Cryptocurrencies had a strong start this year, with crypto asset prices, such as Bitcoin, reaching record-heights. However, that caught the attention of cybercriminals.

The Atlas VPN team found that cybercriminals stole around $108.3 million from various blockchain projects in the first quarter of 2021 — a 46% rise from the same period last year. Ethereum DApps, blockchain wallets, and cryptocurrency exchanges were the criminals’ target of choice.

Ethereum (ETH) DApps were the most popular among cybercriminals in the first quarter of 2021. They were affected by a total of 11 breaches and 5 scam events, which amounted to over $86 million in losses.

Blockchain wallets were also commonly attacked. There were 9 blockchain wallet breaches recorded in the first three months of this year, as well as 1 scam event and 2 blackmail cases. In total, they cost victims approximately $19.3 million.

Finally, cryptocurrency exchanges had 4 breaches and 1 scam event. Together cybercriminals collected around $2.9 million from cryptocurrency exchanges in 2021 Q1.

Blockchain-linked hacks are on the rise again

In 2020, blockchain-related breaches declined for the first time in the past five years. However, a new year brings new challenges, and it seems that in 2021 blockchain-related breaches are on the rise once again.

The first quarter of 2021 already saw 33 blockchain breaches, including scams, affecting Ethrereum DApps, blockchain wallets, and cryptocurrency exchanges. It signifies a 154% rise compared to Q1 of 2020, when 13 blockchain breaches were detected.

However, the number of blockchain-linked breaches in Q1 of 2021 is still almost two times lower than in the record year of 2019. In the first quarter of 2019 alone, 62 blockchain breaches were detected.

Ruth Cizynski, the cybersecurity researcher and writer at Atlas VPN, shares her thoughts on the situation:

“Due to their nature, blockchain projects remain profitable targets to cybercriminals because fraudulent transactions cannot be reversed as they may be in the traditional financial system. With cryptocurrencies continuing to boom, it is safe to say that we can expect more hacks to pour in by the end of this year. ”

To read the full article, head over to: https://atlasvpn.com/blog/blockchain-hackers-netted-over-100-million-in-q1-2021

Deal brings 8,000 ecommerce merchants to Nets portfolio, as part of continued European expansion. Merchants and partners to benefit from expanded set of ecosystem integrations and a broad range of functionalities as well as future innovations

Consolidation in European payments:

• Expansion of Nets presence and know-how in e-commerce through acquisition of one of Finland's leading payment service providers
• “Checkout Finland” turnover of €12m for 2020; strong growth forecast for 2021
• Nets Group on track in ambition to become European PayTech leader through strategic M&A

Nets Group's Finnish e-commerce specialist Paytrail has completed the acquisition of Checkout Finland Oy, one of the leading payment service providers in Finland. With this acquisition, Nets Group further expands its presence in Finland and strengthens its position within e-commerce – a high-growth area across Europe, further fuelled by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Checkout Finland, previously part of OP Financial Group, is a fast-growing player in the Finnish payment landscape, serving both e-commerce merchants and physical stores with a wide range of payment options and mobile payment solutions.

Checkout Finland is one of the first companies in the Nordics to operate payments on a cloud-based, scalable platform. The company had around 8,000 e-commerce merchants and reported revenues of almost €12 million for 2020, up from €8.2 million in 2019. Forecasts anticipate this strong growth continuing throughout 2021.

A combination of national know-how and international experience

“Following acquisitions across Europe – especially in fast-growing, underpenetrated regions – Checkout Finland strategically complements our existing offering in Finland very well,” said Robert Hoffmann, CEO of Nets Merchant Services. “Expanding market presence, especially in the fast-growing e-commerce business, is an important building block in achieving Nets Group's ambition of becoming the European PayTech leader.”

Like every country, the Finnish payment scene has its own unique traits, which is why local experience and know-how about specific consumer preferences and contexts in payment transactions are crucial for success. “In Finland, direct transfers are still a very popular payment option in online retail,” added Hoffmann. “Together with Checkout Finland, we are able to provide an expanded set of ecosystem integrations and broad functionality across bank payments, PSD2, cards, wallets, invoices, as well as future innovations to Finnish merchants and service providers that – thanks to Nets Group's broad spectrum and extensive experience across Europe – also enable international business growth.”

