Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV), a leading global provider of financial services technology solutions, announced today that one of the Mediterranean region's most innovative banks, Hellenic Bank, is furthering its digital transformation strategy with the implementation of payments technology from Fiserv. The Dovetail Payments Platform from Fiserv will enable the bank to simplify its payments architecture, operate more efficiently and offer customers new and customized capabilities.

“Our diverse client base has a range of payment needs, and over time we have added a variety of payment systems to meet those needs,” said Phivos Leontiou, Chief Operating Officer, Hellenic Bank. “By moving to a centralized payments platform, we have been able to streamline our payments operations while offering the payment options customers expect. We’re also able to easily add capabilities, such as support for new real-time payment schemes.”

The highly scalable Dovetail Payments Platform provides a single platform to centralize and manage all high value, low value and instant payment types and clearing schemes. Moving to a centralized payments system enabled by the Dovetail Payments Platform will help propel the bank’s growth by making it possible for the bank to decommission multiple siloed payments systems, simplify IT and payments architecture, and facilitate process automation.

“Hellenic Bank is leveraging advanced payments technology to ensure that they are well positioned to meet the needs of their customers in a rapidly changing digital landscape, and Fiserv is proud to be working with the bank as it delivers on its ambitious growth plans and digital strategy,” said Jan Kruger, president, Enterprise Payments Solutions, Fiserv.

In a world moving faster than ever before, Fiserv helps clients deliver solutions in step with the way people live and work today – financial services at the speed of life. Learn more at fiserv.com.

PrePay Solutions (PPS), subsidiary of Edenred, the world’s leading corporate payments organisation, is partnering with Matalan to launch the fashion and homeware retailer’s first ever gift card solution in the UK.

Launching today across all of Matalan’s 228 UK stores, the gift card solution, powered by PPS, supports the retailer’s three core growing lines of sales; in-store, online, and it’s B2B offering. Meanwhile its new refund solution will support the retail giant to streamline its operations. 

For Matalan, implementing gift and refund cards is a more cost-efficient alternative to its previous, voucher-based system, eliminating much of the manual processes and extra administration that traditional, paper-based voucher schemes require.

While this is the first time that PPS has worked with Matalan, the partnership has already proven to be complimentary to both parties, and the teams have built a strong relationship in developing Matalan’s new solution. The two companies are already planning future announcements to extend and enhance the existing gift card system over the coming years.

Ray Brash, CEO at PrePay Solutions, commented: “We’re absolutely delighted to power Matalan’s new gift card and refund card system, and believe this is a great leverage of our retail technology. It opens up a world of possibilities for Matalan, and I’m very proud of our team for putting in place such a strong roadmap for future development.”

Martin Donnelly, Senior Manager Retail Operations, Matalan, said: “Even though it’s a challenging time for the retail industry at the moment, the launch of Matalan’s gift card and refund card system in the UK shows that there’s still a strong demand for not only our own products, but retail as a whole.

“PPS’ solution is helping us increase our efficiency as well as our sales, all while delivering a retail experience that delights customers. And already there are some exciting future developments in the pipeline that we’ll be able to talk about soon.”

To find out more about PrePay Solutions, visit: http://prepaysolutions.com/

Banking Circle, the next-generation Financial Utility, has continued its award nomination success, as it’s shortlisted for two prestigious Financial Services Forum Awards. 

Banking Circle Virtual IBAN is nominated in the Payments category, while Banking Circle as a company has been nominated for the Financial Inclusion award, recognising its work tackling financial exclusion through its suite of financial solutions.

The Financial Services Forum Product & Service Innovation Awards recognise the importance of innovation in financial services and the vital role this plays in both engaging and empowering customers. The awards celebrate financial services innovation that delivers tangible benefits to both consumer and provider, focusing on the overall impact nominated innovations have had on the sector. Winners will be announced at a formal dinner and ceremony on 23rd of May, at the Museum of London.

Anders la Cour, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Banking Circle, commented: “2019 has got off to a hugely successful start for Banking Circle, with multiple award-wins and nominations. But it is a considerable honour to be recognised in these important categories, by an organisation as respected as the Financial Services Forum. Banking Circle is dedicated to increasing financial inclusion by providing previously excluded businesses with access to essential lending, banking accounts and cross border payments. To be recognised for this work through this nomination is testament to the hard work of our entire team.”

