Published
- 09:00 am
The digital store will also act as an events space, where anyone - not just NatWest customers - can come in for sessions where they can learn how to protect themselves from scams and manage their finances. These include Friends Against Scams sessions - delivered in partnership with National Trading Standards - to protect people from becoming victims of scams.
Children and young people will also be able to learn financial management skills through NatWest’s MoneySense programme. The digital store will have regular presentations about this throughout the year, both during the day, and in the evening.
Michael Burrow, Regional Managing Director for the North, NatWest, said:
“I am excited to see the new digital store in Leeds Victoria come to life. For many banking activities customers are increasingly comfortable with - and often even prefer - self-service banking options.
“However we know that for some transactions customers may prefer talking through options face to face and we hope this new set-up will allow our staff to spend more time with these customers to better support hem with their banking needs.”
The new digital store is a new store and will not replace the existing branch Park Row, which will continue to offer more traditional banking service.
- 08:00 am
Entrust Datacard, a leading provider of trusted identity and secure issuance technology solutions, today announced that the company has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Thales’s market-leading General Purpose Hardware Security Module (GP HSM) business, nCipher Security, which has been operating as a separate stand-alone business within Thales since January 2019.
Thales is divesting its nCipher GP HSM business, in accordance with Regulatory Clearances necessary to complete Thales’s forthcoming and previously-announced acquisition of Gemalto and to ensure a strong competitive market leader in the HSM market.
General Purpose HSMs are a core component of Entrust Datacard’s solutions and are an underlying part of the security infrastructure of the company’s public key infrastructure (PKI) and secure socket layer (SSL) offerings. The acquisition will allow the company to not only further extend its ability to provide its customers with solutions that meet their demand for high assurance use cases – but also address the increased demand for data security stemming from regulations such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the electronic identification, authentication and trust services (eIDAS) regulation. The acquisition strengthens the Entrust Datacard technology portfolio that secures data and identities across internal, cloud and hybrid networks, and from more frequent and sophisticated cyberattacks. It also provides a proven, trusted platform that enhances and extends the security of applications at the heart of the digital initiatives of today and tomorrow, including the Internet of Things, digital payments, card issuance and blockchain.
“This acquisition is an excellent complement to our expertise in both cryptography and hardware and will extend our ability to meet the evolving security needs of our customers globally while allowing us to accelerate our own growth,” said Todd Wilkinson, president and CEO of Entrust Datacard. He continued, “The Thales General Purpose HSM solution, known as nCipher, has a strong market position based on a wide range of use cases, brings with it exceptional talent and offers us the ability to develop even more comprehensive solutions for our clients.”
“nCipher Security is delighted to join Entrust Datacard. There is a powerful synergy between our solutions and the combination of our organizations will accelerate innovation for our customers as they embark on initiatives such as mobility, cloud and IoT to grow their businesses and simultaneously strive to protect data and manage ever-growing cyber risk,” said Cindy Provin, Chief Executive Officer of nCipher Security.
The transaction is subject to the successful completion of the acquisition of Gemalto by Thales, the approval of Entrust as a suitable purchaser by the European Commission, US Department of Justice, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and New Zealand Commerce Commission, and the satisfaction of customary closing conditions. Additional information about the acquisition will be released once the transaction is closed. The acquisition is expected to be finalized during the second quarter of 2019. Financial terms of the acquisition will not be disclosed.
- 05:00 am
According to brand new research by RBR, banks remain committed to the branch as a central delivery channel and continue to invest in solutions to make physical outlets more efficient and customer- friendly. Teller Automation and Branch Transformation 2019, which covers 23 key global markets, reveals ongoing growth in the number of teller assist units (TAUs), with 181,000 terminals installed at the end of 2018. Recyclers (TCRs) now account for almost 80% of such units and have increased by 28% since 2014.
The research reveals that while most banks no longer see a strong business case for monofunctional dispenser units (TCDs), TCRs are widely valued for the increased efficiency and accuracy they deliver to branch operations. The time required for both transaction processing during the day and end-of-day balancing is notably reduced, while note counting and sorting errors are virtually eliminated, resulting in significant cost savings.
TCRs are also credited as an enabler of secure, personalised branch banking. Deployment allows banks to remove traditional glass teller positions without comprising security, meaning staff can interact with customers in a more relaxed, open-plan setting, devoting their attention to relationship building rather than cash counting. According to RBR, these multiple drivers will ensure growth in TCR deployment remains robust, with an additional 31,000 units set to be installed by 2023.
