International IT and fintech company Digital Wallet Group (DWG) has expanded into Singapore by acquiring licensed remittance and foreign exchange company RediMoney Express Pte Ltd (REPL). REPL is a subsidiary of Asia United Bank (AUB), a Philippine-based and publicly listed universal commercial bank. DWG's subsidiary, Digital Wallet Corporation (DWC), is the creator of Japan's first and most popular mobile remittance application, Smiles Mobile Remittance (Smiles). This acquisition will allow DWG to expand Smiles in the Asia Pacific, serve more customers and boost its market presence in the region. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has approved DWG's acquisition.

AUB was appointed as DWG's bank distribution partner in the Philippines in 2019, and the acquisition of REPL further cements their vital alliance. With this acquisition, DWG will bring its expertise in artificial intelligence and fintech to complement REPL's counter remittance service. Additionally, DWG will give customers an enhanced user experience with its competitive exchange rate, convenience, affordability, speed, and 24/7 customer support.  

Eiji Miyakawa, founder and Chief Executive Officer of DWG, said, "Our entry into Singapore through the acquisition of RediMoney Express Pte Ltd is the fruition of a strong partnership with Asia United Bank. Furthermore, having a presence in Singapore is strategic to our global expansion plans in building traction with a sizeable migrant worker community. To serve these customers, we aim to build our Singapore operations and hire roles in customer service, sales and marketing within the next two years and from there, fast-track our expansion into North America and Europe."

"With Digital Wallet Group behind the wheel of RediMoney Express Pte Ltd, we are confident that customers can continue to enjoy exceptional service as we expect DWG to stay true to its promise of bringing smiles across the miles," said Manuel A. Gomez, President of AUB.

Since its launch in Japan in 2017, Smiles has built a loyal customer base among migrant Filipinos working in the country to become the number one mobile remittance service there. It expanded to the Philippines in 2019 with the acquisition of Speed Money Transfer Philippines, Inc (SMTP) and renamed its corporate name to DW Philippines Corporation.

Singapore was the second-largest source of remittances to the Philippines in 2020, after the United States. It contributed 7.2 percent, higher than Japan's 5.3 percent and the United Arab Emirates' 4.3 percent. Moreover, the amount of cash remittances by overseas Filipino workers based in Singapore has increased over the years, from US$1.4 billion in 2014 to US$2.15 billion in 2020.

Besides addressing access and convenience, the high cost of money transfers erodes the purchasing power of the receiving families. The UN Sustainable Development Goal Goal 10.c.1 aims to reduce remittance costs to less than 3 percent and eliminate remittance corridors with costs higher than 5 percent by 2030. Over the past two years, Singapore was among the lowest-cost corridors averaging 3 percent for remittance transfers to the Philippines, apart from Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and Spain. On the other hand, the highest cost corridors for remittances to East Asia and the Pacific Region averaged 13 percent.

Lowering remittance costs can become a reality with fintech players like DWG, which uses technology to offer security and convenience at lower rates.

Mr Miyakawa added, "With the global pandemic restricting movements and travel, mobile remittances have been a lifeline for migrant workers around the world to support their families at home. In addition, the digitalisation of remittance services through mobile has also helped unbanked individuals to have greater financial access. This motivation drives the purpose of our business to create a more sustainable and financially inclusive society to benefit our customers, their families and home countries.

Premier payments industry event returns to Salt Lake City in February in collaboration with the U.S. Payments Forum

The Secure Technology Alliance today announced the 2022 Payments Summit, the only payments event providing practical, actionable guidance that can be used to develop strategies for implementing trending or new payments technologies.

The 14th Annual Payments Summit will be held February 28 – March 3, 2022, at the Little America Hotel in the heart of Salt Lake City, Utah. Registration discounts are available until January 7, 2022. For more details and to register, visit https://www.stapayments.com/.  

The U.S. Payments Forum All-Member Meeting will once again be co-located at the Payments Summit. The Forum meeting brings together hundreds of payments industry leaders from global and domestic networks, financial institutions, merchants and processors, allowing attendees to explore cross-industry business opportunities. 

