Taulia, the leading fintech provider of working capital solutions, has today announced the appointment of Ali Ansari as Director for Global Supply Chain and Payables Solutions. 

Ansari will be responsible for managing and expanding Taulia’s world-class supply chain and payables solutions globally, with immediate effect. In this newly created role, Ansari will be based in London and report to Kathleen Nugent, Global Head of Product. 

With over 25 years in the trade and finance industry, Ansari, a qualified Chartered Accountant, has held senior positions with top-tier organisations including J.P. Morgan, ABN AMRO and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Prior to joining Taulia, Ansari was Global Head of Products in HSBC’s Global Trade and Receivables Finance Development, where he was responsible for managing and developing Guarantees, Financial Institution Trade and Risk Distribution Products. 

Ansari said: “Joining Taulia is a wonderful opportunity to fully use my experience, help the team expand and meet the growing demand globally for technology solutions in supply chain finance. I thrive when driving change and solving problems. Taulia provides a powerful platform to customers, which enables them to get access to liquidity as and when they need it.”  

Cedric Bru, CEO of Taulia, said: “Ali joins us at an exciting time as we are experiencing rapid growth; having just announced our expansion into both China and Singapore, and our new Inventory Management solution. We are excited to welcome Ali to the team. He brings a wealth of knowledge to the role, and his extensive experience in the industry will be tremendously impactful as we look to further grow Taulia’s payables finance capabilities and drive innovation for our customers.”

Streaming Capabilities Support Customers with No-Code Capabilities, Ease-of-Use, and Interoperability

TIBCO Software Inc., a global leader in enterprise data, empowers its customers to connect, unify, and confidently predict business outcomes, solving the world's most complex data-driven challenges. Today, TIBCO announced it has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Streaming Analytics, Q2 2021. In the report, top streaming analytics providers are evaluated against each other in a stringent process that includes 22 clearly defined criteria relevant for analytics and AI applied to streaming data.

“For many digital-first applications, what’s in the rear-view mirror can be irrelevant. Streaming analytics help you predict the best move now based on real-time data, and with efficient no-code application development, real-time apps can be built faster than ever before,” said Mark Palmer, senior vice president, engineering, TIBCO. “We are excited to be recognised by Forrester, as the report is a source of real value for companies looking to select a partner for their streaming analytics needs.”

According to Forrester, “TIBCO Software analyses streaming data to both automate and augment analytics. TIBCO Streaming is designed for real-time insights whether they are embedded in applications to automate decisions or surfaced in operational dashboards for business experts. Developers and business intelligence professionals alike can get up and running quickly with rich, no-code visual development tools. Developers can always drop to code when needed or desired. Its integration with TIBCO Spotfire visual analytics also makes it an ideal core technology to power real-time command centers of any flavour as well as busy analysts at their desks.”

TIBCO is a leader in the end-to-end delivery of real-world analytic applications, platforms, and solutions with deep expertise and experience supporting mission-critical applications across a wide range of industries, in the cloud or on-premises. TIBCO technologies enable extremely low-latency, high-throughput data streams, driving complex rules or AI-model-based decisioning, and dynamic learning directly from the data. Such intelligent data streams can be visualised in real time, or drive effective automation, applications, and processes.

TIBCO offers streaming analytics on premises and in the cloud via TIBCO Cloud Data Streams, a zero-install, cloud-based, easy-to-deploy solution. Streaming is also an embedded component of the market-leading TIBCO Data Virtualization, making it easier to tap streaming data and weave it into an enterprise data fabric.

To learn more about TIBCO’s comprehensive solutions driving today’s most successful organisations, please read our blog to download the full report and see how our customers have benefited.

Power Block Coin launches SmartFi decentralized and centralized cryptocurrency services

Power Block Coin LLC announces the launch of SmartFi, a new, regulatory compliant range of decentralized and centralized cryptocurrency services, aimed at individuals, companies and institutions.