Multi-award-winning Banking Circle Virtual IBAN is a game-changer for the payments sector, providing access to faster, cheaper payments locally and internationally. The unique solution, the first multi-currency virtual IBAN for businesses to be offered by a non-bank, enables financial institutions to give their clients their own virtual IBANs, negating the need to have several banking relationships.

With full transaction transparency, payments acceptance is improved, and screening time reduced. Banking Circle Virtual IBAN initially started as a means for supporting cross border payments for FX and payments businesses but has since been modified to cater for prepaid card issuing, marketplaces and marketplace sellers, insurance brokers, FinTech banking providers, payroll, and invoice discounting, with many more to follow.

Where once smaller businesses were unable to achieve global ambitions due to a lack of necessary funds, Banking Circle is improving financial inclusion by giving financial institutions the ability to offer SMEs fast access to loans with flexible repayment options, as well as instant settlement, through Banking Circle Lending and Banking Circle Receivables Financing.

 Flywire announced the addition of powerful new machine learning capabilities to its cross-border payment and receivables platform. The enhancements improve the payment-to-settlement time, increase security, and reduce costs for both payers and receivers by further automating and streamlining reconciliation of the growing number of international payments coming from different countries in different currencies.

There is significant interest in expanding the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the financial services sector. Research advisory firm Autonomous NEXT estimates that financial firms globally can eliminate up to 20% of costs through the implementation of the technology while also improving service quality. In the area of middle office processes such as payments, the company’s analysts point to increasingly complex regulations and real-time processes which are making artificially intelligent oversight, risk-management and KYC systems very valuable.

Typical legacy payment platforms employ rigid, rules-based systems to perform ‘best effort’ reconciliation of invoices with monies received for businesses and institutions collecting payments. These platforms are limited in their ability to support the ever-evolving business requirements, multiple currencies, and myriad payment methods involved in collecting cross-border transactions. As a result, a significant manual effort is required to review transaction records and reconcile payments. 

With the addition of machine learning-enabled deep neural networks and reinforcement learning techniques, Flywire has enhanced its ability to streamline the identification and reconciliation of complex, cross-border payments in real-time. Its platform is now able to automate the matching of 90% or more of cross-border transactions and gain additional improvements as the models learn. Furthermore, the machine learning algorithms require minimal supervision to learn and support new payment methods and can confirm payment sources, detect anomalous payments, and escalate these to Flywire’s Compliance and Operations teams for review. The new capabilities also further optimize FX conversion.

“Accepting payments across borders is a highly complex process that increases the cost of collecting monies, opens up FX and fraud risks, and requires enormous operational investment,” said Jason Moens, VP of Product at Flywire. “As more and more businesses and institutions leverage our platform to address these challenges, we continue to look for new ways to enhance its capabilities. The addition of advanced machine learning further streamlines our clients’ payment and receivable operations and removes more of the potential risks that can negatively impact fundamental parts of their business. This allows them to offer customized payment solutions to more of their customers -- wherever they are in the world.”

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the premier post-trade market infrastructure for the global financial services industry, today announced that it is partnering with Droit, the leader in real-time transactional compliance, to enable market participants to leverage Droit’s reporting eligibility capabilities within DTCC’s Pre-Reporting Transformation Services for supported G20 regimes as well as the forthcoming Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR). 

The joint offering will encompass Droit’s capabilities, which help reduce firms’ operational burden and mitigate regulatory risk by allowing firms to apply reporting eligibility logic before submitting transactions to the relevant registered trade repository. Market participants can now utilise DTCC’s Pre-Reporting Transformation Services for all key components of a regulatory reporting stack, using Droit to determine the full global cross-regulatory reporting implications and obligations associated with a transaction in real-time as well as receive complete auditability and traceability through to fully digitised regulatory text.

“Since 2014, Droit’s ADEPT platform has been invaluable to our clients in proving, to themselves and external parties, that reporting decision-making for each transaction is accurate and complete with respect to the laws in force at that time,” said Satya Pemmaraju, CEO, Droit. “This new link between DTCC’s Pre-Reporting Transformation Services and ADEPT provides a compelling proposition for an industry seeking efficient, accurate, transparent, scalable and cost-effective reporting infrastructure.”

