ~60 partners globally, as the company scaled from a headcount of 40 to 500.

On his new role at Nucoro, Steve said: “The opportunity to join Nucoro at this pivotal stage of the company’s journey is really exciting. There is an incredibly strong pipeline in place and some excellent client names already on the platform. I look forward to developing more and deeper partnerships that ultimately lead to current and future clients achieving their aims of a modern wealth capability, powered by the Nucoro Platform.”

The appointment of Steve Hoy comes only months after Nucoro brought in the highly experienced Matt Cockayne as Chief Revenue Officer to oversee the revenue function. Matt and Steve will play a central role in furthering Nucoro’s continued growth and deeper adoption of the platform across the market.

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  • 05:00 am

Customers can connect their bank to the remittance platform via TrueLayer to confirm account details.

Payments from TrueLayer enable Instant and secure funds transfer from a customer’s UK bank account to recipients in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya.

TrueLayer, Europe’s leading open banking platform, today announces its collaboration with innovative fintech firm Lemonade Finance. Founded in 2020, the firm was built to serve the African diaspora, with a focus on enabling Nigerians, Ghanaians, and Kenyans in the UK to send money back to friends and family without any hidden fees.

Remittances to Africa have traditionally been compromised by three significant issues: long transaction times, restrictions in terms of use and higher than average fees. As a result, platforms for international remittances are either unavailable to Africans or limited in their functionality.

Afeez Gbotosho, Head of Product at Lemonade Finance, commented: “Money transfer companies have largely ignored the personal remittance needs of Africans living abroad, so we founded Lemonade Finance to make sending money home as easy as possible. Ensuring we provide a secure, fast and cost-efficient way for Africans in the UK to send funds through the platform then led us to examine how to integrate instant payments through open banking.”

Recognising the opportunity to deliver a superior customer experience, Lemonade Finance has now implemented TrueLayer’s market-leading open banking platform. Through TrueLayer, customers securely connect their bank account to the Lemonade Finance platform, enabling the firm to manage risk more effectively by verifying the account and confirming the payee's details.

Customers can then instantly send funds directly from their bank to Lemonade Finance, using TrueLayer’s account-to-account payments, removing the need to manually enter card details or share their bank credentials. With higher conversion and fewer failed transactions, customers gain additional peace of mind that their recipient will receive the funds in minutes with Lemonade Finance compared to up to four days using other remittance methods.

Afeez Gbotosho, Head of Product at Lemonade Finance, said: “With TrueLayer we are delivering a more efficient way for our customers to send money. With just a few clicks they can fund their account and get confirmation the payment has been made. Thanks to the intuitive user experience, we have already seen many of our customers use open banking and benefit from instant payments to send money back home.”

Nick Tucker, Head of Financial Service at TrueLayer, added: “Open banking with TrueLayer and remittances are a perfect match - they’re instant, secure and more cost-effective compared to cards, digital wallets and manual bank transfers. For years, people haven’t been getting the service they deserve from traditional remittance, paying more than they should on transfers that still take days to arrive. That’s why we’re proud to be working with an innovator like Lemonade Finance who are challenging the status quo and using our technology to make remittances to Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana as easy as possible.”

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  • 03:00 am

Worldline (Euronext: WLN), a global leader in payments services, is partnering with IVS Group, the Italian leader and the second largest player in Europe in automatic and semi-automatic vending machines, to maximise the acceptance of cashless transactions.  France and Italy are the first countries where Worldline and IVS roll out their offering, before making the solution available to the whole European market.

This key partnership will combine Worldline’s universal acceptance capabilities with IVS’ expertise in vending machines as well as value added services delivered through Moneynet, IVS’ payment services branch. This highly scalable solution will include Worldline’s best-in-class payment terminals, easy to integrate thanks to its compliance with the industry’s universal protocol, the MDB[1] vending communication protocols. Users of the vending machines will benefit from the latest Self/2000 terminals, featuring full touch, 4G connectivity and camera-enabled to support wallet acceptance.

Shifting user habits demand a new generation of vending devices

One of the most significant developments emerging from the pandemic is the dramatic change in consumer habits in the payments ecosphere. With cashless becoming the norm, along with an increasing demand for digital options, consumers want convenient payment methods, greater value and a more personalised experience, especially in the rapidly enlarging self-service journey space.

To meet this demand, vending operators have to scale their offerings and provide the best purchasing experience possible. They also need to rely on the ability of payment experts to manage payment complexity on their behalf, in all geographies, with a capability to anticipate the next steps of this digital transformational journey and in particular, bring additional value to the vending merchants.

