Tassat, a global provider of financial technologies and products for traditional and digital asset markets and Blockfills, a global leader in digital asset electronic market making, trading and prime brokerage, announce execution of the first trade on the newly launched institutional Trade-at-Settlement (TAS) service for spot Bitcoin (BTC/USD). 

GSR Markets, a global leader in digital asset trading and market making, confirms that it has successfully traded with Celsius Networkusing the TAS electronic order book. GSR plans to utilize this new trading service as part of its offering to institutions trading digital assets. These consist of many structured products built to manage the risk and unique exposures of miners, projects, funds and exchanges in the ecosystem.  

Celsius Network, founded in 2017 is a leading digital asset lender and financial services company. Digital asset lenders and financial companies benefit from TAS price discovery and lower cost execution when balancing their portfolios. 

Bringing TAS, a commonly used trading service in the commodities markets, to Bitcoin trading marks a significant development in the market structure for digital assets, providing substantial trading, pricing, and settlement advantages for clients of the service.

The offering combines the latest in institutional-grade electronic trading infrastructure with a reliable and robust world class settlement rates based on executable, institutional-size quotes from over ten of the world’s leading digital asset dealers. 

TAS paves the way as a new industry standard for institutions looking to build or hedge positions in Bitcoin. It allows for spot Bitcoin block execution at defined spreads from three daily defined settlement rates with typically less price slippage than standard execution methods.    

Rich Rosenblum, Co-Founder of GSR said: “As derivatives trading grows, there is the need to trade crypto risk ratably each day and balance out exposure over longer periods. The TAS model serves as an important bridge between spot and OTC markets. This helps provide the foundation for customized hedging strategies to be built with better efficiency and accuracy.”

Neil Van Huis, Director of Sales and OTC Trading at Blockfills said: “The first trade was executed smoothly and the TAS settlement rate is robust and transparent. We have achieved the goal of innovating in infrastructure and simultaneously providing a unique commercial service to benefit institutions."

Josh Gibson, Director of Sales at Tassat said: “Our partnership with Blockfills, and this first trade with GSR and Celsius has been critical in demonstrating the effectiveness of TAS for the institutional market. We look forward to accelerating the rollout for what we expect to be a major contribution to digital asset market structure.

Asaf Iram, Head of Trading for Celsius Networks said "Our ability to use TAS as a method of low cost, transparent execution to balance our portfolio and deliver efficient services to our community will help us continue expanding our rapidly growing footprint in the digital asset lending space"

The Emerging Payments Association (EPA), the leading London-based professional association of payment players, which brings together more than 150 operators from all areas of the payment value chain, is expanding its European Union network from Luxembourg.

A new separate legal structure has been created as a non-profit business association: the Emerging Payments Association EU (EPA EU).

Its founding members include the EPA, the development agency for the financial centre, Luxembourg For Finance, and the financial utility, Banking Circle. The European organisation will be headed by Thibault de Barsy, ex-CEO of Keytrade Bank Luxembourg.

“With Brexit on the horizon we felt it was vital to give our current members, as well as a new cohort of Europe-wide payments businesses a professional association that could represent their interests”, explained Tony Craddock, Director General of the EPA. “We aim to enlarge our international footprint and deliver new opportunities to our existing and future members.”

Thibault de Barsy, Vice-Chairman and General Manager of EPA EU added: “Connecting key players from across the European Union to collaborate in a way that transcends their national trade bodies seemed an imperative.”

Pierre Gramegna, Minister of Finance of Luxembourg, commented: “With PSD 1 and PSD 2, the EU has shown global leadership when it comes to payment services regulation and open banking. In view of Brexit, the Emerging Payments Association’s decision to expand its EU network to remain at the forefront of developments in the European payment industry thus seems like a natural choice and underlines Luxembourg’s growing role as a leading payment hub over the past decade, both for established global e-commerce and payment firms as well as new Fintech innovators.”

Nicolas Mackel, CEO of Luxembourg for Finance added, “We’re delighted EPA has chosen Luxembourg for its EU base, further strengthening the country as a destination of choice for the global payments sector.”

Anders la Cour, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Banking Circle concluded: “Already a member of the EPA, we strongly believe in the role such a trade association plays in creating value and business opportunities. We are therefore very excited to be involved in the newly formed EPA EU - the next months and years are likely to bring some exciting challenges and opportunities for businesses like ours and it is great to know that the expertise of the EPA EU will be championing our causes.”

Swedbank, the major bank in the home markets of Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, has selected SIA, the leading European hi-tech company in the payment services and infrastructures sector, to enable instant payments through RT1, EBA Clearing’s pan- European system with the real-time payments platform of TietoEVRY, a leading digital services and software company.

