Cohesity, a leader in AI-powered data security and management, today previewed early access to Cohesity Turing, the company’s comprehensive, patent-pending collection of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and technologies that are integrated into its multicloud data platform and solutions. Cohesity will expand its work with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to integrate Cohesity Turing with Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service that makes foundation models from leading AI companies accessible via an API to build and scale generative AI applications. Customers will benefit directly from this integration by using the latest AI capabilities to drive more efficient operations, garner greater insight into security risks, and derive more value from their data. 

Customers can sign up today for the Cohesity Turing Early Access Program here. Cohesity will showcase the power of the integration between Cohesity Turing and Amazon Bedrock at AWS re:Invent 2023, November 27 - December 1, in Las Vegas. Cohesity expects the program to be generally available in approximately six months.

With Cohesity Turing’s integration with Amazon Bedrock, organisations will be able to access and utilise the latest AI capabilities to streamline and enhance data operations securely, while also deriving deep, informed insights from their data. Capabilities will include:

• Managing, securing, and analysing data: With access to the Cohesity Data Cloud, users will be able to securely index their data and use Cohesity Turing’s AI capabilities for insightful analytics that uncover deep insights and offer informed answers to questions about business and application data.
• Enriched data interaction and learning: Customers will be able to query their own data with intuitive, natural-language conversations and generate simplified, secure insights from their historical data.
• Implementing Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG): Cohesity Turing and the Cohesity Data Cloud will leverage Amazon Bedrock to enhance customers’ data interpretation and will provide grounded responses to queries through RAG.

Cohesity developed Cohesity Turing to address customers’ rapidly evolving needs for AI to unlock critical data insights. As new AI use cases emerge, Cohesity will continue to advance the portfolio of technologies powered by Cohesity Turing, while helping customers use AI responsibly and securely.

“For some time, enterprise IT priorities have focused on managing data proliferation, data security, and compliance. We now see a rapidly increasing demand for AI-powered data insights from customers. With our expanded relationship with AWS, we aim to unleash the power of enterprise AI while leading the industry in leveraging AI-powered data security and management to strengthen the cyber resilience of our customers,” said Sanjay Poonen, CEO, Cohesity. “By offering a seamless and secure integration with Amazon Bedrock, we will make it easier for businesses to truly harness the power of their data responsibly and securely.”

Organisations face an ongoing threat from cybercriminals, creating a need to implement AI solutions for greater cyber resilience. In addition to helping customers derive greater insights from data and strengthen their security posture, this integration will make it easier for businesses to benefit from AI solutions in a responsible, compliant, and secure manner.

"We are excited about this expanded collaboration focused on AI and data security that can help us stay one step ahead of cyber threats,” said Jason Haroldsen, manager, IT Infrastructure, Valley Children’s Healthcare. “With the growing risk of ransomware and other cyberattacks, our organisation is always evaluating new ways to boost cyber resilience strategies while keeping our data's integrity at the forefront."

“We see tremendous potential and value in collaboration on generative AI that could provide critical insights into our level of cyber resilience and threat profile,” said Sebastian Springer, head of software development, Pro Care Management, GmbH. “We need to embrace the power of generative AI while ensuring our data remains secure and compliant. This holds great promise in achieving that end.”

Additional Expanded Support for AWS and VMware Workloads

At AWS re:Invent 2023, Cohesity will also showcase new upcoming capabilities for protecting critical AWS workloads with Cohesity DataProtect delivered-as-a-service, including support for Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), and enhanced support for Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). This expansion complements Cohesity’s data protection solution for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). With a single management plane for on-premises, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and cloud-native workloads, Cohesity customers can streamline data security and management, and better protect themselves against cyber threats or outages.

In addition, Cohesity has joined forces with AWS and VMware to bolster data resilience for VMware Cloud on AWS with Cohesity DataProtect delivered as a service. This solution’s flexible pricing, industry-leading storage efficiency, and unlimited scalability provide VMware Cloud on AWS workloads with comprehensive protection and faster recovery at lower costs. With seamless integration across cloud and on-premises environments, this relationship delivers a proven, integrated data protection solution for VMware Cloud on AWS.

