Alipay, the world’s leading mobile payment platform operated by Ant Financial Services Group, today announced a three-year plan to further open up its platform to support the digital transformation of 40 million service providers across China.

The plan marks a major milestone as Alipay continues to strengthen its positioning in China, evolving from a platform that provides inclusive financial services to an open, vibrant digital ecosystem that offers users a gateway into a comprehensive digital lifestyle, right in the palms of their hands.

“The service sector in China is still in the nascent stages of digital transformation, and that means it has huge untapped potential,” said Ant Financial Chief Executive Officer Simon Hu. “Amid the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, we have also seen how digital technology can be used to help service providers become more agile and respond effectively to the fast-changing market environment.”

“Building a one-stop digital lifestyle platform not only creates immense value for our users – it will also play an essential role in accelerating the digital transformation of the service industry and unlocking more growth opportunities,” Simon said.

Amid the Covid-19 outbreak, Alipay introduced an incentive program that encourages developers to create mini programs that can help users cope with the impact, including by fulfilling various lifestyle needs of those who are living and working from home, while minimizing the need for physical contact with service providers.

Within a week, more than 1,200 developers responded, creating 181 mini programs on the Alipay app that enabled “contactless” services across China, including grocery deliveries, legal and medical advice, logistics, and public services. For example, a mini program providing free medical consultation offered by AliHealth received 700,000 daily visits on average.

Beijing-based grocery startup Meicai, which connects farmers with consumers and restaurants, also launched a mini program to make its delivery services available to Alipay users amid the Covid-19 outbreak. In one week, it attracted more than 800,000 new users and orders poured in from across 80 cities in China.

According to the China Internet Network Information Center, 99.1% of Chinese internet users went online via mobile devices in 2019[1], compared with just 24% in 2007.[2] This increased penetration of mobile phone use in China has paved the way for the domestic service sector to begin adopting digital technologies.

China’s service industry contributed to 59.4 percent of GDP growth in 2019, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Despite their importance to the economy, Chinese service providers still rely heavily on traditional brick-and-mortar business models, and have yet to fully embrace digital technology to boost efficiency and improve the customer experience.

Meanwhile, consumer demand for digitalized services has been expanding rapidly. In 2019 alone, the number of searches for lifestyle services within the Alipay app has increased 300% compared with 2018.

“Since the very beginning, Alipay’s success has always depended on the success of our partners, and that is why we believe the only way to best serve consumers is to open up our platform further, so service providers can better tap into consumer demands,” Simon said.

As part of the opening up, Alipay will be updated so that service providers can tap into traffic within the app, while AI-driven incentive programs will encourage service providers to consistently improve the customer experience. Users will also be able to access personalized recommendations from newly added service sections. With these initiatives in place, service providers will be able to enhance their distribution efficiency in Alipay.

Under the three-year plan, Alipay will also work with 50,000 Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to help 40 million service providers digitalize their operations, increase efficiency and reach more customers by 2030, up from more than one million currently on the platform. ISVs are companies that package Alipay’s technologies into solutions to meet the needs of specific industries and use cases, ranging from consumer retail, food-and-beverage, hotels-and-accommodations, transportation to medical services.

Alipay supports a full-service delivery cycle, including payment, anti-fraud, fund management, smart marketing, customer insight, acquisition, retention and engagement. These technology products and services were developed and refined in inclusive finance use cases and come with financial grade safety, reliability and performance. In addition, service providers can leverage Alipay mini programs, which can run on all major platforms within the Alibaba ecosystem such as Tmall and AutoNavi, to reach a much broader user base. These factors make Alipay’s open platform not just a one-stop choice for consumers, but also for service providers.

We are pleased to announce our strategic partnership with Visa to enable Paga and Visa work closely in accelerating secure and convenient mobile payments for merchants and consumers in markets where Paga operates.

Hong Kong-based digital asset custody firm First Digital Trust has scored a $3 million investment from Taiwanese venture studio Nogle.

Deutsche Bank has taken a minority stake in Qplix as part of a cooperation agreement with the Munich-based wealth management software firm.

