New research from TransUnion’s (NYSE: TRU) Consumer Financial Hardship studies found that phishing is the top digital fraud scheme worldwide related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Among consumers reporting being targeted with digital COVID-19 schemes globally, 27% said they were hit with pandemic-themed phishing scams. To help prevent identity fraud that can result from phishing, TransUnion announced today new enhancements to its Document Verification solution.

“From the impacts of phishing and other well documented COVID-19 scams like unemployment fraud, it’s clear that fraudsters have the data and increasing opportunities to create synthetic identities and utilize stolen identities,” said Shai Cohen, senior vice president of Global Fraud & Identity Solutions at TransUnion. “Identity fraud is a primary way fraudsters leverage stolen consumer data from phishing and other social engineering schemes. It can have long-term impacts for consumers such as the compromise of multiple online accounts and bringing down credit scores, which we anticipate will increase during pandemic reconstruction.”

To better understand the impacts of COVID-19 on consumers, TransUnion surveyed 7,384 adults in Canada, Colombia, Hong Kong, South Africa, the U.K., and the U.S. between June 30 and July 6, 2020. It asked the consumers if they had been targeted by digital COVID-19 fraud and if so, which digital fraud scheme(s) related to COVID-19 were they targeted with. Globally, 32% said they had been targeted by digital fraud related to COVID-19 with the below being the top types of COVID-19 fraud they faced:

Top Global Online COVID-19 Scams Targeting Consumers

Online COVID-19 Scams Targeting Consumers by Country

“Although the schemes may vary by country, a new approach to identity verification that supplements traditional authentication methods is needed to defend against their impact,” said Cohen. “The key is creating a friction-right experience where consumers are confident they are dealing with a legitimate organization or business.”

TransUnion Enhancement to Combat Identity Fraud

With fake identities increasingly available through phishing attacks and other methods, TransUnion recently expanded the global reach of its Document Verification solution. Document Verification confirms a consumer’s identity in faceless and in-person channels by validating a government-issued identification document like a passport or driver’s license.

“With successful phishing attacks that have increased during the pandemic, data breaches and social media sharing, consumers should assume their data is on the dark web,” said Bala Kumar, vice president of product management, Global Fraud & Identity Solutions at TransUnion. “Despite these threats, consumers expect that organizations will protect their identities, and enable secure but still convenient digital experiences. TransUnion’s Document Verification solution provides comprehensive consumer friendly identity verification by triangulating the validity of the document, danger of the device used to capture the document and risk associated with the identity on the document.”

Document Verification is part of IDVision® with iovation®, TransUnion’s flagship identity verification, consumer authentication and fraud prevention solution suite which unites personal and digital data into one of the most comprehensive data identity platforms in the world. As part of the IDVision with iovation suite, Document Verification adds strong verification of government IDs to existing capabilities that can validate a consumer by leveraging TransUnion’s comprehensive intelligence about consumer records, device behavior, and if fraud has previously been associated with a person or device.

“Given the digital transformation that’s been accelerated by the recent pandemic, it’s more important than ever to secure trust in faceless channels with a simple consumer experience by reducing the need for businesses to manually review transactions,” said Shirley Inscoe, senior analyst at technology analyst firm Aite Group.

TransUnion’s Document Verification solution verifies consumers who submit a picture of a government-issued identification document. The solution provides organizations additional confirmation of a consumer identity during account origination and subsequent high-risk transactions.

Document Verification ensures that a government issued identification is genuine by:

●     Validating the expiration date, and if the identification document is fake, lost, stolen or tampered with

●     Confirming the personally identifiable information (PII) in the identification document matches against TransUnion’s data identity of the consumer like an address and flagging any discrepancies

●     Enabling real-time fraud risk checks on the device used to capture the document

●     In some markets, verifying an ID matches against a government’s database of issued IDs.

The solution also provides an optional feature that compares a selfie the consumer captures to the photo on their identification document. Document Verification can be deployed via TransUnion hosted pages enabling rapid deployment which is critical with the accelerated shift to digital channels.

For more details about TransUnion’s Document Verification solution, go here. To download TransUnion’s Consumer Hardship Studies, go here. For more details around TransUnion’s digital fraud findings during the COVID-19 pandemic, go here.

Nethone’s leadership bolstered by an ex-McKinsey & ex-Samsara COO Mateusz Czech, and a payments-veteran Head of BD from the largest French acquiring bank Groupe BPCE, Patrick Nickel-Drexler.

Both executives will lead Nethone in driving operational excellence, delivering outstanding client experience, and achieving the commercial growth goals to establish an international footprint for one of the fastest growing tech companies in Central Europe.

