In its first year in Canada, North America’s fastest-growing technology conference has officially announced it has now reached maximum capacity for this year’s Collision event, to be held in Toronto’s Enercare Centre from May 20 - 23.

The size of Collision’s now sold-out floor space is set to be seven times larger than Collison 2018, formerly held in New Orleans. The size of the space has also surpassed its flagship event, Web Summit. This year’s Collision is also bringing more than twice as many speakers, startups and investors compared to last year’s conference.

“Canada is having a moment and we can see this with the level of interest for this year’s Collision and its first year since moving it out of the United States. The Collision floor has exceeded all expectations, and our incredible line-up of speakers and new stages have us all very excited for this coming May and for the remaining years in Toronto” - Paddy Cosgrave, Founder and CEO of Web Summit.

Collision has attracted a great deal of international interest to Toronto. Tech giants such as AWS, Airbnb, Microsoft, Cisco, Stripe and Slack alongside a number of multinationals like KPMG, Volvo, Siemens and Johnson&Johnson are partnering over the four-day event. Additionally, top Canadian companies such as Royal Bank of Canada, Interac and Shopify will also have a presence on the conference floor.

Today, Amazon Web Services Inc., an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced the general availability of Amazon Managed Blockchain, a fully managed service that makes it easy to create and manage scalable blockchain networks. Customers who want to allow multiple parties to execute transactions and maintain a cryptographically verifiable record of them without the need for a trusted, central authority can quickly setup a blockchain network spanning multiple AWS accounts with a few clicks in the AWS Management Console. Amazon Managed Blockchain scales to support thousands of applications and millions of transactions using popular open source frameworks like Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum. To learn more about Amazon Managed Blockchain, visit: https://aws.amazon.com/managed-blockchain.

For customers in businesses like finance, logistics, retail, and energy that need to perform transactions quickly across multiple entities, blockchain gives them the ability to execute contracts and share data, with an immutable record of the transactions, but without the need for a trusted, central authority. Customers typically create blockchain networks using frameworks like Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum, but setting up the networks using these frameworks is difficult and time consuming. Each member of a blockchain network has to provision hardware, install software, create and manage certificates for access control, and configure network settings. As usage of a blockchain application grows, there is a lot of work involved in scaling the network, including monitoring resources across all nodes, adding or removing hardware, and managing the availability of the entire network. This complexity is the reason many customers typically need the help of expensive consultants to make blockchain work. Amazon Managed Blockchain is a fully managed blockchain service that makes it easy and cost effective for customers to create and manage secure blockchain networks that can scale to support thousands of applications running millions of transactions. Customers simply choose their preferred framework (Hyperledger Fabric is supported at launch with Ethereum support coming later this year), add network members, and configure the member nodes that process transaction requests. Amazon Managed Blockchain takes care of the rest, creating a blockchain network that can span multiple AWS accounts and configuring the software, security, and network settings.

“Customers want to use blockchain frameworks like Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum to create blockchain networks so they can conduct business quickly, with an immutable record of transactions, but without the need for a centralised authority. However, they find these frameworks difficult to install, configure, and manage,” said Rahul Pathak, General Manager, Amazon Managed Blockchain at AWS. “Amazon Managed Blockchain takes care of provisioning nodes, setting up the network, managing certificates and security, and scaling the network. Customers can now get a functioning blockchain network set up quickly and easily, so they can focus on application development instead of keeping a blockchain network up and running.”

In addition to making it easy to set up and manage blockchain networks, Amazon Managed Blockchain provides simple APIs that allow customers to vote on memberships in their networks and to scale up or down more easily. Amazon Managed Blockchain offers a range of instances with different combinations of compute and memory capacity to give customers the ability to choose the right mix of resources for their blockchain applications. Amazon Managed Blockchain secures certificates for access control using AWS Key Management Service technology, eliminating the need for customers to set up their own secure certificate storage. Unlike existing blockchain technologies that require custom development to extract blockchain network activity data, Amazon Managed Blockchain makes it easy to replicate transactions to Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (QLDB), which will offer a fully managed ledger database with a central trusted authority when it becomes generally available in the coming months. This gives customers the ability to gain advanced insight into key trends, such as who is transacting and what is the rate of their transactions. Amazon Managed Blockchain is available immediately in US East (N. Virginia) and will expand to additional regions in the coming year.

