One of the biggest Payment Service Providers (PSPs) in the Latin American market, PayRetailers, is now an official sponsor of the CONMEBOL Sudamericana, one of the most prestigious football tournaments in South America, for two seasons until 2022. This is the first time a PSP has officially sponsored a CONMEBOL club competition.

A Unique Partnership

Football is more than just a sport in Latin America. In many ways, it acts as a bridge between people in the diversely populated continent. On the other hand, PSPs like PayRetailers, are also working to connect people across Latin America.

The region is home to a vibrant fintech scene, due to the massive pent-up demand from vast sections of the population, who have remained unbanked for years. In some Latin American countries, only 30% to 50% of the population have an account with a financial institution, compared to 90% in the US, UK, or Spain. With its next-generation payment technology, designed to handle mass online payments in the Latin American market, PayRetailers believes that partnering with this popular annual event can raise awareness among the masses regarding fintech solutions.

While the people live and breathe the football in LatAm, the PSP platform helps them with everyday life, from making online payments via mobile apps to facilitating cross-border eCommerce for new companies. By partnering with CONMEBOL, PayRetailers aims to make an impact by associating itself with a popular tournament that has almost become part of the culture of the people.

In the rapidly evolving digital economy in Latin America, technology remains at the heart of everything, from sports to payments.

Increased Role of Technology in Football Play and Broadcasting

From enhancing sports performance to enabling umpires, referees, and sports officials to make quick and fair decisions on rule infringements, technology plays a prominent role in the world of football today. While coaches use tablets to create strategies, performance systems that utilize cameras and transmitters are worn by players to analyze their individual performance as well as that of the entire team.

Significant investments have been made in the broadcasting aspect as well, including strategic collaborations for media rights and sub-licenses for Pay TV and online streaming. For decades, television has been the main source of broadcasting. It still accounts for 90% of the average viewer’s video time. But online streaming has been gaining steady traction, rising significantly during the pandemic. With TV broadcasting and online streaming combined, the CONMEBOL Sudamericana can be watched in 111 countries, including the US, Russia, China, and Europe, along with Latin America.

CONMEBOL and its broadcast partners create unique experiences for viewers across traditional broadcast channels, OTT platforms, digital media, fantasy games, and more. Data-powered solutions are now being used to offer a huge amount of ancillary content, which satisfies the need for more live information during a match. CONMEBOL has partnered with firms providing video assistant referee technology and sports AI and data.

These partnerships strengthen the confederation’s commitment to ensuring that media and technology partners covering the matches have access to the highest quality data to bring every match to life for viewers around the world. Through an extensive range of feeds, detailed data will be used to deliver broadcast graphics, automated highlights, digital match centers, fantasy experiences, and more.

PayRetailers is proud to be the official sponsor of such a mega event, held by one of the most prestigious sports institutions globally, that includes some of the brightest minds both on- and off-field.

PayRetailers – The Trusted PSP Brand in Latin America

It takes planning and effort to make an international football event enjoyable for viewers globally. The same holds true for building and supporting a robust PSP platform. As with CONMEBOL, PayRetailers boasts perfect product-market fit, with its next-generation payment solutions for the LatAm region.

The platform uses the latest technologies in multi-device accessibility, data analysis, and cross-border payment terminals, to offer services in one of the most difficult regions in terms of fintech adoption. The complex task of connecting diverse regions in the continent is made possible through partnerships with local IT service companies and banks. Various transactions and payment confirmations are handled in real-time on a single platform, including forex transactions with settlements in USD, EUR, and BTC. The suite also leverages AI to enable security and fraud detection, using data from multiple sources, such as credit bureaus and government data.

Over 12 LatAm nations are connected to the PayRetailers network, which currently processes more than a million monthly transactions. A 24/7 multilingual support team makes the process of onboarding and troubleshooting simple and convenient.

If you want to be part of the eCommerce and digital payments boom in Latin America, you need a sophisticated and versatile payment suite, like PayRetailers, to help your company scale into the vast region. With over 250 forms of payments, including cash-in, credit card, and e-wallet transactions, all in real-time and at competitive rates, you can have efficient, single integration solutions to reach diverse consumers in Latin America.

