BELLIN, a global leader in providing web-based treasury software and services for multinational corporations, has successfully integrated SWIFT gpi for Corporates (g4C) technology in its tm5 treasury management system. BELLIN client Darling Ingredients Inc. just went live with g4C and has processed the first g4C payments in tm5, together with JPMorgan Chase bank. This makes BELLIN the first treasury management system provider amongst the select group of SWIFT gpi for Corporates Early Adopters to offer and successfully implement this new, ground-breaking, fast and transparent method of exchanging cross-border corporate payment messages directly from a treasury management system.

SWIFT gpi for Corporates is a multi-bank payment tracking solution that enables corporates to achieve complete visibility of the status of all their cross-border payments in real time. The key feature of the solution is the standardized tracking of payments across different banks by SWIFT.

Release 19.1 of tm5 by BELLIN, rolled out in April 2019, now technically supports SWIFT g4C technology based on MT101 messages. Support for ISO 20022-based messages for bulk payments from ERP systems that contain a unique tracking reference (UETR) will follow later this year.

In June 2019, SWIFT will make the gpi for Corporates service available to all SWIFT corporate customers. This will then enable all BELLIN clients who use the BELLIN SWIFT Service and have their own BIC to introduce gpi for Corporates, provided a customer’s banks support gpi for Corporates. Various major banks have already added this to their portfolio, others are soon to follow.

“We are very proud to see this new era in cross-border payments come to life in our TMS, together with our pilot customers, their banks and of course SWIFT,” remarks Karsten Kiefer, Product Manager SOLUTION MANAGEMENT at BELLIN. “The speed, traceability and transparency of the first gpi for Corporates payments that have been processed are second to none.”

Early on, BELLIN was spearheading Early Adopter development by completing the testing phase. With the technology now live, BELLIN is once again showcasing its drive for innovation and the strong payments capabilities of the tm5 TMS.

First and long-time investor Amerborgh sells a part of its stake in Ohpen to NPM Capital, that upon the transaction, will have a 35% stake in Ohpen. Amerborgh wanted to sell this stake to finance ongoing and future projects, like the arts and culture centre "het HEM" in Zaandam.

Ohpen is a fast-growing Fintech company. The Ohpen SaaS, cloud native core banking platform administers retail investment and savings accounts for banks and other financial institutions.

Rutger Ruigrok, managing director at NPM Capital explains: “The technology sector is an increasingly important focus point in our investment portfolio. Already, we have had Ohpen in sight as one of the most promising technology companies that we have seen in the past few years. We are impressed with their achievements over the past ten years: a cloud native core banking engine, an impressive customer base and a wonderful foundation for further growth. We are very enthusiastic about now being part of their future."

Having the new shareholder on board means a broadening of our options to finance future growth, although Ohpen can still advance with the growth capital that we raised early 2018, says Matthijs Aler, CEO of Ohpen. “With Amerborgh and now also with NPM, we have a well-balanced long-term shareholder structure that enables Ohpen to realize all of its future growth ambitions. I am really looking forward to working with the NPM team.”

Ohpen is the world’s first cloud native core banking provider and became a market leader in the Dutch midsize banking market over the past few years. In the near future, Ohpen will extend its services to large banks and the pension market.

Michel Vrolijk, managing director at Amerborgh Netherlands is happy with the fact that the company decided to invest in Ohpen ten years ago. “Our expectations at the time have always been exceeded. We hope to be a partner of Ohpen’s incredible adventure for a long time to come."

Flywire, a company that solves complex payment problems for educational institutions and their students around the world, today announced the next strategic step in its partnership with TRUE North, a Canadian-based provider of online systems for information management, tracking, collaboration, and reporting for international student programs. The companies have integrated their solutions – connecting the application, enrollment and cross-border payment and receivables processes to provide schools, international agencies and student families increased transparency and convenience. Together, the companies will serve school districts in Canada to better support the recruitment of international students.

As Canadian School Districts continue to experience international program growth, so too come the complexities of supporting the application and payment process from many foreign countries. 

