The acceptance of MIR National Payment System (MIR) cards has been announced in Tajikistan, opening up access to Russians who live in, or travel to, the country. 

Amonat Bank, the operator of the Tajik national payment system, Korti Milli, has announced the launch as part of a nationwide Tajik strategy to encourage the use of card payments in place of cash. MIR cardholders will now be able to make transactions via Amonat Bank terminals throughout Tajikistan.

In support of the introduction of MIR cards into Tajikistan, the Deputy Director General of the MIR payment system, Sergey Bochkarev, became the first cardholder to withdraw cash from an Amonat Bank ATM at the Payment Technologies Forum in Dushanbe.

“The integration between MIR and Korti Milli has been successfully completed, with the first MIR cards transactions already carried out in Tajikistan. The next stage will be for the members of Korti Milli to have their ATMs and POS terminals accept Russian cards,” said Sergey Bochkarev. “It is also essential that, in the future, our cooperation will enable Korti Milli members to issue cards with the MIR payment application - which will allow cardholders to use cards not only in Tajikistan but also in Russia, as well as in the other CIS countries with which MIR is integrated.”

In order to facilitate the acceptance of MIR cards in Tajikistan, ongoing support and processing services between Amonat Bank and MIR will be provided by Compass Plus.

“We believe that the development of our partnership and the implementation of joint projects between Korti Milli and MIR are key,” said Shukhrat Kholikov, Director of Processing Centre at Korti Milli. “This cooperation will expand the geography of cross card acceptance, facilitate financial transactions in countries that are the MIR members, and also enable MIR cardholders to be served in the Korti Milli network. The timely launch of the integration project was made possible due to the operational work and support of the Compass Plus team.”

Alexey Osipov, Executive Vice President at Compass Plus said: “With so many Russians based in Tajikistan, having their MIR cards accepted will make a huge difference. We look forward to seeing how the use of their cards locally will enhance their lives.”

Centage Corporation (www.centage.com), leading provider of cloud financial software that transforms how businesses budget, forecast, analyze and report, introduced the Maestro Help Hub, a rich online portal for Centage customers to access a robust knowledge base, submit and track support tickets, and interact with product experts and other customers. The Maestro Help Hub is free to all Centage customers as part of their cloud subscription and is becoming a popular resource amongst its customer base.

The Maestro Help Hub provides e-learning training, product videos, release notes, and a wealth of other resources to help Centage clients master the Planning Maestro product suite and enable self-help when they want it. “In this day and age, everyone expects and demands real-time information. Our goal is to provide seamless access to the tools and information our clients need to be successful on their own in instances where self-help is their first choice,” explained Nate Burnes, VP of Customer Success at Centage. “At the same time, the Maestro Help Hub allows clients to submit a help ticket or engage with a Centage team member if they are unable to find the answers or resource they need.”

The Maestro Help Hub also serves as a forum for the Centage community to ask one another questions, share best practices, and provide advice on the changing nature of the modern CFO.  “Technology is revolutionizing FP&A. For instance, automation is enabling finance teams to move to rolling forecasts and synchronized reporting to better monitor the health of the organization. Our customers need a place where they can share ideas and ask specific questions about FP&A strategies, topics that are often best addressed by other corporate finance professionals,” explained John Murdock, CEO of Centage. “Our Maestro Help Hub fills this critical need for a forum.”

The EIB Group, consisting of the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Investment Fund (EIF), has provided a mezzanine tranche guarantee of around EUR 100m to Commerzbank AG on a EUR 1.500m granular portfolio of loans to SMEs and Mid-Caps originated by Commerzbank in its ordinary business. The guarantee will release regulatory capital for Commerzbank and will enable Commerzbank to provide further lending of up to EUR 400m to innovative SMEs and Mid-Caps in Germany.

The transaction was made possible by the support of the “European Fund for Strategic Investments” (EFSI). The EFSI is the central pillar of the “Investment Plan for Europe”, or Juncker-Plan, in which EIB Group and the European Commission are strategic partners to strengthen the competitiveness of the European economy. Under the guarantee, EIB takes on the mezzanine risk under a synthetic securitisation transaction with Commerzbank. EIF is fronting the operation by providing a guarantee to Commerzbank in relation to an existing portfolio of SME and Mid-Cap loans. EIB will provide a back-to-back counter-guarantee to EIF which will fully mirror EIF’s obligations under its guarantee.

EIB Vice President Ambroise Fayolle, in charge of innovation and operations in Germany, commented: “The transaction clearly leverages EIB Group synergies, and strengthens Commerzbank’s capacity to provide fresh funds to innovative companies. This is a top priority for the EIB Group as SMEs and Mid-Caps are responsible for the creation of one in every two new jobs. Only this new operation with Commerzbank is expected to support nearly 60000 jobs. Therefore I am very glad that we are continuing our long and successful cooperation with Commerzbank in providing fresh access to finance for innovative businesses in Germany.”

