Paymentology and partner Intercash are launching tailor-made card issuing solutions for the digitally savvy in Mexico.

The market opportunity for FinTech in Latin America is growing year on year. The region has been able to adapt quickly to emerging technologies as payment security and financial inclusion is low. Banks are looking at newer technologies to help bridge this gap.

Mexico is in a great position as it has the highest rate of smartphone penetration in Latin America and over 45% of transactions are done by card. The country represents an exciting opportunity for FinTechs looking to offer smart payment solutions with easy-to-use functionality.

Following recent recognition by Latin America’s financial-transaction-network, PROSA, Intercash, a global payments solutions provider, and Paymentology, a leading issuer payments processor, today announced the launch of innovative card issuing solutions in Mexico to serve the growing volume of card transactions.

The partnership will see Intercash’s customers benefit from the ability to launch innovative payment solutions almost instantly with unrivalled access to data. Furthermore, this access to data at point-of-sale will empower Intercash’s customers to offer innovative real-time payment options that are personalised and meet the demands of today’s digital savvy consumer.

Using Paymentology’s cloud-native platform and PayRule.AI engine, customers will be empowered to shape consumers’ behaviour and preferences, key in today’s customer-first world. It is powered by augmented intelligence functionality which advances the authorisation process of consumer spends on credit and debit cards. Intercash’s customers will gain access to consumer spend data including transaction history retrieval, as well as a granular card scheme fee breakdown. The engine goes as far as retrieving and analysing mid-flight full card history for the approval or decline of transactions.

Shane O’Hara, CEO of Paymentology said: “We are excited to be collaborating with Intercash to help bring the latest customer-first payment solutions to Mexico, allowing millions of people the opportunity to make convenient, fast and secure payment transactions.”

Aaron Gladman, CEO of Intercash’s Card Division added: “Banks and government institutions are now looking to technology for finance and security solutions. We are delighted to be partnering with Paymentology for our initiative in launching turn-key card issuing and card management solutions into the Mexican market."

Unfortunately, it’s becoming all too normal to fall foul of your bank when transacting to buy cryptocurrencies via fiat using bank transfers or your debit card. Banks accounts may get frozen, transactions delayed and issues may arise with the intent and destination of funds.
Club Swan (https://ClubSwan.com/en-za/) is a top-ranking innovative service that has brought a secure and reliable solution to the African crypto community. This firm has played an integral role especially in South Africa who represent the majority of the demand for Bitcoins in the region. The company specializes in buying, selling cryptos and allowing customers to spend Bitcoin as fiat using their debit cards worldwide cutting out the need for a bank in order to buy, sell and spend crypto.
With crypto generally used as a hedge against inflation and currency devaluation in Africa, there are growing shifts in demand to use cryptocurrencies as a means for international transactions and business trade saving in international exchange fees. Recognizing these challenges Club Swan offers multiple currency accounts, the ability to exchange into multiple fiat currencies typically 4-8% cheaper than the high street banks, as well as the ability to transfer your cryptocurrency to other external wallets via their platform.
As an FCA regulated and responsible organization, the KYC process is concluded on all customers which in most circumstances is executed swiftly, in under 30 minutes giving customers the ability to buy and sell Bitcoin,  Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Tether, BAT, Paxos, USD Coin and EOS using USD, GBP, EUR, CNY, and JPY accounts with over $1 billion transacted using the platform.
The crypto concierge service offered by Club Swan allows businesses and busy individual access to concierge professionals 24/7 where all requests, large or small, are handled with care and efficiency. Whether it’s hiring a private jet for business travel during the COVID-19 pandemic, to relocation to a different city or country, the concierge service is there to provide assistance.
With the South African budget looming on 24th February, there is a growing focus on diversification of savings and investments into alternative assets like cryptocurrencies to mitigate the risk of potential Rand (ZAR) devaluation.
“From September 2020 till January 2021 we’ve seen a 310% increase in transactions for our South African customers,” says Martin Lamming, CCO Club Swan.

Red Hat announced the results of its third annual State of Enterprise Open Source research report, after surveying 1,250 IT leaders to provide insights on the use of open source in enterprises.

The survey results highlight how and where organisations are using enterprise open source, the impact of COVID-19, mindsets about enterprise open source and hybrid cloud, as well as he motivations for future adoption.

