FinecoBank today announced has introduced expanded exchange service hours. UK customers will now be able to exchange currencies 21 hours a day and including weekends.
 
The European-headquartered bank has also extended multi currency accounts to include new currencies, bringing the total to 21 global currencies. New worldwide currencies now include the Danish crown, Norwegian krone, Hong Kong dollar, Singapore dollar, Polish Zloty, New Zealand dollar, Czech crown and the Hungarian forint. 
 
Alessandro Capuano, Head of Global at FinecoBank said: “Markets are global, but far too often individual traders are held back by artificial barriers. Today’s announcement is part of our continued commitment to serving British customers – no matter when or where they want to exchange currency even on week end we will be there.” 
 
Fineco’s multi-currency account enables UK customers to make seamless conversions at the true exchange rate with zero admin, conversion or transfer fees. The account also offers no currency conversion fees when paying and withdrawing at ATM in all Europe. 
 
The announcement comes as FinecoBank continue to demonstrate their commitment to the UK and are increasingly driving their UK customer base despite Brexit.

TONIK Financial Pte Ltd (“TONIK”) announced today that it closed a $6M round of equity funding.  The round was led by regional VC investors Insignia Ventures Partners and Credence Partners, with a significant participation from regional family offices and angel investors.   TONIK will use the funding to launch its digital bank in the Philippines, targeting the start of commercial operations in Q3 2020. 

TONIK will be launching on the basis of its own bank license, which was recently granted to it by the banking regulator in the Philippines.  This makes TONIK the first digital bank in Southeast Asia and one of the very few globally to be operating on the basis of its own bank license.  Philippines represents a US$140 billion retail deposit market, and a US$100 billion unsecured consumer lending opportunity. 

TONIK’s veteran team members have previously built and scaled multiple digital and retail banks and fintechs across Global Emerging Markets.  TONIK is led by Founder & CEO Greg Krasnov, who had previously co-founded four market leading fintech start-ups in the consumer finance space in Asia, as well as founded, built and successfully exited a significant consumer finance bank in Emerging Europe.

Greg Krasnov, Founder & CEO of TONIK, said: “We are honored to have secured the backing of such prominent regional investors as Insignia and Credence.  Over 70% of the adult population in the Philippines remains unbanked, and market research indicates that over 50% of existing bank clients would be keen to switch their deposits to a pure-play digital contender.  We look forward to working with our new investors to improve financial inclusion in the country.”

Yinglan Tan, Founding Managing Partner of Insignia Ventures Partners, said:  “We are delighted to partner with the TONIK team led by Greg.  Consumers in emerging markets deserve the ease and convenience of offerings like Amazon, and they expect the same from their bank. Building a modern bank from front to back is an incredible challenge, and we haven’t met a better team to take it on!”

Aquis Exchange PLC (AQX.L), the exchange services group, which operates the pan-European cash equities trading business, Aquis Exchange, today announces that renowned business commentator David Buik will join the Company as a Consultant on 2 March 2020. 

David has enjoyed over 50 years working in the City of London and is a well-known market commentator. He started work at Philip Hill Higginson Erlangers in the City of London and later worked for City Index Group, Cantor Fitzgerald and BGC Partners, and most recently Core Spreads. David was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2016 New Year Honours for services to financial services. 

David is a great supporter of the Company, believing that Aquis’ aim to offer greater liquidity, lower costs and more transparency in equity trading is a worthy cause to champion. 

Commenting on the appointment, Alasdair Haynes, CEO of Aquis Exchange, said: 

“I have known David for many years, and it is excellent to have him on board. There is no-one better placed to bring our message to the City.” 

David Buik added: “I am delighted to be joining Aquis Exchange at this juncture. Anyone who knows me will know of my adoration for the City of London, and I truly believe that Aquis has created an exciting, disruptive new way of trading that will change the way we deal in equities to the benefit of the shareholders.” 

AxiomSL, the industry’s leading provider of risk and regulatory reporting solutions, announces an agreement with a global financial institution in France to implement AxiomSL’s Global Shareholding Disclosures (GSD) solution on its data integrity and control platform, ControllerView. The firm is part of a leading Tier-1 French banking group that engages in a range of banking activities, including global asset management. It has several thousand employees globally and its clients include corporations, financial institutions (FIs), sovereigns, and supranational organizations.

Shareholding disclosure rules are inherently intricate and vary widely from one jurisdiction to another. Thus, the client seeks to industrialize its monitoring and reporting across all relevant jurisdictions on a global basis. This activity includes the identification and management of in-scope holdings, beneficial ownership, monitoring levels, and threshold and reporting triggers. AxiomSL’s ControllerView provides data-management capabilities that empower investment managers with a risk-management compliance ecosystem across the firm’s global regions on a single platform.

The GSD solution enables the firm to consolidate and aggregate reporting across its entity structure and strengthens its ability to comply with specific requirements of local regulations. Further, AxiomSL’s end-to-end GSD solution delivers a unique user-focused capability that features “desk-level” monitoring of their equity thresholds.