Swedbank’s customers have already executed more than 30 million instant payments thanks to SIAnet, the ultra-fast fiber optic network infrastructure leveraging on low-latency, secure messaging technology and stretching over 186,000 kilometers.

SIAnet is specially designed to meet the specific requirements of instant payments in terms of security, reliability and performance, also by virtue of the “always on” Active-Active architecture by SIA that ensures very high resilience and business continuity, consistent with the pressing demands coming from the market in terms of higher service levels.

TietoEVRY’s Payment Hub enables efficient and secure integration between Swedbank’s internal environment and the innovative network services provided by SIA. Based on open architecture, the solution facilitates access to other systems without the need for code changes.

Furthermore, Swedbank’s customers will benefit from the 10-year concession granted by the European Central Bank to SIA and Colt as Network Service Providers for the Eurosystem Single Market Infrastructure Gateway (ESMIG), which is scheduled to go live for November 2021. In fact, Swedbank, SIA and TietoEVRY are already working to enable all the key organizations in the European financial community to access the platform for the settlement of large-value payments TARGET2, the instant payments settlement service TIPS, the securities settlement platform TARGET2-Securities (T2S), the Eurosystem Collateral Management System (ECMS) and possibly other new services and applications such as P27, the new Nordic Payments Platform.

iProov, a leading provider of biometric authentication technology, today announces that its Verifier product is now available to organisations needing to verify customer identities in a host of new physical environments, including kiosks.

iProov has revolutionised the process of remote identity authentication, enabling banks and governments to authenticate customers and citizens via mobile or online app for access to secure services. This latest innovation, however, enables organisations to use the same technology to offer secure, high value transactions in low security branches and other physical locations, such as kiosks or unmanned offices.

The benefits include:

• Accessibility and inclusion - the new service allows organisations to offer secure services to citizens and customers that are unable to access a smartphone or a
• Low security locations - organisations can make secure services available in additional, accessible locations, such as shopping centres or travel hubs 
• Additional verification in branches - for high value transactions, or where staff may be vulnerable to coercion, biometric authentication can provide an extra layer of security
• Ease of use - users simply stand stationary in front of a kiosk screen and witness the authentication process take place before their eyes, with their identity verified inside 30 seconds

Enterprises that will benefit from both mobile and fixed terminal authentication include banks (for Know Your Customer procedures and service access), governments (for benefits and immigration enrolment) and travel providers (e.g. airlines, international train services and car hire).

Building on the launch of Palm Verifier at FinovateEurope in 2019, which was awarded Best of Show, the integration of iProov into fixed non-personal hardware will also adhere to the same conformance standards of genuine presence assurance that saw the company endorsed by the UK National Physical Laboratory in late 2018.

Andrew Bud, Founder and CEO of iProov said: “Over 2.5 million people ‘iProoved’ themselves last year on their mobiles or desktop computers. That same secure, effortless authentication is now possible on kiosks and fixed format screens. Our customers can offer greater accessibility and inclusion, while also pursuing new opportunities for delivering services in new environments.”

“It’s incredibly important for users to feel involved in the authentication process, and we know they appreciate seeing it unfold on-screen. It reassures them that the appropriate care is being taken to ensure they are who they say they are. We care deeply about our user experience and have overcome some interesting challenges to replicate this on kiosks. It’s a fantastic piece of innovation from our team.”

 PPS, formerly PrePay Solutions, and subsidiary of Edenred, the everyday companion for people at work, has today been approved to become an issuer and processor of Visa.

Through the partnership, PPS will be able to offer its customers, including fintech providers and challenger banks, full access to Visa’s products, including issuing Visa branded cards. Incorporating Visa’s product range into PPS’ award-winning payment platform further enhances its ability to power fintechs and in general, financial institutions who wish to partner with Visa. Following the certification, PPS’ innovative processing platform will facilitate issuer and programme manager integrations with Visa across Europe.

Ray Brash, CEO and Chairman of PPS, said: “The digital payments market is growing exponentially, and Visa is investing heavily in the fintech sector. PPS is already a leader in providing a full Bank out of a Box service with Issuing, Card and Bank Processing and Core Banking Services all from one provider both in the UK and in the EU. That’s why we’re delighted to start our collaboration which will offer more choice to the market and look forward to becoming a fully certified Visa issuer and processor in the coming months.”

 The news comes just after PPS’ rebrand, marking the company’s shift from supporting not just prepaid solutions but also to working with the broader fintech market.

International Compliance Association (ICA), the leading professional body for the global regulatory and financial crime compliance community, is pleased to announce it has signed a new, strategic partnership with the Compliance Academy, a private educational institution for compliance, risk and governance professionals, to develop best compliance practice in the Czech Republic. 

