Advanced technology and innovation have forever disrupted business operations of the past. With changing trends and customer expectation, product offerings, service and business operations has been the centre of the continuous cycle of adopting and adapting to latest technology and operation models. The financial service industry is no exception to this and has witnessed dynamic transformation pertaining to digital and technological aspects of product classification and conducting business.

Fintech firms and banks are embracing changes, as they strive to address consumer demands for more timely and convenient payments. Technology has triggered a transformation in policies and regulations, compelling banks and financial institutions to work on their strategies and push the boundaries when it comes to technology.

The Middle East is one of the world’s fastest-growing regions in the banking and capital markets sector. Banks and financial institutions across the region are investing heavily to match or surpass their international peers, owing to better educated and younger and demanding population; increasing diversity in financial products and services; and rising regulatory requirements for better monitoring of processes and developing secure financial systems.

Exibex, is proud to announce the dates for the 2nd annual in the Middle East and the 4th edition globally of Finnovex conferences as 11^th and 12^th of March 2020. Taking place at the Conrad Dubai. Finnovex Middle East 2020 promises to be “The Leading Summit on Financial Services Innovation and Excellence”.

Gathering over 300 eminent names in the BFSI sector, the 2020 edition will aim to brainstorm development strategies, solutions for the challenges and evaluate the ongoing digital transformation and adaptation of emerging technologies and innovation in the business operations, in order to make the sector advanced and future ready.

By joining the event as Media Partner, Financial IT has shared insights and assistance in bringing forth relevant information and knowledge in the industry that assists key players to draw strategic plans of development and futuristic transformation.

The event has already confirmed participation from SmartStream (PLATINUM SPONSOR), EY, Consdata, Backbase  and Comarch (GOLD SPONSORS), Infobip and Payoneer (SILVER SPONSOR), NIIT Technologies (BRONZE SPONSOR), Hyperpay (NETWORKING PARTNER), Emirates NBD, Harvard Innovation Labs, Gulf International Bank – Bahrain, Bank ABC – Jordan, Riyad Bank – KSA, Emirates Investment Bank, National Bank of Kuwait – Egypt, Bahrain Islamic Bank, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Habib Bank, nSolutions, MENA Fintech Association and many more.

For more information about the event and to receive detail please drop an email to mohor@finnovexglobal.com

Today, a new independent global network to digitise and modernise the USD 18 trillion trade finance market has been launched under the new brand – Contour.

The launch follows a series of ground-breaking live pilots in 14 countries and a global trial with more than 50 banks and corporates, which reduced processing times for Letters of Credit by over 90%, from 5-10 days to under 24 hours. 

Contour now moves into full commercialisation of its offering and has established itself in Singapore as a fully independent network and is inviting banks and corporates to join its beta network. 

The business is backed by: Bangkok Bank, BNP Paribas, CTBC, HSBC, ING Bank, Standard Chartered, SEB, Bain & Company, CryptoBLK and R3.

Contour is built on R3’s Corda blockchain and retains the support and expertise of the R3 team. It is led by Carl Wegner, a trade finance veteran who joins following a successful tenure building R3’s presence across Asia.

The network is focusing initially on Letters of Credit (LoCs), which are issued between banks, typically across country borders. They serve as a guarantee for payments between two companies or entities who want to trade goods or services with each other.

The 400-year-old process for agreeing, issuing and tracking LoCs is largely manual, inefficient and costly. Each party must keep and verifying its own separate paper records, creating duplication and discrepancies.  Contour digitises LoCs on blockchain, helping banks and corporates save time and money by reducing old fashioned, duplicative processes.

While historically recognised as an excellent risk-mitigation mechanism, research by Contour reveals that 86% of participants consider traditional LoCs as over-reliant on paper, takes too long and is becoming ‘intolerable’ for both corporates and banks.

Carl Wegner, CEO, Contour said: “The opportunity cost in trade finance is huge. Trillions of dollars in commodities, products and services are transacted daily, but the sector is still characterised by slow, duplicative and expensive processes. Contour delivers a network where trusted information is shared in real-time, effectively digitising Letters of Credit across all users in the transaction.

“We are indebted to the community of banks and corporates who have collaborated with us to validate our solution which delivers genuine, measurable value as well as process improvement around Letters of Credit. With the launch, Contour is now available to provide a full commercial service to organisations looking to enhance their trade finance practices.

“We are now focusing on scaling the network with more banks, corporates and partners, and look forward to continuing to collaborate with our growing community.”

HPD LendScape, a leading global asset based lending and factoring platform, has appointed market specialist, Kheng Leong Lee, as its regional representative for the Asia Pacific region. Based in Singapore, Lee brings with him over forty years’ experience in providing financial support to SMEs in the APAC region.

The appointment follows the opening of a Singapore office by HPD LendScape in May last year, as the company’s client base in the region expands and demand on the asset based finance and factoring services increases. As a major springboard for the region and accounting for 16% of APAC’s (excluding China) factoring activity, Singapore itself will be a priority market for the team, alongside other established markets, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand and Malaysia.

