TransferWise, the global technology company building the best way to move money around the world, today announces the creation of 750 roles globally, with 175 of these to be in London. The news comes following a period of exponential growth for the business, with revenue growing 70% in the last financial year to £302.6 million.

Despite the economic climate, TransferWise has continued to expand throughout 2020, now reaching nine million customers worldwide, from 14 offices across the globe. Currently with 2,200 employees, the latest hiring goals will see the business grow almost a third, in the space of just half a year.

To cater to its existing teams, and in response to the pandemic, TransferWise has also extended it’s remote working policy from 30 days to 90 days; meaning people can work remotely, in another country, for up to 3 months. Employees worldwide can enjoy working and living in a country they don’t know, or to travel to their home country to be with family.

Kristo Kaarmaan, Founder and CEO of TransferWise, said: "We’re already improving international banking for nine million people and businesses, but this is just the very beginning. We need a lot of help beyond our current team of 2,200 people to achieve our mission of money without borders.  Our remote working policy is designed with an international team at heart. We started TransferWise in 2011 distributed across 3 locations, and we have, over time, expanded to 14 offices. Working in distributed teams is in our DNA from the beginning, and we’re proud to be able to change and adapt our working practices to better suit our hard working teams."

TransferWise is headquartered in London, with offices in Tallinn, Budapest, Brussels, Cherkasy, Abu Dhabi; the US - New York and Tampa; in Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Kuala Lumpur, and Sao Paulo.

To learn more about what opportunities are available at TransferWise, visit the jobs page.

Paysera LT, the e-money institution that offers current accounts and money transfer services globally, today brings its customers Apple Pay, a safer, more secure and private way to pay that helps customers avoid handing their payment card to someone else, touching physical buttons or exchanging cash — and uses the power of iPhone to protect every transaction.

Customers simply hold their iPhone or Apple Watch near a payment terminal to make a contactless payment. Every Apple Pay purchase is secure because it is authenticated with Face ID, Touch ID, or device passcode, as well as a one-time unique dynamic security code. Apple Pay is accepted in grocery stores, pharmacies, taxis, restaurants, coffee shops, retail stores, and many more places.

Customers can also use Apple Pay on iPhone, iPad, and Mac to make faster and more convenient purchases in apps or on the web in Safari without having to create accounts or repeatedly type in shipping and billing information. Apple Pay makes it easier to pay for food and grocery deliveries, online shopping, transportation, and parking, among other things. Apple Pay can also be used to make payments in apps on Apple Watch.

Security and privacy are at the core of Apple Pay. When customers use a credit or debit card with Apple Pay, the actual card numbers are not stored on the device, nor on Apple servers. Instead, a unique Device Account Number is assigned, encrypted, and securely stored in the Secure Element, an industry-standard, certified chip designed to store the payment information safely on the device.

Apple Pay is easy to set up. On iPhone, simply open the Wallet app, tap +, and follow the steps to add Paysera Visa credit or debit cards. Once a customer adds a card to iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, and Mac, they can start using Apple Pay on that device right away. Customers will continue to receive all of the rewards and benefits offered by Paysera debit cards.

For more information on Apple Pay, visit: http://www.apple.com/apple-pay/.

For more information on Paysera, please visit https://www.paysera.com/v2/en-GB/paysera-account.

With business crossing pre-covid level and operating profit in sight, Niyo, India’s premier digital banking fintech has announced an ESOP buyback plan to reward its employees. This program announced today will benefit 100+ employees who have completed two years in the company.

Earlier in July, Niyo had offered 10-12% salary hikes and bonuses to all its employees. The company also offered ESOPs to eligible employees, taking the total stock grants to over Rs.100 crore. The company will now buy back upto 25% of vested stocks from all its eligible employees.

Commenting on this development, Niyo Co-founder & CEO Vinay Bagri said: “Employees are the biggest asset for any company. Both my co-founder Viren and I have been employees for the first 15 years of our life and that helps us to resonate with our employees’ sentiments. In the last eight months, our team has worked relentlessly towards meeting company’s goals and objectives. With their unparalleled rigour and perseverance, we have been able to get our business better than pre-covid level. Our ESOPs buyback offering is a humble attempt to reward our employees.”

Earlier this year, the company announced the acquisition of Goalwise, a new-age mutual funds platform, to launch a vertical under the brand name ‘Niyo Money’. Niyo Money is headed by Goalwise founders and it offers financial solutions like robo advisory, auto investments in domestic stocks and mutual funds.

Niyo has also been playing a significant role in increasing branchless banking culture during the pandemic. Niyo was one of the first fintechs in India to launch a co-branded savings account. Niyo also played a quintessential role in educating India’s labour force with contactless payment and digital banking.

