Published
- 03:00 am
Acronis, a global leader in cyber protection, today announced a multi-year strategic global distribution agreement with Ingram Micro, a leading international IT product distributor. The relationship will make Acronis Cyber Protection solutions easily accessible for organisations around the world, enabling them to meet their customers’ demand for easy, efficient, and secure cyber protection.
With more than 50,000 partners, the Acronis channel network is experiencing significant growth. The relationship with Ingram Micro will give service providers an opportunity to take advantage of the current market opportunity to grow their business with Acronis.
“Ingram Micro is an important ally in our efforts to promote our vision of modern cyber protection, and this renewed relationship will enable even more service providers to deliver innovative, effective, affordable solutions to their customers,” said Serguei “SB” Beloussov, Acronis Founder and Executive Officer. “With traditional data protection and cybersecurity solutions failing to meet modern data challenges, the demand for true cyber protection continues to grow. Service providers now face a lucrative opportunity, and Acronis and Ingram Micro can help them leverage that opportunity.”
Acronis Cyber Protection solutions address the Five Vectors of Cyber Protection – ensuring the safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security (SAPAS) of data. This unique approach helps customers protect all of their data, applications, and systems, ensuring effective cyber protection and data management in the data center, cloud, and edge devices.
The effectiveness of this approach has been proven in multiple industries, as well as in the most data-driven sports around the world. Today, Acronis is the cyber protection partner of several motorsport teams in Formula 1, Formula E, Formula 2, Formula 3, and Supercars, as well as the English Premier League’s Arsenal Football Club and Manchester City FC, and Major League Baseball’s Boston Red Sox.
“Acronis solutions are known worldwide for their unique and effective approach to cyber protection,” said Renee Bergeron, Senior Vice President Global Cloud at Ingram Micro. “Ingram Micro serves more than 200,000 customers in approximately 160 countries, and we’re certain our customers will see great benefits from using Acronis Cyber Protection solutions to safeguard their data against modern threats.”
- 02:00 am
Nium, a fast-growing digital cross-border payments platform, is enabling users to make real-time money transfers to Visa debit cardholders across Southeast Asia powered by Visa’s real-time[1] push payments solution - Visa Direct.
Prajit Nanu, co-founder and CEO of Nium said, “At Nium, we understand that individuals’ and businesses’ need to receive money quickly, especially in markets where there are no instant payment solutions like FAST or IMPS. The partnership using Visa’s push payment solution and secure network will allow our consumers to transfer money in a faster, convenient and more secure way.”
According to a recent Visa survey[2], more than one in three respondents in Singapore make international money transfers at least once a year. The survey findings also indicated that close to half (49 percent) of the respondents expect their funds to be successfully transferred in less than a day, indicating the need for an efficient cross-border money transfer solution.
Kunal Chatterjee, Visa Country Manager for Singapore and Brunei said, “Nium is the first Fintech partner from Visa’s Fintech Fast Track programme to deliver real-time remittance using our push payment solution Visa Direct. From our survey findings, more than half of respondents usually send international money transfers to either their personal or loved ones’ bank accounts and one of the most important factors they look at is for money to be transferred in real-time.[3] Given that our domestic transfer solutions are already real-time using the FAST infrastructure, it is important to provide consumers the same speed and efficiency for cross border international transfers. We are pleased to work with Nium to leverage Visa’s global payments network to bring this seamless and secure payment experience to consumers in this region.,” added Kunal.
Nium is a member of Visa’s Fintech Fast Track programme. This programme makes it quicker and easier for fintech partners to build and deliver new commerce experiences on Visa’s payments network.
- 02:00 am
OCBC Bank has entered into a partnership with Google to bring a refreshed Google Pay app to Singapore in January 2020.
Mr Ching Wei Hong, Chief Operating Officer at OCBC Bank, said: “The potential of Google Pay leveraging PayNow is tremendous and will provide our customers the benefits of secure, seamless and ubiquitous payments without having a wallet. Both OCBC and Google share the same customer-centric approach to enabling seamless digital payments - an open-loop payments ecosystem. When it launches here, Google Pay will offer our customers a unique proposition for making payments that is frictionless and requires no extra hoops for customers to jump through to access their bank account funds.”
