CGTrader, one of the world's leading 3D model marketplaces, offers integration of its technology with the Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify. As part of the integration, CGTrader will help Shopify to create an all new shopping experience using 3D modeling and Augmented Reality (AR). The merchants on Shopify will be able to access CGTrader's services through the Shopify experts’ site. 

“This integration can help businesses turn their products into a 3D visual format using the latest 3D modeling and AR technologies,” says Dalia Lasaite, CEO and co-founder of CGTrader. She notes that 3D is the future for e-commerce and within a few years will replace a significant part of today’s 2D online shopping experience. 

CGTrader offers the kinds of services that are critical for e-commerce of the future. “Shopify has chosen us to provide the services needed to make this revolution happen as demand for 3D models in e-commerce sector is expanding rapidly,” says CGTrader’s Lasaite. 

Lasaite adds: "Companies like Shopify are 11 times more likely to sell an item or a product that has an Augmented Reality experience. This fact is very significant for the mobile e-commerce market, which according to Statista.com is expected to generate some $3.56 billion in 2021, a year when it is expected to make up almost three quarters of e-commerce sales."

CGTrader is already one of the leading 3D model marketplaces globally with around 1,500,000 professional 3D designers and over 710,000 models for computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and gaming. On CGTrader, 3D artists, design studios and businesses share and sell their models. 

Enterprise and business customers can choose from a wide collection of high-quality 3D models, which can be used in their projects to reduce development time and save on valuable resources. CGTrader is focusing its efforts on offering complete solutions for enterprises enabling them to manage their growing demand for 3D content. Businesses can also hire designers for their specific 3D projects from the company’s huge and unmatched list of professionals.  

With CGTrader's 3D models, Shopify's store owners do not need any technical knowledge of 3D design to get a high quality 3D model that is guaranteed to work in AR apps. As a result, it will be much easier for them to achieve guaranteed quality, a smooth service and technical compatibility.

CGTrader can help Shopify leverage high quality 3D modeling, according to Lasaite, who explains: "We have a strong and highly specialized 3D design community, and therefore our team can find the perfect designer for any product. All in all, AR greatly increases user engagement, brings your products to life, and lets customers really make sure they want a product before they purchase." 

CGTrader was founded in 2011 in Vilnius, Lithuania, and was the brainchild of the COO Marius Kalytis, who owned an architectural visualization studio in Lithuania and decided to turn his long-time hobby of making 3D models into a business. CGTrader CEO Dalia Lasaite, a serial entrepreneur, joined the company in 2013 as co-founder following the first funding round by Practica Capital. 

CGTrader is backed by investors such as Intel Capital, Practica Capital and Karma Ventures. The company won the Deloitte CEE Fast 50 Rising Star award 2018, the second time in a row and was nominated among the top scale-up companies in the Digital Top 50 Awards, organized by Google, McKinsey & Co. and Rocket Internet. CGTrader currently has around 50 employees who comprise an interdisciplinary team of multinational experts that includes several dozen software engineers and designers. 

Over the past four years, DataArt’s blockchain center of excellence has delivered a variety of blockchain-driven business solutions to dozens of clients. Most of the early blockchain adopters have been mid-size businesses and technology startups. The majority of existing solutions support digital wallets, payments, and cryptocurrency exchanges, with a particularly strong growth in gaming and e-commerce.

During 2018, blockchain experts at global technology consultancy DataArt observed a shift in the approaches of larger businesses to blockchain, with many looking to invest in the technology’s potential, and an uptick in enterprise clients’ R&D and Proof of Concept (PoC) projects. These companies are attempting to apply the radical concepts inspired by blockchain to re-imagine complex, costly and inefficient business processes.

Businesses and IT are attracted to the potential offered by distributed ledger technologies (DLT) to combine multiple concepts and capabilities in a single solution. These technologies enable a fresh perspective on the accepted business processes, with a potential to make them simpler, more transparent, and less resource consuming, resulting in a greater business agility.

These concepts include immutable transactions, the ability to prevent data loss, traceability of digital assets or resources, cryptographic security, consensus mechanisms, joint transaction validation by untrusted participants, and other core concepts - all enabled in the cloud and in a distributed, shared fashion.

Leading platforms and consortia such as Corda, Hyperledger or Ethereum have made great progress this year in addressing the issues of privacy, performance, and other early stage challenges. These platforms now combine legal prose along with code.

Looking toward 2019, DataArt’s blockchain experts see the leaders across industries taking the technology more seriously, and predict the following:

An increase in innovative solutions beyond blockchain’s humble origins:

We will see more projects apply blockchain to processes that are not directly related to payments or cryptocurrencies. For example, in the insurance industry, we expect to see a surge in R&D and implementations focused on the exploration of permissioned blockchains and applications of smart contracts that target inefficiencies and delays in business flows related to checks, controls, and reconciliation.

A strong focus on machine learning and blockchain synergies:

Blockchain technology will be combined with machine learning capabilities, making it possible to develop sophisticated decisions (e.g. insurance approvals) automatically. Use cases that lend themselves well to this blockchain-driven innovation include contract placements, claims assessments, trigger-based invoicing, technical accounting, and settlements.

