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.

Mail.ru Group paid another reward within the framework of the vulnerability search program with international platform HackerOne: the researcher received $40,000. The total amount that the company paid in bounties under the program exceeded $2 million.

Mail.ru Group's vulnerability search program has been operating on the HackerOne platform for cybersecurity experts since 2014. It helps researchers find security flaws and fix them before attackers find them. The large-scale program covers almost all projects of the VK ecosystem (developed by Mail.ru Group), allowing to fortify their security.

The reward for a discovered vulnerability depends on its severity. Bounties range from $150 to $40,000, and the most expensive vulnerability reported in the program is estimated at $55,000 – one of the highest rates on the market.

Mail.ru Group pays out rewards to researchers every week. Since launch, around 5,000 reports have been received from over 3,400 security researchers in total.

“The vulnerability search program is an important security tool that we actively use. This is similar to regularly undergoing medical examinations: the more often you go to experienced doctors, the higher the chances to catch all and any possible health problems at an early stage, avoiding a crisis. The best experts from all over the world are working with us. They help us detect the smallest security threats and receive a well-deserved reward for it – not only money but also recognition from the community. We work as quickly as possible to eliminate all discovered vulnerabilities, which allows us to maintain a high level of security for our products. This is the global standard,” Alexey Grishin, Head of the Vulnerability search program, Mail.ru Group, commented.

HackerOne is a popular platform among security experts that allows researchers around the world to report vulnerabilities to companies and get rewarded for doing so. Organizations such as PayPal, Twitter, Goldman Sachs, the Pentagon, and hundreds of others are participating in the program.

Mail.ru Group develops the VK ecosystem helping millions of people with their day-to-day needs online. More than 90% of the Russian internet audience use it every day. 

The ecosystem enables people to keep in touch (using social networks OK and VK, messaging apps and email service), play video games (via MY.GAMES), get and offer items and services, browse jobs and hire talent (via Youla and VK Jobs), order food and grocery delivery (via Delivery Club, Samokat and Local Kitchen), get a ride (with Citymobil and Citydrive), master new skills (at GeekBrains, Skillbox and other educational services), buy and sell at Aliexpress Russia and fulfill other needs.

The VK ecosystem features a number of shared elements bringing the services together. Users can sign in to different services with a single VK Connect account, pay and earn cash back with the VK Pay platform, get discounts and deals with VK Combo, access their favorite services via the VK Mini Apps platform — and the Marusya voice assistant can help with any task.

The company offers enterprises to employ its dynamic ecosystem to digitize their business processes, providing a range of solutions from online promotion and predictive analytics to corporate social networks, cloud services and enterprise automation.

1. Financial reporting: remuneration and dividend pay  

2. Environmental damage and climate change 

3. Diversity and Accessibility 

4. Good governance 

DealShare, India’s fastest growing social ecommerce startup known for pioneering the community group buying (CGB) model in India, has announced that they have raised $144 Million in their latest funding round. The round was led by Tiger Global and was co-led led by WestBridge Capital, Alpha Wave Incubation (a venture fund backed by ADQ, and managed by Falcon Edge Capital) & Z3Partners with participation from Partners of DST Global, Matrix Partners India, and Alteria Capital. This transaction marks the third funding for the company in a span of seven months, with the valuation increasing nine-fold on the back of high growth momentum. With the current round, the total funding raised by DealShare stands at $ 183 Million.

DealShare has built a new disruptive retail model for India with a focus on the affordability & price component for the mass consumers. It offers high quality, low priced essentials coupled with a gamified, fun and virality-driven vernacular shopping experience that makes it easy for first-time internet users to experience online shopping. Founded by Vineet Rao, Sourjyendu Medda, Sankar Bora and Rajat Shikhar, DealShare provides a sharp and curated assortment at highly competitive prices and has built an innovative community leader driven ultra-low-cost delivery mechanism collectively leading to best-in-class unit economics.

Commenting on the fundraising, Mr Vineet Rao, CEO and Founder, DealShare, said, “We believe India is a unique market with its highly diverse demographics and requires an indigenous model that is built based on first principles and differentiates itself from western and Chinese e-commerce models. DealShare has pioneered this model with innovations in app experience and technology, direct from factory procurement, gamified and viral demand generation and building a DealShare dost (community leader) network that enables DealShare to operate at the lowest cost operations in the world. We are proud to have a strong team of innovators who love to continually learn consumer behavior and solve hard business problems. This has enabled DealShare to rapidly grow to $200M GMV ARR.

We would be utilizing the funds primarily to invest in AI-driven innovations in our user experience leading to a highly personalized, fun-filled and gamified experience. Our monthly active users already use our app over 40 times a month making it the most engaging ecommerce app and we will continue to add more innovative capabilities and services to serve a wider range of user needs. We will also invest in improving and scaling up our operations rapidly. We expect our footprint to increase from current 20 warehouses across 5 states to over 200 warehouses across 10 states by end of this year”, added Mr Rao.

“We are excited to partner with DealShare as they grow the Indian E-commerce market. DealShare’s unique approach combines discovery-led social sharing, group buying, and a gamified shopping experience with a simple consumer interface. They are well positioned to power the next wave of Indian ecommerce growth”, said Griffin Schroeder, Partner at Tiger Global.