OutSystems, a global leader in modern application development, today announced the launch of new components and resources called Cloud Accelerators for Amazon Web Services (AWS) aimed at accelerating innovation as fast as business imperatives change. Announced ahead of the OutSystems and AWS Cloud Innovation Summit, these Accelerators enable developers to leverage the power of AWS in the OutSystems platform for key digital transformation initiatives. 

OutSystems is initially delivering seven Accelerators that target crucial areas of digital transformation: customer experience transformation, workplace innovation, process optimisation, and technology modernisation.

The Accelerators combine components, samples, and training to help developers quickly and seamlessly build and evolve scalable applications that leverage key AWS services to support the following use cases:

• Digital Identity Verification: Provide an onboarding experience with identity verification workflows, including face matching for opted-in users, which compares a photo or selfie with an identifying document such as a driver's license, built on Amazon Rekognition and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).
• Video Call Validation: Deliver video engagement for a variety of use cases, including identity verification during customer onboarding, or field services support using Amazon Kinesis or Chime.
• Self-Service Chatbot: Reduce pressure on call centres by providing AI-powered chatbots and the ability to escalate to a human support agent as required, powered by Amazon Lex and Amazon Comprehend.
• Customer and Employee Engagement Virtual Personal Assistant (VPA): Offer new ways to engage with customers and employees using voice and VPAs such as Amazon Alexa.
• Multilingual Chatbot: Provide chatbots that are able to communicate in any language, using Amazon Translation Services, Amazon Polly, and Amazon Transcribe.
• Multilingual Video Interaction: Deliver real-time video interaction to support new customer engagement use cases, powered by Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Translation Services, and Amazon Transcribe.
• Personalised Streaming Experience: Provide superior workplace innovation experiences such as employee onboarding and training, built on Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon S3.

“OutSystems Cloud Accelerators are built upon our existing relationship with AWS to help every organisation innovate through software,” said Patrick Jean, OutSystems CTO. “The past year has put tremendous stress on businesses and compounded decades-old software challenges, hastening the need for innovation. We’re launching these capabilities to provide developers across all company sizes and industries with an accelerated path to building modern cloud applications fast, right, and for future change.”

“OutSystems has an ongoing commitment to arm development teams with the best capabilities to build modern applications in the cloud,” said Paulo Silva, Partner at everis, an NTT DATA Company. “As a global partner with over 350 OutSystems-certified professionals, we’ve experienced first-hand the combined power of the OutSystems development platform and AWS services to simplify digital transformation. Expanded resources like the Cloud Accelerators will help us as we continue delivering projects to our global customers and further address complex business requirements across many industries and use cases.” 

Cloud technologies are a critical part of any organisation’s digital transformation journey, and these Accelerators combine the power of AWS and the OutSystems platform to drive scale, resilience, security, and flexibility in every step of the software lifecycle. For more information on OutSystems Cloud Accelerators, please visit: outsystems.com/aws-cloud-accelerators

The pilot phase of "Fideiussioni digitali" (digital sureties), the project promoted by CeTIF, SIA and Reply - which also saw the involvement of the Bank of Italy, the Institute for the Supervision of Insurance (IVASS) and the Italian Finance Police - to digitalize the surety management process on blockchain, has been successfully concluded. 

Over 50 players - including guarantors, guaranteed parties and contractors - from the banking, insurance, financial, public administration and corporate sectors participated in the trial carried out within a "Sandbox" under the supervision of a Scientific Committee made up of representatives from the relevant Authorities and public and private bodies.

During the pilot phase, which lasted about 4 months, more than 350 sureties were digitally managed with guaranteed sums ranging from €10,000 to €1.4m, and an average amount of €275,000. According to data provided by participants, use of blockchain and DLT technology can lead to a reduction in fraud of around 30% and in operating costs from 10% to over 50%, depending on the number of transactions processed.