Prior to joining HPD LendScape, Lee was the Chapter Director for Asia and the Regional Director for South and South East Asia for FCI where he was instrumental in encouraging businesses to engage with the global representative body for the factoring and receivables finance industry. Prior to this, he was the Managing Director of Bibby Financial Services in Singapore and responsible for establishing Bibby’s initial foothold in the Asia-Pacific region. He also spent 33 years out of his 40 year career at DBS as a Senior Vice President and Head of Factoring for South Asia.

As the new Asia-Pacific representative, Lee will be working closely with Dave Smart, Regional Director of HPD LendScape Australia, further strengthening the platform’s reputation in the region with incisive local market knowledge.

Dave Smart, Asia-Pacific Regional Director: “We are delighted that Kheng is joining the HPD LendScape team and as a highly experienced local market specialist, he brings an unparalleled wealth of knowledge. The Asia region is rapidly emerging as an area of significant potential for the secured lending industry and represents an exceptional market of opportunity for us here at HPD LendScape. I look forward to working closely with Kheng in order to further solidify and grow our presence in the region.”

Kheng Leong Lee, Asia-Pacific Representative: “I am thrilled to be joining HPD LendScape – a company that has a well-deserved reputation for excellence. In my new role, I will use my market expertise to tap into a growing need among businesses and institutions in the region and help develop their secured lending offerings.”

Curve, the Over-The-Top banking platform that consolidates multiple cards and accounts into one smart card and even smarter app, today brings its customers Apple Pay, which is transforming payments with an easy, secure and private way to pay. With Apple Pay on iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad and Mac, customers can make fast and convenient purchases in stores, in apps and on websites.
Curve simplifies and unifies the money management experience for customers with its unique ability to consolidate all bank cards into a single card and transfer transactions up to two weeks after a purchase was made with its go-back-in-time functionality. As soon as a customer sets up their Curve Mastercard with Apple Pay, it will work instantly with all cardholders’ bank and cards linked to their Curve app.

The launch of Curve for Apple Pay means that customers can now leave their wallet behind, spend more freely without any limit on most in-store transactions and still benefit from Curve’s unique supercharged features, such as 1% instant cashback, the ability to travel in time and change the account that you spent with, and great foreign exchange rates at millions of places around the world.

Security and privacy are at the core of Apple Pay. When you use a credit or debit card with Apple Pay, the actual card numbers are not stored on the device, nor on Apple servers. Instead, a unique Device Account Number is assigned, encrypted and securely stored in the Secure Element on your device. Each transaction is authorized with a one-time unique dynamic security code.

“We are thrilled to announce Apple Pay is here for all European Curve customers” said Diego Rivas, Curve’s Head of Product-OS. “Curve’s integration with Apple Pay is a magnificent addition to Curve’s unique money management features, superbly complimenting Curve’s commitment to simplifying and unifying people’s financial lives and enabling even more ways for customers to pay with one of the most rewarding and feature-packed personal finance products on the market,” added Rivas.

Apple Pay is easy to set up and users will continue to receive all of the rewards and benefits offered by Curve.

With iPhone and Apple Watch, customers can pay with Apple Pay in stores, restaurants, taxis, vending machines and many more places. When shopping in apps or on the web in Safari with Apple Pay, there’s no need to manually fill out lengthy account forms or repeatedly type in shipping and billing information. Every Apple Pay purchase is authenticated with just a glance or a touch with Face ID or Touch ID, or a device's passcode.

2019 was a pivotal year for Curve, in which it closed its series B funding round in July, valuing the business at a quarter of a billion dollars. The all-your-cards-in-one business also broke records in September, becoming the fastest UK startup in history to raise £4M in crowdfunding on Crowdcube. After initially smashing its £1M target in under five minutes it closed out the record breaking round at just under £6M. The Curve card is issued by Wirecard.

Calypso Networks Association (CNA) and OSPT Alliance announce their collaboration to drive the adoption of open standards in transport ticketing. The end goal of the cooperation program is to achieve convergence between their respective open standards – CALYPSO and CIPURSE - simplifying the choice and integration options for public transport operators (PTOs) while bringing time and cost efficiencies to the entire transport ticketing value chain.

Recognizing an increasingly aligned value set, agenda and objectives, the associations have joined forces to promote the widespread benefits open standards provide over proprietary solutions.

“Since our mission first began a decade ago, the market has evolved dramatically. For PTOs however, the challenges caused by the dominance of proprietary systems have only intensified,” comments Philippe Martineau, President of OSPT Alliance. “CNA shares our passion to achieve a more open, collaborative ecosystem. And, in an increasingly complex and crowded market, it’s more important than ever that we combine our efforts to deliver operators a clear, coherent message, reduce market fragmentation and provide an alternative to vendor lock-in.”

“Convergence between CALYPSO and CIPURSE makes perfect sense. By combining voices and minds, we can take open standards’ adoption to the next level in transport ticketing” adds Philippe Vappereau, Chairman of CNA. “Our common aim is to simplify for all ticketing players, whether users or suppliers, the market complexity that limits the development of open solutions in favor of proprietary ones. There’s a lot to be done, but we’re excited, optimistic and prepared for a busy few years ahead.” 

