What’s on our mind: As more consumers invest in cryptos, a new issue is arising: It’s difficult for beneficiaries to access these assets after the owner dies.

The challenge with cryptos: Crypto assets can be much harder to retrieve than traditional assets because of the way blockchains work.

To access and move crypto funds, one needs to know the private key: a random string of numbers and letters, much like a strong password. Crypto exchanges can only use private keys when they operate as custodial wallets, meaning they retain ownership of private keys—as opposed to non-custodial wallets, where the user keeps the private keys. Some of the largest market players, like Gemini and Kraken, offer custodial wallets, while Coinbase offers both custodial and non-custodial wallets.

This means that if the deceased used a non-custodial wallet provider and didn't take precautions to share their private keys before their death, beneficiaries are out of luck. For example, in 2018, when the founder of crypto exchange QuadrigaCX allegedly died, he took to the grave over $140 million worth of crypto from investors, as he alone had access to the private keys.

What it means for the industry: We expect both fintechs and incumbents that offer crypto services to introduce solutions to this issue.

Coinbase, for example, already outlines steps the executor or family can take to access the deceased’s cryptos. This process is simpler for users when Coinbase holds the private keys, which lets it directly transfer ownership.

Crypto firms that offer non-custodial wallets will likely add educational tools, raising user awareness that they must be proactive and take action to avoid locking away their crypto holdings forever from their beneficiaries. These actions could include sharing private keys within a will.

Finally, wealth managers at incumbents will need to understand the challenges of dealing with cryptos, which they are increasingly likely to encounter as part of their retirement planning services as more consumers globally invest in this emerging asset class.

The new partnership provides financial institutions with the data they need to offer a more personalized experience to their business clients

Zafin, the world’s leading SaaS cloud-native product and pricing platform for financial institutions, today announces its partnership with Codat, a technology company that enables small businesses to seamlessly share business and financial data with financial institutions. Through the partnership, banks and credit unions will gain access to the data needed to serve more efficiently and to personalize the products and pricing provided to SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses).

Codat’s API connects several of the world’s leading accounting packages, point of sale solutions and payroll platforms used by SMBs to decisioning systems such as Zafin used by financial institutions. This better facilitates the flow of information, providing a real-time picture of an SMB’s financial performance to aid decision-making. The Codat-Zafin integration delivers a superior customer experience by enhancing the depth of data available to a bank or credit union and streamlining financial reviews and workflows. It improves a bank’s ability to offer product packages better suited to an SMB based on a clearer understanding of their business stage and unique financial needs. The partnership will also provide detailed cash flow information to financial institutions and enable them to offer more suitable products and pricing, thereby leading to better outcomes for financial institutions and SMBs alike.

“Providing next-level personalization is a key component of what both Zafin and Codat offer global financial institutions,” said Thomas Schickler, EVP and Chief Operating Officer of Zafin. “This collaboration allows financial service providers to understand and present hyper-personalized recommendations to their SMB customers more effectively. We can now enable bankers to play a crucial role in promoting the wellbeing of their SMB clients.”

Zafin’s cloud-native SaaS product and pricing platform is layered on top of banks’ legacy core systems. The platform provides a comprehensive view of the customer and the ability to build new products and pricing in months, not years. Offers and recommendations can be hyper-personalized to the business’ needs and financial health, strengthening the overall relationship with the SMB.

“Zafin’s approach to personalization is well established in the banking space and is a perfect fit for our technology,” said Peter Lord, CEO & Co-Founder of Codat. “Our mission is to make the lives of small businesses easier and enable suppliers to small businesses, through a single standardised API, to connect with the software packages SMBs use. We look forward to seeing many more SMBs and financial institutions together flourish as a result of this partnership.”

The partnership’s unified solution is globally available immediately.

Ghost Drops continues to evolve the cannabis scene, today announcing the launch of its pioneering NFT marketplace, cryptodrops.world.

