SH Payments, the tier one banking services provider, has appointed Justinas Basalykas as its new CEO and expanded its leadership team, following a hugely successful first few months of trading.

Mr Basalykas joins SH Payments having spent almost 20 years working as a finance professional in Lithuania – previously, he has founded TaxLink Lithuania, and worked at global finance and accounting specialist companies such as Ernst & Young Baltic. His insight into the market working with regional and global MMEs places him perfectly in understanding client needs and providing solutions as a trusted advisor.

Justinas is also a Global Executive MBA at WU Executive Academy, he holds an LLM from Vienna University of Economics and Business, and has successfully lead a number of projects, including group structuring and others over his career.

As well as the hire of a new CEO, SH Payments, which is a subsidiary of Stanhope Financial Group, has hired four new senior team members to bolster operations for the next stage of its growth.

Included amongst these new hires are Aura Seselgyte as Operational Manager, Renata Eidukaityte as Compliance Analyst, Justas Cerniauskus in a Business Development role, and Kestutis Dascioras as Product Manager.

SH Payments secured its Electronic Money Institution license in December 2020, and recently announced a partnership with Nano, as their core digital banking provider.

The financial services firm is dedicated to reconnecting ambitious small and medium sized enterprises across Europe with tier-one financial services, including FX Payments, payments services and e-wallets.

Justinas Basalykas, CEO of SH Payments comments:

“As much of Europe begins to ‘re-boot’ itself commercially, many businesses will still struggle to gain a foothold in uncertain markets and will find it difficult to navigate challenging economic conditions and the difficult geo-political intricacies associated with travel, export and foreign exchange.

“This is where SH Payments comes in, to help SMEs and MMEs navigate the financial services landscape and empower them with expertise and guidance, offering not only agile finacial services such as e-wallets, but also by connecting them with world-leading banking and financial services which otherwise wouldn’t be available to them, enabling smooth and effective payments processes.”

Khalid Talukder, Managing Director, Stanhope Financial Group comments:

“We are thrilled to welcome Justinas on board, it delivers on our commitment to sourcing talent locally and he will work closely with the group board in delivering the group strategy. We are also excited to welcome the plethora of new senior hires who will help accelerate SH Payments into the next stage of its growth – allowing us to support SMEs and MMEs who require guidance during this difficult period and beyond.”

Onfido, the global identity verification, and authentication provider, today announced its best sales quarter in the company’s nine-year history, with revenue increasing 93% year-over-year.  This strong momentum was attributed to another solid quarter in the United States (U.S.) and Central European markets, where revenues increased over 200% y-o-y in each region. This unparalleled growth was fueled by an acceleration in engagements from financial services organizations worldwide, specifically challenger banks and companies focused on retail investing, payments and crypto. 

By 2022, Gartner predicts that 80% of organizations will be using document-centric identity proofing as part of their onboarding workflows, which is an increase from approximately 30% today. 

“We continue to see a strong push by financial services to digital-first and digital-only customer strategies, which has contributed to this record quarter, and there is no sign of it slowing down,” said Mike Tuchen, CEO of Onfido. “Enterprises see strong ROI from putting robust digital identity at the center of these strategies, enabling them to quickly scale and improve their customer experience without having to compromise on fraud protection or compliance.” 

The company grew its staff to 428 by the end of Q1 and brought on a new Chief Product Officer, Alex Valle. A seasoned product leader and GM, Valle has over two decades of experience building, launching and scaling disruptive product platforms. He held leadership positions at Google, where he was responsible for personalization products delivering $7B worth of global revenue and at Criteo, where he built and scaled six product platforms from zero to $300M, attracting 20,000 customers across 100 countries. Alex started his career as an AI and machine learning engineer at Lockheed Martin’s “Skunkworks” innovation lab and holds an MBA from Wharton, an MS in Engineering from Georgia Tech, and a BS in Engineering from UCLA.

“Alex has an enviable track record when it comes to building disruptive products,” said Tuchen. “His expertise in building scalable platforms that have consistently delivered billions in revenue, powered by innovative machine learning technology, will continue to set Onfido apart in the market.”