DTCC’s Pre-Reporting Transformation Services, powered by Xceptor, can help clients normalise, enrich and validate trade data – typically spread across a myriad of disparate sources, in varying formats – before it can then be submitted to the registered trade repository. The addition of Droit’s ADEPT platform will provide clients with the option of including pre-installed reporting decision-making as part of DTCC’s one-stop solution for both SFTR and derivatives reporting regimes.

“Regulatory compliance is a key issue for market participants across the post-trade space. DTCC will continue to work with our clients to help them understand how new and existing regulations can affect their day-to-day processes, and where we can provide value-add solutions,” said Val Wotton, Managing Director, Product Development & Strategy, Derivatives & Collateral Management, DTCC. “Our partnership with Droit is a further example of how we’re bringing together best-in-class technologies and delivering them as a DTCC hosted solution for our clients.”

Xena Exchange has today announced the launch of a free desktop terminal for its clients designed to meet the information demands of professional traders looking to navigate the cryptocurrency markets. The desktop terminal is aimed at both novice traders looking to learn, test paper trading, try new strategies and order types, as well as experienced professionals. For more experienced traders, it allows easy automation of trading strategies using C# and Visual Studio Code plugin, strategy back testing, built-in calculation as well as one-click trading of synthetic instruments.

The desktop terminal was created in order to serve traders who do not use web terminals and are looking for powerful desktop solutions, the Xena Desktop Pro provides both these services. The launch comes one month after the launch of the world’s first-ever leveraged cryptocurrency-settled derivative contract for the Telegram Open Network’s GRAM token on the Xena Exchange, one of many products that can be evaluated using the Xena Desktop Pro terminal.

Anton Kravchenko, CEO, Xena Exchange: The cryptocurrency sector has grown exponentially within the last decade, however the infrastructure to support professional traders and investors make informed decisions doesn’t exist in the same way it does for traditional financial services. This lack of high quality impartial information is a huge barrier preventing retail investors and institutions from entering this rapidly evolving and exciting area of the world economy.

The Desktop Pro terminal enables investors to back test strategies (emulator mode) that allows people to evaluate the automated strategies without any risks. Participants can also combine several panels in one entity and integrate it into their workspace, these panels can be managed directly while the stat matrix shows the correlations between different assets.

Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce's latest Quarterly Economic Survey (QES) results for the first quarter of 2019 shows that the economy is feeling the impact of Brexit uncertainty. Business activity has dipped for the first time since a slow recovery from the aftermath of the EU referendum. However, the long-term prospects for Greater Manchester's businesses and economy remain positive.

Business confidence in Greater Manchester remains stable despite the political climate and the seemingly never-ending plot twists around Brexit

Greater Manchester Chamber's key economic indicator for Greater Manchester, the Greater Manchester Index™, which combines seven key indicators taken from the QES, declined to 19.6 in Q1 – a significant drop from 33.0 in the final quarter of 2018.

The QES reveals a fall in domestic demand for all three sector groups in the last quarter: manufacturing, construction, services. UK sales and advance orders for the manufacturing and construction sector groups fell sharply, with levels approaching what was seen in May/June 2016. The services sector also saw a fall in demand, which may be due to lower consumer spending. Even the Christmas season did not give the usual fillip to retail sales, and, with the exception of food retail, post-Christmas sales showed a slight decline in 2018 compared with the previous year.

On international sales and orders, construction received a boost with both sales and advance orders for the sector showing a massive increase. Export performance in the manufacturing and services sector groups declined after recording steady levels for over two years, whilst exports in services in the last quarter were the lowest since the third quarter of 2012. For the past couple of years after the EU referendum, manufacturing exports had received an exchange rate bonus when Sterling lost value. Although exchange rates continue to fluctuate, the advantage of a weak Sterling has been lost, which along with continued uncertainty around future international trading arrangements, continues to depress manufacturing exports. Brexit uncertainty and weaker global demand may cause exchange rates to further waver, a cause for concern among all sectors.