The TRUE North / Flywire solution integration, which is available today, enables schools to simplify the international application enrollment, payment and receivables processes for both themselves and prospective student families.

TRUE North’s secure, multi-user, web-based system manages the information tracking, reporting and collaborative needs of international education programs. Flywire complements this by providing a payment experience that is familiar and local to families, offering flexible payment options from over 240 countries and backed by around-the-clock multilingual support. With Flywire, institutions can offer students and families a convenient and secure payment experience – customized by country and currency – while accelerating funds flow and streamlining operational expense. To date, the company has processed over $10 Billion for over 1,800 clients worldwide.

“At TRUE North we are committed to helping international students who want to study in Canada. We are excited to be partnering with Flywire and are confident this integration will simplify the complexities of international payments and add value for international students, agencies and schools,” said Blair  Hope, who co-founded TRUE North along with Jason Schaad.

“By enhancing student activity visibility from the time of application through enrollment and payment, we help eliminate the manual effort typically required on the part of the schools,” said Sharon Butler, EVP Global Education of Flywire. “At the same time, we provide a seamless payment experience for student families that enables them to put more focus on ensuring a smooth transition for their students.”

Igor Galkin, Head of Global Business Development and Sales at Libertex Group, said, “Lyft held an IPO at the end of March, 2019. Its shares are one of the most interesting instruments of this season. We’re glad to offer our clients CFD for Lyft shares and open new trading opportunities for them.”
 
CFD on Lyft have a huge potential for effective trading because of two key reasons: first, they allow traders to diversify their trading strategies, and second, after the IPO they are quite volatile. Long-term investors can also find Lyft to be of interest, seeing as there is a good potential for share price growth.
 
Lyft shares will be available on the Libertex trading terminal starting April, 2019.

A new deposit acquisition strategy capitalizing on cutting-edge technology and globalized market opportunities.

Praxia Bank, the new Greek digital bank, announces the kickoff of its partnership with Raisin, Europe’s leading deposits marketplace, by capitalizing on technological innovation and globalized market opportunities. Praxia Bank is committed to attracting deposits from Europe’s leading marketplaces. In this context, Praxia Bank will be offering deposit products in Germany through WeltSparen, Raisin’s German deposits platform. Praxia Bank’s product offering, to be fully launched in the fall of 2019, comprises products and services addressing current digital trends seeking to offer an advanced banking experience.

Praxia Bank’s objective to be part of an international online deposit market place constitutes a core component of its business plan. Thus, Praxia Bank will take advantage of the operational flexibility offered by its cross-border digital model.  A pioneer in the Greek market, Praxia Bank is launching a ground-breaking deposit acquisition strategy based on innovation.

Anastasia Sakellariou, Praxia Bank CEO said: “We are a new digital bank seeking to do things differently, to offer a seamless and easy-to-access banking experience with technology on our side. As we approach the launch date of a range of products and services for our corporate and retail clients in the fall of 2019, we have opted to reinforce our deposit base through Raisin’s platform. This enables Praxia Bank to become a key player in the global financial market offering our products beyond the Greek borders in line with the current trends set by pioneering banks in Europe.”

The quality of payment processing by paytech firm Paysend has been recognised by MasterCard.

The recognition comes in the form of MasterCard’s Regional Compliance Award, which compares ICAs (Interbank Card Association Numbers) in their respective region. Only ICAs in the top five per cent with the highest compliance percentage receive the awards.

Ronald Millar, CEO of Paysend, said: “We are delighted to have won this award. The fact that we won this while against the major processors is something we at Paysend are all proud of. Like MasterCard, we take our compliance role very seriously.”

The Award is part of MasterCard’s Data Integrity Compliance Awards Program.

Imandra Inc. - creator of the Imandra cloud-native automated reasoning engine - has completed a $5 million Seed investment led by AlbionVC, IQ Capital and LiveOak Venture Partners. The capital will be used towards further growth in financial services and fast-growing applications of their AI technology to autonomous vehicles, robotics and machine learning. Imandra democratises deep advances in symbolic AI for making algorithms safe, explainable and fair. Imandra’s “Reasoning as a Service ®” platform makes these techniques widely accessible to those without specialised background in these fields.