Other notable achievements in Q1:

Onfido’s partner ecosystem sales grew 116% year-over-year. Key deals were made with:

• Microsoft - to enable fast and secure identity verification and onboarding for its Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)  verifiable credentials
• Volkswagen Financial Services for quickly verifying customer identity and signing financing agreements either remotely or in person

Industries such as financial services, retail, payments and money transfer services rely on Onfido for fighting fraud while offering a seamless customer experience. During Q1 2021, demand for remote identity verification in these industries soared, leading to key business wins with:

• Orange - signed first European mobile operator, offering customers self-service identity verification for the Orange Flex mobile plan
• Mangopay - partnered with this leading end-to-end payment solution provider, to provide identity verification for streamlining user onboarding for its 2,500 platforms spanning 26 countries
• One – the US digital banking service aimed at driving financial wellness for middle income households, partnered with Onfido to verify the documents of customers onboarding, increasing it verification volumes by 230%
• Bitex - leading crypto currency exchange, partnered with Onfido, reducing  investor onboarding time from 48 hours to 60 seconds

Recognition:

Onfido was recognized by two industry awards in Q1 for its innovations around biometrics and machine learning / AI:

• Kuppingercole Market Compass for Providers of Verified Identity - awarded ‘Outstanding in Biometric Data Analysis’ distinction 
• Shortlisted for the SC Awards Europe 2021 occurring in June for ‘Best Use of Machine Learning / AI’

Watch a demo of Onfido’s award-winning identity verification technology and experience how the company digitally proves a user’s real identity using AI.

Klarna, the leading global banking, payments and shopping service, has released the first in an ongoing series of quarterly global personal finance trend reports.

Despite the pandemic’s negative impact on the UK economy, Klarna’s Money Management pulse has found that consumers are optimistic about their financial futures. The report, which looks at personal finance behaviour and future expectations, found that more than a third (34%) of UK consumers think they will be better off financially a year from now. Only 15% thought they would be worse off in a year, while 51% felt their financial situation would stay the same. Younger generations are the most positive by far, with nearly two-thirds (64%) of 18-25 year olds and half (51%) of 26-35 year olds believing they will be better off financially in a year’s time.

Younger generations are invested in their personal finances

While younger generations are often portrayed as irresponsible when it comes to their personal finances, they are in fact highly engaged. 18-25 year olds are set to boost savings more than any other age group, with 39% planning to save more than usual in April, closely followed by 26-34 year olds (34%), double the UK average of 18%. 

Younger consumers also keep a tight grip on money management. Six in ten 18-25 year olds (61%) and 26-35 year olds (60%) manage their savings at least a few times a month. And, while the vast majority of UK consumers (73%) are putting money aside in a regular savings account, just 26% try and grow their funds through investing. While the UK doesn’t rank too badly across the globe when it comes to saving, out of nine countries in the report, the UK narrowly missed out on last place for investing. Australians are the only country where fewer people invest at just 25%. 

Trend towards new payment and banking methods

The pandemic has accelerated payment trends that were already emerging, with consumers increasingly favouring debit cards over credit cards and using mobile apps for their banking services. Fewer UK shoppers use cash instore (18%) than the global average (23%), while plastic card (61%), digital mobile payment (14%) and biometric use (3%) were above average. 

Across all countries, including the UK, consumers use mobile apps for their banking services more often than other platforms, with 55% and 44% of UK respondents checking their balance and transferring money, respectively, via a banking app.

Alex Marsh, Head of Klarna UK, commented:

“As lockdown restrictions lift and the vaccination rollout continues at pace, UK consumers have a positive outlook for their personal finances, especially the younger generations. Heading into the summer, the future is also bright for key retail and hospitality industries who are finally able to throw open their doors to welcome back customers in increasing numbers.”

FRANKFURT AM MAIN – Saving valuable data online, sharing files with friends, and switching devices seamlessly have one thing in common: all of these processes utilize the power of cloud computing as the technical foundation of its services. Valued at USD 266.0 billion in 2019, the cloud computing market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 14.9% from 2020 to 2027^[1]. Building on top of this surge in demand, major Hong Kong asset manager CSOP now released the CSOP Global Cloud Computing Technology Index ETF (stock ticker: 3194.HK) tracking the Solactive Global Cloud Computing Technology Index.

In its initial stages, cloud computing was known to the general public as a simple way to save and share files online. Now cloud services pervade all kinds of interconnected services from, e.g., hosting software operations [Software as a Service (SaaS)], enabling customers to instantiate, run, and manage a modular bundle comprising a computing platform [Platform as a Service (PaaS)], and offering basic low-level networks or physical computer resources [Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)]. With the global rollout of 5G technology, companies operating in the cloud computing segment are likely to benefit from the insatiable demand for interconnectivity.

The Solactive Global Cloud Computing Technology Index

In the first stage, companies are included based on their industry classification according to FactSet’s Revere Business Industry Classification System (“RBICS”). Therefore, eligible companies can belong to either enterprise management software or internet hosting services industry groups. Furthermore, companies providing software for network infrastructure, communications infrastructure, data storage infrastructure, and diversified IT infrastructure can be included in the index. Moreover, companies providing data storage drives and peripherals, information and disk storage systems, and multi-type data storage hardware makers are eligible for index inclusion. Additionally, companies exhibiting low liquidity and market capitalization criteria are excluded from the index.