The reduction in both domestic and overseas orders for services and manufacturing has allowed an easing of capacity pressures and many businesses have reported that they do not plan to add to their workforce immediately. Nonetheless, recruitment difficulties remain, and the shortage of skills remain a key constraint for business growth in Greater Manchester.

Importantly, business confidence remains high. Despite the prevailing uncertainty, businesses in the manufacturing and construction sectors reported steady prospects for both turnover and profitability over the mid to long term.

Explaining the results, Subrahmaniam Krishnan-Harihara, Head of Research at Greater Manchester Chamber, said: “The QES results reveal that 2018 was a good year for Greater Manchester’s businesses with year on year growth in all three major sector groups.

“The decline in economic activity in the first quarter of 2019 has been caused by a variety of factors, primarily prolonged Brexit uncertainty. The decline in domestic demand is also a result of poorer than expected retail sales in the Christmas season and the fact that both corporate and household spending has been tightened in the last quarter. If the current UK political turmoil continues, both business investment and household spending are likely to be further affected in the current quarter.

“Demand within the construction sector, especially for housing, remains strong. The increase in overseas sales and orders is a reflection of increasing overseas investment in commercial and residential projects across Greater Manchester. Overall, the Greater Manchester economy remains strong with annual GVA growth of between 2.5% and 3%.”

Commenting on the results, Chris Fletcher, Marketing & Campaigns Director at Greater Manchester Chamber, said: “The results show that political uncertainty and the lack of clarity on the future UK-EU relationship has led to reduced business activity.

“Without the Government providing a definitive way forward for exiting the EU and agreeing on a future partnership that secures the trading relationship between the UK and the EU, there may be further stagnation and what are currently small issues will expand into deep-rooted long-term threats to economic growth. Business confidence in Greater Manchester remains stable despite the political climate and the seemingly never-ending plot twists around Brexit. Beyond Brexit, skills shortages and local business environment issues are still the biggest issues for our members.

“Speaking with members they really do need the politicians to break the current impasse then there can be a stable platform to build on for the future. Political point scoring and arcane parliamentary laws and procedures don’t really mean that much if you’re faced with some stark choices about your future business strategy and people’s livelihoods."

The Quarterly Economic Survey is the UK’s largest and most reliable business confidence survey. It is the first to be published in each quarter and is used by key policy makers to determine economic decision-making.

The Greater Manchester QES alone has the same sample size as other national business surveys.

In today’s connected world, businesses are prime targets for cyber attacks and unintentional missteps can result in critical exposure of consumers’ sensitive personal information. According to the 2018 Norton LifeLock Cyber Safety Insights Report, released today, from Norton™ LifeLock™, a Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC) company, based on an online survey conducted by The Harris Poll of over 1,000 adults, nearly three out of four Brits (74 percent) are more alarmed than ever about their privacy. However, the majority accept certain risks to their online privacy out of convenience (65 percent) and are willing to sell or give away certain personal information, such as their location (57 percent) and internet search history (53 percent), to companies.

“The introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union put data privacy on the agenda and significantly increased consumers' awareness of their privacy rights,” said Nick Shaw, EMEA Vice President and General Manager, Norton. “Yet, consumers are still willing to trade their personal data out of convenience and to get more perks.”

“Our cyber safety is inherently tied to trust,” said Samir Kapuria, executive vice president and general manager, Consumer Digital Safety, Symantec. “Most consumers are aware their data is being captured from the websites they visit, the social media they share and the apps they use, and trust their information is being properly secured. However, these same consumers are often unaware how and why data is captured and what companies do with it. The sheer amount of personal information being collected about us shows no signs of slowing and there is greater value placed on it than ever before.”