In collaboration with full-service digital banking partner QNTMPAY, Ghost Drops – the iconic cannabis brand which recently announced its popular launch into the legal market – is launching Crypto Drops, a world-first NFT platform focused on cannabis and the gamification of cannabis cultivation.

“This is the digital future of cannabis,” says Ghost Drops CEO Gene Bernaudo. “Globally, there’s nothing like this but there’s a real appetite for it. We’re thrilled to continue to expand the boundaries of cannabis culture.”

Cryptodrops.world will launch in two waves. First, Ghost Drops is releasing its fan-favourite legacy strain art as unique, one-of-a-kind digital NFTs. This is a chance for cannabis collectors and connoisseurs to own a piece of the renowned Ghost Drops history. The legacy market strain art is being retired as it is not compliant with legal market restrictions.

In the second wave, Crypto Drops will expand considerably, building out a virtual gamified world of cannabis collection and cultivation. Featuring digital breeder packs of sought-after cannabis seeds, users can buy, sell and trade seeds, and grow virtual plants to crossbreed with other strains.

“Ghost Drops has been a cultural icon in Canadian cannabis. Now, we’re about to revolutionize banking, NFTs and crypto in this space,” Bernaudo says.

“I love that our original fans have this opportunity to own a piece of the Ghost Drops legacy with our strain art. This way, the history of the ghost can live on with the fans who helped us get here.

“And for cannabis connoisseurs, collectors and gamers, I can’t wait for them to experience the new digital cannabis frontier we’re pioneering with Crypto Drops.”

The partnership with QNTMPAY is a blockbuster piece of cryptodrops.world. The Official Digital Banking Partner of Ghost Drops and Crypto Drops, QNTMPAY is next-generation, no-worries banking that will provide ease of entry into buying and selling cannabis NFTs.

QNTMPAY removes the requirement to deal with cryptocurrency to purchase NFTs by processing debit, Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, and more. Through QNTMPAY, Ghost Drops will also offer its customers a free peer-to-peer banking solution, including Ghost-branded bank cards and Mastercards.

In addition, Ghost Drops will also be introducing a points system – Ghost Cash – allowing consumers to redeem points from QNTMPAY purchases, to redeem on merchandise and accessories. Consumers who had been earning the former rewards, Ghostdots, will be able to transfer their points over.

QNTMPAY Founder Adam Pearsall says this launch marks the beginning of an exciting partnership in a high-growth space.

“Crypto Drops is going to transform the cannabis space, both in a cultural sense and also with how money changes hands. QNTMPAY is excited to be a part of this venture, as we bring our cutting-edge banking technology to this game-changing partnership.”

Sber AI Laboratory has presented two AI-powered solutions at the 38th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML): a model that identifies pneumonia sources in lungs through X-rays with further prioritization of patients who must receive treatment and a model that evaluates the risks of severe symptoms in patients hospitalized with pneumonia, including when it is caused by COVID-19. Sber’s AI for Health neural network models have been designed with medical doctors. Now that the models have been adopted, doctors use them a lot in their work.

The model that identifies pneumonia sources on X-rays has reached the accuracy of 97.8% due to its continuous training and fine-tuning. Medical doctors in the city of Tomsk have uploaded 450 chest X-rays for the project. On top of that, the model has been trained using 350 X-rays of healthy patients, and approximately 50 X-rays – both with and without pathologies – have measured the quality of training. The cases when X-rays marked by human doctors and the model had non-empty overlapses were considered as the correctly labeled ones.

The risk assessment model to predict severe symptoms for pulmonology patients uses information documented in the electronic health record by the physician within the first 24 hours of hospitalization. Based on the data, the system assigns one of two high severity risk levels (ranging from 29% to 100%). Timely identification of high risk patients enables doctors to adjust treatment plans and reduce hospital mortality. The project was successfully implemented at Krasnoyarsk Regional Clinical Hospital in spring 2021. The proportion of high risk patients who were admitted to intensive care decreased by 14.3% and the proportion of cases of mortality dropped by 44.3%.

