• 25.04.2019 -- 05:17 pm

Johan Toll, CTO, Europe - IPsoft speaks about company's cognitive assistant Amelia and 1Bank app

​Finnish fintech company Mash partners with Tink to take the next step in becoming a fully data-driven payment solution provider.  

Stripe launched Stripe Billing in Europe. As a product built on top of Stripe’s core payments infrastructure, Stripe Billing simplifies the recurring billing process for SaaS and subscription-based companies, such as Slack and Meetup in the US.

Subscriptions are a driving force in the internet economy. The subscription e-commerce market has grown more than 100 percent a year over the past five years, and 32 percent of people would prefer to buy goods via subscriptions than one-off purchases. In Europe, subscription businesses are growing even faster than in the US.

With Stripe Billing, European businesses of all sizes now have access to enterprise-grade tools to implement subscription models quickly and at scale. Billing uses Stripe’s advanced machine learning infrastructure to help businesses increase revenue, move more quickly and significantly reduce engineering effort. Instead of manually retrying cards, Stripe Billing’s smart retries use machine learning to figure out the best time to retry failed cards. In the US, where Stripe Billing launched last year, smart retries have led to a 7% lift in recovered revenue, on average, for businesses using Billing. This is revenue that the business would not otherwise have earned.

In addition, Stripe Billing automatically generates invoices on business’ behalf. Instead of being static bills, Stripe’s hosted invoices are interactive payment pages, making it easy for customers to submit a payment instantly, without even opening a new browser tab. In fact, Stripe’s hosted invoices get paid 3 times faster than typical invoices.

As an added benefit for European businesses, Stripe Billing also provides the easiest path to SCA compliance for online subscriptions. Later this year, Europe’s second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) will require Strong Consumer Authentication (SCA) for most online transactions. This radical change will require more than 300 million European consumers to confirm their identity using a second factor (such as a password, phone, or fingerprint) in order to complete a purchase. For businesses accepting recurring payments, this is a particular challenge, as their customers are accustomed to being charged automatically. Stripe Billing will help companies automatically identify precisely which charges require SCA and send customizable emails to subscribers when additional authentication is needed, reducing customer attrition and revenue loss.

Stripe Billing also includes support for value added tax (VAT) across the European Union. VAT can be especially onerous for businesses to validate, collect and report, as rates vary across different countries and industries. With Stripe Billing, European businesses now have tools for handling VAT that are fully integrated with their Stripe account.

“Subscription and SaaS companies have been some of the internet’s greatest success stories up to now, but we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible, especially here in Europe,” said Tara Seshan, Product Manager for Stripe Billing. “With Stripe Billing, companies of all sizes now have access to advanced invoicing tools that will also help them comply with SCA and VAT requirements. We’re excited to power the next generation of European subscription companies as we continue building the economic infrastructure that will grow the GDP of the internet.”

“SaaS, subscription and recurring revenue business models have become a major force for economic growth on the internet across Europe. However, for the vast majority of companies, running a billing and subscription system at any scale is both laborious and costly. This function will become even more complex once the SCA regulations take effect on September 14, 2019 in Europe,” said Jordan McKee, research director at 451 Research. “Stripe Billing aims to mitigate this complexity and expense for European companies of all sizes by smoothing the path to SCA compliance, and democratizing access to enterprise-grade billing tools. Ultimately, tools like Stripe Billing represent an important element of the economic infrastructure that will facilitate the creation of a Digital Single Market across Europe.”

Typeform has been a beta tester of Stripe Billing in Europe. “Stripe Billing provides us with the flexibility we need for our business model. The tax functionalities remove operational inefficiencies by enabling us to remove some internal tooling and manual processes”, said CFO Xavier Castellana.

Beginning today, the new Stripe Billing features are generally available for all European customers

Wealth management fintech firm, JHC Systems (JHC), has launched its Digital Wealth Platform. The product and service offering allows firms to digitise key processes, which will improve efficiency and enhance the experience of end users. This means wealth managers will be freed up to focus on what really matters – client relationships and retention.

The Digital Wealth Platform, which is available to wealth management firms of all sizes, draws from one centralised database and enables operations to be digitised from front-to-back. The modular offering combines mission critical data, processes, people, activities and offices so that they function as one. The use of a single database eliminates the need for inefficient and time-consuming duplication and integration. Instead the platform offers an all-encompassing foundation on which firms can build their digital ecosystem, providing a base for JHC, or third party, digital solutions.

Edward Lopez, Chief Revenue Officer at JHC, said: “JHC has served the industry for over 25 years and we’ve seen it all. During that time, just like our customers, we have had to digitise our offering in order to ensure that we have consistently anticipated the needs of clients as the industry has evolved. This journey means that we have been best placed to develop the Digital Wealth Platform, enabling firms to improve their capabilities today while also providing scalability for the future.”  

