The global financial platform, Revolut, announces new senior appointments to local European leadership teams, marking a major milestone in the company’s global growth and expansion strategy.

Lithuania

Virgilijus Mirkės has been appointed CEO of Revolut Lithuania. Virgilijus is responsible for Revolut’s overall operations in the country including recruiting and co-managing the team in Vilnius, working with senior management to define and implement the European strategy for Revolut’s regulated entities, primarily focusing on payment, deposit and credit products, and developing a strong relationship with regulators in Lithuania and beyond.

With 25 years’ banking experience, Virgilijus brings a wealth of experience to the role. He was previously CEO for SEB Investment Management and Head of Capital Markets for SEB, as well as spending 3 years in Canada with Scotiabank Technology Application Group. 

Other senior executives in the leadership team include Jurgita Šaučiūnienė, CFO, who has 20 years’ banking experience including CFO for Luminor Bank, and Raimondas Berniūnas as CRO, with 20 years’ banking experience, previously Head of Risk at SEB.

Revolut is in the final stages of operationalising its existing European EMI and Banking licences in Lithuania, with these entities preparing to provide services to Lithuanian clients, as well as providing a contingency option for European services in the event of a hard Brexit. This follows on from the successful conclusion in June 2019 of the parliamentary enquiry into Revolut which concluded with no adverse findings.

Revolut has hired 62 roles in Lithuania in 2019 to date.

Ireland

Revolut has appointed Joe Heneghan as CEO of Revolut Ireland. Joe will be responsible for building Revolut’s business in the Republic of Ireland. He will be the senior leader defining and implementing the Irish business strategy, including maintaining and expanding Revolut’s offering to best suit the needs of its customers, while maintaining the highest governance and compliance standards. While Revolut progresses its application for relevant Irish regulatory licenses, Joe will also be the in-jurisdiction point of contact for the regulator and relevant stakeholders, responsible for building trusted relationships.

Joe brings over 20 years’ banking experience to Revolut. He spent 14 years at Ulster Bank in senior roles such as Head of Risk Management, Director of Customer Experience and Products, and most recently Chief Administrative Officer. In his role at the third largest commercial bank in Ireland, Joe led a team of over 600 in improving service delivery, cost management and customer experience. Previous roles included Head of Product Management at First Active plc and Marketing Manager with Permanent TSB bank. 

Commenting on the appointments, Richard Davies, Revolut’s Group Chief Operating Officer said “As we continue to implement our expansion strategy to bring great value and amazing digital experience to fit customers globally, it’s vital that we build the strongest teams with the best skills and experience to deliver this.  As banking veterans, Virgilijus and Joe come with a huge amount of experience growing businesses in highly regulated environments as well as building solid relationships with regulators. We’re really pleased to have them on board.”

Abu Dhabi Global Market (“ADGM”), the award-winning international financial centre, has taken its global FinTech talent-discovery road show (“FinTechAD Tour”) to Riyadh.

Riyadh is the final stop on the MENA region leg of the FinTechAD Tour, co-organised by ADGM and Unbound - the global innovation ecosystem builder. In total, the FinTechAD Tour is visiting 17 cities across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

Three outstanding companies have emerged from the MENA region and secured places at ADGM’s flagship festival, FinTech Abu Dhabi, (“FinTech AD”) in Abu Dhabi, between 21-23 October.

At FinTech AD in October, the winners of national events will benefit from the opportunity to:

• Form part of the FinTech 50:
• Join other FinTech companies in applying to enter the ADGM FinTech AD Innovation Challenge:

The overall winners of the FinTechAD Innovation Challenge will be invited to relocate their business to Abu Dhabi for two years and win subsidized housing, office space and health insurance in Abu Dhabi.

The MENA region winners of the FinTechAD Tour are:

• Amman: AmwalCom
• Cairo: XPAY
• Riyadh: FlexxPay

The Riyadh event followed visits to Amman and Cairo, and was another huge success, with a fantastic turnout from companies and entrepreneurs. Those in attendance benefited from early access to institutions and investors who will attend FinTech AD in October and had the opportunity to take part in pitching sessions sharing their FinTech solutions.

