PXP Financial Inc., the US subsidiary of PXP Financial Ltd., the expert in global acquiring, payment, fraud and data analysis services, has today announced its partnership with US online gaming operator Penn Interactive, a subsidiary of Penn National Gaming, Inc. (“Penn National”).

Penn Interactive is the latest innovative operator to join PXP Financial Inc’s growing US portfolio. With this partnership, PXP Financial Inc. has deployed a full-service gateway, offering multiple connections to several payment service providers, and a fully managed service to include reconciliations and risk monitoring for Penn Interactive.

Having entered the US region in 2013, PXP Financial Inc. now has gaming licenses in more than nine US states and its solution is approved in several more. The company’s knowledge of the region and its experience with multiple payment solutions, all under one service, will enable Penn Interactive to best support its merchants across the country. In return, PXP Financial Inc. will continue its brand expansion in the US gaming market.

Jake Francis, Director of Operations at Penn Interactive, commented: “Our Player Account Management partner, White Hat Gaming, introduced us to PXP Financial. We were impressed with the team’s proactivity and how knowledgeable they were about the markets to which we are interested in entering. It was easy to unify our roadmap with PXP Financial Inc’s, so the partnership felt natural.”

Kamran Hedjri, Founder and Board Member at PXP Financial Inc., says: “Penn Interactive is an innovative US brand and it is a great honour to become a service provider for them. They will be instrumental for us to push our brand recognition in the United States, and the experience we gain from working closely with them will help us to improve our services worldwide."

The partnership has already gone live in Penn Interactive’s home state of Pennsylvania and is on its way to continue expanding both companies’ offerings, within Pennsylvania and additional states in the future.

To find out more about the PXP Financial family of companies please visit: pxpfinancial.com.

More workers across the UK will now be able to easily access financial wellbeing benefits, thanks to a new affiliation announced by PayDashboard, the interactive payslip platform, and pirkx, deliverers of employee benefits for all workers whatever their role or profession.

PayDashboard has created Perkwell powered by pirkx – a low cost employee benefits platform suitable for SMEs who want to support their employees at a low cost. For the first time ever, employees will now be able to view their financial wellbeing benefits alongside their payslips – highlighting the ever-growing importance and emphasis placed on wellbeing benefits by businesses for their employees.

Both PayDashboard and pirkx are pioneering the world of pay and benefits and believe everyone should be given the tools to support their financial, physical and mental wellbeing. Once a member, the Perkwell proposition provides key offerings including: 24/7 GP Helpline; 24/7 counsellor; discounted eye tests; free online gym and discounted gym memberships; discounted health insurances; money and debt advice support services; legal information; over 2500 discounts and cash back on everything from your weekly food shop to holidays and days out, or, from fashion to mobile phones.

Going forward, pirkx and PayDashboard will be working together to provide a holistic pay and benefits experience to the diverse work landscape within the PayDashboard customer base. Together they will offer huge value specifically to small and medium-sized businesses who are often under-served when it comes to affordable employee benefits schemes for their workforce, with the common objective of ensuring more UK employees can access vital help and support when they need it. 

The two companies spotted a strong synergy and fit very earlier on, both from a technology and a cultural perspective.

Mike Binns, CEO at PayDashboard, commented: “We’ve been following pirkx for some time and quickly recognised that working together would allow us to provide an essential service to SMEs who are looking for ways to support their employees . The timing of our affiliation could not be better given the current challenging economic climate.”

He continued: “We believe that our joint offering provides enormous potential and value to UK employers. It is a truly mutually beneficial relationship, where our best-of-breed platform provides a new channel for pirkx to reach an SME audience, as well as enabling PayDashboard to give our clients access to the best benefits packages. This is particularly important at a time where workers, regardless of their earnings or their employment status, need that additional support.”

pirkx's founder and chief executive, Stella Smith, continued: “Our mission at pirkx has always been to create happier, healthier humans by creating a wellbeing benefits package for all - whether self-employed working as a hairdresser, an employee within the small or medium sized business or a volunteer at a charity that may not have the facility to offer huge benefit packages.