IDC has recognized Temenos (SIX: TEMN), the banking software company, as a Leader in the ‘IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Integrated Payment Platforms 2019-2020 Vendor Assessment’. Temenos was cited for providing a “solid solution for banks of any size” and credited for its growing investment in resources dedicated to continuously enhancing the global solution. 

“The Temenos Payment platform was engineered from the ground up as a modern, open solution that is consistent across any deployment model”, states the IDC MarketScape, which includes 14 global providers of integrated payment platforms. The study reports that, “[Temenos] is notable for its flexibility in how banks can use Temenos Payments in their digital transformation strategy.” This includes providing the capacity for banks to deploy Temenos Payments as a standalone solution, or connect it to any third party core banking system, including the market leading Temenos Transact.

This IDC Financial Insights study presents a 2019-2020 assessment of vendors that provide integrated payment processing platform technology to the financial services market. The study quantitatively and qualitatively assess multiple characteristics in order to help explain a vendor's success and position in the marketplace.

Aaron Press, Research Director, IDC Worldwide Payments Strategies, stated: “Temenos’ investment in payments has resulted in a compelling offering and a strong complement to their portfolio of banking and financial services software. In addition, Temenos has a growing global presence that makes it an attractive partner to banks around the world who are looking for a robust payments solution.”

Max Chuard, Chief Executive Officer, Temenos, commented: “We are proud to be named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Integrated Payment Platforms. We believe this recognition consolidates our position in the market as the world’s No.1 banking software company and denotes our ongoing investment and innovation in payments. We relentlessly focus on innovation by investing 20% of our revenues in R&D, which is the highest in the industry, and most importantly, we consistently deliver. We offer our cloud-native, cloud-agnostic Temenos Payments solution both as SaaS and on-premise and we enable banks to support payment types in all geographies, reduce their time to market and operational complexity and deliver outstanding digital customer experiences.”

Temenos Payments is ranked #1 best-selling payments system in the IBS Sales League Table 2019.

As a global technology partner, Temenos’ universal payments solution is based on ISO 20022 standards and configuration-driven to support all payment types in all geographies. With our advanced technology, we enable the banks of any size, in any location, to stay at the forefront of payments product innovations and deliver outstanding digital experiences to their customers.”

Cloud9 Technologies ("Cloud9"), a leader in cloud-based communications, has partnered with Business Systems (UK) Ltd (“BSL”), a specialist in call recording and workforce optimisation solutions, to provide more robust and legally-compliant cloud-based recording solutions for institutional traders.

Through the collaboration, Cloud9 and BSL can provide customers with a more comprehensive recording management system that features a sleek, easy-to-use dashboard for viewing data. Cloud9’s purpose-built communication and data digitisation platform captures voice conversations of institutional traders that can be repurposed for regulatory reporting, monitoring and trade reconstruction via BSL’s optimisation platform.

“Institutional voice recordings have historically been one of the most unstructured forms of data in capital markets,” said Jerry Starr, CEO of Cloud9 Technologies. “By partnering with innovative and well-established firms like BSL, we’re unlocking new avenues for voice data so that financial institutions can remain compliant while making more informed, strategic decisions.”

“Firms in today’s financial sector need to be able to repurpose their data in numerous ways,” said Richard Mill, Managing Director at BSL. “As the industry evolves, as do the needs and demands of our customers. The marriage of BSL and Cloud9 allows us to provide the technical capabilities necessary to stay ahead of these changes as they unfold.”

The core module provides reporting and portal view into one or more recording systems and can be seamlessly integrated into existing workflows, addressing rising infrastructure costs faced by financial institutions and incentivising them to leverage voice data more effectively. It has the ability to ingest voice, SMS, and IM chat data.

Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), a leader in enterprise cloud computing, today announced the launch of a new channel offering in EMEA, Nutanix Cloud Bundles. Part of a wider focus on the small and medium-sized business (SMB) market in EMEA, Nutanix Cloud Bundles are designed to give SMBs access to Nutanix enterprise cloud software and solutions, while providing distributors with greater marketing autonomy through the sales channel.