The top-line findings include:

• The importance of open source: 90% of respondents surveyed are using enterprise open source today – top use cases: IT infrastructure modernization (64%), application development (54%), and digital transformation (53%).
• Open source is viewed as more secure than proprietary software: 87% see enterprise open source as “more secure” or “as secure” as proprietary software, while 84% indicate that enterprise open source “is a key part of their organisation's security strategy.
• Increased use in digital transformation projects: 54% say that digital transformation is an important use of enterprise open source, a number that’s climbed 11 points over the past two years.
• Container adoption is widespread: just under 50% of respondents worldwide use containers in production to at least some degree and an additional 37% use containers for development only.
• Contribution matters:  83% of respondents say they were more likely to select a software vendor that contributes to the open source community.

You can view the report here.

Existing Planixs customer, FBN Bank (UK) Ltd, is to continue the use of Planixs’ real-time, intraday cash, collateral and liquidity management solution, Realiti® with a 3-year contract extension.
Through its Realiti software, UK-based Planixs provides banking firms with the ability to gain real-time visibility of their cash, collateral and liquidity at any point during the day, allowing them to use this insight to improve treasury operations, better manage liquidity risk, ensure regulatory compliance and reduce overdraft and liquidity buffer costs.
FBN selected Planixs in March 2016 after an exhaustive evaluation process to establish the best real-time treasury software on the market. By implementing Realiti, FBN can improve its intraday liquidity management capabilities and its compliance with the Basel Committee’s BCBS 248 intraday monitoring regime.
The banking firm initially signed up to Planixs’ Realiti software solution for five years to obtain real-time intraday insight and improve regulatory compliance processes, FBN will now extend the use of the software for a further three years.
Antonio Gutierrez, COO, at FBN comments: “We are delighted to be extending our contract with Planixs – we look forward to a continued successful relationship with the team and enhancing our treasury management processes through Realiti”.
Neville Roberts, CEO at Planixs, adds: “We are thrilled that FBN is renewing its contract for our real-time treasury software solution. We look forward to continuing our relationship with FBN and proving the bank with the tools its needs for real-time liquidity management”.
Realiti continues to be the pioneering real-time intraday cash, collateral and liquidity management solution with live implementations at global scale. Its SaaS or on premise delivery models and high performance and scalable architecture mean that Realiti can be deployed with minimal intrusion to a bank’s infrastructure, rapidly delivering business value.
 

Financial process automation experts, Valta Technology Group (Valtatech),  today launches a new self-assessment tool to help enterprise organisations improve their business resiliency and reduce negotiable spend during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The self-service tool, which is available to all businesses online and free of charge, is designed to help businesses, who have been impacted by the pandemic, to measure and analyse their spend and outgoings; and identify the steps they need to take to improve their business resiliency, operational efficiency, and ultimately increase their profitability in the current climate.

Stuart O’Neill, Managing Director APAC at Coupa Software, says, “In times of crisis and recovery, every dollar counts towards business survival and growth. On-demand visibility over committed spend and outgoing liabilities will help organisations make better spend decisions and build resiliency. In today’s economic climate, this free tool from our partner Valtatech will help Australian businesses to identify opportunities for operational efficiency.”

Built on Valtatech’s unique experience and understanding of both the Procurement to Pay and Source to Pay areas of business operations and spend management, Valtatech’s free self-assessment tool highlights the connection between spend optimisation and organisational performance. Enabling struggling organisations to identify and overcome inefficient processing systems, and to transact digitally with their trading partners, regardless of their size, location, or technical maturity.

Jussi Karjalainen, Founder and Managing Partner of Valtatech, says: “Now, more than ever, businesses find themselves operating in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment. The key question is how can businesses position themselves to not just survive in this environment, but thrive? How well could your business deal with future disruptions? Our experience shows that the businesses who are going to thrive have optimised and gained control of their spend and are delivering more revenue with less cost."

“Surprisingly, many businesses still fail to see the connection between saving money and increased profit. Increasing profit through sales during a global pandemic can be incredibly hard; but putting spend and procurement processes in place is a lot easier. We are here to help, and we have launched Valtatech’s self-assessment tool to ask the key questions your business needs to consider before embarking on a journey to spend and payments automation.”

Martin McCann, CEO of Trade Ledger, the global technology provider to the commercial banking and financial services industry, provides the following comment ahead of tomorrow’s Budget and the predicted introduction of a new business loan scheme.