As part of the agreement, ICA will offer its full suite of accredited qualifications covering financial crime prevention, governance, risk and compliance, and anti-money laundering to Compliance Academy members.

In line with its efforts to help advance professional education in compliance and empower global professionals to manage risk more effectively, ICA will also offer two ICA Diploma scholarships each year to Compliance Academy members. ICA Diplomas are flagship qualifications undertaken by thousands of compliance and AML managers all over the world.

The agreement will help meet the organisations’ shared values to help companies conduct business in the right way and grow through the adoption of internationally recognised best practice by going beyond just meeting regulatory requirements. Furthermore, it will provide an invaluable opportunity for financial services firms and other regulated sectors in the Czech Republic to upskill their employees and safeguard their business from criminal, financial and reputational risk.

The partnership comes at a time of increased scrutiny of ongoing efforts in the country to prevent financial crime following FATF’s 2019 Mutual Evaluation Report.

Helen Langton, CEO, ICA, commented: “At ICA, we put the value of education and continuous professional development as enablers of sustainable business growth at the heart of everything we do, and I am especially delighted to be collaborating with the Compliance Academy to help develop the competencies and capabilities of financial crime and compliance professionals and their firms in the region.”

Michal Moroz, Co-founder of Compliance Academy, added: “Compliance Academy was launched with a clear mission in mind – to bring together professionals from various areas of expertise in order to cultivate the local business environment, promote ethical and just standards for the fight against corruption, and attract new talent to this rapidly growing industry and we are excited to be working with ICA, a professional association that aligns with this ethos.“

ICA qualifications are an internationally recognised benchmark of excellence, designed to ensure global best practice and the highest ethical conduct, and are awarded in association with The University of Manchester, Alliance Manchester Business School. 

To view the full suite of qualifications, visit: https://www.int-comp.org/course-finder/

Klarna, one of the world’s leading smooth shopping and payment providers, today announced an agreement to acquire Moneymour, an Italian payment company, from the founders and minority investors. Through the acquisition Klarna gains access to intellectual property to further improve underwriting capabilities, and additional expertise and competence, as the full Moneymour team will join Klarna. This acquisition also marks the first step in launching Klarna’s latest product development hub in Milan.

Moneymour was founded in 2017 and is an Italian payment method that allows consumers to ‘buy now, pay later’ by splitting their purchases into monthly instalments based on an instant credit assessment. The Moneymour credit scoring engine is powered by PSD2, as it uses balance and transaction data in the credit scoring algorithm. The technology ensures an ever faster and automated credit decision for consumers as only a few clicks are necessary, rather than lengthy and paperwork heavy manual processes. Klarna believes this technology is key especially when underwriting credit to millenials. Going forward, the Moneymour competence and technology could be used across Klarna’s markets, creating an even better and smoother shopping experience for consumers.

“We’re impressed with what the Moneymour team has achieved so far, and we are also happy to now progress the establishment of our new product development hub in Milan. The talented team has developed an interesting offering for the Italian market, and with their knowledge and expertise we can further strengthen our underwriting capabilities in the market. Under the Klarna umbrella, we will together further develop the proposition and scale this across markets, which will support in accelerating growth.” says Koen Köppen, CTO at Klarna.

Klarna is now powering over 200,000 retailers globally including Luxottica, Calzedonia, Alitalia, H&M, ASOS, Peloton, Abercrombie & Fitch and Samsung. During 2020, Klarna will continue its growth momentum on current markets as well as enter new markets, where Australia is the most recent example. Establishing a new product development hub in Milan will support the growth efforts on the fast growing Italian ecommerce market.

The transaction is expected to be completed in Q1 2020 and Moneymour’s operations will be integrated into Klarna.

Bank Indonesia (BI) has adopted Refinitiv Auctions for Domestic Non-deliverable Forwards (NDFs), as Central Banks increasingly rely on electronic tools to ensure their markets function in an orderly, efficient manner. Refinitiv Auctions is an innovative platform that combines a trading venue, real-time view of bid submissions, market surveillance and processing capabilities.

Domestic NDFs are a monetary policy instrument employed by the Central Bank to enhance financial markets. It also provides an alternative hedging instrument for market participants. In addition, the Indonesian Rupiah-settled NDFs auctions are run on a daily basis over Refinitiv Auctions to support a stable exchange rate.

With Indonesian member banks, brokers and the Central Bank onboard, Refinitiv Auctions underpins efficient performance of NDF auction tenders. The solution helps BI automate trade processes in a secure environment.