AI Lab developers have been designing medical solutions based on machine learning and computer vision for several years now. On the AI for Health track, Sber collaborates with medical institutions in both Moscow and other regions of Russia. We have seen how the value of such projects has grown in the last year and a half and how they simplify doctors' heavy workloads. Presenting our AI for Health projects at ICML is a big milestone in the recognition of Sber's developments by the international data researcher and data engineer community. 

Alexander Vedyakhin

First Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

ICML is a major conference that greatly influences research on machine learning and artificial intelligence. It is a globally renowned platform that brings together the world’s leading experts in the fields of DS/AI. The first ICML was held in 1980. In 2020, 11,000 professionals from 75 countries gathered for ICML.

Joint solution accelerates bank connectivity, enabling greater financial close and accounts receivable process automation for customers

Accounting automation software leader BlackLine, Inc. and Kyriba, a global leader of cloud-based finance and IT solutions, today announced that they are joining forces to streamline the digitalization of the Office of the CFO and improve collaboration between Finance and Treasury departments.  The partnership offers enhanced capabilities for mutual customers through their integrated solutions to accelerate bank connectivity, increasing cash visibility and enabling greater automation within the financial close and accounts receivable processes. 

At a time when organizational resilience is more important than ever, Finance and Treasury leaders need their technology solutions to work more efficiently together across both the Finance and Accounting organizations, including Treasury and Risk.  BlackLine and Kyriba help companies adapt and respond to the changing landscape by streamlining processes, enhancing data integrity, optimizing cash and liquidity management, and automating repetitive work to transform traditional close processes.

“Bank reconciliations are a time-consuming process and one of the top challenges BlackLine helps organizations address.  With our new partnership, BlackLine provides Kyriba customers with market-leading solutions that fuel treasury teams with real-time, reliable and data-backed analytics to automate bank reconciliation and other key financial close and accounts receivable processes.  At the same time, BlackLine customers can now leverage Kyriba's extensive network of global banking relationships to streamline bank connectivity,'' said Mel Zeledon, senior vice president of Channels & Alliances at BlackLine.  “The digitalization of the finance and accounting tech-suite is accelerating and our partnership with Kyriba is an exciting example of how best-of-breed solutions can deliver immediate strategic benefits.”

Customers that implement BlackLine alongside Kyriba are expected to see reduced business-process costs and increased organizational efficiencies.  Kyriba’s preconfigured bank connectors simplify bank reporting, accelerating time-to-value for BlackLine customers.  BlackLine’s transaction matching solution can automate up to 95% of bank reconciliations and match millions of transactions in minutes.  Coupled with Kyriba’s robust and pre-built inventory of bank connectors, Blackline customers can streamline bank statement reporting from thousands of banks around the world, achieving unsurpassed efficiency in their finance and accounting operations.

“Kyriba unlocks rapid integration capabilities with its innovation in connectivity and has created new ecosystems of value through global partnerships,” said Joe Marcin, chief revenue officer at Kyriba. “Coupling Kyriba’s innovative treasury capabilities with BlackLine’s market-leading financial close and accounts receivable automation solutions is a natural evolution in financial close, analysis and reporting. We are excited to bring Finance and Treasury closer through our partnership with BlackLine and drive strategic value for the Office of the CFO.”

Mutual customers of Kyriba and BlackLine now have access to complementary solutions for bank connectivity, payments automation and intercompany accounting, ensuring value across three primary use cases:

1. Accelerated Bank Connections and Increased Cash Visibility: Delivers faster connections to BlackLine customers through an extensive network of pre-connected, pre-configured banks; time to onboard customers for automated reporting is drastically reduced while providing Finance and Accounting with timely, valuable information for accounts receivable and close processes.
2. Accounts Receivable Automation: Reduce manual activity and collect more cash using AI-powered automation across order-to-cash processes.  With intelligent automation, customer payments are automatically matched to invoices, reducing the need for costly lockbox services, decreasing days sales outstanding (DSO), and freeing AR team capacity to focus on value-added activities.
3. Financial Close Management: Automates data exchange with financial close technologies that continuously reconcile and verify daily and period-end cash and balance reporting.