Nets entered into a ten-year merchant acquiring partnership with OP Financial Group in 2017 and its acquisition of Checkout Finland take its Finnish e-commerce expertise to the next level. Following the signing of the agreement in January 2021, all authorities have now approved the acquisition. The parties have agreed not to disclose the price of the transaction.

Europe-wide consolidation continues

In recent years, the payments industry across Europe has seen increasing consolidation, in which Nets Group has taken an active role through a comprehensive M&A strategy. In the past three years, the Group has successfully completed several mergers and acquisitions, including the merger with Concardis, one of the leading payment providers in the DACH region, as well as the acquisition of other strategic partners in German-speaking countries and fast-growing regions such as Poland. In September last year, Nets Group announced a merger with the leading Italian PayTech provider Nexi to become the leading PayTech company in Europe. This transaction is expected to close in Q2 2021.

Tinkoff Group has joined the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), the largest UN partnership with the finance industry or the worldwide community of nearly 400 banks, insurers and investors. More than 220 banks have now signed the Principles for Responsible Banking, a unique framework for ensuring that signatory banks’ strategy and practice align with the vision society has set out for its future in the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement.

The Principles for Responsible Banking provide the framework for banks to: 

• Align global environmental, social and corporate governance efforts at management level. 

• Lower the negative environmental impact of their products and services in order to prevent climate change and limit global warming. 

• Work with customers responsibly, which includes increasing the financial literacy of retail customers and encouraging corporate customers to pursue sustainable economic activity.

• Incorporate sustainable development in investor relations in order to achieve broader societal goals.

• Create a corporate culture in line with the sustainable development and responsible banking principles.

• Act transparently– review business activity and ensure that reports outlining the positive and negative impact of the bank’s operations, as well as its sustainable development efforts, are publicly available. 

Oliver Hughes, Tinkoff Group CEO:

«Becoming a signatory of the Principles for Responsible Banking was a logical step for the Group and is proof of our commitment to continue developing our business sustainably. Corporate social responsibility has always been a part of Tinkoff's DNA, and now we can openly share the results of the implementation of our sustainable development strategy with the community. We are excited to pursue this path and have an even greater impact on our customers, employees, partners, shareholders and society in general.»

Today, the UNEP FI collaborates with 450 organizations (banks, insurers, investors and related institutions) to ensure that financial services benefit the planet and improve the quality of people's lives without causing harm to future generations.

More information about the Principles for Responsible Banking is available at the following link: www.unepfi.org/responsiblebanking

TCS Group Holding PLC 

TCS Group Holding PLC is an innovative digital provider of retail financial services. Its portfolio includes Tinkoff Bank, the mobile virtual network operator Tinkoff Mobile, Tinkoff Insurance, the management company Tinkoff Capital, Tinkoff Software DC, a network of development hubs in Russia’s largest cities, and Tinkoff Education. The Group is currently developing the Tinkoff ecosystem, which offers financial and lifestyle services. 

The Group was founded in 2006 by Russian entrepreneur Oleg Tinkov and has been listed on the London Stock Exchange and on the Moscow Exchange. 

The Group's largest business is Tinkoff Bank, a digital bank that serves over 13 million customers and forms the core of the Tinkoff ecosystem. 

Tinkoff Bank is the second largest player in the Russian credit card market, with a share of 14.0%. The 2020 IFRS net income of TCS Group Holding PLC amounted to RUB 44.2 billion. The ROE was 40.6%. 

With no branches, the Group serves all its customers remotely via online channels and a cloud-based call centre. To ensure smooth delivery of the Group’s products, the Group has a proprietary nationwide network of representatives. 

Global Finance named Tinkoff Bank the world’s Best Digital Consumer Bank in 2018 and 2020, the Best Digital Consumer Bank in Russia in 2020, 2018, 2016 and 2015, and the Best Digital Consumer Bank in Central and Eastern Europe in 2019 and 2020. The Banker recognised Tinkoff Bank as the Bank of the Year in Russia in 2017 and 2013, and as the Best-performing Russian Bank in 2020. The bank's mobile app has consistently received top industry ratings and awards (by Deloitte in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and by Global Finance in 2018 and 2020) and in 2020, was ranked by Forbes among the top-3 Best Russian Employers. 