In July, Nethone is reinforcing its leadership team with two new additions. Mateusz Czech joined the team as Chief Operating Officer, responsible for optimizing day-to-day operations for all Nethone employees and clients. Patrick Nickel-Drexler steps in as Head of Business Development, building and executing the business development strategy for sales and partnership teams.

“I am delighted to welcome Mateusz Czech as COO and Patrick Drexler as Head of BD,” said Hubert Rachwalski, Nethone CEO. “Both Mateusz and Patrick have a strong international track record of managing large-scale operations and driving successful organisational change.”

Mateusz Czech joined Nethone in the second quarter of 2020 after working with high growth technology companies in Silicon Valley, where he was responsible for setting up and optimizing operations in new markets and segments. Before that, he designed, implemented and optimized large-scale operations for clients across various industries and geographies (Africa, Australia and Europe) for McKinsey.

“Having gathered experience in high growth technology companies in Silicon Valley such as Samsara and Firefly, I’ve joined Nethone to build and optimize company-wide operations, allowing us to scale effectively,” comments Mateusz Czech when asked about the general reason for choosing Nethone.

Mateusz holds an MBA degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and is a graduate of Warsaw School of Economics and the University of Warsaw.

Prior to joining Nethone, Patrick Drexler managed the partnership department at Paysafecard (for Europe and Asia), and later represented the group in Germany. For the last 5 years, Patrick has built up the partnership department at Dalenys/Natixis Payment in France and led the sales activities in the DACH area.

“I’m a passionate strategic seller who wants to establish an international footprint for Nethone’s leading ML solution and ensure fast and constant growth while helping partners worldwide solve their fraud issues, simple as that,” explains Drexler.

After the positive results of 2019, Banca Profilo grows the suite of products powered by Artificial Intelligence launching three additional discretionary mandates advised by MDOTM, the Fintech company based in London and Milan that develops AI-driven investment strategies for institutional investors.

The three new discretionary mandates, differentiated by risk profile, reinforce the partnership with the Advisory firm that started almost three years ago. The cutting-edge investment models developed by MDOTM leverage the power of Artificial Intelligence to study the relative performances and correlations of different asset classes and build better diversified and more adaptive portfolios.

The distinctive feature of the new discretionary mandates is the innovative synergy between Banca Profilo’s expertise in asset management and MDOTM’s state-of-the-art technology in the field of assisted decision-making. Thus, MDOTM will support Banca Profilo’s investment strategies combining the best of both approaches to investing.

As confirmed in its recent Business Plan 2020-2023, Banca Profilo is striving to integrate new technologies with human financial competences to develop new business models capable of adapting to the evolution of financial markets.

From this vision, the partnership with MDOTM was born. The Fintech company is today the major European player in the development of AI-driven investment strategies for institutional investors. In 2017, it was selected by Google for its acceleration program in Silicon Valley.

Fabio Candeli, CEO of Banca Profilo observes: “We chose to grow our offering of discretionary mandates that use Artificial Intelligence because we believe in the importance of combining human expertise with technological innovation. Today, also thanks to the support of MDOTM, we are able to offer unique and innovative services to our clients.”

“We are extremely proudto strengthen our collaboration with Banca Profilo. - states Tommaso Migliore, CEO & Co-Founder of MDOTM - After working together for three years, we have developed the new mandates to efficiently blend with the bank’s current offering. As financial markets are becoming increasingly more complex, AI represents the best tool to harness the huge amount of data available and dynamically adapt to the constant uncertainty and volatility of today’s markets”.

Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE), IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Red Hat today announced a strategic partnership to help accelerate digital transformation and strengthen real-time data security for enterprises, with a focus on regulated industries. The intent of the partnership is to enable companies to deliver more personalized experiences across the customer journey, driving improved engagement, profitability and loyalty.

 
As companies undergo their digital transformations and move core workloads to the cloud, the entire C-suite is facing a re-framing of their roles to meet customer demands – all while keeping security front and center. Chief Marketing Officers and Chief Digital Officers – particularly those working in regulated industries such as banking and healthcare – are finding that with the emphasis on data-driven marketing, they are now becoming stewards of critical enterprise and customer information. For these executives, the need to protect data while delivering meaningful customer experiences is paramount.