“Joining forces with the fantastic people at PayDashboard means we can become more accessible to people across the UK. Using PayDashboard’s innovative technology, this means employers and employees can access pirkx benefits really easily and from PayDashboard’s eco-system– saving time for everyone.”

Aire, the credit insight service, has been selected to join the ‘Visa Fintech Partner Connect’ programme, a new initiative designed to help connect Visa clients with the next generation of digital products and services.
 
Aire’s involvement in the programme, which was launched today, will help to connect Visa’s financial services clients across Europe to Aire’s first-party data, information gathered directly from the consumer, to help inform their credit decisioning and scoring processes.
 
Operating across the customer lifecycle, Aire enables lenders to make more accurate credit risk and affordability assessments about their customers and optimise decision-making using validated information provided by the consumer with consent.
 
Aneesh Varma, Founder and CEO of Aire, comments: "We’re delighted to be partnering with Visa, further enabling us to take the benefits of first-party data, and the fairer access to credit it provides, mainstream. As a world-leading consumer brand, today’s initiative highlights Visa’s commitment to champion innovative technology solutions that benefit the individual – and we look forward to working alongside them to do that at scale in the months to come."

TIBCO Software Inc., a global leader in enterprise data, empowers its customers to connect, unify, and confidently predict business outcomes, solving the world’s most complex data-driven challenges. Today, TIBCO announced its TIBCO Cost Visualizer Tool and a continued relationship with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, delivering real-time, visual analytics and data science capabilities. The TIBCO Cost Visualizer Tool enables the newly crowned seven-time FIA Formula One™ World Constructors’ Champions’ team of designers, engineers, and budget planners to better understand and more precisely predict the costs of manufacturing the Mercedes-AMG F1 W11 EQ Performance vehicle. 

"First, all of us at TIBCO would like to congratulate the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team for winning its seventh consecutive FIA Formula One™ World Constructors' Championship. The team’s innovative use of AI and visual analytics is a major force in its success, and we’re excited our TIBCO Connected Intelligence platform helps play a part in enabling the team to stay ahead in this highly competitive sport,” said Dan Streetman, chief executive officer, TIBCO. "Our ongoing partnership benefits both the team and all of TIBCO’s global customers, as we push the limits of modeling, simulation, and digital twin technologies, driving value for our users.” 

Outside of the daily analytics that assist with vehicle and team performance, the TIBCO Cost Visualizer Tool gives team members better visualisation and predictability into the manufacturing costs of its vehicles through a bill of materials and budgeting module. Each design engineer can now compare CAD work to all known financial data, which can be viewed, scrutinised, and evaluated from part manufacturing to vehicle assembly. When pooled into the budgeting tool, the team can predict the cost of individual parts at the design stage and a whole car project. This new process for tracking and measuring car development costs will help the team meet the new cost cap financial regulations announced by the FIA in October 2019, which will be a requirement starting January 2021.

“Our sport relies on a team of experienced, talented individuals and technologists who understand that data is paramount. We want to know exactly what is happening behind the steering wheel, under the bodywork, and on the track at all times, and our partnership with TIBCO has enabled us to do precisely that," said Toto Wolff, team principal and chief executive officer, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team. “Using the TIBCO Cost Visualizer tool gives us an additional edge, offering the team insights into the full costs of building, running, and manufacturing our race cars, whilst ensuring the data entered at source is accurate, giving us a critical advantage." 

Formula One continues to be a data-intensive sport, where the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team consistently collects multiple terabytes of data per race weekend. Analysing this data enables the team to derive the insights needed for fine-tuning the engines of the W11 EQ Performance vehicles, make driver decisions with sharp precision, and ensure compliance with FIA cost cap regulations. 

Learn more about how TIBCO enables the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team to drive improved performance on and off the track.