Additional UK findings include:

• People view data protection as a right. Most British consumers are not willing to pay organisations to ensure protection of their personal information. That’s particularly true when it comes to social media providers, with 78 percent of consumers saying they are not willing to pay providers to ensure their personal information is protected when using them, compared to 72 percent for retailers,  68 percent for financial institutions and 67 percent for healthcare institutions.
• British consumers have little to no trust in social media providers. 95 percent of consumers express little (40 percent) or no (55 percent) trust in social media providers when it comes to managing and protecting their personal information. In fact, over one in four Britons with a social media account (28 percent) have deleted an account in the past 12 months due to privacy concerns.
• Despite concerns, consumers in the UK embrace data sharing: While 82 percent of Brits say they are concerned about their privacy, some say they are willing to sell or give away certain personal data, including internet search history (17 percent would give away for free, 36 percent would sell) and location (20 percent would give away, 37 percent would sell). Some are even willing to provide identification document information, such as driver’s license or passport information (16 percent would give away, 26 percent would sell).
• Younger generations are more inclined to take action on social media accounts. 36 percent of UK consumers aged 18-38 have deleted a social media account in the past 12 months due to privacy concerns, compared to only 18 percent of those aged 39-53 and 14 percent of those aged 54+. However, younger generations are significantly more likely to embrace data sharing in the digital age, with 51 percent of 18-38 year olds willing to sell their internet search history and 41 percent willing to sell an identification document information. This is compared to 28 percent of 39 year olds and older willing to sell their Internet search history and 18 percent willing to sell identification document information.

Kapuria adds, “Although consumers want greater control over their privacy and action taken against those that mishandle personal data, they want this control to come without hassle or cost, so they are willing to take risks in favour of convenience. Convenience continues to reign supreme when it comes to sharing personal data.”

What’s Next for Cyber Safety?

Over the last year alone, nearly 17 million British consumers experienced cyber crime – that’s a third of Brits (33 percent) – and 62 percent believe it’s likely they will experience cyber crime in the next year. In fact, 60 percent believe they are equally or more likely to experience cyber crime than they are to get the flu! As a result of cyber crime in the past year, losses totalled an estimated £1.7 billion and 92.7 million hours lost dealing with the aftermath, with two out of five (38 percent) spending a week or longer dealing with the problem.

There are several best practices consumers can follow to help safeguard against online threats:

·          Never open suspicious-looking emails: Cyber criminals send fake emails or texts that may look legitimate. The links in these emails or texts contain malicious software that can download malware and spyware. The software may be able to mine your computer for personal information, which is then sent to a remote computer where the attacker could sell the information on the dark web or use the information to commit identity theft.

·         Make use of a VPN on public Wi-Fi: Many public Wi-Fi connections are unencrypted. This could give cyber criminals a chance to snoop on data being sent and received by your device. If there are software vulnerabilities on your device, attackers can inject malware to help them gain access to your data. In some cases, attackers create fake Wi-Fi hotspots purporting to be legitimate networks.

·          Own your online presence: Carefully read the terms and conditions before opening an account or downloading an application, including social media accounts. Be sure to, set the privacy and security settings on web services and devices to your comfort level for information sharing.

·         Get two steps ahead and manage your passwords: Switch on two-step verification or multi-factor authentication wherever offered to help prevent unauthorised access to your online accounts. Always change the default passwords to something strong and unique on your devices, services, and Wi-Fi networks.

To learn more about the real impact of cyber crime and how consumers can help protect their online privacy, identity, and digital information, visit here.

About the Norton LifeLock Cyber Safety Insights Report (NLCSIR)

The Norton LifeLock Cyber Safety Insights Report is based on an online survey of 1,006 UK-adults (aged 18+), commissioned by Norton LifeLock and produced by The Harris Poll, an independent research firm.. Data are weighted where necessary by age, gender, education, region, employment, and internet usage to bring them in line with their actual proportions in the population. No estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.

How We Define Cyber Crime

The definition of cyber crime continues to evolve as avenues open up that allow cyber criminals to target consumers in new ways. Each year, we will evaluate current cyber crime trends and update the report’s methodology as needed, to ensure the Norton LifeLock Cyber Safety Insights Report provides an accurate snapshot of the impact of cyber crime as it stands today. In the 2018 Norton LifeLock Cyber Safety Insights Report, cyber crime is defined as having personally experienced a crime committed with devices over the internet, including, but not limited to, detecting unauthorised access on an online account, learning information was exposed in a data breach, and detecting malicious software on a device. Visit https://www.symantec.com/about/newsroom/press-kits/2018-norton-lifelock-cyber-safety-insights-report to learn more.