BR-DGE, a leading payment orchestration provider, has integrated Visa Instalments, an innovative API-powered solution, into Kenwood Travel’s payment offering to customers. Leveraging Visa Instalments via BR-DGE Connect, UK luxury tour operator Kenwood Travel will be able to provide greater affordability, enhanced flexibility, and security at the payment checkout to holiday goers through a BR-DGE customisable Hosted Payment Page.

BR-DGE works with Kenwood Travel to enhance the online travel agents’ end-to-end payment journey, helping customers receive a frictionless luxury experience at the checkout. As Kenwood Travel caters to growing consumer demand for instalment solutions, Visa Instalments provides a convenient way for Kenwood Travel to accept and receive payments online. This solution gives eligible consumers more choice in how they pay online, by enabling holiday goers easy access to instalment payment options with clear repayment schedules shown at checkout – so the cardholder knows what they need to pay and when. Visa Instalments also uses existing lines of credit by integrating with consumers' accounts, making it convenient to manage their money without having to open or track other accounts. Research has shown that 75% of consumers said instalments helped them manage unexpected expenses, whilst 40% of merchants have seen an uplift in sales when instalments are offered.¹²

As Kenwood Travel looks to deliver greater choice to consumers, the tour operator is the first UK merchant to select Visa Instalments via BR-DGE, with more merchants expected to onboard the technology soon across the travel and retail industries. Kenwood Travel is leveraging BR-DGE’s modular, payment orchestration platform, taking advantage of a vast array of functionality, from Network Tokenisation through to detailed reporting and analytics, enabling the merchant to deliver a first-class, seamless online checkout experience.

This latest integration from Kenwood Travel is being enabled by BR-DGE Connect which provides merchants with real-time access to more than 100 different payment service providers and over 300 alternative payment methods. Utilising the power of BR-DGE Connect, merchants can easily make dynamic changes to the customer payment experience, in order to improve authorisation rates, reduce transaction costs, and build in greater resilience to technical outages.

Tom Voaden, Head of Partnerships at BR-DGE, said: “This announcement is a major step forward in our strategic partnership with Visa, providing Kenwood Travel and their customers with an innovative payment solution. We are thrilled to be the first platform to switch on Visa Instalments live with a UK merchant, demonstrating how BR-DGE is enabling our merchants to access the latest payment innovations via BR-DGE Connect. Working with Visa, we are excited to offer Kenwood Travel’s customers a first-class payment experience as they book excursions and holidays around the world.”

Mathieu Altwegg, Head of Product, UK & Ireland, Visa, says: “Partnerships play a vital role in driving innovations that reshape the payments experience. Through our strategic partnership with BR-DGE, we are helping businesses like Kenwood Travel to provide their consumers with more choice in how they pay for travel.”

George Koumi, Managing Director at Kenwood Travel, said: "As the first UK tour operator to introduce 'Visa Instalments' in collaboration with Visa and BR-DGE, we at Kenwood Travel are thrilled to offer our customers enhanced flexibility in their online payment experience. This innovation allows for convenient instalment options, complete with transparent repayment schedules right at the checkout. We're proud to lead the way in providing holidaymakers with affordability, security, and convenience at every step of their journey."

This development follows the launch of a three-year partnership agreement between BR-DGE and Visa, a world leader in digital payments, announced earlier this year. The partnership offers innovative payment solutions to merchants and consumers, with further product enablement planned for the future, including tokenisation.

Led by CEO Thomas Gillan, BR-DGE’s platform is revolutionising online payments for merchants by offering a universe of payment options via a single point of integration. BR-DGE offers merchants a suite of products to deliver seamless payment experiences for customers, underpinned by flexible and streamlined processes. BR-DGE provides merchants with actionable intelligence to stay ahead of the latest payment trends and, through BR-DGE Vault, network tokens can be leveraged ensuring customers are always offered the latest payment offerings in the most secure way.