Attend the Premier Payments Event of the Year 
The four-day event will explore emerging technologies and leading topics impacting the payments market. It will include immersive educational sessions, valuable networking opportunities and practical industry council and working committee discussions.

“For over a decade industry thought leaders from the Secure Technology Alliance and U.S. Payments Forum have converged on the Payments Summit to gain insight, unlock new business prospects and propel the payments industry into the future,” said Jason Bohrer, executive director of the Secure Technology Alliance. “This year we will take an in-depth look at key themes across the payments landscape including authentication, fraud prevention and new advancements in FinTech.” 

Attendees will have access to engaging panels from over 100 industry-leading speakers and walk away with a greater understanding of what shapes the payments space today, as well as strategies for moving the industry forward. This year’s Payment Summit will touch on several major topics, including:

• An assessment of the current payments landscape from issuers and merchants
• Payments and the Internet of Things (IoT)
• The latest authentication and fraud trends
• Emerging payment technologies

Payments professionals such as financial institution payment leaders, retailers, FinTech disruptors, payment solution providers, mobile payment providers, payment networks, fraud experts and transit payment professionals are encouraged to attend. 

For continuing updates on the Payments Summit and related topics, follow @SecureTechOrg on Twitter and use #PaymentsSummit to participate in the conversation. 

Deployment to enable enhanced credit decisions, incorporating richer data and analytics

 Leading global AI-powered credit decision platform provider, Scienaptic AI, announced that Avail Finance has chosen to implement the company's credit decisioning platform to enhance their credit decisioning for India’s blue-collared workforce.

Avail finance provides the blue-collared workforce with a neo banking platform that aims to include every credit-worthy individual under the financial umbrella. Using a hassle-free, quick and simplistic loan application structure, Avail Finance aims to identify credit-worthy individuals in the Indian population that are currently underserved by formalized lending institutions such as banks and NBFCs and provide them with credit line and instant cash products using an online app that enables access to credit in just a few moments.

“The blue-collared workforce segment has no credit card penetration, no credit history, and sparse banking records, which leads formalized lending institutions to never consider providing them with loans,” said Tushar Mehndiratta, Co-Founder at Avail Finance. “Using Scienaptic’s credit decisioning engine, we will empower the underserved with faster access to credit. The flexibility of the platform will help us evaluate customers’ total financial picture dynamically and further support our mission to improve their lives.”

"We are very pleased to work with Avail Finance in supporting the credit financing needs of the underserved through our AI-powered credit decisioning platform. Our platform will enable Avail Finance to approve more borrowers while reducing losses, analyze portfolio performance at a granular level and react quickly to external changes,” said Joydip Gupta, Head of APAC Business.

Funding will be used to expand product offering and international reach as FV Bank redefines banking for fintech, blockchain and cryptocurrency firms.

FV Bank, the rapidly growing dual licensed challenger bank and digital asset custodian, has announced the successful closing of its Series A funding round worth $8 million. The fundraise, led by BnkToTheFuture, Decentralized Ventures, NFG Fund, CCIX Global, Zenrain Technology, and Satvat, raises FV Bank’s post money valuation to $48.9 million.

Founded in 2018 by payments entrepreneurs Miles Paschini and Nitin Agarwal, FV Bank offers an online-only banking platform that meets the need for more open access to banking for FinTech, blockchain, and cryptocurrency companies. The first bank in Puerto Rico with an Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions (OCIF) digital asset custody license, FV Bank is also the first bank to offer companies a hybrid solution — marrying integrated traditional banking services including payments with the upcoming ability to hold fiat and digital assets in the same account and the facility to seamlessly convert digital assets to fiat currency. 

The newly injected capital will enable FV Bank to launch its digital asset custody division, develop its debit card offering, and accelerate its international expansion.