Growth in TCR deployment mainly outside of Europe
RBR’s research shows that until now TAU installations have been highly concentrated in western Europe, with the region accounting for 49% of all units yet just 20% of bank branches. Deployment is, however, projected to decline between 2019 and 2023 in most of the region’s markets as banks’ cash management strategies pivot further towards self-service technology. Demand for teller solutions will also be supressed as the region continues to see the sharpest decline in branch numbers globally.
By contrast, Asia-Pacific is poised for double-digit annual growth over the next five years. TCR deployment is still in its infancy in key markets such as China and Indonesia but local banks are keen to harness the technology to improve the branch experience. Meanwhile, the USA remains the largest market and continues to grow as TCRs and ATMs are used in tandem to optimise the cash cycle.
Beatriz Benito, who led RBR’s study, commented: “Despite increasing focus on self-service technology, TCRs continue to deliver a unique set of benefits to branches. Improvements to the efficiency and accuracy of cash handling lead to cost reductions, and provide increased opportunities for customer engagement, reinforcing the branch’s role as a key generator of new business”.
- 07:00 am
Surecomp®, the leading global provider of trade finance solutions for banks and corporates, announced today a technology upgrade for a longtime banking client in the Philippine Islands. This unique enhancement simultaneously featured a core technology transformation, SWIFT 2018 compliance and a functional upgrade to the latest release of Surecomp’s back-office trade finance software. The project was completed on time and on budget.
The bank has been a Surecomp client for over twenty years and, with nearly two-billion Philippine Piso’s (over thirty-six-billion USD) in assets, ranks among the top three banks in its country. Surecomp’s back-office trade finance software serves as a real-time processing and decision-support system that vastly improves transactional throughput, operational productivity and bank profitability. The bank is well equipped for the evolving world of 21st century banking.
The project was completed with the daunting deadline for SWIFT’s 2018 standards release in mind. Throughout the entire process, the bank and Surecomp worked in parallel as one team. “This multi-faceted upgrade was completed with a constant eye on technology innovation and is a big step forward towards trade digitalization”, said Yaron Hupert, Senior Vice President of Global Account Management at Surecomp.
- 04:00 am
iSignthis Ltd (ASX: ISX | FRA: TA8) (“The Company”) following its announcement dated 6th February 2019, is pleased to announce that it now has a number of merchants live on its own Tier 1 Visa, Mastercard and JCB facilities.
The Company’s wholly owned European neobank subsidiary, iSignthis eMoney Ltd (“ISXPay”), is now processing, clearing and settling in multiple currencies under its own Bank Institution Number (BIN) as a Principal member of the foregoing card schemes.
ISXPay now has more than 12 merchants ‘live’ on its own BIN, which it has onboarded commencing late January, with more of our contracted 30+ merchants going live over coming days and weeks. ISXPay now also has more than 50 approved EMA’s and has or is in the process of issuing International Bank Account Numbers (IBAN’s) to them under our Bank Institution Code (BIC) ISEMCY22XXX.
Client fund EMA inflow and processing volumes are growing as expected, with volumes expected to rise significantly Mid-March once our international SWIFT network is fully connected.
Merchant Onboarding Process
The Company has received queries from investors as to how the application process is commenced by merchants and managed by the Company. The European process is very similar to the Australian process described last week.The underwriting process requires that the Company receives a completed Merchant Application Form (available from our website isignthis.com/documents), together with financial, incorporation and ownership details of the applicant. Underwriting may take as little as five days, or in some cases more than 30 days, depending upon complexity of the applicant’s ownership structure and information submission quality.
The Company verifies the Merchant’s incorporation, operating licenses (if applicable, e.g. with CySEC, FCA etc), directors, ownership structure, and ultimate beneficial owners in order to satisfy EC Directives including Anti Money Laundering Regulation requirements. A financial assessment, including past processing performance is also conducted, with terms extended to the applicant usually in parallel with the underwiring process.
Once underwriting is satisfied, and an agreement is executed with security deposit received (if applicable), the merchant is granted credentials to the PaydentityTM, ISXPay® and Probanx® API’s and dashboard. Merchants have been known to complete integration in less than 3 business days, with around a month being the usual timeframe for integration to be completed.
Upon completion of integration, it is usual for merchants to take up to 2-6 weeks to cycle between their current card processing and ISX facilities, with a gradual ramp up thereafter taking a further 6-8 weeks.
- 05:00 am
Softomotive, a leading Robotic Process Automation (RPA) vendor, has announced a strategic partnership with CaptureFast, a state-of-the-art Data Capture solution. CaptureFast allows users to unlock valuable information from physical or digital documents via AI using machine print character recognition. This partnership will provide Softomotive’s clients an all-in-one, ready-to-deploy solution for customers’ automation needs that require an additional method for data capturing from editable or noneditable physical or scanned documents.