FinTech Wales has today announced the resignation of Sarah Williams-Gardener as CEO, who will move to assume the role of the organisation’s Chair, replacing Louise O’Shea, from January 2024.

As Chair, Sarah will support the new CEO to further develop FinTech Wales’ strategic direction, as well as ensuring the continued robust governance structure of the organisation to maintain its transparency and inclusivity. Having established Wales as a thriving fintech cluster on a global stage, it’s now time for a new CEO to lead FinTech Wales and the Welsh fintech ecosystem through its next chapter, which will be focused on attracting and supporting more fintech organisations to start and scale their business in Wales.

Sarah’s role as Chair will enable her the capacity to build on her previous experience with Government and policy makers, and ensure FinTechs in Wales continue to have a voice at Government level.

Prior to joining FinTech Wales as CEO, Sarah was a founding member of Starling Bank. She also spent 17 years at IBM, latterly as Government Affairs Director working with Government departments, as well as working on commercial and innovation projects. Sarah has also held an interim CEO role at charity Hope for Children, and has played a significant role in the market, consumer insights and product design team at Fair 4 All Finance. Aswell as becoming Chair for FinTech Wales, Sarah will continue as a trustee for Surviving Economic Abuse.

During Sarah’s tenure as CEO, FinTech Wales has experienced significant success, exponential growth and numerous milestones. It has:

• grown the membership substantially by over 150%,
• supported 22 startups through FinTech Wales’ accelerator programme, The Foundry, achieving over £20 million investment for Welsh fintech startups who in turn have created over 150 highly skilled jobs in Wales,
• created an established skills strategy to ensure a constant pipeline of talent required by Welsh FinTechs seeing over 100 people re-trained and work-ready for fintech and tech roles per year,
• secured £1.6million investment from Cardiff Capital Region,
• and ensured Wales was recognised globally in the Kalifa Review as a hub of fintech excellence in its own right, as well as part of Team GB’s capabilities.

FinTech Wales existing Chair, Louise O’Shea said: “The Board, Advisory Panel and team at FinTech Wales express their sincere gratitude for Sarah’s outstanding contributions and remarkable leadership throughout her tenure. We applaud Sarah’s decision to embrace this new opportunity as Chair, recognising the invaluable impact she will undoubtedly have on FinTech Wales and its future endeavours.”

Sarah Williams-Gardener, CEO, FinTech Wales: “I’m honoured to have been appointed as Chair for FinTech Wales having received overwhelming support from both the Board and Panel. It’s been a pleasure working alongside Louise O’Shea for the past four years, and, during her time as Chair, Louise has ensured that the organisation has gone from strength to strength. I’m stepping into very big shoes.

“Whilst sad that Louise has stepped down, I’m delighted that this has provided an opportunity for me to hand over the reins of FinTech Wales’ CEO whilst still being able to support and amplify the amazing things that Welsh fintechs and the FinTech Wales team are achieving. My time at FinTech Wales has been truly phenomenal, and I’m delighted to still be able to play a part in such an important and poignant mission.”

Launched in April 2019, FinTech Wales is a not-for-profit organisation who champions the tech and financial services industry in Wales.  The idea behind FinTech Wales is to help businesses both in Wales and beyond to startup and scale in a supportive and collaborative atmosphere. Ultimately, the goal is to make Wales a world leader in the global fintech community. It brings together entrepreneurs and businesses of all sizes, as well as technology suppliers, innovators, universities, colleges and public sector bodies.

FinTech Wales will initiate an extensive search for a new CEO with immediate effect. The Board and executive team will work diligently to ensure a seamless transition, maintaining the organisation’s upward trajectory and continued success.

Sarah continued, “This is a fantastic opportunity for someone with the right experience to take FinTech Wales through to its next stage of growth. We are now in the third year of our four-year strategy, in which we have focused on four key pillars: skills and talent; ecosystem and community; funding and investment; and the promotion of Wales as a place for fintech and financial organisations to thrive.

“We are now looking for someone to pick up the baton and work with the Board, Advisory Panel and team for the continued success and growth of our ecosystem in Wales, the UK and beyond. This latest transition represents an exciting chapter in the FinTech Wales journey, and we look forward to welcoming a new CEO who will lead us into the future.”

