21Shares AG, the pioneering issuer of crypto Exchange Traded Products (ETPs) is launching the world’s first Solana (SOL) ETP (ticker: ASOL) on the regulated market of the Swiss stock exchange (SIX Exchange) on Wednesday, June 30th 2021 further boosting 21Shares as the leading issuer of crypto ETPs. The ETP will offer additional yield through staking rewards by validating transactions on the Solana blockchain which is dedicated to fostering active network participation (such as staking) in a secure, regulated and insured environment.

Solana (SOL) is a highly functional open source project that banks on blockchain technology’s permissionless nature to provide decentralised finance (DeFi) solutions. While the idea and initial work on the project began in 2017, Solana was officially launched in March 2020 by the Solana Foundation with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland headed by developer Anatoly Yakovenko. One of the essential innovations Solana brings to the table is the proof-of-history (PoH) consensus. Solana is known in the cryptocurrency space because of the incredibly short processing times the blockchain offers. Solana’s hybrid protocol allows for significantly decreased validation times for both transaction and smart contract execution. With lightning-fast processing times, Solana has attracted a lot of institutional interest as well. The Solana protocol is intended to serve both small-time users and enterprise customers alike. One of Solana’s main promises to customers is that they will not be surprised by increased fees and taxes. The protocol is designed in such a way as to have low transaction costs while still guaranteeing scalability and fast processing, key aspects to which the 21Shares’s Listing committee concluded to launch the underlying asset as an ETP.
Further insights and analysis of Solana can be found in a new research report published by the 21Shares research team.  

Despite the recent volatility markets, 21Shares have gathered more than $55m in institutional net inflows in the month June alone across all its ETPs.

“Following an active review to extend our innovative and forward-thinking asset launches, we are on track to deliver more new ETPs demanded by clients and as a result we remain the market leading crypto ETPs issuer of choice. European institutions continue asking us for simple and effective access to these new blockchain technologies which we can deliver based on our successful track record. These new ETPs deliver what clients asked for and we expect to add 2 new crypto ETPs in the next months together with new listing and trading venues.” says Hany Rashwan, CEO 21Shares AG. 

The SOL ETP will allow clients to diversify and gain exposure to this inspiring blockchain technology to which its native coin is currently ranked 14 on the CoinMarketCap. The ETP structure is 100% physically collateralised, segregated and replicates 1:1 the tracking of the crypto asset. Coinbase will assume custody and staking for SOL. Physical replication for ASOL aims to track the performance of SOL coin with each unit of the ETP backed by approx. 0.69 SOL at launch with a base fee of 2.5% p.a and will also be available on the Stuttgart and Dusseldorf MTFs. ASOL ETP will also provide additional yield through staking rewards by validating transactions on the Solana blockchain.

• Zopa’s next generation bank is on course to reach profitability before the end of the year, making it among the fastest  challenger banks to reach this milestone 
• Success is due to Zopa’s focus on providing lending products which address the unmet needs of UK consumers
• The first year of the bank has seen increased demand vs. expectation and generated higher than expected growth across a number of metrics, including revenue
• Zopa is on track for an IPO in late Q4 2022
   

This week Zopa is marking the one year anniversary of gaining its full bank licence. Since the bank launch, Zopa has rapidly grown its customer base and product range.

Zopa is focused predominantly on lending, where it has extensive experience having lent £6bn in personal and auto loans in the UK market. Zopa is unique amongst fintechs in disrupting this sector, which is still in large part dominated by incumbent banks. As a result, core customer needs such as speed of decisioning, certainty on price and digital onboarding and servicing are generally not met. Zopa’s proprietary tech and focus on customer led innovation has allowed it to address these needs, bringing innovation such as end-to-end application in minutes, personalised rates throughout the journey and real time balance updates.

The appeal of Zopa’s products have been demonstrated in the last 12 months with Zopa surpassing all targets across its new and existing products. The bank has become a top ten credit card issuer in the UK, attracting in excess of 100,000 credit card customers in nine months. At the same time, it has continued to see strong demand across its personal loans and car finance products. Alongside its lending, Zopa has also attracted more than £400m in customer deposits and won several awards for its new savings product.

The pace of Zopa’s growth and its approach to customer-led innovation has been enabled by its expertise in data and technology. For example, Zopa has been at the forefront of Open Banking utilisation, with both inhouse applications such as its unique credit health tool Borrowing Power and recent partnerships with ClearScore and CreditLadder. Additional innovation in the last year includes features such as SafetyNet, which allows credit card customers to set aside part of their credit limit for a rainy day.