“AxiomSL’s GSD solution is characterized by its flexibility, automation, and transparency,” commented Gaurav Chandra, AxiomSL’s GSD Product Manager. “These elements are critical in an environment that requires FIs to aggregate – or combine – all of their ownership in a particular entity at the individual fund manager level, while others require ownership to roll up to the group entity level. Our solution enables investment managers to automate jurisdiction-specific aggregation and dis-aggregation logic while still having the flexibility to tweak specific rule interpretations, delivering a transparent, auditable governance workflow.”

Glantus, a global provider of financial automation and data intelligence solutions, is today announcing that it has acquired JPD Financial, the industry leader in Vendor Credit Recovery ® services. The acquisition will bring new levels of automation and AI to credit recovery and financial processing offered to global businesses and shared services units.

The acquisition of JPD Financial creates a business with a turnover of approximately $12m, and brings global service delivery expertise to the Glantus family of companies

JPD Financial is a trusted partner to Fortune 1000 companies, having led the way in Vendor Credit Recovery services over the past 30 years. This unique service returns millions of dollars to the bottom line of JPD Financial customers each year, while improving long term supplier relationships.  In recent years it has extended its services offering to include Accounts Payable Auditing and Master Data Cleansing. JPD Financial serves North American customers from its headquarters in San Jose and European customers from its operations in the UK.

Glantus, which is based in Dublin and also has a presence in London, has delivered advanced automation solutions to the Accounts Payable function since its inception. The company’s blue chip clients include Europcar, AIG, Applegreen, Hertz, Hydrogen, Deloitte, Barclays and Paddy Power Betfair.

“This acquisition significantly deepens our ability to serve global organisations at scale,” said Maurice Healy, Founder of Glantus.  “It propels Glantus forward in our ambition to drive the future of financial processing with real-time data intelligence.”

The advanced data platform from Glantus, combined with the expertise in service delivery from JPD Financial, will deliver significant benefits to existing customers and accelerate the delivery of innovative new financial processing solutions.

“JPD customers are increasingly looking at automation and AI to drive further efficiencies in their financial processes,” said John Doyle, President and CEO of JPD Financial. “With Glantus, JPD now has the advanced technology platform and the team behind it to deliver these new services.”

IDEX Biometrics ASA, a leading provider of advanced fingerprint identification and authentication solutions, today announced the launch of TrustedBio™ — a new family of dual-interface products and solutions designed to reduce biometric smartcard cost while improving both performance and security.

Card cost and manufacturing complexity has been a barrier to mass adoption of biometric smartcards. Now, thanks to the unprecedented integration levels of IDEX’s new TrustedBio™ solutions, the cost of building a biometric smartcard product will be dramatically reduced, which will accelerate market adoption.

IDEX has built on its proven off-chip sensor technology with new biometric-system-on-chip based products. This system-on-chip approach lowers the cost of materials required to build a biometric smartcard, while providing major enhancements to both performance and security. Unlike existing sensors, this new generation of products removes the need to have any electronic components laminated within the card’s inlay. This is expected to lead to an improvement in manufacturing processes and yields, substantially reducing the overall time to market.

“TrustedBio™ marks a major step forward for the biometric smartcard market which was accomplished by driving integration of the entire biometric system to an advanced semiconductor process node. With this new product family, card manufacturers and integrators will be able to more easily integrate biometric systems, improving smartcard security and user experience. By looking at ways to reduce costs associated with biometric systems we’ve removed one of the major barriers to mass production. Smartcard providers will now be better able to prepare for future Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) requirements and offer higher levels of security to their customers,” comments Anthony Eaton, Chief Technology Officer, IDEX Biometrics.

IDEX’s new dual-interface products and solutions will work seamlessly with both current and next generation EMV® chips to provide unrivalled flexibility. This means IDEX TrustedBio™ customers will be able to develop differentiated products unique to their target customers and business strategies. The first member of the TrustedBio™ family featuring this biometric-system-on-chip technology will sample in Q2 2020 and be released to mass production in Q4 2020.

Following an agreement between Network International, the leading enabler of digital commerce across the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region and Tencent Holdings Limited, official developer of WeChat Pay, the mobile payment service will soon be widely available to Network’s merchant partners across the UAE.

WeChat Pay is a mobile payment service embedded in WeChat, the popular Chinese social messaging service that boasts more than 1 billion users registered globally. The collaboration will enable millions of Chinese tourists to transact seamlessly, safely and securely with Network International’s extensive merchant network in UAE via their WeChat mobile wallet.

“We are excited to work with Tencent Holdings to offer WeChat Pay to our clients across the UAE. Our agreement brings an incredible opportunity to the UAE’s retail and hospitality sectors, helping them cater to the growing demand from Chinese visitors,” said Paul Clarke, Group Head of Product & Innovation, Network International. “As a market leader in end-to-end payment solutions, we are delighted to enable our network of merchant partners in the UAE to keep pace with new technologies, offering them a competitive edge.”

Network International, the UAE’s largest merchant acquirer, is committed to technology innovation and partnerships aimed at enhancing the UAE’s retail economy. The company will act as both settlement partner (acquirer) and solution provider to enable mobile-based transactions via WeChat Pay at points of sale and for online purchases.