In a bid to support the Singapore government in driving cashless payments, UNPAY, a global fintech company that enables cross-border financial services via its open platform, has ramped up efforts in promoting QR code payment among the retail merchants locally. For a start, UNPay will provide its merchants with popular Chinese QR code payments, and is looking to expand its reach to include the region's QR code payment providers by the second half of next year.

About 1.9 million Chinese tourists¹ visited Singapore between January to July 2017, making China one of the biggest contributors to Singapore's visitor arrivals. While in Singapore, Chinese tourists spent a whopping $3.08 billion² in tourism receipts in 2017, which is a 10% increase from the year before. The Singapore Tourism Board estimates that this number is set to grow.

Recognising that there is a need to cater to this burgeoning segment in the market, UNPay has─in its first phase─acquired merchants in the hospitality and food and beverage sectors. UNPay will support these merchants with popular QR code payment methods such as Alipay and WeChat Pay, enabling the inbound Chinese tourists to pay via their preferred payment methods. In the coming months, UNPay will also be progressively acquiring foreign e-wallets to provide more payment options for inbound tourists around the world.

Since its inception in June last year, UNPay is currently connected to over 500 online payment methods, achieving a comprehensive coverage of more than 200 countries and regions. Within a short span of time, UNPay has become the world's most extensive payment service network. The business currently spans industries in travel, education, e-commerce and digital entertainment.

Zhang Zhenghua, CEO and Founder of UNPay, expressed, "Through our active acquisition of merchants, we hope to drive the use of QR code payment in Singapore, keeping in line with the rollout of SGQR code in September.  We are confident that with our expertise and technology, we will be able to bring greater benefits to our merchants via our integrated payment platform, while providing a more seamless and convenient way for consumers to pay."

During this holiday season, customers who pay with Alipay or WeChat Pay supported by UNPAY, can look forward to enjoying exclusive deals such as complimentary daily breakfast, free make-up set from popular Korean brand as well as a complimentary beer or housepour with every two paying drinks. For more information, please follow the UNPay WeChat Channel.

The Board of Directors of SIA, meeting today under the chairmanship of Giuliano Asperti, has appointed Nicola Cordone to the position of Chief Executive Officer of the Company, after having co-opted him as Director.

Cordone (52) has a degree cum laude in Electronic Engineering from Genoa University and a master’s degree in Business Administration from Bocconi University Business School.

He has worked at SIA since 2000 with increasing responsibilities up to his appointment as Deputy CEO and Senior Vice President Global Business Solutions in 2016.

Previously he had worked at several companies, first as Senior Business Consultant (AT&T-Unisource, Siemens Telecomunicazioni, Italtel and Ansaldo) and was subsequently employed by Servizi Interbancari (now Nexi).

Within the SIA Group, Nicola Cordone is also Chief Executive Officer of the subsidiary P4cards.

"The appointment of Nicola Cordone as the new CEO of SIA recognizes his contribution in recent years to the growth of the company on the national and international markets. I applaud the choice made by the shareholders as it allows our internationalization strategy to continue and I believe that Cordone, together with all the people of SIA, will be able to carry forward this story of innovation which is the main characteristic of the company”, said SIA Chairman Giuliano Asperti.

"I wish to thank SIA’s Board of Directors and all the shareholders for confirming their trust by appointing me as CEO of the Company. My commitment is to continue the international development of SIA with the aim of creating the leading digital payments operator in Europe, through the development of innovative services for clients as well as extraordinary operations such as the recent ones concerning the card activities of Ubis - UniCredit Group - and of First Data in 7 central and south-eastern European countries. A path that I am proud to share with a highly professional team of managers and people specializing in fintech and capable of achieving significant results", stated Nicola Cordone.

TIBCO Software Inc., a global leader in integration, API management, and analytics, today announced the general availability of TIBCO® Data Science on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace, the only cloud marketplace to feature this solution. This release includes a number of Machine Learning (ML) algorithms developed by TIBCO and now featured on the newly launched AWS Marketplace for Machine Learning, including models for predicting hospital readmissions, anomaly detection, and document similarity. TIBCO is one of the only vendors to offer support for the end-to-end analytic lifecycle, with a complete portfolio that includes data virtualisation, data science, data visualisation, and integration, for both AWS and hybrid cloud deployments.

