David Jones, Chief Market Strategist at European investment trading platform Capital.com, said: "As Wednesday saw the England football team entering territory uncharted for the past 55 years, the US stock market was doing the same thing, although on a somewhat less spectacular scale. Wednesday was the ninth day on the trot that the broader S&P 500, an index of the stocks of 500 leading companies in the US economy, hit fresh all-time highs. 

"Anyone who, at any point in history, had bought an S&P tracker and was still holding it on Thursday would have been sitting on a profit. It is said that bull markets climb a wall of worry - investors balance their glee with potential profits with the fear that a crash may only be just around the corner. Just in case stockholders were getting a bit too complacent this time around, Thursday did deliver a sharp sell-off as the US opened.  

"Investors have likely had the same nagging worries all year. Is inflation going to end up being more of a problem than central banks think - and will rates have to be raised sooner than expected? Add into the mix the news that Japan has declared a state of emergency and the Tokyo Olympics will be going ahead without any spectators, due to the coronavirus. This may well have rattled some, worried about another resurgence of the pandemic and the corresponding threat on the economic recovery.

"But if history is going to repeat itself, it could be that these worries don't look big enough just yet to spook markets and cause a more sustainable sell-off. After a few hours of trading, stocks in the USA were attracting buyers once.

"It wasn't just the stock market that saw a burst of volatility this week. The price of oil moved ever high as the week started, hitting its best levels, albeit very briefly, since late 2014. The breakdown of talks between OPEC and OPEC+ was the reason for the sell-off - and it is a market many consider overdue for a correction given it has risen seven-fold in 15 months. But like with stocks, traders tend to buy the dips expecting further strength. If oil increases further then surely concerns about inflation are only set to increase. 

"For now, markets still look to be undeterred  - although that can be a dangerous belief to hold onto indefinitely. Just ask a Bitcoin buyer from April."

Multi-award winning provider of business applications and cloud services, Codestone, poised for growth with funding from specialist lender Shawbrook.

Headquartered in Poole, Dorset, with offices in London and Cheshire, the technology implementation and services business was founded in 1997 by Jeremy Bucknell, CEO, and Dan Hobson, CCO.

The funding from Shawbrook follows backing from FPE Capital (‘FPE’) in March 2021, the first outside investment the business had received since its launch in 1997.

FPE, the software & services focused lower mid-market growth investor, partnered with the management team of Codestone to help the business expand through both organic growth and future acquisitions. 

Shawbrook’s Financial Sponsors team has now supported Codestone with a bespoke unitranche facility, providing the business with the financial capacity to pursue significant acquisitions and to continue investing in strong organic growth.

Henry Sallitt, Managing Partner at FPE, said: “At FPE, we are focussed on partnering with fast growing software and services businesses in the lower mid-market and we were delighted to complete our investment into Codestone back in March of this year. We had been aware of the business for some time and moved quickly at the opportunity to partner with its award-winning team. We are delighted to be supporting Jeremy, Dan and the management team with their growth strategy in the coming years."

“Looking for a funding partner, the Financial Sponsors team at Shawbrook stepped forward and have proven themselves to be highly professional, experienced in working with mid-market sponsors and committed to certainty of delivery. The unitranche facility gives us and the management team at Codestone the funding capacity, flexibility and confidence to support future growth.” 

Jeremy Bucknell, CEO at Codestone, said:

“We’re delighted to have secured the backing of Shawbrook Bank which is a further endorsement of confidence in Codestone and our operating model. The solution that Shawbrook tailored for us, combined with their proactive and flexible approach, is just what we need to achieve our ambitious milestones. This unitranche financing will enable the Codestone management team to drive the business forward to realise our exciting organic and acquisitive plans. Most importantly, these plans will enable us to further enhance our position as leaders in our field and to bring even greater value to our customers.”

The business applications and cloud technology provider, focused on SAP and Microsoft technologies, operates across multiple sectors including wholesale & Distribution, professional services and manufacturing.  A serial winner at SAP’s annual channel awards, mostly recently awarded a record four awards in February 2021 including Best Performance in EMEA North (Business One & Business ByDesign), Codestone’s customers include Virgin Management Ltd, Graff Diamonds and Pinewood Studios.