Nicolas Dejonghe, Head of Vending Sales of Worldline, commented“We are delighted to have gained the trust of IVS, a well recognised and highly respected European Vending operator, to be their payment expert in this conversion from cash to cashless. Our flexible solution allowed us to build a tailored offer that is fully scalable across geographies, ranging from terminals to a full offer including acquiring services. We will stand side by side with IVS and support them further in their growth plans and to deliver a unified business experience.”

Davide Arzuffi, Head of Systems and Electronics at IVS Group, added: “Providing cashless payments easily and efficiently throughout Europe is key for us at a time when we have significant clients to serve across various industries, such as Transportation and Public Services.  This will also help us sustain our European expansion with key existing and new clients. We have chosen to rely on the expertise of Worldline to support us in this transition to cashless. Having one unique payment expert is a major benefit that will allow us to deploy payment services efficiently and optimise our operations. We are confident that Worldline will help us deliver on this.” 

 

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  • 01:00 am

The SGX-backed private market exchange has partnered with Fullerton Fund Management to allow tokenised access to the Fullerton Optimised Alpha Fund

Private market exchange ADDX has partnered with investment specialist Fullerton Fund Management Company Ltd (“Fullerton”) to list Fullerton’s private equity fund of funds on its digital platform. The Fullerton Optimised Alpha Fund is a closed-end fund targeting 8% to 12% in returns per annum over its fund life of seven years.

The fund will be invested in a portfolio of six to eight private equity and private credit funds. From a field of over 20,000 funds, Fullerton arrives at the final list of funds following a rigorous and proprietary method of fund selection that focuses on blue-chip managers with a proven track record of consistent investment strategy and performance across market cycles. 

The underlying assets of the fund will be diversified by geography, across North America, Europe and Asia, and by strategy, across buyout, growth, secondaries and private or distressed credit. The fund will focus on thematic sectors, such as defensive, tech-enabled, new economy, post-COVID-19 dislocation and recovery as well as ESG-aligned sectors.

As a result of efficiencies from tokenisation, accredited individual investors on ADDX were able to access the Fullerton fund at a minimum size of US$10,000, instead of the US$250,000 required through traditional, non-tokenised channels. A liquidity option in the form of quarterly gated redemptions is available to investors.

Tokenisation is the digitisation of an asset, in this case a traditional security, using blockchain and smart contract technology. By reducing the need for intermediaries and manual work, tokenisation makes it easier to administer the security, with benefits seen across different stages of its life cycle, including issuance, distribution and custody. Tokenisation allows ADDX to serve a much wider segment of investors at lower minimum sums – which the traditional private market infrastructure is not designed to do.

ADDX CEO Oi-Yee Choo said: “Globally, private equity has outperformed public equity, whether one is looking at a 5-year, 10-year or 25-year timeframe. Adding a private equity allocation to one’s portfolio has been demonstrated to enhance overall returns while reducing volatility. This is why institutional investors like pension funds typically have 20% to 30% of their capital in the private markets. By bringing down the barrier to entry, ADDX is contributing to a fair and level playing field for individual investors. At a time when rising inflation is a source of anxiety worldwide, strategies that help investors to better preserve and grow their wealth are needed more than ever.”

Fullerton manages assets across public and private markets for a wide range of clients including government entities, sovereign wealth funds, pension plans, insurance companies, private wealth and retail clients. Its commitment to delivering investment excellence to investors through accessible, innovative solutions formed the foundation for this partnership.

Fullerton Chief Business Development Officer Mark Yuen noted: “The partnership between Fullerton and ADDX is unique and synergistic. By leveraging the ADDX platform, we can provide wider access to our private market expertise. Our private equity team has on average 21 years of experience, and a deep understanding of markets with strong risk management in place to ensure that we can deliver the best outcomes for our investors. Through ADDX we can reach a broader base of investors to help them achieve well-diversified portfolios that can match their long-term investment objectives.”  

Ms Choo added: “Fullerton Fund Management is a world-class name with strong experience and expertise in the private equity space. Through its parentage, ecosystem and fund manager relationships, Fullerton is able to provide access to tier-one deal flow and can invest in funds that are near-impossible for individuals to reach. ADDX is excited to list a Fullerton fund on our platform and we look forward to exploring with them other opportunities for our investors.”

ADDX became licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) as a private market exchange in February 2020. Since then, ADDX has listed 30 deals on its platform involving blue-chip names such as Hamilton Lane, Partners Group, Investcorp, UOB, CGS-CIMB, as well as Temasek-owned entities Mapletree, Azalea and SeaTown. Asset classes available on ADDX include private equity, venture capital, private credit, real estate, hedge funds, funds with cryptocurrency exposure, and structured products. ADDX offers issuers access to previously untapped capital pools and reduces both the cost and minimum threshold of fundraising projects.

