Aims to introduce 50 mn Indians to crypto investing by FY25

Bitbns, the country’s leading cryptocurrency exchange, has partnered with QuantInsti to launch Bitbns Academy, an all-new dedicated online education platform that offers scholastic tutorials, resources and educational content on Cryptocurrency and Blockchain. 

A comprehensive digital education platform, Bitbns Academy offers globally accredited certified courses that not just teaches the fundamentals of crypto but helps candidates to develop in-depth understanding of the subject. The coherent content has been carefully curated to serve users across the board, inclusive of beginners, enthusiasts as well as mature investors. The current program is offered under four distinct modules – ‘Introduction to Crypto’, ‘Risk Management’, ‘Margin Trading’ and ‘Technical Analysis. Each module entailing a series of chapters that has been specifically designed to enable the user to progress through the course in terms of his knowledge and understanding.

To ensure seamless and quality learning experience, Bitbns has tied up with QuantInsti, a leading ed-tech platform that specialises in offering quantitative based learning courses since a decade. A pioneer Algorithmic Trading Research and Training Institute, QuantInsti conducts professional programs in the contemporary fields of Algorithmic and Quantitative Trading.

Commenting on this development, Gaurav Dahake, Founder & CEO, Bitbns, said, “India has been one of the fastest growing markets of cryptocurrency trading. Besides a rapidly growing base of mature investors, our country is home to a massive chunk of young and tech-savvy population who are increasingly adopting crypto as an alternative asset class. However the technical nature and non-tangibility of the asset class has restricted its adoption among retail investors. Bitbns Academy offers a robust curriculum that has been tailored to decrypt several technical concepts while offering an in-depth understanding on Cryptocurrency and Blockchain technology. It aims to strengthen the country’s digital economy through an educational revolution by building trust among new entrants and enabling mature investors to grow their portfolio through knowledge driven and informed decision making.”

Commenting on the development, Nitesh Khandelwal, CEO, QuantInsti, said, “In lines with our mission to up-skill investors and traders, we are excited to partner with Bitbns to empower crypto enthusiasts with the essential knowledge required to make smart trading decisions. Quantra learning management system (LMS) brings a unique combination of learning by doing and implementation using seamlessly integrated paper trading and backtesting platform, which allows learners to apply learned concepts in real-life trading experiences.”

The course has been designed and curated in such a way that it highlights the best practices involved in crypto trading while offering a step by step guide in building in-depth understanding around the subject. The modules offered under the program encompasses infographics, articles, tutorial videos and other content that suits the needs of users at all levels.

Catering to beginners’, crypto enthusiasts and seasoned traders the modules will have three different states - beginner, intermediate and advanced. Starting from as basic as Understanding crypto to learning complex Python APKs the courses would serve as a complete go to guide for crypto investment.

The academy is open to all the users on Bitbns platform who can seamlessly avail the certified courses for free. Additionally Bitbns Academy aims to add new certification courses and more resourceful content under the program in the future. To ensure optimum outreach the courses have been provided for free post a simple registration with Bitbns platform.

Bitbns is known for providing unique offerings and safest way to carry crypto transactions and bringing exclusive benefits to its customers, as it constantly endeavors to improve the overall user experience. With this feature, Bitbns aims to create more and more informed crypto investors beyond the urban areas.

BITCOIN APP WILL REWARD USERS FOR CHARITABLE GIVING AND DONATE A PROPORTION OF ITS REVENUES TO GLOBAL UNICEF PROJECTS

Relai, the savings and investment app making bitcoin accessible for everyone, will support UNICEF Switzerland and Liechtenstein by donating a percentage of revenue from bitcoin transactions on its platform to female education initiatives.

Passionate about improving female representation in a male-dominated tech industry, Relai is tackling the issue from the ground up by supporting female education from its earliest stage. The donations will help UNICEF improve girls’ access to schooling in poverty- and conflict-affected areas through activities including the construction of schools and the provision of teaching materials and free school meals to create the conditions to help girls stay in education. 

