Elon Musk, a well-known crypto enthusiast, argued that Bitcoin mining was now moving to renewable energy, increasing its green share. 

But as recent findings would have it, this is not the case. The Bitcoin mining carbon footprint has been steadily rising, and China's current ban on crypto use only fueled it further. Research shows that carbon emissions have increased by 17% following the crackdown. 

China was a significant Bitcoin hub, accounting for more than 75% of Bitcoin's hash rate and 44% of crypto miners. That was until June 2021, when the country banned Bitcoin mining. The ban resulted in a mass exodus of miners from China to the US, Russia, and Kazakhstan, where the negative impact is higher. 

Now, this may seem absurd, especially because China relies heavily on coal. But, the country also uses renewable hydropower to mine cryptos. 

Hydropower and other renewable energy hold the solution

Although things seem bleak right now, there just might be a way out. Going by Musk's stance, shifting to renewable energy might solve the stalemate between adoption and climate impact. 

And it seems that things are already set in motion. 

A Costa Rican hydropower plant recently converted into a green Bitcoin mining plant. Sure, the adverse effects on the climate may not start reversing just now, but it is a step in the right direction. 

Read the full story here: Global Carbon Footprint of Bitcoin Mining up 17% to Stand at 114 Mt

Azentio Software, a Singapore-headquartered technology firm owned by funds advised by Apax Partners, today announced that Bank of Abyssinia (“BoA”) has successfully gone live with iMAL*IslamicFinancing and iMAL*ProfitCalculationSystem in less than four months, to support the growth of its Islamic window operations.

Azentio’s Shariah-compliant profit calculation and distribution system makes profit distribution highly efficient. With the company’s AAOIFI-certified Islamic banking suite, BoA will be able to compete with both Islamic banks and conventional banking methods of interest payouts, in rates and customer satisfaction, reducing time-to-market for new products and distribution of profits. All profit rate adjustments are made within the confines of the rules of Islamic jurisprudence and handled automatically by the system.

Mohammed Kateeb, Global Head of Islamic Banking and President of Middle East & Africa at Azentio, commented, “We are proud to support BoA, one of the leading private banks in Ethiopia, to achieve the highest levels of transparency and complete automation to manage the restricted and unrestricted Islamic investments, compute and share profits as prescribed by the Shariah. iMAL*IslamicFinancing and iMAL*ProfitCalculationSystem were integrated online with the bank’s existing core banking platform and are running smoothly as standalone applications. The approach we adopted during the implementation phase was an innovative deviation from the normal one, enabling BoA to save the costly process of migration iterations, frequent CIF and account updates maintenance.”

Abdulkadir Redwan, Director - Interest Free Banking at BoA, said, “Islamic banking has been growing rapidly in recent years in Ethiopia. Choosing the right technology partner was critical to stay nimble and move fast. We made a great choice in partnering with Azentio, because of their in-depth experience, system understanding, vast industry expertise and the team professionalism. This partnership will create an edge for our Islamic banking operations to operate in a more Shariah-compliant manner and comply with the National Bank of Ethiopia’s regulations.”

Insurtech pioneer to guide expansion of Kinetic Insurance:

smarter insurance for broker and policyholder through reduced injuries

Kinetic Insurance, an innovative insurtech that uses wearable technology to keep workers safe and saves money on premiums, today announced that John Peters has joined the company’s advisory board. The insurance operations chief (CIO at Lemonade Inc.) will guide Kinetic Insurance as the groundbreaking new insurtech looks to grow rapidly after the company’s recent launch in partnership with Nationwide. Kinetic Insurance provides policyholders with the same wearable safety technology that leading Fortune 500 companies trust to keep their workforce safe – at no extra charge.

“John Peters is one of the brightest minds in the business with a breadth of experience transforming insurance operations and truly disrupting the insurance sector,” said Haytham Elhawary, founder and CEO of Kinetic Insurance. “John brings the strategic leadership and industry relationships to Kinetic’s board that will guide us in truly reinventing workers’ compensation. We’re pioneering smarter insurance for the broker and the policyholder that leverages state-of-the-art technology proven to reduce both injuries and costs.”

