Spectrum Markets ("Spectrum"), the pan-European trading venue for securitized derivatives, has released its third Quarterly Business Update of the year, revealing a stable positive trajectory despite the challenges posed by declining equity markets and the broader inflationary landscape. 

Third-quarter order book turnover grew by 10% year-on-year, reaching €921 million, making it the second-best quarter so far. During the same period, trading volume increased by 5% with a total of 421 million securitized derivatives traded on the venue from July to September 2023, compared to 401 million during the same period the previous year. 

This underlines the firm’s continued growth trajectory, as it has expanded its product offering and welcomed more European retail investors trading on Spectrum, including those coming via new members and other partnerships commenced during the course of the year. 

Since its last business update in July 2023, Spectrum has announced two important initiatives, including a partnership with the independent Italian retail broker Directa, which became its newest member, allowing more retail investors the ability to trade securitized derivatives on Spectrum, 24 hours a day, five days a week. 

In addition, Societe Generale, already a member of Spectrum since 2022, expanded the geographic availability of some of the daily constant leverage and vanilla warrant products it has listed on the trading venue to include Italy.

These announcements reflect the success of Spectrum’s ongoing growth strategy and represent a new source of trading volume to the venue, which will continue to be consolidated in deeper pan-European liquidity pools, thanks to Spectrum’s innovative, single pan-European product ISIN.

“We are very happy to be announcing another positive quarter of year-on-year growth, emphasizing Spectrum’s progress on volume and turnover,” explains Nicky Maan, Spectrum Markets CEO. “I’m particularly pleased with the initiatives we announced last quarter and look forward to announcing further developments, strengthening our growth ambitions for the venue as we look towards the year-end and beyond.”

“Despite the wider market uncertainty we’ve seen during the last few months, we remain committed to continuously delivering the best possible trading experience for our members and their retail investor clients, exploring new partnerships, expanding our offering and developing our ‘plug and play’ trading infrastructure around Europe,” he adds.

During Q3 2023, 32.3% of individual trades took place outside of traditional hours (i.e. between 17:30 and 9:00 CET). 87.6% of the traded derivatives were on indices, 8.5% on currency pairs, 2.7% on commodities, 1.1% on equities, and 0.1% on cryptocurrencies with the most traded underlying being DAX 40 (34.1%), NASDAQ 100 (20.8%) and S&P 500 (16.4%).

Qumulo, the simple way to manage exabyte-scale data anywhere, today announced its position as a Leader in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage for the sixth consecutive year. Gartner, Inc. positioned Qumulo in the Leaders quadrant based on its Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute.

“For the last 10 years, Qumulo has been on a relentless path to enable customers to not just scale-out, but Scale Anywhere™,” said Bill Richter, CEO at Qumulo. “Gartner has recognized Qumulo as a Leader for six consecutive years. We feel this recognition reflects our customer obsession and focus on providing solutions that enable our customers to not only drive their business, but solve incredible problems.”

The company has licensed exabytes of capacity across more than 900 customers in 20 countries. Qumulo’s customers include Fortune 500 companies, major film and animation studios, healthcare, education and some of the largest research institutions in the world. They use Qumulo to manage their unstructured data easily throughout their hybrid infrastructure without compromising performance, security, or enterprise features. 

Qumulo delivers the world’s first unstructured data management platform for the hybrid enterprise.  A 100% software-defined storage solution, Qumulo scales unstructured data anywhere to exabyte levels on the edge, core, or cloud.  

“We provide multiple customers inside the same enterprise with a consistent way of dealing with data across multiple locations and numerous workflows,” said Kiran Bhageshpur, CTO at Qumulo. “Customers can utilize their storage infrastructure and storage software natively, the same way across the cloud and on-prem, and Qumulo is the only company that can do that.”

According to Gartner Peer Insights™, Qumulo has an Overall Rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars in the Distributed File Systems and Object Storage market, based on 138 reviews, as of November 1st, 2023.

XS.com, the global FinTech and financial services provider, has today announced that it has introduced the XS Prepaid Mastercard along with XS Cards Mobile App fully integrated into the XS Client Portal in an effort to make the entire funding process smooth and simple.

According to an official press release, the global multi-asset broker has partnered with Gate to Pay, a pioneering company in the FinTech and PayTech sector, to launch the new XS Prepaid Mastercard & XS Cards Mobile App.