In response to the escalating humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, Relai will also be donating to UNICEF’s efforts to provide safe water, hygiene, healthcare, education and safeguarding for children and families affected by the conflict.

Bitcoin is becoming increasingly popular in the charity sector as its decentralisation can afford smoother access to funding. Benefits include the ability to secure and deploy funds more quickly and with greater security than with fiat currency. Additionally, for those that hold their bitcoin, there is the potential to significantly grow the funds donated.

Donations will come at no cost to Relai’s users, who simply opt into a referral code scheme, whereby the referee’s transaction fee is reduced by 0.5% and the referrer receives up to 50% revenue share from every transaction that uses their referral code. Applied to this relationship, this will mean Relai donates up to 50% of the revenue collected from every opted-in transaction to UNICEF Switzerland and Liechtenstein, meanwhile the user is rewarded for doing good. 

The move comes as part of wider initiatives by Relai to help bitcoin to create a more positive impact on the world. 

Julian Liniger, CEO and Founder of Relai, said:

“At Relai we’re extremely passionate about the future of tech and the generations of women who will work within it. That’s why we’re supporting female education from its earliest stage, giving women the tools to pursue the career they choose and break into male-dominated spaces - whether that be in STEM, fintech or the bitcoin industry specifically. 

We’re also extremely aware that there are a great many other injustices going on in the world right now, which is why we’ve committed to working with UNICEF on multiple projects globally, including the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. We’re also in conversations with a number of other charities concerning a range of initiatives, and look forward to involving the Relai community in deciding what projects come next in our newly-launched Relai Donations initiative.

“Bitcoin is an incredibly useful tool for mobilising humanitarian aid on a large scale, and we hope that by using it as a rapid and secure conduit for funds, we can play even a small part in harnessing its unique power for good.”

Bettina Junker, CEO, UNICEF Switzerland and Liechtenstein, added:

“We are truly grateful that Relai has chosen to support UNICEF in advancing the education and empowerment of underprivileged girls, as well as safeguarding children and families in Ukraine. The donations will make an important difference.”

TrueLayer, Europe’s leading open banking platform, today announces that former Amazon executive David Exposito has joined the firm in the newly created role of VP of EU Sales, where he will manage commercial operations and development, including the company’s European Country Managers.

A highly experienced commercial manager, with more than a decade working in payments and ecommerce, Madrid-based David joins TrueLayer as it continues its rapid European growth. The company recently expanded its open banking platform for data, verification and account-to-account payments with connectivity to leading banks in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Portugal.

“Payments are undergoing a fundamental shift, driven by changing consumer expectations, merchant demand and technologies that can deliver a better experience. Open banking is a catalyst for change with higher acceptance rates, lower fraud and instant settlement,” commented Exposito. “TrueLayer is at the forefront of that evolution and I'm excited to be on that journey as we look to change the way the world pays.”

David joins TrueLayer from Amazon where he worked for eight years across several senior positions, most recently as a EU Head overseeing physical distribution and managing multiple payments products including the firm’s EU  Branded Currency Portal. Prior to that role, he was Amazon’s Head of B2B channel in France, Italy and Spain, having previously been Amazon’s Head of Corporate Partnerships in Spain where he collaborated with major brands to help them achieve their digital transformation objectives using different Amazon corporate tools.

An entrepreneur at heart, David has held senior leadership roles in multinational companies including Transcom and the European Space Agency. He is also a successful founder having built and sold AdFiedlia, a Spanish incentive portal that developed the first Facebook app for P2P gift distribution and a B2B platform for employee rewards. 

Max Emilson, Chief Revenue Officer at TrueLayer, added: “TrueLayer is attracting the top talent from across the payments industry, bringing together experts from the likes of Adyen, Amazon, Klarna and others to take open banking payments mainstream. David’s commercial mindset coupled with his experience of working with complex, multinational merchants will be crucial for us as we accelerate our European expansion.”

