UTP Group (UTP), a European card payment solutions provider, which now has UK operations in Manchester, Hastings and Reading, is seeing increased demand for its services as more and more merchants look to quick and convenient fintech solutions to aid business recovery.  

UTP has seen:

• 300% rise in demand for same day funding via the Faster Processing solution
• Shipments of new devices 28% higher than pre-pandemic levels 
• Credit card processing up 60%* 

 *compared to the same period in June 2019 

As the UK economy begins to recover UTP, a home-grown payments provider with over 13 years spent serving UK SMEs, is experiencing a surging upward trend, like many within the fintech industry. As preferences continue to shift away from cash payments, fintech has seen an accelerated growth like no other. UTP, which supplies thousands of small and medium size businesses with a fast and secure payments service, is keeping up with this demand to help retailers provide the best service possible. 

Today*, the UK-based payment services firm is seeing a 60% increase in credit card processing volumes, as well as a 300% increase in demand for same-day funding. 

UTP works alongside Faster Processing to provide its in-store and eCommerce customers with the ability to receive fund settlement within hours rather than days and it’s proving to be a huge success. 

Michael Ault, CEO and founder of UTP Group, says: “With Faster Processing, our clients are able to receive and send funds within hours. Covid has really impacted so many of our clients, especially those in the leisure and retail sector, and we are delighted we can offer this added rapid service. Many are reliant on transactional cashflow, so same-day funding means that their funds can be accessed almost instantly and hassle free.” 

In addition, the merchant services provider has seen shipments of new hand-held payment terminals increase by almost a third (28 per cent). Accelerated no doubt by the impact of Covid, businesses are becoming more reliant on card transactions, where previously cash may have been the preferred choice of payment, card is taking over. The increase also follows the launch of the UTP Pro Android terminal in April this year in preparation for the return from lockdown and demand for increased functionality at the point of sale. 

Michael added: “Demand has increased for merchants to provide a cashless, one might say more covid-safe way for customers to pay and of course we are delighted to be able to provide a solution.  

“It’s great news to see UK businesses demanding more from their payment service providers, especially now. We are excited to see where UTP will be in the next 12 months and to be going on that journey alongside thousands of small and medium size businesses.”  

Founded in the UK, UTP’s business is now gaining a hold on the European and global card services markets, with a launch to market in Spain planned for end of 2021, and a further two international offices planned in the first half of 2022. 

For more information visit www.utpgroup.co.uk. 

Bloomberg today announced its Market-Implied Probability of Default (MIPD) product, a fully market-driven creditworthiness indicator, is now available to both Enterprise Data and Bloomberg Terminal clients globally. MIPD enables clients to easily incorporate creditworthiness metrics within their existing workflows for a more holistic approach to credit risk management. 

“Market participants are generally aware of potential credit issues ahead of official rating downgrades or defaults; and while CDS prices can serve as indicators, they are often limited with fewer issuers traded and reduced liquidity,” said Brad Foster, Global Head of Enterprise Data Content at Bloomberg. “By quantifying market sentiment underpinned by BVAL’s rich data sets, MIPD provides a powerful early warning creditworthiness assessment for a wide range of issuers across the curve that can help investors navigate changing market conditions, including both issuer-specific news as well as market-wide events.”

MIPD provides clients with a highly responsive, transparent, daily credit risk assessment that incorporates data from BVAL, Bloomberg’s best-in-class evaluated pricing service, to proactively estimate fixed income market sentiment and quickly react to changing market and issuer-level conditions. This solution helps anticipate credit deterioration such as major rating downgrades and defaults ahead of traditional credit analysis, allowing clients to confidently make risk and investment decisions. 

MIPD is a premium Enterprise Data solution that is available to Bloomberg Data License clients, as well as on the Bloomberg Terminal through a new dedicated screen accessed via MIPD<GO>, W<GO> and via the Excel API. The solution includes implied probability of default for over 36,000 issuers and multiple sectors across the term structure from 1 to 20 years. 

Bloomberg’s Enterprise Data business produces high-quality pricing, reference and regulatory datasets, real-time market, event and news data, and liquidity analytics along with data management and distribution technologies. For more information about Bloomberg’s MIPD solution, please click here.

Payment orchestration platform Corefy has today announced the opening of the first Regional Office in the Asia-Pacific region with the aim to expand the company's global coverage.  

