SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management (TLM^®) solutions provider, today announces SmartStream Air version 2, the latest artificial intelligence (AI) technology to transform data quality and reconciliation processes that would usually be measured in weeks and months, to just seconds. In addition, with cloud-based technology accessed via a new user interface it manages large volumes of data, in any format, to achieve even higher match rates.

SmartStream Air version 2 has been launched to enable organisations with a unique solution to instantly compare all types of data sets, regardless of format and complexity. The latest version features inbuilt observational learning capabilities with a new AI technology called ‘Affinity’ – which automatically learns how records correlate to one another and can mimic and learn from actions made by a user. In just a few clicks, the AI establishes its own understanding of how records correlate and Affinity will assist the user to significantly reduce the time it takes for carrying out the matching of complex data sets. Ultra-fast matching results are delivered to the end-user with high-quality results.

This is the next-generation AI solution to be developed in the SmartStream Innovation Lab, and it delivers data quality and verification processes in an elastic cloud-based deployment model, using the latest technologies and digital friendly services. Customers are up and running straight-away and the solution can transform traditional data verification processes within seconds. Introducing Affinity as part of version two ensures any manually changed data matching activities get learnt and adopted for the algorithm’s future use.

SmartStream Air version 2 carries the PCI-DSS label, which is the most recognised data security standard, and has been certified at the highest level of security standards when hosting digital payments data. SmartStream’s solutions are also certified with SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3, attestation, and ISO 27001 and ISO 27002 standard. This ensures robust security controls across the whole organisation, including physical security, personnel security, fraud control mechanisms, IT & data security and data privacy. 

Andreas Burner, Chief Innovations Officer, SmartStream, states: “We have 13 years of experience with cloud technologies and fully understand how these platforms need to behave. Also, this combined with our data scientists’ work and our powerful SmartStream Innovation Lab, we have the right level of experience to trustfully bring AI cloud technologies to the market, unlike any other vendor in the market today. With our new version of SmartStream Air and the encompassing AI technology, Affinity, both these capabilities know what needs to be done and the results are a lot faster than before. I’m very proud of our achievements, most notably with the user experience design, that enables non-IT staff to take multiple complex data sets and compare them within seconds. What's been really compelling is that you don't even need to understand the data, Affinity knows how to compare complex data sets and the results are achieved in seconds - it’s that simple.”

Victoria Harverson, Global Head of Business Development for SmartStream Air, states: “SmartStream Air is like nothing else, it transforms traditional operating models as it behaves like a consumer app and requires no training or configuration, and no IT projects are needed. We understand that when it comes to managing data and finding discrepancies quickly it’s of paramount importance that our customers have a solution for every scenario and don’t miss a thing. Controlling risks, delivering transformation projects and optimising data quality processes is going to be easier than ever with this introduction of our next generation AI application”.

additiv, a leading SaaS provider to the wealth management industry, today announces that it has appointed Pieter Zylstra, former Regional Director Digital Transformation executive at Orange Business Services (Middle East & Africa). Pieter joins additiv leadership team in a newly created role as Head of Strategic Sales. The role will support additiv’s rapid enterprise customer growth and channel management globally.

Bringing over 20 years of experience within the technology and telecoms sector, Pieter is ideally suited to support additiv as it moves to lead the wealthtech digital revolution. He worked for many years as Head of Mobility and leading CXO-advisory services at CapGemini in Europe before joining Orange in AsiaPac. Initially, his roles within Orange’s Business Services division focused on sales strategy and portfolio management before moving to SITA and BCI Asia in similar roles. In 2016, Pieter returned to Orange Business Services in a professional services directorship position that oversaw the launch of Orange digital transformation program in Middle East and Africa, resulting in significant growth in financial sector markets.

Pieter’s appointment comes at a time when additiv has seen an unprecedented period of rapid growth. As a result, additiv has expanded its team significantly across the world in recent months. Their increasing market gain recently led to the opening of a new regional head office within the Middle East, and the company is set to expand further imminently. Pieter’s international experience in technology sales is ideally suited to this expansion, as he focuses on building the organization to drive regional and local sales channels.

Commenting on his appointment, Pieter Zylstra said: “This is a time of disruption in the financial services industry worldwide, where traditional banks are experiencing a sense of urgency to adopt the cloud-based digital financial services platform that additiv offers. My experience allows me to offer additiv’s growing customer base an insight into the opportunity that being truly digital brings. One that I believe only additiv can really offer financial institutions.”