• Through a partnership with Fidel API, a financial infrastructure platform that works with the largest card networks in the UK, including Visa - Flux opens up its offers platform to the majority of cardholders in the UK

• The partnership means that Flux Offers is now available to customers at dozens of UK High Street banks, giving retailers direct-to-consumer access to consumers and allowing customers to receive real-time cashback on purchases made with their payment card

• Flux Offers launched in October 2021 with offers from top UK retailers like H&M, schuh, Just Eat, itsu, Papa Johns, Pure and KFC - helping retailers to scale offers both on and offline in a way that is revolutionising the card-linked offers space

Flux - the UK’s leading digital receipts and offers platform - announces a partnership with Fidel API that will facilitate access to its retailer offers and receive real-time cashback for all UK customers using payment cards connected to the UK’s largest card networks.

Consumers can register via the Flux Offers portal, link their credit or debit card and choose the account they want their real-time cashback to enter. Once consumers sign up, they activate the offers they like which are then automatically linked to their payment card and redeemed at point-of-purchase, with cashback. 

Retailers on the Flux Offers platform immediately gain access to consumers and can start to build a relationship with them. Through card-linked, product-level offers, retailers can confidently assess consumer interest and make targeted decisions based on purchase behaviour - such as location-based shopping and items previously bought.

The partnership with Fidel API significantly expands the potential market share of the Flux Offers platform. This is particularly exciting for Flux’s retail partners, who use the platform to increase sales by reactivating idle buyers and acquiring new consumers who opt into their offers with a clear ROI, thanks to Flux Offers’ built-in attribution feature. The Flux Offers platform is perfect for marketing, launching new products and targeting specific customer segments.

Today, UK consumers can enjoy retail offers and real-time cashback from KFC, Pure, Papa John’s, The Black Farmer, Apex Hotels, blankei, Healf, Amala Chai and others - with more retail partners joining over the coming months. Flux will use Fidel API’s financial infrastructure platform to facilitate retailer offers and cashback for cardholders at point-of-purchase.

Veronique Merriam Barbosa, CEO and co-founder of Flux, states: 

“This is a game-changer. Using our cutting edge product-level data platform, customers can get real-time cashback and our retail partners can be more creative in how they increase sales, interact with consumers and market new products. I’m extremely proud of our team for making this happen. We are here to disrupt the cashback and offers’ model across the UK with our real-time product level cashback positioned for accelerated growth”

Patrick Nealon, VP of Strategy at Fidel API, concludes:

“Fidel API is incredibly excited to support Flux Offers which provides a novel, innovative experience that increases the value of using and accepting payment cards for cardholders and merchants respectively.”

Profile Software, an international financial solutions provider, announced today the enrichment of RiskAvert with new capabilities like the introduction of the NPE Prudential Backstop and the Interest Rate Risk in the Banking Book (IRRBB) modules.

In particular, RiskAvert the comprehensive risk management platform for capital adequacy, was enhanced to incorporate the NPE Prudential Backstop module that enables Financial Institutions to meet regulatory requirements for the calculation and reporting of minimum losses for NPEs.

The module fully covers the calculation of minimum loss coverage amount for non-performing exposures (NPEs), in line with the provisions of Regulation (EU) 2019/630.  It also covers all the relevant reporting requirements of EBA Reporting Framework, regarding NPE Loss coverage.

The rules for the “Prudential Backstop” set a binding minimum level of loss coverage that banks must set aside as a buffer to absorb losses for newly originated loans that become non-performing after the enforcement of the specific regulation (April 2019).

In addition, RiskAvert has also been enriched with the development of the updated version of Interest Rate Risk in the Banking Book (IRRBB) module that supports the EU prudential Banking supervision and regulatory reporting requirements. This newly launched version of IRRBB is introduced well ahead of the final regulatory technical standard and the forthcoming delegated regulation which is currently under consultation and expected to be finalised by April 2022. The forthcoming regulation introduces methodologies where the NII (Net Interest Income) differs from that of EVE (Economic Value of Equity), as well as the simplified standardised approach. 