TIBCO Data Science is a collaborative platform that empowers data scientists and citizen data scientists with the latest ML techniques and open source developments to create innovative solutions, while offering data security and governance. The scalability of the TIBCO Data Science platform allows users to process large datasets from sources such as Amazon EMR and Amazon RedShift. With the ability to share and annotate data, set project milestones, and manage project resources, the solution facilitates seamless collaboration between data scientists, citizen data scientists, engineers, and business stakeholders, enabling rapid development and delivery of results.

“As part of the TIBCO Connected Intelligence platform, TIBCO Data Science makes it easy for citizen data scientists to develop code-free workflows to support data preparation and machine learning, while enabling data scientists with notebook and coding interfaces, in a collaborative environment," said Michael O’Connell, chief analytics officer, TIBCO. “We’re excited to showcase our support for machine learning on AWS Marketplace, making it possible for organisations to develop innovative solutions while computing at scale.”

With the increasing number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, the ability to capture, measure, and analyse large volumes of data in real time with ML models becomes increasingly important. In some cases, this process needs to happen at the edge. By enabling organisations to use TIBCO Data Science in tandem with TIBCO Flogo® Enterprise, enterprises can now leverage the power of data science in application services that run at both the edge of the network and in the cloud, to capture streaming insights in real time, informing immediate and accurate operational decisions.

TIBCO Data Science also achieved AWS ML Competency status in 2018 by demonstrating proven experience, technical proficiency and success in helping enterprises deliver on the promise of digital transformation. With new support for AWS Marketplace for Machine Learning, TIBCO Data Science allows organisations to execute ML models in serverless and edge environments like AWS Lambda and AWS IoT Greengrass.

TIBCO Data Science is generally available on AWS Marketplace. For more information, please visit www.tibco.com/products/data-science.

Follow us @TIBCO on Twitter, and on our Facebook and LinkedIn pages to hear the latest news and updates from our team.

Banking Competition Remedies Ltd (BCR), the independent body established to implement the £775 million Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) State Aid Alternative Remedies Package, today announces the appointment of two non-executive directors to its board. 

Nigel Vooght and John Howard will join the BCR leadership team working alongside the main board consisting of Godfrey Cromwell (Executive Chair), Brendan Peilow (Executive Director) and Aidene Walsh (Executive Director).

Nigel Vooght led PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Global Financial Services practice and was a member of PwC’s Global Financial Services Board. He has over 35 years’ experience in global financial services consulting, where he has developed a broad and deep understanding of the regulatory, risk and technological challenges to financial services companies. Prior to this, he was a leading Partner in the Business Recovery practice, where he developed an entrepreneurial approach to growing businesses. 

John Howard joins with a strong background in regulation and an in depth understanding of consumers. John is currently Vice Chair of The Family Building Society and Founder and Director of Consumer Insights limited, a consultancy specialising in principles-based regulation. He has previously held positions as a non-executive director at The Gas and Electricity Markets Authority (Ofgem) and the Financial Ombudsman Service and as Chairman of the Financial Services Consumer Panel to the Financial Services Authority. A former broadcaster and presenter of Radio 4’s You and Yours, John is a member of the Independent Governance Committee at Lloyds Banking Group having been a member of a number of advisory committees and independent commissions for many years.

Godfrey Cromwell, Executive Chair of BCR, said: “We are pleased to welcome Nigel and John to the BCR board as non-executive directors as we enter a key period of activity. Their combined experience across financial services, customer focus and communication will be invaluable in testing our processes and decision making”.

B-Hive’s Trusted Fintech Program kicks off today with an introduction day in Brussels. Ten start-ups have decided to join the program in order to understand the ins and outs of cyber security while aiming to receive the valuable Trusted Fintech Label. The completion of the program will not only result in earning the label, but it will also showcase their commitment to better the company’s cybersecurity procedures.

