PostePay, one of the largest Electronic Money Institutions (EMI) in Italy, bringing together Poste Italiane’s assets and expertise in payments and telecommunications, with over 28 million cards in circulation and 1.4 billion card transactions managed in 2019, today announced a partnership with Volante Technologies, a leading global provider of payments and financial messaging solutions in the cloud and on premise. The partnership will further enhance the Poste Italiane Group’s payments modernization programme, including its open banking platform, enabling instant payments and providing a new gateway to traditional interbank networks. 

PostePay, part of the Poste Italiane Group, plays a pioneering role in the electronic money market in Italy, steering the shift from traditional payment methods to next-generation digital options and account-based payments. 

Volante’s VolPay cloud-native microservices architecture will allow Poste Italiane to support current and future payment rails by offering high levels of resilience and extensibility. The resulting modern scalable end-to-end payments processing infrastructure will allow leading edge customer experience and services for over 14 million Poste Italiane accounts, providing a strategic advantage to constantly innovate in the changing landscape resulting from PSD2 regulation.

As part of its ‘Deliver 2022 strategy’, Poste Italiane is expanding its network of partnerships on a global scale, firmly believing that innovation is essential for a diversified business of its scale to remain competitive at a time when established markets are being disrupted. As part of this strategy, Poste Italiane already launched successful partnerships in digital wealth management, open banking, premium home delivery services and long-haul road transportation.  PostePay also took part in Volante’s growth capital raise of $35 million, with other top-tier financial and industry investors.

The partnership with Volante Technologies will further enable the development of innovative products, like Codice Postepay QR code solution, allowing state-of-the-art customer experience and paving the way for further exciting developments. In line with the Group’s strategy, PostePay’s first goal is to inform and guide changes in consumer habits, accelerating Italy’s transformation from cash to digital payments. Through this valuable partnership, Poste Italiane will be able to serve its customers even better.

Poste Italiane commented: “One of our objectives was to find a partner with whom we could develop common roadmaps for our payment-hub, rather than simply outsource to a vendor for the SCT-INST project. With the payments landscape changing so rapidly, the Poste Italiane Group is investing – alongside other leading global institutions – in a growing company known for its modern, resilient and scalable technology to continue to provide our customers with the most technologically advanced and reliable payment experience. The fact that VolPay is cloud-native proved particularly attractive in that it can offer a variety of deployment models.”

Volante Technologies added: “It is clear that Poste Italiane is constantly looking for ways to ensure that their customers benefit from the emerging opportunities of digital payments. We are delighted that they chose Volante, and that we have the opportunity to help them further modernize their payments landscape with speed, enabling them to become more competitive now and in the longer term. We are confident that we can provide them with the extensibility they require to achieve their future growth objectives in payments.”

Huobi Asset Management (Hong Kong) Limited (the “Company”), the wholly-owned asset management subsidiary of Huobi Technology Holdings Limited (1611.HK), is pleased to announce that it was granted with Type 4 (advising on securities) and Type 9 (asset management) licenses by the Securities and Futures Commission (the “SFC”) on 31 July 2020 to conduct the respective regulated activities. The Company shall focus on providing securities advisory and asset management services to professional investors, with the long term aim to build an integrated financial service platform to serve customers both from the traditional and virtual asset industry.

According to Elaine Sun, the Compliance Director of Huobi Tech: “We are delighted to get licensed and it marks a good start for the Company to provide professional asset management services. The Asset Management arm is led by a team of investment professionals with extensive traditional securities investment experience and fruitful knowledge in blockchain and virtual asset industry. As a fully compliant trusted platform we are confident that the Company could bridge the gap between traditional and virtual asset class investments and offer integrated solutions to our professional investors.”

Enfuce, Finland’s largest fintech startup, has recently appointed Transact Payments (TPL) – the experts in cards and payments – as its preferred prepaid BIN Sponsorship partner in Europe. The partnership allows Enfuce’s customers who don’t have an issuing license to quickly and securely launch prepaid card products across Europe.