With these enhancements financial institutions in the Eurozone will better facilitate their processes to efficiently meet their CRR/CRD related requirements and safeguard their business operations effectively. RiskAvert has been developed to help organisations achieve their business goals pertinent to compliance through an intuitive, automated and flexible platform.

Volume, the one-click checkout startup, has partnered with open banking infrastructure provider Yapily to reduce the $100 billion being paid by customers annually in hidden and unnecessary fees at online checkouts. 

The partnership underpins Volume’s Transparent Checkout, the UK’s first one-click solution to enable direct “account-to-account” (A2A) payments between consumers and merchants, without the need for payment processing intermediaries and expensive third-parties. Currently, merchants have to pay between 2% and 8% of every sale to these card, ewallet and BNPL facilitators — costs that are ultimately paid by consumers in higher prices. 

The impact of high transaction fees on merchants — totalling $100 billion annually, according to McKinsey — recently became highly visible in a public dispute, now resolved, when Amazon threatened to stop the use of UK-issued Visa credit cards. 

Building on top of Yapily’s open banking infrastructure, Volume’s new one-click online payment solution facilitates direct A2A payments between merchants’ and online shoppers’ bank accounts, cutting transaction fees by up to 75%. This makes Volume three times cheaper than credit and debit cards, and up to ten times cheaper than ewallets. In one click, shoppers are relayed to their banking app’s biometric check, and the money is instantly settled with the merchant.

By partnering with Yapily, Volume aims to eliminate fees based on a percentage of the total basket and drive online transaction costs close to zero. Volume’s breakthrough to a low, flat-rate cost model is the result of new Open Banking regulations that came into full effect in the UK in March 2022. Yapily’s open banking infrastructure powers Volume Transparent Checkout to work with any banking app in the UK and Europe.

Simone Martinelli, co-founder and CEO at Volume, says, “We want to do for ecommerce payments what Transferwise and WorldRemit did for currency exchange. Today’s online shopping experience is broken for merchants and their customers. Only last week Mastercard and VISA announced they are raising fees for merchants. By partnering with Yapily, Volume is slashing the cost of doing business online and creating a transparent, inclusive and financially sustainable way of enabling payments that works for everyone.”

Stefano Vaccino, CEO and Founder at Yapily, comments, “Volume is solving payment pain points for merchants in the UK and across Europe. We’re delighted to support this community and help Volume to deliver the benefits of open banking to businesses as they continue to grow.”

Powered by Temenos Banking Cloud, Banco de la Nación del Perú plans to create more than 24 million accounts to deliver financial relief funds, setting a new record in Latin America

Banco de la Nación del Perú went live with Temenos, the banking software company. In the first phase of the implementation, Temenos Banking Cloud supported the opening of two million new digital accounts called Cuentas DNI. With Temenos’ scalable open platform the bank plans to expand to 24 million accounts.

These accounts were created with the identification number (DNI) of each citizen, as part of the Yanapay Individual Economic Support program to provide government relief funds in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Every Peruvian citizen, age 18 and older, with a DNI is automatically allocated a Cuentas DNI, fostering financial inclusion. Of the two million people who received a Cuentas DNI, more than 1.8 million previously did not have a bank account.

Banco de la Nación del Perú has approximately 570 branches, 60% of which are located in remote areas of the country. One of the bank’s key objectives is to promote financial inclusion through sustainable and modern business practices. Only 52% of adults in Peru have a bank account, according to data from the National Household Survey (ENAHO) and collected by the SBS. In response to the pandemic, the Peruvian government has launched special programs to distribute funds to the most vulnerable populations, using  Cuentas DNI, has facilitated the payment of one of these bonds to millions of unbanked Peruvians.