Zopa’s focus on lending and its ability to attract deposits mean that it has a unique business model amongst challenger banks as it generates strong customer revenue. This approach has resulted in revenue per customer more than doubling since Zopa launched its bank, putting it on track to reach profitability before the end of the year. This trajectory would make Zopa amongst the quickest challenger banks to reach profitability. This, combined with its momentum, both in terms of revenue and product success means Zopa has set its sight on an IPO in late Q4 2022, by which time it would have shown a £12m+ track record of consistent profitability.

Jaidev Janardana, CEO of Zopa, comments: “The past year has been a highly successful one for Zopa Bank and we’ve exceeded our targets across new and existing products. We built a bank to better meet the needs of UK consumers and our year one success endorses that approach. We look forward to using the momentum that we have gained to expand our products and services further and to help more customers. At Zopa, we are also passionate about building a sustainable business and so I’m excited to see that our trajectory puts us on course to be amongst the fastest digital banks to achieve profitability. We will continue to build from that base with an IPO on the horizon as early as Q4 2022.”

Bigbank, an international Estonian-owned bank offering personalised financial products, has chosen European payment services provider Nets, to provide issuer processing and digital services, including virtual cards and mobile payment capabilities.

As a licensed credit institution, Bigbank delivers financial services to European private and corporate customers with a focus on loans, corporate loans and term deposits in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden and Bulgaria. The bank also provides cross-border deposit services in Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, and the partnership will further extend Nets’ footprint across Europe.

Nets will support Bigbank’s core offering by delivering issuer processing and innovative digital services through its strong modular-based platform. This will include tokenisation, with access to Apple Pay and Google Pay, as well as instant issuing with virtual cards and digital PIN. Nets will also provide Bigbank with state-of-the-art card personalisation, customer services, and fraud and dispute services.

“As a frontrunner in the European payment service industry, Nets will help enable our customers to improve their lives through seamless financial services,” said Martin Länts, CEO of Bigbank. “The benefits of scale and international reach that Nets provides will be invaluable as we grow our digital services offering across Europe.”

Henrik Anker Jørgensen, CEO of Nets Estonia AS & Head of Baltic region in Nets, added, “We are very much looking forward to providing Bigbank with our modular and flexible processing platform, helping them in their journey to become the digital financial service provider of choice in their European markets.”

The Chartered Banker Institute (the Institute) and HSBC UK are working together to develop the knowledge and expertise of the bank’s commercial banking team to better support UK businesses navigate a transition to net zero.

More than 500 colleagues are expected to participate in the Institute’s Green and Sustainable Finance e-learning over the next year.

Simon Thompson, Chief Executive of the Chartered Banker Institute commented: “To ensure every professional financial decision includes climate change, we must ensure every finance professional develops the expertise required to manage climate risks and identify the opportunities from the transition. As the leading global voice for responsible and sustainable banking, and with an advanced curriculum of learning content and professional qualifications, the Institute is uniquely placed to support HSBC UK.”

The bank’s most recent Navigator report found that 78% of UK companies believe that a greater focus on sustainability will result in a growth of sales over the next year, as consumers are more attracted to doing business with firms who have clear ESG ambitions.1

Amanda Murphy, Head of Commercial Banking, HSBC UK added: “Many of our business customers understand that a strong sustainability strategy is key to improving their financial position today, as well as protecting their growth aspirations in the future. We’re delighted to be working with the Chartered Banker Institute to ensure that we are best placed to support customers as they transition to net zero.”

HSBC UK is committed to helping customers transition to a low carbon economy, offering a wide range of Green and Sustainable products to support British business’ growth ambitions. To learn more, visit HSBC UK’s sustainability hub for businesses.

Trifork, a next-generation IT services provider, and Modularbank, a cloud-native core banking technology provider, have entered into an integration partnership, strengthening both companies’ banking and fintech offerings.

As banking continues the transformation from branches on street corners to digital services, the importance for the financial industry to develop and offer innovative and easy-to-use digital solutions has increased.

Modularbank has built a highly configurable core banking platform featuring a comprehensive set of retail and business banking capabilities. We help financial innovators to rapidly develop, test and roll out new products and experiences, all of which starts from the core. Trifork will leverage its vast experience in building innovative fintech solutions to develop add-on features to Modularbank’s core banking platform and support customers within the financial services industry throughout the implementation process.  

