Chargebacks911, the award-winning FinTech company that has successfully protected over 10 billion online transactions and has helped its clients recover $1+ billion in disputed revenue, announced today the appointment of Keith Clay “KC” Fox as its new Chief Product Officer.

A 30-year veteran of the payments and fraud industries, Fox will be helping Chargebacks911’s clients reduce fraud, increase revenue, enhance payments security, streamline efficiencies, prevail in financial disputes, and optimize readiness for the cyber-trends of 2020 -- and beyond. 

“I’m excited and energized to join this fast-growing, highly-innovative company,” said Fox.  “Chargebacks911 has a tremendous reputation within the payments industry, and they got their reputation the old-fashioned way: They earned it.  As a payment professional with more than three decades of experience, I fully understand how chargebacks and financial fraud can sabotage a business’ bottom line.  But perhaps more importantly, as a former Chargebacks911 client myself, I also understand the unique resources, capabilities and expertise that Chargebacks911 brings to bear.  I can honestly say, I’d trust Chargebacks911 to safeguard my own hopes and dreams -- because I literally did. And now that I’m officially part of this incredible team, I look forward to helping Chargebacks911 reach ever greater heights.”

Fox was previously the Senior Vice President of Technical Services at Radial (formerly eBay Enterprises), where he was responsible for managing, running and overseeing Radial’s technology-based products and services, which included: payments, tax, fraud, order management and Omnichannel solutions.  During his tenure, he worked closely with issuing banks, gateways, alternative payments providers, facilitators and more, developing innovative new strategies to solve complex problems. He has also held leadership positions at Paypal and Verisign, and played a pivotal role in assisting numerous startups and e-stores become successful, sustainable businesses.

“KC has been one of the preeminent voices in the payments industry since the 1990s, and his expertise and FinTech credibility is virtually unmatched,” said Monica Eaton-Cardone, Co-Founder and COO of Chargebacks911.  “He didn’t simply watch the eCommerce economy get built from the ground up -- he played a hands-on role in helping to build it. And with three decades of leadership, knowledge and direct experience, we’re fully confident that KC will be an amazing, one-of-a-kind resource for Chargebacks911’s clients.  We’re delighted to have him on our team.”

Chargebacks911 currently represents clients in 87 countries, with corporate offices in North America, Asia and Europe.  For more information, please visit us online at Chargebacks911 (https://chargebacks911.com/).

Monzo has announced today that it is launching free and premium business accounts. From today, businesses can apply for a Monzo Business Account for £5 per month or a Business Lite account with no monthly fee. 

Both Monzo accounts are full UK current accounts and it's regulated by all the same rules as high street banks. Furthermore, eligible deposits in Monzo are FSCS protected up to £85,000.

Ian Bradbury, CTO of Financial Service at Fujitsu said:

“Monzo’s announcement that its customers can now apply for business bank accounts is another example of how the challenger bank continues to diversify its offering portfolio. Similar to other challenger banks, its business model allows Monzo to quickly implement and trial new offerings and solutions – for example the 12 months beta testing for this account with small businesses – to find what their customers prefer. This is perfect example of them acting quickly to implement new services in  an increasingly crowded and competitive marketplace.

“It’s clear that challenger banks continue to disrupt the world of traditional banks – so much so that our research found that 61% of leaders in the financial services industry said they have experienced radical change over the past five years. And technological innovation will play a critical role in the continued popularity of the disruptors in the financial services industry. However, as the sector matures, it will be interesting to see how these challenger banks differentiate themselves from one another.

Goldbell Financial Services, one of Singapore’s leading business finance providers, has confirmed it will partner with Mambu, the market-leading pure SaaS banking platform, to power its private debt investment platform, the Goldbell Evolution Network, known as GEN.

Launched in November 2019, GEN provides financing solutions to businesses, while offering investors alternative investment opportunities in private debt. Mambu’s cloud-native platform will underpin GEN, with its flexible composable architecture allowing for rapid growth at a time when the financial services industry is undergoing intense change across the Asia-Pacific region.

Mr Alex Chua, CEO of Goldbell Financial Services, said: “We need a configurable technology in order to meet the diverse needs of our stakeholders, including business owners seeking financing solutions and our accredited investors. After careful consideration we have selected Mambu’s pure SaaS banking platform to take GEN to the next level as it has an unrivalled capacity to allow us to be flexible, agile and responsive to our customers’ needs. We foresee that Mambu’s technology will be instrumental in supporting our velocity as we navigate the changes that the new world of digital banking will bring to Singapore in 2020 and beyond.”

Myles Bertrand, Managing Director, APAC, for Mambu, said: “The financial services industry in Singapore is entering an enormously disruptive and transformative period, as regulations change and we start to see the impact of the new digital banking licences distributed by Monetary Authority of Singapore. Mambu is thrilled to be working with Goldbell Financial Services to create a game-changing lending and investment platform in GEN, and to solidify GBFS’ position as one of Singapore’s leading financial services companies.”