 
The partnership will initially focus on:

·       Deployment Flexibility with Hybrid Cloud: Adobe, IBM and Red Hat aim to enable brands to manage and deliver their content and assets within any hybrid cloud environment, from multiple public clouds to on-premise data centers. By certifying and delivering Adobe Experience Manager 6.5, part of Adobe Experience Cloud, to run on Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s leading enterprise open source container platform, IBM will offer clients the flexibility to host, access and leverage data in the environment of their choice.
·       Adobe Enabled for Financial Services: Adobe joins IBM’s partner ecosystem as a strategic partner providing CX solutions for the IBM Cloud for Financial Services. Using the IBM Cloud for Financial Services, IBM will extend Adobe Experience Manager to professionals in this industry with the aim of helping them as they meet their security and regulatory requirements when delivering personalized experiences to their customers.
·       Adobe and IBM Services: IBM iX, the business design arm of IBM Services, will extend their offerings across all of Adobe's core enterprise applications. With broader, integrated support for clients across Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Experience Cloud, and Adobe Document Cloud, IBM iX will accelerate how global brands use data to design, implement, and scale personalized customer experiences to instill trust across every corner of their business.

“Now more than ever companies are accelerating their efforts to engage customers digitally,” said Anil Chakravarthy, executive vice president and general manager, Digital Experience, Adobe. “We are excited to partner with IBM and Red Hat to enable companies in regulated industries to meet this moment and use real-time customer data to securely deliver experiences across any digital touchpoint, at scale and compliant with regulations.”
 

“The reality is that today, businesses across industries are operating in an experience first world where it is possible to gain immense value from data if trust and technology flexibility are central to the equation,” said Bridget van Kralingen, senior vice president, IBM Global Markets. “It is with these principles as the focus of our partnership – bringing Adobe’s marketing expertise, IBM’s industry domain knowledge and the open innovation of Red Hat –that will give clients the confidence to use their data for new competitive advantage.” 

“Being competitive in the digital economy requires delivering innovation quickly,” said Ashesh Badani, senior vice president, Cloud Platforms, Red Hat. “Through this collaboration, Adobe, IBM and Red Hat are enabling organizations to deliver great digital experiences in any environment with flexibility and speed across the hybrid cloud, whether in on-premises data centers or across multiple public clouds.”

As part of the partnership IBM has named Adobe its “Global Partner for Experience” and will begin adopting Adobe Experience Cloud and its enterprise applications to transform its own global marketing.

BlueSnap, the All-in-One Payment Platform to help merchants increase sales and reduce costs, today announced it has been named a BigCommerce Elite Technology Partner, providing more than 60,000 BigCommerce customers access to BlueSnap’s global payment technology. Beginning today, BigCommerce customers can leverage BlueSnap’s All-in-One Payment Platform through the BigCommerce App Marketplace. 

"Together, BlueSnap and BigCommerce are bringing global payment capabilities to mid-market and enterprise merchants," said Ralph Dangelmaier, CEO of BlueSnap. "As organisations that strive to reduce complexity and increase margins for their clients, this is a natural partnership. Merchants who leverage BigCommerce and BlueSnap together will have extensive payment options to help grow their businesses around the world." 

With the BlueSnap All-in-One Payment Platform, BigCommerce merchants get the tools they need to increase profits, improve authorisation rates and optimise cross-border sales, including:

●      One account connected to a network of global banks to help reduce costly cross-border interchange fees

●      Intelligent Payment Routing to optimise authorisation rates

●      100-plus shopper currencies and 17 settlement currencies, offering more choices for consumers and businesses

●      100-plus global payment types, including SEPA, iDEAL, Sofort, ACH and more

●      Integrated fraud and chargeback management to protect businesses

●      Built-in solutions to handle 3-D Secure, PSD2, GDPR and other regulations

●      Reporting to increase visibility and simplify reconciliation

BlueSnap offers merchants one account, one contract and one consolidated view of their business globally, allowing them to streamline their own operations without the need for multiple payment accounts or storefronts for each region they sell in or currency they accept.

“Our partnership with BlueSnap further illustrates our commitment to providing merchants access to the highest-calibre technologies and service providers available in the industry,” said Russell Klein, chief commercial officer for BigCommerce. “BlueSnap shares our desire to help merchants sell more and grow faster to maximise success, and we look forward to working together to mutually support customers.”

BigCommerce Elite Technology Partners are selected for offering best-in-class technologies, value and superior customer service. For more information, visit: https://www.bigcommerce.com/bluesnap/.

SEED Group, a subsidiary company of The Private Office of Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum, today announced a strategic partnership with ABAKA, the global leader in digital saving and retirement enterprise SaaS solutions, that will allow United Arab Emirates (UAE) financial institutions to integrate ABAKA’s Artificial Financial Intelligence™ technology platform into their core business processes to digitize customer experience, and improve financial education, saving and retirement planning for its residents and citizens.