As the world of wealth management continues to advance and regulatory demands increase, the importance of having streamlined operations and access to a clean source of data is more important than ever before. JHC recently deployed a solution for LGT Vestra to help them digitally transform the management of their suitability reporting, and saw the manual processing time for its middle office reduced from two months down to one day.  This is just one example of how the Digital Wealth Platform transforms beyond the front office and client engagement.

Lopez concluded: “Although everyone is keen to make the most of digitisation, firms often try to run before they can walk. While other sectors have made strides in their digital capabilities, PwC recently dubbed wealth management “one of the least tech-literate financial services sectors. We have seen this first hand so we know that wealth managers need to build from the ground up, making sure that they have the bare necessities in place first. Our Digital Wealth Platform provides firms with a solid foundation from which they can start thinking about leaping into the future.”

Famous for solutions such as: JHC Neon, JHC Figaro, JHC Digitize and JHC Xenon, JHC provide services for many prominent firms in wealth management sector including Davy, Charles Stanley, LGT Vestra and Societe Generale Securities Services.

Research conducted by Bud reveals nearly half of young Brits (45%) will first turn to family members for financial advice over banks, indicating a prevailing disconnect between millennials and their financial services providers. The headline figure was taken from Bud’s multimedia research initiative called Futureproof, which aims to shed light on the complex relationship people have with their money and act as a driver for meaningful and positive change within the financial services industry. The data was gathered in a quantitative study of 2000 young people between the ages of 22-35.

Far from the stereotype of a feckless generation concerned more with spending on Instagrammable avocado on toast than saving, the research discovers the millennial generation to be multi-faceted, ambitious and autonomous when it comes to their financial lives. Sixty-three percent of respondents are optimistic about their financial future, but the majority (96%) do worry about it. Over half (57%) go as far as to say they feel ‘’stressed out’’ about money.

Interestingly, millennials are not shying away from money issues. Instead, they are actively seeking ways to improve their financial situation. Eighty-percent are proactively looking for financial advice to overcome their worries; specifically, on how to save more (48%), build a passive income (27%), and ultimately become financially independent by working for themselves (53%). Half of the group, however, were dissatisfied with their financial circumstances, a possible clue for why they are turning to family for advice.

Expanding on the findings, Ed Maslaveckas, CEO at Bud said: “We conducted this research to understand the young generation’s money challenges as well as identify areas we can redefine their relationship with it. The findings validate our view all along: the financial services industry isn’t fully meeting the needs of this generation; which explains why millennials are turning to parents for money advice. To solve this issue, the industry must work collaboratively with innovation specialists to create solutions that support people with actual problems and ambitions - whether they are hunting for unique life experiences or planning for the future. Our mission at Bud is to enable this collaboration, by showing how leading innovation and insight-based product development can help create services that put the consumer at the core, and make the money parts of life much, much simpler.”

Industry experts laid out their vision for the future of fintech partnerships and what this means for consumers at a breakfast event hosted by Yolt, the smart thinking money app. Attendees included Leon Muis, CBO at Yolt; Romi Savova, CEO at online pension manager PensionBee; and Peter Goodman, CEO of home insurance start-up Homelyfe by Aventus. Other industry experts present included Frank Jan Risseeuw, CEO at Yolt and Emma Byrne,Head of Communications at the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE).

Fintech collaboration

Yolt CBO, Leon Muis, began the discussion with a focus on the importance of collaboration between fintechs. He said that “The next 12 months will be shaped by users experimenting and creating their own financial ecosystem, mixing and matching the money apps and financial management tools they need. Ever-closer and more seamless in-app integration and collaboration between fintechs is making this easier and easier.”

Payments

Payments also proved to be a popular area of discussion and PensionBee’s CEO, Romi Savova, said that “This year will continue to be all about processing transactions using Open Banking. This is the natural next step for the initiative and, by this time next year, we will be discussing how to make payment transactions even better. Now that the big players in the industry are increasingly coming onboard, we should see an acceleration in the services that will benefit from Open Banking. As an industry, I see us moving from Open Banking to Open Finance and eventually to Open Data.”

Mass adoption

Peter Goodman, Homelyfe’s CEO, agreed that “The next 12 months will definitely place an emphasis on payments, but there is still a lot of work to be done on education. As money apps increase their utility for consumers, we will hopefully see more user case studies appear. When these are shared, I think more people will realise the benefits of Open Banking.”

Emma Byrne, Head of Communications at the OBIE, agreed that mass adoption won’t happen overnight and pointed out that “It won’t be big advertising campaigns alone which raise Open Banking’s profile. Instead what’s needed is for all the players within the Open Banking ecosystem to play their part in building not only awareness and adoption but also trust; ultimately resulting in consumers adopting innovative apps such as Yolt. When customers realise the benefits of these new innovative apps then they too will spread the word.”