John Peters is Chief Insurance Officer at Lemonade Inc. Prior to joining Lemonade, he held a multitude of executive roles for commercial insurance and loss control at Liberty Mutual and spent 10 years at McKinsey & Company's global property-casualty insurance practice. Peters will advise the Kinetic Insurance executive team on all aspects of the business, including MGU strategy, carrier relationships, advanced underwriting and actuarial strategies, and the integration of novel datasets in our business.

“Kinetic’s tech and new approach to wearable technology intrigued me because they’ve built a simple device with a proven track record of significantly reducing injuries in a non-invasive way,” said John Peters. “This is the future of what commercial insurance should be: focused on both claims resolution as well as claims prevention.”

Kinetic Insurance, backed by Nationwide, AM Best Rated A+ XV, offers workers’ compensation coverage combined with a technology-driven approach to worker safety. Policyholders are equipped with wearable technology designed to reduce injuries and losses. The wearables automatically detect unsafe postures and provide workers with real-time feedback whenever a high-risk motion occurs. With use over time, workers can improve their biomechanics, resulting in fewer injuries. Risk data can be viewed in the Kinetic dashboard, and used to make targeted changes to workplace processes that can help to further reduce injury risk.

Read the blog interview for more from John Peters: Kinetic Board Member Talks Injury Prevention, Tech and Insurance.

Levy’s experience in strategic leadership is set to overcome charities and supply chain challenges to create seamless and transparent donation solution.

To accelerate its investment into the charities sector, digital payments expert, PayPoint, has named Jason Levy to lead the Strategic Development and Partnerships plans. The appointment confirms PayPoint’s ambition to become the market-leading omni-channel payment and donations solutions partner for the charity sector.

Levy has considerable experience across the industry, which first began as Director of Fundraising and Marketing at Midlands Air Ambulance Charity. Here he delivered significant and strategic income growth through the development of innovative digital and face to face fundraising campaigns. Levy held similar roles at Caudwell Children, Worcestershire Acute Hospitals Charity, and most recently, the UK’s largest Jewish charity supporting children, families & people with learning disabilities and autism, Norwood.

Last year PayPoint completed the acquisition of RSM 2000 Ltd, a leading provider of innovative digital payment services including Direct Debit services, card payments and text donations, amongst other services. The move marked a step change in PayPoint’s strategic delivery, with RSM 2000’s significant portfolio of charities, not-for-profit organisations and SMEs bolstering PayPoint’s market reach. 

Jason Levy, Charities Strategic Development and Partnerships Lead at PayPoint said of his appointment: “It’s an exciting time for me to be joining PayPoint. The business has made real progress in the last 12 months in assessing and refining its solutions in the charities sector and I am eager to bring these to market. There is a real opportunity for PayPoint to make a much-needed difference to the charity and supply chain processing of transactions, bringing client led, seamlessly integrated digital solutions, underpinned by excellent customer service.”

Danny Vant, Client Service Director at PayPoint adds: “With Jason on board, our charities solutions will be taken to the next level. His knowledge and experience are already proving to be great additions to the team and we look forward this being leveraged by our charity and non-for-profit clients. Like any business, charities must apply best-practice in relation to goods and services and Jason will be utilising his skills to deliver strategies that drive efficient and fair fundraising and donation practices.”

Expands US footprint in response to client demand for Level 3 Data and Analytics

BMLL, the leading, independent provider of harmonized, historical Level 3 data and analytics, today announced the appointment of Tim Baker as Senior Adviser. Based in New York, Baker will be responsible for growing BMLL’s US client base, developing and implementing the company's growth strategy in the region.

A seasoned innovator, technologist and entrepreneur with a track record of building and growing successful ventures in financial, data and fintech markets, Baker brings strong US financial services expertise with over 30 years of experience across a wide variety of disciplines from sell side research, banking, M&A, technology, data and data science. He has served in a variety of senior roles at IEX, UBS, Refinitiv and Thomson Reuters, while also working for and investing in smaller fintechs, building an extensive network across the industry over time.