Additional benefits that emerged from the trial include:

• cost reduction resulting from the dematerialization of documents; 
• increased transparency and certainty of information throughout the entire surety management process, linked to greater information sharing;
• greater efficiency in management of the release of the surety with consequent availability in a shorter timeframe of lines of credit to be allocated to new calls for tenders.

Based on the effectiveness of the trial and the positive feedback of participants - who represent the main players in the management of sureties in Italy - further technological, functional and regulatory improvement activities have been started up with the aim of making the platform fully operational and available on the market in the second half of 2021.

CeTIF

CeTIF, the Research Centre on Technology, Innovation and Finance has been working since 1990 in research, promoting programs on strategic and organizational change in the financial, banking and insurance sectors, involving within its network about 20,000 professionals. Each year CeTIF organizes more than 12 research programs (HUB, Outlook), also at international level, and events (workshops, community events, summits) to share knowledge, experiences and strategies on the most innovative drivers of change. With CeTIF Banking & Insurance Academy, it promotes higher education courses characterized by their scientific approach, the relevance of the contents and direct focus on the financial sector. In addition, through the activities of spin-off CeTIF Advisory, it uses exponential technologies (in experiments and sandboxes) to effectively and tangibly convey frontier innovation to target markets. CeTIF’s institutional partners include Bank of Italy, IVASS, ABI, ANPB, ANIA, and CONSOB. CeTIF.it

SIA

SIA - a subsidiary of CDP Equity - is European leader in the design, creation and management of technology infrastructures and services for Financial Institutions, Central Banks, Corporates and the Public Sector, in the areas of Card & Merchant Solutions, Digital Payment Solutions and Capital Market & Network Solutions. SIA Group provides its services in over 50 countries, and also operates through its subsidiaries and branches in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and South Africa. The company also has representation offices in the UK and Poland.

For more information: www.sia.eu/en

Reply

Reply [MTA, STAR: REY, ISIN: IT0005282865] specialises in the design and implementation of solutions based on new communication channels and digital media. As a network of highly specialised companies, Reply defines and develops business models enabled by the new models of AI, big data, cloud computing, digital media and the internet of things. Reply delivers consulting, system integration and digital services to organisations across the telecom and media; industry and services; banking and insurance; and public sectors. www.reply.com  

HIPSTO today announced the launch of its Series A Funding Round, providing the rare opportunity to invest in an organization with proprietary, leading-edge AI/advanced NLP technology as it starts its commercial journey.

HIPSTO is seeking funding to scale up its AI development department and bolster the commercial (sales & marketing) function prior to aggressively targeting the Data Labeling, Alternative Data and Brand Safety Markets. The organization is seeking investment of €2-3M for a direct equity stake and is targeting a 60x ROI in year 5. 

HIPSTO has developed a state-of-the-art AI platform called FalconV™. It combines Machine and Deep Learning techniques to facilitate a variety of NLP microservices for information discovery. The modular architecture allows configuration and re-configuration of various proprietary services for extraction, curation, analysis and delivery, providing a complete toolbox to create end-to-end AI solutions.

 “We’ve already developed a leading-edge technology stack that can provide unlimited AI solutions for a multitude of markets. Commercially we have only just scratched the surface, and found that leading international hedge funds and enterprise have acknowledged that our technology can set a new benchmark,” 
Sebastian Owen, CEO & Founder of HIPSTO.

The market for AI is estimated to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 42% from 2020 to 2027, and a trillion-dollar annual market is predicted by 2030. The adoption of AI and use of NLP by enterprise is in its infancy; HIPSTO is looking to utilize investment to accelerate the creation of its organizational infrastructure to optimize its ability to benefit from this accelerated growth.

Visit hipsto.ai/falconv/ for further information about HIPSTO’s FalconV platform. 

The following investment documentation is available upon request: 

• Information Memorandum 
• FalconV extended version overview 
• Science papers 
• AI microservice decks 
• Technology backend operations & dashboard 
• Internal market research reports (>1500 pages)

Investors with a genuine interest are encouraged to contact info@hipsto.ai for a teaser and pitch deck that will provide further information about the Series A investment.