Michael Stemmle, additiv CEO, added: “We are delighted to have Pieter on-board. He is a natural hire at this exciting time for additiv. As demand for seamless and engaging client experiences across channels grows, so is our customer base. Pieter is a highly experienced and strategic leader with exceptional channel knowledge. Together with our key channel partners, he will develop our business to take ad-vantage of the opportunities that digital offers; driving the industry to become omni-channel by design.”

AccessFintech, the leading fintech company evolving the financial industry operating model through data and workflow collaboration, is pleased to announce the successful completion of its Series B round of $20 million, led by Dawn Capital, Europe’s largest venture capital fund dedicated to B2B software.

Existing investors J.P. Morgan, Citi and Goldman Sachs contributed to the round, and Deutsche Bank has participated for the first time. It brings the total capital raised to date to $37 million since 2018.

AccessFintech will use the proceeds of the investment to fuel the next stage of its development, to accelerate product innovation, and to continue its go-to market expansion and extend its partner ecosystem.

The company has created a network of participants sharing financial data and standardising workflows. Market participants use the network to collaborate on exception resolution, distribute data and onboard vendors to create a complete ecosystem for data and workflow management.

Since launch, AccessFintech has already gone live with 10 financial products and is in proof-of-concept or live testing with another 11 products. The collaboration ecosystem has the participation of many of the leading global banks and broker-dealers, custodians, asset managers and has created workflow partnerships with industry vendors and peers.

Commenting on the investment, CEO of AccessFintech Roy Saadon, said: “Over the past two years our mission to evolve the financial industry operating model has gained significant traction and it is testament to the energy and skill of our team, the support of our clients and our wider network that we have reached this important milestone. We are thrilled to partner with a firm of the calibre of Dawn Capital who have an exceptional track record in working with fast growing companies in the fintech sector and who fully support our strategy. We are also excited to have worked with J.P. Morgan, Citi, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank in this round – they are important partners for us in our vision of collaboration to maximize efficiencies across the market.”

Mina Mutafchieva, Principal at Dawn Capital, said: “A unique combination of experienced entrepreneurs, sponsorship of key market participants and an ecosystem ready to adopt SaaS, was an ideal fit for our investment strategy.  AccessFintech’s platform benefits from a new co-operative spirit in institutional financial services and a willingness to take advantage of the opportunities opened up by the latest technologies and resource models. We believe AccessFintech is building a unique and critical part of the future infrastructure of capital markets and has already won the endorsement of key market participants. We look forward to supporting the team as they continue to scale and accelerate their growth.”

Richard Gordon, Global Head of Securities Services Operations, J.P. Morgan, commented: “We have been proud supporters of AccessFintech since their origins in our In-Residence programme and are pleased to support the next stage of their growth. We believe in creating better industry collaboration tools for our clients, our peers and ourselves so that the market as a whole can benefit from better efficiencies in post trade processes, and AccessFintech has demonstrated the ability to successfully deliver in the space.”

Steve Morgan, head of markets operations solutions at Citi, said: “Our aim is to automate post-execution practices, whilst improving our user experience through the use of innovative technology solutions. Our partnership with AccessFintech represents another example of Citi’s culture to embrace collaboration with start-up technology firms. We are working closely with AccessFintech to help us on our continual drive to provide an exemplary service to our clients by reducing complexity and exceptions as we move towards a fully automated environment.”

Sarah Shenton, Growth Investor at Goldman Sachs, said: “The pandemic has accelerated widespread adoption of fintech, a trend clearly seen at AccessFintech in terms of new participants and volume on the platform. AccessFintech’s offer has successfully created a shared data network and workflow, enabling more collaborative and efficient exception management. We are delighted to support their development and continued success.”

Stephen Bell, Global Head of FIC and Securities Services at Deutsche Bank, said: "Partnering with and investing in fintech firms as well as developing in-house expertise is essential to be at the cutting edge of financial services, as clients seek quicker and simpler electronic applications of previous processes. We are pleased to be co-investing in AccessFintech who have proven experience, creativity and expertise in driving efficiency and solving problems in the context of the global capital markets.”

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the premier post-trade market infrastructure for the global financial services industry, announced that its Depository Trust Corporation (DTC) subsidiary has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) a proposal to launch ClaimConnect, a new DTC service that will centralize and automate cash claim processing across the entire lifecycle of a corporate action claim.