NexBotix, the Robot-Process-Automation (RPA) service, has officially launched in the UK. With a managed dashboard solution applied to specific business objectives, it means that only the right processes are automated and ROI can be delivered in as little as 30 days.

NexBotix delivers a low-cost solution for businesses across finance and accounting, HR, IT, governance and compliance departments, across banking, financial services, insurance, automotive, logistics, legal, retail and local government. Unlike anything else currently in the market, the platform can be deployed into existing IT infrastructure in just 14 days.

NexBotix uses today’s leading technology from major vendors such as Microsoft, Google, IBM Watson, Automation Anywhere, NICE, UiPath and Abbyy, alongside its own NexBots. The platform provides businesses with the ability to scale up and down their operations according to demand and assist teams in focusing on more high-value tasks, all the while, driving down cost. The key to the multi-vendor approach, is the NexAnalytics capability that helps companies gain complete control of their digital workforce and ensure that the Business Case ROI is delivered as specified.

Chris Porter, CEO of NexBotix, says: “The ‘plug, play, and managed’ element of our technology means that there’s minimal disruption to existing operations, and with no-code to manage it doesn’t require users to be tech-savvy to operate it. With some of the more established players in the market, there’s typically a three month consultation period before any integration can begin, so is it any wonder that enterprises are becoming disillusioned with the actual impact automation can have? We’re so confident in our technology and team that we offer customers a guarantee of receiving ROI within three-to-nine months; though in many cases we’ve seen this happen within as little as a few weeks.”

“With NexBotix, it’s less about removing the human element, but more about working alongside process automation to arrive at the best possible outcome; both in terms of efficiency and profitability. Where most businesses fail with AI implementation is that they lack the foundations intrinsic to its success as a model. Where NexBotix differs is that we put a specific business situation first, and build around that.”

The platform is managed by a team of experts within NexBotix, so it removes the need for any company to have a dedicated technical resource and the service can deliver quantifiable benefits 30 days from implementation. In one case, NexBotix helped a customer service organisation with 3,000 employees achieve an ROI of 802% and payback within four weeks, for its sales department.

Nexbotix has been spun out from Camwood Ltd which has over 20 years of experience and a proven portfolio of products and services across intelligent automation. Most notably, it sold AppDNA to Citrix in 2011 for $91.3m.

Mphasis, global solutions provider specializing in cloud and cognitive services, announced the appointment of Manish Dugar as the Chief Financial Officer effective 15 May 2020. V Suryanarayanan will continue as the Chief Financial Officer until 14 May 2020, and will be available for transition support, until he retires in October 2020.

Acknowledging Mr. Suryanarayanan’s contributions, Nitin Rakesh, CEO, Mphasis said, "I would like to thank Surya for his relentless support and leadership in setting new benchmarks in finance, strategy and governance. As we drive our business forward, I am highly confident that Manish’s deep industry expertise and extensive global experience will take Mphasis to new heights. We welcome Manish to the Mphasis Leadership Team and look forward to his contribution in creating value"

“I feel privileged with the opportunity to serve Mphasis, and all our stakeholders - clients, shareholders, and employees" said Suryanarayanan V. "I am looking forward to working closely with Manish for the next few months, and in ensuring a seamless transition."

“I am excited and grateful to the Mphasis Board and humbled by the trust and confidence placed in me to take on this key role at a growing organization. I look forward to working closely with the team in our journey to sustain and enhance stakeholder value,” said Manish Dugar.

Manish brings strong financial leadership experience of over 25 years across multiple industries including Information Technology, BPO, FMCG, diversified conglomerates and with new age digital and health-tech sectors. He is a qualified Chartered Accountant (CA), India, Cost & Works Accountant (CWA), India, Company Secretary (CS), India and holds a Diploma in Business Finance from ICFAI. He holds a Master of Business Administration, Finance degree from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta Having served as CFO of Wipro Technologies, the CEO of Wipro’s BPO business among others, he has taken up diverse, large and challenging assignments in IT Services industry. He has also led several M&A initiatives and has actively been engaged in fund-raising with FIIs, Banks, and other institutional investors. Manish has also held several leadership roles at Practo Technologies, inMobi, RPG Enterprises and Agnus Capital LLP. 

BlackLine, Inc. announced that Sophia Velastegui of Microsoft has joined the accounting automation software leader’s board of directors, effective March 16th, 2020, bringing the number of female directors on BlackLine’s board to three. A widely recognized technology industry leader and artificial intelligence (AI) expert, Ms. Velastegui will draw on her more than 20 years of experience at global technology trailblazers Microsoft, Google and Apple to help BlackLine maintain its leadership position and guide the company through its next phase of growth.

“Sophia has an incredible technology background and is recognized as one of the foremost engineers in the field,” said BlackLine CEO Therese Tucker. “She’ll bring experience and knowledge to our board and will help ensure that BlackLine utilizes the latest AI, machine learnings and other predictive and emerging technologies to continue to innovate and serve our customers. And, she shares my passion, advocating for diversity in technology and leadership.”