The XS Prepaid Mastercard & XS Cards Mobile App have several exclusive features and will enable traders and partners to track their transactions on their mobile phones.

Commenting on the latest announcement, Mr. Wael Hammad, Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) at XS.com said: 

"We are excited to introduce such an advanced payment tool, which will make the entire funding process for traders and partners very smooth and simple. At XS.com, we are committed to continuous improvement in all aspects of our services, and we constantly put all our efforts into ensuring a seamless funding process and efficient and secure handling of client’s funds. Based on our understanding of the complexities of e-payments globally and of the specific needs of each local market, we believe that XS prepaid Mastercard card will be an important milestone in our journey to provide traders globally with an exceptional trading experience."

The multi-award winning broker has accelerated the expansion of its product and services since the start of 2023. Recently, the company has introduced its new carefully crafted account types designed with varying features and advantages to cater to traders of all levels.

Rasha Asfour, Gate to Pay’s General Manager, added "We are honored to partner with XS.com and contribute to elevating their services, enhancing the user experience for their global client base. Through our offerings, we aim to empower partners to offer digital banking products and solutions for their clients. XS.com, a global industry leader, remains dedicated to continuous improvement and innovation, setting new standards and benchmarks within the sector."

XS.com has recently been recognized with a range of awards that have recognized its mission to empower traders with the knowledge and tools they need to thrive in the dynamic world of trading.

Tide, the leading business financial platform, has partnered with BT to help SMEs with rising costs to save time and money managing their business.

BT and Tide are joining forces to offer BT’s 1 million small business customers access to Tide’s connected finance and admin solutions. This includes the platform’s flagship features such as invoice generation, Tide Accounting, payment and payroll services, and expense cards.

More than 550,000 Tide customers (members) will also have access to discounts on selected EE phones, laptops, tablets & SIM-only deals from BT.

The partnership comes as small businesses face rising costs of doing business yet increasingly need fast and efficient broadband and mobile connectivity to run their ventures.

A recent survey conducted by BT found that 41% of UK entrepreneurs now manage their business solely online.  Almost three-quarters (73%) of those already running a business or side hustle feel this would be impossible without reliable broadband and mobile connectivity.

Today’s announcement underpins both Tide’s and BT’s mission to transform the small business community. For Tide, the tie-up means more SMEs across the UK will be able to save time and money using its integrated platform.

BT’s partnership network includes a number of like-minded organisations across a range of sectors, including retail, hospitality, banking, finance and membership bodies, to bring benefits to its smallest customers. It sits alongside BT’s Skills for Tomorrow programme which has helped more than one million small businesses access free digital skills training.

George Schmidt, SVP Member Accession Marketing at Tide, said: “The addition of BT to Tide’s highly successful partnership programme is a perfect opportunity for our new and existing members to get precious time back via Tide’s business financial platform. Our integrated services mean small businesses can manage their banking, accounting, payroll and credit all from one place - their Tide account. This partnership strengthens this offering,  helping small businesses at a time when they face ongoing cost pressures.”

Chris Sims, Managing Director, Small and Medium Business at BT, said: “Small businesses are facing a lot of challenges at the moment, which are making it difficult for them to plan financially. Both BT and Tide are committed to helping small businesses navigate these challenges and maximise their potential, and unlocking discounts on BT’s best-in-class business broadband and Tide’s leading financial solutions is an important part of this.”The partnership

Tide members can now enjoy a 10% discount on selected EE phones, laptops, tablets & SIM-only deals (subject to T&Cs) to support growing businesses hiring new employees. Members will also get savings of up to £259.95 on BT business broadband, which includes speeds of up to 900 Mbps. The deal comes with a free setup worth £19.95 (subject T&Cs). Tide members signing up to BT will also have access to a dedicated customer support line to help them apply.

To help BT small business customers get started, alongside dedicated onboarding support, Tide is also offering cashback when they successfully open a Tide account.

Sift, the leader in Digital Trust & Safety, announced new platform capabilities that simplify digital risk assessment across multiple payment methods, while empowering fraud teams with more control in payment fraud decisioning. The announcement was made at Money20/20 USA in Las Vegas, where Sift is a 4 Star sponsor and exhibiting in Booth #4208.

