Solidatus, the leading metadata management technology firm, has been chosen by British Business Bank to enhance its data governance and data lineage capabilities. British Business Bank is the UK’s business development bank that helps drive economic growth by making finance markets work better for smaller businesses across the UK. Solidatus’ award-winning data lineage solution will empower the company to visualise and manage all its data from end-to-end.

British Business Bank’s programmes include the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CIBLS) and the Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS), introduced as temporary emergency measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Solidatus’ expedited onboarding process allowed British Business Bank to get started using this modern data governance solution almost immediately. Solidatus will make it possible for departments across the Bank to build a more comprehensive understanding of its data to address problems, make more informed decisions and minimise risk.

Stephen Whiteley, Data Director - Data Management Office, British Business Bank, added, “Smaller UK businesses are providing world-leading technology which benefits both them and the UK economy. We’re pleased to be working with Solidatus, whose solution provides us with the flexibility and features we require to perform our data governance functions”.

The events of the last year and a half have highlighted and prioritised a number of data management challenges for organisations across the public sector, especially in risk management for Covid-19-related loans. These challenges have not only been encountered by the British Business Bank, but also by other UK government departments. Solidatus is well placed to play a pivotal role in enabling other public sector organisations to optimise their data governance practices, better understand and resolve the challenges they have encountered, and make better decisions from their data.

Philip Miller, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Solidatus, said, “The British Business Bank does a fantastic job in supporting UK-based start-ups and SMEs. We are delighted to be working with the Bank’s team to help them connect, visualise and govern their data, giving this growing development bank the tools to start its successful development in the right way – with well managed and curated data”.

“The British Business Bank is at the point in its growth where it has large amounts of data that need to be analysed and understood in order to drive best practice decision-making. We are delighted to be working with its enthusiastic team to help visualise its data challenges and gain real insight from the data”, said Elizabeth Squire, Director of Business Development at Solidatus.

FutureBricks, tech-led specialist lender, joins Twenty7Tec, introducing its updated lending criteria to intermediaries.

Brokers will be able to access FutureBricks’ bridging and development product range for residential-led loans, offering up to 80% LTGDV, with its model expanded to include the onboarding of institutional funders following the scaling of its corporate arm. Each bridging loan product has a minimum loan size of £50,000 and a maximum loan size of £1M. Each development loan product has a minimum loan size of £100,000 and a maximum loan size of £1M.

Gareth Ward, Head of Underwriting at FutureBricks, commented:

“FutureBricks is already an innovator in providing Bridging and Development loans to the SME developer market. We often see small ticket facilities overlooked by large sectors of the lending market whereas we recognise huge demand for smaller, short-term bridging and development facilities.

By aligning ourselves with Twenty7Tec, we are now more easily identifiable to brokers and borrowers in this sector and can expand our offering to a much wider group.”

Nathan Reilly, Head of Lender Relationships at Twenty7Tec, added:

“We always welcome the opportunity to work with lenders, intermediaries and third parties that share our passion for innovation. With this in mind, we’re really pleased to have added a tech-led lender like FutureBricks to CloudTwenty7 so advisers can access and source its product range and criteria.”

FutureBricks, tech-led specialist lender, joins Twenty7Tec, introducing its updated lending criteria to intermediaries.

Brokers will be able to access FutureBricks’ bridging and development product range for residential-led loans, offering up to 80% LTGDV, with its model expanded to include the onboarding of institutional funders following the scaling of its corporate arm. Each bridging loan product has a minimum loan size of £50,000 and a maximum loan size of £1M. Each development loan product has a minimum loan size of £100,000 and a maximum loan size of £1M.

Gareth Ward, Head of Underwriting at FutureBricks, commented:

“FutureBricks is already an innovator in providing Bridging and Development loans to the SME developer market. We often see small ticket facilities overlooked by large sectors of the lending market whereas we recognise huge demand for smaller, short-term bridging and development facilities.

By aligning ourselves with Twenty7Tec, we are now more easily identifiable to brokers and borrowers in this sector and can expand our offering to a much wider group.”

Nathan Reilly, Head of Lender Relationships at Twenty7Tec, added:

“We always welcome the opportunity to work with lenders, intermediaries and third parties that share our passion for innovation. With this in mind, we’re really pleased to have added a tech-led lender like FutureBricks to CloudTwenty7 so advisers can access and source its product range and criteria.”

