Travelex, a Finablr company and a market leading independent foreign exchange specialist, has today unveiled its new B2B fintech platform, Travelex Business. Travelex Business allows the company’s partners including banks, credit unions, retailers and digital technology companies, to access a broad range of payments and foreign exchange services in one place. The launch of the Travelex Business platform follows a four-year digital transformation project.

Travelex Business leverages the strengths of Finablr’s network and capabilities and combines it with a state-of-the-art cloud-based, API-led platform. The platform provides a seamless way for customers across mature and emerging markets to move money around the world. From cash management to cross border payments and retail currency conversion via APIs, Travelex Business addresses a wide range of enterprise and consumer needs with its omni-channel, multi-currency capabilities. For digital technology companies wanting to offer cross border payments services to their customers, services can be delivered as a white-label offering.

Travelex Business builds on Finablr’s global capabilities and includes three core product suites underpinned by a developer centre which allows customers to explore Travelex services

• Travelex Business Cash is a technology driven solution that allows end users to quickly and securely receive cash, by working with large banks, financial institutions and retailers. This solution features Cash Network and Cash Services, comprising a range of related white-label cash products, from travel money to wholesale banknotes.
• Travelex Business Pay is a cross-border payment platform serving enterprise customers including financial institutions and digital technology companies. It offers two modules, Pay Banking for banks and other financial services providers, and Pay Direct which serves consumers and organisations that need to transfer large amounts of money across borders quickly. Both offer a suite of APIs that enable seamless international money transfer for end customers.
• Travelex Business Cloud is the ideal solution for any business that offers foreign currency services to international customers. It provides a new way for business to financially benefit from international transactions made through mobile apps, ecommerce websites, Point of Sale terminals or ATMs. It includes advanced and flexible Multi-Currency-Processing, and Dynamic Currency Conversion, underpinned by a market leading Dynamic Exchange Rate Engine.
• Travelex Business Digital is a developer platform, that provides access to Travelex Business APIs so partners can embed capabilities and processes into their products and services.

Gareth Williams, Chief Product and Innovation Officer at Travelex comments:

“The platform is the culmination of years of hard work by Travelex and collaboration across the Finablr network. By revolutionising how we work, the technology we use, and the partners we work with, we have combined four decades of experience with a new microservices architecture to build a market-leading global fintech platform. Critically, working with Finablr, we have adopted a modern engineering culture with self-organising teams in order to create and iterate on a new and innovative suite of services.

“Not only does this allow Travelex to continually innovate and improve its products and services, but it gives our customers the services they need within one solution—and the developer centre means that our customers and prospects can experiment with our capabilities at their own convenience. Travelex Business ensures companies get to market quicker, increase revenues and boost customer value with agile services available at the click of a button.”

Blackmoon and Sumsub are joining efforts to meet the FATF requirements for a secure and compliant crypto to fiat exchange environment. Sophisticated compliance and anti-fraud solution enabled Blackmoon to upgrade and secure the process of investing and exchanging currencies for investors.

In 2017, Blackmoon developed an investment platform allowing  the crypto community to access traditional financial markets without leaving the blockchain ecosystem. Recently, Blackmoon launched an exchange within the Platform to provide its users with the opportunity to trade 50+ assets and 200+ trading pairs (including fiat pairs). The platform is built in line with the highest security standards which were validated by a security audit conducted by a Big 4 company. 

Blackmoon selected Sumsub for its crypto exchange as an efficient, reliable and comprehensive compliance and fraud protection solution to maintain investor protection and uphold the regulatory requirements..

“Regulatory and AML compliance is the foundation for a long-term success and a core value of Blackmoon. AML prevention continues to be the greatest challenge for the blockchain industry and the most serious concern for the competent authorities. We firmly believe that market participants play a vital role in building the regulatory confidence by introducing and implementing compliance solutions as innovative as the industry itself. We have chosen Sumsub as our partner to ensure we have the most comprehensive AML checks, compliance & onboarding analytics, liveness tests, fraud controls, and negative database screening with minimal onboarding time. The Sumsub solution enables us to improve the conversion rates and allow the users to use the Blackmoon exchange in a convenient, safe and secure matter,” said Anna Cox, Chief Compliance Officer at Blackmoon.

Sumsub enables fast and engaging onboarding, KYC, AML screening and ongoing monitoring with GDPR-compliant record keeping, to powerful analytics and report generation for regulators, banks and auditors.