For more information, visit www.blackline.com or www.kyriba.com or register to attend our upcoming joint webinar here.

Noname Security, creator of the most powerful, complete, and easy-to-use API security platform, has today announced the appointment of Dirk Marichal as vice president EMEA. Marichal will be responsible for further expanding Noname’s presence across EMEA, through building robust relationships with additional channel partners, system integrators and customers. Marichal’s appointment is effective immediately and he will be based in Antwerp, Belgium. 

Marichal is an accomplished business and sales leader, with more than 20 years of experience across a variety of software and hardware technology sectors including networking, security, data centre, and hyperconverged infrastructure. He previously served as vice president of sales at Cohesity for the EMEA region, where he had complete oversight for the company’s business development and sales operations throughout the region. Prior to his role at Cohesity, he held similar roles at Avi Networks, Nutanix and Infoblox, where he led the startup company to revenues exceeding $200 million, which subsequently led to a successful IPO in 2012.

Commenting on the appointment, Oz Golan, CEO and co-founder of Noname Security said, “Dirk has proven experience in launching new technologies in Europe and taking startup companies to an IPO phase. His track record speaks for itself. In his new role, he will help to build an experienced team to underpin our number one position in the API security market. I'm delighted to welcome him to the company and look forward to working with him going forward.” 

Marichal joins Noname at a time where the fast growing API security market is dealing with an increase in API threats, with current API management tools not sufficiently capable of handling the threats they pose. Gartner predicts that, by 2022, API attacks will become the most-frequent attack vector, causing data breaches for enterprise web applications. As a result of the urgent demand for API security, Noname has signed four large enterprise customers in Europe and eight channel partners in the UK, France, Benelux and Germany - while growing its presence on the ground in those regions - in a short time frame.

“I’m excited to be joining Noname at a time when the API threat is exploding,” commented Marichal. “I was drawn to Noname as it distinguishes itself from its competitors due to the nature of its architecture and technology. With nothing else on the market close to Noname’s product offering, I look forward to accelerating Noname’s success across EMEA and providing a high level of service to its channel partners and customers.”

The Noname API Security Platform covers every aspect of API security, from discovery to analysis to remediation and testing. It creates a complete inventory of an organisation’s APIs and uses AI and machine learning to detect attackers, suspicious behaviour, and misconfigurations. It remediates API vulnerabilities by integrating with existing security infrastructure and blocking attacks in real-time, all without deploying agents or requiring network modifications. Customers can also use Noname to test APIs before deployment, preventing vulnerabilities from ever going into production.

Partnership gives Opus visibility and control over important new attack vector

Retail payments solution and digital payment transformation technology experts Opus Consulting Solutions have partnered with Noname Security, the API security company, to protect Opus’ global clientele from a dangerous new class of cyberattack, the two companies announced today.

A leader in fintech software development, Opus Consulting Solutions has built more than 350 payments systems for some of their global marquee clients across the entire spectrum of payments technology ecosystem. It combines deep technology proficiency with unmatched domain expertise to deliver systems that are innovative, effective, and secure.

With the rise of cloud and mobile technology, payment systems increasingly depend on APIs, software interfaces that enable cloud and mobile applications to communicate with one another. APIs make it possible for fintech providers to integrate their applications with their clients’ existing business systems without affecting the security or integrity of those systems. One estimate puts the total amount of API-based transactions at $1.1 trillion per year.

The growing importance of APIs and the critical nature of payment technology has made them key targets for cybercriminals, and a top priority for Opus. Through its new alliance with Noname, Opus can discover, track, monitor, and diagnose API vulnerabilities from development through production, understanding exactly what APIs are in use and what they’re doing at all times.