Nutanix Cloud Bundles enable SMBs to simplify the management of their infrastructure, help ensure business continuity and keep up with rapidly increasing data volumes requirements, all at a contained cost.

By launching a unified management bundle for VMs and containers, files, computing resources, storage and network for the SMB market, Nutanix is expanding access to its solutions, with an offering that meets the needs and budgets of smaller companies.

Designed to complement the SMB offerings from its OEM partners, Fujitsu (Value4you) and Lenovo (Hxpedite), Nutanix Cloud Bundles, combine the main software licenses of the Nutanix flagship offerings most relevant to the small and medium-sized enterprise market, with three levels of service:

• The first service level embeds the base building blocks of the Nutanix stack: the AOS enterprise cloud operating system, AHV hypervisor, and Nutanix Prism end-to-end management solution.
• The Standard offer sees the addition of the enterprise file storage solution, Nutanix Files, as well as the administration automation features brought by Prism Pro, thanks to machine learning.
• SMB customers opting for the advanced level will benefit from the standard package along with network security and microsegmentation functionality from Nutanix Flow.

Depending on the service level selected, customers will have access to a software subscription that can be used on a server infrastructure ranging from 24 cores (i.e. three servers) to 192 cores (i.e. six servers). Nutanix Cloud Bundles work with all hardware platforms certified by Nutanix and include software support for three years.

The roll out of Nutanix Cloud Bundles is managed independently by the company’s authorised distributors, providing an agile approach that enables certified resellers to offer the bundles faster and more efficiently to their SMB customers.

"Companies of all sizes are concerned by the challenges of managing their increasingly complex IT environments, and that’s what our solutions address. With the launch of Nutanix Cloud Bundles, we want to innovate and package our flagship offerings at a competitive cost and to make them available through our partners to SMBs," said Cyril VanAgt, Senior Director Channel Sales EMEA at Nutanix. "Through these offers, the objective is to give more autonomy to our distributors so that they can quickly enable their channel partners, and their end customers."

“Today small and mid-sized customers, just like enterprise customers, manage a rapidly growing variety of workloads and use cases,” said Eric Nowak, president of Arrow’s enterprise computing solutions business in EMEA. “The new bundles allow Nutanix partners to meet these customer needs thanks to the integrated combination of infrastructure, advanced monitoring and security software. We look forward to working with our customers on this great opportunity and enabling them to benefit from the simplified quoting and ordering, whilst ensuring that all eligible programmes are applied.”

Justyn Leonard, Global Head of Cloud Transformation, Exclusive Networks said: “These new cloud offerings are a great opportunity for Nutanix partners to address the challenges of their small and midsized customers as they look to scale out their infrastructure, rapidly and cost-effectively. As a Nutanix distributor, we’re committed to creating value for both Nutanix and our channel partners. We’re ready to create a differentiated proposition with our partners, using the programme and its simplified quoting and ordering capabilities.”

“The built-in customer savings of Nutanix Cloud Bundles empower Nutanix partners to offer small and midsized customers the opportunity to rapidly and cost-effectively scale out their infrastructure,” said Jason Boxall, VP Vendors & Alliances, Europe for Tech Data Advanced Solutions. “As a Nutanix authorised distributor, we’re delighted to support our partners in bringing these simplified solution offerings to the market.”

Nutanix Cloud Bundles are only available to new customers and will be delivered in EMEA via the channel until July 31, 2020. Nutanix's partners will benefit from the same level of marketing support for the bundles that they normally have access to when targeting key accounts. New partners wishing to support this programme must first enroll in the Nutanix partner programme. This will enable them to benefit from the programme advantages, including access to the financial incentives and discounts introduced by Nutanix at the end of 2019.

As the impact of the Coronavirus outbreak begins to directly impact more businesses, NatWest has outlined the initial support it will provide to SMEs across the UK, including a £5bn Working Capital Support extension to its successful Growth Funding Package, ongoing support and practical advice for businesses.   

