European fintech startup Quppy has closed its B-round at a very ambitious valuation of 25 mln euro

The Quppy digital financial solution was designed back in 2017 by a group of reputed tech enthusiasts, financial, and banking specialists. Quppy is operating on the European market since 2018 while expanding the range of services provided and a number of regions served including Latin America, Africa and Asia. During these years of development and growth, Quppy has turned towards the BaaS implementation and adoption together with a scrupulous work on fruitful synergies between digital currencies and traditional banking and financial services.   

“One of our key goals is to provide our customers a brand-new personal banking experience on an everyday basis while contributing to norms of Open Banking mechanisms all around the world.” – shares Dmitry Nikiforov, the Quppy CEO and co-founder.

Despite the pandemic situation, Quppy has shown promising metrics as the project launched a number of important contactless payment and financial solutions to help its customers in this turbulent period. As a result, Quppy has successfully closed its B-round in the beginning of June 2021 at a valuation of 25 million euros.

“We are proud to close this round despite general decrease in financial activity on both EU and US markets. Our metrics, including the constantly growing number of customers, of partners, a widening range of services we offer our clients and our expansion to Latin America show that we are responsive to market tendencies and clients’ needs.” – he states.

Quppy is a European fintech startup with over three years of impeccable financial expertise. The Quppy all-in-one contactless digital payment solution offers all kinds of financial services with traditional and digital funds. You can open a digital multicurrency bank account in Euro and British pounds in several minutes using your mobile device only. Quppy is currently working on debit and credit cards launch as far as bank account and card consolidation, investment and saving solutions.

Leading global AI-powered credit decision platform provider, Scienaptic AI announced Heritage Financial Credit Union has chosen to implement the company’s AI-powered platform to enhance its credit decisioning and strengthen financial options for its members.

Founded in 1940, Heritage Financial Credit Union is a member-owned, not-for-profit financial institution serving in and around the Hudson Valley communities for over 80 years. As an organization, Heritage Financial is focused on the financial well-being of its members, offering best-in-class financial products and services as well as an online banking platform that allows their membership to bank from the comfort of their preferred digital device.

"Empowering and supporting the financial growth of our members, both current and prospective, is something we hold in high regard and anything we can do to help enhance their experience is vital," said Michael Ciriello, President and CEO at Heritage Financial Credit Union. "With Scienaptic, we can increase loan approval rates, reduce decision times and offer credit to more potential members, helping them to better achieve their financial goals."

“We are excited to partner with Heritage Financial, helping to empower the credit union’s credit decisioning and availability for its members,” Pankaj Jain, President of Scienaptic. “Scienaptic's unique, adaptive AI will help enhance the institution’s credit strategies, increasing approvals and deepening member experience.”

As a direct response to increased cyber-attacks against UK CNI targets, a new cyber staffing organization, Huts & Blocks has launched to provide access to a largely untapped and growing cohort of security-cleared cyber contractors.

Through Huts & Blocks, cybersecurity contractors have the opportunity to explore a variety of roles within CNI across its multiple sectors. The specialist firm enables cyber contractors to experience different technologies and platforms and enhance their valuable skills and experience into new competencies and wider opportunities.

Headquartered at Sci-Tech Daresbury, Cheshire, Huts & Blocks will be located within the new North West Spacehub and in close proximity to the government’s national cyber force, to be based in the neighboring city of Manchester.

Launched by two well-respected industry professionals, Simon Cullum and Ian Patterson, Huts & Blocks is one of very few dedicated cyber CNI focused contracting firms in the UK. The leadership team has significant expertise in infrastructure, cyber and digital underpinned by deep experience and understanding in contingent staffing and resourcing.

Simon Cullum, Operations Director, said: "Many mature organizations recognize the contracting model as a very valuable addition to their way of sourcing people, and cyber should be no different.

"Despite a growing demand for highly-skilled cyber professionals across CNI, there is a widening disconnect between the right candidate and the role in question. Many clients remain unable to find the best-fit people with the right skills in the right place at the right time.
"This creates recruitment challenges for many of Huts & Block’s customers but also enhances the value of staffing services - using contingent talent where permanent recruitment isn’t appropriate.”

The Huts & Blocks model is geared to provide cost-effective flex into the nation's cyber workforce, and a much-needed way of fulfilling medium and longer-term projects. Deploying cyber contractors is thought to be a natural step to bridge shortages of highly skilled and specialist staff within CNI.