James Salmon, Director at Shawbrook said: 

“We’re backing an impressive founder-led management team responsible for having built a serial award-winning technology business. With an impressive client roster, exposure to multiple sectors and the ability to attract top talent into the business, Codestone is now set for further success with the backing of FPE. With their dedication to software and software services investing in the lower mid-market, we could not think of a better partner for management than FPE. Shawbrook are delighted to support this transaction, with our funding to play a part in the next phase of Codestone’s journey.”

Shawbrook were advised on the transaction by Travers Smith LLP and Spectrum Corporate Finance provided debt advisory services to FPE Capital and Codestone.

EasyEuro announced today the launch of its digital Wallet, called OuiTrust. OuiTrust aims to serve millions of European SMEs, traders and freelancers bringing them new levels of payment efficiency to global trade.

The EU is one of the world's largest trading block, and SMEs are the backbone of the trade-driven EU economy, accounting for 99.8% of numbers of enterprises.

However, SMEs are largely underserved by traditional banking services since they are not a priority for them and are saddled with products and services that often vastly fall short of customer expectations. The areas of payment, money transfer and currency exchange still remain time-consuming, leaving the customer demand for digital mobility, cheap and fast banking services unmet.

OuiTrust empowers SMEs with a complete new set of banking services, including collection, payment, low-cost currency exchange, customized card issuing. It provides users with a multi-currency account to send and receive payments in the currency of their choice (support more than 30 currencies and local settlement in 20 currencies).

It also supports SEPA, SEPA INSTANT, Faster Payments and SWIFT. Customers can apply for a MasterCard linked with their OuiTrust wallet that can be used worldwide. The OuiTrust digital wallet supports most major payment acquiring methods such as Visa, MasterCard, WeChat Pay, Alipay and UnionPay and allows customers to benefit from quick and simple remittance and favorable exchange rates which can be locked in during the trading process to avoid any currency fluctuations.

These features aiming at covering every SME merchants' transaction needs allowing SMEs to spend more time on running their businesses by making transactions easier and cheaper. 

Under the COVID-19 pandemic, the global economy has accelerated its pace for digitization, and contactless financial services. OuiTrust has acquired over 50,000 customers during the year and has grown it's transaction volumes in 2020 by multiple folds compare to that of 2019.

OuiTrust's team is led by Dr. Ryan Li and comprised of a group of highly experienced industry veterans formerly worked at BNP, HSBC, RBS and Weston Union. The technology team is led by the ex-Chief Architect of Huawei Mobile Money, who was responsible for deployment of M-Pesa, bKash, TCash, etc.

OuiTrust operates under Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license authorized by the UK FCA and is granted a conditional EMI license in 2020 by l'Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution (ACPR), Banque de France.

Softline, the global leading digital transformation and cybersecurity solutions and services provider, announces today that it´s been recognized in four countries with the Microsoft 2021 Partner of the Year Award.

Softline operations in Bulgaria, Cambodia, Malaysia and Vietnam have been recognized with this global award. The company, which is a global strategic partner to Microsoft, is currently focusing on business transformation in emerging economies and developing countries. Softline was honored among a global field of top Microsoft partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology.

This achievement highlights Softline’s truly exceptional work in enabling business transformation through Microsoft solutions that positively impact their mutual customers. As well as investing in technology capabilities and capacity building across the region to support evolving global demands. This award reflects years of hard-work in ensuring our workforce is equipped to handle growing demands of a new age customer.

“I am honored to announce the winners and finalists of the 2021 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards,” said Rodney Clark, corporate vice president, Global Partner Solutions, Channel Sales and Channel Chief, Microsoft. “These remarkable partners have displayed a deep commitment to building world-class solutions for customers—from cloud-to-edge—and represent some of the best and brightest our ecosystem has to offer.”

The Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards recognize Microsoft partners that have developed and delivered outstanding Microsoft-based solutions during the past year. Awards were classified in various of categories, with honorees chosen from a set of more than 4,400 submitted nominations from more than 100 countries worldwide. Softline was awarded in four different countries for its excellent work towards its clients. 