NatWest is the largest supporter of UK businesses and is committed to helping SMEs thrive and achieve their potential. This £5bn of funding builds on the targeted support the bank offered to SMEs through flooding and Brexit readiness as they adapt to the rapidly evolving impacts of the Coronavirus on the UK economy.  These Funding initiatives have already offered £9.5bn facilities of which £6.5bn is committed and this support builds on NatWest’s existing commitments as a founding signatory of the Government’s SME Finance Charter. 

The package of support for SMEs throughout the UK, will help across all sectors and where there is the greatest disruption and need. The SME support includes following components:

• An additional £5bn of support to the Fund focused on the provision of working capital support that meets the needs of SMEs
• Loan repayment holidays
• Temporary emergency loans with no fees
• NatWest’s team of Relationship Managers based in communities across the UK will proactively speak to business customers offering help and support as they form their plans to mitigate the impact of coronavirus
• The Bank’s team of locally based Business Growth Enablers will also work with their external networks to distribute information to businesses on Coronavirus preparedness
• Continued work with the Government, British Business Bank and UK Finance to understand the evolving impacts and appropriately support SMEs
• Proactive outreach to those SMEs that may be experiencing short-term trading issues due to Coronavirus to ensure they are able to access the best possible range of support
• Through NatWest Mentor, the provision of consultancy and advice to help support businesses. This can range from employment law & HR advice, to health & safety and environmental management consultancy
• Specific sectoral insight and advice from dedicated Sector Banker specialists

Alison Rose, CEO NatWest, commented:  

“The ongoing uncertainty that the UK’s small and medium sized businesses are experiencing is unprecedented even by recent standards. While many of our customers are yet to feel the direct impacts of Coronavirus, I want NatWest to have the right support in place, so we are there to help our SME customers when they need us most.

This is a priority for NatWest and we will remain proactive, continuing to listen to our customers – we are here to support and can help businesses manage any short term disruption. SMEs should not feel like they have to go through these uncertain times alone, we are here to help.”

NatWest has been closely monitoring the developing situation both in terms of the overall economic impact as well as specific sector and regional impacts to make sure the appropriate support is in place for SME customers. The bank is already speaking to many SMEs customers, who may potentially be impacted, on the steps they can take and the support that is available.

Paul Thwaite, CEO Commercial Banking NatWest, commented:

“The impacts our customers may experience will vary from sector to sector, but we want to be proactive in the way we support them and to use our size and scale, combined with our detailed customer and sectoral knowledge to ensure the UK’s SMEs are supported through the impact of the Coronavirus. We are here to help, there is support available and we want to get it to those who need it.”

Details of all upcoming Coronavirus events and information and support for our customers’ will be available on the dedicated NatWest Coronavirus Hub.

Mariana Gomez de la Villa, programme director Distributed Ledger Technology at ING

“The successful commercial launch of HQLAx is a big milestone for the implementation of blockchain in the securities lending market and proof that blockchain can bring tangible benefits to the industry,” said Mariana Gomez de la Villa, head of ING’s blockchain team.

“It’s rewarding to see that a project we’ve been working on for years, is now live.”

ING and HQLAx partnered in 2018 to carry out the first ever live securities trade on a blockchain platform. Together with Credit Suisse, we swapped EUR 25 million worth of high quality liquid assets using the collateral lending application of HQLAx on R3’s Corda distributed ledger platform.

How it works

Banks need high quality liquid assets to meet tougher liquidity requirements under Basel III. These are assets that can easily and immediately be converted into cash without losing their value. However, holding too many lowers their return. Efficient trading allows banks to optimise their balance sheets.

“HQLA^x enables market participants to redistribute their collateral by exchanging the ownership of tokenised securities on Corda’s blockchain platform, which no longer requires the underlying securities to move across users. This removes settlement barriers and improves collateral fluidity, which in turn allows users to manage their liquidities easier, faster and more efficiently,” said Mariana.

What does the future of banking look like for ING? Listen to this podcast with Mariana Gomez de la Villa.