Azimo, Europe’s leading digital money transfer service, announced today that it has partnered with Ripple, the enterprise blockchain solution for global payments. 

Azimo has launched its first service using Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity solution (ODL) to send faster and cheaper cross-border payments to the Philippines, with plans to expand to more markets in 2020. The Philippines is one of the top remittance destinations globally, receiving $34 billion in 2018. 

ODL uses the digital asset XRP and has the potential to reduce liquidity costs by up to 60% compared to traditional banking solutions.

“We've been interested for a long time in the potential of digital assets like XRP to make cross-border payments better for customers,” said Richard Ambrose, CEO of Azimo. ”Ripple’s ODL solution has significantly reduced the cost and delivery time for cross-border transfers, and our customers are seeing the benefits. As more banks and financial institutions use ODL, we believe it has the potential to replace current methods of foreign exchange trading and to reduce settlement time to close to zero.”

“It’s of the utmost importance to partner with companies who share the same vision and passion for changing the way that money moves around the world today,” said Marcus Treacher, SVP of Customer Success at Ripple. “Azimo is challenging the status quo by leveraging RippleNet with ODL to provide fast, low-cost, reliable and easy payments for its customers worldwide.”

Azimo’s money transfer platform is used by more than a million customers, who can send money from 25 countries to more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. Based in the UK, Poland and the Netherlands, it offers customers a faster, cheaper way to send money around the world.

RippleNet, Ripple’s global blockchain payments network, makes it easy for its diverse network of financial institutions worldwide to enable faster, lower-cost payments around the world. Ripple has 300+ customers in more than 45 countries and 6 continents, with payout capabilities in 70+ countries. ODL is commercially available in the U.S., Mexico, Australia, Europe (Euro) and the Philippines, with plans to expand across APAC, EMEA and LATAM in 2020. 

Klarna, a leading global payments and shopping provider, has today announced its latest figures showing sustained growth both in the UK and globally. The year on year global volumes and revenue increased by 32% and 31% respectively while the volume processed now amounts to over USD 35 billion. 

Since launch, over 7 million customers have now used Klarna in the UK, an increase of 2x compared to last year. Over the past 12 months, a new Klarna order was made every 1.3 seconds and over 1.6 million UK customers have downloaded the Klarna app to date. In the last 6 months of 2019, an average of over 88,000 new UK customers a week chose Klarna’s Pay later services at checkout.

Klarna currently has more than 5,000 live merchants in the UK, including iconic British brands such as River Island, ASOS, JD Sports, Gymshark, Made.com, Oliver Bonas, Boohoo Group, Missguided and Topshop as well as Cult Beauty, RayBan, Olivia Rubin, Wayfair, Space NK, Swarovski, Tessuti, Michael Kors, Dr. Martens, UGG, In the Style, H&M and H&M Group - COS, &other stories and Arket. This figure also includes over 500 UK brands who have launched in-store offerings with Klarna in 2019, including high-street giants Schuh, Thomas Sabo and Halfords. 

Klarna is Europe’s most valuable private fintech company, valued at USD 5.5 billion in 2019. This valuation ranks it among the world’s top privately held fintech unicorns. Globally, Klarna partners with over 200,000 merchants, adding 75,000 during 2019, and has been used by over 85 million customers and processes over 1 million transactions a day on the platform. More than 11 million customers use the Klara app on a monthly basis globally, with an average of 37,000 new app downloads every day.

Klarna is now live across 17 markets, having most recently launched in Australia. Klarna employs over 2,700 people worldwide, 120 of whom are based in the UK spread across its two offices, London and Manchester. 

Commenting on the figures, Luke Griffiths, General Manager at Klarna UK, said: “These landmark numbers are testament to the enduring growth we have achieved, by offering customers newfound financial flexibility, enabling shoppers to get what they love, as well as remaining dedicated to our merchant partners across the country.

“The UK statistics are reflective of our global growth story, as we continue to pursue our mission to make shopping simple, safe and smoooth, for both consumers and retailers.”

Envestnet | Yodlee, a financial data and analytics platform powering dynamic, cloud-based innovation for digital financial services has acquired FinBit.io, an emerging financial data aggregation and analytics platform provider for the India and Asia market, powering over 60 B2B FinTech companies.