Nordics-based Enfuce provides payments processing and card issuing services. A key element of its card-as-a-service offering is to simplify issuing and enable customers to easily scale card issuance into new countries. To enhance these capabilities, Enfuce partnered up with a BIN Sponsorship provider with a strong compliance track record and a wide geographical reach. 

In collaboration with Transact Payments, Enfuce can offer fully compliant BIN Sponsorship across Europe. This allows Enfuce’s bank, fintech and merchant customers to run secure card payments without having to join a card scheme directly, which is a time and resource consuming process.

“Transact Payments is an ideal partner for ensuring that our non-licensed customers achieve compliant card issuing. TPL brings unparalleled industry expertise, in addition to sharing our core values of compliance, collaboration and speed-to-market. Together, we can help our customers grow and provide payment solutions that match their fast-evolving needs." says Denise Johansson, CEO and Co-Founder at Enfuce. 

Relying on Transact Payments’ status as an e-money institution, Enfuce can launch physical and virtual prepaid card programs in 23 European countries and in 16 different currencies.

Noel Smith, Sales Director at Transact Payments explains: “Enfuce is already one to watch in the fintech space and, through our shared ethos of agility and responsiveness, customers will benefit from a more streamlined and speedier full payments solution. TPL brings to the table a robust track record and team with over 20 years’ experience in our field, and we’re excited to expand our service with a partner already making headway in the Nordics.”  

“By joining our visionary teams together we are making complex items easy for our customers. They can run safe and future-proof prepaid card payments across Europe – without hassle, whilst maintaining full focus on their core business,” Denise Johansson adds.

The two partners will collaborate closely to provide seamless BIN Sponsorship services tailored to each customer’s individual needs. The partnership will further bolster Enfuce’s turnkey Payment Services offering, which, besides BIN Sponsorship, enables customers to launch debit and credit cards, fleet cards, gift cards, tokenized payments etc.

FSS (Financial Software and Systems), a global digital payment and financial technology company, has augmented its UPI 2.0 platform with a range of new capabilities to improve customer convenience. This includes AutoPay and voice-activated account management to enable PSPs harness the potential of UPI, generate new monetization opportunities, and encourage frequent use of digital payments.

Coinciding with the nation-wide launch by NPCI, two of the country’s leading banks were among the first to go live with FSS UPI AutoPay. Compliant with NPCI guidelines, FSS AutoPay unlocks new revenue opportunities for banks to collaborate with third party FinTechs for the development of new generation digital overlay services. This spans a broad range of services – consumer to business transactions (subscriptions and monthly payments ), business to consumer payments (‘buy now, pay later’ -- e-commerce initiatives) corporate pay-outs (payroll) and business-to-business payments (supply chain transactions). 

FSS UPI AutoPay allows customers (payers as well as payees) to set-up auto-debit instructions for regular payments using a mobile app or by scanning a QR code. All subsequent payments are seamlessly executed in the background, without any manual intervention, maximizing customer convenience. Using the PSP UPI app, customers can digitally set-up authorise, view, modify and manage mandates with a single click, ensuring visibility and control over these payment arrangements.

With growing adoption of voice-based interfaces, FSS UPI 2.0 allows customers to manage their accounts using voice commands for an easy-to-use, on-the-go banking experience. Customers can use the conversational interface embedded in the UPI app to conduct a range of routine, non-financial transactions. This includes account creation and activation (create UPI id, create virtual private account), manage mandates, enquire balance, check transaction status (collect money), receive alerts (fund transfer status notification). The transactions are secured using data encryption and out-of-band authentication mechanisms such as a one-time password.

Speaking on the launch of new capabilities, N Sathish, Deputy CPO FSS, stated: “The real-time payments landscape is evolving, and improved customer experience is at the heart of this transformation. Instantaneity and invisibility are the defining attributes of future consumer payment experiences. With AutoPay and conversational banking capabilities, FSS provides PSPs a compelling, new way to embed themselves deeper into their customers’ lives and further adoption of UPI-based payments.”