The FinTech AD Tour now moves on to Casablanca on 19 September. This global search is part of ADGM’s mission to identify companies who wish to scale internationally and develop disruptive products and services, to solve challenges identified by ADGM in:

• Financial Inclusion;
• RegTech & SupTech;
• Banking & Finance;
• Insurance;
• Digital Marketplaces;
• Wealth & Asset Management; and
• Security & Trust

Wai Lum Kwok, Senior Executive Director, Capital Markets, Financial Services Regulatory Authority of ADGM, said:

“ADGM is excited that the FinTech AD Tour has received such strong support in all the cities it has visited. The calibre of participating FinTech companies and entrepreneurs has been extremely impressive and it shows how much talent is just waiting to be discovered. Our tour is an integral component of the FinTech Abu Dhabi Festival. As an international financial centre and a FinTech Hub in MENA, ADGM is committed to nurturing emerging tech and FinTech enterprises to thrive and grow locally in Abu Dhabi and globally.”

Daniel Seal, Founder and CEO of Unbound, said:

“So far, the FinTech AD Tour has been to cities across Africa, Asia, Central Asia, Europe and the MENA region. It has now just completed the penultimate city in global tour. We have been so lucky to witness so much talent and innovation during the tour and choosing winners has been extremely difficult. I can’t wait to see what the other stops on our world tour have to offer as the bar has been set very high so far.

“As an entrepreneur myself, it is very special to me to be involved in a project that serves to elevate grassroots talent and celebrate the boldest ideas and initiatives driving the FinTech industry.”

Israeli startup GK8, which provides secure end-to-end management of digital assets, has completed the development of a patented technology for sending transactions to the blockchain without any direct or indirect internet connection. GK8 is now emerging out of stealth mode and announcing that it has completed a seed funding round of $4 million, led by Check Point co-founder Marius Nacht and Israel Discount Capital, Israel Discount Bank Investments Arm, with the participation of investors such as the blockchain VC firm EdenBlock, iAngels, IDEAL-HLS, StratX and Israel Innovation Authority.

The company was founded in July 2018 by the CEO Lior Lamesh and the CTO Shahar Shamai, who previously protected the State of Israel’s strategic assets against cyber-attacks. GK8’s advisory board includes cryptography expert and Zcash founding scientist Prof. Eran Tromer and Ilan Levanon, formerly the head of cybersecurity in an Israeli intelligence unit.

GK8 is currently targeting financial institutions, custodians, exchanges and hedge funds which hold cryptocurrencies.

GK8's custodian technology is already operational and helps to securely manage digital assets for clients such as eToro, a global multi-asset trading and investment platform. GK8's customers manage a total of more than $1 billion in digital assets.

Current custodian solutions used by financial institutions and state-owned enterprises do not meet institutional scale security standards. In addition to existing security protocols, digital assets based on blockchain technology need a higher security standard since signed transactions are irreversible. Unfortunately, the current blockchain wallet solutions, categorized into “cold wallets” and “hot wallets”, are subject to major cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Cryptocurrency thefts, scams, and fraud worldwide led to the stealing of approximately $4.26 billion in the first six months of 2019 alone.

To meet this challenge, GK8 experts have developed proprietary cryptographic techniques that enable real-time blockchain transactions of digital assets without any need for an internet connection. These techniques provide a secure environment to sign blockchain transactions and execute automatic reconciliation confidently. The company’s techniques, protected by five registered patents, can bypass core assumptions related to cryptocurrency transfers and eliminate attack vectors to any asset transfer.

These capabilities allowed GK8 to develop the world’s first and only secured cold wallet with hot wallet functionalities. As a result, digital asset transfers secured by GK8 become inaccessible to criminal hackers or sponsored cyber-attacks. Based on these capabilities, GK8 developed a fully operational end-to-end encrypted system for managing and safeguarding digital assets beyond the reach of hackers.

Lior Lamesh, co-founder and CEO of GK8, noted: “Shahar Shamai, GK8’s co-founder and CTO, and I, found security vulnerabilities in one of the most secured cold wallets in the market. After we saw how easy it was, we understood that hackers will invest millions to steal billions, and we decided to develop a secured end-to-end institutional tool for managing digital assets.”

Lamesh concluded: “Today, GK8 has a full working solution which is already securing customers who manage around $1 billion for global clients, protected by 5 patents and enjoy the trust and backing of leading cyber-security opinion leaders, partners and investors. This is supplemented by our strong team of cyber-security experts and developers, whose ability to safeguard money is proven, and this has led global organizations to trust our ability to securely manage their digital assets.”

