TIBCO Software Inc., a global leader in enterprise data, empowers its customers to connect, unify, and confidently predict business outcomes, solving the world’s most complex data-driven challenges. Today, TIBCO announced it is recognised as a Leader in Gartner’s 2020 Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms* for the second year in a row. The company sees this as further validation that its artificial intelligence (AI), data science, and machine learning (ML) capabilities are helping its customers and partners continually deliver an exceptional customer experience and solve difficult business challenges with data science.

“TIBCO is committed to helping enterprises realise the value of their data science initiatives by improving productivity of knowledge workers and operationalising analytic insights. One of our guiding principles is to make AI a foundation of our products. By infusing AI at the core of our data science products, we can automate basic tasks, and free up time for innovation, while enforcing best practices,” said Michael O'Connell, chief analytics officer, TIBCO. “Ultimately, our data science products enable our customers to turn data into actionable intelligence at scale, and create competitive advantage for their business. We view our consistent recognition as a Leader in data science and ML from Gartner as a testament to our success in creating extreme value for our clients.”

TIBCO® Data Science and TIBCO Spotfire® continue to be top competitors in the market, providing customers with real-time, augmented visual analytics and deep data science capabilities. AI and machine learning capabilities are core foundations across all TIBCO offerings in the TIBCO® Connected Intelligence platform, including the IoT-centric Project Flogo®. From full-edge integration to the execution of deep-learning models on devices or in AI-infused BI dashboards, businesses are turning to TIBCO to collect data from anywhere, derive and automate insight and actions, and drive success through digital transformation.

In the 2020 Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine Learning report, Gartner, Inc. evaluated the strengths and cautions of 16 DSML platform providers, with TIBCO named in the Leaders quadrant. Vendors are plotted by Gartner based on their ability to execute and their completeness of vision.

Read the full Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms report for further insights.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organisation and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

*Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms, Peter Krensky, Pieter den Hamer, Erick Brethenoux, Jim Hare, Carlie Idoine, Alexander Linden, Svetlana Sicular, Farhan Choudhary, 11 February 2020.

The trend to Open Banking in real time continues: With a project in Hungary, a comprehensive solution package has been created for the customers of the Erste Bank Hungary. The subsidiary company of the Erste Bank Group Vienna operates one of the largest branch networks in Hungary. In addition to real-time payments around the clock, the customers can also use request-to-pay functions for making payment requests. valantic has implemented the technological basis for this. For more than 20 years, the FinTech company develops software for payment, investment banking and transaction management. With the customised solution on the basis of valantic’s Real Time Payment Engine (RTPE), Erste Bank Hungary now provides a modular structured payment hub solution. The development is based on regulations of the Central Bank of Hungary (MNB) which aim to promote the electronic processing of transactions. At Erste Bank Hungary, money transfers take seconds instead of several hours – every day, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

E-mail or telephone number instead of IBAN

The integration of valantic’s RTPE in the existing bank environment is unproblematic: The rules for controlling the settlement processes are centrally configured and parametrised. Currently, standard payment formats like SEPA (payment, direct debit, card payment), SWIFT, CGI (Common Global Implementation) or local currency standards, such as Hungarian forints (HUF), are supported. These formats are extended by instant payments for SEPA (SCTInst) as well as other country-specific currencies.

The project at Erste Bank is based on regulations which are mandatory in Hungary and have to be fulfilled by the financial institutions. “With regards to electronic banking, Hungary is now in the front position. Before the go-live, a comprehensive testing phase took place under control of the Central Bank of Hungary. In March, the project at Erste Bank Hungary could successfully be completed thanks to the great cooperation between Erste Bank Hungary and valantic,” said Sertac Cetiner, Head of Payments, from valantic. Currently, Erste Bank Hungary is the only bank in Hungary supporting those request-to-pay functions, so that, for the time being, only intrabank payment requests are possible. “For the Hungarian payment industry, instant payments are an important milestone which enables new business models and fulfils customer expectations which are now much more dynamic than some years ago,” added Reka Schreiber, Head of Operations, from Erste Bank Hungary. New in RTPE is that, in addition to the conventional IBAN identification, customers can use their telephone number or e-mail address as ID for verification in the new payment system.

Conformity with SWIFT and ISO 20022

valantic’s RTPE supports all relevant SWIFT and ISO 20022 standards in the pain, pacs and camt format, including required variants. Additionally, RTPE is multi-client and multi-channel capable, so that payment instructions can be processed across different channels, such as e-banking or corporate banking. All instructions are validated on various levels against format rules, EPC rules and bank-specific rules. A high-performance mapping engine allows the conversion from any format used by the payment submitter. The settlement processes are centrally controlled and a single Point of Truth enables a central filing of all processed instructions, payments and bookings. The example of Erste Bank Hungary shows how flexible valantic’s Real Time Payment Engine can be customised to the requirements of local markets and the banks. Today, Erste Bank Hungary already has the technological basis at its disposal.