Having advised on AML laws in several countries, Sumsub is constantly in touch with banks and regulators with their comprehensive reports welcomed and accepted as a confirmation of legal diligence.  

“In recent years the demand for compliance and anti-fraud increased as businesses are being put under the magnifying glass of strict regulatory commissions, and criminals use businesses as an intermediaries to launder their money. Both checks have crucial importance for the legality and therefore for the life expectancy of any company. As the environment is getting more and more transparent, everybody chooses to be compliant, taking care of their finances and protecting the personal data of their users. Blackmoon is one of the companies who puts compliance forward,” comments Jacob Sever, Co-Founder at Sumsub.

FSS, one of India’s largest payments processor and a leading global provider of integrated payment products, and US-based Oracle Financial Services, will collaborate to enhance digital payments for banks. As part of this strategic relationship, FSS will provide specialized integration and hosting services for Oracle’s cutting-edge Oracle Banking and Payments solutions. FSS will also extend customized solutions to address the corporate and retail payment needs of the banking industry. FSS is a Platinum level member of Oracle Partner Network (OPN).
 
FSS is a leading payments technology provider for 130 plus banks, with a focus on retail and wholesale payments. Fueled by the advent of online and real-time payments and new technologies, such as AI and blockchain, the payments landscape is changing rapidly. Through this effort, FSS and Oracle plan to meet the needs of banks with a centralized payments system that supports real-time payment processing and straight-through processing for cross-border transactions. 

This collaboration will enable banks to successfully execute digital payment strategies, using an enterprise-class, open and modern retail and corporate payments’ solution. This will help banks to integrate payment processing, lower infrastructure overheads, minimize the impact on host systems for implementing regulatory changes, reduce corporate disputes related to payments, and enable SWIFT GPI initiatives for real-time global transactions.
 
Commenting on the collaboration Mr. Nagaraj Mylandla, Managing Director, FSS stated, “Our alliance with Oracle is strategic in nature. FSS’ deep experience in delivering end-to-end payment solutions combined with Oracle Global Payments will help us bring a more comprehensive digital payments offering to banks in the markets where we operate. The collaboration will help our customers streamline digital payments in a seamless and secure manner, improving operational efficiencies, optimizing resources and enhancing the customer experience.” 
 
Commenting on the relationship, Venky Srinivasan, Group Vice President & Head of Sales – APJ & MEA, Oracle Financial Services said, “Banks are under more pressure than ever before to modernize their services to better and more quickly serve customers and remain competitive. They also must improve their own operational processes to reduce costs. The collaboration of Oracle and FSS will enable us to address the needs of banks for streamlined and modernized payments infrastructure whilst reducing cost and complexity.” 
                                                          
Oracle Banking Payments is a complete next-gen payment processing solution that unites disaggregated payment operations in a common shared payments service infrastructure, simplifying operations and maximizing agility and efficiency. The solution is comprised of three components -- core processing, messaging and connectivity and is customizable to the bank’s needs.
 
For enterprises, Oracle Banking and Payments is closely coupled with Virtual Account Management, enhancing customer visibility into capital and liquidity positions and automating the reconciliation process for effective payables and receivables management.
 
Under the umbrella of the agreement, FSS can additionally bundle its end-to-end payment offering with Oracle Financial Services Analytical Applications, Oracle Banking Digital Experience, Oracle FLEXCUBE and Oracle Banking Platform, offering banks a one-stop shop for their digital payment needs.

WorldStream, a fast-growing Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) hosting provider with a 10Tbps global network backbone and more than 15,000 dedicated servers under management for its global client base, announces the launch of its next-generation anti-DDoS platform, WorldStream DDoS Shield. WorldStream R&D and the company’s network-team have worked on the DDoS scrubbing center for a year in total. The result is an anti-DDoS platform equipped with intelligent clustering techniques and a multi-tiered architecture to address the growth of sophisticated DDoS threats.

After more than tripling the size of its R&D department from 3 to 10 engineering employees recently, global IaaS technology provider WorldStream has now released its completely redesigned and re-engineered DDoS mitigation platform, WorldStream DDoS Shield. The new anti-DDoS scrubbing center is located in WorldStream’s company-owned data centers in Naaldwijk, the Netherlands, and equipped with the latest techniques in the field of clustering. By deploying an intelligent clustering technology with a multi-tiered architecture, WorldStream now expects its DDoS scrubbing center to be ‘future-proof’ and able to withstand the largest DDoS attacks as well as advanced ‘under the radar’ attacks for its clients.