BMLL’s granular Level 3 Data and analytics are used by banks, brokers, asset managers, hedge funds and global exchange groups, enabling them to truly understand market behavior across several asset classes and to generate alpha more predictably. What’s more, after successfully establishing a track record in Equities, BMLL has expanded into Futures, providing market participants with Level 3 Data from CME, Eurex and ICE, covering Equity Indices, Fixed Income, Short-Term Interest Rates, Commodities, Digital Assets/Cryptocurrencies and FX.

Specifically for the US markets, BMLL offers more than 6.5 years of full depth US order book data via the BMLL Data Lab and BMLL Data Feed, allowing US customers and European funds trading US stocks access to harmonized, historic Level 3 Data for insights, algo design and backtesting.

Tim Baker, Senior Advisor at BMLL, said: “I am delighted to work with BMLL at such an exciting time for the business, where I have the opportunity to play a part in its continued expansion across geographies and teams. BMLL has seen an increasing demand for its data and analytics tools from capital markets participants looking to optimize trading strategies, increase alpha and gain an edge.”

Paul Humphrey, CEO of BMLL, commented: “In the past year, BMLL has secured a number of Tier 1 banks, global exchanges and sophisticated hedge funds as clients, and expanded its global footprint through a series of data distribution partnerships with established and widely used industry providers. Tim’s appointment is part of our strategy to invest in our presence in the US and to serve the growing demand from firms in the region. Tim brings with him invaluable, relevant experience and we are confident that our US clients will benefit from his expertise and insights.”

• Nearly two thirds (62%) of consumers would avoid merchants with a poor payment experience and 22% would avoid them even if they needed to use them.
• Less than a tenth (6%) of UK adults would continue to shop as normal with a company if they experienced a poor payment experience with them.
• Such a commercial risk for businesses makes investment in checkout technology critical, and will drive e-commerce investment trends

As the shift to digital accelerates, online merchants that fail to offer a strong payments experience face significant risk of losing customers to those that get it right, according to the latest findings from Plaid, an open finance data network and payments platform. 

A positive payment experience is now an integral part of how customers view online merchants. Nearly two thirds (62%) of consumers would avoid merchants that offer a ‘poor’ payment experience and one in five (22%) would even avoid the merchant even if they needed their goods or services. 

Inversely, less than a tenth (6%) of UK adults would continue to shop as normal with a company if they experience a poor payment experience with them.

It is not only the quality of the payment experience that matters. Four in five (81%) people feel it’s also important for companies to offer a wide variety of payment options, whether that be buy now pay later, or digital payments. Payment flexibility is so significant that a fifth (22%) of people see a lack of choice as a reason to abandon a transaction altogether. 

Consumers also increasingly have clear payment preferences. Over a third of people (36%) cited methods that required customers to enter in their personal financial information - such as the long card number on a credit or debit card -  as a reason they would abandon a purchase from an online business. Another third (30%) would abandon the purchase due to overly complex identity checks or verifications. 

Younger generations, however, have even stronger views over their preferred payment methods. Of those aged 18 - 34, 32% would change their payment method to avoid having to repeatedly enter personal information; 37% for lower fees, 38% for faster transactions and 34% for fast refund times. 

The businesses getting payments right

When asked which types of companies offer good payment experiences, consumers ranked food retailers and supermarkets highest. Hire companies and event companies recorded the worst scores.

Keith Grose, Head of Plaid UK, commented: “The growth of e-commerce has been stratospheric in the last couple of years as consumer demand changed almost overnight, and companies move swiftly to adapt to completely new trading conditions. But this has brought a new set of challenges for retailers as consumer expectations rise too. Many merchants will know well that consumers want their payment experience to be as smooth as the rest of the online shopping experience. How people pay is no longer an afterthought, but a crucial part of the customer experience. 

As businesses look to bounce back from the turmoil of the past two years, and support the economic recovery by doing so, they cannot afford to lose customers who’ve seen the benefit of digital innovation and a better way of paying. 