AT&T Business offers a range of edge-to-edge technologies including mobility, cybersecurity, networking, voice and collaboration, cloud and IoT solutions and services to match their customers’ technology needs. “Blockchain is far more than just Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. It’s changing the way companies do business and giving us a new way to solve complex business problems,” said Andy Daudelin, Vice President, Alliances Business Development, AT&T Business. “AT&T’s suite of blockchain solutions now includes Amazon’s Managed Blockchain. Amazon Web Services customers can integrate their blockchain solution with AT&T Business’s IoT and edge-to-edge portfolio. This allows them to automate data collection to improve their ability to manage complex supply chain processes, monitor environmental conditions, improve security, gain real-time insights, and so much more.”

Nestlé is a global food and beverage company with more than 2,000 brands and global distribution across 189 countries worldwide. “Transparency in supply chains is increasingly important to consumers, who want to know what is in their food and where it comes from. While Nestlé has begun to release information on its supply chains for its 15 key commodities, using blockchain technology enables a more precise tracking,” said Armin Nehzat, Digital Technology Manager, Nestlé Oceania. “With Amazon Managed Blockchain, we are able to set up our Hyperledger Fabric network and easily invite our partners to collaborate in our supply chain transparency efforts. Amazon Managed Blockchain will enable our customers to track their products on the blockchain from the farm all the way through to consumption.”

Singapore Exchange Limited (SGX) is Asia’s leading and trusted market infrastructure, operating equity, fixed income and derivatives markets to the highest regulatory standards. “Ever since overcoming the physical limitations of open-outcry trading pits, technology has been fundamental to the transformation of critical financial-market infrastructures,” said Andrew Koay, Head of Blockchain Technology, SGX. “SGX sees blockchain technology as a way to bring innovation to our distributed financial marketplace, and we have developed Delivery-versus-Payment (DvP) capabilities for the settlement of tokenised assets across different blockchain platforms. We are working with AWS to move our existing investments in Hyperledger Fabric to Amazon Managed Blockchain. Amazon Managed Blockchain offers businesses the opportunity to eliminate the heavy-lifting typically required in infrastructure setup. This allows us to focus on adding business value and not worry about managing or scaling the underlying platform.”

MOBI, the Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative, is a non-profit foundation formed to accelerate adoption of and to promote standards in blockchain, distributed ledgers, and related technologies. “Blockchains will increasingly impact the provisioning of mobility services since they enable business networks to reduce the cost of coordinating their activities,” said Chris Ballinger, Founder and CEO, MOBI. “MOBI hopes to build a worldwide network of cities, infrastructure providers, consumers, and producers of mobility services in order to realise the many potential benefits of blockchain technology. Since Amazon Managed Blockchain is a fully managed service, users are able to setup a Hyperledger Fabric network in minutes and easily invite other partners to join. Also, since Amazon Managed Blockchain’s ordering service ensures reliable sharing of data across the network, our participants don’t need to worry about managing infrastructure and building a blockchain solution from the ground up. Instead, they can now focus on building applications for connected car payments, autonomous and electric vehicles, and peer to peer ride-sharing services.”

TrackX Inc. is an enterprise asset management company deploying SaaS-based solutions for the comprehensive tracking and management of physical assets. “Returnable asset tracking including movement and transportation tracing, invoicing, billing, payment and remediation is complicated, and time sensitive,” said Dr. Eddie Shek, Chief Strategy Officer, TrackX. “Blockchain technology has the potential to increase the speed at which we track and reconcile returnable and reusable assets such as beer kegs, intermediate bulk containers, and plastic pallets. Before Amazon Managed Blockchain, we had spent a huge effort building and managing our blockchain infrastructure. Now, we can use Amazon Managed Blockchain to quickly and easily create blockchain networks with Hyperledger Fabric and easily enable our customers to monitor and maintain accountability throughout their entire supply chain. Amazon Managed Blockchain fully manages our blockchain infrastructure and shared network components, enabling us to focus on developing smart contracts to deliver additional value to our customers.”

Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology, and operations. “At Accenture, blockchain is driving business transformation in virtually every industry—from aerospace to not-for-profits,” said Prasad Sankaran, Senior Managing Director of Accenture’s Intelligent Cloud & Infrastructure business group. “Blockchain’s unique characteristics are helping to reinvent complex supply chains, improve business processes, and expand the reach and veracity of our digital identities. As the technology continues to take hold, services such as Amazon Managed Blockchain can drive both cost saving and revenue generating opportunities.”

Eagle clients can now source sanctions data directly from SIX for use within Eagle solutions. The alliance will help to streamline efforts by clients to source, validate, and align sanctions data with existing portfolio data, helping firms minimize the risk of reputational damage and fines that can result from dealing with sanctioned entities.

“Alliances, such as SIX, are critical to our mission of bringing services and capabilities that, when combined with Eagle, can bring a greater solution to our clients,” said Joel Kornblum, Head of Strategic Alliances at Eagle Investment Systems. “SIX is an award winning provider of global sanctions and watchlist data; sourcing this data can help our clients to manage portfolio risk more effectively.”

“Effective sanctions compliance depends on accurate identification of in-scope entities and their issued securities, which are very complex and constantly changing,” said John Mc Manus, Head of Sales Americas, Financial Information, SIX. “Expanding our relationship with Eagle Investment Systems delivers a data solution that empowers their clients to adapt quickly to regulatory demands and sanctions activity, helping them to trade with confidence as a result.”

The Sanctioned Securities Monitoring Service from SIX provides a list of related entities and issued securities of “watched” individuals or organizations who have been sanctioned by regulators or government bodies. The service identifies the regimes under which each is sanctioned, drawing from various international regulatory bodies, including those of the European Union, Hong Kong, United Kingdom and United States, as well as the United Nations. SIX monitors 6.7 million active instruments and over 26,000 changes a week (such as regulator updates and shareholder changes), making it one of the most comprehensive sanctions and watchlist checks in the market.

FINRA today announced the formation of an Office of Financial Innovation that will serve as a central point of coordination for issues related to significant financial innovations by FINRA member firms, particularly new uses of financial technology (fintech).

Bankable, the global provider of “Banking as a Service” solutions, today announced a strategic partnership with Visa (NYSE: V) to enable financial institutions and banks to access real-time and modular banking solutions worldwide.

 The world’s first open banking business lending platform, Trade Ledger, has won a place in the inaugural Hong Kong-UK FinTech Bridge Program announced last night (29th April 2019) at a special event hosted at Mansion House by the Lord Mayor of London.  In just three years Trade Ledger has established its ground-breaking business lending platform on three continents. This latest achievement means Trade Ledger is the first global technology platform to leverage both the AU-UK and UK-HK bridges.

Last night’s event, part of UK Fintech week, also celebrated the 1-year anniversary of the UK-AU FinTech bridge.

Commenting on its selection for the Program by the Department for International Trade and Invest Hong Kong, CEO and co-founder of Trade Ledger, Martin McCann said: “The global economic impact of under-supply of trade finance cannot be underestimated.  But with the advent of open banking and the evolving FinTech ecosystem there is now a once-in-a-generation opportunity to truly revolutionise the global marketplace. Gaining the support of the Department for International Trade, Invest Hong Kong and other partner organisations on the inaugural Hong-Kong-UK FinTech bridge will provide Trade Ledger with new avenues of support to continue to build the network of organisations that can benefit from this banking revolution.

“There was considerable competition to be selected for the UK-HK FinTech Bridge program and Trade Ledger’s success demonstrates our standing, calibre and international capacity, providing the firm with further support to achieve our international ambitions”, concluded Martin McCann.

Trade Ledger automates the end-to-end process of digital business lending for banks and alternative finance providers and has already achieved significant growth, working with large global trade banks & alternative finance providers across three continents.