New appointment brings up 100 employee milestone and follows the fraud fighters’ recent Series A investment round and launch into the US and Indonesia

SEON, the fraud fighters, has responded to a year that has seen both digital crime and interest in their products skyrocket by hiring Otto Toth, former CTO of digital news outlet The Huffington Post and SVP and Chief Mobile Innovation Officer at AOL. This key strategic appointment means SEON has now passed the 100 employee milestone in a period of rapid growth for the fraud fighters since it secured €10 million (USD 12 million) Series A investment earlier this year and opened new regional offices in Austin, USA and Jakarta, Indonesia.

With the recent surge in online crime, there has never been greater need for SEON’s artificial intelligence-driven ‘fraud fighting’ tools, and with new customers there is a need for a best-in-class internal structure to not only support higher loads but to increase the pace of new product releases. This is why SEON went looking for top-tier talent and found Otto Toth.

Over a 25-year career in tech, Otto developed the first iPhone and iPad app for the New York Times, built the prototype of AOL’s Content HUB and served as a board member of Verizon Media’s Patch.com and StudioNow programmes. He served as Chief Technology Officer of The Huffington Post during a major international expansion, building a scalable content management system and a data migration for the huge amount of content on the site.

At SEON, Otto will be in charge of all people-related aspects in the company’s engineering team. Additionally, he will be in charge of compliance, security and coordinating with external partners to improve SEON’s infrastructure, ensuring its solutions scale to even more customers. Commenting on his appointment and new project, Otto Toth, VP of Engineering at SEON, said: “I wanted to utilise my expertise at a young, fast-growing company with an excellent product and vision for the future, providing opportunities for the talented Hungarian engineers working on world-class projects with the latest technologies without the need to leave the country.”

He added: “I am a builder who loves to contribute to all aspects of the product and the growth of SEON. I believe that my experience is a great asset that will help to achieve our goals and take the company to the next level.”

Tamas Kadar, Co-Founder and CEO at SEON, said: “SEON has been a huge success and is attracting the very best talent internationally. As former CTO of Huffington Post, Otto is a testament to this, and we’re proud to have him along on the ride to our further success.”

SEON is a Budapest-based company founded in 2017 by college friends Tamas Kadar and Bence Jendruszak. Since its founding it has developed into a significant player in the online fraud screening space and was recently the recipient of the largest Series A funding round in Hungary’s history after being invested in by Creandum, a venture capital firm that has previously backed Spotify, Klarna and Bolt.

The company has offices in Budapest, London, Austin and Jakarta and due to significant growth in the past year has recently partnered with VCC Live, IDVerifact and Connected Data to bring new capabilities to their two core products, Intelligence Tool and Sense Platform.

 SteelEye, the compliance technology and data analytics firm, has appointed Philip Lemmon as Commercial Director, working with CEO, Matt Smith, and the management team to accelerate the firm’s commercial activity across its Trade Surveillance and Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA) solutions.

Philip’s arrival follows shortly after SteelEye announced plans to expand into North America and more recently opened an office in Portugal.

Philip has spent over 25 years in the financial services sector, most recently in business development for LiquidMetrix, supporting both buy and sell-side market participants with TCA and Market Abuse Surveillance solutions.

Prior to this, he worked for Abel Noser Solutions specialising in TCA and other Compliance solutions, in addition to providing consulting services to help firms reduce their overall trading costs while optimising their execution processes.

Philip started his career at electronic agency broker, E*TRADE, where he managed the Support Desk for institutional clients. His several years with E*TRADE also included a role in Product Management after which Lemmon moved into a Sales role at Pipeline Europe, an electronic MTF venue specialising in block matching and algorithm alpha capture.

Commenting on the appointment, Matt Smith, Chief Executive Officer at SteelEye said: “Philip’s experience and sector expertise makes him a great fit for SteelEye. During a time of rapid transformation across the sector, I’m confident our clients will benefit from Philip’s detailed knowledge of front-office technology and trade surveillance tools, and I look forward to working closely with him during our next phase of growth.”