EIF Chief Alain Godard: “EIF is pleased to be working with Commerzbank and the EIB to provide additional access to finance for SMEs and Mid-Caps. The combination of EIF’s investment and structuring expertise and the EIB’s efficient deployment of EFSI funds offer a competitive financing solution for Commerzbank which will serve to boost the supply of finance in the real economy.”

Roman Schmidt, Head of Capital Markets, Commerzbank AG said: “Commerzbank is Germany’s leading bank for SME and mid-cap lending and has been proudly co-operating with promotional banks for many years. This innovative product helps us to satisfy increasing client demands whilst providing the opportunity to manage our capital. Closing this consecutive synthetic securitisation under EFSI is a further proof of Commerzbank’s innovative spirit as well as a commitment to further support the German Mittelstand at competitive conditions.”

New research commissioned by and published today by cybersecurity company, BullGuard, revealed an alarming number of small businesses in the UK and US are not prepared for a potential cyber attack or breach. One-third of companies with 50 or fewer employees report using free, consumer-grade cybersecurity, and one in five companies use no endpoint security whatsoever. Additionally, the study found 43% of SMB owners have no cybersecurity defense plan in place at all – leaving their most sensitive financial, customer and business data, and ultimately their companies, at significant risk.

"Small businesses are not immune to cyber attacks and data breaches and are often targeted specifically because they often fail to prioritize security," said Paul Lipman, CEO of BullGuard. "Caught between inadequate consumer solutions and overly complex enterprise software, many small business owners may be inclined to skip cybersecurity. It only takes one attack, however, to bring a business to its knees."

The study also revealed some glaring discrepancies between what SMB owners believe versus what is actually occurring in the market. Nearly 60% of SMB owners believe their business is unlikely to be targeted by cyber criminals, however the results revealed that 18.5% of SMB owners have suffered from a cyber attack or data breach within the past year. Unfortunately, while securing data can be simple, remediation is not. Companies that fall victim to a cyber attack often experience significant downtime that seriously impacts productivity, data privacy, and even revenue. Once breached, 25% of SMB owners stated they had to spend $10,000 or more to resolve the attack, which could be devastating for a small company. As for time lost, 50% of SMB owners said it took 24 hours or longer to recover from a breach or cyber attack, while 25% reported they lost business as a result, and almost 40% stated they lost crucial data.

Despite these numbers, many SMB owners are overly confident in the safety of their company and customer data. One in five SMB owners surveyed stated their organization has zero vulnerabilities, however 50% of SMB owners stated their employees do not receive any cybersecurity training.

A significant number, 65%, of SMB owners report managing their cybersecurity in-house, but less than 10% say they have a dedicated IT staff member. The right solution makes it simple and extremely cost-effective for SMBs to manage their own cybersecurity, ensuring their business is secure and protected.

Conducted in January 2020, the BullGuard-commissioned survey queried a total of 3,083 small business owners in the UK (1,532) and the US (1,551) with 50 employees or less.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) today announced two key appointments to the BIS Innovation Hub, a new initiative designed to support central bank collaboration on new financial technology. 

Andrew McCormack, Chief Information Officer at Payments Canada, will head the BIS Innovation Hub Centre in Singapore. Morten Bech, Head of Secretariat for the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI), will head the Hub Centre in Switzerland. 

"I am pleased to welcome Andrew and Morten to the Innovation Hub team. Their knowledge and experience will greatly enhance our efforts to make the global financial system safer, more efficient and inclusive," said Benoît Cœuré, Head of the Innovation Hub. 

Given his previous role, Mr McCormack has strong experience in policy and strategy work as well as on new technologies, including extensive research on blockchain and payments. He has a background in software design and development. 

Mr Bech heads the secretariat of the CPMI, the global standard setter for payment, clearing and settlement services. He worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Danish central bank before joining the BIS, where he has also served as Secretary to the Markets Committee. 

Both will start their new roles in April for three-year terms. 

The Innovation Hub aims to identify, and develop in-depth insights into, critical trends in technology affecting central banking; develop public goods in the technology space geared towards improving the functioning of the global financial system; and serve as a focal point for a network of central bank experts on innovation. 

As part of the initial phase of implementation, Hub Centres have been established in Hong Kong SAR, Singapore and Switzerland. Good progress has been made on appointing the head of the Hong Kong Hub Centre, who will be announced in due course.

StepChange Debt Charity has today confirmed that it is entering into an exciting new partnership with fintech innovator OpenWrks to bring the opportunities offered by Open Banking into its services. 