B-Hive launched the program two months ago, during Digital Finance Europe, to encourage start-ups and scale-ups to put more focus on security. The ten start-ups that chose to take part in the program include Billit, BrightAnalytics, Digiteal (Teal IT), Elimity, Features Analytics, Gambit Financial Solutions, Investsuite, Linearity, NGdata Europe and NGRAVE.io.

Christian Bettendorf, sales manager at Digiteal is excited to be a part of the program: "Digiteal is certified by the National Bank of Belgium as payment institution so, as you can imagine, it implies a very high-security level. However, we appreciate to be permanently challenged in order to continuously improve our services and stay up to date. For our customers, for their customers, for us, TRUST is one of the most important values. We are therefore really glad of the opportunity provided by B-Hive to be a part of the program!"

The program lasts for three months and will focus on five different modules – the fundamentals of cybersecurity, regulation and certification, incident and data breach management, third-party vendor risk and secure technology. Throughout the program, 12 of B-hive’s community partners will bring in their expertise and educate the participants on each topic.

Among them is Digitribe. Commenting on the importance of cybersecurity and why Digitribe wanted to be a part of the program is their Managing Director, François Lecocq: “One of the CyberSecurity services that Digitribe provides to the Financial Services industry is to help them assess the security maturity of their suppliers and inherent risk of using them against a number of frameworks and best practices. We’ve noticed that there is still a big gap in readiness when those suppliers are tech start-ups or scale-ups. The Trusted Fintech program creates a win-win for everyone, which is why were immediately convinced that we had to join as a content provider.”

On top of the training, the participating companies also receive a vulnerability assessment among others: “Whether you’re ready or not, hackers can and will test your security at any given moment. This is why external security assessments are so important: they provide a realistic view of how hackers can get in and what they are able to do.”, said Stijn Jans, founder of Intigriti.

The main objectives of the program are to encourage start-ups to look at security from the get-go and create a collective responsibility in their rapidly-growing organizations. Patrick Coomans is certain that security should be embedded in the DNA of every software company from day one. “When you read about data breaches, most of the companies impacted have two things in common: 1. They have plenty of security certifications, and 2. They consider those certifications as a compliance tick-in-the-box only. Safeguarding customer information is about the right mentality, a common responsibility, a mindset of continuous compliance and security by design, not another certificate.”

Despite sensitive data being increasingly moved to the cloud, research carried out by business continuity and disaster recovery provider, Databarracks, reveals over 60 per cent of organisations have not evaluated the continuity risks for their cloud services over the past year.

Recently, McAfee published findings from its Cloud Adoption and Risk Report showing over a fifth (21 per cent) of organisations regularly store files in the cloud containing sensitive data. This is a 17 per cent increase from over the past two years. The number of files with sensitive data shared in the cloud has also increased 53 per cent year-on-year. These findings are a concern in context against research carried out by Databarracks.

From a survey of 400 IT professionals, only 40 per cent of organisations have evaluated the continuity risks for their cloud services in the past 12 months. 17 per cent of businesses have no plans to address this over the next 12 months. Further to this, almost a quarter (23 per cent) of organisations admit to not having backup or recovery capabilities in place, beyond the standard default options offered by their cloud provider.

Peter Groucutt, managing director of Databarracks commented, “McAfee’s research shows the increase in ‘sensitive data’ in the cloud. That data must be protected, just as it has been previously for systems held in internally managed data centres.

“In many ways cloud computing is vastly more secure and resilient but it’s worth noting that several issues do carry equal risk, regardless of whether systems are on-premises or in the cloud. There is the potential for disgruntled users intentionally deleting data. Or, the potential for hackers to gain access and do the same. Or, for malware to encrypt or delete your data. For those reasons alone, it is vital to have reliable backups in place.”