Fresh from co-founding the CAPSLOCK Cyber Academy in 2020, Ian Patterson, Huts & Blocks Development Director said: “My time leading the digital transformation division at a major cyber contractor taught me how project-based cybersecurity really is.

“The terms ‘cyber skills shortage’ and ‘cyber talent gap’ are so overused today, it’s easy to become numb to the ongoing shortage of cyber professionals. It’s worrying. With CAPSLOCK I worked with a phenomenal team to support new entrants into the cyber marketplace, but Huts & Blocks is geared to cater to mature cyber contractors, who want variety, flexibility, and greater control of their cyber career in their later years.”

Ian, continued: “We made the decision early on to focus on cyber specialists involved in operations and delivery, over sales, marketing or project management. We want to build a cyber workforce who can handle the grit and gruesome, rather than the glitz and glamour”.

Through Huts & Blocks, cybersecurity contractors have the opportunity to explore a variety of roles within CNI across its multiple sectors. The specialist firm enables cyber contractors to experience different technologies and platforms to enhance their valuable skills and experience. It is hoped that this model will allow for greater movement of skills and cross-pollination of experience within the UK’s cyber talent pool.

For more information visit the Huts & Blocks HQ and you can also follow them on Twitter: @HutsAndBlocks or LinkedIn: @Huts & Blocks for updates.
 

Workday Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY), a leader in enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, today announced it continues to meet growing customer demand for its enterprise cloud solutions, having successfully scaled to complete a record year of customer deployments while achieving an industry-leading 97% customer satisfaction score. The most recent customer satisfaction survey was completed with named customer contacts — those who are closest to engaging with the Workday experience on a daily basis — and reflects the ongoing partnership Workday offers to customers as they automate enterprise finance, planning, human resources (HR), and spend management processes in a changing world.

In its fiscal year 2021 (Feb. 1, 2020-Jan. 31, 2021), Workday and its global partners completed more than 1,800 customer deployments* — with the vast majority managed virtually — for customers around the world including Alight Solutions, Flinders University, GE, Hong Kong Broadband Network, John Lewis Partnership, Nebraska Medicine, and Prisma Health.

Workday also reported a 40% year-over-year increase in Workday Financial Management deployments for both new and existing customers, as accelerated demand for Workday cloud-based solutions for the office of the chief financial officer (CFO) continues. The company’s broad portfolio of finance offerings brings new levels of visibility and control that go beyond the boundaries of traditional ERP systems. Together Workday Financial Management, Workday Adaptive Planning, Workday Accounting Center, Workday Prism Analytics, and Workday Strategic Sourcing deliver a deep and comprehensive solution for enterprise planning and analysis across finance processes including record to report, report to forecast, contract to cash, and source to pay.

Prioritizing Business Continuity for Customers 
In March 2020, Workday transitioned to nearly all virtual deployments and training globally to meet local, state, and country mandates for quarantines as a result of the pandemic. As a native cloud platform, Workday was able to transition to virtual deployment processes in days, minimizing disruption to go-live plans and helping organizations across the globe. Customer deployments spanned a variety of industries and regions, enabling medium enterprise customers with 500 employees to large global organizations with well over 500,000 employees to maintain business continuity and accelerate digital transformation initiatives.

Comments on the News
“Workday enabled us to deliver critical business processes in a way that would have been unthinkable with our legacy ecosystem and this, in turn, enabled a seamless transition to our virtual go-live. Without missing a beat, we were able to complete our performance and salary planning cycle and launch a new performance management approach — all in Workday,” said Paul Davies, head of people operations, GE.

“We knew cumbersome technology is what has caused top talent to leave organizations, and without top talent we can’t provide the highest quality of care,” said Brian Lancaster, vice president of information technology, Nebraska Medicine. “And that’s why Workday has been so vital in our transformation journey, including the seamless virtual deployment of this technology. In healthcare IT, technology needs to support and work for employees to enable our miracle workers to focus on what they are trained to do: save lives.”