Corefy was launched in 2018 with headquarters in London, UK, and R&D offices in Kyiv, Ukraine. After 3 years of development, the company announced the launch of the new regional office in Manila, Philippines. Corefy's representatives in Manila joined the business development team in the roles of sales executive and customer success manager. 

‘This is an important decision for our company and one more step in our global growth strategy. The APAC market is one of the fastest-growing in the world and has a favorable environment for the development of e-commerce. Representation in the Philippines allows us to cover more clients and provide qualified services in new time zones.’ —  comments Chief Business Officer at Corefy Den Melnykov. 

According to the COVID situation in the region, Corefy's management decided to postpone opening an offline office, for the nearest time new representatives will work remotely. Once the situation gets back to normal, the company expects to find a comfortable workspace and increase the number of employees in Manila to create a full-fledged unit that will cover business development and support issues in the region.

The new Regional Office will focus its attention on Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Thailand, and other countries of the region. 

‘Our aim for the nearest few months is to onboard new colleagues, to help them understand the product and all processes. In the next quarter, we expect to see the first clients from the APAC region onboard.’ — adds Den Melnykov.
The project has grand plans for the Asia-Pacific region and future expansion. In the company's roadmap it is planned to open at least three more offices on different continents by the end of 2022. 

A new whitepaper released by Trulioo, the leading global identity verification company, explores the implications of the Sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (6AMLD) and the European Union’s bid to tackle rampant financial crime. Since June 3, EU member states are required to adhere to 6AMLD, which introduced more severe criminal penalties for violations and broadened the scope of money laundering offences, among other key changes.

The whitepaper “Complying with 6AMLD in a heightened enforcement environment” delves into how 6AMLD obliges affected financial institutions and reporting entities to enhance their Know Your Customer (KYC) and Customer Due Diligence (CDD) processes. Implementing regulatory technology solutions that can automate KYC/CDD processes can help businesses achieve compliance and avoid costly financial and reputational repercussions. 

“Among banks, AML compliance breaches were the most common type of financial crime violation last year,” said Garient Evans, SVP, Identity Solutions. “Facing increased regulatory scrutiny, businesses need to invest in adaptable tools that will help them meet evolving compliance requirements while ensuring they deliver a convenient customer experience.”

The whitepaper also provides an overview of:

• The evolution of AML directives in the EU and major sources of financial crime

• Key regional finance risks and sectors that pose significant AML risk

• The increased fraud risks that have resulted from the pandemic

Download the “Complying with 6AMLD in a heightened enforcement environment” whitepaper here. 

EasySend, a no-code platform for building and optimizing digital customer journeys, announced a partnership with PSCU, the United States’ premier payments credit union service organization (CUSO). The partnership will integrate EasySend’s platform into PSCU’s back-end systems, helping to export and import data.

Largely due to the remotely-functioning pandemic world, recent accelerations in the realm of digitization have led to a more diverse, complex array of customer needs – making it more important than ever for enterprises to be prepared to handle digital transformation. However,  particularly for long-standing enterprises in the financial services and banking industries, implementing these future-facing changes can be challenging. To help meet customers’ evolving needs and expectations, PSCU has partnered with EasySend to accelerate its digitization of data. EasySend will work with PSCU’s Project Delivery & Platform Optimization (PDPO) department to help improve efficiency and the overall client project experience.

This strategic collaboration comes as PSCU works to migrate to a new platform that will offer self-service solution enrollments to their financial institutions while maintaining a high-quality experience. EasySend offers PSCU a scalable and multi-tenant client-facing platform that is easy to implement and can accommodate high-level user experiences even as they undergo complex business growth.

“We couldn’t be happier about partnering with PSCU on their digitization journey,” said EasySend CEO and Co-founder Tal Daskal. “EasySend is excited to help provide the digital experiences that will enhance their customers’ experiences and keep them competitive in today’s ever-changing digital world.”

EasySend offers a cloud-based, no-code development platform to banks, insurers, and financial service companies in the United States, Europe, Japan and Israel. The company transforms paperwork into seamless digital journeys with unprecedented speed, and their platform – an intuitive drag-and-drop interface with pre-made templates – does not require any programming expertise, allowing non-developer employees to assist in digital transformation. The platform greatly improves customer experience (CX), reduces time to market and cuts operational costs. By continuously developing digital journeys to improve customer experience and operational efficiency, EasySend enables businesses flexibility to respond to the ever-changing business environment and customer needs. 