“DDoS can be seen as a significant risk for enterprises and virtually all organizations with business-critical applications,” said Nick de Jong, Sales Director of WorldStream. “We’ve seen some very serious DDoS attacks on various types of organizations during the last couple of years, large and small, including high-profile financial brands such as ING, ABN AMRO, and Banco de España. We saw well-known global developer platform GitHub experiencing one of the largest DDoS attacks in history, with an attack peaking at 1.35Tbps. And most recently, in June of this year, messaging service platform Telegram was shut down by a massive DDoS attack. As WorldStream is providing IaaS hosting services to quite some high-profile customers including broadcasters and cloud providers, we want our DDoS scrubbing center to be fully prepared for the latest DDoS developments and trends. The fact that the WorldStream DDoS Shield is now fitted with intelligent clustering technology and a multi-tiered approach to DDoS protection will bring our customers ultimate safety and piece of mind.”

The new WorldStream DDoS Shield powered by intelligent clustering technology is available now for new clients as well as WorldStream’s existing customers - to automatically monitor, detect and filter malicious Internet traffic and protect digital and business assets against the largest and most-advanced DDoS threats. WorldStream’s new DDoS Shield solution features real-time traffic insights, and default as well as custom-made anti-DDoS profiling. The DDoS Shield solution is backed by and operating within the environment of the company’s 10Tbps high-bandwidth global network backbone.

Custom Clustering Technology

 “As the number of dedicated servers under management in our data centers and the volume of our worldwide Internet network traffic have grown massively lately, we needed a better-scaling technology to power our anti-DDoS capabilities,” said Tim Vollebregt, Network Director of WorldStream. “At the same time, we wanted to modernize and further enhance the technology stack behind our anti-DDoS solution. Off-the-shelf products available on the global market were not meeting our demanding and high-scalability anti-DDoS requirements though, so it took our R&D and Network teams about a year to come up with current intelligent clustering-based solution.”

 “Intelligent clustering is a technique in which given interrelated details in Internet traffic get divided into groups called clusters and analyzed as such,” added Mr. Vollebregt. “Based on smart clustering algorithms and a multi-tier approach, we are subsequently able to handle the highest volumes of bandwidth in a sophisticated and highly scalable manner. This intelligent, multi-tiered clustering technology truly fits our high-bandwidth volume requirements. Traditional off-the-shelf products were only analyzing and validating inbound traffic when it comes to high-bandwidth usage. By developing our own intelligent anti-DDoS technology, we’re now able to analyze inbound as well as outbound traffic during a DDoS attack. This maximizes the DDoS-detection accuracy for the overall traffic flow of our high-bandwidth clients.”

 “With the new WorldStream DDoS Shield platform we’re able to handle all kinds of current and future DDoS threats, the high-profile attacks as well as the smaller, sneakier ‘under the radar’ attacks,” added Mr. Vollebregt. “We can scale the anti-DDoS platform on the fly and easily capitalize on the latest DDoS trends. Our Network and R&D teams will have to keep working on it continuously, but the management controls in place allow for quick and flexible responses to evolving and new threat developments.”

ACA Compliance Group (“ACA”) announced today that Carlo di Florio has joined ACA’s leadership team as Global Chief Services Officer (“CSO”).

As ACA’s CSO, Carlo will be instrumental in defining and executing the vision for ACA’s governance, risk, and compliance (“GRC”) service offerings. His responsibilities will include oversight, management, and strategic growth of ACA’s global regulatory compliance, cybersecurity and risk, AML and financial crimes, and performance practices. He also will focus on enhancing ACA’s infrastructure and technology for servicing, managing, and delivering its quality service-based offerings. 

Carlo joins ACA from FINRA where he served as Chief Risk & Strategy Officer and as Co-Chair of the FINRA360 Project Management Office, providing leadership across several high-profile initiatives to strengthen FINRA’s mission impact and overall effectiveness and efficiency.  During his six years at FINRA, Carlo oversaw and supported various offices including Risk & Strategy, Emerging Regulatory Issues, Regulatory Planning and Programs, Business Consulting Group, International Affairs, Litigation and Counsel, Fixed Income Regulation, and SEC Oversight Liaison and Counsel.