DTCC has been working closely with the industry to refresh its technology and to further improve Corporate Actions processes in order to eliminate manual processes and reduce risk and errors from claim submission to closure. With the new ClaimConnect service, DTCC seeks to address limitations in Corporate Actions processing related to untracked cash claims. These claims are typically processed manually by large operations teams leveraging fax, email and phone calls.

With ClaimConnect, clients will benefit from near real-time claim validation and matching, email alerts and the ability to pinpoint data leveraging intuitive search functionality. Clients will be able to post claims verses their counterparty with the ability to track those claims through to settlement. Both sides of the claim will have access to email notifications, alerting them of claim statuses and reporting to communicate progress, simplifying decision making.

“We’re continuously meeting with our clients to learn more about their evolving internal processes and challenges in order to identify ways we can deliver new and improved services to meet their needs,” said Ann Marie Bria, Executive Director, Corporate Actions Business Management at DTCC. “Centralizing claim processing through ClaimConnect will enable clients to seamlessly manage the entire lifecycle of a claim while reducing risks.”

ClaimConnect will be one of the first services available on DTCC’s new API Marketplace. With ClaimConnect APIs on the DTCC Marketplace, Corporate Actions clients will have direct programmatic access to DTCC processing functionality, allowing clients to automate the process of submitting claims and inquiring about their status. 

The ClaimConnect service will be launched following SEC approval.

Temenos (SIX: TEMN) (www.Temenos.com), the banking software company, today announced that Saudi Arabian digital wallet, STCPay, has selected cloud-native, cloud-agnostic Temenos Payments and Temenos Transact running on a private cloud to achieve exponential growth and expand its digital payments capabilities. Real-time, API-first Temenos Transact and Temenos Payments will provide a single, digital platform on which STCPay can rapidly create and update innovative digital services for retail customers. Using Temenos’ cloud and microservices-based technology to power innovation and transform customer journeys, STCPay aims to double its customer base by 2021. Longer-term, the business aims to establish itself as the leading digital challenger in the Middle East and Africa (MEA).

STCPay, a subsidiary of STC Group, is Saudi Arabia’s largest and leading mobile wallet app. Launched in late 2018 by STC, the digital challenger aims to provide new, innovative technologies and digital payment experiences to customers and facilitate transactions that are quick, easy, and secure.

Temenos Payments provides Straight-Through Processing (STP) rates over 99% and will underpin STCPay’s digital customer experiences. Temenos Payments will be integrated with Temenos Transact, the next-generation core banking product, and deployed on private cloud to provide unparalleled resilience and scalability to support skyrocketing volumes of digital payments. This will provide STCPay with timely benefits in light of regional trends towards cashless banking as a result of COVID-19. According to the recent Economist Intelligence Unit report (https://bit.ly/34rH6JB) released by Temenos, 60% of banking executives in MEA think cash will dip below 5% of retail transactions in the next five years.

The new platform will drive significant cost efficiency gains and enable sustainable business growth. According to the Temenos Value Benchmark, a strategic, survey-based program providing an in-depth analysis of how software capabilities impact a bank’s profitability, banks with STP rates over 90% can achieve up to 8x higher revenues per customer, compared with banks with lower STP rates.

Temenos Saudi model bank will deliver pre-configured, country-specific capabilities and regulatory compliance to support STCPay to roll out its new platform in the shortest possible timeframe and at minimum cost. With model bank capabilities for more than 150 countries, Temenos’ software will support the seamless onboarding of new geographies across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and scale as STCPay’s business grows.

Temenos is collaborating closely with Red Hat to create a standardized cloud operating model for STCPay based on a collection of enterprise-grade, open-source technologies, including Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat Quay, Red Hat AMQ Streams, and Red Hat Storage. The collaboration will provide STCPay with the combined strengths of market-leading cloud-native and open source technologies.

Ahmed Alenazi, Chief Executive Officer, STCPay, commented: “We are excited to partner with Temenos and unlock the vast opportunities of digital payments in the Middle East. Temenos brings to this partnership 20 years’ experience deploying advanced banking software and delivering next-generation digital experiences in Saudi Arabia. With Temenos’ market-leading technology and rich banking functionality, we aim to redefine payments, offering outstanding digital experiences that integrate into our customers’ lifestyles.”

Abdulrahman Tawfiq Almutairi, CIO, STCPay, added: “Temenos’ cutting-edge cloud and microservices-based architecture perfectly aligns to STCPay’s growth and innovation strategies. Temenos’ unique architecture will power DevOps and support continuous innovation by facilitating faster deployments that reduce time to market for new products and services. This agile technology will enable us to remain at the forefront of digital payments innovation by helping us to quickly respond to the evolving market landscape and needs of our customers.”