“At the onset of the pandemic, we committed to maintaining our deployment schedules because we knew how valuable Workday could be to helping customers manage through and out of this crisis,” said Emily McEvilly, chief customer officer, Workday. “Our services organization’s and global partners’ incredible ability to pivot and complete a record number of go-lives in a very challenging year underscores our collective dedication to customer success. I’m personally inspired by our customers who were incredible partners on this journey and demonstrated agility and resilience along the way. We feel fortunate that they recognized the efforts from all of our teams at Workday supporting customers to achieve a 97% customer satisfaction score.”

Additional Information 
For additional perspective:

• Read the blog, “New Approach, Same Goal: Staying Dedicated to Workday Customer Satisfaction”

FXCM, the leading international provider of
online foreign exchange trading, CFD trading and related services, announced that FXCM Pro, the
institutional arm of the business, is partnering with Fortex, a leading multi-asset trading technology
platform.
The partnership between FXCM Pro and Fortex integrates FXCM Pro’s liquidity with Fortex’s
XForce 2.0 platform. XForce 2.0 is a multi-asset trading platform that packs liquidity aggregation,
order and risk management, MT4/5 Bridges, FIX API, hosting, and multiple trading GUI into one
valued cloud native SaaS offering in NY4/LD4/HK1.
FXCM Pro will combine its world leading multi-asset trading technology solution with Fortex’s
market leading service, providing institutions and professional traders with a first-class trading
experience and access to key industry platforms.
Daniel Chen, CEO and Co-founder at Fortex, commented: “Fortex specializes in helping
enterprise clients innovate and re-orient their trading business to fuel continuous growth. From
exchange products to FX/CFD to crypto derivatives, we discover deep values for our clients by
leading changes and overcoming pain points, armed with superior computing power and data insights.
Our team holds a client first, liquidity neutral and broker agnostic principle. FXCM Pro’s transparent
and pure agency model resonates with our core value. We are very excited to partner with FXCM
Pro.”
Mario Sanchez, Managing Director and Global Head of FXCM Pro Sales, commented: “FXCM
Pro’s liquidity management team continues to work hard to develop partnerships that will enhance
execution and trading efficiency. Our latest partnership with Fortex provides us with an additional
channel, and we are both aligned in our strategy of easing connection and offering customized trading
solutions. Through this partnership, we are ensuring that FXCM Pro's liquidity is easily accessible to
a wide pool of brokers, hedge funds and professional traders.”

Worldline [Euronext: WLN], the European leader in the payments and transactional services industry, today announces it has strengthened its relationship with long-term partner Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions, a global market leader in retail store technology. The next stage of the retail powerhouses’ partnership will see them bring to market the Pro-X Hybrid Kiosk with payments processed via the Worldline LANE/3000 Terminal, allowing retailers to reimagine their store design and increase throughput capacity. 

In line with the needs of both retailers and shoppers for a low-contact checkout, particularly in the convenience, speciality, small format grocery and hospitality sectors, the Pro-X Hybrid Kiosk presents a versatile small footprint kiosk. This option of using convertible POS technology gives the retailer the flexibility to immediately react on customer flow, while always providing an easy to use, secure and seamless shopping experience for customers.

Toshiba’s solution enables retailers to enhance the in-store customer experience by proactively managing queues, meeting shopper’s expectations of a fast and frictionless checkout, and providing more self-service touchpoints where needed. It also helps preserve precious counter space for retailers with its small footprint that can perform self-checkout or traditional register functionality to meet the shoppers’ and retailers’ needs.

The integrated LANE/3000 terminal offers retailers fast and secure transactions, meeting the latest safety requirements for Payment Card Industry PIN Transaction Security (PCI-PTS) 6.x and Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE). Together, this powerful combination means that Toshiba and Worldline are helping retailers to optimise the layout of their stores through a more flexible approach to the point of payment and providing a more sophisticated checkout experience.

Rob Macintyre, European Business Development Executive of Toshiba, said: “The self-service industry continues to evolve as retailers across all retail segments invest in digital capabilities to support shoppers' expectations of low-contact checkout. We are delighted to work with Worldline to bring checkout innovation to retailers across the European marketplace. Now, they bring their payment expertise and Tetra Lane 3000 augmenting the Pro-X Hybrid Kiosk to provide a next-level checkout experience to customers.”

Lee Jones, Managing Director Northern Europe, GSV at Worldline, commented: “As the way consumers want to pay is evolving, Worldline is committed to staying ahead of the game in order to keep our retailers relevant in this ever-changing market. That’s why we are proud to continue our close cooperation as a trusted global payments leader with Toshiba. This partnership strengthens our joint ability to deliver innovative end-to-end solutions, and together we are creating an even stronger offering.”