“Tomorrow Rishi Sunak delivers the UK Budget 2021. We don’t know what he’ll say. We do know that business loans schemes have to stop eventually. What will happen next?" 

“The public purse can’t fund the loans indefinitely. They will need to transfer back to the private sector. This will prompt an urgent rethink for business borrowers and lenders about cashflow. The government is aware of the problems. The credit system hasn’t changed much for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and it’s not up to the task of helping UK businesses to recover and thrive."

“It’s too slow. Business borrowers need 30 hours to apply then have to wait 90 days for cash. It’s focused on tangible assets, but 80% of UK businesses are service-focused and have intangible assets."

“Times of challenge like this are when we should see the most innovation. What’s stopping lenders assessing the creditworthiness of business borrowers in new ways, such as using information from their supply chain? And operating at internet speed?”

Trade Ledger exists to enable lenders to provide credit to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), by showing them at a glance the information they need to make good decisions. Its platform puts the customer experience at the heart of the process and expands credit distribution without increasing risk, unlocking a £1.2 trillion un-served segment of the £7 trillion global SME credit market. 

Trade Ledger brings together all the data that lenders need throughout the customer lifecycle, analyses that data, and automates key processes. Lenders can act faster with less risk and serve more businesses at greater profit. They can also move into new services such as embedded finance, including offering loans as part of the payment journey on websites selling to businesses.

Classic car and motorbike insurance specialist, Hagerty, has selected LexisNexis® Risk Solutions as its chosen data partner to support its growth ambitions in the U.K. under the direction of its new VP of International Insurance Products, Lee Mathewson.

Hagerty has seen solid growth in the U.K.; and plans to expand its customer base to include newer classic cars and younger drivers building on its strong reputation in collector vehicle insurance in the U.K. and in the U.S. The Hagerty Drivers Club is also set to expand to customers in the U.K. for the first time.
 
In the first phase of development, Hagerty will take advantage of streamlined access to prior claims  and financial sanction data direct into their quoting systems via the LexisNexis® Informed Quotes platform.  This will enable the insurer to provide quotes, calculate renewals and make mid-term adjustments at speed, based on a comprehensive view of the customer’s risk.

Informed Quotes delivers high volume, real-time risk data to help provide the clearest picture possible of risk. It serves more than 200 million transactions per day to all of the major software houses and direct to insurance providers via a single, direct application programming interface (API).

Later this year, Hagerty will also bring Attract™ for Motor and LexisNexis® Risk Insights into its quote process. Attract™ for Motor is the first market-wide, policy data-based risk score built to help insurance providers more accurately predict insurance claims losses. Risk Insights is an insurance-specific customer verification and enrichment solution based on over 200 public and proprietary data attributes combined with the ability to match and link disparate customer records.    

Lee Mathewson, VP of international insurance products at Hagerty, said: “We serve a strong and growing community of classics enthusiasts in the U.K. who value our expertise and trust us to protect their pride and joys. While collectors’ insurance might be non-standard, our customers still expect a smooth, swift and accurate quote process when they buy insurance from us.  LexisNexis® Informed Quotes will help us deliver on our promise to provide a digitised quote process and fits with our ambitions to increase our online presence and offer digital experiences to our customers.”  

Martyn Mathews, senior director of personal lines, U.K. and Ireland, for LexisNexis Risk Solutions, said: “LexisNexis Risk Solutions works with insurance providers to help create a better customer experience and evaluate risk accurately. This new relationship with Hagerty is a clear example of that, and we are delighted to have been selected as the data partner to support Hagerty’s plans for expansion in the U.K.”

Checkout.com, the leading connected payments provider has been chosen by British premium, digitally-native Home and Living brand, The Cotswold Company, as its new online payment service provider.

The Cotswold Co., an online leader in premium furniture, upholstery and home decor, is the go-to online destination for forever furniture. As consumers spent more time than ever at home in 2020, appetite for home interior improvements rocketed. The Cotswold Co. has been at the forefront of this trend as a destination of choice for many shoppers, seeing a 50% year-on-year jump in online sales and mobile payments. The company chose Checkout.com to help it seize this opportunity, going live ahead of a busy festive period.