“With branchless banking and contactless payment being the new norm, Covid-19 has indeed accelerated the digital adoption of financial services among both white-collar and blue-collar workers in India. It has been a great opportunity for a fintech startup like Niyo to ride the digital wave”, Bagri added.

Niyo is among the fastest growing fintech start-ups in India with a customer base of 2 million+ and 9,000+ corporates. The company is backed by marquee investors such as Social+Capital, JS Capital and Prime Venture Partners, and has raised about $49 million in funding so far.

Enterpryze, a cloud based invoicing, accounting and ERP platform, launches Invoice & Pay solution for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore during the Singapore FinTech Festival 2020.

Introducing Enterpryze Invoice & Pay

Designed for small business owners looking for a simple, easy-to-use invoicing solution, Enterpryze's Invoice & Pay allows them to collect payments faster than ever before. Small business owners can adopt Invoice & Pay through UOB BizSmart, a suite of cloud-based solutions by UOB to help SMEs digitalise their business processes such as invoicing, sales, and accounting.  Start your 30-day free trial of Enterpryze today.

Using Enterpryze's solution, businesses can generate sales and purchase invoices easily. They can get paid by PayNow QR code with real time credit notification, and they can also manage outgoing payment to suppliers. Businesses can also integrate the Invoice & Pay solution with their UOB business bank accounts to reconcile their transactions quickly and conveniently.

Enterpryze Invoice & Pay is ideal for start-ups and small businesses looking for simple tools to manage their sales and invoicing quickly and easily. As their business grows, Enterpryze grows with them, allowing them to seamlessly upgrade to the Accounting, Inventory or full ERP solutions.

Enterpryze is a seamless InvoiceNow-ready solution

Because Enterpryze is an InvoiceNow-ready solution,  businesses can send invoices via the e-invoicing network automatically. InvoiceNow helps to shorten invoicing processing time and help businesses get paid faster without any manual paperwork, resulting in healthier cash flow for SMEs. Furthermore, businesses that register for InvoiceNow on or before 31 December 2020 can receive an E-Invoicing Registration Grant (ERG) of $200, which will be paid out through PayNow Corporate (T+Cs apply).

Take payment faster with PayNow

An incredibly simple solution that helps businesses improve cash flow, PayNow allows SMEs to take payment faster via a dynamic PayNow QR Code. A Dynamic QR Code links the QR code with the invoice, meaning the invoice amount doesn't need to be typed in again manually. This minimises any human-error when collecting payment and is especially useful for businesses dealing with cash-on-delivery or for SMEs choosing to send a QR code via WhatsApp to get paid.

Says Morgan Browne, CEO of Enterpryze, "Enterpryze has been working with UOB Bizsmart for almost 3 years, providing integrated solutions to SMEs. Today, with Invoice & Pay we now offer solutions to all SMEs, from the start-up to the super scaler. No longer are SMEs restricted by solutions that will not grow with their business. Enterpryze can meet your needs today and into the future."

Micro businesses could face additional hurdles in recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic compared to larger firms due to a greater reliance on the furlough scheme and a lack of confidence in seeking financial support, according to new research by iwoca.

HMRC data shows that micro businesses are significantly more reliant on the furlough scheme than larger firms.1 As of 30th September, 19.9% of eligible workers in micro businesses (1-9 employees) were on furlough, compared to 8.3% for medium enterprises (50-249 employees) and just 3.8% of large firms (250+ employees).

In addition, micro businesses have struggled to bounce back from the height of furlough scheme usage earlier this year. The most recent HMRC figures show that large businesses have recovered further with the number of eligible furloughed employees 80.7% lower than the peak in May of 3,448,500 workers. In comparison, 788,200 eligible employees in micro businesses were furloughed at the end of September, only 61% lower than the April peak of 2,024,900 staff. 

The findings come as analysis of the new SME Finance Monitor data2 for Q3 2020 shows confidence in loan applications for micro businesses has dropped a third of the measure it was this time last year, with only 41% anticipating success. The confidence measure for the 3 months to August 2020 hit a historic 7 year low of 34% and was almost halved since Q3 2019 when 64% believed their application would be accepted.

Charmaine Silver, owner of Nottingham based cleaning business – Crystal Shine Cleaning Services Nottingham Ltd, said: “I have eight people in my business, including myself. I put four of them on furlough at the start of the first lockdown, and then brought everyone back in June. We’d lost a lot of our clients and were in the process of trying to build the business back up, but then the second lockdown hit. A lot of our clients went into hiding and I had to put my staff back on furlough. The business is facing difficulty in paying bills and overhead costs, but I’m determined to fight on and build it back up.” 

