Monneo, a virtual IBAN and corporate bank account provider, is proving a hit with yachting and marine businesses.

Unlike traditional banks, Monneo simplifies the management of corporate banking for companies with unique financial needs.

Having a multi-tiered structure provided by Monneo, allows companies better visibility and control of funds as they can decide how much money to transfer to each yacht and its crew’s sub-accounts.

An ideal solution for managing expenses, and potentially saving yacht owners and management companies $millions each year, it allows for the payment of international expenses, maintenance, international money transfers and deposits, as well as accepting different currencies and dealing with different languages.

Lili Metodieva, Managing Director at Monneo explains; “Currently, too much time is diverted away from the priorities and into cumbersome expense tools and spreadsheets. In addition to our digital banking services, Monneo provides a super easy tool that gives ultimate control and accountability to finance management. A purpose-built multi-card, multi-currency account that enables staff to transact, record and review expenses in real time at the click of a button. This makes life easier for captains and crews onboard, and ultimately provides a better service for yacht owners.”

For further information visit https://www.monneo.com.

nexo standards, which offers the payment community a unified, ISO-based solution for payment acceptance, has expanded its scope beyond card-based transactions to support changes in the ways consumers are paying for goods and services; for example using mobile wallets, instant payments, request-to-pay and QR codes; and new payment scenarios such as open-loop transport payments. 

The freely available nexo technical standards are based on ISO 20022 which addresses the complexity created by using existing fragmented and proprietary financial service standards.

Working with an international membership base of acquirers, card schemes, issuers, merchants, processors and vendors, nexo standards simplifies and standardizes the exchange of data between all stakeholders to detail an integrated global approach to payment acceptance.        

Jacques Soussana, Secretary-General at nexo standards, comments: “Today, our standards are easing integration complexity for merchants, processors, vendors, PSPs and banks, and are supported by schemes all over the world. Adding other means of electronic payments to our scope enables nexo standards to bring these significant financial and operational benefits regardless of the transaction type, payment method or technology used. This reflects the needs of our members, the market and their customers.”

The scope expansion was agreed at the association’s General Assembly last month, during which several new representatives were elected to its Board of Directors and appointed to its Executive Team. Yann Leclerc, Project and Solutions Director at Market Pay, was elected as new General Assembly Chairman; and Patrice Hertzog, Manager at Crédit Mutuel Global Payment Solutions, was elected as Board of Directors Chairman. 

nexo standards are already used across six continents and power more than five billion payment transactions a year.

Learn more about becoming a member and shaping the future of payment acceptance.

United Fintech has announced its Advisory Board, with the appointment of six world-class experts who will play a key role in the global expansion of the fast-growth firm launched by Christian Frahm to help banks, hedge funds and asset managers to accelerate their transition to a digital world through access to fintechs specialising in capital markets.

The members of the Advisory Board are:

• Russel Levi – 25 years’ experience heading up Sales at Bloomberg and SuperDerivatives; responsible for building Bloomberg’s European business.
• Michel André - CTO at Saxo Bank for 14 years and widely regarded as one of Europe’s leading IT architects.
• Rasmus Jensen – Specialist in corporate leadership and digital transformation, instrumental in the significant growth of Templafy’s commercial team.
• Peter Korsholm – successful investor, former partner at EQT and 12 years at the firm which is one of Europe’s most successful Private Equity firms with $80 billion AUM.
• Jannik Kruse Petersen – 20 years in investment banking and private equity and a successful private fintech investor.
• Morten Jensen – Leading legal expert, Head of Capital Markets and M&A at Bruun Hjejle, advising clients such as Goldman Sachs and EQT.

Peter Korsholm, Jannik Kruse Petersen and Morten Jensen are also investors in United Fintech.

Christian Frahm, Founder and CEO, United Fintech says, “We have strengthened our exceptional team with an outstanding Advisory Board to provide further scrutiny and consultancy, particularly in terms of our strategic fintech acquisitions. Our Advisory Board comprises of world class leaders in their respective fields, including highly experienced and talented M&A experts and fintech leaders. I feel very humbled and honoured that, at this early stage for United Fintech, such eminent experts have chosen to support our vision and join our journey.”