Groucutt continues, “SaaS solutions will have a level of resilience built in, but that ‘standard’ option may not be sufficient. If there is a problem with a database, you may have to recover from a backup 24 hours ago, recovering the entire database rather than an individual record. Those options often make recoveries impractical because you wouldn’t want to lose a day’s worth of work to save a single mistake. Another common issue is that deleted files are removed after a short period, as little as 30 days, which is insufficient for certain compliance requirements.

“Addressing this is simple. Firstly, find what levels of protection are included. If it isn’t enough, the Cloud Service Provider itself may have additional options that will meet your need. If those options still aren’t adequate, take matters into your own hands and setup your own additional data protection methods.

“There are a range of different options depending on the type of cloud service. For self-service public cloud providers, all the tools are available, but it’s up to you to setup backups and copies across multiple regions, back to your site or to another cloud. With SaaS services the customer doesn’t have the same level of access to the infrastructure but in most cases, you can set up your own methods to give you the level of protection you need.

The introduction of new payment types has created a greater need for a strong, flexible card infrastructure than ever before. That’s easy for issuers to lose sight of; mobile services are new, exciting and backed by demonstrable customer demand. Fundamentally, however, mobile services rely heavily on card payments. 

All this innovation is pushing and pulling card infrastructures in ways no-one could have predicted a decade ago. Mobile banking, ecommerce integration, loyalty and rewards schemes and even IoT payments all link to cards. That’s a lot to ask of a back-end system.

So the question is: how can issuers balance a need to be perceived as innovative with providing a reliable, compliant and fit-for-purpose payment infrastructure?

Payment revenue is falling, so issuer’s profit margins are being squeezed. Technological change is advancing faster than internal systems can be updated, and the demand for developers with the skills to design and implement back-end solutions is growing faster than supply. As a result, the most forward-thinking banks are taking a critical look at their go-to-market strategies, and questioning if a business model where they design, implement and maintain their own systems is still feasible.

Take payment gateways as an example. Banks need a payment gateway to the card schemes as they are the backbone of broad e-commerce payment acceptance for their customers, thereby enabling banks to benefit from the international e-commerce market - set to grow to $4.5 trillion by 2021[1]. To avoid locking themselves in with a single scheme, these gateways must also be card scheme agnostic. Issuers now have the choice of whether to develop and maintain these gateways themselves, or to prioritise reliability and time to market by working in collaboration with a trusted partner. 

The debate around outsourcing infrastructure has been simmering under the surface for the last few years, and was brought into focus by the Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2). Open banking is bringing huge opportunities to banks because the importance of national borders in the provision of financial services is diminishing. This opens up the market and benefits consumers, and enables banks to target whole new countries of potential customers. However, these opportunities come hand in hand with two significant challenges. 

First, banks must ensure that their payments infrastructure is compliant not only with EU and their own national regulations, but the domestic regulations of any other international markets they intend to enter, as well as the complex and constantly evolving requirements of the card schemes. Card scheme compliance alone is a great responsibility, demanding increasingly more resources as the service portfolio diversifies and becomes more complex, predominantly driven by mobile payment enablement. This is an enormous undertaking – and one difficult to justify when there are dedicated providers of back-end systems offering full compliance for less than it would cost a bank to create and maintain it themselves.

Second, scalability is key. In the increasingly globalised world of financial services, exciting new products must be made available to all customers at the same time, without any of the downtime associated with launching new products and systems. Stability and security are fundamental to banks; innovation alone means nothing.

It’s clear that, in an era where banking and financial services are evolving faster than ever before, banks need to put their money where it counts. A flexible and reliable card infrastructure will be crucial to a successful transition as more and more financial services move to being predominantly mobile – and in the future, maybe even mobile-only.

Although most consumer-facing financial institutions now offer mobile applications, that doesn’t mean that they are ready for a world where smartphones are the primary point of contact with their customers. This is a new reality, and as the industry changes issuers must evolve too. Those that survive and thrive will be the banks that focus on their delivered customer journey and value-adding core business areas – and it’s time to ask if this really includes developing and maintaining back-end systems. 

So, put your cards on the table. Is your infrastructure up to the challenge?