“EasySend’s intuitive platform will help us execute our strategic vision for digitizing and automating our client project experience with greater speed,” said Dan Rosen, SVP, Project Delivery & Platform Operations at PSCU. “As the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated a digital shift throughout our industry, we have continued to look for ways to automate and identify the right partners to help us optimize our processes and user experience. Partnering with EasySend will help PSCU continue to deliver an unparalleled experience to our financial institutions.” 

 As a growing number of financial services organizations choose FIS Modern Banking Platform to provide convenient, frictionless digital banking services to their customers, FIS^® continues to add significant new components to its flagship cloud-native core banking platform.

The new components, which include innovative retail lending and commercial onboarding as well as a growing ecosystem of third-party solutions, add to the advanced digital banking capabilities that are being deployed by a dozen leading banks including Fifth Third Bank and BMO Harris.

“If anything is certain in this rapidly changing banking industry, it’s that the pace of change will only accelerate in the years ahead,” said Martin Boyd, President of Fintech Solutions at FIS. “FIS Modern Banking Platform is built from the ground up using a highly flexible, cloud-native architecture and component-based approach that enables banks to stay ahead of market changes and confidently grow into the future. These new components continue the evolution of the platform as one of the most open, powerful, and scalable banking systems in the industry.” 

Since its introduction in early 2020, FIS Modern Banking Platform has rapidly expanded its available functions. The platform now provides more than 60 advanced components from FIS and a growing ecosystem of fintech partners—all enabled through the system’s open, API-based architecture that provides ease of integration to FIS’ Code Connect application gateway.

New components available on FIS Modern Banking Platform include:

• Retail Lending: Financial institutions using the platform can now offer a full range of secured and unsecured term loan products to their retail customers whether in a branch, via a mobile wallet, or at point-of-sale. These lending services are all delivered through an intuitive, end-to-end digital user experience. The new lending components leverage advanced technology from both FIS and key partners including Amount for origination and Telrock for collections.
   
• Commercial Express: This digital commercial customer onboarding and account servicing solution enables financial institutions’ corporate customers to self-serve their accounts through a new digital user experience. The solution includes advanced workflow, document management, and data and document repositories for commercial banking clients, enhancing their banking experience.

“The digital transformation of the global economy is enabling technology providers like FIS to not only improve the efficiency of the world’s financial infrastructure, but also bring new features and functionality to market faster than ever before possible,” said Stephen Greer, Senior Analyst at Celent. “Features like digital lending could revolutionize the way lenders, businesses and consumers alike think about financing because it can be more specifically deployed through intuitive user experiences such as through a mobile device. FIS Modern Banking Platform provides financial institutions and their commercial clients powerful digital tools that help them manage portfolios, create and deliver new products and continue to be competitive in a rapidly evolving market.”

Click here to learn more about FIS Modern Banking Platform.

Smaregi, serving more than 98 thousand stores in Japan, has integrated the OCR module by Smart Engines into its mobile applications. Automatic extraction of passport data allows streamlining VAT-refund procedures in tax free shops for foreign citizens in Japan. This solution is available for retailers using Smaregi cloud services which is iPhone/iPad-based registers. 

Two mobile applications, Smaregi and Plugram, developed for retail automatization, were equipped with Smart Engines technology for scanning of ID documents machine-readable zone (MRZ). New option allows speeding up input of customer’s data when filling in VAT-return declarations for foreign customers in stores with Smaregi cloud POS-registers. Instead of filling in a declaration by hand, shop assistants just need to show the MRZ page of the customer's passport to a POS-register camera or iPad or iPhone and all necessary data automatically appears in VAT-refund declaration which is then printed out. 

Recognition is done in video flow in real time and takes about 1 second without special skills of a shop assistant. Smart Engines solution guarantees a high-quality MRZ recognition notwithstanding lighting conditions, different angles and passport position in front of the camera. Recognition process is completely autonomous on mobile devices and does not transfer ID pictures to third services or servers. 

“MRZ recognition module by Smart Engines expands the possibilities of our applications for POS-registers automation across Japan. Streamlining of clients’ data input improves the quality of retail service so our clients can serve their customers more quickly. This is important for travellers since they are always short of time for shopping, especially at tax-free airport stores. We are happy that tourists in Japan can save their time on VAT-refund procedure,” remarks Smaregi CEO Hiroshi Yamamoto.

“We are proud that our Japanese partners, who are famous for their perfectionism, have chosen Smart Engines. We have a lot to offer to our Asian clients since our symbol recognition technology works exclusively well with documents in traditional Japanese characters. So we have a vast perspective for growth here,” comments Dr. Vladimir Arlazarov, CEO of Smart Engines.