Russel Levi, Advisory Board member, adds, “I am excited and feel privileged to be part of such a talented and experienced Advisory Board.  The capital markets industry largely runs using legacy technology and data provided by a small number of outdated providers with inflexible and expensive business models. The status quo is ripe for disruption by nimble start-ups with strong engineering credentials.

“Christian is an incredibly ambitious and successful visionary and has established United Fintech with a clear plan to enable banks and hedge funds worldwide to have easy access to innovative capital markets solutions and to help proven but small fintechs accelerate their growth globally and realise their true potential.”

United Fintech plans to acquire and scale a range of pioneering small to medium-sized engineering-led fintech companies, all with a proven capital markets product; and to partner with banks and financial institutions to help them to access and onboard these innovative digital technologies.

To date, the firm has acquired two fintech firms, NetDania and TTMZero and plans to have an extensive fintech portfolio including products ranging from trading platforms, liquidity management and regulatory reporting tools through to AI and machine learning applications, Big Data tools, institutional Blockchain, Bots and Virtual Assistants.

Since launching in November 2020, United Fintech has grown at a rapid pace and now employs 85 people in London, New York, Copenhagen, Berlin and Romania. Its team consists of world-class experts in each aspect of building, growing and scaling capital markets businesses.

For further information, please visit www.unitedfintech.com 

Reach, the global payment localization provider has announced the appointment of two members of senior management, with Sarah Hermary joining as Head of Human Resources, and Lohrasp Seify as Head of Data. The new hires will support Reach’s impressive and rapid expansion plans, following a successful start to 2021. 

Seify, a data science and advanced analytics expert with a MSc in Theoretical and Computational Physics, will be responsible for Reach’s data strategy. This encompasses scalable data delivery and analysis, and optimizing data-driven decision-making for the organization, its customers, and partners.  

He will also oversee the creation of new Business Intelligence, Data Engineering, Master Data Management, Data Architecture, Data Science, and Data Security teams to strengthen Reach’s expansion and reputation as a pioneer in e-commerce data and business intelligence. 

Previous positions saw Seify leading the data, analytics, and data science teams at Blackline Vision and working on the TRIUMF particle accelerator project as part of the ATLAS Group. He will now bring his deep knowledge and expertise in cutting-edge artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to extend Reach’s industry-leading data services into more client sectors. 

“Reach is a market disruptor that is doing something new,” Seify said. “Intelligent and talented people have brought the company to where it is now. Data, analytics, and data science products are untapped potential opportunities for the company that we will start taking advantage of over the next year. As we grow and gain a larger, more diverse client base, we can do even more with data – from helping our clients attain more sales, to getting the the visibility that they might never have had, and analysis that they didn’t know they needed.” 

Meanwhile, Hermary will use her 16 years’ experience to oversee the execution of Reach’s HR strategy and operations, as well as strengthening its talent acquisition and employee development programs.  

A proven leader in her previous role in the energy sector, Hermary led the enlargement of the organization’s HR department, developing her strategic mindset which she now turns toward supporting the ever-expanding Reach team. 

In her new role, Hermary’s main focus will be developing scalable and efficient HR initiatives that can support the planned expansions to Reach’s workforce in the near future. Hermary will also play a key role in driving the implementation and improvement of HR practices that resonate with Reach’s ethos of employee development and wellness. 

To meet the requirements of its growing head count, Reach will take office space in one of Calgary’s most upscale districts, with the business taking an entire floor of the Edison building. The Edison, which is described as ‘Calgary’s headquarters for collaborators, innovators, and visionaries’, provides Reach with the perfect platform to continue strengthening its business throughout 2021 and beyond. 

Sam Ranieri, CEO of Reach, commented: “Building on our incredibly strong start to 2021, we’re excited to prepare for the next stage of Reach’s evolution by adding exceptional talent and moving to beautiful new surroundings. Sarah and Lohrasp bring with them enviable amounts of experience in both developing and leading HR and data science teams. They will play critical roles in directing our employee engagement and talent acquisition strategies and leveraging advanced data analytics to drive business growth from our new Calgary office. 