TraditionDATA, the data arm of Compagnie Financiere Tradition SA (Tradition), announces today the availability of various Interest Rate Swap and FX data products on AWS Data Exchange, a service from Amazon Web Services (AWS) that makes it easy for customers to find, subscribe to, and use third-party data in the cloud. 

Tradition was a Launch Partner for AWS Data Exchange when it was first announced in November 2019. Initially focusing on Tradition’s Asia Pacific IRS and FX data, Tradition has expanded their use of AWS to offer more global high-quality data with a focus on the introduction of new benchmarks to replace LIBOR. Tradition’s Global Alternate Risk Free Rate (RFR) package incorporating SONIA, ESTR, SOFR and AMERIBOR data is now available directly on the cloud via AWS Data Exchange.

“By distributing our data through a cloud-native managed service, subscribers of all types from all corners of the globe can quickly discover and leverage the most relevant financial market data to power their applications and inform decisions,” said Scott Fitzpatrick, Head of TraditionDATA. “As our customers work through market changes, such as the transition away from LIBOR, they need access to the most relevant and timely data that is easy to consume and use. AWS Data Exchange was a natural channel for our data business and we look forward to building on this relationship in the coming years.”

Tradition provides access to a wide range of over-the-counter prices in many of the world’s fastest-moving markets. Given the current global economic climate and regulatory direction, Tradition’s Global Interest Rate data is particularly powerful and timely, as it helps financial institutions in their assessment of impact and plans as they transition away from Libor to new Reference Rates in 2021.

AWS customers can access Tradition content directly with AWS Data Exchange. 

ThinCats, a UK-based alternative lender to mid-sized SMEs, has partnered with Salt Edge, a leader in offering Open Banking solutions, to improve the efficiency of its upfront credit assessment and ongoing loan monitoring processes.

The UK is globally recognised as a cradle of Open Banking and during these uncertain times the most forward-minded participants in the industry are using data provided by Open Banking to improve their service offerings. According to a recent McKinsey online survey of UK SMEs, 80% of SMEs reported declines in revenues during the Covid crisis. Considering the cash flow challenges that lockdown restrictions have caused, many businesses are struggling to receive additional funding. Using Open Banking data, lending companies can more accurately assess the cash flow needs of creditworthy borrowers and shape funding solutions specific to their necessities.

ThinCats is a leading alternative finance provider dedicated to funding growing and ambitious mid-sized SMEs from the UK with loans from £1 million up to £15 million. The collaboration with Salt Edge will enable ThinCats to build up its Open Banking dataset to support its customers through earlier identification of changing circumstances or additional funding needs. Data aggregation will help ThinCats to integrate real-time information in its credit decisioning and portfolio monitoring.

Salt Edge’s Data Enrichment solution will upgrade ThinCats’ data models with actionable insights, that will help streamline and shorten the funding process for borrowers.

Gareth Rumsey, Head of Analytics at ThinCats, said: "Given the high volume of cashflow backed loans that we fund, Open Banking has a key role to play in helping us support creditworthy, but asset-light businesses, so it was important for us to find the right partner. Salt Edge were able to provide a portal-based trial within days, which enabled us to test both the technical aspects of the service and the usefulness of outputs we could expect to see. The support throughout the trial and as we moved to a live API-based solution was excellent; feedback from clients also indicated that the sign-up process from their side was straightforward and user-friendly."

Vasile Valcov, VP at Salt Edge, added: "SMEs are in great need of better data-led solutions and we are truly proud to be teaming up with ThinCats, who are combining traditional lending skills with powerful data analytics, and now Open Banking capabilities through our collaboration, to help businesses grow."

Zscaler, Inc., the leader in cloud security, released its 2020 State of Encrypted Attacks report, published by the Zscaler ThreatLabZ team. The threat research reveals the emerging techniques and impacted industries behind a 260-per cent spike in attacks using encrypted channels to bypass legacy security controls. The report provides guidance on how IT and security leaders can protect their enterprise from the rising trend of encrypted threats, based on insight sourced from over 6.6 billion encrypted threats across the Zscaler™ cloud from January through September 2020 over encrypted channels.