The SmartFi launch builds on the success of Power Block Coin, which since 2017 has delivered high touch execution and financing services to institutional and high net worth clients. A pioneer in the emerging crypto-currency industry, Power Block Coin has offered cryptocurrency-backed loans, coin-interest accounts, spot markets and OTC derivatives trading in BTC, ETH, and various other digital assets. Power Block Coin has completed over $1 billion of loans and spot-market transactions.

Power Block Coin was founded as an energy infrastructure company to support the development of cryptocurrency mining operations, by a group of US energy industry veterans. These include former Utah state legislator Aaron Tilton and Tom Retson, who was an executive at GE Nuclear Energy. Other team members are drawn from investment banks, trading institutions and regulatory agencies. 

The experience and skills of the SmartFi team have enabled them to utilize proven strategies and techniques from other areas of financial services and capital markets. They have adapted and modified them with proprietary features to provide answers to the challenges faced by cryptominers and cryptocurrency users. SmartFi has now automated a number of those solutions, creating a suite of complementary decentralized and centralized tools. These will provide users with simpler and safer options to create wealth.

SmartFi CEO Aaron Tilton commented: “For a number of years there has been a growing demand by consumers for greater individual choice in wealth generation. The strategies, processes and tools of the current cryptocurrency landscape are sometimes complex, restrictive and risky. SmartFi is providing users with a new range of options, to give them more flexibility, more control and will open up new opportunities to customers worldwide.”

Tribe Payments, a payment technology provider, today announced it has agreed a partnership with ClearBank to provide Tribe’s fintech customers with access to payment schemes using ClearBank’s award-winning agency banking and banking-as-service product sets. The partnership will strengthen Tribe’s Bank Connect solution by allowing its fintech clients to quickly and easily integrate Faster Payments, CHAPS, BACS and Direct Debit payments to improve the functionality of their offerings. The integration will allow end-users to instantly make and receive funds from their account, as well as initiate salary payments via BACs, and set-up Direct Debits.

Tribe Payments’ Bank Connect solution has been integrated with ClearBank’s API first platform. Bank Connect helps fintechs that have a card programme or digital wallets on Tribe’s platform, to add banking services to their payment products. The integration lets Tribe’s fintech clients offer the following capabilities to their customers:

• Faster Payments: Real-time instant payments for transactions up to £250,000, allowing customers to make and receive payments within minutes, and have near-instant access to funds.
• CHAPS: High-value, bank-to-bank, and settlement risk-free payment capabilities with same-day payment guarantee. Although not instant, CHAPS is highly flexible, with no limits on the amount of money that can be sent.
• BACS & Direct Debit: Allows issuers to initiate salary payments via BACS on behalf of its customers. Users will also benefit from ClearBank’s improved Direct Debit functionality, which notifies customers 24 hours in advance of payment being taken, to ensure they have the correct amount of funds ready in their account.

“ClearBank is dedicated to helping fintechs gain simple, secure and compliant access to banking systems and rails. These systems and rails were once the preserve of the few, but our partnership with Tribe means that more service providers can now utilise the payments schemes they need to drive innovation and competition in the market,” said Simon Jones, Chief Customer Officer at ClearBank. “Through technology partnerships like this we are transforming the way financial products are built and delivered for the better.”

“Fintechs need access to banking systems to create more powerful convenience-driven customer propositions,” said Alex Reddish, Chief Commercial Officer at Tribe. “Bank Connect helps to standardise access to these banking systems, cutting out complexity and unnecessary third-parties. Thanks to our collaboration with ClearBank, we can add vital payment functionality through a single API integration, giving firms the ability to provide their customers with choice, plus the chance to expand their reach, and reduce cost.”

Tribe’s clients can use the new capability from ClearBank in conjunction with Tribe’s Digital Banking solution or its core processing platform, ISAAC. Alternatively, it is also available as a stand-alone connection that can be easily integrated via APIs into existing client payment systems.

Etrading Software (ETS), global provider of technology-led solutions, acting as exclusive Registration Authority for the new International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) standard for Digital Token Identifiers (DTIs), announced the DTI Registry which will assign ISO’s DTI Identifiers to digital tokens globally, goes live today.