Qumulo, the breakthrough leader in radically simplifying enterprise file data management across hybrid-cloud environments, today announced support for Amazon Nimble Studio, a new service that enables customers to set up creative studios in hours instead of weeks, with elasticity that gives them near limitless scale and access to rendering on demand. With Nimble Studio, customers can rapidly onboard and collaborate with artists from anywhere in the world and produce content faster and more cost effectively. Artists will have access to accelerated virtual workstations, high-speed storage, and scalable rendering across the Amazon Web Services (AWS) global infrastructure, so they can create content faster as part of virtual teams. Together with high-performance file data management from Qumulo, customers can unlock remote content creation workflows at massive scale and performance across nearly every aspect of the media and entertainment data lifecycle on AWS global infrastructure at petabyte scale, with real-time visibility, predictive caching, and a comprehensive API. 

Powered by Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) G4 instances, Amazon Nimble Studio virtual workstations provide on-demand compute power to handle the demands of even the most challenging content creation needs. Amazon Nimble Studio supports both Windows and Linux, as well as industry-standard digital content creation applications. Amazon Nimble Studio customers who choose Qumulo receive an agnostic file storage solution that is simple to manage in the cloud.

Media and entertainment (M&E) companies experienced a massive digital transformation over the past year as many studios shifted to virtual collaboration within the cloud. Because of this, Qumulo experienced unprecedented growth of file data created by M&E customers in 2020. The company currently supports 7 of the top 10 media and entertainment companies, and is designed to handle the most demanding media and video production workloads. Cutting edge studios including Industrial Brothers, Cinesite, Raynault VFX and FuseFX use Qumulo to produce television shows, animated feature films and world-renowned VFX projects, such as The Greatest Showman, American Horror Story, Amazon Prime Video’s The Boys, and The Avengers, to name a few.

“The shift to a distributed workforce has forced production teams to collaborate in remote, cloud environments resulting in data being generated by M&E companies more than ever before,” said Keith Nargi, Field CTO at Qumulo. “At Qumulo, we provide creative teams with a modern infrastructure that is simple to use and highly scalable to meet the needs of changing project demands. We’re honored to be a launch partner of Amazon Nimble Studio.” 

Contact us today to learn more about how Qumulo helps media and entertainment organizations all over the world capture, collaborate, and distribute file data globally in a cloud environment.  

NatWest has been recognized for "Best Security and Anti-Fraud Development" following its enterprise-wide deployment of the ARIC™ Risk Hub; Featurespace's real-time machine learning Enterprise Financial Crime prevention software.   

The award was announced during The Card & Payments Awards’ digital ceremony on April 29, 2021. 

Featurespace’s ARIC Risk Hub safeguards payments across NatWest's commercial and consumer divisions from all known fraud types, as well as new scams and attacks.  

Featurespace’s ARIC technology achieves this by risk scoring every event within its authorization stream and predicting individual customer behaviors.  

Since deploying the ARIC Risk Hub, NatWest has achieved:  

• A substantial improvement in the value of fraud detected 
• An exponential increase in scam value detection rate  
• Greater overall customer satisfaction 
• Reduced operational strain  
• A higher Net Promoter Score (NPS) 

“We selected Featurespace as a strategic partner as the team and their technology gave us the best understanding of NatWest’s requirements to protect our customers from the harm of fraud. This award win is a testament to Featurespace’s excellence in this area,” said Gavin Coull, Fraud and Customer Authentication Strategy Lead at NatWest.  

“The financial return on our investment has outstripped our expectations and with ARIC’s integration to our existing customer communication platform, we've seen a significant improvement in customer handling and complaints." 

From the judges: 

• "[Authorised Push Payment] fraud is a massive problem for the industry. The regulator is concerned and is encouraging innovation in this area to invest in new technology to reduce that. The risk cover that NatWest have done with Featurespace is innovative in the space." 
• "Featurespace is stepping up its game in fraud detection transaction monitoring, and what they’ve done with NatWest is unbelievable." 