Eventus Systems, Inc., a leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance and market risk solutions, today won the award for Trade Surveillance Product of the Year in the 2021 Risk Technology Awards. The firm won the comparable honor in 2019, also for its Validus platform that now provides not only trade surveillance and risk monitoring but also anti-money laundering and transaction monitoring.

The Risk Technology Awards recognize those vendors doing the most to help the industry meet its various challenges in the fields of asset liability management (ALM), credit and operational risk, as well as wider enterprise risk management. Winners are determined by a panel of judges, selected by the editors of Risk.net, including technology users, risk management practitioners and members of the editorial team.

Erin Joyce, Manager, Risk Technology Awards, said: “The judges prized Eventus’ balance of offerings that span the current state of innovation with impressive and forward-thinking features such as its use of AI and a complete audit trail of all automations.”

Eventus CEO Travis Schwab said: “It’s truly gratifying to earn this recognition from the distinguished panel of judges that Risk.net assembled. We’ve been on a steep growth trajectory since winning this award last time, broadening our staff, capabilities and geographical presence – but maintaining our laser focus on market expertise, close collaboration with our clients, flexibility, customization and scalability.”

Eventus last year made hundreds of enhancements to Validus, including new capabilities for anti-money laundering (AML) and transaction monitoring, along with extensive functionality and features for its trade surveillance and risk monitoring capabilities. The firm also introduced new automation tools, enabling clients such as digital asset market centers to far more efficiently self-manage their surveillance models and cast a wide net for alerts, sifting through the noise and better highlighting which alerts require human review.

In June, Eventus won Best Market Surveillance Tool in the 2021 WatersTechnology Asia Awards, following its selection in April as Best Sell-Side Market Surveillance Provider in WatersTechnology’s 2021 Sell-Side Technology Awards, as well as Best in RegTech in Markets Media’s Markets Choice Awards for the second consecutive year.

The global fintech sector is expected to be worth more than $324 billion by 2026, growing significantly each year. In terms of geography, APAC and the Americas are those that are flourishing the most, closely followed by Europe. The former share some 40% of the market between them.

Fintech is present in almost every industry, but which is it disrupting the most?

Real Estate

The real estate industry is going through a period of profound evolution. More and more technologies are being implemented to help speed up the process of buying and selling while lowering costs. For example, VR is being used to show prospective buyers around homes, and AR can allow them to add their furniture to see how it might look if they purchase the property. The entire purchase process has also been made more efficient.

Not only can buyers search for the perfect property online, but they can even seek out advice on financing and apply for mortgages. Online mortgage brokers like Trussle facilitate advice, guidance, and even the comparison of different deals. The user inputs their income, deposit size, and desired duration, and the site presents them with a range of offers. From here, they can also apply online. All of this can be done via smartphone, removing the need for telephone calls or in-person meetings.

In the future, we expect to see the sale process taking place on the blockchain, including all legal work, escrow, and payments.

Personal Banking

There was once a time when checking one's balance meant seeking out a cash machine, going into a branch, or spending 20 minutes on the phone. Those days are long gone. Now, consumers can check their balance, make payments and transfers, and manage their accounts via a mobile app. 

In addition to conventional banks going online with their services, a new breed of eBanks has popped up, which offer online-only services. Some offer exchange, savings accounts, and more via apps. These companies are big competition for high street banks as they typically provide less bureaucracy and better fees. It’s estimated that almost 2 billion people globally use online banking, and many of these are opting for apps.

It’s likely that this trend will continue, including the use of mobile payments, quicker and cheaper transfers, and the decline of card usage in favour of other forms of digital payment.

Financing

31% of the world's adults are unbanked. Not only does this exclude them from participating in the online sphere, but it also limits their access to finance. Millions of entrepreneurs, private individuals, and small business owners worldwide are denied access to loans that could help them become successful, sustainable and lift them out of poverty. Thankfully, fintech has stepped in to help.

One example is blockchain-based and crypto lending. When lending on the blockchain, the loan is managed by smart contracts. There is also no need for an intermediary or third party or the fees they charge. The loan can be paid out in small instalments after certain criteria are met, and it also gives borrowers access to a larger pool of lenders. By using crypto and blockchain lending services, there is greater transparency for all involved, and disputes on repayments can be solved quicker.

We are yet to understand the full potential of fintech, but it will continue to disrupt and improve the way we live our lives. The future looks exciting when we think of where we are now and what is still to come.