“The appetite for cross-border ecommerce has never been higher, with more customers looking beyond their own localities for their goods and services. With this, we know the true value that Reach can bring. By taking out the lease on our new office space in the heart of Calgary’s burgeoning tech scene and attracting experienced professionals internationally, we are building the foundations for our accelerated growth in the months and years to come.” 

Volante Technologies, the global leader in cloud payments and financial messaging, and SIA, a leading European hi-tech company in payment services and infrastructures, controlled by CDP Equity, have signed a partnership agreement to enable banks, financial institutions and payment service providers to access instant payments, speeding up the adoption of digital payments in Europe.

The combination of Volante’s cloud-native SEPA Instant Payments as a Service with the high-speed, secure and low-latency network infrastructure SIAnet will allow European banks and financial institutions to directly access the EBA Clearing’s pan-European real-time payment system RT1 and the TARGET Instant Payments Settlement (TIPS) service of the Eurosystem (the ECB and national central banks in the Eurozone). 

The partnership will allow the banking and financial communities to send and receive payments in less than 10 seconds for a maximum amount currently set at 100,000 euros per individual transaction, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, in line with the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer scheme of the European Payments Council (EPC).

Adopters of the Volante and SIAnet solution will benefit from cloud payments processing as a service and outstanding resiliency and network infrastructure performance. The service is also extensible with a wide range of available additional payment types and schemes, including SEPA Credit Transfer and SEPA Direct Debit.

Domenico Scaffidi, Vice President, Global Industry & Regulatory Affairs, Volante Technologies said, “The number of payment schemes across Europe continues to climb. Our combined proposition dramatically speeds up the process of connecting to these pan-European payment systems and platforms. As we are already certified with SIAnet, banks can very quickly offer instant payments to their customers, and benefit from reduced project resource and implementation costs. The partnership will also enable joint customers to extend the service to other payment types beyond SEPA Instant Payments.” 

“The partnership with Volante Technologies is an important step in implementing SIA’s strategy to develop instant payments for banks and financial institutions in Europe and we are fully committed to supporting the success of this initiative. As part of the SIA Partnership Program, we will enable Volante Technologies’ customers to directly access the pan-European payments platforms by leveraging the integration between a leading network infrastructure and a cloud-based innovative solution,” stated Cristina Astore, SIA’s Northwest Europe and DACH Region Sales Director.

Fabrick, Italy’s leading open banking ecosystem, is launching a suite of API based solutions that harness Open Finance. Fabrick has created two market-ready solutions based on Mastercard’s APIs: InControl for Business and Identity Check Mobile (IDCM) and utilises them to bring value to end users with easy-to-use applications.

The new solutions can be readily adopted by banks, fintechs and enterprises by removing friction through Fabrick’s Open Finance platform and simplifying time-to-market.

Controls for Business is a solution that Fabrick has developed based on a set of APIs Mastercard created called InControl. While banks can choose to incorporate these APIs themselves, Fabrick’s solution integrates the APIs reducing the technical burden and easing adoption. The platform is a fully customisable white-label solution that is integrated with the main payment networks. This new solution is a new, quick and easy route to market for banks. The key functionality of Controls for Business allows a business to better control the use of company credit and debit cards issued to employees for expenses and business costs.

The Controls for Business app was created to meet the specific payment needs of SMEs to have a seamless multi-channel experience across mobile, tablet and PC. With the Controls for Business solution, the business owner can set different profiles for groups of users, setting limits and restricting how and where their cards can be used. It delivers greater convenience, security and control to business owners allowing them to spend smarter.

Controls for Business’ offering satisfies the strong end-user need for high security and managed access to spending accounts, while providing cost efficiencies and speed-to-market for issuers without the need for any changes in the payment process at the merchant. Beyond this, the platform can extend card programs into new payment categories with enhanced controls and other features, resulting in the potential for new revenue opportunities. This puts business owners in control of their companies’ financial destinies.

Controls for Business is a vital and timely solution as small firms will benefit from a post-lockdown recovery only if they are able to harness the right digital tools; ultimately allowing them to compete with larger firms by closing the digital divide. Financial technology has a critical role to play in helping SME firms optimise their growth potential.