“Our main goal as a business is to empower our customers with the best technology solutions and services, so that they are equipped to deliver the best to their own clients. We are very proud to see that our APAC local teams’ outstanding work has been recognized and awarded by Microsoft. Our strategy for 2022 is to further strengthen our partnership with Microsoft to grow our shared portfolio of Azure, Microsoft 365, and other solutions as a key digital transformation and cybersecurity services and solutions provider for emerging markets.” Atul Ahuja, senior vice president – Middle East, Africa & Asia, Softline.

“Looking into FY2022, we are committed to further develop our Microsoft technology-based services and offerings and grow the number of earned Advanced Specializations to support our shared strategic goals. We trust, that our global expertise combined with our local team’s market knowledge will continue to provide unmatched benefits to our customers in Bulgaria and other parts of the World.” Zoltán Mészáros, vice president - Eastern Europe, Softline.

 The Mauritius Commercial Bank Ltd (MCB) (www.MCB.mu) is adopting MITECH's system TRAC (Trade Risk Active Control) to support a continuous and significant growth in its Commodity Trade Finance (CTF) business. TRAC is a Trade Risk and Collateral Management system supporting Structured Trade Commodity Finance. The TRAC solution handles not only Transactional Commodity Finance but Borrowing Base structures as well.

The TRAC software will be implemented on a Cloud infrastructure, with the aim of going-live with the system before the end of the year.

Michael Cohen Dumani, MITECH's CEO commented that "this contract is a major milestone for MITECH as we are expanding our geographical footprint to support Africa's intense Trade Finance growth as well as implementing TRAC seamlessly on a Cloud setup" adding that "MITECH is proud to welcome yet another prestigious reference in its community of users".

Rajeshwar Pertab, Head of Middle-Office, MCB stated: "We are delighted to be partnering with MITECH and further bolster risk and collateral management within our Commodity Trade Finance business. MITECH's expertise and TRAC's extensive functionalities convinced us to adopt the solution and streamline information flow between our customers, front-office and middle-Office teams".

Hudson Fintech, the London-based Capital Markets technology firm, has partnered with 1066NOW, an Oracle Partner, to make the Hudson Edge platform available to financial institutions using Oracle’s suite of products.

Under the strategic partnership, 1066NOW’s Banking Integration Application (BIA) will enable easy and quick adoption of the Hudson Edge platform for Financial Markets’ institutions across a wide range of use cases and applications. The Edge platform resolves the issues faced by financial institutions when seeking flexibility, product enhancements, lower costs, faster deployment cycles and independence from fixed data models. 

“It was always our vision to extend the Hudson Edge platform to encompass a wider set of solutions outside our core products in the areas of Repo and alternative asset management. A recent example was the launch of the Hudson Trade Hospital for post trade optimisation,” said Michael Walliss, CEO of Hudson Fintech. “As we further extend coverage, we are delighted to be working with the team at 1066NOW to bring their deep Oracle Middleware and Project Engagement expertise to users of the Edge platform, to seamlessly integrate into existing Financial applications landscape”.

He added, “This shows the power of the Hudson Edge platform, where we are able to apply its unique features to a wide number of different use cases, which help leverage existing and installed components that financial institutions use as a core part of their businesses.”

“At 1066NOW we see numerous benefits for our clients utilising the unique Entity Components System (ECS) architecture offered by the Hudson Edge platform, as we include it within our BIA solution,” said John Collett, Founder and CEO of 1066NOW. “This partnership will enable seamless integration into the Oracle customer base within Financial Markets and solves many issues faced by Financial Institutions, using both On-Premise and Hybrid Cloud technical architectures.” 

He added, "This represents an exciting new phase in 1066NOW’s growth and development taking Hudson’s leading Financial services solution to benefit Oracle customers and enabling Digital Transformation”.

Hudson is the first Fintech to use ECS in Capital Markets. ECS is an advanced system architecture, supporting a flexible data model and independent workflows,  which allows for the adding and upgrading of functionality without impacting the existing code base, hence requiring minimal testing, while always adhering to coding best practices. This guarantees the software will be extendable, easy to maintain, and cost-effective in years to come rather than evolving into a costly and unmanageable problem.