Showing that cybercriminals will not be dissuaded by a global health crisis, they targeted the healthcare industry the most. Following healthcare, the research revealed the top industries under attack by SSL-based threats were:

1.           Healthcare: 1.6 billion (25.5 per cent)

2.           Finance and Insurance: 1.2 billion (18.3 per cent)

3.           Manufacturing: 1.1 billion (17.4 per cent)

4.           Government: 952 million (14.3 per cent)

5.           Services: 730 million (13.8 per cent)

Other key findings include:

●   COVID-19 is Driving a Ransomware Surge: Zscaler researchers witnessed a 5x increase in ransomware attacks over encrypted traffic beginning in March, when the World Health Organisation declared the virus a pandemic. Earlier research from Zscaler indicated a 30,000 per cent spike in COVID-related threats, when cybercriminals first began preying on fears of the virus.  

●      Phishing Attacks Neared 200 Million: As one of the most commonly used attacks over SSL, phishing attempts reached more than 193 million instances during the first nine months of 2020. The manufacturing sector was the most targeted (38.6 per cent) followed by services (13.8 per cent), and healthcare (10.9 per cent).

●      30 Per cent of SSL-Based Attacks Delivered Through Trusted Cloud Providers: Cybercriminals continue to become more sophisticated in avoiding detection, taking advantage of the reputations of trusted cloud providers such as Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to deliver malware over encrypted channels.

●      Microsoft Remains Most Targeted Brand for SSL-Based Phishing: Since Microsoft technology is among the most adopted in the world, Zscaler identified  Microsoft as the most frequently spoofed brand for phishing attacks, which is consistent with ThreatLabZ 2019 report. Other popular brands for spoofing included PayPal and Google. Cybercriminals are also increasingly spoofing Netflix and other streaming entertainment services during the pandemic. 

“Cybercriminals are shamelessly attacking critical industries like healthcare, government and finance during the pandemic, and this research shows how risky encrypted traffic can be if not inspected,” said Deepen Desai, CISO and Vice President of Security Research at Zscaler. “Attackers have significantly advanced the methods they use to deliver ransomware, for example, inside of an organisation utilising encrypted traffic. The report shows a 500 per cent increase in ransomware attacks over SSL, and this is just one example to why SSL inspection is so important to an organisation’s defence.”  

Inspecting encrypted traffic is mission-critical for all organizations to protect against these attacks. A multilayered defence-in-depth strategy that fully supports SSL inspection ensures that enterprises are protected from escalating threats hiding in their encrypted traffic. Processing more than 130 billion transactions per day, Zscaler performs SSL inspection at scale, helping organisations securely connect their users in a work-from-anywhere world. 

To download the full report, see the 2020 State of Encrypted Attacks.

QuantHouse, the global provider of end-to-end systematic trading solutions including innovative market data services, algo trading platform and infrastructure products and part of Iress (IRE.ASX), today announced a global upgrade of all data centre backbones to 100G including the deployment of the low latency Arista Networks platform as part of their ongoing rollout of customer-focused enhancements.

In April 2020, QuantHouse completed the first phase of their infrastructure process automation program demonstrating their commitment to delivering superior performance and resilience for their global client base. Today’s announcement builds upon the first phase ensuring increased bandwidth, improved legacy and enhanced fabric performance.

Emmanuel Carjat, Chief Operating Officer, QuantHouse, said: “Improving the performance of the QuantHouse fabric, and the services received by our clients, remains of great importance to us. In times of uncertainty, and from ongoing conversations with our client base, we know that having additional capabilities that address security, risk and continue to meet volatility changes continues to be top of minds.”  