SunTec Business Solutions, the world’s #1 relationship-based pricing and billing company, today announced that it has appointed Venkatesh SG as the Head of Customer Success Group. Based in Bangalore, Venkatesh will be responsible for nurturing and strengthening SunTec’s global client relationships in more than 45 countries around the world.

Venkatesh is a seasoned business leader with more than 30 years of experience in the BFSI domain, and a proven record of successfully leading large transformation programs. Prior to joining SunTec, he was the Chief Customer Officer at Clari5. In an earlier stint, he was responsible for delivering customer value as Senior Vice President at ITC Infotech and has also worked with EdgeVerve (Infosys), Intel and IBM.  

Nanda Kumar, CEO and founder of SunTec said: “SunTec’s Customer Success Group has been set up as a key element of our mission to become even more customer-centric than ever. I am glad to welcome Venkatesh as the head of this group. He brings to SunTec an exemplary record in building and leading teams focused on delivering greater customer success and delight. I am confident that under his leadership, this group will be instrumental in driving customer delight across the depth and breadth of SunTec’s client and product portfolio.”  

Venkatesh SG, Head of Customer Success Group at SunTec said: “The mandate to drive greater customer delight at an organization as customer-centric as SunTec is both exciting and challenging. I am looking forward to the opportunity to work closely with our clients around the world, as well as with internal teams at SunTec, with the singular mission of delivering greater value to our client organizations with our products and solutions.”

Throughout his career, Venkatesh has been involved in different stages of the enterprise software lifecycle, including pre-sales, product management, product engineering, delivery, and support.

SunTec operates globally across 45 countries, including India, USA, UK, Germany, UAE, Singapore, Canada, and Australia. The company has more than 130 clients in BFSI, telecom and travel industries.

Goal Group, the global fintech leader in withholding tax reclamation and securities class action recovery services, has announced the appointment of Tom Grande as Managing Director, Head of Institutional Sales, Americas. He will lead Goal’s rapidly expanding New York sales team and focus primarily on helping the company meet the strong market demand for its securities class actions services among large institutional investors. 

Tom Grande brings a wealth of experience to his new role, having held senior executive positions in custody banking, corporate trust and asset servicing for prestigious institutions including JP Morgan and BNY Mellon. He has an enviable track record for leading and managing large relationship management and sales teams, helping clients leverage technology to boost global portfolio net income, mitigate risk and navigate regulatory change.   

Stephen Everard, CEO, Goal Group, said: “We are excited about our progress in the US market and the potential for future sales growth based on our innovative, new cloud subscription service packages. New business enquiries are at an all-time high and Tom is ideally qualified to help us capitalise on this, fulfilling investment intermediaries’ needs to power up their capabilities in asset servicing and accelerate returns while reducing costs. I’m confident that the additional experience Tom brings to our talented local team – underpinned by our substantial investment in technology, unparalleled global service and flexible fee structure – will propel our business to new heights in the coming year.” 

Commenting on his appointment, Tom Grande said: “I’m delighted to join the Goal team just at the time when the company is rolling out its next-generation suite of cloud-based subscription services that are set to truly disrupt the market. The new solutions are smart, scalable and sustainable – they tick every box and will transform institutional investors’ process models. I’m excited to help new and existing clients unlock every opportunity to maximise fund returns while driving efficiency, reducing costs and improving governance.”

Goal Group’s client base includes five of the top ten global custodians, six of the top ten global fund managers and all four of the U.S. depositary banks. The company is headquartered in London, with local teams in New York and Melbourne.

FSS (Financial Software and Systems), a leading global provider of integrated payment products and a payment processor, is to collaborate with Zwipe to bring next generation contactless payment cards to issuers globally. Zwipe is a payment FinTech recognized for having pioneered the development of biometric payments and has delivered many successful pilots around the world.