Timo Pfeiffer, Chief Markets Officer at Solactive, comments: “Cloud computing technology changed the way we connect and work with each other. It is like that song ‘Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you’; in our case, the cloud is always above us. In combination with a global rollout of 5G technology, cloud technology will enable us to roam freely, choosing where we want to work, while having all our valuable and essential data in the cloud. In this context, we are thrilled to expand our collaboration with Asian ETF powerhouse CSOP, bringing the next innovative product to the Hong Kong market. “

Melody He, Managing Director and Head of Sales and Product Strategy at CSOP AM, comments: “We are very excited to kickstart our involvement in the fast-growing field of thematic ETFs with the release of the CSOP Global Cloud Computing Technology Index ETF. After the successful launch of our 2x leveraged Gold ETP (7299.HK) together with Solactive last year, we are delighted to continue our collaboration with the German index provider for this new important milestone in CSOP’s prosperous growth story. As one of the market leaders in Thematic Indexing, Solactive shares our spirit for innovation, and we look forward to further intensifying our commitment in thematic ETFs with Solactive to offer more high-quality products for our investors.”

Paysend, the UK based global Fintech has the vision to develop the next generation of integrated global payment ecosystem to save time, save money and serve millions all around the globe.

Reaching more than 3.5 million customers already in 60+ countries, soon Paysend will be bringing their disruptive Financial Services to APAC.

Asia Pacific is one of the most populated and attractive regions globally with nearly 4 billion people living there and a massive opportunity for digital money.

In order to drive the growth of the company across the region, Paysend has appointed Steve Vickers as the new Managing Director for Paysend APAC. Based in Singapore, Steve will be responsible for defining and implementing the regional business strategy, building a world-class Fintech team, and securing additional Regulatory approvals and partnership deals across Asia. All this in order to turbo charge growth for Paysend in the region and to land the foundations of a winning business in the long run.

“Paysend is establishing itself as a trusted cross-border payments partner, with millions of customers using the Global Transfers and Global Account services every month. We intend to offer our multi-currency account, virtual debit card, and global transfer capabilities to individuals and SMEs throughout Asia,” says Steve.

Steve is an experienced global executive, with a track record of success in several areas of the Internet Economy: eCommerce, Media & Content, Digital Services, and Payments/FinTech. He has negotiated deals and built operational teams in APAC, Europe, the Americas, and Africa. For the last 12 years he has been based in Singapore, and has driven the growth of several major international technology organisations across the region, including Xiaomi, Grab, and the payments Fintech Thunes.

“Building from our existing partnership deals with Mastercard, Visa, China UnionPay, and Alipay, amongst many others, I see enormous opportunities to expand our industry leading card-to-card direct transfer offerings further, providing additional benefits for the millions of un-banked individuals across Asia Pacific,” adds Abdul Abdulkerimov, Paysend Founder and President.

ABOUT PAYSEND

Paysend is a next generation integrated global payment ecosystem enabling consumers and businesses to pay, and send money online anywhere, anyhow in any currency. Paysend is UK-based and has global reach and was created in April 2017 with the clear mission to change how money is moved around the world.

Paysend currently supports connections between 12 billion cards globally across Mastercard, Visa, China UnionPay and local card schemes and provides over 40 payment methods for online SMEs. Paysend operates in over 60 countries worldwide and has attracted more than 3.5 million consumers and 135,000 businesses to its platform.

As a global end-to-end payment platform Paysend has its own global network of banks, international and local payment systems, and has partnerships with the major international card networks Visa, Mastercard and China Union Pay as a principal member and certified processor. Paysend recently opened its US and Canada operations and secured a partnership with Alipay in order to grow its global footprint.

For further information visit https://paysend.com

OpenPayd, a leading global payments and banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform for the digital economy, today announced it is working with SwissBorg, a cryptocurrency wealth management platform based on blockchain technology. OpenPayd’s platform enables SwissBorg to seamlessly embed a full suite of financial services into its user experience, driving increased processing speeds and reducing operational costs, to support further business growth.

With the price of Bitcoin continuing to set new all-time highs - the latest reaching more than $63,000 (CoinMetrics, 13 April 2021), scaling to meet demand is crucial for digital asset businesses. SwissBorg itself is an extremely fast-growing platform and, after a huge spike in user numbers, faced the unexpected need to replace their incumbent banking provider at short notice (a common issue for cryptocurrency businesses). Since launching with OpenPayd, its monthly new user growth has increased by nearly 800% - and it needed a solution to support its scaling. 