The underlying FSS UPI Gateway supports standard secure interfaces for integration with third-party FinTechs and Voice Commerce systems. In addition, FSS UPI mobile SDK provides third party providers -- banks, fintech, retailers, telecoms, insurers, wallet providers – a quick out-of-the-box integration capability, enabling UPI services within the existing app in a few hours. FSS supports licensed and As-a-Service deployment models in line with PSP business needs. The solution is benchmarked to process 6,600 transactions per second and can scale to accommodate larger workloads.

Payments company EBANX announced the expansion of its transparent checkout solution for Shopify to more Latin American countries. Already available in Brazil, it is now live in Mexico and Colombia as well, allowing international stores that sell through the platform to deliver a more seamless payment experience to their consumers in all these countries, at once, through one single integration with EBANX.

"In addition to improving the consumer's experience, we also wanted to ease the process for stores that sell through the ecommerce platform, for them to implement the solution in Latin America. They only need to integrate once with EBANX, to unlock the potential in several countries," said Erika Daguani, B2B Product Director at EBANX.

With the solution, merchants will be able to display the final price of purchases in local currencies of these countries, and offer local payment methods like installments, domestic debit and credit cards, e-wallets, local cash vouchers and bank transfers. EBANX transparent checkout also provides merchants with information on conversion of ads into sales. 

"Keeping consumers in one online payment environment, and not redirecting them to other screens, improves greatly the shopping experience. This in addition to displaying prices in their currencies and allowing them to pay how they prefer, and you offer them an easier and smoother interaction with your online store," explained Daguani. "Ultimately this leads to lower checkout abandonment and higher conversion rates," she completed. 

During beta tests of the new checkout, EBANX merchants that use Shopify experienced a 30 percentage point decrease in checkout abandonment rates, and a 7 percentage point increase in conversion rates. Even though prices are displayed in the local currency, and consumers pay with local payment methods, merchants can receive their settlement in US dollars if they would like to. 

“The expansion of this solution to other Latin American countries reflects how EBANX understands the importance of the Latin America region for global companies. Businesses around the world can start selling internationally from day one, relying on a robust ecommerce platform such as Shopify, and EBANX provides access to all of the Latin American consumers," said Wade Pylka, VP of Channels at EBANX.

In order to enjoy the new product, merchants that sell to Latin America need to choose EBANX as a payment gateway inside their Shopify administrative panel. 

thinkFolio, a leading multi-asset class investment management platform from IHS Markit, has integrated with Investor Access, making it the first portfolio and order management platform to provide seamless fixed income primary market workflow for the buy side community.

The integration allows thinkFolio front office users to monitor new issues via the Investor Access Deal Monitor platform, subscribe to those assets, and trigger new security information to thinkFolio and client downstream applications. The workflow and cohesive tool kit leverages the Investor Access Deal Services API and FIX messaging, providing users with the ability to orchestrate allocations at point of order creation and to initiate all required compliance checks before placement.

"The inertia driving further electronification of fixed income trading activity is noted and this theme has now evolved to the primary markets," said Brett Schechterman, Managing Director and Global Head of thinkFolio at IHS Markit. "Our colleagues from Investor Access have been at the forefront in working with key consortiums across the capital markets with the objective of optimizing the primary issuance process for fixed income securities. The thinkFolio team is thrilled to contribute to a collaboration which will result in streamlined primary market workflow, reduced operational risk, and enhanced compliance and audit capabilities for our clients' dealing operations."

"As a foundation for working collaboratively with our buyside stakeholders, we have initiated this 'open' integration effort with our colleagues from thinkFolio," said Ted Douglas, Managing Director and Co-Head of Fixed Income for IHS Markit's Global Markets Group. "Embedding Investor Access within leading buy-side trading technology platforms will provide holistic straight-through processing benefits for our primary market clients and the entire ecosystem. We are delighted that our collective efforts and the workflow synergies we've deployed in close partnership with thinkFolio will streamline the end to end process for their clients and connect the marketplace to the primary fixed income new issue market."

SwissBorg has partnered with Onfido to securely verify applicant identities for its wealth management platform, providing a seamless customer onboarding experience while achieving regulatory compliance. 