“While we continue to grow globally, India and Asia are strategically important geographies for us,” said Stuart DePina, Chief Executive of Envestnet | Yodlee.  “While open banking is making waves across the world, India is making progress with its own Account Aggregator ecosystem. We are delighted to empower millions of consumers in India with state-of-the-art Account Aggregator technology and superior user experiences that will allow them to share consented data seamlessly across platforms enabling speedy solutions such as the real-time processing of personal loan applications.”

Prashant Paliwal, FinBit.io’s Founder and CEO and his team, will lead Yodlee FinSoft, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Envestnet | Yodlee, to drive account aggregation business in India and other parts of Asia.

“Our vision is to empower consumers with the ability to permit the aggregation of their financial data so that holistic analytics can be made available to valuable services like affordable credit, personal finance management and even accounting”, said Prashant Paliwal, Founder and CEO of FinBit.io. “By joining forces with the pioneer in data aggregation and analytics, Envestnet | Yodlee, we will be able to provide a broader product portfolio to our customers, along with the critical ability to scale our solutions.”

The acquisition was completed on February 18, 2020.

“India is at an inflection point for consumer consented data services with the emergence of Account Aggregator guidelines. FinBit.io’s technology is at the forefront of this innovation and will enable Envestnet | Yodlee to offer compliant solutions in the very near future to our existing and new customers”, said Arjun Singh, Managing Director, Envestnet | Yodlee Asia.  “We expect the pace of our innovation to pick up with this acquisition and for us to be a major player wherever Open Banking standards are deployed.”

Envestnet’s unified technology empowers enterprises and advisors to increasingly understand their clients and deliver actionable intelligence that drives better outcomes and improves lives. Envestnet Data & Analytics enables innovation and insights through its Envestnet | Yodlee data aggregation platform.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ), New Zealand's central bank, and SIA – European hi-tech company leader in the fields of payment services and infrastructures – have launched the new real-time financial market infrastructures, replacing the two separate platforms Exchange Settlement Account System (ESAS) and Central Securities Depository system (NZClear).

The RBNZ market infrastructures are used by 57 member organisations including banks, custodians, registries and brokers that total around 600 users from New Zealand, Australia and Asia. Those financial institutions are now connected to a far more modern and leading-edge system to manage their day-to-day interactions with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.

The new market infrastructures are based on the Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) and Central Securities Depository (CSD) applications provided by SIA and already used by also several other central institutions across Europe, Africa, Middle East and North America.

“The extent of change is significant. Every day, transactions with a value of more than $30 billion are settled, so there has been a focus on getting this right, and not rushing out a replacement until we were confident that it was ready. This successful changeover is the result of months of rigorous testing and we appreciate the cooperation of the system’s key users” says Mike Wolyncewicz, Assistant Governor and Chief Financial Officer of Reserve Bank of New Zealand.

“The successful go-live of this significant project with Reserve Bank of New Zealand represents another important step forward in our international presence. In particular, it is the first cornerstone in the delivery and implementation of SIA’s market infrastructure technologies in the Asia-Pacific region,” commented Nicola Cordone, CEO of SIA.

Brilliance Financial Technology, a global leader in providing end-to-end digital pricing and intelligence, today announced its strategic partnership with Rabobank, the world’s largest Food & Agri financial institution based in the Netherlands. Rabobank likes to work with partners that add value for its customers. Rabobank has rolled out the industry-leading deal management and relationship pricing solution, Brilliance DealPoint, to manage its commercial engagement process in wholesale banking globally.

DealPoint digitizes and streamlines Rabobank’s pricing, as well as its pricing approval workflow. The new digital process gives Rabobank more insight into the portfolio and provides Relationship Managers (RMs) with a better view into their clients’ position on pricing, product, and cross-sells to steer the overall relationship. DealPoint is a key part of Rabobank’s strategic investment in its re-envisioned customer end-to-end journey. As such, DealPoint integrates into the bank’s ecosystem – including Customer Relationship Management, Client, Booking, Enterprise Service Bus, and Credit Approval systems. With the newly streamlined process, Rabobank creates a seamless experience for bankers — that provides more flexibility and adds real-time data analysis and insight to their wholesale lending commercial engagement process.