Embedded financial infrastructure

The micro-level, deep technical integration between the SwissBorg back-end systems and the OpenPayd API mean the services provided by OpenPayd are embedded into the customer experience on an individual user level. Most notably, this can take place without the need for SwissBorg to change any of their technology to support the new infrastructure, meaning the integration process was streamlined and the service was live in just 2 weeks 

Through OpenPayd’s specialist BaaS platform, which includes a feature set specifically designed for digital asset businesses, SwissBorg can completely automate the process of receiving fiat deposits and initiating fiat withdrawals from and to their customers via SEPA, SEPA Instant and SWIFT. Crucially, with SwissBorg having access to the SEPA Instant payment scheme, its customers are now able to top up their fiat wallets in real time. 

Eliminated manual payment references 

In addition, because OpenPayd’s virtual IBANs (uniquely allocated to each SwissBorg customer) are directly embedded into the SwissBorg platform’s back end, SwissBorg’s customers will no longer need to include a Unique Reference when instructing payments to SwissBorg from their bank account. This helps reduce payment reconciliation errors (leading to increased operational costs) and significantly speeds up the payment processing time.  

Reduced fraud

OpenPayd’s platform helps reduce fraud by enabling SwissBorg to step into the deposit flow via API and automatically approve / reject  any incoming deposits before funds are allocated to an individual customer. This is based on pre-defined logic of what SwissBorg deems an acceptable deposit and SwissBorg’s own compliance requirements. Finally, OpenPayd also helps SwissBorg control the flow of off-ramps thanks to OpenPayd’s proprietary depositor-beneficiary matching solution. These features add a new layer of security for the wealth management platform and its customers.

“Crypto is proving itself a viable alternative to traditional financial services and is rapidly entering the mainstream. As crypto players begin to compete with traditional financial services, maintaining a keen focus on customer-centricity and exploring the full potential of embedded finance is imperative,” said Cyrus Fazel, CEO at SwissBorg. “Off-the-shelf BaaS products don’t work for digital asset businesses – we need specialist crypto knowledge, bespoke technology and enhanced compliance capabilities to lead in this market. OpenPayd is enabling us to innovate ahead of demand, embedding new financial services products into our offering, and transforming personal finance and wealth management for our customers.” 

“Cryptocurrency’s potential as a store of wealth is fast being realised. A melting pot of factors ranging from the pandemic to technological advancements and regulatory developments has meant crypto is on a high-growth trajectory,” said Iana Dimitrova, CEO of OpenPayd. “SwissBorg is undoubtedly challenging the status quo. It’s growing fast and needs a BaaS partner built for the digital economy that understands crypto. We’re beyond excited to help SwissBorg realise its mission of revolutionising personal finance by making investments in digital assets easier, safer and quicker than ever.”

SoftSolutions!, the developer of high-performance mission-critical trading technologies and TransFICC, the specialist provider of low-latency connectivity and workflow services for Fixed Income and Derivatives Markets, have partnered to provide clients with a complete cloud-based trading service with connectivity to multiple Fixed Income trading venues. 

SoftSolutions! recently announced the launch of its latest, cloud-enabled, version of nexRates, the first “Trading as a Service” (TaaS), to be hosted in AWS. Cloud connectivity for nexRates is being provided by TransFICC, which fully supports RFQ trading connectivity to all major D2C venues including Bloomberg as well a number of D2D venues. 

TransFICC supports multiple versions of Bloomberg’s RFQ trading gateways (TNP) to enable easy migration to the latest version, TNP 3.2. Currently there is significant demand for these upgrades, as large numbers of trading firms move to support BOLT (Bid Offer List Trading) workflow for Bonds. TransFICC enables banks to trade packages of up to 300 instruments on BOLT, including spread trading and benchmark spotting.

“As the Fixed Income market continues to evolve, many clients are adopting a cloud or hybrid technology solution. Our partnership with TransFICC enables us to support clients’ trading workflows on both legacy and new business protocols like BOLT, as well as providing access to many other venues from the cloud,” said Roberto Cocchi, CEO of SoftSolutions!. “With TransFICC providing access to both D2C and D2D markets, nexRates is now able to provide the sell-side with the ability to service client requests as well as being able to hedge or trade out of positions on the inter-dealer markets – either manually or automatically.”