"We are focused on expanding our core suite of vertically integrated banking services to meet the demonstrated needs of institutional clients who are not catered to by the traditional banking sector,” said Miles Paschini, FV Bank’s CEO. “The demand for banking services in the FinTech and digital asset industries currently far outweighs the supply. With this new round of funding, we are in an excellent position to continue innovating and expanding our offerings to our growing client base."

 FV Bank aims to include expansion of its product suite to include interest-bearing products and B2B lending services in 2022, while aiming to achieve $750 million to $1 billion AUM within the next year.

“Banking for FinTech companies is still a major challenge for many of the companies we’ve invested in, and it requires a fit for purpose challenger bank,” said Simon Dixon, CEO BnkToTheFuture.com. “As soon as we saw FV Bank’s expansion plans we wanted to not only bank with them, but also support their funding so they can serve FinTech companies building the future of finance.”

FV Bank also recently announced an agreement with data software firm Fireblocks to provide custody infrastructure. The integration between Fireblocks’ enterprise level MPC-based wallet and network infrastructure and FV Bank’s proprietary FVNet will support FV Bank’s regulated digital asset custody services and streamline liquidity settlement for corporate clients.

Seed Group, a company of the Private Office of Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum, has entered into a strategic partnership with Signzy, a Bangalore-based banking workflow automation company, for financial services, to give further push to digital transformation of businesses across the UAE. With the support of Seed Group, Signzy aims to triple its growth in the region by the end of fiscal 2022.

The partnership comes at a time when the UAE is expediting tech transformation across government services and industries, as per the goals of the UAE Digital Government Strategy 2025.

Under the partnership, Seed Group will help Signzy expand its operations in the Emirates and the wider Middle East, reach the right audience, access top decision-makers in government as well as private sectors, and market their products effectively in the region. The AI startup, on the other hand, will bring the best products and technologies to the region and help companies automate their back office operations, create security and data protection infrastructure and speed up digitisation of their processes.

Hisham Al Gurg, CEO of Seed Group and The Private Office of Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum, said, “The UAE is taking giant strides to meet the objectives of the UAE Digital Government Strategy 2025 and double the size of the digital economy in the next 10 years. Businesses are going through a phenomenal digital transformation and are on a lookout to adopt affordable smart technologies.”

“Having Signzy as our strategic partner will give the country’s digitisation agenda the much-needed push. Signzy has been successfully providing to various institutions cutting-edge digital solutions. We see a huge potential for their services in the UAE and the Middle East,” he added.

Signzy Co-founder and CEO Ankit Ratan said, “Seed Group brings a wealth of experience and regional access to the MENA region which will power us to rapidly grow market share. Businesses, especially banks, financial institutions, and fintechs across UAE and Middle East are doubling efforts to digitize and automate services to build a robust digital financial infrastructure that improves access, transparency, and speed of delivery. We are pleased to partner with Seed Group to fulfil UAE’s vision of digital transformation.”

Signzy, a company that works with over 100 financial institutions, including the four largest banks in India and the top three banks in the US, and various other businesses, seeks to help financial institutions automate their back-office operations, create security and data protection infrastructure, and speed up digitisation for faster customer onboarding and real-time verification and fraud detection. With over 240 fintech API pre-integrated on the platform, Signzy assists banks become digital ready from day one and expedite customers’ digital journey.

Seed Group is a notable force in the technology, healthcare, hospitality, and telecommunications landscape in the Middle East. Over the past 16 years, it has formed successful strategic alliances with leading global companies representing diverse regions to accelerate their sustainable market entry and presence within the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

Switcho, an Italian digital fintech platform that brings innovations in expenses management, has upgraded its services by teaming up with Salt Edge, pioneer in open banking, thus becoming the first company in Italy able to provide insights on expenses and at the same time offer the chance to take actions about it, straight from the app, in order to save on those expenses.