About valantic

valantic is the number one provider of digital transformation services and belongs to the fastest growing companies involved in digital solutions, consulting services and software on the market. valantic combines technological competence and industry expertise with humanity. More than 1,000 customers trust in valantic – 20 of 30 DAX corporations and just as many of the leading Swiss and Austrian corporations. With more than 1,000 specialised solution consultants and software developers and an annual turnover of more than 150 million euros, valantic is represented in 25 locations within the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) and in 6 international locations. valantic is organised in a unique structure comprising several competence centres and teams of experts – always focusing on the digitalisation needs of their customers and partners. From strategy to concrete realisation. The service portfolio comprises the fields of Financial Services Automation, Customer Experience, Business Analytics, SAP Services, Enterprise Software as well as Logistics and Supply Chain Management.

www.valantic.com

About the valantic Competence Center Financial Services Automation (FSA)

The valantic Competence Center Financial Services Automation is a leading provider of software solutions in electronic trading, payment and transaction management. Nearly 300 IT and financial specialists service more than 100 customers in 7 locations throughout Europe. valantic FSA enables its customers to securely automate business-critical processes and thus forms the basis for digital business approaches. With the Electronic Trading Hub, the Transaction Process Automation Hub and the Real Time Payments Hub, valantic FSA offers modular and open platforms for digital transformation, open banking and the simplification of business processes.

Blockchain.com, the leading provider of cryptocurrency products including the most popular crypto wallet, has launched Borrow, a new product offering for users to borrow USD-denominated stablecoins against crypto held in their Blockchain.com Wallet. In doing so, it becomes the first major cryptocurrency platform to offer lending directly to everyday consumers.

The launch follows Blockchain.com’s successful launch of an institutional lending desk last August, which has rapidly increased originations from $10M in the first month to $120M in November. By offering the retail market access to the same liquidity pool as institutional investors, the firm is addressing the shortage of USD on both sides of the crypto market.

“Institutional and retail investors have the same financial goals – grow wealth and manage risks – but the tools at their disposal are vastly different,” says Peter Smith, Co-founder and CEO of Blockchain.com. “Now, with our suite of trading products and Borrow, retail users can trade like the big guys without selling the crypto they’ve stockpiled or leaving their Wallet.”

Starting today, users can borrow USD Digital stablecoins against bitcoin held in their Blockchain.com Wallet. As soon as the collateral is posted, users receive their loan and are free to use the coins however they see fit. To close a loan, users simply pay back the amount owed when it is convenient or aligns with their investment strategy. Borrow by Blockchain.com is currently available to all users across 180+ countries.

With the addition of Borrow within the Blockchain.com Wallet,  the Company is further expanding the control that users have over their crypto, and ways they can use it. In the last three months, the firm has launched payments gateways for the British Pound and Turkish Lira, completed an airdrop with Blockstack, launched an API for algorithmic traders, and expanded the asset offerings on the Blockchain.com Exchange to include popular crypto projects Algorand and DGLD.

Wirecard, the global innovation leader for digital financial technology, is entering into a payments partnership with Grab, Southeast Asia’s leading super app, that will see Wirecard process transactions made via the GrabPay e-wallet, starting with the Malaysian, the Philippines and the Singapore markets.

Consumers can use their GrabPay e-wallet to pay for transactions online and offline, for example for ride-hailing or food delivery, but can also use it to pay for purchases on e-commerce sites or at physical stores. Through this partnership, Wirecard will process card transactions for GrabPay via its digital financial commerce platform and will extend GrabPay to more merchants to expand the acceptance of the mobile payment method.

According to a recent global Wirecard consumer survey, over 90% of consumers in Southeast Asia have used digital payments both in-store and online. Mobile wallets are almost twice as popular in the region as they are worldwide, with 44% regularly choosing them as a payment method compared to the global average of 25%.

“We are proud to partner with Grab, a Southeast Asian icon,” commented Georg von Waldenfels, Executive Vice President Group Business Development at Wirecard. “Together, we aim to continue disrupting the payment, tech and mobility industries with innovative solutions that can improve the lives of millions.”

Reuben Lai, Senior Managing Director of Grab Financial Group, said, “We are thrilled to partner with Wirecard as we progress on our journey of building a cashless economy for millions of businesses across Southeast Asia. Wirecard’s innovative mobile payments solutions will not only complement our GrabPay e-wallet platform, but also offer businesses and consumers the opportunity to transact with greater security, convenience and flexibility.”

The GrabPay e-wallet is one of the most popular e-wallets in Southeast Asia accepted by over 600,000 merchants and small businesses.