“GK8 develops a high security custodian wallet solution, using an exciting and unique approach to cold wallet security,” commented Prof. Eran Tromer, Zcash founding scientist and member of GK8’s advisory board. “Inspired by high assurance critical infrastructure systems, it uses state-of-the-art cryptographic techniques to minimize the wallet’s attack surface and block the influence of a potential attacker on security-critical components.”

Eliahu Assif, CISO at eToro, noted: “GK8 provides us with a solution for the entire spectrum of threats, which also includes state sponsored attacks, like the recent attacks we’ve seen on financial industries worldwide.” 

 SumUp (sumup.co.uk), today announces the appointment of Alexander von Schirmeister, a former executive at eBay, as its Executive Vice President, Europe.

Alexander brings to SumUp a wealth of experience in both marketing and general management, and most recently held the post of chief digital, technology and innovation officer (CDTIO) at electronics distributor RS Components, where he drove transformation. Prior to this, he was VP, EMEA Expansion & Cross-Border Trade at eBay (as part of over a decade of leadership positions at the company) and a member of the UK client advisory board at Facebook.

The appointment of Alexander follows the recent significant news of SumUp raising a €330m facility - from Bain Capital Credit, Goldman Sachs Private Capital, HPS Investment Partners, and TPG Sixth Street Partners - to accelerate growth and acquire new merchants in its 31 markets across the globe. The company has been broadening its product portfolio, both internally and through the acquisition of Debitoor, for accounting and invoicing, and Shoplo, for ecommerce and marketplaces.

Alexander von Schirmeister, comments “I’m very pleased to be joining SumUp on its growth journey and to be part of an incredible team, which has made SumUp the successful company it is today. SumUp has a simple, yet particularly powerful value proposition which is completely changing the payments landscape around the world, and I believe that we will see this space develop even further over the coming years. By staying very close to its core customers and understanding their evolving needs, SumUp is uniquely positioned to remain the preferred partner to our merchants, and I am very excited to be part of this future.”

Marc-Alexander Christ, Co-Founder of SumUp, comments: “The appointment of Alexander comes amid a busy and exciting year for SumUp, which is now one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the world. Alex brings unrivalled skills and experience of expanding major international retail brands across Europe, and his expertise will be essential in our company’s continued work towards becoming a global market leader for merchant technology. We are certain that with Alex on board we can further enhance SumUp’s technology leadership position and drive the development of our business and new services.”

SumUp is also set to continue its track record of over 120% year-over-year growth, with an ever-expanding team containing 1500+ of the world’s best talent situated across 15 offices on three continents.

SumUp was named Europe’s fastest-growing company in the ‘Inc. 5000’ in 2018 and has over 4,000 companies joining the platform daily. With its card terminals relied upon by over 1.5 million users globally, SumUp expects to generate over €200m in revenue this year.

SIA has created the digital platform that enables passengers in Rome to pay for their tickets in Atac’s subway and railway network directly at the turnstiles using contactless credit and debit cards (MasterCard, Visa and American Express), also virtualized on smartphones and wearable devices, in a simple, fast and secure manner.

The innovative Tap&Go service is based on SIA’s technological infrastructure that connects all the POS terminals on which contactless cards can be used to open the turnstiles of the A, B/B1 and C metro lines and of the Rome-Lido, Rome Viterbo and Termini-Centocelle railway line stations as well as payment circuits and Atac’s fare calculation system.

This is a further significant step towards digital transformation in public transport. The new Atac payment system places Rome among a small group of cities in Italy and around the world that offer similar services, such as Milan, London, Moscow, Chicago, Singapore and Vancouver.

The advanced features of the platform, which support the development of Smart Mobility, allow Atac to manage, authorize, account for and settle payment transactions and calculate the best fare according to the number of journeys made.

For the first time, thanks to SIA’s infrastructure, travelers can also use their credit card as if it were a monthly pass: an innovative feature available to users who, in fact, after purchasing their travel pass on the Atac online portal using a contactless credit card, can use the same card to travel throughout the Atac public transport network.