1066NOW BIA is an integration and enablement solution that utilises Oracle Middleware technology for integration, performance and availability to provide the most robust and respondent capabilities needed for Financial systems and applications. This approach provides economies of scale to reduce cost across the enterprise and provide excellent and robust support structure globally required by Financial Markets’ participants. 1066NOW’s BIA can be implemented On-Premise or in the Cloud (Public, Private and Hybrid). 

For bank CIO’s looking to solve specific problems within their trading solutions where cost effective, simple to use and highly scalable solutions are important, the combination of 1066NOW BIA incorporating the Hudson Edge platform offers many unique benefits.

Commenting on UK GDP rising by 0.8% Ian Warwick, Managing Partner at Deepbridge Capital, said: “Today’s data serves as a further reminder that the UK economy is not out of the woods just yet. We are however clearly moving in the right direction and as we focus on economic recovery, it remains critically important that scale-up businesses, particularly in high-growth sectors such as digital technologies and life sciences are supported; as they will be at the very heart of economic growth as we create an economy fit for the twenty-first century. Government initiatives such as the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) have never been more important for helping entrepreneurs and innovators source the funding they require, whilst also offering private investors with tax incentives to develop UK-supporting private equity portfolios. With our EIS funds reaching record levels of funding in 2020/21 it is evident that there is considerable demand from investors and financial advisers alike to invest in early-stage UK companies which we believe will be at the forefront of our economic recovery.”

• Southeast Asia is the fastest growing region for mobile wallets in the world with 25.5% CAGR and overall growth of 311% in the next five years
• Latin America and Africa & Middle East are the second and third fastest growing regions, set to expand by 166% and 147% respectively by 2025
• Between 2020 and 2025 the number of mobile wallets transacting over USD $1 billion per year will increase by 27% creating a growing acceptance challenge for merchants

Today, the biggest report into the growth of mobile wallets ever published, projects that one in two people will use a mobile wallet by 2025. At the end of 2020, there were over 2.8 billion mobile wallets in use. That number is projected to increase by nearly 74% to reach 4.8 billion mobile wallets in use by the end of 2025 – nearly 60% of the world’s population. The fastest growing markets are Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa & Middle East where mobile wallets are displacing cash and cards for more convenient digital payments.

Boku, a fintech pioneering the world’s first global mobile payments network, has released their 2021 Mobile Wallets Report in partnership with digital technology analyst house Juniper Research, which provides insight into mobile wallet adoption and use in leading markets across the globe. In 2019, mobile wallets overtook credit cards to become the most widely used payment type globally and the shift to online driven by the pandemic has accelerated adoption. Mobile wallets use is growing rapidly across the world with emerging markets leading the way.

Key findings

• Southeast Asia is the fastest growing mobile wallet region - Mobile wallet use will grow by 311% between 2020 – 2025, reaching up 439.7 million wallets in use across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam from 141.1 million in 2020. The rise in e-Commerce and dominance of super-apps like Grab and Gojek, particularly in markets like the Philippines and Indonesia, is driving accelerated mobile wallet adoption.
• China reaches maturity while Japan, Korea and Taiwan set for hyper-growth – The Far East and China continues to be the largest mobile wallet region in the world with 1.34bn users in 2020. Market saturation is resulting in slowing growth in China, with a CAGR of just 2.2% per year. Meanwhile, markets including Japan, Korea and Taiwan will continue to see accelerated adoption of mobile wallets with 98.4% market penetration by 2025.
• Africa & Middle East is the second biggest mobile wallet market – The second biggest mobile wallet market is set to grow by 147% between 2020 – 2025. This is driven by expanded usage of mobile money services such as M-Pesa which are increasingly offering additional services such as access to eCommerce.
• Latin American growth is being supercharged by eCommerce – This region is set to increase mobile wallet use by 166% between 2020 – 2025. Long held back by consumers’ preference for cash-based payments and comparatively lower smartphone penetration, this is fast changing, and the region’s eCommerce growth is supercharging mobile wallet use.
• Slow growth in Western Europe and North America – With 65% growth in Western Europe and 50% in North America by 2025, these regions will see the least amount of mobile wallet growth in the next five years. However, markets such as the UK are seeing a rise in card-based mobile wallets due to the adoption of contactless spurred on by the pandemic and shift towards cashlessness.