The furlough scheme acts as a useful proxy for the health of the micro business community and the latest figures make the low measure of confidence in finance applications all the more worrying as firms could be discouraged from seeking the finance they need to support their post-pandemic growth. The need for more support is further highlighted in micro businesses having the strongest overall appetite for taking on finance out of all SME sizes in 2020.3 

iwoca was founded to support micro businesses which are underserved by high street banks and larger lenders, and is committed to helping these smaller firms recover from the pandemic. iwoca aims to lend at least £200 million through the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), with 83% of its loan approvals going to brand new customers over the past month. In further support of SMEs recovering from the pandemic, the firm has also pledged to lend £220 million to small businesses in the North of England by 2023.

Christoph Rieche, CEO and co-founder of iwoca, added: “The gap between the demand for finance from micro businesses and their expectation of success for raising it is alarming. Many businesses have not been able to access funding via the Bounce Back Loan Scheme and need urgent support. We, alongside many other lenders, are committed to work with the big banks to find solutions to bring much needed finance to them.” 

Arcserve, LLC, the world’s most experienced data and ransomware protection provider, unveiled Arcserve X Series Appliances Secured by Sophos, the first self-contained solutions with integrated cyber and data protection for enterprise data volumes. The new appliances uniquely combine deep learning endpoint protection and on- and off-site disaster recovery with over 3PBs of effective capacity in one unit, and linear expansion to increase capacity as needed.

According to the recently released Sophos 2021 Threat Report, organizations are hard-pressed to predict the evolution of cyber threats because ransomware gangs are constantly devising new tactics to hold critical data hostage and solicit ransom payments. For that reason, enterprises must take a proactive approach through an integrated first and last line of defense that offers ransomware prevention, detection and removal, and if needed, automated restore to on-site and cloud targets.

“Most practitioners in the IT community understand the extreme wreckage ransomware often leaves in its wake,” said Phil Goodwin, Research Director, IDC. “Integrating cybersecurity and data protection as a coordinated deployment is critical, of which Arcserve has staked its position at the forefront of this market. The new X Series Appliances expand these integrated technologies and are designed to create a robust system scalable for enterprise data centers.”  

Data protection and security at scale

Arcserve X Series Appliances uncomplicate enterprise infrastructures and offer a higher ROI by eliminating discrete data protection and security strategies:

●       Powered by Arcserve UDP software, organizations protect complex workloads with heterogeneous technologies that can be unboxed and deployed in under 15 minutes; 

●       Integrate Sophos Intercept X Advanced cybersecurity to prevent ransomware and hacker attacks, including credential harvesting, lateral movement and privilege escalation;

●       Protect entire enterprise data centers with over 3PBs of effective capacity per unit; and,

●       Increase capacity as needed with linear expansion.

Performance-driven architecture

To stay ahead of new and existing challenges, IT organizations require solutions with extreme performance and agility:

●       Architected with cloud-native technologies, the X Series enables cloud economies of scale by combining on- and off-site backup and rapid restore to public and private clouds, including Arcserve® Cloud, Amazon® AWS, Microsoft Azure®, Nutanix® Objects, Eucalyptus®,  Rackspace®, and more;

●       Instant VM and BMR, local and remote virtual standby, application-consistent backup and granular restore, optional high availability, and more;

●       56 CPU cores and 1TB RAM (expandable to 2TBs) to spin up dozens of VMs on-appliance; and,

●       Hyper-efficient global deduplication with enterprise-grade SAS HDDs and NVMe SSDs for up to 20:1 ratios.

“As the threat landscape evolves and data becomes more distributed in our work-from-home reality, it’s become more critical than ever to invest in the highest-performing tools and services to keep priceless data safe,” said Ivan Pittaluga, CTO of Arcserve. “And, as more data is being produced it’s equally important that organizations have a solution that can grow with them. Our new appliances are changing the game -- giving organizations with enterprise-level data volumes the opportunity to use one solution for backup, cybersecurity, on-appliance and cloud disaster recovery with options for high availability. No other appliance can do that, which is why we’re so pleased to offer differentiated value that not only offers significantly higher ROI, but peace of mind.”

Learn more about Arcserve X Series Appliances Secured by Sophos.

Infradata, a leading provider of state-of-the-art cyber security and cloud networking solutions and services, announced they have deployed the BroadForward Signaling Transfer Point (STP) at Belgacom International Carrier Services (BICS). Infradata has become leading expert in intelligent routing and interworking solutions based on the entire BroadForward product portfolio. Infradata has gained extensive experience in designing, implementing and supporting these products at BICS and other telecom operators worldwide.

The Next Generation STP solution is deployed as a central, highly versatile routing hub for all 2G/3G related signaling traffic. The software solution provides BICS with the signaling intelligence required to unify and simplify SS7 based routing configuration, management and provisioning of all their SS7 signaling traffic. The STP can run standalone or combined on a single engine platform with other BroadForward products, such as a Diameter Signaling Controller and can be extended with the BroadForward SS7 and Diameter Firewall.