"We are particularly proud to have contributed to the launch of this new Tap&Go system. From today Rome too can be counted among the most innovative cities in Italy thanks to SIA’s technology already adopted for contactless payments in the Milan subway system and on board ‘vaporetto’ boats in Venice. Our country is gradually accelerating the process of digitalization of the Public Sector and above all in the area of mobility and public transport. Indeed, the hi-tech platforms we have developed can certainly promote the creation of further initiatives aimed at improving the user–experience of citizens by simplifying their daily life through reliable and secure payment services", commented Eugenio Tornaghi, Marketing & Sales Director of SIA.

Volante Technologies Inc., a global provider of technology and software as a service to accelerate digital transformation and payments modernization, today announced it has launched financial message validation on the cloud, available as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) on the AWS Marketplace. 

Volante’s new validation offering is available as a microservice to any users looking to test their SWIFT Standards Release (SR) 2019 messages ahead of go-live on November 17th, 2019. The validation service provides APIs for validating messages, ready for applications to use. The service enhances the validation process by not just identifying valid/invalid messages, but also returning a list of errors encountered. This information helps reduce the frequency and severity of formatting errors, and minimizes the risk of rejected messages. As a result, users will enjoy increased straight-through processing rates, greater efficiency, and lower cost for their financial messaging operations.

The cost for the service is based on hourly use rather than by message count or data usage, making it an affordable and scalable service. In order to improve security, users purchase dedicated hosting services in which they deploy the validation service AMI, giving them complete control and transparency. 

Venkat Malla, Co-founder and Head of Product Management, Volante Technologies, said, “At Volante Technologies, we are constantly looking at ways to help our customers simplify complexity by introducing automation in the processing of financial messages. Making our new message validation as a service offering available as an AMI on AWS is an important further step in this direction. The SWIFT validation API, which will help anyone looking to validate their SR 2019 messages in advance of the live date, is only the first of many cloud based services we plan to launch in the future.” 

Deepak Gupta, Global Head of Software as a Service, Volante Technologies, said, “Pressure from multiple sources is forcing banks and financial institutions to explore every avenue to improve time-to-market and increase operational efficiency. As a result, a growing number of institutions are now taking a ‘cloud first’ strategy to meet these demands and help lower the cost of technology ownership. Volante has partnered with the best cloud providers in the industry, and we are delighted to offer this new validation service on the cloud along with other cloud-native Volante solutions such as VolPay for payments processing.” 

TIBCO Software Inc., a global leader in integration, API management and analytics, today announced its TIBCO NOW™ conference, taking place September 25-26, 2019 in London, is sold out. Following sold-out events in both Singapore and Chicago, the global tour brings together customers, partners, and TIBCO thought leaders to share best practices on how to innovate everywhere and digitally transform business.

Through a culmination of insightful keynotes and a wide variety of breakout sessions, attendees will hear from influential speakers, including executives from TIBCO and several of the company’s most prominent EMEA customers, such as Three UK, Campari Group, and Invitalia. TIBCO NOW takes place as today’s leading organisations look to innovate beyond the competition, with the two-day event guiding attendees on strategies to digitally transform their business through the adoption of emerging technologies and the data-driven mindset that is now crucial to success.

The user conference will follow three tracks – Augment Intelligence, Interconnect Everything, and Accelerate Innovation – aimed at addressing the pressing needs of organisations looking to innovate throughout their digital journeys. Attendees will hear a series of announcements relating to product, features, and connectivity updates, alongside keynote presentations, breakout sessions, certification programs, a Technology Hub, filled with sponsor and TIBCO demonstrations, as well as networking opportunities with some of the most innovative companies across EMEA. Additionally, the TIBCO Trailblazer Awards will be presented at the conference, highlighting exceptional examples of companies embracing TIBCO technology in their business strategies.

“Successful businesses are founded on technology, strategy, and culture. The TIBCO NOW Global Tour is the culmination of all those things, offering an unrivaled platform to inspire and educate attendees on how to leverage data to power the digital enterprise,” said Dan Streetman, chief executive officer, TIBCO. “TIBCO provides the keys to unlock data to drive innovation and turn that into a competitive differentiator.”