With a focus on driving industry standards in the global corporate lending sector, it has recently published a white paper – From Open Banking to Global Business Finance – to set out the parameters for ensuring open banking equips SMEs to drive global growth.

The Programmes are highly competitive, with industry experts selecting just 10 companies to take part in each this year (20 companies in total). The businesses have demonstrated notable success in their sector and represent some of the best of UK FinTech’s ecosystem’s growth and innovation potential.  Other companies selected alongside Trade Ledger in the Hong Kong-UK FinTech Bridge include TransferWise, Seedrs and Onfido.

The Fintech Bridge Pilot Programmes have been launched at a pivotal time for UK FinTech, which rose by 18% to $3.3 billion in 2018 and VC investment reached a record $36.6 billion across 2,304 deals, a 148% increase from previous years.

As part of the 2019 FinTech Bridge Pilot Cohort, Trade Ledger will receive a tailored program of support from the Department of International Trade, Invest Hong Kong and other partner organisations including:

•    Support to develop business relationships and opportunities in Hong Kong
•    Specialist professional services assistance (Lawyers, Tax experts, Accountants, Consultants etc.)
•    Connectivity with regulators
•    Curated events and dedicated sessions with industry experts

Volante Technologies Inc., a global provider of software for accelerated end-to-end payments processing and financial message integration, has expanded VolPay-as-a-Service, its cloud-based ecosystem of business services for payments innovation and modernization, with key innovations for U.S. financial institutions.

The new offering is the first to combine corporate to bank connectivity, corporate onboarding, and end-to-end processing of all U.S. domestic and cross-border payment types in a unified on-demand cloud service. In doing so, it addresses two of the most significant challenges for U.S. financial institutions: 74 percent of banks cite slow onboarding and complex integration as the single biggest obstacle to achieving their corporate customer acquisition goals, and four of five corporates express willingness to switch to banks that provide more effective customer-centric services.

To accelerate corporate onboarding, the service simplifies the complexity of handling diverse corporate ERP and acknowledgement formats, and automates the process of connecting corporate customers to their institutional payment service providers through a comprehensive API library. To facilitate efficient end-to-end processing of payments, the service handles all U.S. payment types including Fedwire, ACH/Same Day ACH, Zelle, and TCH RTP clearing and settlement, as well as SWIFT cross-border payments. With all these capabilities available in one 24x7 real-time managed service, U.S. financial institutions can now simultaneously enrich customer experience, speed time-to-market, and reduce total cost of ownership by nearly 40 percent.

“NACHA welcomes the introduction of new services that will facilitate increased adoption and use of ACH, Same Day ACH and ISO 20022 messages within the U.S. financial services ecosystem,” said Jane Larimer, chief operating officer of NACHA. “As-a-service models are an efficient way to enable the smarter, faster payments capabilities that financial institutions desire to support the evolving needs of their corporate customers.”

Christine Barry, Research Director, Aite Group, concurred, “A cloud implementation can provide greater accessibility to complex technology solutions without many of the expenses that come along with an on-premises implementation. As confidence in the security of the cloud—private, public, and hybrid—continues to increase, Aite Group anticipates greater adoption in 2019 by banks of all sizes. Not only are large banks investing heavily in cloud technology, but small banks are also following suit.”

“At Volante, we are committed to providing the most advanced payments solutions to our customers, so that they can stay ahead of emerging trends, and make the most of the growing opportunity in payments,” said Vijay Oddiraju, CEO, Volante Technologies. “With the increasing popularity of software-as-a-service models in financial services, this is an ideal time for U.S. institutions to take a close look at their payments infrastructures, and explore managed-service models to generate superior business outcomes.”

“We are delighted that Volante Technologies is providing corporate to bank automation and end-to-end payment processing services for the U.S. with innovations powered by Microsoft Azure,” said Janet Lewis, VP Worldwide Financial Services, Microsoft. “Volante Technologies delivers significant advantages to financial institutions who are looking to improve customer service and benefit from a reduction in hardware and software costs by adopting cloud technologies.”