The initial work of this collaboration is to analyze in detail the unique strengths of the two standards and, with backward compatibility in mind, define a roadmap that respects and supports existing solutions. As such, CNA and OSPT Alliance members can be reassured that any investment in the CALYPSO and CIPURSE Specifications will be protected.

To quickly bring the full benefits of the cooperation to all stakeholders, the associations are creating shared working groups, which will ensure the necessary specifications and tools to enable compatibility between CALYPSO and CIPURSE are delivered. Three working groups have been established: Governance (to optimize organizational setup), Marketing and Communications (to ensure a common promotion of the open standard concept), and Technical (to work on topics such as an SDK based on the existing Eclipse Keyple Open Source Software and a common Secure Access Module Specification).

Want to learn more about the collaboration? Philippe Martineau and Philippe Vappereau will be delivering a joint presentation at Transport Ticketing Global in London on Tuesday 28 January at 4.40pm, followed by a short press conference at the CNA booth (booth number E35) at 5pm.

PrePay Solutions subsidiary of Edenred, the everyday companion for people at work, today announces its rebrand as PPS.

PPS, founder and innovator in prepaid cards, has in the last 5 years grown the market in the fintech services including banking, virtual cards, debit, credit and prepaid processing. As a result of this expansion the company will now be formally known as PPS, a moniker already well known in the industry.

With both UK and European e-money license and Mastercard issuing license PPS is a leader in supporting pan-European fintech solutions.

Ray Brash, CEO, PPS, said: “For almost 20 years, we have been the leading digital experts in prepaid solutions, and we’re thrilled PPS’ journey started out this way. But, in recent years we have grown our expertise and product offering significantly which has opened up a whole world of options to help power fintechs too. We are proud that we have been able to adapt to the changes happening in the global financial services space. That’s why we have decided to update our brand to reflect our current - and future - roster of clients that include a whole array of specialisms. It’s a great feeling internally to be able to refresh our image as we are achieving significant business milestones.”

Cyber security provider F-Secure has begun to roll out F-Secure ID PROTECTION and five operator partners around the world have already signed up to protect their consumer customers’ identities. First announced in May of 2019 and now available as planned, the service monitors for data breaches and can detect if an individual’s personal information has been exposed.

ID PROTECTION boasts the industry’s fastest breach detection and response times, meaning consumers can immediately react to these types of threats and lower the risk of identity theft and account takeover. This is equally important from a connected home and consumer internet of things (IoT) perspective as those devices and services are increasingly used via the cloud.

ID PROTECTION is an app-based solution that notifies users immediately when it detects exposed personal information with precise recommendations on how best to deal with the situation. The service also includes an easy-to-use password manager that helps consumers use unique, strong passwords across the digital services they use. This ensures that a single service getting breached doesn’t automatically mean an individual’s entire digital life or connected home is compromised, and also assists in creating new passwords for services that were breached.

“Our customers recognize that all these great new online services come with risks. And even if consumers do everything they can to secure themselves, their data can still be exposed via a breach. This is something that more than 50% of consumers worry about today,” says Antero Norkio, Vice President of Product Management, Consumer Security at F-Secure. “No one can keep up or be ready to respond to every data breach in the very short time window when damage can be minimized or avoided. That’s where F-Secure ID PROTECTION comes in.”

Over half of consumers (56%) worry about the loss of personal information in a data breach and more than seven in ten (71%) feel they’re likely to be victims of cyber crime or identity theft.*

These fears are well founded given the poor data security practiced by many consumers, with eight in ten (82%) saying they reuse their passwords.** Recycled passwords multiply the risks to customers’ data when a leak occurs.

“ID PROTECTION is the perfect complement to our Connected Home Security solution. It’s the opposite side of the same coin,” says Kristian Järnefelt, Executive Vice President, Consumer Security at F-Secure. “Securing your devices and detecting if there are anomalies in your home network is essential, yet it doesn’t protect your data when it ends up in the cloud.  By combining human intelligence with dark web scanning, data breaches can be detected everywhere, much faster than it is by services that use dark web scanning alone.”

F-Secure’s recent consumer survey indicates people’s willingness to pay for ID monitoring services to be quite similar to how they purchase malware and endpoint protection.*

“We see tremendous opportunity for our 200+ operator partners worldwide to offer ID PROTECTION as a stand-alone, bundled with a broadband subscription value-added service or combined with our other security products,” says Järnefelt. “Looking at our global consumer survey results, we’re seeing a high willingness to pay for ID PROTECTION service and buy the solution through our operators, so we’re thrilled our partners are seizing this chance to protect their customers.”

H2O.ai, the open source leader in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), today announced that its open source platform, H2O, provides critical machine learning capabilities to MarketAxess, the operator of a leading electronic trading platform for fixed-income securities and the provider of market data and post-trade services for the global fixed-income markets.

Westpac-backed venture fund Reinventure has stepped up its push into Asia’s fintech scene, joining a US$90 million funding round for the owner of Kredivo, Indonesia’s fast-growing "buy now, pay later" (BNPL) platform.

CaixaBank has teamed up with Silicon Valley-based innovation platform Plug and Play on a Spanish fintech startup programme.