Rocket Software Inc. forecasts significant growth in numbers of developers using open source on a mainframe, the move towards modernisation presenting a game-changer for legacy systems, and the increase of Blockchain popularity in the supply chain – along with three additional predictions for 2019. 

Open Source 

The trend towards collaborative working will continue in 2019, with open source eliminating the barriers between platforms.

Almost 19 years ago, IBM was the first major computer power to embrace Linux which today translates to a staggering 90% of mainframe customers leveraging Linux on their mainframe. With the recent launch of open-source frameworks, the divide between modern applications and the mainframe will be reduced through the increase in accessibility. As it becomes less about what platform you’re using and more about what can be achieved with it, we’ll see a shift in how the mainframe is perceived.

Languages and tools like Python, PHP, Java and Git, can all be used, allowing developers, especially students fresh from university, the chance to code on a platform which they might not be familiar with, or even perceive as ‘bygone’. Open data and open source will be the driving force for future innovation, encouraging the next generation not to shy away from the mainframe, thereby creating an opportunity to bridge the skills gap.

Blockchain

Once hailed as the saviour of the Irish border issue and secret weapon in the fight against world hunger, Blockchain has had a tough couple of months. ‘Too slow’ the banks said, ‘no use for a distributed ledger’ the nay-sayers criticised. But the new year will see Blockchain finally come into its own with the manufacturer crowd. While its supporters might have to accept that it may never be adopted across the board, Blockchain will certainly make its mark in the supply chain – processes like B2B transactions, ordering, invoicing, payments, stocking, etcetera, will benefit hugely from implementing the technology. 

Modernisation for Innovation

Legacy system owners will come to realise that the ‘why fix what isn’t broken’ mentality is not sustainable. The capital tied up in mainframe maintenance is better used to modernise it and take advantage of new technologies. The mainframe provides power and security and is not going away. Therefore, the motto for 2019 is modernisation rather than replacement. Legacy systems will see true innovation – there’s life in the old dog yet.

IoT

Having been ‘the future’ for years, the Internet of Things is continuously making leaps and bounds - GSMA Intelligence forecasts that there will be more than 25 billion "internet of things" connections by 2025. Guy Tweedale, regional VP at Rocket Software would go a step further: “We expect the number of connected devices to surpass 35 billion in the next six years. With the increasing popularity of smart devices, especially in areas like transportation, the figure might even be higher.”

Thanks to the introduction of 5G, devices like parking meters and traffic lights finally have enough power to bring about real breakthroughs in the near future. Moving away from pure data collection to performing actual functions based on external data inputs, congestion will be eased and road accidents reduced – cities will get smarter. However, the more devices get connected, the more we have to prepare for cyber -attacks which are expected to increase in number and severity.

Quantum computing

While it might not be available to the general public in 2019, or possibly anytime soon, quantum computing deserves a spot on this list as it is one of the most exciting future developments of our time. Using quantum mechanical phenomena such as superposition and entanglement, quantum computing takes advantage of the strange ability of subatomic particles to exist in more than one state at any time, allowing to solve problems that are impossible for classical computers to tackle.

Currently only running on a small 20-qubit quantum computer via the IBM quantum experience project, should quantum computing become widely available, the effects are going to be revolutionary. The entirety of security, pharmaceutical and financial industries will be changed dramatically, and lives saved through e.g. atmospheric mapping in real time to avoid hurricanes. In the future, tragedies caused by the late evacuation as it was the case during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, can be circumvented. Due to the processing power of quantum computers, the two-to-three- day hurricane forecast will be as accurate as the generally spot on 24-hour forecast today. The future might be tumultuous, but we’ll be equipped to weather the storm.

Commerzbank is the first financial institution to set up an Enterprise Lab at Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML in Dortmund, in an extension of the partnership that has been in place since July 2017.
 
In the Trade Finance Innovation Lab, new payment and finance solutions will be developed for the Trade Finance business based on innovative technologies such as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), Smart Contracts and the Internet of Things (IoT), and made ready for the market. At the same time, both institutions will play an active part in helping to establish a general framework and standards for the digitalisation of international supply chain management and the related financing tools.
 