John Anastasopoulos, Head of Product for Softomotive said “We are excited to extend the capabilities of ProcessRobot, our leading enterprise RPA platform, to include CaptureFast for extracting valuable data from physical and digital document data capturing. This is an important development for our customers because it opens up the range of processes that are potentially suitable candidates to be automated. By doing so, it means they can accelerate process development to achieve better ROI.”
Gurkan Karagoz, founder and CEO of CaptureFast explains, “We believe Softomotive is a great partner for us because we share a similar point of views about how the market is evolving and the needs of clients. In particular, both CaptureFast and Softomotive products are very easy to use, which is a great benefit because there is no learning curve and no need for complicated –and costly- approaches.” He added, “Data capture is normally the starting point and customers also need to take action or process the data once it is captured. Capture, by itself, solves only part of the problem. In order to achieve broader automation, CaptureFast values partnerships with RPA vendors such as Softomotive because it provides customers with an easy to implement and flexible data capture solution in their RPA deployment.”
From the Forrester Wave™: Robotic Process Automation, Q2 2018 Report:
"Text mining applied to unstructured content lifts RPA’s value. Text analytics enhances the strategic value of RPA. Typical documents in scope include insurance, medical claim forms, invoices, purchase orders, and emails. Unstructured text fields are scattered throughout such documents. Before these text fields can become actionable in RPA, a process must extract structures — simple ones like names, times, and locations, and complex ones like sentiment, effort, and intent. Leading vendors stepped up their game with partnerships or native extensions."
CaptureFast fills this gap in the market offering quick, easy set-up for a very flexible and integrated cloud solution at affordable prices.
Gurkan Karagoz, said, “We believe Softomotive’s RPA and RDA solutions combined with CaptureFast’s capture capabilities creates an all-in-one, ready-to-deploy solution for customers’ automation needs that require AI enabled data capture, especially for unstructured data”.
CaptureFast is used in multiple verticals such as insurance (application, sales, claim forms between field and HQ), Banking & Finance (account opening, checks, KYC, loan and mortgage documents, bank statements), Non-profits (member forms and files), Construction (insurance documents, work orders), healthcare, legal, logistics and many others.
CaptureFast serves both local and global companies such as Allianz Insurance, INGBank and Ceva Logistics.
- 23.02.2019 -- 09:19 am
Guy Talmi, PayKey's CMO speaks at FinovateEurope 2019, London
Other Videos
- 01:00 am
ThousandEyes, the company that provides actionable intelligence into digital experience for the cloud, Internet, and enterprises, today announced it has raised $50 million in a Series D round of funding led by GV (formerly Google Ventures), bringing ThousandEyes’ total funding to more than $110 million.
Additionally, Thomvest Ventures joined the round as a new investor alongside existing investors Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures and Tenaya Capital.
The new funds will be used to execute on the company's strategic growth initiatives, including the acceleration of go-to-market activities and expansion of global operations while continuing to invest in digital experience innovations that drive customer success.
“ThousandEyes is seeing remarkable traction with Fortune 500 customers and this sustained growth is a testament to the scope of the network visibility problems they continue to solve,” said Dave Munichiello, General Partner at GV. “As enterprises increasingly rely on applications and services in the cloud, their CIOs and CTOs are losing visibility and control of the networks and outages impacting end-user digital experiences. ThousandEyes delivers mission-critical visibility into every network an enterprise relies on, and ultimately has an objective view of enterprise services, clouds, and their performance that is unparalleled in the technology ecosystem.”
As applications, services and workloads have moved off-premises and into the cloud at a staggering rate, IT teams are often ill-equipped to troubleshoot problems impacting the digital experience of their customers and employees as they no longer own or operate the entire service delivery path. If something breaks outside of their four walls, they are completely blind to find who’s at fault, wasting precious time, reducing productivity, losing revenue, and potentially impacting brand perception.
ThousandEyes empowers IT teams with instant visibility into the entire service delivery path—including the cloud, Internet and end-user—putting control back into the hands of IT. Now, they can see, understand and improve the digital experience of every website, service and app, and can identify issues before they impact customers and employees.
Key FY19 Successes Fueling Strong Business Trajectory into 2019 and Beyond
ThousandEyes also today shared year-end results and key accomplishments from its fiscal year 2019 (FY19), which concluded on January 31, 2019. ThousandEyes closed out the year with significant revenue growth in both global and domestic markets, most notably in technology, financial services and retail markets. ThousandEyes now counts 20 of the 25 top SaaS companies, six of the top seven U.S. banks, and four of the top five UK banks as customers, plus more than 65 of the Fortune 500 and over 120 Global 2000 companies.