Noname’s agentless security platform discovers APIs and analyzes API traffic throughout the customer’s IT infrastructure, flagging suspicious patterns of activity. It’s the only solution that covers every aspect of API security, from discovering APIs to analyzing vulnerabilities to remediating anomalies and misconfigurations and testing APIs before they go live. Noname provides a complete view into API activity and threats at each stage of an API’s lifecycle without taxing the customer’s infrastructure with bulky software agents.

“For us, the security of our customers’ systems is absolutely paramount,” said TM Praveen, CEO, Opus Consulting Solutions. “With digital transformation and PSD2, the payment technology is becoming API-led, which means helping our customers modernize without compromising on security. Nobody does that like Noname. They’ve set the gold standard, with the most complete and effective technology for API security. APIs can help payments companies create ecosystems that push payments innovation forward and win new clients.”

“When it comes to payments knowledge and experience, Opus is second to none,” said Oz Golan, CEO and co-founder of Noname Security. “They understand what it takes to secure a modern payment system, and how the attack surface is changing. They’re totally committed to keeping their customers’ systems and data safe, and we’re proud to help them do it.”

• Reduces friction in experience and provides greater choice for consumers by helping crypto companies offer card programs

• Suite of partners include Circle, Paxos, Evolve Bank & Trust, Metropolitan Commercial Bank, Uphold, BitPay, Apto Payments, i2c Inc. and Galileo Financial Technologies 

Mastercard announced today it will enhance its card program for cryptocurrency wallets and exchanges, making it simpler for partners to convert cryptocurrency to traditional fiat currency. Working with Evolve Bank & Trust and Paxos Trust Company, the leading blockchain infrastructure and regulated stablecoin issuance platform, and Circle, a global financial technology firm and the principal operator of the USD Coin (USDC), a dollar digital currency or stablecoin, Mastercard and its partners will test this new capability to enable more banks and crypto companies to offer a card option to people wanting to spend their digital assets anywhere Mastercard is accepted.

Raj Dhamodharan, executive vice president of digital asset and blockchain products & partnerships at Mastercard, commented: “Today not all crypto companies have the foundational infrastructure to convert cryptocurrency to traditional fiat currency, and we’re making it easier. Through our engagement with Evolve, Paxos, Circle and the larger digital assets community, Mastercard expects to deliver on our promise of consumer choice to provide options to people around the world on how and when to pay.”

The enhancement to Mastercard’s existing Crypto Card Program includes a suite of partners. Mastercard is in discussions with Evolve Bank & Trust and Metropolitan Commercial Bank to issue cards, Uphold and BitPay to provide real-time crypto wallet technology, and i2c Inc., Apto Payments and Galileo Financial Technologies® to support processing and program management.

With this enhancement to Mastercard’s Crypto Card Program, Paxos and Circle will use their platforms to facilitate the conversion of crypto to fiat through fiat-backed stablecoins, a class of cryptocurrency that offers price stability and is backed by reserve assets. Making the process simpler will allow more banks and crypto partners the opportunity to offer their consumers the choice of paying with cryptocurrency.

Hear from Our Partners

“As pioneers in crypto-backed debit card issuance, we are absolutely thrilled to see the level of investment that Mastercard and all the associated partners are demonstrating for innovative products,” said Apto Payments CEO Meg Nakamura.

“BitPay believes the future of payments is on the blockchain because it transforms how consumers send, receive, and store money around the world,” said Stephen Pair, co-founder and CEO of BitPay. “Working with Mastercard’s pilot to turn digital assets into dollars for everyday spending will accelerate consumers’ use of crypto as a means of commerce.”

Dante Disparte, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Global Policy at Circle, commented: “The collaboration between Circle and Mastercard demonstrates that dollar digital currencies like USDC play a foundational role in making payments more efficient and can facilitate new economic activity for businesses worldwide.”