Commerzbank, one of Europe's leading foreign trade banks, is the first bank to join the Enterprise Lab Center with its Trade Finance Innovation Lab, which covers the field of financial services with a focus on trade finance business, i.e. processing and financing international trade transactions. From now on, user-oriented researchers at Fraunhofer IML from logistics, supply chain management and blockchain technology will work closely with trade finance specialists from Commerzbank and its research and development unit, main incubator.
 
The Enterprise Lab Center at Fraunhofer IML brings together science and business. It already hosts several subject-specific labs set up by well-known industrial companies in sensor technology, automotive, logistics, chemicals, pharma and telecommunications. These are places where company representatives and researchers work together to analyse current and future trends in logistics and supply chain management, and assess potential scenarios in order to develop innovations and forward-thinking business models.
 
“Since the collaboration with Fraunhofer IML began, potential practical applications for the trade finance business have been identified and prioritised in consultation with corporate clients of the Bank. Processes along physical supply chains can be linked much more closely to the financial supply chain using new technologies. In many parts of the supply chain, processes currently done manually are able to be automated and performed more efficiently. The Enterprise Lab Center provides exactly the right framework for us to step up our collaboration, which has been a success to date”, said Nikolaus Giesbert, Divisional Board Member Fixed Income, Currencies & Commodities and Trade Finance & Cash Management, Commerzbank AG. “From our Trade Finance Innovation Lab, we will work on a cross-sector basis to make optimum use of the opportunities provided by digitalisation, both in physical and financial supply chains”, he added.
 
“We are pleased to have entered into a collaboration with Commerzbank, a financial institution with decades of experience in international export and trade financing. The core competencies of Commerzbank and Fraunhofer IML complement each other perfectly. So in future, our Enterprise Lab Center will also be covering the field of finance”, commented Prof. Dr. Michael Henke, Institute Director at Fraunhofer IML. “The solutions developed jointly in our Trade Finance Innovations-Lab will blaze a trail for digital banking along the global supply chains of the future”, he said.
 

Mobey Forum, the global industry association empowering banks and other financial institutions to shape the future of digital financial services, has today published its latest report outlining the most important and influential developments across the virtual currencies industry. Entitled ‘What Banks Need to Know About Virtual Currencies Right Now’, it explores the key considerations for banks and financial institutions when taking the first steps on the road to creating their own strategic approach. 

The Virtual Currencies Expert Group, co-chaired by Hans Henrik Hoffmeyer, co-founder of Coinify, and Peter Stephens, CIO at DrumG Technologies, was formed in 2017 to explore the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats posed by virtual currencies to banks and financial institutions globally.

Peter Stephens comments: “Even though virtual currencies have been on the list of banks for years, most have taken a hands-off approach. This is now changing. The impact of regulations on virtual currencies is better understood and some of the world’s largest financial institutions are beginning to formalise positions. Digital assets and tokenized fundraising has gained some traction in the blockchain space and the emergence of stablecoins has the potential to bridge between traditional and crypto assets. As the industry continues to develop, it’s time for banks to take a closer look.”

Hans Henrik adds: “Regulations are emerging that may favour banks’ deep regulatory experience and hence are effectively preparing the ecosystem for banks to engage. The potential revenue returns are great and the range of viable options for banks are also diversifying. That said, the risks remain significant and manifold. Volatility is a defining characteristic of the market and reported cases of fraud are, by comparison, extraordinarily high. The combination of these factors means that now is the time for banks everywhere to move their strategic evaluation of this market higher up the priority list.”

Elina Mattila, Executive Director at Mobey Forum, agrees: “Decisions will soon have to be made about whether banks should be leaders or followers. These decisions will require strategies that explore how and when they should engage with this rapidly evolving ecosystem. Our report, the direct result of expert collaboration in a commercially-neutral environment, aims to provoke further discussion and investigation among banks all across the world.”