Jean-Paul Mergeai, Managing Director, Middle-East & Africa Temenos, said: “It is a true privilege to embark on this exciting partnership with STCPay. We are seeing a significant increase in demand for digital payments across the Middle East and Africa region – the COVID-19 pandemic is only accelerating this trend. Our cloud-native, AI-driven software supports the exceptional digital experiences that customers want, but it also provides the business resilience and security that banks need now more than ever. As the only technology provider offering cloud-native banking software in this market, we are excited to deliver Temenos Transact and Temenos Payments and witness another use case for powerful and transformative cloud technology.”

Kelly Switt, Global Director, FSI strategy, Ecosystem and Strategic Partnerships, Red Hat, said: “Red Hat is thrilled to be a part of this collaboration with Temenos and STCPay. We believe that the next evolution of financial services will be based on open source development principles and technologies. We are grateful for the opportunity to enable both Temenos and STCPay on this evolutionary journey and look forward to being an enabler of continuous innovation.”

Temenos Payments product was named Leader in the 2019-2020 IDC MarketScape for worldwide integrated payment platforms (https://bit.ly/33xgI1F) and also ranked #1 best-selling payments system in the IBS Sales League Table 2020 (https://bit.ly/34pa9xv).

EBANX, specialized in offering payment solutions from Latin America to global brands, grew its payment solutions portfolio in Colombia. The company has integrated with Colombian digital wallet Nequi and the cash-based payment method Efecty, adding these two options into its payment solutions suite for global merchants that sell cross-border to Colombia. Both integrations are part of the EBANX Product Series 20, a robust payment expansion package in Latin America comprising over 50 new initiatives. The series was first announced in September, at chapter one of EBANX's Latin America Summit.

By integrating with EBANX, international merchants can unlock a new customer base, being able to offer Nequi and Efecty to their Colombian consumers in addition to local debit and credit cards, Pagos Seguros en Línea (PSE) and Vía Baloto, which are also included in EBANX solutions. Making it easier for their consumers to purchase, reaching an e-commerce market that grew over 7.8% per week from March to July, according the Colombian Chamber of Electronic Commerce.  

"Colombians are quickly adopting digital wallets as a way of paying online purchases, especially now with the new purchasing behaviors that are being designed during the pandemic. And cash payments have always been essential to reaching Colombian consumers," said Erika Daguani, B2B product director of EBANX. "Nequi and Efecty come to complement our array of solutions in the country. We are very happy to integrate these two important local payment methods because this means more access for Colombian consumers and for global brands wanting to seize Colombia's fast-growing market," she completed.  

For more information, please visit https://business.ebanx.com/en/. 

Refinitiv has acquired The Red Flag Group, significantly expanding its suite of due diligence offerings with the addition of a leading provider of workflow, data, due diligence and ratings solutions that help corporate compliance customers to evaluate money laundering, bribery and corruption, reputational and ESG risk.

The acquisition of The Red Flag Group comes at a time of rapid growth in the market for due diligence solutions and services, fueled by an increasingly complex and rapidly evolving business environment. The acquisition combines the best in breed of both organizations to deliver the technology, data insights, scale, and automation capabilities required to meet the evolving needs of customers.

The addition of The Red Flag Group to Refinitiv’s existing Due Diligence capabilities, will result in a comprehensive set of tools and services to assist in customer and third-party risk mitigation. The combination will result in further development in areas such as workflow platforms, traditional due diligence reports, and will leverage Refinitiv’s data powered insights driven by products such as World-Check, the company’s premier risk intelligence database.
 
“This is an exciting combination for customers of both companies as we will be bringing together the capabilities of two highly complementary businesses,” said Phil Cotter, Managing Director of the Risk business at Refinitiv. “The Red Flag Group’s strong corporate customer base and customer-facing technology complement our traditional strength in financial services, rich and diverse datasets and automation capabilities. I look forward to welcoming our new colleagues at The Red Flag Group to Refinitiv.”
 
“We chose to join Refinitiv because they offer the prospect of further growth and investment,” said Scott Lane, Founder and CEO of The Red Flag Group. “The opportunity to build an extensive suite of due diligence products and capabilities to better serve our growing customer base is an exciting prospect.”