Prior to joining FINRA, Carlo served as Director of the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations ("OCIE") where he oversaw the National Exam Program from 2010-2013, which consisted of a team of over 900 examiners across the U.S. At the SEC, Carlo led a comprehensive review and transformation of the exam program including implementing the Risk Analysis and Surveillance Unit, leveraging technology and data analytics to automate the risk monitoring and exam process, improving transparency through annual priorities letters and risk alerts, and promoting industry compliance through proactive industry engagement and conferences. Prior to the SEC, Carlo was a Partner in PwC’s Financial Services Risk & Regulatory Practice.

“I have always admired ACA for its integrity and mission to do right by clients. The strong, trusting relationships ACA has built with its clients and partners is a testament to the culture of the firm. ACA’s commitment to helping clients strengthen compliance, manage risk, and prevent crisis through technology and quality service supports both the strategic needs of clients and the mission of global financial regulators,” said Carlo di Florio, Chief Services Officer at ACA. “I’m looking forward to driving the vision for the future of our services and leading a remarkable team of professionals and industry experts.” 

“Our clients are facing the ever-growing complexity of their compliance responsibilities and they need the right support, guidance, and technology to address those demands. Carlo’s tremendous experience and success developing and leading teams and technologies in both the private and public sectors to support financial services firms and to protect investors will be instrumental to ACA and our clients,” said Jeffrey C. Morton, Co-Founder, Partner and Chief Revenue Officer at ACA.
 

Deutsche Bank Wealth Management is significantly accelerating its Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategy as a new generation of wealthy clients increasingly ask their advisers to help them add purpose to investment performance.

The wealth management business of Deutsche Bank is adopting ESG ratings from MSCI, a leading provider of critical decision support tools and services for the global investment community, to give clients valuable standardised information on non-financial risks and opportunities when making investment decisions.

It is also further extending its ESG product offering across discretionary wealth management and investment advisory, and launching new research, client materials and events.

Fabrizio Campelli, Global Head of Wealth Management, said: “This fast-growing area is of critical relevance for our clients and for the future of our business and society.”

He added: “ESG comes up more and more often in our regular discussions with clients. ESG analysis, guidance and investments are rapidly becoming not just an important component of our client offering but the essential foundation for everything we do.

“A new generation of clients and society as a whole are becoming increasingly aware of the responsibility that comes with wealth and the positive impact that ESG factors can have on returns. They are rightly demanding that we enable them to add purpose to investment performance.”

ESG investing is estimated already to represent more than $30 trillion of assets across five of the world’s major markets, or about a third of global assets under management, according to the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance. Surveys have found that the vast majority of millennials say a company’s ESG track record is important when they are deciding whether to invest.

Deutsche Bank seeks across all its divisions to promote sustainable business, increase transparency and ensure that its risk-management processes help to avoid negative environmental and social impacts arising from its core businesses. The company has disclosed sustainability and non-financial information every year since 2002, most recently for 2018.

Recent Deutsche Bank Wealth Management Chief Investment Office research and roadshows have featured ESG as a central theme. It has also played a prominent role in major client events such as the longstanding Wealth With Responsibility summit in Germany. The keynote speaker at the upcoming Next Generation Innovation Summit in San Francisco in November is Al Gore, the former US Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize-winning environmentalist.

Wirecard, the global innovation leader for digital financial technology, has signed an MoU with UnionPay, the world’s largest card scheme, to form a global strategic partnership. The agreement will support UnionPay’s ongoing international expansion and Wirecard’s growth in China and with Chinese businesses.

With over 7.59 billion cards issued under its brand, amounting to 57.6% of the world’s payment cards in circulation according to the Nilson Report, UnionPay leads the global card scheme market, and is an association for China’s banking card industry. The cooperation between Wirecard and UnionPay will focus on expanding the global acceptance of UnionPay as a digital payment method across all channels. In addition, the partnership will also launch a number of issuing projects, including corporate solutions such as payout products and SCP (Supplier and Commission Payments), and consumer-oriented products in the form of digital wallets for incoming tourists to China.

“As the world’s largest card scheme in terms of card issuance, UnionPay will be one of our key alliances in Asia,” commented Georg von Waldenfels, EVP Group Business Development at Wirecard. “We’re excited about the immense potential this partnership creates for both entities, and to deliver innovative solutions for current and future UnionPay cardholders globally. As a major tourist and business destination, China receives hundreds of millions of travelers every year, which means that the scope of our solutions will also address non-Chinese nationals and enable them to pay with UnionPay nationwide.”