Announcing the news, Peter Rørsgaard, COO, Trifork FinTech, states: “Fintech is a core business area in our growth strategy, and the partnership with Modularbank, who has developed a platform allowing both established financial service companies and fintech startups to quickly roll out tailored digital services, further strengthens our offering within the important and fast-growing fintech segment.” 

Modularbank's platform consists of independent modules, allowing customers to pick and choose the exact capabilities they need in order to meet their business objectives. Its API-first approach facilitates easy integration with other services and systems, enabling the roll-out of new product offerings in a flexible, fast and cost-efficient manner when compared to legacy banking platforms.

Julien Douve, Alliance Manager, Modularbank said: “Partnering with Trifork, an IT and business services provider with such a significant presence throughout Europe, enables us to better serve our quickly growing customer base. Combining our flexible and lightweight core banking technology with Trifork's reach and proficiency in building new use cases, we will bring fintech innovation to more and more customers within Europe, letting them unlock the full potential of our core banking platform.” 

Prior to entering into this integration partnership, Trifork and Modularbank were already working together on several customer cases.

Horizon Software (Horizon), provider of electronic trading solutions and algorithmic technology for the global capital markets, have today announced that, Santander Bank Polska, one of the largest and most innovative financial institutions in Poland, has successfully deployed Horizon’s Platform for Market Making connecting to the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE).

Santander Bank has chosen to partner with Horizon as a result of their strong reputation in the region and vast experience with exchanges. Horizon’s market-making systems deployed on the WSE cover many asset classes, including equities, equity futures and index futures. On top of this, Horizon provides Santander with the tools & technology for both quoting and hedging. These solutions ensure efficient access to the market and allow clients to obtain an accurate monitoring of positions.

Santander Bank Polska Group first established a relationship with Horizon in July 2019 to enable market making in equities and derivatives on the WSE as part of its strategy to expand and upgrade its services.

Marcin Jurkowski, Manager at Strategy & Development Department at Santander Bank Polska, says: “Horizon has been carefully selected amid multiple electronic trading vendors in the region after close examination. This leading technology provider has not failed us in delivering the best service, exceeding our expectations. At Santander Bank, we are very proud of what this collaboration has resulted in, and we believe that the investment will yield significant trading benefits”.

Damien Jenner, Head of Sales EMEA at Horizon Software, added: “We are honored to support Santander Bank’s development, especially for market making in Warsaw. Also, we are delighted to establish this strategic partnership with one of the best financial institutions in Poland. This close collaboration proves our commitment to developing the next generation of sophisticated platforms, providing our clients who trade on WSE with a single cross-asset, algo-powered platform for both principal and agency trading.”

Cardlay, a leading Danish commercial banking as a service payment FinTech, today announced it is collaborating with SAP^® Concur^®, the world’s leading brand of travel, expense and invoice management solutions, on an integration that is designed to allow banks to issue and manage virtual payment cards for their corporate card holders. 

Through this partnership and planned integration, Cardlay will offer a cloud solution that helps a bank’s corporate card holders to easily capture, verify, and reconcile card spend. Corporate card holders will be able to benefit from a closed loop of optimized automated processes to save time, avoid errors, reduce fraud, and secure data enrichment. 

Cardlay’s solution is planned to enable employees to operate their card through digital wallets on a mobile app and web portal, integrated with Concur Expense, and managers will be able to issue and control virtual cards for employees.

Employees will be capable of quickly requesting a payment card via the app before any company spend occurs. Managers can then approve/deny new cards, set spend limits and review settings. Virtual cards would be added easily to digital wallets, and as the card is used, the transaction data would be available in the SAP Concur service to be reconciled. 

Jørgen Christian Juul, CEO at Cardlay, said: “Through our SAP Concur partnership we can simplify and streamline corporate card management for companies globally. The collaboration brings banks enormous value, leveraging the distribution of corporate payment cards for all employees by securing the transition from out-of-pocket payments. This is planned to enable immediate benefits such as streamlined processes, improved data, minimized fraud, reduction in errors, and increased control. Commercial payment is going through a massive development and we see a great opportunity for Cardlay to create powerful integrated solutions with numerous benefits for global companies.”

Currently, companies need to plan, predict future needs and issue cards accordingly. Cardlay’s integrated solution with Concur Expense is planned to enable banks to deliver a sophisticated and integrated card management capability to their corporate card holders to issue a payment card and simultaneously approve a budget.