Philip Lemmon added: “I am thrilled to join SteelEye at such an exciting stage for the business. SteelEye’s solutions are truly unique and can add immense value to financial firms as the regulatory landscape continues to change and evolve.”

Appital, the Equity Capital Marketplace, today announced it has secured a £2.5m investment from Frontline Ventures and a number of seasoned capital markets angel investors to bring technological innovation and automation to today’s equity capital markets, hence increasing efficiency. 

The investment will accelerate the development of Appital’s technology infrastructure, integration with market leading financial institutions as well as technology vendors and enable the expansion of their engineering team to support the delivery of their go-to-market strategy.

Appital’s mission is to bring innovation to Equity Capital Markets, an area largely untouched by automation, plagued by opaque legacy processes. A new trading platform that enables the discovery of latent liquidity, Appital offers the buy-side community the ability to gain greater exposure to relevant deal flow opportunities and interact with like-minded institutions in the liquidity formation process. 

The funding follows  the recent announcement that Appital is to partner with Turquoise to bring pioneering bookbuilding technology to the buy-side. The cooperation brings together complementary capabilities to the benefit of issuers and investors, adding transparency and automation to the process of liquidity discovery. Institutional investors will be able to take advantage of a more innovative and efficient way to access liquidity opportunities and trade in a market for size, at the best price. At the same time, Appital users will be able to execute all deals through the Turquoise MTF, via a single point of access and with seamless straight-through-processing (STP) to over 20 settlement venues.

Mark Badyra, Chief Executive Officer of Appital, said: “This is an exciting time for our business. We are delighted to have secured joint investment from Frontline Ventures and a number of angel investors to provide buy-side firms with new opportunities to discover and interact with latent liquidity. We enable buy-side firms to radically rethink their approach to interacting with the market, gain exposure to deal flow opportunities they have not been able to access before, and proactively drive liquidity in the market.”

Shay Garvey, Partner at Frontline Ventures, commented: “Appital offers a solution to one of the buy-side’s biggest pain points in equity capital markets: the lack of efficiency across existing bookbuilding and deal distribution processes. Their proven track record in gaining participation from major asset management firms is testament to the need for innovation in this segment of the market and we are delighted to support Appital’s vision.” 

With Appital, institutional investors can proactively source liquidity, including in highly illiquid, small and mid-cap stocks. The platform pro-actively drives the bookbuilding process, providing deal originators with opportunities to execute large volumes, often in excess of 5 days of ADV, with minimal market impact or risk of price erosion. While deal originators have real-time access to the entire life cycle of the bookbuilding process, allowing them to make distribution adjustments throughout, deal participants set their own preferences to ensure they are only exposed and alerted to relevant liquidity.  

Richard Worrell, Head of EMEA Equity Trading at Janus Henderson Investors, Chairman of the Investment Association Buyside Trading Committee, said: “Appital is an innovative company which has the potential to solve inefficiencies in accessing significant volume in less liquid securities. What’s more, the platform gives the buy-side greater control and transparency over their bookbuilding process.”

Greg Bennett, Chair of Appital and former Head of Capital Markets for EMEA & Americas for Fidelity International, observed: “During my career in Equity Capital Markets I have seen first hand that illiquidity is a systemic problem for the market, diminishing returns for investors as well as adversely impacting the cost of capital for issuers. Appital’s technology brings innovation for institutional investors and provides a significant step change in enhancing the execution of illiquid flow and ECM business across the market.”

Appital is currently engaging with the majority of the top 40 global asset management firms who collectively manage over 30trn USD, many of which are already participating in Appital’s Beta programme.

Appital’s robust technology infrastructure allows users to integrate into existing OMS and EMS systems and workflows. The platform offers full transparency and control over the bookbuilding, allocation and distribution process. End-to-end processes are secure, fully automated and deliver the visibility and transparency necessary for internal compliance, external audit and regulatory reporting.

Tempo France (operating brands: TEMPO Money Transfer, TEMPO Payments), Velo Labs, and Bitazza Thailand have opened up a remittance corridor between 27 countries in the EU region and Thailand. 

Thailand is one of the fast-growing remittance markets, with $6.7 billion coming from abroad annually, as per the World Bank data, but the country is still one of the most expensive regions, in terms of remittance prices globally. TEMPO and partners are aimed at changing this trend, by delivering affordable, high-speed and secure remittance services based on the Stellar blockchain.