“We are pleased to work with Brilliance, who is quite adaptive and creative in tailoring DealPoint for Rabobank.  They really do understand the needs of global banks like ours,” said Lissy Smit, Global Head of Loan Product Group of Rabobank. “DealPoint streamlines our commercial processes, which is extremely important for us. so we can service our clients better and faster. Working with a partner like Brilliance who really knows what they’re talking about and are really specialized in digital pricing is crucial to our transformation program’s success.”

“Our work with Rabobank is reflective of our mission to help global banks modernize their pricing transformation journeys. DealPoint’s seamless integration into Rabobank’s wholesale bank ecosystem provides them with a more holistic view of performance and profitability,” said Jean-Edouard van Praet, President and CEO of Brilliance Financial Technology. “Now, Rabobank is able to gain real-time insights into their customers, as well as conduct business anytime, anywhere. An integrated process is critical for future success and Rabobank is leading the way in the competitive landscape,” he added.

Rabobank is exploring additional ways to leverage DealPoint’s capabilities across its other divisions, products and regions.

This latest version of DealPoint adds key enhancements to the platform to drive performance in today’s market landscape:

• Relationship Profitability: Real-time view of the proposed Deal’s impact to the overall Relationship, including existing and potential cross sell products.
• Cross Sell Tracking: Formalizes the promise of additional relationship income into the decision-making process and enables the reconciliation of projected versus realized revenue
• Recommendation Engine: This AI-driven feature leverages real-time data to analyze price elasticity and suggests alternate deal structures, fees, and potential cross-sells
• Pricing Insight: Data generated throughout the digital pricing process is utilized by out-of-the-box data visualizations to drive smarter and faster decisions for business heads, product owners and strategic decision makers
• Standard open API framework: Makes it possible to integrate DealPoint into key stages of the customer end-to-end journey
• Benchmarking: Incorporates real-time comparison of proposed deals with latest market prices

Finablr network brand BayanPay, a Saudi Arabia-based digital payment solutions provider, has been awarded a payment services provider licence by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA). Following its successful graduation from the SAMA regulatory sandbox, BayanPay will offer digital wallets, e-commerce and SME business payments gateway solutions in the Kingdom.

Through BayanPay, Finablr seeks to expand its suite of digital services, offering domestic and international payments to consumers and businesses across Saudi Arabia, by leveraging its technology, industry expertise and global network.

BayanPay’s portfolio of solutions currently includes:

• BayanPay Business: an online payments gateway services aggregator that provides an easy and secure way to accept, process and disburse digital payments for B2B, B2C and B2G businesses in Saudi Arabia.
• BayanPay Wallet: an innovative e-wallet service, powered by Finablr’s technology, that enables Saudi Arabia-based customers to make seamless payments including cross-border payments from the second-largest remittance market with outflows of US$43 billion in 2018 as per World Bank estimates.

Promoth Manghat, Group Chief Executive Officer of Finablr, said: “Saudi Arabia is a fast-evolving market in the payments space with the right infrastructure readiness and a conducive regulatory framework. Through BayanPay, Finablr will support the Kingdom’s strategic objectives of becoming a cashless society, one of the goals of the Financial Sector Development Program under Saudi Vision 2030. We look forward to supporting SAMA in pursuit of their vision to promote innovation in the financial sector as we work towards shaping the future of the digital payments landscape within the Kingdom.”

Fahad Al Fawaz, Chairman and Founder of BayanPay, added: “Finablr’s experience, expertise and global network, underpinned by its technology leadership, will enable BayanPay to take the next step in becoming a leading player in Saudi Arabia’s digital payments space. In line with Saudi Vision 2030, our digital solutions support the development and diversification of the economy by enhancing payment efficiencies for consumers, businesses and the government. Convenience, reliability and a seamless experience are among the many benefits our digital payments ecosystem will provide to customers. We thank SAMA, our partners and well-wishers for their continued support in our endeavour to facilitate the evolution of a vibrant digital ecosystem in Saudi Arabia.”

Founded in Riyadh, BayanPay is well-positioned to support the goals of Saudi Vision 2030 by providing trusted, secure and highly efficient digital payments solutions that can support the growth and development of the Saudi Arabian economy. SAMA’s estimates indicate that non-cash payments for the retail sector amounted to more than 36 percent of all payments in Saudi Arabia as of July 2019, with a goal to increase this to 70 percent by 2030 under Vision 2030’s Financial Sector Development Program.