“The acquisition of The Red Flag Group comes at a time when our customers are wrestling with new and emerging challenges, including supply chain resilience and an increasing focus on ESG due diligence,” said Charles Minutella, Head of Due Diligence services at Refinitiv. “With the addition of The Red Flag Group, Refinitiv is ideally positioned to meet these and other on-going customer challenges. We’re looking forward to expanding upon the great work The Red Flag Group has done to date.”

The Red Flag Group is a global integrity and compliance risk firm based in Hong Kong with 15 offices located throughout the United States, Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Established by founder and CEO Scott Lane, the firm has more than 900 customers and approximately 300 employees who assist clients across a range of industries with their enhanced due diligence and onboarding technologies.  Its leading products include IntegraCheck, IntegraWatch, Supplier Integrity and ComplianceDesktop.

Refinitiv offers comprehensive, timely, and trusted information to help customers manage regulatory compliance, enterprise risk and financial crime. Its leading products include World-Check, Qual-ID and Connected Risk.

SWIFT and Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) today signed a Memorandum of Intent (MOI) to accelerate trade digitalisation globally.

The MOI looks at offering SWIFT’s community of more than 11,000 financial institutions and corporates in over 200 countries and territories more efficient and cost-effective cross-border paperless trade, without the need for multiple bilateral linkages and siloed systems. Moving manual processes to digitally enabled ones also creates opportunities to shorten trade processing times and open up possibilities for innovation such as new trade financing offerings to the trade community.

Through this MOI, both parties will work to combine TradeTrust, an interoperability framework that connects various platforms for the exchange of digital trade documentation, with the SWIFT community. TradeTrust provides proof of authenticity of documents and offers title transfer through open-source software1. This functions alongside legal harmonisation to recognise these digital documents. When paired with SWIFT’s ability to securely transport industry standardised electronic trade messaging, scanned hardcopy documentation and digitally signed assets, this will pave the way for the seamless exchange of electronic trade documents around the world.

As an important global trade and finance hub, Singapore has been at the forefront of trade digitalisation, partnering with various international organisations, governments and industry players to boost cross-border trade. This MOI further builds on IMDA’s effort to bring in new partners to join this global trade digitalisation effort. Earlier this year, IMDA signed a cooperation agreement with the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and 17 multinational firms to move from existing paper-based processes to digitally enabled ones.

Mr. Alain Raes, Chief Business Development Officer, SWIFT, said: “The trade ecosystem faces digital disruption and requires open standards, legal harmonisation and coming together as a community to address fragmentation, friction and risks. Our collaboration with Singapore’s global TradeTrust initiative allows us to play a central role in this effort, and we look forward to working together towards a shared vision of a frictionless, dynamic, global trade ecosystem.”

Ms Jane Lim, Assistant Chief Executive, IMDA, said: “International trade is the lifeblood of Singapore’s economy. Singapore is working with various partners internationally to develop an interoperability framework, TradeTrust, for the seamless and efficient exchange of digitalised trade documentation across different communities. We are pleased to partner with SWIFT to further develop a trusted, interoperable and global digital trade ecosystem.”

The UK based fintech GR8PAY is teaming up with Clearhaus. Now, the Danish financial institution will provide the technology needed for GR8PAY to undertake online payments throughout Europe.

“We felt a connection with GR8PAY right away. The team embodies a rare combination of deep knowledge, amazing talent and a sincere dedication to provide the best solutions available for developers and merchants alike,” says CEO at Clearhaus, Claus Methmann Christensen. He adds: “We are always open to engage in strategic partnerships and provide Visa and Mastercard payment rails for promising fintechs. We are looking forward to joining GR8PAY on their promising journey.”

At its core, GR8PAY is a payment gateway taking pride in offering payment infrastructure to online businesses and web developers. A mission in line with the Clearhaus product.

“What struck me the most about Clearhaus was the clean and simple APIs that Clearhaus offers. In combination with a fast onboarding process, great support and a comprehensive risk profiling system, we have found the perfect partner for our future expansion in Europe,” says Jamie Hall.

Although GR8PAY was founded just 6 months ago, it has already found a way to stand out from the crowd. Thus, GR8PAY differentiates itself from the likes of Stripe and PayPal by having built the developer portal, Pay2Code.

“Our bigger competitors often leave developers on their own. But with us, the developers can communicate and benefit directly through Pay2Code. We want to be the best at accommodating the developers’ needs and in return we offer a highly skilled customer service and a UK based call center,” says Jamie Hall.

GR8PAY is currently operating exclusively in the UK but plans to expand to mainland Europe within the coming months.