Kigali, Rwanda will host Finbank Innovation Conference & Expo taking place at Kigali Convention Centre on 26^th - 27^th  August 2020 where bankers, insurers, microfinance institutions, investment managers and software developers will gather in the main aim of advancing forward the finance technology in Africa.

We are very proud and glad to bring Finbank Innovation Conference & Expo in Kigali, as African financial institutions need more initiatives of this kind to raise more funds through finance technology by reducing considerably frauds and drop outs

We also look forward to exchange ideas on how Africa could enhance the culture of cashless economy and this can only be achieved through empowering financial technology with efficient software applications from the central banks to the microfinance institutions level.

Finbank Innovation Conference & Expo which is designed to host 700 African professionals from financial industry and government authorities, will be a great platform whereby professional speakers, financial software exhibitors and meet and greet connections are believed to bring a positive change in our respective financial industry.

We therefore call up financial technology companies to join the exhibition and exposure their prestigious solutions to professionals in the industry.

Why Exhibit

• Fuel your brand awareness in Africa
• Connect with 700+ senior executives from financial institutions in Africa
• Be in the top of Africa’s financial ecosystem
• Business meetings and closure
• Launch of new technologies
• Strengthen partnerships regionally

For more details about the event please visit http://finbankinnovation.com/  

For details about Exhibiting and sponsorship opportunities please call to +250784960195 or by emailing to christian@finbankinnovation.com

Fintech is our concern!

Auriga, a leading supplier of technological solutions for the omnichannel banking and payments industries, today announced a new strategic partnership with Transaction Systems (TRSYS), a major international technology solutions provider helping financial and retail organizations embark on their journey towards digital transformation.

TRSYS will be offering Auriga’s WinWebServer (WWS) Omnichannel platform to its customers in Greece, Ukraine, Hungary, Slovakia, Cyprus, Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, North Macedonia, Albania, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Sri Lanka, enabling them to develop banking and payment services.

At the centre of the partnership is how both organisations will help banks use Auriga’s WWS software solution to transform their banking services. The Auriga WWS is a proven, modular solution that provides feature-rich banking services through all channels including mobile, tablets, PCs, kiosks and ATM machines.

Vincenzo Fiore, CEO, Auriga said: “Having worked with them as a distributor for some years, we are excited to be forging a closer partnership with TRSYS to help us to realise our ambitious international growth plans. Their technical expertise and local market knowledge matches with our own technology and consultancy capabilities and will enable us to answer the demand for transforming banking services in these countries.”

Commenting on the partnership, Panagiotis Chalkias, Managing Director Transaction Systems, said: “The new partnership fully meets our strategy and further enhances our portfolio to provide a full range of transaction optimization solutions in our markets. The combined technologies, skills and expertise, will create and deliver tailored solutions that empower local banks to successfully implement the right strategies and optimise operations, while enabling continuous innovation and improvement of customer omnichannel experiences.”

Trade Ledger and Wiserfunding today announced a partnership that allows banks and alternative finance providers to more accurately assess their mid-market commercial customers for secured and unsecured credit.  Trade Ledger, the specialist mid-market commercial Lending-as-a-Service platform, confirmed that Wiserfunding’s leading business credit score, the SME Z-Score, would be made available within both their loan origination and management portals, to help their rapidly growing client base access the fastest and most precise business credit score available. 

Roger Vincent, Chief Innovation Officer at Trade Ledger said, “Inaccurate and slow credit risk assessment, for SME commercial loan requests is one of the major reasons that over 50% loans are currently declined by financial institutions (FIs).  This has created a £1.2 trillion global credit gap and is stunting economic growth and social mobility.” 

Roger continues “To address this issue risk assessments must be exceptionally accurate and utilise unstructured, as well as structured, big data inputs and machine learning techniques in this continually evolving environment. WiserFunding, uniquely does just that, but offers the reassurance of the best of academia and its established client base, while drastically reducing the time taken to underwrite counterparties.” 

Gabriele Sabato, CEO of Wiserfunding highlighted that “Trade Ledger were the perfect fit for our credit risk assessment solution. As one of the fastest growing lending technology providers in the world, their data-driven approach to commercial lending provides the ideal platform for underwriting and portfolio management teams to accelerate their risk management capabilities. With Wiserfunding’s SME Z-Score embedded within the platform, these institutions can now start to think about more advanced segmentation, automation and straight-through-processing, advancing the accuracy to record levels and profiting from this hugely underserved market.”

The new global partnership will aim to target mainly mid-market lenders and banks, who have traditionally used manual risks assessments to identify high-risk customers. The score is tailored specifically for SMEs with revenue between £500K and £200M. On average, the score delivers between 83% and 95% default prediction accuracy, 20-30% higher than other than other industry benchmarks in this space.