The liberty of providing various utility services, like energy, gas, telephone, home and mobile internet, has encouraged intensive price competitiveness. While this is definitely an advantage to the final user, one must be aware of all suppliers’ offerings and how they relate to their specific needs. Most of the time, the research of these suppliers, gathering information on their offers and prices, comparing those prices between them, and then reporting it all to the current expenses is too big of a fuss. Usually, people tend to abandon it halfway and stick to the current plan. But that’s not all. Besides finding the right provider, switching from the current one to a more suitable provider involves bureaucracy and several weeks for the procedure to be finalised.

Switcho has found a way to solve that and ease up Italian consumers’ lives. It aims to become a broad service-offering platform that helps users manage their recurring expenses in smarter ways. For instance, with Salt Edge’s Account Information, Switcho accesses bank transactional data and information on the payees for each bill from 500+ Italian banks. Adding that information to the suppliers on the market, the company analyses them and offers tailored deals to its users. This way, it is directly helping save money and enjoy reliable services. Moreover, users get a unified view of all their expenses, since the API automatically retrieves and categorises bank accounts’ information, making all expenses transparent and easy to scroll through.

Our most important goal is to help users save both money and time. Switcho takes off the paperwork’s burden and helps consumers optimise their expenses stress-free. In order to help people understand which provider is best for them and if it is worth switching from the current one to another, we needed a comprehensive view of their expenses. Salt Edge Account Information has enabled our users to automatically connect their bank accounts and have the data extracted and analysed. We’ve already helped people using Switcho save over EUR 5 million and will keep on increasing their savings with the open banking possibilities.

Marco Tricarico, CEO and co-founder of Switcho

Everything that we do is aimed at improving the life quality of our clients’ final customers. Switcho has chosen our Account Information for enhancing the algorithms of its “recommendation engine” and we are thrilled that the merchant identification and transaction categorisation, among others, are helping the Italian users efficiently save money.

Andrei Scutari, Country Manager Italy at Salt Edge

The aim of the solution is to provide researchers and companies with funding to create Blockchain solutions that contribute to trust in social media content.

Worldline, the European leader in the payments and transactional services industry, is leading the TruBlo (Trusted Blockchain) project under the European Commission's "Next Generation Internet" initiative, which aims to provide researchers and companies with funding to develop innovative solutions based on Blockchain technology to address the issue of trust in social media content.

In the context of TruBlo and led by Worldline, a consortium of six European partners with different profiles and capabilities has been formed. Among the members of the consortium are the Blockchain experts from Athens University of Technology; ATC, a company specialized in the development of technologies and a specialist in detecting and combating fake news; Deustche Welle, the German public international broadcasting company that provides services in 30 languages; F6S, the world's largest community of startups and SMEs; and ALASTRIA, a Spanish Blockchain infrastructure provider.

Three Open Calls are planned as part of the execution of the international TruBlo project. These can be attended by research teams, SMEs or academic teams interested in developing new tools and solutions that contribute to creating state of the art, trusted and reliable content on social networks and the Internet.

The registration period for the 2^nd Open Call was opened on June 14^th and will last until September 10 at 12:00 noon. We encourage the participation of all stakeholders interested in deepening their research into solutions that boost trust in social networks and develop their own MVP. (https://www.trublo.eu/apply/)

In the first call held between January 18 and March 11, 2021, 79 proposals were submitted from countries across Europe, from which the 10 best proposals were selected to enter the TruBlo programme. Among the selected teams are mainly SMEs and academic research teams, with proposals focused on the provision of mechanisms that promote the reliability and trustworthiness of content in various areas and with a possible practical application in the near future along with its launch in the current market.

A brief description of the projects selected in the 1^st Open Call can be found on the project website. (https://www.trublo.eu/projects/)

Now begins an exciting 9-month journey in which each of the teams, supported by a mentor from the consortium, will start their research tasks using the technological infrastructure provided by TruBlo, as well as the technical support and market orientation services that will enable them to achieve a successful outcome after the end of the TruBlo funding period.