Acronis, a global leader in cyber protection, today announced a $147 million investment round led by Goldman Sachs. The investment round sets the valuation of the company to over one billion dollars and enables Acronis to expand its engineering team in Singapore, Bulgaria and Arizona, build additional data centers, and grow through acquisitions. Additionally, Acronis will use the capital to accelerate the business growth in North America in partnership with Acronis SCS, an independent software vendor and distributor for the public sector.

Founded in Singapore in 2003 and incorporated in Switzerland in 2008, Acronis now has more than 1,400 employees in 18 countries. Acronis solutions are trusted by more than 5 million consumers and 500,000 businesses, including 80% of the Fortune 1000 companies. Acronis cyber protection products are available through 50,000 partners and service providers in over 150 countries in more than 30 languages.

“We are excited about Goldman Sachs‘ investment,” said Serguei Beloussov, founder and CEO of Acronis. “In 2018, Acronis achieved 20% business growth, and in 2019 it is on track for over 30% growth with the Acronis Cyber Cloud business growing by over 100%. Recently we announced the Acronis Cyber Platform, enabling third-parties to customize, extend, and integrate our cyber protection solutions to the needs of their customers and partners. The investment round led by Goldman Sachs will help us to fast-track the product development through acquisitions of companies and additional resources, and accelerate the growth.”

With the funding round led by Goldman Sachs, Acronis can increase its engineering capabilities and acquire new teams and technologies to accelerate the development of the Acronis products:

• Acronis Cyber Protection solutions for data safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security.
• Acronis Cyber Platform that enables third-party developers to customize, extend and integrate cyber protection into their solutions
• Acronis Cyber Infrastructure that provides the most cost-efficient and secure environment for running cyber protection solutions and data storage.
• Acronis Cyber Architecture that guarantees the privacy of data and gives customers the full control of data location.
• Acronis Cyber Cloud that enables service providers and enterprise IT to deliver cyber protection services to end customers.

“We are excited to invest in Acronis at this stage of rapid growth,” said Holger Staude, Vice President GS Growth. “The traditional backup and data protection market is changing due to an innovative solution delivered efficiently by Acronis Cyber Protection through a vast channel of service providers.”

The investment round will help Acronis to accelerate delivery of the vision of cyber protection, which combines traditional data protection and cybersecurity into one integrated solution addressing all Five Vectors of Cyber Protection– ensuring the safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security of data (SAPAS).

Expanding Vision and Ecosystem of Acronis Cyber Protection

The upcoming Acronis Global Cyber Summit in Miami will take place on October 13-16, 2019. The Summit will be the largest gathering of service providers, resellers, and software developers dedicated to building a robust business on Acronis Cyber Platform, delivering cyber protection to customers of any size.

Payrexx - a fast-growing payment provider in the DACH region - will integrate with the EU payment fintech and merchant acquirer, Clearhaus, for processing Visa, Mastercard, Google Pay and Apple Pay payments online. The partnership will bring two quickly expanding fintech players together to offer superior payment solutions to online stores across Europe.

Every e-Commerce business that accepts card payments, requires a payment provider - that provides the payment part of the checkout flow in the online shop - and a merchant acquirer - that handles transactions between the shop and the shop’s customers. Integrations between payment gateways and merchant acquirers make it possible for these two solutions to work together. Such strategic alliances are important for the development of e-Commerce technology landscape, the latest one being between Payrexx and Clearhaus.

Both companies were founded in 2015 and have grown quickly since; and today, their combined customer-base totals over 27,000 e-Commerce businesses of all sizes. “Clearhaus and Payrexx were a perfect match from the start, as our two companies have a similar innovation-driven culture - making it easy for our teams to work together towards a common goal,” says Clearhaus’ CEO, Claus Methmann Christensen. “Payrexx is a modern platform that is constantly developing smart features for merchants. We’re proud to partner with such a progressive company, and look forward to this strategic entry into the DACH markets,” he adds.

“We work with many acquirers and are constantly looking to add new integrations to our product. Clearhaus stood out from the pack because of their technically strong platform and APIs,” says Ivan Schmid, CEO, and Co-founder of Payrexx. The integration will enable a seamless flow of detailed transaction data between both solutions, thereby improving data transparency for customers and helping them make better business decisions.

“Partnerships and integrations drive the payments industry forward and bring better technologies to the market. We currently partner with over 30 payment gateways across Europe and will continue to forge new alliances in the years to come,” concludes Mr. Christensen.