Refinitiv Auctions facilitated over $1.225 trillion in 2019 while seeing rapid volume growth and adoption with a 27% year on year increase in customers, and is now used by Central Banks and Corporates in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Refinitiv is able to address Central Banks and Corporates auction needs on data residency and infrastructure costs by offering its solution uniquely on either a hosted or deployed basis. Support is now also in place for Islamic Finance Shari'ah compliant auctions for both Central Banks and Corporates.

"We highly appreciate the collaboration between Bank Indonesia and Refinitiv to ensure that monetary operations in Indonesia can be done in more efficient way through Auctions," said Nanang Hendarsah, Head of Monetary Management Department at Bank Indonesia.

"The launch of Refinitiv Auctions for domestic NDF operations is a great example of our long-lasting partnership with Bank Indonesia, driving innovation in Asian financial markets. With Auctions catering to multi-purpose auction techniques, bringing more transparency and efficiency to monetary policy execution mechanisms in emerging and frontier markets, we are pleased to be supporting Bank Indonesia as they stand at the forefront of innovation in financial technology," said Stuart Brown, Global Head of Emerging and Frontier Markets at Refinitiv.

MirrorWeb is pleased to announce that it is now listed in the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Compliance Vendor Directory (CVD), a resource which enables firms to search for vendors that offer compliance-related services.

As a new participant of the CVD, FINRA members can learn more about MirrorWeb’s digital archiving platform, which helps regulated firms adhere to record-keeping and financial promotion compliance.

In particular, MirrorWeb can help members’ companies to ensure compliance with FINRA Communications Rules for record-keeping and financial promotions, specifically around web and social media. MirrorWeb’s platform captures and archives websites and social media output, ensuring that clients are audit-ready at all times in the event of a customer complaint or regulatory investigation.

FINRA is an independent agency dedicated to protecting investors and safeguarding market integrity in a manner that facilitates vibrant capital markets. It works under the supervision of the SEC and actively engages with and provides essential tools for investors, member firms and policymakers.

In 2017, FINRA announced its plans to establish a directory of compliance service providers. Today, the directory lists firms who specialise in Compliance Consulting, Cybersecurity, Data Management, Information Archiving Exam Prep & Firm CE, Insurance Brokers, Monitoring & Surveillance, PCAOB Registered Accountants and Registration services.

David Clee, CEO of MirrorWeb: “We’re incredibly pleased to be listed in the FINRA Compliance Vendor Directory. It marks an important moment in the company’s history as we continue to help clients meet ever-changing digital archiving requirements. With MirrorWeb successfully helping clients across the UK and Europe remain compliant, we’re excited to bring our innovative web archiving technology to the US and the members of FINRA.”

The leading FinTech Modulr will host its first Accountancy Innovation Roadshow on the 20th of February in Edinburgh, as the first of a six-city tour of the UK. The series of events forms part of the FinTech’s £20m investment to deliver simple, secure and reliable payments services for accountants and their SMEs clients.

Payments, designed specifically for the needs of the UK’s 5.7m SMEs, have been historically neglected by established financial services while the recent fintech revolution has struggled to expand its reach across the UK. Modulr is changing this by using the Roadshow Series to drive awareness of how accountants can make payments an advantage for themselves and their SME clients, freeing them from payment inefficiencies hidden in legacy systems.

The Roadshow Series will first visit Edinburgh on the 20th of February, bringing together forward-thinking accountants to discuss the real impact of technology on the accountancy business model, and the SME clients they serve. The event will feature a morning of networking, panel discussions, round tables and useful insights which accountants can apply to their own businesses in order to fuel growth for their clients.

The first Accountancy Innovation Roadshow will take place at Whitespace, Norloch House, 36 King's Stables Road, Edinburgh, EH1 2EU, 08:30-12:00. The Roadshow Series will also visit Birmingham, Manchester, Belfast, Cardiff and London throughout the year.

Commenting on the launch of the first event, Myles Stephenson, CEO and founder of Modulr comments: “For too long the UK’s SMEs and their accountants have missed out on the latest payment innovations from the world-leading fintech industry on their doorstep. This lack of access to the fintech ecosystem has limited their ability, leading to slow payments, financial headaches and unnecessary hours pulled away from the core of their business - delivering greater value to clients.

“An accountant powered by the latest payments technology means SMEs have better control over their money and future growth, all through a platform that’s secure and simple, and more reliable than many established financial services.”

In August 2019, Modulr was chosen from 76 applicants to receive a £10m grant from the Capability and Innovation Fund (CIF), part of the RBS Alternative Remedies Package. Modulr was awarded the grant based on its vision to provide SMEs and their accountants with simple, secure and reliable payment capabilities. Modulr will be partnering with accountancy practices and software providers, including Sage, to roll out improved payment functionality to the UK’s SMEs.

Read Modulr’s full commitments and roadmap here.