Volante Technologies is exhibiting at NACHA’s PAYMENTS 2019 conference. To learn more about payments as a service and VolPay, visit us at booth #201 or schedule a meeting in advance by clicking this link.

The leading robotic process automation (RPA) company, UiPath, is blazing a path to an “automation first” era, closing its Series D investment round, raising $568 million at a post-money valuation of $7 Billion. This was led by Coatue and joined by Dragoneer, Wellington, Sands Capital, and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. Accel, who led the Series A and B rounds, and CapitalG and Sequoia, who led the Series C round, all participated in this round, as did other existing investors, including IVP and Madrona Venture Group. At the $7 Billion valuation, UiPath is one of the fastest growing and highest-valued AI enterprise software companies worldwide.

UiPath closed its Series A funding in April 2017, and since then has expanded on its most important milestones:

●      Cultivated the world’s largest community in RPA, now exceeding more than 400,000 users worldwide across 200 countries;

●      Expanded its worldwide customer base to 8 of the top 10 Fortune 500 Global, and over 50 percent of the top 50 Fortune 500 Global;

●      Delivered six releases of the UiPath Enterprise RPA platform with defense-grade security, launched UiPath Go!, integrated AI by adding new capabilities like AI Computer Vision, and created an open and extensible architecture that has made UiPath the platform of choice for third-party RPA and AI development;

●      Increased its annual recurring revenue (ARR) from $8 million to over $200 million;

●      Grew its employee base to over 2,500, a 16x increase during the period.

“We are at the tipping point. Business leaders everywhere are augmenting their workforces with software robots, rapidly accelerating the digital transformation of their entire business and freeing employees to spend time on more impactful work,” said Daniel Dines, UiPath co-founder and CEO. “UiPath is leading this workforce revolution, driven by our core determination to democratise RPA and deliver on our vision of a robot helping every person. I am humbled by the amazing support our customers, partners and investors give us every day, inspiring us to work harder to evolve RPA as the platform that not only unlocks the true potential of AI, but also other emerging technologies. We are just getting started.”

Recent customer additions include American Fidelity, BankUnited, CWT (formerly known as Carlson Wagonlit Travel), Duracell, Google, Japan Exchange Group (JPX), LogMeIn, McDonalds, NHS Shared Business Services, Nippon Life Insurance Company, NTT Communications Corporation, Orange™, Ricoh Company, Ltd., Rogers Communications, Shinsei Bank, Quest Diagnostics, Uber, US Navy, Voya Financial, Virgin Media, and World Fuel Services.

UiPath’s commitment to delivering the best RPA solution and creating a powerful, open and transparent team has garnered significant recognition:

●      Listed in CB Insights’ AI 100, a list showcasing the 100 most promising private artificial intelligence (AI) companies in the world;

●      Named in the Forbes 2018 Cloud 100, snagging the fourteenth spot on the list;

●      Ranked the 26th fastest growing company in North America on the 2018 Deloitte Fast 500;

●      Named a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Robotic Process Automation, Q2 2018; and

●      Given more than ten Comparably Awards in categories including: Best Place to Work, Best Places to Work in New York region, Best Outlook (large companies), Happiest Employees, Best Engineering Teams 2019, Best Product Teams 2019, Best Company for Women, Diversity, Perks & Benefits and Compensation.

“UiPath is improving business performance, efficiency and operation in a way we’ve never seen before,” said Philippe Laffont, founder of Coatue Management. “The company’s rapid growth over the last two years is a testament to the fact that UiPath is transforming how companies manage their resources. RPA presents an enormous opportunity for companies around the world who are embracing artificial intelligence, driving a new era of productivity, efficiency and workplace satisfaction.”

“UiPath is enabling the critical capabilities necessary to advance how companies perform and how employees better spend their time,” said Greg Dunham, vice president at T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. “The industry has achieved rapid growth in such a short time, with UiPath at the head of it, largely due to the fact that RPA is becoming recognised as the paradigm shift needed to drive digital transformation through virtually every single industry in the world.”