Infradata is a great advocate of the solution, as it enables easy-to-use GUI based configuration and integration of advanced signaling scenarios across protocols and technologies, without the need for scripting or coding. Infradata previously implemented the BroadForward Diameter Signaling Controller (DSC) at BICS, for routing all 4G signaling traffic on its IPX network.

BICS is the world's leading interconnect provider of wholesale carrier services to wireline and wireless operators and service providers globally. As the world's largest roaming provider, it reaches more than 1,000 mobile destinations in the world. The BICS network covers over 200 countries and it comprises fiber & sea cables, satellite link and connections to the world's major internet exchanges. BICS deploys multi-technology solutions (SS7, GRX, IPX, and Cloud) to enable seamless interoperability of traditional and cloud communications.

Quentin Pouplard, Head of Solution Architecture & Engineering at BICS, commented: "We are the number one interconnect provider because we innovate and improve continuously. As our trusted partner for several years now, Infradata regularly updates us on new improvements we can make to our operations. The deployment of the BroadForward STP gives us the signaling intelligence we need to enable much faster service adaptation to the specific needs of our roaming partners around the world. The STP comes with the same signaling versatility and flexibility we already enjoy with the BroadForward DSC on our IPX network, because they run on the same converged, single engine software platform."

Infradata Managing Director BeLux, Kris Verheye added: "The selection of the BroadForward Next Generation STP in the heart of the GRX network is a testament not only to our close partnership with BICS but also to the trust that the technical team has in BroadForward technology for their IPX and GRX networks. We are very proud that Infradata has been able to play a pivotal role in the successful delivery of the Next Generation STP at BICS."

IHS Markit has formed a strategic alliance with MSCI Inc. to integrate MSCI's portfolio and risk analytics capabilities with thinkFolio, the leading multi-asset class investment management platform.

MSCI's analytics solutions help firms measure, decompose and understand absolute and relative portfolio risk across asset classes, spanning short, medium and long-term time horizons. With its open integration framework, IHS Markit's thinkFolio allows investment managers to incorporate proprietary and externally sourced models, analytics and data to support the unique demands of their investment and asset allocation processes.

Going forward, mutual clients of both firms will be able to leverage MSCI's industry-leading analytics and multi-asset class factor modeling capabilities within thinkFolio's decision support and portfolio management workflows. The combination of thinkFolio's sophisticated portfolio modelling tools and MSCI's analytics and factor models will deliver enhanced capabilities for equity, fixed income and alternative asset class portfolio construction and predictive risk analyses. Through a dual integration delivered via a hosted managed service, mutual clients will also benefit from streamlined and synced position management across both thinkFolio and MSCI Analytics software solutions.

"A central focus of our platform strategy is to deliver an interoperable functionality suite for user groups driving the alpha generation and beta replication processes," said Brett Schechterman, Managing Director and Global Head of thinkFolio at IHS Markit. "thinkFolio's modular and open integration framework empowers clients to leverage preferred, best-in-class capabilities across the lifecycle while providing a harmonized and interactive workbench to monitor and action investment decisions. We are pleased to collaborate with MSCI and their leading capabilities to elevate and streamline decision support and idea implementation workflows for our clients."

"We are pleased to offer thinkFolio users the ability to seamlessly access MSCI's multi-asset class risk and performance analytics capabilities," said Jorge Mina, Head of Analytics at MSCI. "Through this expanded collaboration with IHS Markit, investors can enhance their risk management capabilities and improve operational efficiency across the entire investment process."

Chartered Accountant and Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, Niels Pedersen, today announces the launch of his latest book, Financial Technology, where he cites research linking increases in staff-customer engagement with greater levels of customer loyalty.

According to Pedersen, this engagement helps businesses differentiate themselves in the eyes of their customers and although nationwide lockdowns have accelerated digitization in many sectors, customers still have a desire to interact with other human beings – not just digital interfaces. Thus, he explains how engaging with customers on a human level can help boost businesses seeking to recover from the pandemic’s economic fallout once it is over.

“While your competitors are busy micro-managing their digital interfaces, the customer is really looking for a human touch. When everyone is using the same gimmicks to optimize digital engagement, you need to go a step further and offer the customer a firm handshake in a world without social distancing,” says Pedersen.

Mr Pedersen decided to write Financial Technology out of frustration. The project began more than two years ago after he went looking for a plain-English explanation of blockchain technology and failed to find a satisfactory one. 

“Popular books about technology tend to be written by techies. I took the opposite approach by writing a book from a business perspective about technology. My aim was to help non-technical professionals understand the key technologies reshaping the world so they can benefit from this change,” he says.

Striking a balance between in-depth academic knowledge and practicality for commercial use, the book that demystifies key technologies throughout the fintech industry is now available on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Financial-Technology-Studies-Fintech-Innovation/dp/1789665434/.