Considering the huge challenge that the saving and retirement sector faces to produce better outcomes for workers who constantly have to keep up with their savings when there are still limited financial options, ABAKA is the world’s first AI-driven platform that has been developed.

ABAKA streamlines its digital services through AI technology. ABAKA has built the economy applications and seamless data exchange platform enabling FIs to access customer data, build insights and intelligence through conversational AI and hyper-personalised behavioural nudges. It provides digital solutions covering retirement (accumulation, at-retirement and decumulation), banking (PFM, digital savings), wealth and advisory (goal-based investing, data aggregation, advisor lead generation tools and business process automation).

“We are honoured to confirm our new strategic partnership with SEED Group and The Private Office of Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum to bring our AI-powered digital solutions to the UAE for the first time,” said Fahd Rachidy, founder and CEO of ABAKA. “The UAE is facing the same saving and retirement challenge as many countries around the world: consumers are not saving enough, most do not have a clear financial plan for later life and many cannot access financial advice. SEED Group shares our vision to help engage more people in financial planning and enable everyone to have a financially secure future. We’re delighted to be working with them towards achieving this goal.”

The National Bonds Corporation's 2018 Savings Index reveals that more than eight out of 10 people in the UAE claim that they are not saving enough for themselves. With support from the UAE government for the development of initiatives for the "responsible and efficient" adoption of AI in the private sector, as evidenced by the UAE AI strategy, and the launch of the Think AI program in 2019, ABAKA is the leading answer to help everyone make more informed decisions with their finances.

“The utilization of artificial intelligence in the UAE is one thing, financial planning is another,” said Hisham Al Gurg, CEO of SEED Group and The Private Office of Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum. “More than 200 nationalities live in the UAE, but the majority still are almost clueless about planning their retirement. We are confident that through ABAKA’s lead in this regard, the numbers will improve over the next few years, and we are very excited about being part of this mission and helping everyone, citizens and residents, achieve their long-term financial objectives.”

Not so long ago, in December 2019, ABAKA raised $6.5M in Series A funding round from Thames Trust, Ace&Co, and Downing Ventures. To date, the London-based company has raised a total of $10 million in investments, one of the biggest and notable investments in the space of saving and retirement technology.

MYPINPAD, the global leader in secure personal authentication solutions today announces new strategic partnerships with Mswipe, India's largest independent mobile POS merchant acquirer and network provider, and the world’s leader in digital payments, Visa, to propel contactless payments in India.

The announcement follows MYPINPAD becoming the first, and currently only company in the world to achieve Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards Council (SSC) certification for its software only Contactless Payments on Commercial off-the-shelf (CPoC) solution.  

This is an especially important market for MYPINPAD, given that tap-to-pay or contactless card payments in the Indian market are in hypergrowth, led by Visa with over 30mn contactless cards issued.

Mswipe is at the forefront of driving tech innovations that enable micro, small and medium Enterprises (MSMEs), and merchants to accept payments through cards, wallets, mobile payment apps and bank apps, contactless and QR payments.  With over 675,000 POS and 1.1 million QR merchants, it is the largest independent mobile POS acquirer and network provider in India.

The global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has fuelled the need for contactless transactions, with Visa recently announcing a commitment to support 10 million small businesses across Asia Pacific. The pledge is part of a global program that sees Visa supporting 50 million small businesses worldwide. As part of the commitment, the company is introducing a range of programs and solutions to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) drive efficiency and sales by accepting and making digital payments to meet increased demand for cashless payments – both online and in-store.  

CEO of MYPINPAD, Colin Greene, commented: “MYPINPAD makes it easy and affordable for merchants to become a part of digital acceptance and the payments ecosystem. Mswipe has spearheaded technology innovation in digital acceptance and payments for small and medium businesses in India. This important milestone, following our recent world-first PCI SSC CPoC certification, is another huge step for the industry in simplifying digital acceptance for the smallest of businesses to the larger retailers.”

CEO of Mswipe, Manish Patel adds: “What we plan to achieve alongside MYPINPAD will be incredibly significant for consumers, merchants and India in its entirety.. The company’s technology will enable true democratisation of payments and accelerate the contactless revolution in India, which will result in huge socioeconomic benefits. We look forward to deploying the solution, and where the partnership will take us in the future.”

Shailesh Paul, Head, Merchant Sales & Acquiring and Cybersource, India & South Asia, Visa said: “Consumer preference for tap to pay or contactless payments offers a transformational opportunity for our collaboration with MYPINPAD and Mswipe. By empowering small merchants to use their mobile phones to accept tap to pay digital payments and without the need to invest in a standalone terminal, this solution should truly help propel digital payments far and wide across India.”  