FSS is among the leading providers of card issuance products globally and its card portfolio consists of 800 plus million payment cards for Tier One banks and payment processors. The organizations will be working together closely, offering greater value to customers by combining FSS’s Unified Issuance Platform and Zwipe Pay One biometric card capabilities, supported by Zwipe’s fast-growing global network of card manufacturing partners.

The widespread adoption of contactless payment cards has been a huge success in recent years[1]. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the use of contactless payments even further as consumers demand a safe, contact-free transacting environment. However, the lack of cardholder authentication with contactless cards translates into usage being restricted to relatively small and medium value payments, hampering the ability to deliver a fully contact-free experience for all payment values. The response to this is the biometric payment card that fully enables contact-free transactions while boosting confidence and security for consumers, retailers and issuers.

Commenting on the partnership  K Srinivasan, Chief Operating Officer, FSS PayTech, said “Biometric payment cards will bring strong differentiation and value uplift to our card issuance and management offerings. Our collaboration with Zwipe will help our issuer clients to deliver a completely touchless and PIN-free check out experience, better in-store payments hygiene and much stronger cardholder security. Needless to say, now more than ever, innovation can play a critical role within the context of the global pandemic which makes it even more important to bring solutions such as this quickly to our customers. Zwipe Pay ONE is recognized as the most advanced (Gen3) biometric payment technology and complements FSS’ innovative card portfolio. It will be made available to our clients for piloting and deployment from H2 2021”.

As part of this collaboration, FSS will offer Zwipe Pay ONE biometric payment cards globally. The initial focus will be in those markets where contactless is bringing considerable benefits

in the area of financial inclusion as seen in Canada, India and a number of countries within Europe, Middle East (GCC countries) and Africa. Both partners will start engaging with issuers from Q2 2021 and aim for starting pilots from 2H 2021.

“We are humbled and proud to partner with FSS, one of the most respected and global providers of payment services. This is a landmark alliance for Zwipe and will significantly accelerate our growth globally, most notably in Asia, the world’s largest payment market,” said André Løvestam, CEO of Zwipe.

Monevo, the market leading personal credit platform & API, has released an independent report on UK Banks and Fintechs setting out the business case for developing closer partnerships and defining exactly how customers are set to benefit.

Entitled ‘The Banks and the Fintech: Creating Better Banking Together’, the new report is the culmination of in-depth interviews with a range of finance industry leaders, including brands such as Monese, Zopa and Shawbrook Bank. Their insight is coupled with references to recent research and case studies of ongoing successful partnerships between various Banks and Fintechs.

At the heart of the report is the theory that the combined strengths of Banks and Fintechs can offset their respective limitations - should the two industries develop partnerships built on healthy co-opetition.

The report, with a foreword from Fintech industry influencer Marcel Van Oost, presents a number of key findings, three of which are summarised below.

Fintechs are more digitally agile than Banks. For Banks to emulate Fintech operations, they would have to undertake large-scale, time-consuming, and costly digital transformations. By partnering with Fintechs, they would have immediate access to this technological capability without the investment.

Banks can achieve better customer understanding. As Fintechs function on platforms designed to integrate leading-edge AI and machine learning technology, they can complete sophisticated analyses of a Bank’s customer data on their behalf. This would allow Banks to responsively improve their customer offerings.

Partnerships would lead to better customer outcomes. Customers denied credit from their Banks are often forced to navigate the personal finance market on their own. With a suite of Fintechs at their disposal, Banks could instead introduce customers to those Fintechs they feel offer the best alternative solutions. This would mitigate the risk of customers committing to unfavourable deals and of Banks potentially losing customers to competitors.

Greg Cox, CEO of Monevo, says: “We feel this report is crucial because it’s the first of its kind to candidly interview experts within the lending space and to expose the multiple, substantive advantages of Banks and Fintech working together in a spirit of co-opetition.

“The timing of the report is also vital. Especially since the pandemic, customers are more digitally savvy, they want the ease, versatility, and functionality of Fintech but wrapped in a brand they can trust. By combining Fintech innovation with the captive audiences and trust levels that Banks possess, the personal finance market could undergo one of its most significant upgrades in decades. Our intention is that this report helps to drive more fruitful discussions that bring more customer-facing innovation to market.”