Since its founding in 2014, Imandra has pioneered advances in AI for algorithm safety and compliance and their application to new industries. In 2015 it won the UBS Future of Finance Challenge, coming in 1st place out of more than 600 companies from 52 countries by using its AI technology to find a fundamental flaw in the design of the UBS dark pool previously undetected by the bank and the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Imandra’s current clients include top global investment banks who rely on Imandra for design, testing and ongoing audits of their complex trading systems.

Since the public release of Imandra’s cloud services last year, the company has expanded into robotics, autonomous vehicles and reinforcement learning. Grant Passmore, co-founder and co-CEO, said “As our reliance on complex software grows, deep advances in AI are required to ensure the algorithms we depend on are safe, explainable and fair. We’re proud of our team and the advances we’ve made in turning groundbreaking research into a scalable product with wide-reaching positive impact. This investment is a strong recognition of our progress and we’re delighted for the support of our venture partners in our next phase of growth.”

Denis Ignatovich, co-founder and co-CEO, noted “The need for automated mathematical techniques for algorithm analysis has never been more pressing. Industry leaders including Facebook, Amazon and Google are recognising this with significant investments into automated symbolic reasoning for their business use cases. We could not be in a better position at a better time to provide a scalable and industry-agnostic platform. We’re excited to partner with Albion, IQ Capital and LiveOak on this journey and look forward to leveraging their expertise as we scale our company in this next stage.”

This latest round of seed funding will support Imandra’s expansion in both the US and the UK, with significant hiring of AI, engineering and product talent in Austin, London and Edinburgh.

Robert Whitby-Smith, Partner at Albion VC, said: “Increasing automation safely is critical to most sectors including automotive, aerospace, defence, healthcare, financial services and social media. The number and complexity of algorithms used in applications regarded as safety critical is increasing rapidly with the expansion of automation and machine learning and it is increasingly challenging to test software robustly at scale, and ensure the exhaustive creation of edge cases, using traditional techniques. Imandra’s proprietary software which provides automated testing for functional languages and model-based generation of tests will become a key element of the future mix of software testing. The completeness of the learning experience provided by Imandra will provide significant benefits beyond software testing including the evolution of the training of artificial neural networks. We are delighted to support Denis and Grant achieve their exciting vision.”

Ed Stacey, Partner at IQ Capital, said: “The founders of Imandra - Grant and Denis - have taken their cutting edge research into characterising algorithmic behaviour and applied it in making a scalable product for the finance industry. We also believe this technology has great potential for a broad class of algorithmic and AI challenges. The founders have a proven track record both in academia - at leading institutions including the University of Cambridge and University of Edinburgh - as well as in business. Many of the companies IQ Capital invests in are IP-rich and spin out of university networks - Imandra is a great example of the type of businesses we want to invest in.”

Krishna Srinivasan, Founding Partner at LiveOak Venture Partners, said: “Our investment in Imandra embodies the core of our investment thesis to back Texas based top notch entrepreneurs that are disrupting large industry categories.  We recognized quickly that Denis, Grant and team are amongst the best in the world at this emerging area of algorithm and application security testing and that their approach has the ability for multi-industry transformational impact. We are also super excited to welcome Denis and Grant back to their Texas roots, leverage the tremendous local computer science talent and build something significant from where it all began.”

Denis Ignatovich and Grant Passmore, the founders of Imandra, have backgrounds in academic mathematics and financial trading. They founded the company in London in 2014, a decade after having met as undergraduate roommates at the University of Texas. Denis started his career at Deutsche Bank in New York, before moving to London to lead a trading desk that relied heavily on complex algorithms. Grant earned his PhD in AI for algorithm safety at the University of Edinburgh and is a Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. In 2019, the company opened its new US headquarters in Austin, TX.