Through this partnership with Velo Labs, and Bitazza, as a licensed financial institution, TEMPO Payments and partners are leading the way in revolutionizing international payments by connecting the ASEAN and EU markets, representing about $17 billion and nearly 600 million customers.

Today’s financial system’s make it slow and costly to send money around the world. Globally, sending remittances costs an average of 6.38 percent of the amount sent. The 3 companies are focused on improving these inefficiencies by relying on their respective networks and decentralized technology, and offering fast, low-cost, and secure ways to send money between Europe and Thailand.

Suren Ayriyan, CEO, TEMPO Payments, on this innovative project:

“This remittance corridor has been built on the TEMPO payment ecosystem which gives full interoperability for its participants. The launch of this remittance corridor was made possible due to the TEMPO Payments ecosystem – treasury by token as well as easy and fast KYC. It is a proof of our infrastructure readiness for the global fintech challenges in 2021 requiring high-speed technologies and low-risk solutions. We aim to revolutionize financial services with the power of blockchain, starting with cross-border payments for businesses and individuals in Europe and Southeast Asia. We hope to continue working with Velo Labs and partners to exponentially increase our currency corridors and offerings, providing cheap, secure and fast global money transfers to all TEMPO Payments customers, both existing and new."

Mike Kennedy, CEO of Velo Labs on this historic transaction:

“What we’ve launched today is a validation of our core mission: building a global, decentralized, and interoperable network that will allow businesses and individuals alike to securely and instantly transfer value across the globe.

Velo Labs wants to make cross-border transactions faster, cheaper, and more reliable for everyone; this first step starts us down the path of that reality.”

Kevin Heng, Chief Strategy Officer of Bitazza, states:

“Bitazza is pleased to work in conjunction with Velo and TEMPO Payments to help facilitate the launch of this Europe to Thailand remittance corridor. This program will contribute towards improving and raising the standard of financial inclusion and mobility for millions of users worldwide, and is another step forward in our shared commitment to fundamentally change the global remittance industry and push Thailand/Southeast Asia as the global frontier for next-generation financial innovation.”

 The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), on behalf of its members, today issued guidance that provides financial institutions with examples of effective authentication and access risk management principles and practices for customers, employees, and third parties accessing digital banking services and information systems.

The guidance:

• Highlights the current cybersecurity threat environment including increased remote access by customers and users, and attacks that leverage compromised credentials; and mentions the risks arising from push payment capabilities.
• Recognizes the importance of the financial institution’s risk assessment to determine appropriate access and authentication practices to determine the wide range of users accessing financial institution systems and services.
• Supports a financial institution’s adoption of layered security and underscores weaknesses in single-factor authentication.
• Discusses how multi-factor authentication or controls of equivalent strength can more effectively mitigate risks.
• Includes examples of authentication controls, and a list of government and industry resources and references to assist financial institutions with authentication and access management.

Majic Wheels, Corp. (OTC Pink: MJWL) ("Majic" or the "Company"), a Delaware corporation, that is positioning itself as a player in the disruptive industries of fintech and software development by means of acquisitions, announces shareholder update and upcoming developments.

Since taking the helm this year, new management has implemented a strategy to create shareholder value through strategic acquisitions in the Fintech & Technology sector.  As part of the effort, management proceeded with solidifying the balance sheet of the Company and restoring the Good standing of its OTC Listing.

In the last three months, management has completed its objective to bring the Company to current status on the OTC Markets. As well, the structure and reorganization of the Company was completed to allow for a healthy step forward and to enter its first acquisition. The Company closed the acquisition of CGCX, an established a crypto trading platform, cryptocurrency mining operation and custody solutions provider.

Moving forward, the Company intends to complete further acquisitions before the end of the year. The acquisition candidates will be within the same industry, and will complement the current offering of CGCX as well as increase its global footprint to reach markets like the United States of America, Canada and other part of the world.

“Our plan is to continue to create shareholder value of investors of Majic through the acquisitions of synergistic candidates to complement the current offering of CGCX. As well our intention is to make CGCX a global player in the Crypto Currency Exchange Industry. Beyond the Exchange itself, we want to position CGCX as a provider of Blockchain solutions. We have received incredible feedback to the iChain Decentralized Blockchain platform so far.” Said David Chong, Chief Executive Officer of Majic Wheels Corp.  