The Pro-X Hybrid Kiosk is currently in pilot phase with a number of retailers across Europe, including a high-profile sports and fashion retailer, having been launched in March 2021. 

The Lane 3000 is already the PIN pad of choice for many European retailers.

Following the launch, both Toshiba and Worldline will continue to work together to develop integrated products that enhance mutual business opportunities and cover more vertical markets.

The global shift towards a cashless society created a huge space for mobile wallets as a safer and more convenient way of managing money. However, the entire sector boomed amid the pandemic as people started questioning the safety of using banknotes for fear of transmitting the virus.

According to data presented by TradingPlatforms.com, digital or mobile wallet payment was the most used point of sale payment method globally, with a 21.5% market share in 2020. By 2024, mobile wallets are set to become even more popular, making one-third of all POS transactions worldwide.

Digital Transactions Rise, Cash Payments Continue to Drop

Over the last few years, mobile payment services provided hundreds of millions of people access to electronic transactions, especially in underbanked markets in Africa, Asia and Latin America. However, they also become very popular among tech-savvy consumers in developed countries. 

The digital transformation of the global payments industry, fuelled by the COVID-19, led to the impressive growth of the entire mobile wallets market. Over the last two years, the transaction value of the entire sector doubled and is expected to hit nearly $2.5trn in 2021. The number of people using mobile wallets to make payments surged from around 900 million to 1.48 billion in this period.

In 2020, 25.7% percent of all POS payments were made using mobile wallets, revealed the Global Payments Report 2021. By 2024, this figure is expected to jump to 33.4%.

The survey also revealed that mobile payments made 44.5% of all eCommerce transactions last year, two times more than credit cards and three times more than debit card payments.

Credit cards and debit cards are expected to hold the same market share in the next two years, making around 22% of POS payments each. However, cash transactions are set to witness a significant drop, falling from 20.5% in 2020 to 12.7% in 2024.

Mobile Wallets to Become $4T Worth Industry by 2024

The Statista data showed the mobile payments segment is forecast to continue booming in the following years, both in terms of users and transaction value. In 2021, 1.48 billion people worldwide are expected to use mobile payments services, producing a $2.48trn transaction value. In the next three years, mobile wallets are set to become a $4trn worth industry with nearly 1.8 billion users worldwide.

Generally, the mobile wallets market is dominated by Asian countries, spearheaded by China as the global leader. According to the Statista survey, the transaction value of the Chinese mobile payments market is forecast to reach $1.3trn in 2021. By 2024, this figure is set to jump to over $1.8trn, or 45% of all mobile wallet payments globally.

Western countries are far behind in terms of usage, with many people still preferring cash, credit, and debit cards. The US ranks as the world's second-largest mobile payments market, with $468bn worth of transactions or nearly three times less than China. However, statistics show the US market is set to witness impressive growth in the following years, with transaction value growing by 80% to $840.7bn in 2024.

The United Kingdom is the third-largest mobile wallets market globally, expected to reach $97.6bn transaction value in 2021, a 43% increase in a year. By 2024, mobile POS payments in the country are expected to grow by another 92% and hit a $187.7bn value.

The full story can be read here: https://tradingplatforms.com/blog/2021/06/07/mobile-wallet-payments-to-make-one-third-of-all-pos-transactions-by-2024/

The ai Corporation (ai), an FCA approved expert in payments, fraud and risk management, today added a Dark Web Managed Service to its suite of enterprise fraud solutions. Powered by Dark Web experts Skurio's cloud-based technology, the new managed service will enhance ai's fraud capabilities even further. Enabling ai's users in the payments and financial industries to protect themselves against cybersecurity threats emanating from the Dark Web.

The latest addition to the aiFraud Managed Service will provide users with best-in-class cyber intelligence. Automatically scanning websites, marketplaces, and forums to detect incidences of leaked sensitive data. Alerts are generated when any information matching specific search terms appears on the Dark Web, creating an early warning service to both businesses and consumers. 