Kim Verkooij, co-founder and CEO of Solvimon, comments: “While there has been innovation in pricing and metering solutions, businesses are still underserved. Their options are patching together point solutions or entering the expensive and time-consuming process of building a homegrown billing solution. There is a clear need for a flexible, yet end-to-end billing platform. We’re really happy to be partnering with the Northzone team. They have studied the space deeply and understand the scale and urgency of the problem we’re solving. Their conviction meant that we could close the round in just two weeks and get back to building the business.”

Michiel Kotting, a partner at Northzone comments: “Having previously built Adyen’s complex internal billing engine, Kim and Etienne bring a wealth of unique insights and a deep understanding of the complexity of pricing for larger companies which are increasingly adopting hybrid business models. Billing and pricing software are mission-critical, and there is a strong need for a sophisticated end-to-end solution with a breadth of functionality”.

Paxos, the leading regulated blockchain infrastructure platform, has announced that TD Securities has become the latest financial institution to join the Paxos Settlement Service for Commodities.

For the first time in the precious metals market, Paxos is facilitating the simultaneous settlement of cash and commodities trades. As part of the network, TD Securities will be able to facilitate fully automated settlement and streamline operations for both traditional and digital precious metals trades.

With the numerous commodities trading firms still without automated confirmations and settlement, TD Securities' adoption of the Paxos service is an important step to increasing efficiencies and common standards for commodities settlement.

Joe Quinlan, Global Head of FX & Commodities Middle Office at TD Securities, said: “Bridging the longstanding gap between cash and asset settlement networks, as well as collecting settlement obligations in a controlled way that mitigates risk, are fundamental elements to creating safe settlement for the commodities market. Aside from the risk mitigation, joining this settlement network enables us to drive significant benefits to our processes, increasing our overall settlement efficiency.”

Anoushka Rayner, Head of Growth - Commodities, Paxos, added: “In plugging the gap between cash and asset settlement, credit risk is reduced and capital efficiencies are realised, delivering real benefits to market participants such as TD Securities from day one.  Not only does Paxos deliver simultaneous settlement but the Paxos Settlement Service also acts as a hub to accommodate all counterparty settlements regardless of whether the counterparty is on the network.  TD Securities will be able to optimise its commodities business with full automation from post-trade confirmation to final settlement.”

Torstone Technology, a leading SaaS provider of post-trade securities and derivatives processing solutions, today announces that it has successfully completed product certification of its Middle Office product with DTCC’s CTM service, further enhancing Torstone's comprehensive multi-asset workflow for the industry. DTCC is the premier post-trade market infrastructure for the global financial services industry.

DTCC’s CTM is a central matching platform used by end-user clients to allocate and centrally match transactions globally across multiple asset classes.

As global market participants anticipate the transition to a T+1 settlement cycle in 2024, Torstone’s certification with CTM is timely and crucial, providing the global investment community with automated central matching capabilities and facilitating an accurate and efficient post-trade process to align with the upcoming tighter settlement windows.

This certification underscores Torstone’s commitment to investing in technology that addresses the intricate challenges of post-trade processing, thereby empowering clients to navigate the complex financial market with ease and confidence.

By completing the certification process of Torstone’s Middle Office product with DTCC’s CTM service, the Torstone platform is now quicker and cheaper to implement, providing clients with a reliable, secure, and streamlined environment for managing their post-trade activities. In addition, since DTCC’s CTM includes enrichment from DTCC’s ALERT, the industry’s largest online global database for the maintenance and communication of account and standing settlement instructions (SSI), Torstone clients will have the benefit of golden source SSI enrichment available to them.

David Pearson, product owner for the Torstone Middle Office commented, "We are focused on providing rich post-trade functionality across multiple asset classes, enabling straight-through processing through the allocation and confirmation workflows, and rapid error identification and resolution for any issues.  By providing access to CTM as well as ALERT, we’ve taken another step forward on our mission to provide our clients globally with the next generation of middle office functionality to meet the requirements of their buy-side clients and the regulators".