The full report can be found here. 

The pilot phase of "Fideiussioni digitali" (digital sureties), the project promoted by CeTIF, SIA and Reply - which also saw the involvement of the Bank of Italy, the Institute for the Supervision of Insurance (IVASS) and the Italian Finance Police - to digitalize the surety management process on blockchain, has been successfully concluded. 

Over 50 players - including guarantors, guaranteed parties and contractors - from the banking, insurance, financial, public administration and corporate sectors participated in the trial carried out within a "Sandbox" under the supervision of a Scientific Committee made up of representatives from the relevant Authorities and public and private bodies. 

During the pilot phase, which lasted about 4 months, more than 350 sureties were digitally managed with guaranteed sums ranging from €10,000 to €1.4m, and an average amount of €275,000. According to data provided by participants, use of blockchain and DLT technology can lead to a reduction in fraud of around 30% and in operating costs from 10% to over 50%, depending on the number of transactions processed. 

Additional benefits that emerged from the trial include: 

• cost reduction resulting from the dematerialization of documents; 

• increased transparency and certainty of information throughout the entire surety management process, linked to greater information sharing; 

• greater efficiency in management of the release of the surety with consequent availability in a shorter timeframe of lines of credit to be allocated to new calls for tenders. 

Based on the effectiveness of the trial and the positive feedback of participants - who represent the main players in the management of sureties in Italy - further technological, functional and regulatory improvement activities have been started up with the aim of making the platform fully operational and available on the market in the second half of 2021. 

Fintech Week London is the first major event to bring the Fintech community together, in-person, since 2019 and SkyParlour is delighted to have been appointed as the official PR and media relations partner for the event.

Based in Manchester and London, SkyParlour is a PR agency dedicated to the Fintech industry – having spent over a decade delivering global media and content campaigns for some of the biggest names in the market via its Scale division. SkyParlour has recently broadened its proposition with new division Started, to deliver tailored PR campaigns for the brightest new Fintech start-ups.

Fintech Week London chose SkyParlour for its unique, specialist understanding of the Fintech agenda and for its close working relationship with Fintech media. The partnership will see SkyParlour promoting Fintech Week London, as well as managing all media relations and press office.

The event, held from Monday 12^th to Friday 16^th July 2021, will host senior decision-makers representing the most innovative companies in financial services, as they gather in the UK capital to discuss the position of London as a Fintech hub post-Brexit. Topics of discussion will include open-banking, digital identity and the roles that big tech firms and the big banks will play in the future of the UK’s economy.

Over the course of the five days, Fintech Week London will welcome over 2,000 executives online and in person, from high-street banks, digital challengers, technology giants and new disruptors. An array of exciting and sought-after speakers and keynotes will be involved, including Ron Kalifa who will discuss the recently published Kalifa Review of UK Fintech.

Kimberley Waldron, Co-Founder at SkyParlour, says: “It is great to be recognised by Fintech Week London for our knowledge and commitment to the Fintech industry. We are experiencing a significant moment for the industry, with Fintech gaining lots of attention this year even at a government level. Fintech Week London will be a pivotal moment for London and UK Fintech as we come face-to-face again, and we are delighted to be helping drive the excitement around this alongside our clients, partners and industry friends.”

The CEO of Fintech Week London, Raf De Kimpe, adds: “Fintech Week London is back with a brand-new team and event format. Our content board is made up of some of the industry’s biggest names, and together we have created a truly thought-provoking and insightful agenda. With that in mind, it is important we have a PR team on board that fully understands Fintech. We are thrilled to be working with the SkyParlour team.

Following on from this, Angela Yore, Co-Founder at SkyParlour, adds: “We have all missed face-to-face events in Fintech, so it is great to be a part of building the buzz around Fintech Week London. Fintech is an industry that thrives on conversation and we are pleased to be a conduit to get so many strong messages out to the media. Fintech has an ever more important story to tell.”

For further information, or to sign-up, please click the link below:

https://fintechweek.london