He added: “Our team worked very closely with Google to custom build the PayNow connectivity for the Google Pay app, and we have already launched a private beta and fired the first live transactions last week. From January 2020, our customers will be the first in Singapore to be able to link their bank accounts to Google Pay to make digital payments. In today’s digital world, building ecosystems of partnerships and going beyond traditional banking products is critical. This is a bold move which I believe will have great impact and bring significant scale to PayNow by expanding payment journeys for consumers.”
Mr Caesar Sengupta, Vice President of Payments and the Next Billion Users initiatives at Google, said: “We partnered with OCBC to provide a product that gives an optimal payments experience to customers and users. The first PayNow transaction we tested on Google Pay was $8.88 - a success of our close partnership. OCBC has proven to be a valuable partner providing us with insights and expertise on payments, leveraging the national payment rails in Singapore.”
Google Pay is Google’s payments app that aims to make money simpler, more secure, and more helpful while it helps customers shop online, pay neighbourhood shops, or send money to friends right from their bank account. Users of the app can also earn rewards, which goes directly into the app user’s bank account.
Singapore is the second country to launch the enhanced version of Google Pay after it was introduced in India in 2017. Google Pay significantly increased the adoption of India’s inter-bank payments system, United Payments Interface (UPI). UPI is similar to Singapore’s peer-to-peer transfer service, PayNow.
- 04:00 am
DBS today announced plans to launch Google Pay services with DBS PayLah! by early 2020.
Said Han Kwee Juan, Chief Strategy Officer at DBS Bank, “We believe that integrating Google Pay with our DBS PayLah! platform will deliver greater convenience to consumers as they will have more options to transfer funds and make instant payments to some 80,000 merchants in Singapore. This collaboration demonstrates our commitment towards building wholly seamless, intuitive services for our customers and is in line with our plans to ramp up our ecosystem partnerships regionally.”
“We are delighted to partner with DBS in our mission to make mobile payments simple, helpful and secure and through this collaboration we hope to make that a day-to-day reality for Singaporeans,” said Mr Caesar Sengupta, Vice President of Payments and the Next Billion Users initiatives at Google.
In September 2019, DBS announced that it would more than double DBS PayLah!’s existing user base of 1.6 million to 3.5 million by 2023.
- 04:00 am
Prepaid Financial Services Ireland Limited (PFS) is pleased to announce it has entered into a binding agreement to sell 100% of the share capital of the company to EML payments Ltd for an upfront enterprise value of £226 million excluding cash on hand (the Acquisition) plus an earn-out component of up to £55 million.
Noel Moran, CEO of PFS said:
“From humble beginnings over a decade ago, PFS started life at a kitchen table and now we are so happy to be listed on the Australian stock exchange as a result of this transaction. It has been a magnificent journey and I am excited about the possibilities and opportunities that this will bring to us over the coming years. I look forward to working with the EML team and cross selling our expanded payment solutions over a global footprint. The EML product suite adds considerably to our existing capabilities and our combined global reach enables the group to service clients worldwide.”
EML Managing Director and Group Chief Executive Officer, Tom Cregan said:
“The acquisition of PFS continues to consolidate EML’s market position as one of the largest FinTech enablers in open banking and prepaid globally.
PFS is highly complementary to EML’s existing solutions suite and adds digital banking and multi-currency offerings to our existing suite, while expanding our global market footprint and ability to cross-sell PFS’ solutions.”
Keefe, Bruyette & Woods’ specialist Financial Technology Investment Banking team in London acted as sole and exclusive financial adviser to PFS, Eversheds Sutherland acted as legal counsel and GBW Accountants Ireland provided accounting advisory.
- 09:00 am
Coleman Research, a leading global provider of primary research, today announced that its Expert Relationship Management (ERM) platform has been chosen by Stax Inc., the global strategy consulting firm, to support them on their journey of digitizing their research data and workflows.
Coleman ERM addresses industry demand for a solution which mitigates the current time consuming, manual processes and replaces them with a platform that consolidates all Expert relationships in one interface, whether they are sourced from internal directories, or provided by third party research vendors.