“We are thrilled to be partnering with Mastercard and other leaders to evolve the payments landscape,” said Scot Lenoir, chairman of Evolve. “Evolve is a known leader that supports all forms of stored value and money movement for our diverse array of fintech customers. To support the tremendous consumer and business adoption of digital currencies over the last few years, we see settlement via USDC and other stablecoins as our next step in our journey to continue to modernize banking for all.”

"Galileo is excited to partner with Mastercard to simplify payments and provide the modern API technology that enables a seamless cryptocurrency conversion process of new currencies and coins to fiat currency and U.S. stablecoins,” said Derek White, CEO Galileo Financial Technologies.

"As one of the world's leading issuer-processors powering millions of active crypto-backed cards globally, i2c couldn't be more enthusiastic or honored to be counted as a key Mastercard partner for crypto," said Jim McCarthy, president, i2c Inc. "We look forward to helping visionary crypto companies bring their card programs to market quickly through a single global platform, offering product diversity, robust applications, services, scale and unprecedented reliability."

"Metropolitan Commercial Bank is proud to be named a key partner with Mastercard and its plan to enhance its existing Crypto Card Program,” said Nick Rosenberg, executive vice president and head of Global Payments at Metropolitan Commercial Bank. "We are excited to join Mastercard in making it simpler to convert cryptocurrency to traditional fiat currency."

Charles Cascarilla, CEO and co-founder of Paxos, added, “Paxos builds the underlying technology that will usher in an open digital economy. Our stablecoins are trusted, regulated and always fully backed one-to-one by U.S. dollars. We can facilitate instant settlement for transactions on a 24/7 basis, 365 days a year. By partnering with Mastercard, we'll bring the benefits of crypto and blockchain to the everyday lives of consumers globally.” 

JP Thieriot, CEO of Uphold, said: “We’re thrilled to be working with Mastercard to advance the payments landscape and enable next generation transactionality for consumers and merchants alike. Removing friction and barriers to entry is critical to ensure the wide adoption of digital payments, and Mastercard is in position to lead the way.”

Napier, provider of advanced anti-financial crime compliance solutions, has announced it has extended its global footprint by opening a new office at Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), the global financial centre and leading FinTech hub in the MEASA region.

Strategically located between East and West, DIFC is recognized as the leading financial center in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia (MEASA). Located in the recently inaugurated Innovation Hub, part of the Dubai Future District, Napier’s new UAE base puts the RegTech provider at the center of the region’s largest collection of financial services companies.

Salmaan Jaffery, Chief Business Development Officer at DIFC Authority, said: “The world’s leading financial and FinTech institutions are based at DIFC and we are delighted to welcome Napier into the fold. Our new Innovation Hub is the region’s largest and most comprehensive innovation ecosystem and provides FinTechs at all stages of their evolution with unparalleled access to a community of like-minded entrepreneurs, experts and technology innovators such as Napier.

“We want to connect a wide range of large and small financial institutions and technology companies and create strong partnerships that will drive global innovation in the financial sector.”

Napier already works on AI-led anti-financial crime solutions with many organizations across MEASA, including Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, Central Bank of UAE and directly with DIFC. The new UAE base forms part of a wider global strategy that sees the RegTech now established in all key financial hubs across the world, working with firms on KYC, AML and trade compliance.

Greg Watson, Chief Operating Officer at Napier, said: “DIFC is recognized internationally as a leading global center for FinTech and building a presence here will enable us to better serve our clients operating both locally and in international markets. Innovations in technologies to improve financial compliance are a key part of the huge ambition that we see across the UAE as it strengthens its position as a modern global financial hub, so it’s very important for us to be here.”

Headquartered in London, Napier works with international customers and has a presence in North America, Australia and Dubai, while its foothold in APAC was also strengthened recently with key senior hires from the industry and the addition of new offices in Singapore and Kuala Lampur.