 

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  • 04:00 am

 In the midst of a selloff, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele added an additional 500 Bitcoin to the country’s balance sheet. The purchase is the country’s largest since it first added Bitcoin to its assets last September. The average price of purchase was roughly $30,744, and the country now holds over 2,300 Bitcoin, currently worth approximately $70 million.

“This really shouldn’t be a surprise. The president has bought the dip continuously since adopting Bitcoin as a national currency. He’s seeing what many are seeing: external macroeconomics and geopolitical events at play, dragging the price of Bitcoin down. However, he’s banking his entire political career on this bet,” said Richard Gardner, CEO of Modulus, a US-based developer of ultra-high-performance trading and surveillance technology that powers global equities, derivatives, and digital asset exchanges.

In a tweet, Bukele said, “El Salvador just bought the dip! 500 coins at an average USD price of ~$30,744 #Bitcoin”

“He’s doubled down on his belief. Over and over. The good news for him is that the fundamental technology is worthwhile, and the dip we’ve been seeing does seem to be stemming from external effects. This dip isn’t caused by industry factors as much as what’s happening across the economy as a whole,” noted Gardner.

Bukele is facing a number of critics, perhaps most notably, the IMF, which noted in January that the country’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender “entails large risks for financial and market integrity, financial stability, and consumer protection.”

“El Salvador is a country with a great need for banking services. Most estimates peg the unbanked segment of the citizenry at roughly 70%, so it makes sense that digital assets would offer significant upside, particularly as it relates to introducing the country to banking services,” noted Gardner.

Modulus is known throughout the financial technology segment as a leader in the development of ultra-high frequency trading systems and blockchain technologies. Modulus has provided its exchange solution to some of the industry’s most profitable digital asset exchanges, including a well-known multi-billion-dollar cryptocurrency exchange. Over the past twenty years, the company has built technology for the world’s most notable institutions, with a client list which includes NASA, NASDAQ, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Barclays, Siemens, Shell, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Cornell University, and the University of Chicago.

“However, the country has also been looking for a loan. Originally, it hoped for a $1.3 billion influx of cash from the IMF. Then, it looked to raise the funds through a Bitcoin bond that didn’t quite pan out as hoped. Whatever comes next, I think history will view Bukele through the success or failure of his Bitcoin gambit,” opined Gardner.

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  • 01:00 am
  • Over two thirds of savers are interested in their pension pot
  • Interest in pensions would increase as the size of pots grow for 71% of savers

·       16% of savers don’t know how much they will need in their pot for later life

New research released today from Penfold, the digital pensions platform, finds that 71% of people say they are interested in their pension pot, showing that possible engagement levels are high. Yet people still aren’t saving enough, with one in five (19%) working adults in the UK saying they only have up to £5,000 currently saved in their pension and a further 19% saying they don’t know how much is currently in their pot. 

The research also finds that if the value of their pension pot increased, so would savers’ interest in their retirement savings. 71% said they would be more interested as the value of their pot increased, and 27% said it would not change their level of interest.  

When asked at what value they would become more interested in their retirement savings, an equal proportion (20%) said their interest would grow when their pot hit £25,000, £50,000 or £100,000. A further 14% said they would be more interested at £75,000. 

However, these figures are relatively small in comparison to the £254,420[1] that people need to have saved into their pots in order to enjoy a comfortable retirement, providing clear evidence of how people often underestimate how much they need to set aside for later life.

This lack of education is further emphasised by the fact that 16% of people don’t know how much they’ll need to save in their pension pot for their desired standard of living, a figure which rises to 25% among those aged 55-64 and 24% among those aged 45-54. This is especially concerning given these individuals are much closer to retirement and have far less time to save.

Nevertheless, Penfold says high levels of interest in pensions could be good news for the industry as a greater number of savers interacting with pensions, even if of relatively low value, will drive engagement and in turn give pension providers greater insight into how to get people saving more for retirement.

Chris Eastwood, Co-founder at Penfold, says:  

“Our research shows that fundamental change is needed for the pensions industry to be fit for today’s saver. It’s not good enough that a significant proportion of people are still in the dark about how much they need to save to achieve their desired standard of living after retirement. Education is the key to resolving this. Clearly, there is a real interest from savers looking to prepare for their future, but the industry is struggling to properly engage these savers.

“Simply put, the pensions industry needs a rebrand. We need to put the emphasis on communicating the flexible and accessible tools available to help people achieve their pension goals, and leave the outdated practices and complex jargon at the door, which only help deter people from saving.

“Penfold's easy to use platform engages savers with complete transparency over fund performance, the ability to check your balance and manage it on your phone, and the power to vote on issues that you care about by offering sustainable investment plans. It’s this freedom and accessibility which will ultimately drive engagement.”

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