Mark Bremer, President, Stax Inc., said, “At Stax, we always look to supplement our deep industry expertise with detailed discussions with current industry practitioners. Coleman's Expert Relationship Management solution allows us to bring many different parts of our research onto one standardized workflow and extend our deep industry contacts. While improving our ability to deliver insights and value to our clients, Coleman’s Expert Relationship Management system also provides us tools and technology to put compliance-approved procedures in place that are forward-looking relative to global, privacy-related regulations such as GDPR.”
Kevin Coleman, CEO of Coleman Research, added: “This is an important milestone, not only for us but for the research industry. Stax has been a client of Coleman’s expert network service for many years, and we are delighted to be able to provide them with software solutions to drive automation and meet their needs for a more efficient way of managing their expert research data.”
Coleman ERM is a powerful and easy-to-use solution which offers analysts and end-users quicker access to the right expertise, saving them time through automated scheduling and vetting functions. ERM enables users to meet compliance, audit and reporting requirements and ensures analysts only interact with approved counterparts.
- 09:00 am
Digital Asset Research (DAR), the independent cryptocurrency data and analytics firm, has published the results of its quarterly analysis of cryptocurrency exchanges. This program is designed to identify those venues that meet rigorous measures of integrity, performance and reliability.
Fewer than ten – or less than 4% - of the over 250 exchanges analyzed in this ratings cycle demonstrated the integrity of pricing, volumes, valuations and infrastructure to be deemed as ‘trustworthy’ for investors. These venues include Bitfinex, Bitflyer, Bitstamp, Coinbase Pro, Gemini, Itbit by Paxos, Kraken, Liquid and Poloniex.
This analysis, which is conducted quarterly for clients also aims to reduce the impact of price discrepancies across the fragmented exchange landscape. In prior examinations, DAR found that Bitcoin price discrepancies between ‘trustworthy’ exchanges and data from overall industry exchanges averaged 1.14% - equal to a $1 billion+ gap in market value. These discrepancies were significantly higher for less liquid cryptocurrencies.
“Regulators have repeatedly cited the need for an authoritative price,” said Erin Friez, General Counsel and Executive Vice President at DAR. “It’s still an emerging space, but we’re at the point where pricing, protections and performance have to be as clean as possible to promote accuracy and trust. It’s also a fast-moving environment where some exchanges know how to adapt their trade data in light of scrutiny, which is why we felt a rigorous, evolving quarterly analysis was the ideal approach to provide confidence and foster maturity.”
Accurate, quality cryptocurrency pricing is critical for the industry to shift into its next growth stage. Price distortions hamper the quality of valuations and risk management. Regulators have cited quality of pricing and the potential for manipulation as the primary barrier to the approval of a cryptocurrency ETP.
Appendix: Comments from cryptocurrency exchanges
“We are at a point where the advancement of fair and orderly markets can only be achieved by a conscious decision to support initiatives that introduce robust and authoritative pricing to the digital asset markets. I firmly believe that our focus on transparency, regulatory compliance, and market surveillance will best position Bitstamp and its partners to lead the way towards market maturity and institutional adoption.” - Miha Grčar, Head of Business Development at Bitstamp
"Thoughtful regulation creates healthy markets and Gemini has adopted a compliance-first and regulatory-friendly approach since the start. It's important to provide our institutional and retail investors with a secure and well-vetted marketplace to buy, sell, and store their cryptocurrency," said Jeanine Hightower-Sellitto, Managing Director of Operations at Gemini. "We are proud to consistently set the bar for the highest KYC/AML standards in the cryptocurrency industry.”
“Creating secure markets and maintaining the integrity of those markets is why we got into this business, said Jesse Powell, CEO of Kraken digital asset exchange. “We’re thrilled to be recognized by objective sources for our efforts to become one of the most trusted exchanges for millions of investors each day.”