Etrading Software’s Digital Token Identifier Foundation (DTIF), a non-profit division of the company, is responsible for the DTI Registry. The foundation’s mission is to provide the golden source reference data for the unique identification of digital tokens based on ISO’s new standard for digital assets, ISO 24165. The launch is ahead of the ISO standard that is scheduled to be published in Q3 2021 to meet urgent industry and any regulatory need.

Sassan Danesh, Managing Partner of Etrading Software, said, “The purpose of the DTI is to address the demands of exchanges, custodians, financial institutions, and regulatory authorities for a registry and identifier assignment process for digital tokens, to mirror the use of ISINs and UPIs in the digital asset space. DTIs will bring many benefits to users of this burgeoning asset-class, from improving liquidity, allowing for easier identification of counterparties, facilitating price discovery and improving the operational efficiency of post-trade processing. We are pleased with how the DTI is being received by industry.”

“Global Digital Finance (GDF) welcomes the launch of the ISO Digital Token Identifier”, said Lawrence Wintermeyer, Executive Co-Chair of GDF, adding, “This new industry standard, when adopted by digital asset service providers, data providers, and regulators, will contribute, alongside the GDF Code of Conduct, to the mainstream adoption of digital assets in an orderly and standardized way.” 

Dominique Tanner, Chairman of ISO TC 68/SC 8, said, “ISO TC 68/SC 8 is glad to see this exciting development, meaning over a 100 digital tokens can now be uniquely identified based on objective, verifiable information. The underlying data used to assign identifiers has been made public on the DTIF website. This is an important step for the industry in being able to unambiguously identify digital assets, in a standardised way.”

Rudolf Siebel, MD, BVI German Investment Funds Association, said, “Standardising the identification of digital assets will bring a host of benefits for industry, by reducing ambiguity, increasing transparency and consistency, and lowering the bar for greater institutional investment in this burgeoning asset class. We are pleased the next stage of the DTI process brings this standard closer to helping the market.” 

Tony Pettipiece, Global Digital and Cryptocurrency Association’s (Global DCA) Board of Directors,  Policy and Regulation, said, “This standard will create a foundation for growth while also providing for straight-through-processing and global interoperability across the ecosystem for the registration, classification, issuance, trading, settlement, accounting and regulatory reporting of the nascent asset class. The Global-DCA is excited to be working with the DTI, ISO/TC 68/SC 8, and the broader, digital asset community to help shape this and other standards, because standards are a necessary step toward realizing the societal benefits of cryptocurrencies and digital assets.”

The DTIF has pre-seeded the registry with 100 tokens, and over 70 fork records associated with these tokens. It will continuously be adding and verifying the normative and informative token data in preparation for the full launch. The scope of DTI issuance is all fungible digital assets which use distributed ledger technology for their issuance, storage, exchange, record of ownership, or transaction validation and are not a “fiat” currency (as defined by ISO 4217). More information is available by subscribing to the DTIF newsletter to follow the DTI registration progress. Please contact us if you have any questions on the data in the registry.

Industry veteran and Founder Manish Patel to continue as Managing Director

India’s leading independent financial services platform for MSMEs, Mswipe, today announced the appointment of Ketan Patel as the Chief Executive Officer. Founder Manish Patel, who has built the company over the last one decade as India’s largest POS player and leading end-to-end digital enabler of MSMEs, will move into the role of Managing Director.

Ketan, who brings close to 20 years of entrepreneurial and corporate experience in fintech and BFSI industry, will lead the company through a strategic transformation - by accelerating its operational excellence to provide seamless digital payments and by building value-added financial services including credit, insurance among others for MSMEs.

Commenting on the appointment, Mswipe Founder Manish Patel said, “I am excited to welcome Ketan to the Mswipe family. Ketan is a seasoned leader with a proven track record of delivering operational excellence, achieving revenue and profitability for our business. I am a firm believer of constant evolution and adaptability and I am confident that Ketan will spearhead Mswipe on to an exciting, high-growth journey as Mswipe expands to provide credit and other financial services in addition to our core payments services to our customers.”