At the core of the enhancements is the 100G data centre backbone upgrade which reduces the risk of packet loss and ensures that the QuantHouse infrastructure continues to meet the significant and on-going increase in bandwidth requirements from exchanges. Deploying the Arista Networks platform improves latency for customers, and by implementing a highly scalable EVPN/VxLAN design, QuantHouse is able to deliver new services quicker.  

Mark Foss, Senior Vice President Global Operations and Marketing, Arista Networks, added: “We are delighted to help the QuantHouse algo trading community enhance their latency connectivity to their global network of data centres. Arista Networks complements the high performance network enhancements that QuantHouse continues to roll out and through leveraging our advanced technologies and state of the art automation, will enable them to deploy seamless services to their customers.”

Stephane Leroy, Chief Revenue Officer and business co-founder, QuantHouse, concluded: “At a time when global execution venues are experiencing intense volatility with many high-volume bandwidth peaks, we have taken the decision to invest in these steps to make sure all our clients can maximize their trading opportunities and profit during any type of market conditions ahead.”

Tink has appointed Klaus Holse as its new Chairman of the Board. Danish-native Klaus brings extensive experience from both the technology and financial services industry, as CEO of investment management solutions provider SimCorp. Prior to that he spent more than 11 years at Microsoft, most recently as its President of Western Europe. Klaus also worked as CEO at Internet Ventures Scandinavia and Senior VP at Oracle Corp.

Klaus Holse, Tink’s newly appointed Chairman of the Board, said: “Tink is leading the charge in open banking across Europe with its aggregation and payment products. On top of this they have built a unique set of products unlocking the value in financial data for the benefit of financial institutions, fintechs, startups and their end users. Tink has built a phenomenal team of some of the brightest minds in the industry. Their ambition and passion made me want to be part of the Tink journey.”

Daniel Kjellén, co-founder and CEO of Tink, commented: “Klaus has a fantastic track-record of scaling software companies globally for over 25 years. Klaus’ knowledge of the tech industry and his experience of building partnerships with financial institutions will be incredibly valuable to Tink.”

Tink’s board currently consists of: Klaus Holse (Chairman), Jeff Horing (Insight Venture Partners), Christian Lindegård Jepsen (Heartcore), Daniel Kjellén (Founder and CEO) and Fredrik Hedberg (Founder CTO).

Mphasis, an Information Technology (IT) solutions provider specializing in cloud and cognitive services, today announced that it has been recognized as a Major Contender by Everest Group in the report “Mortgage Operations Service Providers PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2020”.

October 2020’s PEAK Matrix™ report analyzed the capabilities of 19 global mortgage operations service providers based on Everest Group’s annual RFI process conducted over Q2 and Q3 2020, interactions with leading mortgage operations services providers, client reference checks, and an ongoing analysis of the mortgage services market.

Backed by its acquisition of digital Risk, Mphasis has consistently built specific process capabilities on due diligence, quality control, and TRID reviews through its Qcynergy platform, and is also providing support to GSEs to improve loan quality. Based on Everest Group’s evaluation, Mphasis is positioned as a Major Contender within the 2020 PEAK Matrix. Through broad-based capabilities spanning mortgage processing, underwriting, closing and securitization, Mphasis has witnessed growth in its mortgage revenue, new client logos and a strong set of offerings in risk and regulatory management services.  

“We are honored that Mphasis has been recognized for our efforts within the mortgage operations sector. Mphasis strives to help shape the evolving regulatory environment, focus on the shifts in consumer behavior and embrace the digital technologies that include advanced analytics and cognitive aids,” said Ravi Vasantaj, SVP & Global Head of Business Process Services, Mphasis. “The services that Mphasis offers looks to provide customers with a seamless and personalized experience.”

“Increasing competition from non-banks and evolving customer preferences are pushing enterprises to become more open to digital initiatives,” said Robin Jain, Practice Director, Everest Group. “Mphasis, with its deep domain expertise in mortgage operations and continued investments in digital tools, can help financial institutions deliver superior customer experience amid the pandemic.”