The FinTech Modulr today announced it has joined Visa as a principal issuing member, granting it direct access to the industry-leading global payments network. The new partnership will add extra functionality and benefits to Modulr’s offering, including optimised pricing, improved speed to market and simpler ways to launch Visa products. 

By removing the requirement to go through an intermediary bank, Modulr’s membership eliminates extra layers of friction and complexity, and gives them the ability to issue Visa products directly, meaning greater control over the FinTech’s delivery, payment infrastructure and scheme compliance issues.

Modulr will use the partnership to further expand its customer base in Europe, with a view to launching both consumer and business card capabilities for partners in the future, as well as additional issuing currencies. The partnership will also be used by Visa and Modulr to drive adoption within its key market verticals, including travel and alternative banking.

Myles Stephenson, CEO of Modulr, comments: “Gaining direct access to key financial infrastructure, such as the Visa network, means that we gain more control and are able to deliver faster, simpler and increasingly friction-free full payment capability to our clients. By opening up access to non-banks such as ourselves, it also helps to provide a more level playing field for competition in the sector.

“We look forward to extending the functionality of Modulr’s core platform with a leading card scheme, enabling us not only to build a more reliable service, but to pioneer payments innovations even faster.”

Jill Docherty, Head of Business Development, UK & Ireland at Visa, comments: “We are thrilled to announce our partnership with Modulr, an exciting payments platform that enables digital businesses to offer innovative, user friendly, payment solutions. We look forward to working with Modulr as it looks to expand its portfolio and grow across key sectors in Europe such as travel. We look forward to seeing how our partnership will enable even more businesses across the UK and Europe to benefit from Visa products, driven by powerful payment solutions built by Modulr.”

In 2019, Modulr became one of only a few non-banks to gain direct access to Bacs and Faster Payments and recently won Best Initiative from an SME at the Card & Payments Awards 2020. 

Through direct access to Faster Payments, Modulr holds an account in the Bank of England’s (BoE) Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system, allowing the FinTech to settle payment obligations in central bank money under its Modulr FS Limited entity (FRN 900573). And through direct access to Bacs, Modulr takes full control of its Bacs payment flows and removes any reliance on third-party banking partners. It has now done the same with its Visa principal issuing membership.

Modulr, which powers the likes of Sage, Liberis, Salary Finance, Iwoca and Paxport, is a Payment as a Service API platform created for digital businesses that need a faster, easier and more reliable way to move money. Backed by investors, Blenheim Chalcot and Frog Capital, Modulr has raised a total of £35m in funding since inception in 2016. The FinTech was most recently named as one of 25 Top Startups to work for in the UK by LinkedIn.

Global fintech leader Airwallex today announced an integration with Xero, the global small business platform – to help Airwallex’s small-to-medium business (SMB) customers seamlessly reconcile their domestic and international payments, saving time and ensuring accuracy. This integration is part of the company’s ongoing commitment to enable SMBs’ growth in an increasingly borderless world.

From today, Airwallex’s integration with Xero will enable SMBs to connect their multi-currency financial transactions in Airwallex to Xero. This will allow Airwallex customers to view a daily update of their transactions* through their Xero bank feeds, simplifying and speeding up the reconciliation process to free SMBs from labour-intensive manual processes so they can instead focus on driving business growth.

SMBs will also have full visibility of their Airwallex funds within Xero’s interface to gauge their business’ financial health and position at any given time.

“Small businesses do not have the time or resources to manage multiple technology solutions that often operate in silos – they need solutions to work and integrate with each other seamlessly. This is even more imperative when it concerns their multi-currency financial reporting as there is no room for errors,” said Jack Zhang, CEO and Co-founder, Airwallex.

“An integration with Xero is one of the most requested integrations from our customers. We have been listening and are delighted to be able to offer this to our Australian customers from today, with a wider international rollout planned across 2020. This is the start of a series of capabilities that we plan to introduce with Xero to improve the way small businesses manage their finances across platforms,” Jack added.

Ian Boyd, financial industry director at Xero, said: “As more small businesses enter overseas markets, it’s important that their multi-currency payments flow seamlessly in Xero and are automatically reconciled. This integration with Airwallex will ensure our mutual customers spend less time on administrative tasks and more on what’s important to them -- running their business.”

Airwallex currently offers SMBs the ability to access interbank foreign exchange rates on international payments and transactions. SMBs can also easily open accounts in the US, UK and EU on Airwallex, allowing them to break down the barriers of achieving international growth.

With Airwallex’s recent launch of the Airwallex Borderless Card in partnership with Visa, along with today’s Xero integration, the company now provides an alternative business account for modern businesses that want to operate and bank online.

The integration is currently live in Australia, and will become available in the UK and HK later this year.

*Xero Premium account users will be able to connect multi-currencies. Xero Starter and Standard account users will be able to connect a single domestic currency.