Dr Mark Goldspink, CEO of ai, says: "The battleground in the fight against fraud must now include the Dark Web. With the increase in fraudulent activity, it is vital that ai continues to find ways to mitigate and protect our customers even further. Our partnership with Skurio coupled with our automated aiAutoPilot ML^TM technology will ensure that our existing users receive a best-in-class fraud prevention solution, which helps them stay ahead of the fraudster."

According to ai's data:

• Dark web traffic has increased by 300% over the last year, as more criminals look to commit fraud remotely due to COVID restrictions
• Despite increased levels of security, the price of stolen card details on the Dark Web has increased due to increased demand
• Last year (2020), stolen card testing fraud increased by up to 225% – these cards were almost certainly purchased on the Dark Web

Jeremy Hendy, CEO of Skurio, says: “We’re delighted to partner with ai to bring our Dark Web monitoring technology to their world-leading fraud detection and prevention platform.  Cybercrime is now a trillion-dollar industry, where criminal gangs buy, sell, resell and trade compromised card information across an increasing number of shady forums and marketplaces.  Skurio’s automated monitoring technology provides early warning when cardholder data is leaked, marketed or sold on the Dark Web, hacker forums, and dump sites, allowing ai customers to take immediate action to block compromised cards and cut losses from fraud.”

ai's cloud-based, automated machine learning fraud detection and prevention tools help all types of issuers and acquirers, to monitor account and merchant activity using pre-authorisation and post-authorisation transaction data. Its unique self-service, fraud detection solutions are considered by many industry 'thought leaders' to be the best in the world.

Alongside stopping fraud, ai’s new flexible, aiAutoPilot ML^TM orchestration technologies can be applied to many business processes, which require detailed consumer insight, including credit management, marketing (attrition) or pricing. ai’s solutions, including its' state of the art' machine learning/A.I, protect and enrich payments experiences for over three million multi-channel merchants, 100 banks and over 300 million consumer cardholders. ai also monitors over 25 billion transactions and authorisations each year.

Online mortgage broker Mojo Mortgages has announced the appointment of Cassie Stephenson as its new director of mortgages as the business looks to scale its team to 50 mortgage advisers across the UK over the next 12 months.

The business, which has expanded its team over the course of the pandemic, has experienced unprecedented demand over the past few months - driven by the need for a digital-focused service as well as a booming property market, with the ongoing Stamp Duty holiday playing a part.

Mojo, which now counts the likes of Uswitch, Zoopla and Snoop as digital partners, has seen year-on-year partner mortgage submissions rise by 165% compared to pre-pandemic levels, with traffic and enquiries to its site also up by 200% compared to the start of 2020.

Stephenson joins Mojo following her time at fellow online broker Habito as VP Operations, as well as previous spells at Atom Bank, Tesco Bank and Lloyds, and will play an instrumental role in helping to scale the award-winning broker over the coming months as society returns to some normality.

Commenting on her appointment, Cassie Stephenson, director of mortgages at Mojo Mortgages, said:

“I am delighted to be joining the team at Mojo as the business enters its next stage of growth. It’s no secret that the past year has been challenging but the market appears to be gaining some real momentum with new government-backed schemes, competitive rates amongst lenders and a bustling property market, so it’s an exciting time to join the team.

“Mojo already has such strong foundations, systems and amazing people - it’s now time to take what we have and accelerate it to make us the number one brokerage in the UK.

“No-one has really perfected the end-to-end process for customers yet and there is still some important work to do in this area. I also feel open banking hasn’t been utilised as much as it could be, with practices such as paper document requests still in place which feel so outdated. There is more work to do with lenders to allow automated submissions and execution-only experiences and this is one area I’ll be working on closely in the coming months. It’s certainly an exciting space to be in at the moment!”

Richard Hayes, CEO and co-founder of Mojo Mortgages, added:

“Cassie’s appointment will play a pivotal role in the future of Mojo as we continue to revolutionise the way consumers access mortgages, advice and information to an industry that still continues to baffle many people.

“We want to help customers to fully understand the process and become more financially confident by empowering them to learn more about mortgages and, of course, find the best deal for them. Not only for those that come to us, but across the wider industry.

“However, we do need more talented individuals to join us. We’re going through a hyper growth phase, so that means we need even more driven, proven mortgage experts to get on board. We have a number of fully remote roles available with further details on our website.”

For more information about Mojo Mortgages and its current vacancies, please visit: https://mojomortgages.com/