The breakfast event marked the beginning of a series of exciting activities for Yolt as it launched its latest Open Banking initiative – Yolt for Business API – offering a single API that covers account information services (AIS) and payment initiation services (PIS), enabling businesses to benefit from the power of Open Banking. This was closely followed by the launch of Yolt Pay Beta, which has seen the money app invite its community to test the early version of its payment functionality. Finally, Yolt announced its most recent partnership with comparison platform MoneySuperMarket, in the first of its kind partner integration, enabling users to compare and switch energy providers all within the Yolt app

Chainalysis, the leading provider of cryptocurrency compliance and investigation solutions, today announced the availability of real-time transaction monitoring for ten cryptocurrencies. The launch of additional cryptocurrencies comes in anticipation of global regulatory guidance that will require automated transaction monitoring for the cryptocurrencies that exchanges and financial institutions support.

Real-time monitoring is now available in Chainalysis KYT (Know Your Transaction), the anti-money laundering compliance solution used by more than 110 cryptocurrency businesses and financial institutions in 36 countries. Access to four of the most popular cryptocurrencies, including Binance Coin, Gemini Dollar, Tether, and USD Coin is available beginning today. Over the past year, the company also rolled out support for Ether, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, TrueUSD, and Paxos Standard, in addition to its original Bitcoin capabilities.

“Global regulation of the cryptocurrency industry is inevitable for this truly borderless financial system to achieve mainstream adoption,” said Jonathan Levin, Co-Founder and COO of Chainalysis. “About a year ago, we made the decision to completely re-architect our technology to scale to support more blockchains. We’ll now be able to add new cryptocurrencies more quickly, an important factor for our customers in meeting regulatory requirements.” 

This year, inter-governmental and domestic bodies will provide clarity on the regulation of virtual assets, including cryptocurrencies. An early draft of guidance from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which will influence how over 180 countries will regulate cryptocurrencies relating to anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism, suggests systems to automate the monitoring and processing of transactions may be required.

Chainalysis KYT is designed to automate the assessment of money laundering risk so cryptocurrency businesses and financial institutions can meet regulatory requirements, and strong regulatory regimes require cryptocurrency businesses to get approval on offerings for any new cryptocurrencies. Chainalysis now covers 10 cryptocurrencies that represent 85% of the top 25 by trading volume, and will continue to onboard additional cryptocurrencies.

“As a New York trust company, we are required to monitor transactions onto and off of our platform. Automated solutions like Chainalysis help us fulfill our regulatory obligations," said Michael Breu, Chief Compliance Officer at Gemini.

Graphing support for the same 10 cryptocurrencies is also available in the company’s investigations product, Chainalysis Reactor, and is already being used by law enforcement to investigate hacks and other illicit activity across different cryptocurrencies. Chainalysis has identified and labeled more than 3,500 real-world services including the top exchanges, merchants, darknet markets, and scams in its products.

Mastercard and BMO Bank of Montreal today announced that BMO will implement Mastercard Send to deliver faster, more cost-effective and transparent international payment services to its Canadian-based business and commercial banking clients. BMO joins a growing list of global banks working with Mastercard to offer their clients a better way to send money around the world.

With Mastercard Send, BMO can offer its clients the ability to send cross-border payments efficiently, seamlessly and securely to bank accounts in more than 75 countries. The partnership will initially focus on bank account transfers, but will expand to include payments to mobile wallets and cards internationally.

“Consumers today expect quicker access to their funds, but businesses face numerous challenges when making cross-border payments,” said Brian Lang, President of Mastercard in Canada. “Mastercard Send helps banks modernize their cross-border services and deliver a better experience for their clients.”

“BMO has a long history of serving cross-border customers across a wide range of industries, and our capabilities and experience in this area are a key differentiator for us,” said Sharon Haward-Laird, Head, North American Treasury & Payment Solutions, BMO Bank of Montreal. “As a result, we have a deep understanding of the complexities involved in running a cross-border business, including as it relates to payments, and this latest offering with Mastercard Send reflects our commitment to providing customers with solutions that deliver against their changing expectations and needs.”

As businesses of all sizes manage an increasingly global marketplace, banks will need cost-effective solutions to meet the evolving needs of their clients. Mastercard Send delivers funds quickly and securely to both cards and non-cards, including bank accounts, mobile wallets and cash-out locations. Consumers with Mastercard Send can receive payments from governments, businesses, non-profit organizations and even other consumers, locally or in another country. With Mastercard Send, banks can improve customer experience and future-proof their cross-border payment service.