According to Toni Paradell, R&D Manager of Worldline Iberia & TruBlo Project Coordinator: "After the success of Open Call 1 in which we have selected 10 very innovative projects that will receive support and funding from the TruBlo programme over the coming months, we have just opened Open Call 2 for which we hope to receive very innovative proposals based on Blockchain technology that contribute to the trust and reliability of content on social networks and the Internet".

Leading fintech enablement partner, Ukheshe Technologies has announced a new partnership with global next-generation card solutions and digital security company, dzcard. The partnership will enhance dzcard’s customisable solutions for various digital ecosystems and locations.  

The partnership will leverage Ukheshe’s Eclipse API platform and its market leading digital payments solutions, allowing both companies to deliver digital strategies within their respective markets.

Donovan Drew, President: Asia-Pacific of Ukheshe says the company’s digital payments enablement platform has expanded and evolved significantly as the financial services market seeks innovative solution providers that can address fundamental payment gaps. “The partnership will provide further channels for dzcard to expand upon within the existing customer base and remain current in the fast-evolving digital payments domain. With this Ukheshe will expand its footprint into Asia Pacific.”

He adds the partnership is a natural fit for both organisations through the combination of  Ukheshe’s position as an award-winning digital payment platform provider and dzcard’s influence as leaders in secured smart card solutions and digital security.”

Sutat Suksawat, Managing Director of dzSolution at dzcard says “At dzcard, we aim to address the changing needs of our customers who are craving advanced services and seamless experiences. By fusing the physical and digital spaces, customers can enjoy secured cashless payments solutions. With this partnership, Ukheshe and dzcard bring a unique service offer in terms of accessibility, availability and usability to customers from fintech to financial institutions reinforced with reduced time-to-market, good cost-effectiveness, and a customer-first approach.”

Currently Ukheshe provides the platforms and technology that support nine issuers comprising four telcos, six banks and fintechs, 334 029 merchants and 2 271 880 apps.

Netherlands-based acquirer and payment gateway Adyen reported $246 billion (EUR216 billion) in processed volume in H1, up 67% year over year (YoY), per its shareholder letter. Adyen’s processed volume growth in H1 outpaced the same period last year, when it increased 23% YoY, indicating that the pandemic-driven shift to digital payments has endured.

More key data: Other metrics underscore strong performance:

• Point-of-sale (POS) volume doubled YoY, hitting $26 billion (EUR22.8 billion) in H1 2021 and comprising 11% of total processed volume. Recent growth reflects a strong acceleration from H1 2020, when POS volume growth remained flat—and was likely spurred by global consumers returning to stores post-vaccine.
• Company revenue jumped 46% YoY, reaching $507 million (EUR445 million), up from the same period last year, when revenue increased 27%. Adyen pointed out that existing partners and regional diversification mostly drove that increase.

How we got here: Adyen identified three factors that helped achieve growth in H1.

• Minimal client churn and the addition of new ones. Adyen added big-name brands to its partner network, including Dick’s Sporting Goods, Nando’s, and Hunter. Growth from existing enterprise partners like AirBnB and Shein also translated into increased POS and processing volume for Adyen.
• Global expansion to support more merchants. In May, Adyen brought its acquiring business to Japan, and the following month to the UAE—two countries where ecommerce is expanding. It also obtained a US branch license, allowing it to expand its capabilities in the country and diversify its US business.
• Evolving consumer shopping preferences. The company pointed out that longer-term shifts in consumer shopping preferences—with consumers increasingly turning away from cash and adopting digital payments—continued to support business growth.

What’s next? New partnerships and further global expansion should help Adyen carry growth into the second half of the year.

Adyen recently partnered with Just Eat Takeaway, one of Europe’s biggest food delivery companies, to issue corporate meal expense debit cards, which come preloaded with allotted funds and can help employees to consolidate meal expenses. The partnership benefits Adyen by expanding its burgeoning issuing business and boosting its revenues.

Global expansion offers further opportunities, particularly in regions like Asia and the Middle East, where ecommerce is continuing to grow and Adyen’s presence is limited. Extending its reach can increase revenue-generating opportunities as global consumers continue to embrace digital payments.