Val Wotton, Managing Director and General Manager of DTCC Institutional Trade Processing, commented, “We are pleased that Torstone has successfully completed product certification of its Middle Office product with CTM to support mutual clients as they prepare for the industry’s move to T+1. With CTM’s automated central matching and open architecture, firms across the industry can facilitate accelerated settlement. We look forward to helping prepare a broad range of market participants for a seamless transition to T+1.”

Brian Collings, CEO of Torstone Technology added, "We are delighted to work with DTCC to offer the CTM trade matching service through our platform to our clients in Asia, the Americas and Europe.  With major post-trade structural changes on the horizon, including T+1 for North American markets in 2024, Torstone Technology provides a real-time, event-driven platform to support our clients’ requirements to meet the demands for efficiency and accuracy."

Spryker, the leading composable commerce platform for sophisticated use cases in B2B Commerce, Enterprise Marketplaces, and Thing Commerce, today announced a new partnership with Vertex Inc., a leading global provider of indirect tax technology solutions. The partnership will see Vertex’s services offered through Spryker’s App Composition Platform, simplifying the process of complying with local tax jurisdictions in more than 19,000 jurisdictions worldwide. Customers can now connect with and leverage Vertex® O Series® to streamline tax needs for third-party seller configuration and sales tax

“Our customers expect us to provide solutions that empower their businesses and simplify their commerce needs,” said Manishi Singh, SVP App Composition Platform & Technology Partnerships at Spryker. “By partnering with Vertex, Spryker customers can confidently manage complex tax requirements at scale, regardless of whether the organization focuses on B2B, B2C, D2C, marketplaces or any other form of sophisticated commerce. Vertex’s solutions integrate seamlessly with Spryker through our App Composition Platform, extending the value of our composable platform and streamlining indirect tax compliance for our global customers.”

A custom Vertex app for the Spryker App Composition Platform has been built to provide the following features:

• • Quick and easy integration of Vertex® O Series® On-Demand in Spryker project and configuration.
  • More accurate, automated tax determination before checkout using customer delivery address.
  • Detailed tax reports in Vertex dashboard displaying the Spryker Order Numbers as Invoice Numbers for the customer.
  • Flexibility to integrate with other financial systems (ERP, CRM, etc.) and add more data with the use of tax metadata.

Joint customers can add Vertex’s app to their existing digital commerce operations with just a few clicks, simplifying the process of integration and accelerating time to value. 

This partnership provides Spryker customers with access to scalable solutions and services that automate processes, increase efficiency and accuracy, and improve customer experience, all while reducing risk. Together, Vertex and Spryker enable customers using the Spryker platform to rapidly grow their marketplace businesses while effectively managing and addressing tax compliance challenges.

“In an increasingly interconnected world, businesses face the complex challenge of navigating the intricate landscape of indirect taxes across borders,” commented Bradd Wildstein, Vice President of Global Channel Sales at Vertex. “We are excited to partner with Spryker to offer robust indirect tax solutions that empower their merchants to overcome tax-related hurdles – fostering growth and expansion in the global marketplace.”

As a trusted tax technology provider with over 40 years of industry experience, Vertex supports many of the world’s most valuable brands, including a large percentage of those in the Fortune 500. It is this expertise that users of Spryker will be able to tap into, accessing more than 800 million tax rules from within their existing sophisticated tax compliance and commerce solutions.

Evgeniy Ivantsov, CMO FYST, commented: “This spike corresponds with the uptake of chip-and-pin payments in the UK - an innovation designed to reduce incidents of payment fraud since the embedded chip offers more secure storage compared to the magnetic strip on previous cards. But search volume peaked again just last month. This could be linked to the first APP scams performance report by PSR, but also points to a growing interest from consumers in reducing fraud through innovations such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and open banking.”