IDCM is a biometric recognition platform that allows banks and financial institutions to provide their end customers with secure biometric services such as face ID, touch ID and voice recognition that can be integrated within apps and is also available as a Software Development Kit (SDK).

IDCM is being offered to European issuers to make biometric authentication available for their customers on remote card transactions to authorise their online payments. Additionally, multiple new use cases for IDCM to improve other banking operations where the customer identity needs to be confirmed are being developed, such as updating personal details in online banking, withdrawing cash in-branch or contacting a bank call centre. With IDCM customers receive a notification via their smart phone enabling them to verify their identity via secure biometrics. As well as delivering a smoother customer experience, it can potentially reduce fraud and operational costs for the bank.

Solutions like InControl for Business and IDCM that are built on Mastercard’s APIs demonstrate the possibilities for the future of Open Finance.

Marco Casartelli, Deputy CEO of Fabrick: “We are delighted to strengthen our strategic partnership with Mastercard to deliver seamless solutions that harness the transformative power of Open Finance and realise concrete benefits for banks, fintechs, enterprises and end customers. Our InControl for Business and IDCM solutions enable easy adoption of Mastercard’s APIs.

“IDCM is highly innovative and proven in the market and we look forward to developing new use cases. IDCM is the future of secure and fast identity verification, and with InControl for Business we have brought to market a new intelligence-driven solution that offers SMEs empowering real-time control”.

Rigo van den Broeck, Executive Vice President, Cyber Security Product Innovation at Mastercard Europe, commented: “We are excited to continue to partner with Fabrick to bring solutions such as InControl for Business and IDCM to our customers and end-users. The speed and efficiency with which IDCM was delivered was really impressive. We look forward to further partnerships in the future to create solutions driving the user experience - that is convenient and controlled by the end user - of tomorrow”.

4OTC, the FinTech connectivity specialist for FX and digital assets, today announced that Cobalt, a provider of risk and settlement infrastructure for FX and digital assets, is using 4OTC's new TicketLounge service to capture and normalise post trade data onto a single FIX API.

TicketLounge is 4OTC's second product launch in only four months. In February this year, it was announced that Cobalt was also using 4OTC’s first service, 1API to connect with market data in the Digital Asset and FX Markets.

TicketLounge enables post trade automation by providing a robust and reliable infrastructure that utilises redundant, multi-regional, connectivity to major FX ECNs and digital asset exchanges.

Cobalt and its clients can leverage a single FIX API for connectivity, greatly reducing onboarding time, risks and costs. Cobalt’s 24/7 infrastructure connects risk management systems, execution venues, asset custodians, clearing mechanisms, and settlement services. Its robust engines ensure that market participants have access to best prices while credit providers and asset custodians maintain accuracy and oversight over market access.

Alexis Atkinson, Co-Founder of 4OTC said, "We are delighted to work again with Cobalt. TicketLounge delivers the same benefits for STP as our 1API service does for market data and execution. TicketLounge provides a single API for receiving STP tickets, across all significant venues, for FX and Digital Assets.  By delivering a back office process using front office technology, including the same low latency components used for market data and trading, we ensure that tickets are delivered to their end destination as fast as possible." 

Darren Coote, CEO of Cobalt said, “4OTC provides a wealth of experience in both FX and Digital Assets.  Importantly 4OTC has demonstrated on multiple occasions the ability to deliver on time and to aggressive timelines, making them the ideal partner as we expand our footprint in FX post-trade while providing a market-ready network for institutional Digital Asset trading. This partnership enables us to provide full venue coverage and an unrivalled suite of post-trade services for our customers.”

TicketLounge supports digital assets, FX spot, forwards, swaps, NDFs and NDF swaps and has full support for all regulatory fields. Operating in London, New York and Tokyo, it is certified against all major FX ECNs.

Temenos, the banking software company, today announced that Standard Chartered has extended its strategic relationship with Temenos to support its growing Financing and Securities Services offering.