MYPINPAD’s solution is easily integrated into third party applications and delivered ‘As-a-Service’. It significantly reduces cost across the entire face-to-face payment ecosystem by meeting PCI security standards through software updates alone. This relieves pain-points such as the cost of traditional payment and POS hardware for the smallest retailers, while also serving larger retailers by significantly reducing maintenance, replacement costs of aging hardware-centric POS systems and ultimately providing stronger customer service with trusted and familiar devices.

Please visit www.mypinpad.com to discover more about this transformational technology. 

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 that EliData has partnered with QuantHouse to integrate QuantFEED market data into the EliData Smart Order Router (SOR).

EliData is an Italian software house that develops trading and order routing applications for the financial markets, as well as solutions for data exchange between front office and back office systems. The partnership has already seen the EliData SOR using QuantHouse market data be deployed by a tier one financial institution in Spain. 

QuantFeed normalises and disseminates market data from more than 145 Exchange data feeds and delivers them to the EliData SOR using a single API. By integrating to the QuantHouse API, EliData and their end customers benefit from unmatched levels of performance and high quality data normalisation with single API connectivity, allowing customers to take advantage of emerging market data feeds as QuantHouse on-boards them.

Gilles Antoine, Business Development Director EMEA, QuantHouse, said, “We are delighted to see a major financial institution in Spain benefit immediately from the EliData-QuantHouse tie up. We consider Spain and Italy key markets and adding EliData as a local partner in Spain, Italy and wider across into Europe helps bring more choice of order execution to traders in the region.”  

Marco Connizzoli, CEO, EliData, added, “In an increasingly fragmented world, financial institutions need access to a wide range of venues and asset classes to execute their orders, and QuantHouse expands our reach beyond our existing set of venues and systematic internalisers. Our SOR was originally developed with MiFID I in mind and over time has been enriched to be MIFID II compliant, ensuring that our customers can meet their best execution requirements. We look forward to seeing more clients benefit from our collaboration with QuantHouse.”

Flywire, a high-growth vertical payments company, today announced new enhancements to its digital payment platform to better serve education recruitment agents and institutions worldwide. As part of its comprehensive receivables solution, the platform enhancements will help agents better manage student information and streamline payment tracking while also enabling education institutions to optimize agent relationships and minimize potential fraud.  

In a related announcement, the company also reported a new strategic partnership with BOSSA (the Beijing Overseas Study Service Association), a non-profit, government-supported organization that supports member agents across China that recruit students for study abroad.

Flywire is the payment provider of choice for students and education institutions around the world. Its solution enables institutions to offer students a highly-tailored, convenient and secure online payment experience – customized by school, country, and currency – while also accelerating funds flow, easing reconciliation and streamlining operational expenses. The solution also enables institutions to create custom payment plans to provide students and families with greater flexibility. 

The company already partners with hundreds of certified education agents that work on behalf of institutions to recruit international students including ACIC, AUG Study, Global Education Alliance, Global Reach, iae Global, IDP Education and KC Overseas Education.

Flywire’s enhanced agent platform connects agents, students and schools to simplify the payment process and provide real-time visibility. New enhancements include a customizable dashboard providing agents with the ability to directly send payment reminders to students. It also provides real-time visibility into the status of all student payment requests; status of all payments made to institutions including payment methods; and easy, secure access to all student payment details including refunds and download receipts. These capabilities offer important benefits for both agents and schools.

For agents, the platform:

• centralizes student information in one place to easily store, manage, import and export data

• provides access to fair-market foreign exchange rates to protect students from unnecessary costs

• delivers payments securely to education institution accounts

• enables easy delivery of payment notifications to one or multiple students

• tracks payments in real time to provide transparency      

• provides split payment functionality (one transaction, multi-payouts)    

For education institutions, the platform:

• enables receipt of payments in full and reduces unidentified and short-balance transactions

• automates the reconciliation process to save time

• secures account data to prevent vendors from acting as agents without authorization

• tracks payments in real time to provide transparency

• centralizes all relevant agent and student information in one place to streamline operation

“Flywire has set the gold standard for cross-border payments in the international education space,” said Mark Lukas, founder and managing director of iae Global. “Their ability to connect schools, agents and students throughout the entire payment process enables a trusted and seamless experience for all involved. As a result, we’re able to create stronger relationships between the students and the schools we represent.”

"Education agents play a very important role in the relationship between institutions and their international students,” said Sharon Butler, EVP of Education, Flywire. “Their ability to represent education institutions locally can make a big difference in how a school is viewed by prospective students. By enhancing our agent platform, we are helping to not only streamline the international student recruitment process, but also optimize the way agents engage with both students and schools worldwide.