The integration to Checkout.com gives Cotswold Co.’s customers a wider range of payment methods. For the first time, Cotswold Co.’s customers can pay with Google Pay and Apple Pay new payment methods unlocked by Checkout.com - offering customers greater flexibility and convenience, while unlocking additional revenue opportunities for the business. Demand for these capabilities has increased as mobile commerce continues to grow. According to Statista, the number of users opting for mobile wallets in the UK will reach 18.9m in 2025, up from 11.9m users in 2020. 

As more consumers opt for online shopping, Cotswold Co. will also future-proof its e-commerce strategy by taking advantage of Checkout.com’s industry-leading connected payments platform, offering payment gateway, processing and acquiring services via a single integration. This unified proposition offers Cotswold Co. access to granular reporting, enabling continued optimisation of the checkout process, to offer a frictionless experience for their customers.

Paul Marshall, Finance Director at Cotswold Company said: “A customer’s journey with our furniture starts online. That’s why our customers deserve a seamless shopping experience. We selected Checkout.com as the specialist in digital payments, to not only offer our customers a greater choice of payment options but to future-proof, as customers shift to purchasing on-line, our eCommerce businesswith its best-in-market platform.”

Commenting on the partnership Moshe Winegarten, Senior Vice President at Checkout.com, said: “We’re proud that The Cotswold Company have selected Checkout.com as their payment service provider. Our market-leading Connected Payments platform offers merchants the tools they need to unlock more value from every transaction and create a frictionless shopping experience for customers.  We look forward to supporting Cotswold Co. with their continued growth.”

Checkout.com is the payment provider of choice for major fintech businesses globally, counting the likes of THG (The Hut Group), Farfetch, Klarna as customers. Since the start of the pandemic, it has seen a 250% increase in digital transactions on its platform as businesses switch to online payments. The company recently announced Series C funding, which tripled its valuation to $15bn, making it EMEA's most valuable venture-backed business and one of the largest fintechs globally. 

nCino, Inc. (NASDAQ: NCNO), a pioneer in cloud banking and digital transformation solutions for the global financial services industry, today announced it is bolstering its European presence with the appointment of Jennifer Geary as General Manager, EMEA. In addition, the company has established an entity in Germany to deliver the nCino Bank Operating System® to advance the digital transformation of German financial institutions.  

“I am extremely excited to be joining nCino at such a pivotal moment for the European financial services industry,” said Jennifer Geary, General Manager, EMEA at nCino. “Having spent the majority of my career working in finance and technology, I look forward to using my experience to help financial institutions further adopt digital banking services as necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic and evolving client preferences. nCino’s culture and proven success record of delivering measurable and meaningful results to financial institutions across the globe were major draws for me, and I hope to make a positive and lasting impact on the industry in this role.” 

Based in London, Geary is responsible for nCino’s full European functions, spearheading business expansion across the continent and into Africa and the Middle East. Geary has more than 20 years of experience in finance, technology, risk and legal, across diverse industries from financial services to not-for-profit. Prior to nCino, she was the Chief Risk and Operations Officer at Asto UK. She also spent 13 years in Barclays plc, initially in investment banking, followed by wealth management and finally as Chief of Staff to the Group General Counsel. She holds a B.Comm from University College Dublin and a Masters in Accounting from the Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business. 

Geary’s appointment coincides with the launch of nCino Germany GmbH. The subsidiary was established to more locally meet the growing demands of financial institutions inGermanylooking to modernise and improve their ability to innovate while reducing costs and keeping pace with changing regulations and client needs. Newly appointed in-country lead Jens Treskatis will help scale nCino’s German operations.  

With offices in London,Melbourne, Sydney,Toronto, TokyoandSalt Lake Cityin addition to its worldwide headquarters inWilmington, N.C.,U.S.A., nCino currently works with more than 1,200 financial institutions ranging in size from large, international organisations to smaller neo and challenger banks. Built by bankers for bankers, nCino provides financial institutions with a flexible, digital, end-to-end platform that can help provide cost savings, improve portfolio quality, monitor risk, and cope with regulation demands. 

nCino’s CEO Pierre Naudé added, “The EMEA market plays an extremely important role in the future of nCino’s business and Jennifer is perfectly placed to take the helm of the operation; we’re very excited to have her join the team. Over the last twelve months and following our IPO in July, we have matured our position in the cloud banking market globally, and began working with financial institutions in new countries who are now experiencing the benefits of nCino. As such, we’re pleased to formally commence operations in Germany while advancing our presence across the entire European continent in a commitment to support even more financial institutions through innovation, reputation and speed.”