SwissBorg’s mission is to become the world-leading wealth management ecosystem powered by blockchain technology - setting the standards for crypto projects across the industry while building a dedicated community of users. As a licensed financial entity, SwissBorg’s priority is safeguarding users’ data and preventing fraudsters’ attempts by performing sufficient Know Your Customer (KYC) checks. All this must be achieved without compromising the customer onboarding experience. 

To achieve this, SwissBorg partnered with Onfido to securely verify remote users while streamlining the onboarding process and watchlist checks. With Onfido’s AI-powered identity verification technology, SwissBorg applicants are able to sign up by simply taking a photo of their government-issued identity document (ID) and a selfie. Onfido first checks that the ID seems genuine and is not fraudulent, and then matches it to the user’s face. This ensures the person presenting the identity is its legitimate owner and is physically present. Users are able to start their digital crypto investment and trading journey anywhere, anytime, through a fast and user-friendly online experience.

For a digital-first business in an emerging industry, balancing compliance needs with customer experience could be the difference between winning market share and driving customers away. Finding a service that SwissBorg could trust and integrate seamlessly—and use to satisfy KYC needs—was essential. 

Now, 60% of Swissborg’s applications are processed automatically with regard to identity checks, making it one of the faster onboarding journeys in the cryptosphere. KYC checks are completed in under two minutes on average and users can be fully onboarded in under ten minutes. The data is only used for verification purposes for the safety and security of users assets. Onfido’s SDK event tracking also allows the SwissBorg team to see exactly where the drop-off is, so they can react in real-time. 

“One of SwissBorg’s main priorities is the protection of its community. This includes preventing users with ill-intent from onboarding and also safeguarding users’ data. Partnering with Onfido has allowed us to achieve these objectives while providing one of the safest and quickest onboarding experiences on the market.” comments Christophe Diserens, Chief Compliance Officer at SwissBorg.

“In today’s digital age, users increasingly appreciate a user-friendly digital experience so they can seamlessly prove their real identity while knowing it is secure. As SwissBorg scales across Europe, they can now be confident that it can satisfy customer verification, and that Onfido’s comprehensive coverage—spanning over 4,600 document types in 195 countries—will be there to help.” said Husayn Kassai, CEO and co-founder at Onfido.

Deloitte announced today that Monica O’Reilly has been named the new leader of its financial services industry practice, which serves 94% of the financial services companies on the Fortune 500 list last year. In addition, Mark Shilling has been named as Deloitte’s banking and capital markets sector leader.

O’Reilly, a principal with Deloitte & Touche LLP, succeeds Kenny Smith, who retired from Deloitte after 27 years in May. Shilling, a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP, previously served as the banking and capital markets sector leader for that business unit. He succeeds Scott Baret, who will be shifting into a strategic client-focused role supporting Deloitte’s portfolio of banking and capital markets clients.

“Monica and Mark’s deep understanding of the industry and business issues that impact financial services has positioned them as leaders among our distinguished clients, colleagues and across the industry,” said Seema Pajula, vice chairman and U.S. Clients, Industries and Insights leader for Deloitte LLP. “I look forward to seeing our organization advance and our clients succeed under their combined leadership.”

O’Reilly will lead the overall strategic direction of the broad client-facing efforts in the industry, as well as direct its go-to-market strategies and resources. She is the first woman to hold this role. Shilling will do the same in banking and capital markets — Deloitte’s largest sector by revenue — with the two often working together when it comes to Deloitte’s largest clients.

Deloitte’s financial services industry practice is the professional services organization’s largest in terms of headcount and revenue. This includes banks and capital markets firms, payments companies, investment managers like mutual funds, hedge funds and private equity firms, insurers and real estate companies.

“The response to the pandemic is the prologue to the future of financial services,” said O’Reilly. “All of the imminent shifts we’ve been tracking over the last decade — including the acceleration of digital technologies and how work is changing — are impacting today. I am thrilled to be named the leader of such a talented team, especially at such an important inflection point in the industry as we help our clients navigate the path forward.”