“NatWest is fulfilling an ambitious vision to protect its customers from the exponential threats of financial crime. This recognition shows that NatWest is at the forefront of security innovation and a leader at protecting its customers and their money. We’re honored to be NatWest’s chosen partner and to be helping them drive towards achieving their vision,” said Martina King, CEO of Featurespace. 

The Card & Payments Awards recognize excellence and innovation across the industry. Winners of the prestigious awards are selected by an independent panel of expert judges.  

For Featurespace, this recognition follows the recent launch of Featurespace's Automated Deep Behavioral Networks for the card and payments industry, which provides a deeper layer of defense against scams, account takeover, card and payments fraud, which cost the financial services industry an estimated $42 billion last year.  

Today’s Eurozone GDP numbers highlight the stark difference in the state of the US and Eurozone economies. GDP contracted 0.6% q/q in the Eurozone in Q1 as the slow vaccine roll-out and continued lockdown restrictions took their toll.  A hefty 1.7% decline in activity in Germany easily outweighed a 0.4% gain in France. Yesterday’s data, by contrast, showed the US economy, already recovering fast on the back of the massive fiscal stimulus and growing 1.6% q/q last quarter. Activity in the US is now only 0.9% below its pre-Covid level in Q4 2019 whereas in the eurozone the shortfall remains a considerably larger 5.5%.

Sowmya Mony, 33, from Sheffield, is using her background as a software developer to inspire more young women into STEM as she trades tech for teaching, supported by Transition to Teach.

Transition to Teach is a Department for Education funded initiative which enables eligible career changers, those at risk of redundancy and early retirees to train for new teaching careers. Recruitment for the 2021 programme beginning in September is now underway across the Yorkshire region.

Using the Hogan Personality Assessment, Transition to Teach identify participant strengths and help to support with potential challenges participants may face in teaching. Analysis of data from the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) across the two Transition to Teach cohorts (2020 and 2019) has revealed that the main motivation for candidates to move into teaching is the desire for a career where they feel they are helping and supporting others, or adding to the greater good of society.

For Sowmya, it was her tech role and becoming a parent that helped her to see the difference she could make as a teacher:

“I moved to the UK around 10 years ago, attending the University of York to do my Masters degree before moving to Sheffield, a beautiful city that I now call my home. Sheffield is where I built my career, met my husband and we started our family.

“In my old job, I worked for Twinkl as part of the website development team. We made resources for teachers. It was a tight knit team and a very busy environment. I worked at Twinkl for around 5 years and had great relationships with teachers and former teachers. When I’d hear them talk about ‘my children’, referring to their pupils and the drive, determination and ambition they had for their students, it inspired me to think about teaching.

“Becoming a mother myself, and my child growing up and going off to school, also developed my interest in teaching as a career. I could see first-hand the passion that teachers have for their profession and the difference they make to a child’s life.

“In 2020, the time was right for me to move into teaching. My application at Sheffield Hallam was accepted just as the pandemic hit, so there was already a lot of change in my life, moving to home working and both my husband and child at home. Lots of people dropped out of the course due to the uncertainty but I almost used the uncertainty to my advantage. Everything was changing anyway, so changing my career suddenly didn’t seem like such a big jump.

“The transferable skills I will take into teaching include professionalism, collaboration and the ability to come up with creative ideas. But, training as a teacher has also helped me to develop new skills, like resilience and adaptability. As a parent, you often feel guilty about how much time you’re giving your child. Having support and workarounds helps hugely. The one thing I’ve learnt is that you don’t have to be perfect, just efficient.

“Having support from Transition to Teach has really helped too. My guidance and development adviser is the person I go to every time I need help, whether it’s with an interview or a question about an assignment, my GDA always has the answer. I’ll receive support from Transition to Teach right through to the end of my first year as a newly qualified teacher.

“When I qualify, I will be teaching computer science at secondary level and I like the idea of teaching KS4 and KS5 where the subject gets quite complicated. My industry subject knowledge will help me a lot there.”