“Mswipe has been a market leader in transforming digital payments for MSMEs and is credited with bringing several industry first innovations in the last 10 years. I am excited to be a part of the journey ahead that seeks to transform the financial services landscape for the smallest of businesses in India. We will continue building a superior financial platform for MSMEs that is built on the tenants of accessibility and affordability,” Ketan added on his new role.

In his role as the Executive Director & CEO of CASHe, Ketan led the company in becoming India’s largest digital lending company for salaried millennials. Prior to his entrepreneurial venture Ketan worked with Kotak Mahindra Bank for over 18 years where he had an illustrious career heading some of its key portfolios ranging from Private Banking, Wealth Management, Composite Business Solutions and E-commerce. He was also instrumental in setting up the Private Banking Business for the Kotak Group in the UK.

Ketan has received several industry recognitions for his leadership. He was bestowed with the Young Entrepreneurs Award by The Economic Times in 2020 and recognised as India's Most Trusted CEO 2020 by WCRC- The Malcolm McDonald Academy. Ketan was recognised for his excellence in Finance – Leadership at the Finext Conference in Dubai 2019 and received the ‘CEO of the Year’ award at the Asia Leadership Awards in 2019.

UBL, Pakistan's fastest-growing digital bank, has signed an agreement with Temenos (SIX: TEMN) and National Data Consultant (NdcTech) to provide and implement a next-generation digital banking solution. As a pioneer of innovation in the Pakistani Banking industry, UBL, earlier this year, launched Pakistan’s first Islamic Digital Account and the first of its kind ‘UBL Pay’ where customers can use their phones as debit cards. Through this agreement, the bank has embarked on a digital transformation journey across all channels, products and segments, including retail, SME and corporate, for its domestic and international markets.

Once executed, the bank expects to hyper-scale its digital footprint and provide a modern online banking platform with an integrated, seamless customer experience, covering the entire customer lifecycle from customer onboarding, deposit, loan originations, and digital servicing.

Temenos Infinity is the leader in driving customer acquisition and digital banking engagement with its scalable platform, deep analytics, and AI scoring models. The platform enables banks to increase digital revenues and reduce customer onboarding time significantly. Built on a micro-services architecture, Temenos Infinity is the most open and agile cloud-native product allowing banks to continuously extend and expand their solution for all or portions of the customer lifecycle.

Mr. Jean-Paul Mergeai, President for APAC and MEA, Temenos, said, "UBL is leading the way in digital banking, and we are proud to support the bank in the next phase of its digital journey. With Temenos Infinity, UBL can take customer experience to the next level, delivering digital experiences that delight customers and make banking better across every channel. Temenos Infinity is the world's best-selling digital banking platform and our selection, together with NdcTech, reflects our market leadership but also our success working with banks in Pakistan to deliver a rapid implementation and time-to-value."

At the event, Ms. Ammara Masood, CEO & President from NdcTech, said, "We look forward to this collaboration which will allow UBL to make incredible leaps forward in its Digital Banking transformation and customer experiences across various segments. The Temenos Infinity platform and NdcTech expertise will provide the bank new capabilities and a great platform for future innovation".

Mr. Shazad G Dada, President & CEO UBL commented, "Customer centricity is at the heart of everything we do. This partnership with Temenos and NdcTech is a great catalyst in our digital transformation journey. We are very excited to make this a part of our strategic objective of becoming more agile and tailor our platform to better serve the rapidly changing needs of our customers”.

The agreement was signed virtually with UBL & NdcTech at the UBL Head Office in Karachi and Temenos at their Head Office in Dubai, UAE.

ZebPay, India’s oldest and most widely-used crypto asset exchange, today announced the launch of ZebPay Earn, a new feature enabling ZebPay customers to earn returns on crypto available in their spot and trading wallets. ZebPay is the first cryptocurrency exchange in India to offer this feature to its entire customer base.