O’Reilly has nearly 30 years of experience, advising many of Deloitte’s largest financial services clients in risk management, regulatory compliance, and controls consulting. She previously served as the financial services industry leader for Deloitte’s Risk & Financial Advisory business, where she was responsible for the group’s market growth, solutions development, and service delivery. She will retain that role. She has deep experience in the payments industry, an area of increasing focus for Deloitte moving forward. O’Reilly, who joined Deloitte in 2002, resides with her family in San Francisco.

Shilling has nearly 25 years of experience in the financial services industry, advising CIOs, CFOs, and Chief Data Officers on large scale/global programs that enable cost and risk reduction, asset efficiency, control and compliance, and digital banking. In his role as the leader for Deloitte Consulting’s banking and capital markets unit, he has specialized in bringing agile, multi-disciplined teams (across strategy, technology, operations, and human capital) to global and regional clients, along with fintech and emerging ecosystem players. Shilling, who joined Deloitte in 2008, has a computer sciences background and previously also led Deloitte Consulting’s data and analytics business unit. He resides with his family in Summit, NJ.

In positive signs for the economy’s recovery, research from IRIS Software Group (IRIS), one of the UK’s largest software companies, has found businesses that prioritised harnessing technology to move to cash free trading and support flexible working while increasing customer communications during lockdown predict a return to pre-pandemic trading levels in just six months.   

Overall, of the 1,119 IRIS customers surveyed, businesses remain broadly confident about their ability to bounce back; with some clear trends emerging about the key priorities they need to focus on to return to pre-crisis levels.   

Nearly a third (29%) of businesses that moved to cash free trading, increased customer engagement throughout the lockdown (27%) and moved to cloud or hosted systems to support flexible working (26%) predict they will return to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2020. The move towards digital payments, combined with prioritising engagement through cloud-based systems has enabled many businesses to continue trading throughout the lockdown period, and put them in as strong a position as possible as we enter the next normal.   

Elona Mortimer-Zhika, CEO of IRIS Software Group says, “Despite predictions of the worst recession on record, UK businesses are demonstrating clear resilience in adapting successfully to meet the COVID-19 challenge head on.”  

The biggest challenge faced by British businesses during the COVID-19 lockdown period was the cancellation or pausing of work from customers and clients – with over half (56%) of respondents citing this as their number one challenge. This was followed by late payment of invoices (32%) and an influx in customer queries and questions (31%).   

One in five (19%) respondents cited a lack of clarity around the lockdown rules impacting business results as a key challenge. Supply chain problems and technical software challenges while working from home were also named as barriers to business growth by 19% of respondents.   

However, nearly a third of respondents who are now making changes to employee benefits (30%) and tracking key assets more closely (28%) as key priorities also predict they will return to pre-pandemic status within six months.  

The research further found that firms taking other proactive steps are anticipating a recovery in under 12 months. Over a quarter (26%) reported focusing on improving employee record keeping and management will help towards a sustainable recovery. While nearly a third (28%) are focused on investing in employee engagement and automated technology to speed up their bounce back within a year.   

Elona Mortimer-Zhika continues, “As businesses begin to settle into this new normal, they cannot rest on their laurels. The biggest lesson that must be taken from this is that we have to be on our toes now. We can’t pick up where we left off. We must make quick decisions on imperfect data. Uncertainty is around the corner, and businesses must be ready for the next normal.

Our research shows the impact of the five biggest challenges faced by organisations during the crisis can be controlled. Throwing into sharp relief the necessity for businesses to have as strong a handle on these controllables as much as they can, whether that be their people, commercial contracts, supply chain, cashflow or technology. So if the worst happens, they will be in the best place possible to react. Businesses, regardless of size, need to harness technology to put themselves in the best position to control these controllables and move forward with confidence.”  

Interestingly, the UK’s smaller and micro businesses took markedly different actions during the crisis when compared to larger businesses. This has impacted on how confident they now feel moving into the next normal.   

Over half (53%) of micro businesses took tax breaks and other relief offered by the government, while less than 10% of medium to large businesses did (11% and 8% respectively). Nearly two in five (39%) small business sought finance from a bank or lender, while less than 10% of medium to large businesses did the same (7% and 5% respectively).   

The research further found that 38% of small companies restructured their business during the crisis, while only a quarter of medium and large businesses did the same (25% each).   