“That’s why investment into digital checkouts and e-wallets is now a core focus for companies, but they cannot go it alone. As such,  there’s  a vibrant and emerging segment of fintech companies focused on this space.”  

Encompass’ £25 million capital raise will be used to automate KYC for banks on an international scale

Encompass Corporation, the provider of intelligently automated Know Your Customer (KYC) solutions, today announced the completion of a successful capital raise of £25M.

Perennial Partners, a major Australian investment management company, served as the lead investor, joined by financial services focused principal investing firm Serendipity Capital, Seven Seat Capital, and FinTech investment firm Microequities Asset Management.

There were also follow-on investments from several existing shareholders, including Alan McIntyre, former Global Head of Banking Services at Accenture, and Tim Frost, ex-Chairman of IHS Markit, as well as experienced technology investor Ray Scott.

Encompass’ capital raise will be used to accelerate its growth globally, which has included office openings and extensive recruitment in New York and Amsterdam. The raise will also facilitate ongoing product innovation and development, undertaken from three main engineering centres in Sydney, Belgrade, and Glasgow. Encompass’ expansion will help it to better meet the needs of existing global customers, as well as to continue to onboard renowned financial institutions, as it increases its international footprint.

The raise follows twelve months of significant growth in revenue, new accounts, and the addition of specialist industry experts to the business’ teams across the UK, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the US.

Roger Carson, co-founder at Encompass commented:

“Today’s funding will help fuel Encompass’ rapid global expansion, especially as we make inroads in North America, with operations driven from New York, and continue to expand our presence in Europe.

“Expanding to new markets will add greater value to our business in a way that better serves existing customers and attracts additional global banks as new customers. We are excited to have new and existing investors support Encompass’ acceleration, expansion and vision to continue to be recognised globally as the leading provider of automation to the corporate KYC due diligence market.”

Sean Harpur, co-founder at Serendipity Capital

“Encompass’ successful funding represents the increasing value of solutions that digitise and automate regulatory screening and due diligence for the corporate KYC market.”

“Designed to help banks simultaneously create a better customer experience and mitigate compliance risk at scale, we believe Encompass is exceptionally well-positioned to deliver in these areas for global banks, becoming the recognised global standard across RegTech, AML and KYC.”

Today’s news follows a round of funding in 2020, as well as Encompass’ expansion into North America in late 2021.

 CQG, a leading global provider of high-performance technology solutions for traders, brokers, commercial hedgers and exchanges, announced today the phased roll-out of its newest trading platform, CQG One. Designed for professional traders and institutional investors, the new cloud-based CQG One combines the ease of use of the firm’s retail-oriented CQG Desktop platform with many of the popular market data, charting, visualization and advanced analytics features of CQG Integrated Client, its flagship professional trading platform.

A multi-asset, multi-broker platform, CQG One will be available through traders’ futures commission merchants (FCMs) beginning in April, with new functionality added throughout the year.

CQG President Ryan Moroney said: “We’re excited to bring CQG One to market after gathering extensive input from our users on what features they most want in our new platform. This will be as intuitive and easy to deploy, configure and use as CQG Desktop but with advanced charting, market analytics and trading functionality, along with the CQG depth and breadth of market data utilized by our largest and most sophisticated institutional clients.”

Marcus Kwan, CQG Vice President, Product Strategy & Design, said: “CQG One is an ultra-fast, secure platform that traders will be able to access from anywhere to leverage technical analysis tools and execute transactions with a single click on markets all over the world. We will continuously update it through our HTML5 cloud infrastructure in a way that’s seamless to users.”

The new platform will include premium functionality such as:

• Single-click trade entry
• Advanced charting and analytics
• Portfolio sharing
• Window linking, and drag-and-drop tabs
• Highly secure, consolidated real-time and life-of-contract historical market data feeds from more than 75 global sources
• Access to CQG Algos, a comprehensive set of pre-built algorithmic order types
• New analytics features, custom formulas, price alerts and a spreader later in 2022

Institutional clients will be able to utilize a Windows-installed version of CQG One in the future.