• In Europe, the United Kingdom recorded the highest search volume in the past 12 months, followed by Ireland, then a jump down to the Netherlands, Russia, Germany, and France.
• In North America, the United States records the highest volume of searches in the region, followed by Canada. A closer look at the United States reveals some interesting patterns; Georgia records the highest volume of searches for ‘payment fraud’, closely followed by Kansas. According to data from the Federal Trade Commission, out of all states, financial scams are most prevalent in Georgia, with 437 incidents per 100,000 people. In this region, imposter scams are the most common fraud type. Notably, Vermont experiences the highest prevalence of these schemes, with imposter scams accounting for 47.32% of total fraud reports. 
• Meanwhile, in South America, Mexico has recorded the highest search volume for the Spanish equivalent of ‘payment fraud’ (‘fraude de pago’) since 2003, followed by Colombia, Argentina, and Brazil.
• Over the past 12 months, the highest-ranking countries in Africa are South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya. Over the last five years, and since 2004, South Africa has remained top.  
• In Asia, Singapore has recorded the highest search volume since 2004, followed by the Philippines. In the past five months, Singapore and the Philippines remained top of the list, followed by, India, Unitethe d Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Pakistan, South Korea, and Indonesia
• Finally, Australia recorded the highest search volume across all time periods in Oceania, which it dominates geographically.

Evgeniy Ivantsov, CMO FYST, added: “Fraud is a global problem, with 2023 data showing that phishing, pharming, whaling, and ‘friendly fraud’ still prevail. It therefore seems appropriate we highlight these hotspots during International Fraud Awareness Week.

 

“Payment fraud trends and techniques vary geographically due to differences in payment infrastructure, regulation, law enforcement, and customer behaviors around the world. Understanding the regional specificities and global hotspots for different fraud types is crucial for developing effective fraud prevention and mitigation strategies.  

 

“By understanding geographically-specific fraud search interest, stakeholders can develop targeted solutions suited to their locations and support strategic allocation of anti-fraud resources. With the global fraud problem continuing to grow in scale and complexity, we must improve our understanding of where and how fraud is concentrating so we can create effective barriers against it.” 

Genesis Global, the low-code application development platform purpose-built for financial markets organizations, today announced the release of Genesis Platform version 7 (G7).  It includes multiple enhancements that make it faster and easier for developers in financial services to build, test and deploy robust software applications.

Engineered for software developers in banks, asset managers and other types of financial firms, Genesis fuses the flexibility and power of professional development tools with the efficiency of low-code specially optimized for financial markets.  The Genesis platform and its library of functional, technical and financial business components make it faster to develop full-stack applications requiring high-performance transaction processing, event-driven workflows, real-time data integrations and customized user experiences. 

“Our technology and expertise in capital markets make Genesis a unique partner for banks, brokers, asset managers and other financial firms that want to drive performance and competitive advantage through technology innovation,” said Tej Sidhu, Chief Technology Officer at Genesis Global.  “Upgrades to our platform are driven by our core mission to supercharge software developers in financial markets and make it faster to build, test and deploy new applications.”

Enhancements in G7 make it faster and easier for developers to build full-stack applications, design user interfaces, to operate Genesis applications within enterprise technology ecosystems and to access training tools and other assistance available in the platform.

Supercharging developer productivity

The financial markets-specific low-code framework and developer tools in the Genesis platform supercharge developer productivity.  A new suite of specialized IDE plugins deliver AI-driven code automation and real-time code assistance, accelerating software development.  New features include:

* AI-Driven Code Automation:  a Large Language Model enables developers to describe their intentions in plain text and receive full-stack code to actualize those needs. Translating developer intent into code in real-time speeds up builds and reduces code errors. 

* Expanded Front & Back-End Code Assistance:  new IDE plugins deliver more extensive auto code completion, on the spot parameter prompts and dynamic programming options to boost speed and accuracy for server-side and interface development.  

Enhanced UI design and customization

With Genesis, developers can easily create dynamic and tailored user interfaces to support the demands of financial markets applications and workflows.  New tools in G7 for effortless design of customized UIs include:

* Dynamic Layout Manager: facilitates full customization of screen layouts to ensure that interfaces align with users’ unique workflow needs.

* Design System Configurator: a visual tool that enables developers to create and update their application’s design style.