On launch, ZebPay Earn will support earnings on Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Tether (USDT), Polygon (MATIC), Binance Coin (BNB), and Dai (DAI). Returns can be earned on the balance in an investor’s spot or trading wallet and even in pending ask (sell) orders. The earnings will be calculated based on the daily eligible balance as at midnight UTC (or 5.30 am IST) every day. The earnings cycle will be for the span of a whole month and the monthly earnings will be credited by the 7th of the following month. The minimum earnings paid will be 1 Satoshi per coin. All users will be able to see the list of coins they can earn returns on and their earnings on the ZebPay website, iOS app, or Android app in the coming few days.

All registered ZebPay customers who have completed their KYC will be eligible to earn returns on their trading wallet balance by default via ZebPay Earn. In May, ZebPay launched ZebPay Lending Platform, a first-of-its-kind crypto lending model in India allowing users to lend their crypto to ZebPay and earn returns based on the coin and its lending period. ZebPay Earn allows users to continue trading their coins, whereas users cannot trade the coins lent with the ZebPay Lending Platform before maturity.

Avinash Shekhar, Co-CEO, ZebPay, said, “At ZebPay, we are constantly ideating on ways to encourage our users to invest in crypto for the long-term to get the best possible returns. Recently, we introduced the ZebPay Lending Platform to allow users to earn passive returns on their crypto holdings. With ZebPay Earn, an easy-to-use feature, we are removing the threshold of having to lend one’s crypto for a certain amount of time. We are now enabling ZebPay users to not only continue holding but also continue trading while earning returns on their balance. We want our customers’ coins to continue to earn for them in more than one way as they sit in their wallets. We want to look out for every customer HODLing their coins for long-term returns as well as those short-term customers trading on our exchange daily. We value our customer's trust in ZebPay and are constantly innovating with new features and product offerings for the crypto community in India.”

This weekend, Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority announced that Binance Markets Limited is currently “not permitted to undertake any regulated activity” in the United Kingdom. Last month, Binance Markets Limited withdrew its 5MLD application, and all parties seem to agree that the latest developments did not come as a surprise.

“This is a situation where size doesn’t matter,” 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. “Traditionally we think that the biggest entities have the easiest time dealing with compliance issues, thanks to significant legal resources at their disposal. While that may be true, they’re still bound to the same rules and regulations as others face. A small investment in compliance on the front end can save exchange operators significant losses on the backend.”

Additionally, the company must post the following notice on its website and apps for users originating from the United Kingdom:

BINANCE MARKETS LIMITED IS NOT PERMITTED TO UNDERTAKE ANY REGULATED ACTIVITY IN THE U.K. Due to the imposition of requirements by the FCA, Binance Markets Limited is not currently permitted to undertake any regulated activities without the prior written consent of the FCA. (No other entity in the Binance Group holds any form of U.K. authorisation, registration or license to conduct regulated activity in the U.K.).

“In essence, while Binance Markets Limited is banned from offering regulated services, Binance is still allowed to allow those living in Britain to trade cryptocurrencies via Binance.com. What’s interesting about this is that the company is said to have withdrawn its application to register with the Financial Conduct Authority because of anti-money laundering requirements. Binance is the largest crypto exchange on the planet, and, yet, compliance became an issue,” noted Gardner.

According to CNBC, an CFA spokesman offered that “Binance Markets Limited withdrew their 5MLD application on 17 May 2021 following intensive engagement from the FCA. The action taken today on Binance Markets Limited has been in train for some time.”

“As regulators continue to grapple with how they treat cryptocurrency exchanges, it is more important than ever for exchange operators to deal with regulatory issues, including anti-money laundering and terrorism financing, on the front end. So often, operators are in a mad dash to market, trying to launch their exchange quickly, and they don’t see the forest through the trees. Compliance issues and security should all be part of the conversation as operators begin to build out their technology. Compliance is more than a nuisance to procrastinate on. Failure to comply with budding regulations could shut an enterprise down before it even begins,” 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.

“Currently the market is such that compliance and security are thought of as costs to be avoided. However, the exchanges which invest in their security, and those which invest in their ability to meet or exceed regulatory requirements --- those are the entities that will succeed over the long-haul,” opined Gardner.