“Over the last year, we have seen unprecedented growth as both domestic and international demand for digital experience intelligence continues to increase at an extraordinary pace,” said Mohit Lad, co-founder and CEO, ThousandEyes. “This new funding round will allow us to further invest in both product innovation and global expansion as we quickly find our solution becoming a non-negotiable piece of the modern operations stack that’s necessitated by the rapidly growing $206 billion cloud market*.”
- 05:00 am
Assetz Capital has launched a new 90-Day Access Account, offering an introductory target gross interest rate of 5.75% p.a. and giving investors access to their cash with just 90 days’ notice in normal market conditions, though access times cannot be guaranteed.
To celebrate the launch, and for a limited time only, both new and existing investors can also benefit from a 1% cashback payment on all funds newly deposited on the platform that are then invested into the 90-Day Access Account. The cashback is payable in just 90 days, and both ISA and non-ISA wrapped accounts qualify for the promotion. T&Cs apply.
The 90-Day Access Account joins the other Access Accounts – the Quick Access Account and 30-Day Access Account, and all three can be wrapped in the Assetz Capital IFISA.
The Access Accounts have been incredibly popular for the pioneering peer-to-peer business lender, with more than half of investors using them and approaching £170 million currently invested. Assetz Capital has processed over £1 billion of withdrawals to-date from the Access Accounts, all of which have been made on-time.
Whilst the underlying loans within the Access Accounts are typically between one month and five years in duration, the high investment flow into the accounts has enabled users to withdraw funds on time, every time – although supply and demand can vary and exit times are not guaranteed.
Stuart Law, CEO at Assetz Capital said: “Providing simple and straightforward access to cash, the 90-Day Access Account gives our investors another opportunity to create an investment plan that suits their goals. It’s the next step in our long-term strategy to give our lenders the widest and fairest choice of peer-to-peer lending opportunities.
“The 90-Day Access Account will fill another gap in the market, and we will continue to develop our offering to match the needs of our loyal retail customers.”
The new 1% cashback offer on Assetz Capital’s 90-Day Access Account immediately replaces its current existing customer promotion. Investors that took advantage of this prior promotion will still receive their cashback payment as advertised.
- 07:00 am
With the banks annual reporting season well underway in the UK, analysts are expecting a combined profit of £23.9 billion for the four largest players in the last year – an astonishing 85 per cent rise from 2017. However, the pressure for traditional banks to compete with their agile digital rivals is growing, with 35 per cent of profit margins under threat by their fintech counterparts in coming years.
To remain competitive, traditional banks are increasing their investment in digital initiatives by 15 per cent every year, expected to reach $296 billion in 2021.[3] A top digital priority for many banks is to create an ‘omni-channel’ customer experience – going beyond the walls of a bank branch to enhance customer interactions across online and social media channels.[4] More than 80 per cent of global banks also expect to adopt blockchain technology by 2020 to significantly improve transparency, automate processes across enterprises as well as reduce settlement and transaction time.
However, a staggering 88 per cent of a bank’s IT investment is still directed towards the maintenance of their legacy systems. This has led to traditional players seeking alternative ways to unlock the necessary capital and take the first step towards upgrading their digital capabilities.
Dave Locke, EMEA Chief Technology Officer at World Wide Technology comments: “Access to budgets for digital initiatives is an area of growing importance for traditional banks. Telecom Expense Management (TEM) is a popular method to tap into this source of capital. TEM is an important first step to release funds and allow banks to invest in digital transformation initiatives and proofs of concept so they become more competitive and improve their customer experience. It allows companies to map their existing communications expenditure, visualise inefficiencies and typically reduce costs by up to 40 per cent.
“Global banks stand to gain the most from these savings. They operate across a large and distributed network across borders, ranging from back offices to branches – and even ATMs. Each endpoint within this network is not only constantly talking to the other endpoints but also has its own cost associated with it. More often than not, this results in banks trapped in a cycle of recurring and unmonitored contract renewals for each communication channel, without getting full value for money. This can be likened to paying for a mobile contract and not using all the minutes and data you pay for every month.”
Dave continues: “TEM equips banks with complete oversight of their current expenditure across these contracts, allowing them to remove redundant and dormant links and ensure good value for money across all dealings – drastically reducing costs. Once identified, banks can use the freed up cash to reinvest in the digital capabilities needed to compete.”