Improved enterprise interoperability

Genesis applications are engineered to integrate and interoperate within enterprise ecosystems.  Advances in G7 that streamline deployment and performance monitoring include:

* OpenAPI Integration: new support for OpenAPI promotes efficient integration and interoperability of Genesis applications within wider enterprise solutions.

* Enhanced Metrics & Monitoring: integration with Micrometer and support for OpenTelemetry observability standards facilitate instrumentation and health and performance monitoring.

Interactive developer assistance and training

Genesis continuously improves how it supports developers using the Platform.  New tools to help developers quickly leverage the full capabilities of Genesis include:

* AI-Powered Assistance: an AI chatbot embedded in Genesis documentation answers queries, including intricate technical requests, helping developers navigate the Genesis platform.

* Learning Management System: a new LMS offers engaging and structured learning experiences, empowering developers to advance their use of Genesis.

“AI-driven automation and other tools in this release improve the coding experience and help our developer community leverage the capabilities of the Genesis platform,” continued Tej Sidhu.  “With G7, we make the power of high-performance low-code even more accessible to our developer community.” 

Strategically backed by Bank of America, BNY Mellon and Citi, the Genesis platform is used by banks, asset managers, clearing houses, exchanges and other financial organizations to build new software applications, enhance legacy systems and replace spreadsheet computing and manual processes with enterprise-quality solutions.

Xero, the global small business platform, has announced two new payment features underpinned by some of the latest financial technologies, to help UK small businesses save time and have greater control over their cash flow. 

Unveiled at Xeroʼs roadshow, the first is a new bill payments tool that offers a simple and secure way to manage, approve, and pay bills without leaving Xero. To save time on their everyday administrative tasks, small businesses, and their advisors can now set up direct bank transfer as a payment method for bills, and use open banking to quickly and securely batch pay multiple bills from their bank account. 

This means UK businesses using a UK bank that supports open banking, can now complete their end-to-end accounts payable process in Xero, giving them greater control over their cash flow. 

To enable this functionality for its customers, Xero is partnering with financial services provider Crezco to facilitate open banking payment services. Xero will be the first major small business cloud accounting software in the UK to offer on-platform bill payments using open banking. 

“Paying bills is crucial for cash flow, but it is still a very manual process for many small business owners. With our bill payments feature, small businesses can avoid manual bank transfers, funding external wallets and accounts, or entering credit card details. It's all about making life easier and saving time on everyday admin,” said Jo Copestake, UK Sales Director, Xero. 

Xeroʼs Money Matters report found that 50 percent of UK small businesses are worried about their financial future amidst economic uncertainties. Bill payments offer small businesses real-time cash flow insights, as payments can be made almost immediately, enabling them to see the up-to-date impact of bill payments and an accurate view of cash flow to help make informed business decisions. 

“As small businesses continue to face economic challenges, having access to digital tools that can help them predict and manage cash flow challenges is essential,” added Copestake. 

Eligible UK Xero customers can register for the bill payments beta now, with the new feature being made available on 27 November 2023. 

eInvoicing receives capability now available with Xero 

Xero is the first major small business accounting software to launch eInvoicing in the UK, starting with the ability to receive eInvoices. Hailed as the next big billing revolution, eInvoicing uses the secure Peppol network to enable the electronic real-time delivery of invoices between small businesses and their trading partners. 

“eInvoicing will be a powerful new tool for businesses to make their payment process much more efficient. It a faster and safer way to send and receive invoices – it is automated, and it removes the need to create paper or PDF invoices, as well as the process of scanning, emailing and manually entering them,” said Copestake. 

Xero customers can now register to receive eInvoices in Xero, with bills coming straight into the platform to offer a holistic view of a small business cash flow position. While eInvoicing is mandatory for UK government agencies and its suppliers, the UK has not adopted eInvoicing more broadly. 

“We expect that eInvoicing will eventually become a global best practice standard and a natural part of the cloud accounting process. As adoption continues to grow around the world, we continue building a seamless eInvoicing experience in Xero for our customers,” added Copestake.