According to EY, alternative payment method volume reached $19 trillion globally in 2022, while businesses grapple with the rapid adoption of Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL), a wider range of Payment Service Providers (PSPs), digital wallets, and ACH systems—all of which deliver greater value to users. Yet these new methods present challenges: as businesses provide more payment options and modernize the customer experience, they expose themselves to new types of risk. To address these challenges, Sift is introducing a range of features specific to the payments ecosystem: expanded payment coverage; weighted cohort ML modeling; and, a customizable UX.  

Expanded Payment Coverage

Sift has expanded payment coverage by introducing non-traditional payment automation, investigation, and ML model training.

For example, if a fintech company wants to expand the ability to facilitate a broader range of payment methods and understand how end-users make payments, their fraud team can now leverage insights across a variety of payment methods, including ACH, wire, SEPA, prepaid cards, and crypto-specific transactions (such as digital wallets)—directly within the Sift Console.

This data can be used to inform decisions by incorporating criteria from these extended payment options, and by performing risk assessments on all payment channels. Furthermore, each Sift customer’s custom machine-learning model can now also incorporate insight from these extended payment options.

Weighted Cohort ML Modeling

Sift has updated its machine learning models to meet changing payment trends by introducing weighted models based specifically on similar customer cohorts (e.g., fintech companies) combined with Sift’s global ML model.

This approach enables fintechs to benefit directly from Sift’s global network while also focusing specifically on analyzing fraud patterns that are unique to the fintech industry and emerging payment trends.

Configurable User Experience

Sift customers can now easily tailor the payment fraud prevention experience for traditional and emerging payment signals, with the ability to drag and drop risk data into a personalized format within the Sift Console for accelerated case resolutions.

“The payments ecosystem has transformed in recent years,” said Sift CTO Neeraj Gupta. “By providing fintech companies with deep insight on emerging payment methods and their different risk profiles, they can better serve their customers while further reducing fraud and maximizing revenue.”

Volante Technologies, the global leader in cloud payments modernization, today announced that it has secured $66 million in debt and equity financing in an investment round led by Sixth Street Growth, the technology growth investing arm of Sixth Street, with participation from Wavecrest Growth Partners and Wells Fargo Strategic Capital.

This latest round follows earlier funding milestones, including repeat participation from Wavecrest and Wells Fargo Strategic Capital and investment from BNY Mellon, Citi, Poste Italiane, and Visa Ventures, bringing the total outside investment in the company to $116 million. 

Nari Ansari, Managing Director at Sixth Street Growth, said, “Volante provides the fastest on-ramp to payments innovation for financial businesses seeking to modernize legacy systems, and Volante’s Payments as a Service and underlying low-code payments platform offers a compelling value proposition.”

Ansari continued, “With financial institutions increasingly prioritizing both investment in payments modernization and partnerships with fintech companies, this is an ideal time to expand Volante’s reach. We are investing in Volante because we are confident they have a clear advantage over legacy providers and challengers and are best positioned to capitalize on the growth opportunity and further outpace their competitors.”

Vaibhav Nalwaya, Managing Partner, Wavecrest Growth Partners, added, “We led Volante’s first-ever growth capital funding round in 2020. Since then, the company has steadily built on its early momentum, as evidenced by taking the top spot in IBS Intelligence’s annual Wholesale Payments League Table for an unprecedented three years. We are pleased to have participated in this latest financing round and look forward to supporting them through their next growth phase.”

Vijay Oddiraju, CEO, Volante Technologies, commented, “We welcome Sixth Street Growth and its deep expertise supporting the growth of payments and fintech businesses to Volante. This latest investment will further accelerate our product roadmap for our customers, particularly in global real-time payments, UK New Payments Architecture (NPA), and domestic and cross-border ISO 20022 modernization.”

Oddiraju continued, “It will also allow us to expand the reach of our Payments as a Service offering further into the mid-tier bank segment, especially in the U.S. and Europe where FedNowTM Instant Payments, The Clearing House RTP®, and SEPA Instant Payments, respectively, are driving the adoption of modern payments technology.”

