Elavon, a leading global payments provider and subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) today announced a strategic deal with bpost, Belgium’s leading postal operator, to provide payment services across over 650 locations. 

NEXT Biometrics (Oslo Bors: NEXT), a global leader in fingerprint sensor technology, today announced the company is joining with MK Group to launch an R&D program for biometric smart cards for banking and other applications. 

Leading global payment technology providers Worldpay, Inc. (NYSE: WP;LSE: WPY) and Paysafe Group (Paysafe) announced today a new strategic partnership, with sights set on establishing an industry-leading standard in iGaming and Sports Betting digital payments acceptance and security in the United States (U.S.).

Lendingblock, the securities lending platform for digital assets, today announces the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission (GFSC) has made an in-principle decision to grant the firm authorisation as a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) provider.

The in-principle authorisation comes simultaneously with Lendingblock’s successful completion of its platform testing period conducted with over 30 institutions worldwide.  This puts the firm well on track to launch the world’s first institutional digital assets lending exchange as a fully regulated DLT provider early in the new year.

Steve Swain, CEO and co-founder of Lendingblock commented: “As a true believer in the importance of getting our industry into regulatory shape, seeking authorisation from a leading regulator was always a priority for us. The GFSC has developed one of the most advanced DLT regulatory frameworks in the world and this in-principle decision is a tremendous achievement.” 

Following this in-principle decision and the successful testing period, the Lendingblock platform is open for institutional onboarding in preparation for launch. Market participants are now able to sign up for access and will be able to commence borrowing and lending  BTC, ETC, BCH and LTC across various maturities from early next year.

“Securities lending is an important aspect of most traditional market participants’ return generating strategy and we see it as a particularly relevant to the crypto economy. Our technology and collaborative work with regulators and partners has enabled us to create the market and financial infrastructure needed to meet the demand for trading digital assets on an institutional level,” added Steve Swain. 

Lendingblock continues to collaborate closely with the GFSC as it works towards being granted the full DLT licence.  The firm is also in discussion with several other regulators globally to ensure that the exchange meets its strategic aim to operate on a duly licenced basis for all territories in which it operates.

Hogan Lovells has advised Monzo, the UK's digital, mobile-only bank, on its biggest ever crowdfunding round. Monzo has just published a prospectus in connection with a £20 million raise from its existing customers. This follows the close of £85m of funding in October this year from General Catalyst, Accel and existing investors, which Taylor Wessing advised on.

The Hogan Lovells team was co-led by London Corporate Partners Richard Diffenthal and Daniel Simons, working alongside Monzo relationship Partner Jon Chertkow, assisted by Nagham Al-Turaihi and Peter Finch. The Taylor Wessing team was led by corporate technology specialists, Adrian Rainey and Adam Thatcher.

Commenting, Richard Diffenthal said: "It's been a real privilege to support one of the UK's most dynamic and fastest growing companies – keeping up with the pace of change in the business has certainly kept us on our toes whilst putting together the prospectus.  We were delighted to advise on this exciting deal which will see Monzo into its next stage of growth." 

Adrian Rainey, partner and head of the corporate technology team at Taylor Wessing, said: “The pace of development at Monzo has been extraordinary since we worked on the company's first funding in 2015. We are delighted to continue to support Monzo, working closely with the excellent Dean Nash, Diana Milanesi and Andrew Macklin.”

Dean Nash, General Counsel and Chief Risk Officer at Monzo added "The Hogan Lovells and Taylor Wessing teams worked seamlessly alongside each other, bringing an efficiency of process to this substantial and complex deal which drew heavily on their market knowledge".

EBANX, global fintech company that offers end-to-end local payment solutions from Latin America to global digital commerce merchants, announces the integration with local credit cards in Argentina. Websites that sell cross-border to the country can rely on EBANX solutions to reach all consumers that like to pay for online purchases using domestic credit cards.  

Besides accepting local cash payments and payments made with credit cards from international schemes in Argentina, EBANX merchants will also be able to accept payments with credit cards from two major Argentinian local schemes – Cabal and Naranja.

Merchants that offer this option to their Argentinian consumers can see an increase in cross-border sales to the country. Over 80% of online consumers declared they like to pay for their purchases using credit cards, according to the annual study conducted by the Argentinian Chamber of Electronic Commerce (CACE).

Ecommerce in Argentina: An ever-evolving market

Argentina's ecommerce market is among the three fastest-growing ones in the world, according to Focus Economics. Internet and mobile penetration are among the main reasons for that. Over 63% of the Argentinian population is connected to the internet, according to Statista's data. By 2021, more than half of Argentinians are expected to have a smartphone, as shown by eMarketer.

In the first half of this year, ecommerce in Argentina grew 66%, compared to the same period of 2017, as reported by the Argentinian Chamber of Electronic Commerce. This means that the first half of the year, alone, generated almost $ 97.9 billion pesos, which corresponds to over $ 2.7 billion US dollars.

Cyber Monday, a three-days event that happened in October, generated over $ 7.2 billion pesos, almost $ 200 million US dollars. CACE reported a growth of 39% compared to 2017's edition of the shopping event.

Yesterday marked the six month anniversary of the momentous GDPR deadline – a period of time that has seen an exponential increase in the number of consumers wary of how, if at all, their personal data is being protected. Since the deadline, the French CNIL company has seen a 64 per cent increase in the number of privacy complaints^[1]. Similarly, more than 1,100 reports of data breaches involving people’s personal information were received by the Data Protection Commission in just the first two months – a number that has gone up exponentially since then^[2]. 