With the Temenos open platform for composable banking, Banco de la Nación del Perú will be able to scale massively, launch new products quickly and modernize other lines of business. The operational cost efficiencies will enable Banco de la Nación’ to offer its customers better benefits such as lower fees.

Liliana Casafranca, account leader from Cuentas DNI at Banco de la Nación del Perú, commented, "This is the beginning of Banco de la Nación’s modernization towards digital banking that will allow us to create more than 24 million accounts, and deliver financial inclusion to Peruvians. The challenge is to quickly develop enhancements that will encourage citizens to make greater use of their cellphones to carry out secure financial transactions, through Cuentas DNI. Our aim is to develop the right partnerships to make our services more accessible to clients. Banco de la Nación's vision is for the Cuentas DNI to become the gateway to more sophisticated services to Peruvians."

Enrique Ramos O’Reilly, managing director in Latin America and the Caribbean, Temenos, "We are proud to partner with Banco de la Nación del Perú. This is just the beginning of what we will create together. Temenos open platform willenable Banco de la Nación to scale massively and handle millions of accounts in order to provide financial services for those currently operating outside the financial system. We look forward to supporting Banco de la Nación del Perú in its digital transformation to provide outstanding banking services and promote financial inclusion to the people of Peru."

Online fraud is changing, but so is the way that risk teams are dealing with the threat of fraud and abuse. Smart machines and big data mean that businesses can be armed against fraud — they’re no longer playing defence.

Now, modern risk teams have seized the role of optimising business revenue, rather than focusing on loss avoidance. This reframed role means that progressive risk teams are no longer a cost recovery centre but have become their own revenue generator.

In Signifyd’s e-commerce data report, we explore how fraud strategies and artificial intelligence (AI) are key to fraud and abuse prevention solutions. 

The rise of fraud teams

Fraud teams can no longer be the only defence against abuse. Since the dawn of ecommerce, the online side of the retail house has been somewhat shielded from the ill effects of an economic downturn or a strategic misstep by businesses.

For many retailers, online sales only made up a single-digit percentage of revenue. But with the surge in ecommerce during the pandemic, ecommerce revenue reached 33% of retail sales, according to Signifyd’s Pulse Report. Now online commerce is a key part of the business, and it needs to perform like it.

Therefore, fraud prevention has changed. It has become a risk intelligence for forward-thinking retailers. Risk teams are no longer cost centres being asked to squeeze spending while improving performance. At the most successful retailers, risk teams work on enabling the enterprise’s strategic objectives. They turn to artificial intelligence to maximise approval rates with decisions that are made in real time and allow buy online, pickup in store and curbside pick up to run efficiently and profitably.

Using big data

Dynamic insight is the best way to understand your customers and the risk that they can carry. Merchants can utilise commerce protection platforms to access adaptive artificial intelligence and machine learning back-end monitors to assess customers with vast datasets.

This assessment means that those who would abuse your store are blocked from purchasing in the moment. This block is conducted if their intentions aren’t explicit or identifiable at the checkout.

But it’s not just about blocking fraudulent consumers; using AI and data means that genuine customers have a better experience. Traditional risk analysis may knock consumers back, asking for additional verification. However, intelligent decision centres can calculate the risk of a customer the first time around, meaning that there are no awkward declines.

Merchants can also gain access to a single view of all transaction information thanks to the intuition of AI. Historical reports and fraud trends can also be used to understand where fraud teams need to target the most, aiding revenue optimisation.

What is your fraud maturity?

We now recognize that fraudsters will continue to change their tactics along with the ecommerce landscape.

Adaptability and agility are now more important than ever for risk and fraud teams. They are core competencies necessary to prevent the costly revenue leakage that can ensue from fraud attacks or throughout an order’s lifecycle — at the payment gateway, the card processor, through anti-fraud efforts, and even after delivery, through returns and chargebacks.

Retailers must take time to assess and identify areas for improvement for an effective long-term strategy. This is key when it comes to your fraud team, one of your first lines of defence against revenue leakage.