“Through our global strategic partnership with Wirecard, we plan to continue driving our international expansion forward,” added Larry Wang, Vice President at UnionPay International. “We are proud to have an experienced partner in digital financial technology and global payments by our side to provide an even wider range of innovative solutions for UnionPay customers. We look forward to launching our partnership with Wirecard.”

The initial stage of the partnership will focus on launching additional projects in Asia-Pacific, Europe and the US, where both partners already work together for several years. Especially point of sale and issuing solutions will merge with the existing online payment business. Additionally, a consumer solution for the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing is being planned to take advantage of the large number of tourists who will visit the country.

Keesing Technologies, the global identity verification provider, is pleased to announce that its industry-leading Documentchecker database now contains reference data on more than 6,000 ID documents.

Keesing Documentchecker enjoys a reputation as a highly reliable source of detailed reference information on ID documents from over 200 countries and organisations. Following the recent inclusion of the new Romanian and Rwandan national passports and the driver’s license and ID cards of the US States of Alaska and Indiana, the database now contains more than 6,000 ID documents. Another recent addition to Documentchecker is the laissez-passer document issued by the African Development Bank in 2017.

While organisations embark upon digital transformation and increasingly adopt biometric authentication technology, thorough ID document verification remains imperative. Unfortunately, the results of biometric and/or automated verification checks sometimes fail to meet legal requirements or security standards. In these situations, detailed reference information that allows users to perform accurate and reliable ID checks is indispensable. Daniel Suess, Commercial Director of Keesing Technologies emphasises the importance of quality ID reference material: “Many of our customers who check ID documents on a daily basis occasionally fall back on manual verification processes using our reference database, whether or not integrated into our digital ID verification solutions. Hundreds of countries issue thousands of ID documents, which all circulate concurrently. It is near enough impossible to be familiar with all these ID documents and their security features. And even if you are familiar with a given passport or driver’s license, it doesn’t necessarily mean you will recognise a forgery. That’s where Documentchecker comes in. It covers more ID documents than any other database in the world, and provides an unparalleled balance between remote identity proofing on the one hand and detailed ID document verification on the other.”

When it comes to size, quality and level of detail, Keesing Documentchecker has been in a league of its own for decades. Keesing has published reference material for the authentication of security documents for almost a century, starting with Keesing’s Counterfeits & Forgeries, launched in 1924. Since then, the company has continued developing reference material for secured documents, such as banknotes and ID documents, of the highest quality. In the early nineties, the company started publishing its content digitally, via Keesing Documentchecker, which opened the door to digital and remote ID verification, the mainstay of its existing business. All Keesing’s digital ID verification solutions are powered by the Documentchecker database. Daniel Suess: “We’ve focussed on the integrity, adequacy and quality of our database from the very outset, which is why we’re able to support so many international organisations in their daily fight against identity fraud”,

To safeguard the quality of Documentchecker, Keesing closely cooperates with international government agencies, as well as embassies, consulates and central banks. Documentchecker can either be used on a stand-alone basis, or in combination with Keesing’s leading-edge digital ID verification solutions. The content of Keesing Documentchecker is updated weekly.

BidFX is proud to announce and welcome Wai Kin Chan as the Company’s new Head of Asia Pacific. Wai Kin will be responsible for sales team leadership, driving sales growth in the region as well as general management responsibilities across Asia Pacific.

Wai Kin was previously the Head of Asia Pacific Distribution for XTX Markets, a leading quantitative non-bank market maker. Wai Kin has nearly 20 years’ experience in Investment Banks starting in JPMorgan as a Global Markets Fixed Income pricing, trading & risk management developer, client services and support through to Head of Sales in Morgan Stanley for FICC, eCommerce and Prime Brokerage.

“I am truly excited to join a world class team that provides leading edge electronic solutions for an ever-changing financial marketplace” said Wai Kin. “I am honoured to be a part of the mission to change the future of how technology will be used in global and regional markets. Our aim is to combine long-term vision with immediate execution capacity.”

Jean-Philippe Male, CEO of BidFX commented “We are very pleased and honoured to welcome Wai Kin as BidFX’s new head of Asia based in Singapore. This demonstrates our strong commitment to invest in our team and products to improve our value proposition and sustain the high growth of our business.”