As a result of these measures taken, only 21% of small businesses and 14% of micro businesses report feeling confident about recovering from the pandemic. In stark contrast, nearly all (84%) of large businesses feel confident about their organisation’s future, given the evolving COVID-19 situation.  

While the biggest challenge for large and medium sized businesses lay in managing the transition to home working and employee engagement, it was the micro and small businesses which struggled with paying staff and chasing invoices.

Business bank, Allica Bank has combined data and insight from over 1,000 UK SMEs with a multiple regression analysis to determine what factors most closely aligned with an SMEs’ chances of success and separated the highest-performing businesses from their peers. These ‘rules for success’ have been compiled from the research data to support British businesses as they look to chart a course to post-Covid recovery.  

The full report identifies six behaviours for small and medium businesses to follow, to maximise their chances of a successful COVID recovery. The six top-line rules emphasised by the data were: 

Rule 1: SMEs should regularly train staff 

Of the top-performing businesses analysed, 47% provided training for employees at least on a quarterly basis, compared to just 32% of other businesses. Regular employee training was linked closely to success by the model.  

Despite this, many small businesses have neglected training and nearly half (46%) of the small businesses analysed only provide training for employees about once a year or less often. This included 15% that never provide employer-funded training. This discrepancy could represent a significant opportunity for small businesses to unlock the potential of their employees and thrive in the post-Covid economy. 

Rule 2: SMEs need to focus on innovation and technology 

Looking again to the best performing businesses, 76% were found to either continually (39%) or often (37%) be considering new opportunities for technology in their business. This is compared to only 51% for businesses considered to be outside of the top ranks, out of which only 27% admitted to continually looking for new technology opportunities. 

Rule 3: Small business must have a formal, long-term vision  

Nearly two thirds (66%) of the most successful businesses in the survey had a formal, long-term vision, compared to just 50% of businesses outside the top 100. Looking to the businesses that scored the lowest on the SME Performance index, only 37% claimed to have a formal, long-term vision. 

Rule 4: SMEs should broaden their customer reach and find new markets 

Of the top-performing businesses, 65% of these have overseas customers compared to just 40% of the worst performing businesses. Among the best performing SMEs, over a third (34%) identified international expansion as one of the top three drivers for their success. 

Rule 5: SMEs need to develop reinvestment plans 

22% of the best performing SMEs reinvested some of their profits into the business in the past three years with an average 9% of profits being redeployed. Tellingly, this is nearly double what other businesses admit to reinvesting in their business (5%). 

Rule 6: SMEs should engage with local business organisations and networks  

Of the top 100 SMEs, 30% had obtained external credit to expand over the past three years (compared to 24% of other businesses). Meanwhile, only 16% of all other SMEs had engaged with local enterprise partnerships or growth hubs in the past three years (compared to 23% of the top 100 SMEs). 

Chris Weller, Chief Commercial Officer, Allica Bank, said: 

“All small businesses are different, as are all small business owners, but one trait they share is an innovative resilience. Whilst the coming months and years will undoubtedly continue to present extreme challenges, there is no doubt that small and medium sized businesses across the UK will rise to meet them head on.  

“To give them the best chance to succeed, though, they need to be equipped with the right tools. There is certainly no silver bullet or panacea for every small business, but as this study has found, there are a number of common factors found in the most successful businesses that allow small enterprises to thrive and that they can consider individually for their business.  

“This research has identified common ‘rules for success’ that speak to every aspect of running a business, not just the financials. Once we saw these results, we wanted to use them to help small businesses begin to re-build and prosper, by outlining common factors and then examining how best they can be practically applied to businesses in all sectors of the economy.  

“Small business owners and their employees have been hit hard by the crisis, but they have the drive and resourcefulness to breathe new life into the economy and bring energy to post-Covid Britain. Our commitment at Allica Bank is to give them the support they need to do so, every step of the way.” 

The full report contains a wealth of additional data and insight into each of these topics. As part of its mission to empower small businesses, Allica Bank is making the findings freely available and running a series of free online workshops with relevant partner organisations for businesses to attend.