StepChange's new Money Coaching tool, which will be made available to clients accessing support with their persistent credit card debt, will utilise OpenWrks' sector-leading Open Banking technology to better support clients. The move will help deliver key elements of the charity’s strategic vision to double the number of people it helps over the next few years. The success of this strategy focuses on helping more people, helping them earlier, and helping them better by harnessing new technology.  

The Money Coaching tool will enable clients to analyse their real-time spending in detail, use Open Banking to get a full picture of their outgoings, and to set long-term savings goals and challenges to help them improve their financial situation. Initially, support will focus on clients who enter the charity’s new and unique online persistent debt service.

As a leading debt charity, StepChange is delighted to be partnering with an innovative provider to harness the power of commercially-developed Open Banking applications to deliver a significant improvement, at scale, across innovative new services. This partnership should show how Open Banking can be used to harness new benefits. 

Research undertaken by StepChange last year suggested that many clients seeking debt advice are receptive to Open Banking principles to help them identify their income and expenditure in an easier way that they can recognise. However, StepChange will always allow clients to choose whether they use Open Banking and how they access the charity’s services.

StepChange Debt Charity CEO Phil Andrew comments:

 “It is hugely exciting to be able to leverage new technology innovation to deliver meaningful new services to our clients. We know from our research that getting help and support as early as possible can help to prevent a debt crisis for some people. Providing tools which enable consumers to understand their finances and, where possible, make small changes, could potentially reduce the number of people reaching crisis point in the future.

“This first step in utilising Open Banking data will enable the charity to explore further uses across our services. The overall aim is to further support the many people in the UK who need our help, in an increasing variety of ways that suit their needs. Every bit of efficiency we create means increased opportunity for people worried about money to get the help they need, and increased value for those who fund us.”

OpenWrks Group CEO, Stuart Bungay added:

“The Personal Finance Management market is crowded with tools that show people what and where they are spending but few of these tools actually help people change their underlying spending behaviour to help improve financial resilience.”

“In our Money Coaching application, we encourage people to set long-term financial goals – be it for a house deposit, a holiday or debt repayments. Then, Money Coaching uses behavioural psychology and personalised savings challenges, identified by Open Banking insight, to help people make savings on everyday spending and fundamentally change the way they manage money. With progress notifications and tailored educational content, Money Coaching drives long-term change in how people think about, manage and make use of their money. Over time this empowers people to save more to put towards their credit card repayments or to build a savings buffer for unexpected financial shocks.”

Austin-based Eventus Systems, Inc., a multi-award winning global trade surveillance and market risk software platform provider, announced that the firm has just raised $10.5 million of growth capital in a Series A investment round. Investors included a range of venture capital and financial services organizations, led by Chicago-based Jump Capital and Austin-based LiveOak Venture Partners. 

The funds will enable Eventus to further enhance its technology, significantly increase its sales, development and service staff globally and continue to grow its customer base. Also participating in the round were existing customers and investors, including Coinbase Ventures and Chimera Securities.

Peter Johnson, Principal of Jump Capital, and Krishna Srinivasan, Founding Partner of LiveOak, have joined the Eventus Board as part of the financing. Rosenblatt Securities served as an advisor to Eventus on the funding round.

“Eventus is disrupting the trade surveillance space, and its innovative technology, scalable model and seasoned leadership position the firm to be the unparalleled market leader in the coming years,” said Johnson. “Jump Capital is excited to utilize our resources and deep fintech and capital markets experience to help further accelerate Eventus’ impressive growth.” 

Srinivasan said: “We look for Texas-based firms that can grow into world-class, category-dominating companies, and we believe that talent and domain experience are the critical ingredients for that success. The team at Eventus has many decades of hands-on experience as market practitioners with an intimate knowledge of the challenges that clients face. Its track record in just over five years in business – addressing mission-critical challenges of numerous top firms in the financial services industry – is impressive.”

Eventus CEO Travis Schwab said: “We have embarked on an aggressive growth strategy following our third straight year of doubling both customers and revenue, and we’re looking to add a wide range of talented, experienced sales, development and service professionals to our team to take the firm to the next level. Our plans include growing our emerging presence and client base in Europe – where we have strong tools for addressing MiFID II and related regulatory requirements – and in Asia, where we have tailored our platform to meet the needs of multiple regional jurisdictions. We have an extraordinary roster of clients, Board of Directors and team, and we are truly honored to welcome our new investors and gratified that existing customers and investors have reaffirmed their confidence in us.”

Eventus has earned four major global recognitions in the past year for its Validus platform, including an FOW International Award for best Market Surveillance product and a Risk Technology Award for Market Surveillance Product of the Year. The firm also garnered a Best Trade Surveillance Solution award from A-Team’s RegTech Insight Awards and a spot for the second year running on the global RegTech 100 list.