TreviPay, the global B2B payments and invoicing network, today announced it has partnered with Harbor Freight Tools, a leading national tool retailer, to provide a Harbor Freight Commercial Credit Card. This new payment option provides instant B2B credit to its business and institutional customers with invoicing and commercial payment terms. The new Harbor Freight Tools Commercial Account is designed to meet the specific B2B and institutional customer needs, such as net terms invoicing, easy sign-up, convenient expense and purchase tracking, and authorized purchaser controls.

Today’s B2B buyers, informed by their experiences as consumers, expect to transact seamlessly with their preferred payment methods.  TreviPay enables large enterprises to offer B2B customers invoice-based purchasing across all channels.  

“By understanding Harbor Freight’s B2B customer profile and shopping habits, we developed a custom, branded, end-to-end purchasing experience to increase customer loyalty and support faster business payments,” said Brandon Spear, CEO of TreviPay.  

As part of Harbor Freight’s strategy to bring a unique B2B offering to over 1,400 stores in 48 states, the retailer will begin the rollout of the Commercial Account program for in-store purchases, with eCommerce capabilities to follow. TreviPay will enable Harbor Freight to offer branded, closed-loop cards to its business customers which allows multiple buyers under a single account to make purchases. Harbor Freight business customers can apply for the Harbor Freight Commercial Account at HarborFreight.com.  

“Our goal is to provide quality tools at a great value to all our customers,” said Alex Aguila, Senior Director of Customer Growth, Harbor Freight Tools. “TreviPay’s vast industry expertise and flexibility in creating a custom payments solution for these customers were key in selecting them for our B2B payments and invoicing needs. We are excited to partner with them to provide all the benefits of real-time credit decisioning, stellar fraud mitigation and a seamless checkout experience to our corporate and institutional customers.”

Bud Financial (Bud), the AI-powered data intelligence platform for financial services, today unveils an out-of-the-box solution suite that enables anyone in a financial organization to perform advanced data analytics tasks for marketing, personalization, segmentation, and customer monitoring. The new product brings breakthrough levels of performance to automated marketing and communications, using generative technology, enabling financial institutions to identify and act on new customer segments.

With Bud’s new product, Drive, companies can find patterns and real-time opportunities for up-selling and cross-selling, and deliver best-in-class customer service actions and experiences.

Bud now provides banks and financial institutions with a robust data analytics foundation that integrates into their existing tech stacks. The new capabilities unlock in-depth visibility and understanding of the customer base, acting as a real-time data analyst, enabling financial institutions to build automated sales, marketing, customer service, and customer experience journeys, with scale, ease, and precision.

Bud's new Drive product covers four fundamental elements:
 

• An AI-powered, actionable Insights Engine – designed to uncover real-time insights within the banks' existing customer data and leverage an unparalleled level of customer understanding based on everyday financial transactions.
• An AI Insights Analytics finder – which identifies patterns and trends that can be quickly and easily acted upon to allow banks to grow both their product and service offering, supporting high-level objectives such as increasing deposits, reducing credit risk or increasing mortgage or loan revenue/targeting. 
• An Action Hub – transforming insights into action by integrating seamlessly with banks' current and existing analytics and communication tools and infrastructure, to power next-best action initiatives and review the success of previous actions. 
• A generative AI chatbot, Drive Copilot – a chatbot-driven insight discovery experience, allowing banking staff to simply identify and act on high-impact opportunities.

To unlock or accelerate business growth and build a competitive edge, financial institutions are under pressure to delve into the value of huge swathes of financial data which they already own but often underutilize. Customers' growing demand and expectation for personalization means that banks and fintechs need to increase the sophistication of their customer segmentation practices if they are to deliver meaningful hyper-personalized experiences. 

This latest addition to Bud’s product suite represents a significant step forward in productivity and customization for the banking industry. With these additions, banks and financial services can give their staff the power to take control of their product’s success, getting the insights they need without excessive reliance on technical colleagues and the associated operational delay. Bud's Drive product and its new Generative AI chatbot save banks hundreds of hours of data analytics time each month, highlighting trends and identifying new segments with high growth potential.

“Bud is fundamentally a transaction data specialist, and with our new product Drive we have reached a level of expertise and precision where we can unlock an endless array of insights for our clients, enabling real-time customer base analysis and insight, meaningful segmentation and mass personalization, and sophisticated automated action flows. With this new product, we’re excited to support our customers' move towards more customer-centric operations, which ultimately will massively increase productivity, effectiveness and profitability",  says Ed Maslaveckas, Co-Founder and CEO of Bud Financial.