Velastegui is currently the chief technology officer for Operation Applications at Microsoft. Previously she was a general manager, responsible for development of AI and Search products and initiatives. Since 2018, she has concurrently served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council. Before joining Microsoft, Velastegui served as Doppler Lab’s chief product officer where she defined a new product category and created the world’s first ‘smart’ earbuds, which leveraged machine learning to enhance how people experience sound and ultimately hear better. Prior to Doppler, she headed Google/Nest’s Silicon and Architecture Roadmap team where she scaled the organization from start-up to growth business unit following the Google acquisition. Previously, Velastegui was at Apple where she led the Platform Architecture “Think Tank” Program, leveraging AI and machine learning across all of Apple’s advanced technology platforms. Prior to Apple, Velastegui held a variety of technology and product development roles at ETM and Applied Materials.

In addition to her extensive professional experience, Velastegui serves on Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering and Create X incubator boards. She previously served on the board of Elwyn.org, a non-profit servicing children and adults with disabilities.

“I find BlackLine truly inspiring because of the leadership team’s unwavering focus on innovation, collaboration and customer success – all of which has resulted in BlackLine emerging as the leader in modern accounting,” said Velastegui. “I am very excited to have been nominated to join the board and to contribute to the continued growth of this extraordinary company.”

Velastegui holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. She also completed executive education programs at Stanford Law School and Harvard Business School.

Velastegui has received numerous awards and accolades for her contributions to the technology industry including being recognized by Business Insider as one of the ‘Most Powerful Female Engineers in the World’ for her work in advance technology at Google and then again for her work in AI at Microsoft. Lastly, Velastegui received the prestigious Lumiere Distinguished Leadership Award from the Advanced Imaging Society for innovation and technical impact in advancing the entertainment and media industries.

GIRO has now launched its new instant payments platform based on the well-established platform – RealTime24/7 – powered by technology from Nets. The high volumes processed during the first days since the launch have given the new system a flying start.

“We are happy to see our technology perform so well in a launch where speed, stability and reliability were key to meet the expected high volumes from the second it went commercially live. It is great to see the close collaboration we have had with GIRO now materialise,” comments Paul Walvik-Joynt, SVP in Payments International at Nets.

The GIRO platform can manage 5-600 transactions per second and 100% of the transaction production volume since the launch has been completed in less than one second. GIRO has spent months of diligent testing together with the Hungarian bank community, completing more than 120 million testing transactions. In consultancy and development dialogue GIRO answered more than 3,000 questions to ensure that the experience of the new solution would be genuinely beneficial to the whole Hungarian society.

“Launching real-time payments in Hungary not only marks an important step for GIRO, but for the whole Hungarian financial market. We have been working closely with Nets throughout the implementation process and been reassured of the product and partnership value we were looking for when completing the tender and vendor selection process.” said Dr Selmeczi-Kovács Zsolt, CEO of GIRO.

Zsolt continues: “We now look forward to developing the capabilities of the payments system further and facilitating new and innovative products in cooperation with Nets.”

The commercial launch of the RealTime24/7 platform in Hungary is a software delivery. RealTime24/7 is also available as a managed service. The deployments in production in Denmark, Italy, Slovenia, and Norway are run as managed services. Several of the RealTime 24/7 deployments include overlay services, where the advantages of instant payments are utilised for the benefit of all parties in the payments ecosystem.

Starling Bank founder and chief executive Anne Boden said the business will to make its first monthly profit in “in January or February” of next year.

This year is perhaps the most crucial in the well regarded bank’s short history. Boden has to manage expansion into Germany, France and the Netherlands, maintain the bank’s quality, and produce a profit.

“Digital banks have experienced high growth,” says Boden. “We are all putting on numbers. This has never happened before in the history of banking. But now we are moving into a period where these banks have to show they can make profits.”

The digital bank has opened 1.25 million customer accounts and holds more than £1.25bn in deposits since it was launched in 2014. The digital bank has forged a reputation for bringing quality products to market across business banking, travel money or overdraft facilities that have won it several bank of the year awards.

All of this has made Boden arguably the most famous woman in British fintech.

However, the Starling competes against UK rivals who have more customers such as Revolut which claims 10 million accounts and Monzo, which notched up four million accounts earlier this month.

Starling makes its cash from a mixture of charging fees on the cards it issues, its marketplace where it charges other financial service firms to sell products on its platform, as well as using its deposits to lend.

“The thing to remember is that our cost base is so small the cash we raise here is meaningful,” adds Boden.

The elephant in the room for all neo-banks is Big Tech firms such as Amazon or PayPal. These firms have deep pockets, large customer bases, and unlike high street banks, are platform companies themselves and so are comfortable with the business model.

The number of fintech deals by global tech giants – including Alibaba Group, Alphabet, Apple, Baidu, IBM, Microsoft and Tencent – increased for the fifth straight year, with $3.5bn invested across 46 deals in 2019, according to last month’s KPMG Pulse of Fintech bi-annual report.

“I think Big Tech will want to distribute banking services, says Boden. “I don’t think they will want to get involved in the financial plumbing of moving money around. Or obtaining a license, that will mean more regulation, and they already face calls for more regulation as it is.”