Data has also been released from Transition to Teach’s 2020 cohort. 105 candidates made up the 2020 group, bringing over 1500 years’ work experience into the teaching profession. The majority of 2020 participants trained to teach maths (37%), followed by modern foreign languages (17%), chemistry (10%), physics (8%) and computer science (6%).

Further insight from the HPI data found that, as well as being motivated to help others, candidates moving into teaching are motivated to work with the latest research, data and technology, enjoying creativity and innovation. This was also key to Sowmya’s move into teaching:

“Some people might have the perception that only boys like gaming and computing, and I hope to use my role as a teacher and my past industry experience to encourage more girls into STEM subjects. In my old career, I used to volunteer for projects to encourage women into tech, helping them to code, so this will be similar in that way.

“When I was younger, I was lucky in that my brother was into computers and did an undergraduate degree in computer science. Computers and coding was quite normal to me but not everyone has that. Teaching is one way that I can give back and share all that I have learned, hopefully inspiring others.”

Programme Manager at Transition to Teach, Rebecca Waring said: “As we recruit for our 2021 cohort of trainee teachers, it’s incredibly positive to see that participants are moving into teaching because they want to make a difference in the lives of young people. They’re ready to be the role models that young people need, challenging perceptions that might exist about certain subjects or professions and inspiring the future generation.

“Our service is there to help people work out if teaching is for them, and if they choose to proceed, then we support with the practical tasks like finding an initial teacher training provider, support through placements and even job applications when the time comes. If you would like to learn more about Transition to Teach, get in touch to see if you are eligible and you could be starting your teaching journey this September.”

https://www.transitiontoteach.co.uk/

UTP Group has partnered with Faster Processing to provide its eCommerce customers with the unique ability to receive fund settlement within hours rather than days. Up until this point merchants have had to wait anywhere up to five working days before receiving the funds from payments they have taken online. 

UTP Group is the only payment solution company in the market that is currently providing Faster Processing to both online and bricks and mortar businesses. Transactions processed using Faster Processing are typically credited to a merchant’s bank account within a few hours or the same day.

Key features:

• Only provider offering same-day funding for in-store and online. 
• Businesses can choose their own end of day. 
• Reports all transactions – attempted, declined and processed.
• Optional text message alerts on transaction data. 

Whilst Faster Processing ensures same-day funding, it also allows businesses to determine their own end of day. This flexible feature can play a vital role in providing merchants with full control of their cash flow. Allowing individual merchants to choose the end of day best suited to their business model, eliminates the challenges faced of receiving more than one separate statement for each trading day. 

By having a more consolidated picture of the daily trading period, businesses can plan more effectively for increased demand and traffic whilst also understanding potential vulnerabilities. The system also permits merchants to witness transactions that are declined, allowing them to implement more effective fraud prevention strategies.

Faster Processing is already available to thousands of businesses across the UK and Gibraltar. Alice Collins from Firefly Events, says of the service: “Using the Faster Processing service through UTP has made such a fundamental difference to our business. As an events company, we have many an occasion when last orders are late at night. Faster Processing allows us to choose when we get paid, and without fail the funds are in our account ten minutes after we close. Not only does this give us greater confidence in our provider, but it streamlines the way we are able to do our accounting with daily reports on transactions. We would never go back to a standard service now we have experienced what Faster Processing offers.”

Michael Ault, CEO at UTP, highlights the benefit that Faster Processing will provide to any online business taking payments: “Implementing Faster Processing for eCommerce was always in our business plan. Covid-19 also means it has become a necessary development to help businesses that have suffered over this past year. Waiting up to 5 days to receive funds is simply not viable for many businesses that are still on the road to recovery.”

As the world continues to shift towards a cashless society, businesses are becoming more reliant on digital payment methods. Not only is efficiency key, but the data that can be gained from these solutions can play such a crucial role for a business. Gaining information on busy periods, customer profiles and spending habits is data that translates into income.

The difference between having Faster Processing, and not having it, could be the difference between a strong successful cash flow, and a broken unstructured one. Faster Processing is designed with merchants in mind and will be a pivotal change that helps businesses to thrive in the new normal. 

For more information visit https://www.utpgroup.co.uk