FinXP, a European payments and banking solutions provider, is pleased to announce its strategic collaboration with Mastercard to introduce an innovative cross-border payment solution, named FinXP PLUS. By leveraging Mastercard’s Cross-Border Services, FinXP shall be tapping into the extensive Mastercard network, thereby providing its global customer base with unparalleled access to a new range of payment possibilities.

FinXP PLUS is set to modernize corporate cross-border payments by providing a proprietary platform that facilitates secure transactions to over 100 countries, supporting multiple currencies, including USD, GBP, EUR, CAD, CHF, TRY, PLN, SEK, DKK, NOK, PHP, COP, and more. One of the standout features of the service is its support for multi-channel transfers, empowering merchants to make payouts to bank accounts, cards, e-wallets, as well as cash-out locations. This versatility ensures that clients have the flexibility required to adapt to different payment preferences around the world.

The new service integrates with FinXP's best-in-class Euro IBAN service called IBAN4U, which provides dedicated corporate accounts complemented with Mastercard debit cards. Therefore, FinXP PLUS users shall benefit from a comprehensive account solution enabling them to receive payments, make payouts, as well as use their funds via a physical debit card. 

Through this partnership, FinXP will extend access to Mastercard's network to its diverse clientele, which includes e-commerce enterprises, professional services firms, as well as reputable merchants hailing from specialized sectors such as blockchain, fintech, iGaming, and nutraceuticals. 

“Our latest collaboration with Mastercard reinforces our commitment to offer merchants with a seamless payment experience, that means the ability to make fast and reliable payments at a cost-efficient price with an easy-to-use platform,” said Jens Podewski, co-founder and CEO of FinXP. “We are very excited about launching the new service especially since it offers so many payout capabilities in just a single solution. Of course this would not have been possible without partnering with a payments leader like Mastercard”. 

Chris Denny, COO at FinXP added that "through this new service we are able to present a much stronger value proposition not just to our current clients but also in new markets that we are entering such as international remittance, travel and marketplaces".

"In the current climate, having fast, reliable access to funds at a reasonable cost has never been more crucial,” said Dr. Peter Robejsek, country manager at  Mastercard. “Our partnership with FinXP will provide its customers with a safe, simple and reliable cross-border payments experience, regardless of whether they want to send money to a bank account, card, digital wallet or cash withdrawal location.”

Mastercard’s suite of remittance-related products enables payments using Mastercard’s global network to be delivered to bank accounts, digital and mobile wallets, card, and cash across more than 180 countries and 150 currencies. In total, these services provide senders with access to more than 90% of the world's banked population and in near real-time to more than 50 markets.

The launch of FinXP PLUS represents a significant step forward in cross-border payments for several industries. FinXP and Mastercard look forward to transforming the way businesses conduct international transactions, facilitating the growth of global commerce. 

Eventus, a leading global provider of state-of-the-art, at-scale trade surveillance software across all lines of defense, announced today it has successfully completed its System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2® Type 2 examination on controls relevant to Security, Availability and, Confidentiality for trade surveillance services.

Developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the SOC 2 Type 2 examines a service provider's internal controls and systems related to security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy of data. It provides stakeholders with reasonable assurance of the suitability of the design and operating effectiveness of a third-party provider’s controls and systems when evaluated against the relevant Trust Services Criteria for some time.

While SOC 2 is not a regulatory requirement, Eventus has chosen to demonstrate the effectiveness of its security controls using the SOC 2 framework to assure existing and potential clients that the firm is meeting rigorous parameters to keep their data safe.

Eventus Chief Technology Officer Josh Bosquez said: “As a leading global trade surveillance organization responsible for the management of highly sensitive data, we hold ourselves to the highest possible standards. This includes adhering to the most stringent security parameters to ensure that our clients have the utmost confidence that we are protecting the integrity and privacy of their data.”

Eventus chose 360 Advanced, Inc., a licensed CPA firm, to perform the demanding third-party SOC examination.
 

“360 Advanced has a distinctive approach to client collaboration beyond the conventional role of an auditor,” Bosquez said. “In addition to fulfilling the duties of an auditor, the company has proven to be invaluable, providing comprehensive guidance and steadfast direction throughout the entirety of the compliance process.”