As consumers become increasingly aware of their rights under GDPR, the number of Subject Access Request (SAR) have also increased. An SAR is a written request made by an individual for the information an organisation holds on him or her.^[3] The typical SAR demands a copy of all personal information, how it has been used, who it has been shared with, how long it has been stored and details of any data breaches. The consumer can also subsequently ask for the data held to be deleted. 

As SARs can be requested by anyone, the last six months has also seen an increase in malicious actors using the guise of GDPR to steal personal data,^[4] leaving businesses struggling to ensure the requests are authentic. Experts at Trulioo believe that organisations may have neglected adequately planning for the influx of SARs while setting out plans to adhere to the larger GDPR framework. As the volume of SARs have increased, managing these requests continues to be an under-examined blind spot of being GDPR compliant.  

Zac Cohen, General Manager at Trulioo comments: “Once an SAR is made, organisations have one month to comply. However, before going to the extensive process of releasing or deleting a subject’s data, it is imperative for businesses to first determine that the request is indeed coming from the actual data subject.”

“While the number of requests for erasure has climbed since the introduction of GDPR, processing a fraudulent request and releasing or deleting data from the record has resulted in a completely different set of problems. To ensure the person making the SAR is who they say they are, companies can leverage identity verification services to authenticate individuals making the request.

In a haste to process SARs, many businesses have lost sight of the primary objective of the GDPR – the confidentiality of data. Wrongly disclosing confidential data is a data breach and the individual whose data was exposed could file for negligence.^[5]

Zac concludes: “Considering businesses have only had a month to respond to a data subject’s deletion request, the faster and more automated the process, the easier it could be to comply with GDPR regulations smoothly and avoid the associated penalties and fines, which can run up to four per cent of company revenues.”

Third-generation trust-based multi-dimensional blockchain platform, YGGDRASH, has entered into a partnership with a blockchain powered open market remittance platform, REMIIT.

At the signing ceremony, representatives from both companies met to share and discuss the technology, vision and direction between the two companies. In particular, they focused on the overseas remittance sector within the ecosystem of YGGDRASH. 

YGGDRASH is a South Korean project developing a blockchain platform that enables the blockchain experience in everyday life by solving the problem of speed and capacity. The YGGDRASH Project hosted its second meet-up in Seoul, South Korea on the 23rd. At the event, YGGDRASH announced the launch of an Incubation Center, which funds the growth of various dApps and various start-ups. Also announced was the establishment of a profit-sharing exchange.

REMIIT is a blockchain powered open market remittance platform that uses smart contract to reduce network complexity. The REMIIT Token is a unified stable token that lowers trust cost of transitions, which is much more advantageous solution compared to distributed IOU series. The REMIIT Project has developed deep research into the blockchain based remittances space and token economics. It will be holding an Initial Exchange Offering on Coinis at 10AM on the 27th of November.

CEO of YGGDRASH David Seo mentioned, "REMIIT's remittance platform is full of potential," and "I felt a great deal of interest in REMIIT's abundant operating know-how in the overseas remittance industry and high understanding of the overseas remittance market." He also stated, "We will strengthen the overseas remittance sector together with REMIIT in the YGGDRASH ecosystem. " 

REMIIT's CEO, Stevie An on the partnership: "Following the partnership with the HYCON eco-system overseas remittance service agreement, the strategic business agreement with YGGDRASH and the monopoly agreement for overseas remittance have secured the competitiveness of REMIIT's overseas remittance platform," and that "We will actively exchange technology and business infrastructures owned by the two companies to create synergies, which will lead to the global success of the overseas remittance platform of REMIIT."

The potential to enable overseas remittances to significantly reduce the cost, complexity, and increase the speed of trading and settlement processes in a secure manner, has garnered interest from the biggest names in blockchain technology. The path to its adoption will require resolving issues in the distributed IOU systems which many blockchain remittance projects implement. However, despite the hurdles that lie ahead, REMIIT stands at the forefront by developing a fast adopting remittance platform. With the help of YGGDRASH, it is expected to expedite the development and bring in greater transparency and efficiency.

REGO Payment Architectures Inc., (OTCQB: RPMT) announced today the engagement of SKB Capital to act as its financial advisor for both the firm's capital requirements as well as its long-term corporate strategy to align with a major multi-conglomerate tech titan. 

Suzanne E. Kecmer, CEO of SKB Capital, has a distinguished track record in both the cyber security and financial services sectors.  REGO believes the engagement of SKB Capital will provide strategic and investment guidance the Company needs in order for its cutting edge patented COPPA compliant payment platform to be launched.  "This engagement represents a significant milestone as we move forward to deploying a viable product and at the same time position the company for its corporate mission in launching the only COPPA compliant mobile payment platform for the 80 million 18 and under users who influence over $860 billion annually in spending.  Suzanne's knowledge, experience and expertise in the cyber security market will ensure that the security protection that REGO has embedded in its platform will be well understood as a unique discriminator in the marketplace," confirmed David Knight, CEO of REGO.

"We look forward to partnering with REGO to appropriately capitalize and swiftly proliferate its world-class technology," said Suzanne E. Kecmer, CEO of SKB Capital.