Validus helps firms monitor for all trading surveillance requirements including market manipulation such as spoofing, layering and wash trading.  The software platform features hundreds of pre-built surveillance procedures and in real time processes billions of trade lifecycle messages per day across diverse asset classes spanning equities, equity options, futures, fixed income, foreign exchange, cryptocurrencies and others. It is the only trade surveillance solution to offer both machine learning and a procedural approach in one seamless package to not only reduce alert noise but also assist customers in intelligent issue resolution. 

Temenos (SIX: TEMN), the banking software company, invites developers to attend Temenos SCALE, the global developer conference for the banking industry, taking place April 27 – 28 in Madrid, Spain. Temenos SCALE will bring together the brightest minds from across the global developer community to experience two days of collaboration, innovation and networking and dive into future banking technology with a focus on Explainable AI, open APIs and cloud technologies. Register here today.

Focusing on the core themes of Innovation, Integration and Automation, Temenos SCALE will educate and equip developers to respond to the fundamental changes redefining the banking industry. With financial institutions under mounting pressure to create hyper-personalized, AI-driven customer experiences, developers will have the opportunity to utilize marketplaces of financial services and products and build better digital experiences. Temenos SCALE will support developers and their organizations to access the opportunities of open banking and catapult banks into the digital era.

Attendees of Temenos SCALE will hear from influential technology and banking industry leaders, including headline sponsor IBM. They will experience first-hand the expanded award winning developer platform, Temenos Base Camp, which enables its 12,000+ members to collaborate and extend the capabilities of their Temenos products. In addition, they will have free access to industry certification via the Temenos Developer Community Learning Path (part of Temenos Learning Community) an initiative providing widely-applicable skills to support developers build exceptional digital experiences using APIs.

Temenos SCALE offers expert-led hands-on labs, roundtable discussions with Temenos experts and demo-rich keynotes and presentations giving early insights into Temenos’ technology roadmap. These sessions will address key industry trends including cloud technologies and multi-cloud resilience and Explainable AI and drill down into how cloud-native API-first banking software can be used to grasp the digital banking opportunity.

Andre Tost, Distinguished Engineer, IBM Cloud Paks, IBM Cloud and Cognitive Software: "At this year's Temenos SCALE banking developer conference, you’ll hear about how IBM and our Business Partner Temenos are on a journey towards cloud native banking to deliver automation, innovation and integration to our joint clients. I hope you'll join us as we explore the incredible capabilities of modern software and API-led technology built with IBM offerings, like LinuxONE and IBM Cloud Paks. We look forward to meeting with some of the brightest minds in the developer community – today’s change leaders – to discuss how we can work together to create powerful change in the banking industry on a global scale.”

Paul Roberts, MarketPlace and Developer Community Director, Temenos, commented: “Temenos SCALE offers a unique and unmissable opportunity for any developer using Temenos software to network, collaborate and innovate. Developers will not only learn about Temenos’ latest technology developments, but experience the full potential of our software through hands-on workshops generating real-life use cases for our industry today. It is a fast-track and a one-stop-shop to witness what’s new in our quickly evolving industry and to learn critical skills to help developers get more out of banking software.”

Follow #TemenosSCALE on social media for live updates on LinkedIn, twitter, Facebook and Instagram

Kahina van Dyke, one of the leading women in the Fintech sector, has joined Standard Chartered’s Corporate, Commercial and Institutional Banking division (“CCIB”) as Global Head, Digital Channels and Client Data Analytics.

Kahina joins from Ripple, the blockchain-based enterprise payments company, where she was Senior Vice President, Business & Corporate Development. She was previously Global Director, Financial Services and Payments at Facebook, and previously spent several years at Mastercard and Citigroup.

Standard Chartered’s CCIB division focuses on the world’s largest corporates, financial institutions and investors, connecting them to each other’s ecosystems and providing advice, access and financing to dynamic the markets of Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Simon Cooper, Chief Executive, CCIB at Standard Chartered, said: “Kahina is joining my team at a pivotal time in our development. We have achieved a number of successes with clients, at times developing our own platforms and at others forging partnerships with fintechs, and we’re not standing still – this is a statement of intent. Kahina will spearhead a talented team in taking our data analytics and channel capabilities to the next level as we continuously seek to deliver the best client experience.”

Kahina said: “It is a privilege to be joining Standard Chartered, an institution with a rich legacy and a truly unique global footprint. We will deepen and expand our leverage of digital technology and data analytics to deliver real economy impact to clients and communities around the world. I am proud to join the Bank at this exciting time with our strong, talented and diverse team, and hope to accelerate the next generation of global financial services.”