"Liquid is committed to the development of institutional products in the cryptocurrency market ecosystem. By working with Digital Asset Research, Liquid is committed to facilitate legitimate trading between real buyers and real sellers and investor protections.” - Mike Kayamori, CEO of Liquid
Appendix: DAR cryptocurrency ratings system criteria
DAR’s vetting system features a series of quantitative tests that seek to identify disparities in trade and order book data patterns. These tests are coupled with qualitative measures, focused on infrastructure, governance and other factors correlated with investor protection. To maintain the integrity of its vetting system, DAR reviews and enhances the process quarterly.
Indicative Quantitative Tests | Indicative Qualitative Tests |
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Additional insights on how DAR models its cryptocurrency exchange analysis can be viewed on the firm’s Medium page, in a post titled ‘Clean Prices: A Required Step for Crypto to Mature.’ A detailed report and methodology is also available on request.
- 04:00 am
- 01:00 am
IHS Markit, a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions, today announced that BofA Securities, HSBC, UBS and 3 other global broker-dealers will leverage Counterparty Manager: Outreach360 to manage standardized counterparty questionnaires for the Securities Financing Transaction Regulation (SFTR).
The questionnaires, generated by the International Securities Lending Association (ISLA) and the International Capital Markets Association (ICMA), enable in-scope firms to exchange counterparty requirements for SFTR transaction reporting. Using Outreach360, which connects the largest network of buyside and sellside firms, securities lenders and borrowers can seamlessly convey their unique requirements to multiple counterparties in a universal format.
“The data management requirements for SFTR reporting are massive, and by leveraging Outreach360 to prepare for transaction reporting, broker-dealers and their customers in securities lending and repo markets can share vital information with greater ease,” said Lansing Gatrell, managing director for risk and regulatory compliance at IHS Markit. “As part of our Counterparty Manager platform, Outreach360 helps firms manage the storage and distribution of regulatory and compliance data, which is particularly helpful given the scope of SFTR.”
“As we head into 2020, securities lending participants need to prepare for the daily obligations and counterparty responsibilities associated with SFTR transaction reporting,” said Adrian Dale, director of regulatory policy and market practice at ISLA. “To help firms communicate SFTR requirements with efficiency, the ISLA SFTR working group has drafted standardized questionnaires for bilateral and agent lender use. We support the use of these questionnaires throughout the market.”
Based on feedback from more than 15 banks, Outreach360 will support real-time updates to questionnaire responses and counterparty classification for SFTR. These updates can be automatically exchanged through an API feed, as well as services like the IHS Markit SFTR reporting solution.
Since 2017, IHS Markit and Pirum Systems have worked with leading financial institutions and other design partners to develop the IHS Markit SFTR reporting solution. The solution now has more than 60 design partners and can streamline trade reporting to repositories for repo and reverse repo agreements, securities loans and borrows, commodities loans and borrows, prime brokerage margin lending and collateral re-use.
- 07:00 am
Cardpay announces integration with Boleto, Cash Express and Loterica into its existing list of payment methods in Brazil. With their introduction, ecommerce businesses will be able to unlock the potential of a population of upwardly mobile, yet ‘unbanked’ consumers.
To date, Cardpay seeks to remove a lot of the friction that still exists when it comes to taking payments; with more than 300 local payment methods available through its acquiring platform, it aims to support businesses looking to capitalise on accepting payments from an ever more global population of customers.
Kirill Evstratov, Group CEO of Cardpay, said: “What makes Latin America, especially Brazil, so interesting for us is the fact that there is so much opportunity for businesses, and need from the average user. In spite of hosting a rapidly growing population of over 200 million people, more that 50 million of them are what we would refer to as ‘unbanked.’ This is despite being responsible for a huge proportion of payments; in excess of 800 billion BRL. For businesses that live and thrive on the web, this is a massive financial opportunity. Especially considering that those that are unbanked are constantly looking to increase consumption of goods and services they buy online.
Being able to open the door wide for these companies and facilitate payments acquiring from Brazilian consumers is really exciting for us.”
Online merchants can connect to Cardpay’s platform via API and enable new payment methods for their customers in Brazil. As Cardpay has recently opened a local office in Sao Paolo it is looking to onboard international companies from the variety of sectors including Marketplaces, Travel, Transportation and Information Technology.