Our objective to up list to the NASDAQ exchange remains on schedule with the engagement of auditors as our current next step. We are also undertaking several initiatives to increase the profile of Majic as a publicly traded company among institutional investors and investment bankers. To that end, the Company has already been in discussion with a renowned Investment Bank to act as the underwriter and advisor to the Company.  The Company will also be participating in targeted events aimed at institutional investors, investment bankers and accredited investors.

Lastly, the Company will be hosting an online presentation where management of Majic and CGCX will be further outlining the road map of the Company for the next year and further. As well, management will be providing an update on CGCX revenues to date. 

The Blockchain Domain Registry System will be unique to the XDC blockchain and provide access to domains, tools, and support for decentralized application (dApp) developers.

 Butterfly Protocol and the XDC Network announced today that the Butterfly Protocol blockchain domain system will be used for an XDC blockchain-specific domain system. Through a grant from XinFin, a blockchain registry system will be created that allows developers and users of dApps to register domains and use a growing set of open-source tools to develop a standardized URL path to data and processes.

In addition, to access dApps built for the XDC blockchain, the initiative will create human-readable wallet naming and the opportunity to create single sign-on access across the dApp ecosystem.

Dana Farbo, Partnership Lead for Butterfly Protocol and founder of Avrilar Inc., stated that, "We are excited to be an XDC Network partner. The Butterfly Protocol will be used for creating blockchain top-level domains (bTLD) with a blockchain that is known for scalability, stability, and very low transaction costs. This advancement will accelerate decentralized web usage."

As an enterprise-ready, hybrid blockchain, the XDC Network is well-positioned to bridge legacy systems with blockchain technology, enabling institutions to take advantage of blockchain's innovative use cases.

The XDC Network is EVM compatible, allowing seamless interoperability with Ethereum, and offers advanced smart contract capabilities for enterprise use cases, including asset tokenization and decentralized finance. The network is receiving increased interest from institutions looking to keep pace with rapid fintech disruption.

Blockchain domains are rapidly gaining acceptance as the world moves toward Web 3.0 with a growing decentralized internet and distributed computing environment. In addition, file storage is improving with hybrid cloud and local nodes providing a more robust infrastructure to handle data-driven societies' demands. Naming systems for the decentralized space allow for ease of use and access while providing additional layers of security for fraud prevention.

Vemanti Group, Inc. announced today that it has signed a Fintech and Banking-as-a-Service (“BaaS”) business cooperation Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) with Vietnam Public Joint Stock Commercial Bank (“PVcomBank”) to jointly develop financial products and banking solutions for the underserved consumers and small businesses in Vietnam.

PVcomBank is a fully licensed and regulated bank in Vietnam with comprehensive core banking products and services. It has a network of 109 transaction offices in major provinces and cities in Vietnam that provide a wide range of products services for its individual and corporate clients. In recent years, it has made significant progress in the digital banking segment, bringing superior financial products and services to customers while also enhancing their experience. PVcomBank has received numerous awards from prestigious international financial institutions, including "Most Innovative Digital Bank - Vietnam, 2020", "Best Bank for Customer Services in Vietnam for 2021".

According to the signed MOU outlining the partnership, Vemanti will gain access to the technical know-hows and banking expertise of PVcomBank via the latter’s bank license, core banking services, and an existing technology platform purpose-built for API-based integration. The partnership’s mission is to develop, demonstrate, and provide innovative, tech-driven, embedded financial and banking services to customers without requiring them to go into a physical branch to become registered bank customers. A market study to assess the business opportunity and commercial feasibility of the planned services will be jointly carried out by both parties. Once launched, the on-demand commercially-ready banking services from PVcomBank will be accessible via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and offered as Vemanti-branded products in its ecosystem. It is aimed to be a cost-effective and efficient approach to bring banking services to the underserved consumers and small businesses compared to traditional banking products that are either under-penetrated or under-marketed.

The MOU is only the beginning. Both parties plan on establishing deeper collaboration down the line to further tackle existing and incoming challenges by leveraging technology to increase efficiency, especially in cross-border transactions.