Sharing his views on the fundraising and the growth trajectory of the company, Mr Sourjyendu Medda, Founder, Chief Business Officer and Chief Finance Officer, DealShare, said, “The funds will be used to augment our current growth trajectory. In FY 20-21 fiscal, we grew 5X to reach $200 Million Annual GMV Runrate. In a short span of 2 years, we have serviced more than 3 million consumers and over 20 million orders. We are confident of hitting a $ 1 billion GMV Runrate by end of the year thereby building a strong 10 million customer base. We currently serve 40 cities and towns across 5 states and will increase our footprint to 100 cities & towns and 10 states by year end. 

Since the very first day, DealShare has been focused on developing indigenous brands across states and has enabled them to grow exponentially. We are the only retailer in the country building a unique and large network of local manufacturers in the grocery space enabling them to compete with large multi-national brands. We are truly aligned to further our country’s mission of Make in India and the cherry on the top is that we are very close to breakeven”, added Medda.

Mr Sandeep Singhal, Co-founder, WestBridge Capital said, “We are very impressed with the traction that DealShare has been able to achieve especially amongst first-time internet users in the hinterlands of the country. We are confident they will be able to scale up further with the new round of funding.”

“We currently have over 1000+ micro-entrepreneurs partners promoting the community group buying (CGB) model in the country thereby generating a massive amount of employment opportunities across all tiers of cities and towns. We plan to strengthen our network further and increase it to 5000+ by this year-end. Along with this, we are planning to fuel the growth by building State-of-the-art technology and infrastructure-related assets which will ensure efficiency”, added Mr. Sankar Bora, Founder, Chief Operation Officer, DealShare.

“We invested in DealShare in its seed days and have seen the company grow rapidly, while consuming minimal capital - a refreshing change in an industry plagued by heavy capital consumption. DealShare demonstrates best-in-class unit economics and capital efficiency (5.0x+), while delivering a compelling value proposition to its customers, value-conscious middle Indians in Tier 2 and 3 cities who crave local / regional products. DealShare is constantly iterating and improving its playbook of viral customer acquisition through group buying and gamification, while driving steady retention / cohort and unit economic improvements. DealShare’s best in class fulfilment capabilities allows it to deliver this value proposition at attractive unit economics. Today, DealShare is a business that expects to break-even in the next 12 months. The Company will also expand internationally, starting with the UAE and is establishing its first base in Abu Dhabi. We are thrilled to continue backing DealShare, across rounds”, added Mr. Navroz Udwadia, Co-Founder and CEO, Falcon Edge Capital.

Tarun Davda, Managing Director, Matrix India, commented: “Matrix has had the privilege of co-leading DealShare’s Seed & Series A rounds along with Falcon Edge. This fundraise is a testament to DealShare’s exponential growth and capital-efficient business model, which uniquely serves the needs of Tier 2/3 consumers that are embracing online grocery shopping like never before! We are delighted to be re-investing in the DealShare team once again and wish the team all the very best as they seek to transform the social-commerce landscape in India, and we welcome Tiger Global to the partnership.”

Rajat Shikhar, Co-founder, Chief Product Officer, DealShare, commented, “Building scalable technology amounts to solving some hard problems and technical challenges, that are posed by our unique target group of Bharat users. Key problems revolve around savviness, efficient logistics, and making shopping convenient, cost-effective and fun with social engagement, personalization and gamification. 

This round of investment would help us continue to build a top-notch team and build a highly performant platform by which we will scale to the next level of evolution as a company."

Avendus was the exclusive financial advisor for this transaction.

Cascades Financial Solutions Inc., a PureFacts company, and Flinks announced today a strategic partnership to provide financial services firms with a best-in-class retirement income planning experience. The collaboration will see the integration of Cascades’ decumulation planning engine with Flinks’ financial data aggregation and analytics platform.

Together, Cascades and Flinks believe in a world where the opportunity to create wealth is accessible to all. Both companies aim to build meaningful wealthtech solutions that empower Canadians to live their best lives. Since the 1960’s and 70’s, the financial advice industry has been focused on addressing one primary concern from their clients: “How much money do I need to retire?” Today, those same clients now have a different primary concern: “Will I have enough money to live and enjoy my retirement?”

Cascades’ mission is to help advisors give their clients the confidence to retire without the fear they will run out of money, and to provide the peace of mind that their estate values have been maximized for future generations. This strategic partnership furthers this goal by leveraging the Flinks platform to provide clients with a simple and secure way to share financial information with their advisors, greatly reducing the efforts required to generate practical and personalized value-add plans.

“Retirement income planning is an incredibly complex and nuanced endeavour. For advisors to deliver the insights their clients need, they must gather the relevant data from a wide variety of sources,” said Jonathan Kestle, co-founder, Cascades Financial Solutions. “Together with Flinks, advisors can now simply ask clients for their permission to collect the relevant financial data, streamlining the experience and getting more retirement income plans into the hands of Canadians.”

“Wealth management had a data challenge,” said Brock Leong, Director of Global Partnerships, Flinks. “Manual collection processes are time consuming, error prone, and never completely up to date. Flinks not only solves that challenge, but also makes sharing information the easiest part of the process. The combination of Cascades and Flinks enables advisors to see the whole picture, plan accordingly, and give their clients peace of mind over their financial future.”