Finablr acquired its majority stake in BayanPay in 2019, providing the group with entry to the GCC’s largest economy while enabling BayanPay to benefit from Finablr’s industry-leading capabilities and technology expertise to deliver seamless and reliable payments solutions to its customers in Saudi Arabia.

Temenos (SIX: TEMN), the banking software company, today announced that Assaray Trade and Investment Bank (ATIB) has selected Temenos Infinity and Temenos Transact to power its digital transformation. Temenos’ cloud-native, cloud-agnostic banking platform will enable the bank to quickly launch new digital products for retail and corporate banking and improve the customer experience.

ATIB has been a fixture in Libyan banking for over 20 years. It is recognized as one of the most structured and advanced banks in the country, delivering financial services to more than 50,000 customers nationwide. ATIB selected Temenos’ technologically advanced and functionally rich platform to replace its legacy core banking system and accelerate its digital transformation. Temenos’ packaged and upgradeable software will deliver operational efficiencies and improve ATIB’s cost/income ratio, supporting the bank’s growth.

Temenos Model Bank and award winning Temenos Islamic Banking solution will help ATIB dramatically reduce the time taken to deploy the new digital banking platform. Temenos model bank approach also brings preconfigured country-specific functionality to help ATIB meet evolving regulatory requirements and business practices in an efficient and cost-effective way.

Farouk Laabidi, General Manger, ATIB, commented: “Temenos’ track record for delivering class-leading software and its extensive presence in the Middle East made it the obvious partner for this ambitious project. Deploying Temenos’ cloud-native, cloud-agnostic technology will allow us to benefit from rapid ROI and reap the benefits of remarkable efficiency gains and cost savings. Temenos technology will help us innovate at speed, and deliver enhanced digital banking products and better experiences to our customers. This partnership marks a significant step forward in our journey towards digitalization and, most importantly, means we are better able to meet the evolving needs of our customers.”

Jean-Paul Mergeai, Managing Director, Middle East & Africa, said: “We are proud to partner with ATIB as they make this significant investment in digital banking technology and move towards a more customer-centric banking model. Together, Temenos Infinity and Temenos Transact will drive simplicity and efficiency and help to reduce the bank’s operating costs. Furthermore, Temenos’ multi award-winning Islamic Banking solution and Model Bank approach will ensure the fastest timeframe for delivery so that ATIB can quickly realize the benefits of its new end to end digital platform.”

Global Digital Finance (GDF), the industry body advocating and accelerating the adoption of digital assets, today announces its partnership with Washington-based advisory and advocacy firm FS Vector, along with four new senior appointments to supercharge its global policy and regulatory affairs capability.

John Beccia of FS Vector will lead US Regulatory Affairs for GDF.  European public policy specialist Lavan Thasarathakumar of Thasa Consulting, who is also a consultant at GDF founding member Hogan Lovells, will take ownership of EMEA Regulatory Affairs.

Malcolm Wright, Chief Compliance Officer of digital asset financial services and advisory company Diginex, has been elected Chair of the GDF member based Advisory Council. He is joined by Bryony Widdup, a Partner at DLA Piper, who will lead the Advisory Council Secretariat responsible for the GDF Code of Conduct.

“These highly experienced and seasoned professionals complete the new international regulatory affairs team,” said Lawrence Wintermeyer, Co-Chair of GDF. “They bring a wealth of experience, insight, and a vast and influential global network to the GDF membership and mission.”

Jeff Bandman, Board Member and Regulatory Engagement Lead at GDF added, “Our partnership with FS Vector and appointment of these high-calibre industry professionals will supercharge GDF’s regulatory and policy maker advocacy programmes globally.  These talented new resources will exponentially accelerate GDF’s ability to execute its regulatory mission and vision, enabling us to drive and support regulatory clarity and consistency in our rapidly developing industry.”

GDF continues to engage in outreach with global regulators, standard setting bodies and non-governmental organisations through the development of the GDF Code of Conduct, which provides a consistent professional voice of responsible industry practitioners.