Standard Chartered is a leading international banking group with a presence in 59 of the world’s most dynamic markets and serves clients in a further 85. Its Financing and Securities Services arm provides custody, clearing, fiduciary and fund services, securities lending and prime service to client segments that include insurance, asset management and sovereign wealth funds. The organization’s fund and fiduciary footprint covers 22 markets across Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

The rapidly expanding alternatives market in Asia Pacific, which is expected to grow to $4.97tn by 2025, faster than any other region and more than double the forecasted growth rate for global alternative markets¹, has been the underlying driver for the enhancements of Standard Chartered’s investor servicing platform. With Temenos’ modern technology stack, Standard Chartered is now well positioned to offer futuristic services to its clients, improve the overall client experience and continue going from strength to strength to take on this growing market opportunity as one of the leading alternatives administrators.

Kiran Dhillon, Head of Fiduciary & Fund Services, Technology & Innovation, Securities Services, Standard Chartered, commented: “We have invested significantly in our infrastructure to bring stability and robustness to the platform as part of our sustainability agenda, to ensure that we bring scale and speed to market in today’s ever-evolving landscape. We look forward to continuing our partnership with Temenos to further streamline our technology ecosystem by advancing our cloud journey, and further harnessing their solutions to improve our services across alternative products to enhance the client experience.”

The new service offerings include automations throughout the investor servicing lifecycle, have enabled higher levels of operational efficiency, freeing operations teams from manual, labor-intensive tasks so they can focus on deepening relationships with their clients.

Oded Weiss, Managing Director, Temenos Multifonds, said: “We are proud to work together with Standard Chartered, a long-standing and valued customer. Standard Chartered is leading the way with their enhanced securities services offering for alternative assets, leveraging back-office innovations to deliver personalized experiences to its clients, across multiple jurisdictions. We are excited to be a partner on this growth journey.”

Temenos has been providing market-leading investor servicing software for over 25 years. Temenos Multifonds is used by nine of the top 15 global fund administrators and services over 30,000 funds at a value of over $7 trillion. On a single, global platform we help to deliver a step-change in efficiency, control and oversight. Temenos Multifonds has the most extensive capability in the industry, integrating all administrative support functions and supporting the full investment lifecycle for traditional and alternative funds.

¹ Prequin Insights – Future of Alternatives 2025: the Great Awakening in Asia - https://www.preqin.com/insights/research/blogs/future-of-alternatives-2025-the-great-awakening-in-asia

The SER Group, a leading global content platform provider for intelligent information management, announces today that analyst firm Forrester Research has named it a "Strong Performer" in The Forrester Wave™: Content Platforms, Q2 2021.* Furthermore, in the Wave, the SER Group is the vendor with the highest score in the current offering category.

The SER Group was one of 14 vendors evaluated by Forrester Research based on a set of 25 objective criteria. It received the full score of 5 out of 5 points in 10 criteria including “Document Management”, “Digital Process Automation”, “Integrations & Interoperability”, “Support for Team or Project Workspaces”, “Packaged Applications” and “Search”. According to the evaluation scale, a full score indicates that the vendor provides superior capabilities relative to others included in this evaluation.

The Forrester report states, “As the flagship product from SER Group, Doxis4 continues to evolve its low-code app design and development capabilities, embed native AI and ML capabilities, and accelerate its vertical strategy with a growing set of solution templates for common use cases.”

Dr. Gregor Joeris, CTO of the SER Group, comments, “With over 40 ready-to-run solutions, our strategy is geared towards enabling a faster time-to-market for organizations. Embedded with AI capabilities, these solutions give customers greater operational flexibility, better insights, and improved productivity. We know that a pragmatic use-case oriented approach built on a visionary technological foundation is crucial for digital transformation.”

Morad Rhlid, Managing Director of SER Solutions International, adds: “It is our mission to ensure that our customers have the digital dexterity they need to meet the needs of the next normal. Doxis4 as an intelligent information hub plays a central role in this. Meaning, it brings together information from various systems and places it in the right context to empower people, support decision-making and speed up workflows throughout the organization.”

The Forrester Wave is based on independent research and rigorous inclusion criteria. It is designed to help enterprise decision-makers understand and shortlist vendors of the content platform market. Full and complimentary access to the The Forrester Wave™: Content Platforms, Q2 2021 report and its evaluations of all 14 vendors can be found here.