“While mobile wallets are being used on a global basis, we see two distinct types being used today. One is card-based mobile wallets, like Apple Pay and Google Pay, which provide an easier way to pay with cards people already have. The other is stored value mobile wallets, like AliPay and GrabPay, that enable consumers to transact with digital cash and are popular in emerging markets with fast growing eCommerce sectors,” said Adam Lee, Chief Product Officer at Boku. “The markets that are set to grow the fastest are those with the lowest levels of card penetration, stored value wallets are thriving. In North America and Western Europe, which are dominated by card-based mobile wallets, we are seeing the slowest growth in mobile wallet adoption, as the technology provides merely incremental benefit.”

“We are seeing clear bifurcation in the market between card-based mobile wallets in developed markets and stored value mobile wallets that are ubiquitous in Asia and rapidly growing in all emerging markets,” concluded Lee.

The growth and bifurcation of mobile wallet use presents both an opportunity and challenge for merchants. The number of mobile wallets transacting over $1 billion per year is set to grow by 27% from 54 wallets in 2020 to 69 wallets by 2025. This provides a lucrative opportunity for merchants looking to acquire valuable customers, many of whom only use mobile wallets. However, not only are consumers using mobile wallets more, they are using more mobile wallets. Consumers in high growth markets such as India and Indonesia use an average of 2.74 wallets. This means that not only do merchants need to accept wallets but they need to ensure broad coverage across each target market.

“We are witnessing a paradigm shift in payments driven by mobile wallets. Mobile wallets have lowered the barrier to making digital payments and in parallel ushered billions of new consumers into eCommerce. These consumers are not in North America or Western Europe, they are in emerging markets, and while they don’t have credit cards, they overwhelmingly have mobile wallets,” said Jon Prideaux, CEO at Boku. “For global merchants, mobile payment acceptance is not about accepting one type of mobile wallet or another, but ensuring that consumers in every market will have the required selection on payment types in order to monetize transactions.”

To download the 2021 Mobile Wallets Report please visit: http://boku.mobilewallet.report/

Graphs, data visualisations and other assets can be found in our media kit here.

Late last month the Bank for International Settlements issued a report which strongly supported the concept of CBDCs as the blockchain-based technological advancement which would change the way the world interacts with money. In the report, the BIS indicates that a Central Bank Digital Currency would offer protections against nefarious activity while still offering benefits in the realm of cross-border payments.

“The BIS indicates that it believes that most functional CBDCs would operate in conjunction with the private sector, instead of in competition --- a model which would eliminate many concerns of the naysayers who warn of the collapse of the private sector banking industry if we move to CBDCs. In the view of the BIS, central banks have a narrow focus, which would only be diluted by attempting to take on consumer-facing roles,” said Richard Gardner, CEO of Modulus, a US-based developer of ultra-high-performance trading and surveillance technology that powers global equities, derivatives, and digital asset exchanges.

“CBDCs are a concept whose time has come… They open a new chapter for the monetary system by providing a technologically advanced representation of central bank money. In doing so, they preserve the core features of money that only the central bank can provide, anchored in the foundation of trust in the central bank,” said BIS Head of Research, Hyun Song Shin.

“While there is a multiplicity of models from which a central bank may choose, essentially the central bank would be in control of ensuring that the technology functions as designed, in a safe, secure fashion. Then, the private sector would continue its role in serving as a go-between with the general public. This would be the type of model that’s being beta tested in China right now, with the private sector dealing with things such as onboarding, AML compliance, and executing payments,” explained Gardner.

Modulus is known throughout the financial technology segment as a leader in the development of ultra-high frequency trading systems and blockchain technologies. Over the past twenty years, the company has built technology for the world’s most notable exchanges, with a client list which includes NASA, NASDAQ, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Barclays, Siemens, Shell, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Cornell University, and the University of Chicago.

“The BIS identifies security and the chicanery of bad actors as an ongoing issue with cryptocurrencies, which they believe CBDCs would correct. I’ve been saying, for years, that if the crypto segment wishes to expand, it must prioritize safety from hacks. Exchanges must do better in guarding against money laundering and other crimes against the public good. It seems clear that CBDCs are the future of finance,” opined Gardner.