“Working with SoftSolutions!, we provide cloud connectivity for the nexRates cloud hosted platform and have successfully completed the Bloomberg API upgrade, making it fast and simple for clients to move to the new gateway and begin trading using BOLT,” said Steve Toland, Co-Founder of TransFICC. “Our service helps clients to address the significant challenge of coding and testing new venue APIs for both trading and data. Typically it can take three months to complete each API upgrade, with the  workload amplified by managing multiple connections.”
SoftSolutions! provides multi-market, multi-asset, high performance connectivity and price distribution Market Making platforms. Its solutions include nexRates, XTAuctions and BestX!. The Rates EMS platform, nexRates, provides a full range of services to support sell-side clients trading Rates products. XTAuctions enables Primary Dealers to perform EGB primary auctions, and BestX!, a buy-side EMS, allows trading desks to auto-ex on all Fixed Income venues, with unrivalled richness of algos and trading parameters.

TransFICC resolves the issue of market fragmentation by providing banks and asset managers with a unified low-latency, robust and scalable API. Its ‘One API for eTrading’ platform provides connectivity to multiple trading venues while supporting a variety of workflows across asset classes such as Rates and Credit Bonds, Repos, Mortgage Backed Securities and Interest Rate Swaps.

SoftSolutions!’ clients include major global investment banks, regional sell-side champions and one global private bank. TransFICC’s clients include six investment banks, a global exchange and a market data vendor.

Relite Finance, a cross-chain DeFi protocol set to launch on both Polkadot and Ethereum, pass a security audit, and reveal information on NFT collateralized lending in light of their upcoming IDO

Relite Finance is a cross-chain lending platform that will enable users to lend and borrow assets on different blockchains in one protocol.

In anticipation of their upcoming IDO on Paid Network’s Ignition Launchpad, set to roll out on the 17th of May, the team has shared a promising update regarding the project’s status and what’s to come.

RELI, the native token of the Relite financial ecosystem, underwent a security audit by renowned smart contract auditing firm CertiK. The audit yielded only one informational finding, the least impactful finding possible, regarding gas optimization in the smart contract. Ultimately, this bodes exceedingly well for the security and robustness of the RELI token codebase. The full audit can be accessed here.

In what may be the first offering of its kind, Relite is on track to enable NFT  collateralized lending within their protocol. The loan-to-value ratio, and NFT pricing, will stem from data on major NFT marketplaces, including OpenSea and Rarible.

With a private sale that was oversubscribed nearly 100 times over, the upcoming Relite IDO on May 17th may be set to do much the same. The IDO will occur on Paid’s Ignition platform and will be closely followed by a listing on the major decentralized exchange, Uniswap. The team has reported that they are in discussion with several centralized exchange partners for CEX listings following the launch of RELI.

George Groshkov, Relite Finance CEO and Founder, was very optimistic once asked to share his expectations for the upcoming launch:

“We’re thrilled by the recent Relite traction on the eve of IDO. The smart contract audit completed by Certik was a must-have top-up to our current state, as security is a top priority for blockchain projects, especially in the DeFi field. We’re now fully set to go for an IDO on Ignition and Uniswap listing on May 17.”

About Relite Finance

Relite Finance is a cross-chain DeFi money market protocol that enables users to lend, borrow, and stake all crypto assets in one interface by utilizing Polkadot’s Moonbeam Parachain, bridges, and a unique reserve fund module. Relite plans on creating interoperability with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other blockchains. In addition, Relite plans to implement collateralization of NFTs with better fees and usability than other protocols can offer.

Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR), a global Fintech leader, has completed its previously announced acquisition of Itiviti Holding AB (“Itiviti”), a leading provider of trading and connectivity technology to the capital markets industry. The acquisition enhances Broadridge’s position as a global Fintech leader and significantly strengthens Broadridge’s Capital Markets franchise. It extends Broadridge’s market leading back office capabilities into the front office and deepens its multi-asset class solutions, better enabling the company to help financial institutions adapt to a rapidly evolving marketplace. The addition of Itiviti’s footprint in APAC and EMEA also increases Broadridge’s scale outside of North America to better serve global clients. 

Itiviti is a leading global capital markets technology service provider offering highly scalable solutions that financial institutions use to consolidate their trading infrastructure, driving significant cost savings. With offices in 16 countries, Itiviti serves 24 of the top 25 global investment banks and over 2,000 leading brokers, trading firms and asset managers across 50 countries. Itiviti’s solutions and services provide financial institutions with comprehensive tools for connectivity and flexible, cross-asset trading solutions that cover the full trade lifecycle. 

Itiviti will become part of Broadridge’s Global Technology and Operations segment and its senior management team, led by CEO Rob Mackay, will remain with the company to drive future growth.