Elavon, a leading global payments provider and subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp has agreed a new partnership with leading financial services group, Societe Generale, for payments acceptance and acquiring services across Europe.

Societe Generale’s business clients will now have access to Elavon’s cross-border payment capabilities in the United Kingdom, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland. This will complement Societe Generale’s established payments infrastructure (face-to-face and e-commerce) in France.

Elavon’s payments services include accepting electronic payments from payment cards, digital wallets, alternative payment methods and real-time bank transfer capabilities. The company offers a full range of payments solutions to leading international businesses across more than 30 countries in Europe.

This includes Elavon’s omni-commerce payment solution, which offers businesses the ability to accept payments in any payment environment needed, including in-store, mobile, mail/telephone order (MO/TO) and online.

Building on Elavon’s renowned expertise and capabilities, Societe Generale will enable its clients to benefit from best-in-class service for card present and e-commerce, aligned to its robust quality standards. Both businesses and consumers benefit from Elavon’s advanced secure payment solutions and fraud prevention.

Aurélien Viry, Global Head of Payments and Cash Management for Societe Generale comments: “Elavon’s comprehensive service capabilities across Europe will give our clients access to best-in-class service and innovation in payments. We are delighted to work with Elavon for payment acceptance and acquisition services across these eight European countries.”

Colin Close, Country Manager, UK and International Corporate for Elavon Financial Services adds: “We are extremely pleased to be chosen as Societe Generale payments partner across Europe. Elavon brings the expertise of working with international businesses to facilitate cross-border operations in the UK and the continent. As part of U.S. Bank, we are a trusted choice for financial institutions who benefit from our payments experience and capabilities.”

Ahead of the payment protection insurance (PPI) complaints deadline on August 29th 2019, Corlytics, a global leading provider of regulatory risk intelligence, has revealed that the last kicks of PPI may still be to come for some banks.

An analysis of over 1.25 million complaints, carried out across seven firms with high street operations in the United Kingdom, shows that the deadline has sparked more approaches from consumers. Specific firms also appear to be more susceptible to financial penalties and restitution following this race to the PPI finish line.

Leading bank sees PPI complaints increase by 50%

A leading UK high street bank saw the number of PPI complaints increase by 50% between H2 2017 and H1 2018. Should this trend continue, this firm will exceed a 100% increase in complaints before the deadline. This is the tipping point for regulatory activity, according to Corlytics' analysis.

Another leading UK high street bank saw the number of complaints increase by 28% between H2 2017 and H1 2019 (to date). This firm has already seen a huge volume of complaints made against it and it may now be on track for another round of regulatory penalties. 

The remaining two leading UK high street banks are also seeing an increase in the numbers of complaints, though at lower percentage increases.

Of the global organisations analysed, a major US firm that operates a retail bank in the UK has seen a 900% increase in complaints. This is despite the number of complaints being traditionally low for this firm. A leading European firm with retail operations in the UK also saw a 10% increase in complaints.

Mike O'Keeffe, UK General Manager, Corlytics, comments: “While most PPI complaints occurred before 2015, there are a number of firms that might be worried about this final wave. Corlytics’ data shows that, once a firm experiences more than a 100% increase in complaints on a specific topic to the ombudsman, enforcement activity and restitution becomes inevitable. Regulatory penalties will be unavoidable.”

Complaints correlate with a pattern of enforcement

The data illustrates that firms face the threat of fresh fines if they fail to adequately address this flood of new PPI claims. When a 100% increase in complaints is logged with the UK Financial Ombudsman, a pattern of enforcement becomes imminent. 

The graph below shows a surge of complaints in H1 2013, followed by a spike in enforcement and restitution activity in H1 2015:

Graph comparing financial complaints data across, PPI, Banking and Credit, General Insurance, Mortgages and Homes, Investments, and Life & Pensions and Decumulation with related enforcement activity

O’Keeffe continues: “By setting this deadline for compensation claims, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has sparked more approaches from consumers. Banks need to take note that, for specific types of complaints, the restitution outweighs the enforcement amounts that are levied by the regulators. They are taking restitution very seriously, making sure consumers are fully compensated. The banks in question need to provision capital or face a major shock down the line.”