Data-management will attract attention:

We expect to see new solutions in financial services that adopt smart contract principles for data management and sharing, especially in areas where the data has been previously locked in PDF documents, such as financial statements or loan contracts.

Bigger players will drive impact:

We expect to see platform solutions from the bigger players and communities such as B3i (Business Insurance Industry Initiative). Their activity could have a long-lasting effect on the industry standards and the ways businesses operate going forward.

A new era will form for identity management: 

Blockchain-based identity management will be on the rise in 2019. Open source communities will increasingly play an important role in helping enterprises build new technical components and solutions applicable across entire industries, such as Identity Management, smart contracts libraries, and data sharing.

Blockchain implementation across industries still has a way to go but 2019 is set to be the turning point. No longer is blockchain a mysterious and overhyped technology trialed only by the few. It is a technology embraced by industry leaders who are committed to its potential to transform businesses and industries far beyond its modest cryptocurrency and bitcoin origins.  

The inaugural edition of Vizag Fintech Festival 2018, an initiative by Government of Andhra Pradesh and organized by Fintech Valley Vizag was held from 22nd – 26th October 2018 at Hotel Novotel, Vizag.

Vizag Fintech Festival was a one-of-its-kind in the fintech domain, as the most comprehensive and reputed global platform where India’s key industry players of the Financial and Start-up ecosystem came together to discuss industry trends, challenges and market insights including the Indian regulatory framework. The event also showcased product launches, innovations, and augmented the forethought through the exhibition and a conference platform.

The VizagFintech Festival was a 5-day event which saw more than 75 start-ups as exhibitors and over 2,500 delegates and visitors from around 20 countries.

The festival saw the presence of dignitaries like N. Chandra Babu Naidu, Hon’ble Chief Minister, Nara Lokesh, Hon’ble IT Minister, Sri. GantaSrinivasa Rao, Hon’ble Minister for Education, Sri. JA Chaudhary, IT Advisor to Govt. of AP, Sri. K. Vijayanand, IAS, Principal Secretary ITE&C Dept., and Sri. Anoop Singh, IFS, Special Secretary – ITE&C Dept.

VizagFintech Festival 2018 also featured a series of exciting events including CXO Golf Tournament, CXO Roundtable, Networking Reception, Comic Relief, Re-Imagine Tour, Demo Day and Awards, and Site Tours.

Volante Technologies Inc., a global provider of software for accelerated financial message integration and end-to-end payments processing, today announced the release of Volante Designer version 6.0. This major release allows banks and financial institutions to address the increasing industry demand for API, cloud and microservices enablement.

Organizations looking to take advantage of the opportunities arising from the API economy will benefit from Designer 6.0’s Services Manager feature, which allows users to design comprehensive API-driven solutions, or seamlessly integrate into their hybrid environments using standardized interfaces. Services Manager also provides extensive support for microservices architectures, specifically leveraging RESTful APIs, today’s gold standard for open banking.

Designer 6.0 incorporates a number of important enhancements to enable and accelerate cloud deployments. When combined with Designer’s existing OSGi code generation capability (hot deployment in an always-on production environment), users can quickly build highly scalable cloud-based multi-tenant applications with native high-availability, an essential requirement for 24x7 processing.

Compliant with the latest industry and regulatory standards for software accessibility that govern aspects such as keyboard access and display customization, Designer 6.0 can be easily used by individuals with a variety of accessibility needs. The release also includes new plugins, transformations, and additional support for platforms including OpenJDK, newer versions of Java and of middleware such as Mulesoft. In doing so, this new version continues to address the challenges posed by ever evolving messaging standards.

According to recent research from Aite Group, several trends are shaping the market and the ways in which leading technology providers must serve their clients. Trends include a focus on customer experience over functionality, improved data delivery, more frequent product releases, fully API-enabled architectures, and plans to create financial technology ecosystems.

Christine Barry, Aite Director of Research, commented, “As banks and financial institutions compete more intensely with third-party providers and new market entrants, it is more important than ever for them to differentiate by focusing on customer-centric value-added services. That means having technology which will allow them to easily tap into today’s growing digital ecosystems and expand their service portfolio.”

Venkat Malla, VP, Product Management, Volante Technologies, commented, “This major version release helps our customers manage the rapid pace of technological change and capitalize on the biggest trends in financial services, such as the API economy and cloud computing. Version 6.0 stays true to Volante Designer’s fundamental tenets: enabling rapid financial message integration and processing, founded on solid open-architecture API-native bedrock.”

LiquidityBook today announced that Tremblant Capital, a multi-billion global asset management firm, has selected the SaaS-based LBX Buy Side as its full POEMS (portfolio, order and execution management system), with the integrated LBX Connect as its FIX routing network. LBX Buy Side replaced an existing system which was implemented 16 years ago near Tremblant’s inception.

LiquidityBook’s platform provides a full range of order, execution and portfolio management capabilities, including real-time performance, full historical P&L, risk management, compliance and reporting. With the implementation now complete, Tremblant is using LBX Buy Side to support its entire multi-asset trading workflow, which includes equities, options, FX and swaps. In addition, LiquidityBook’s proprietary FIX network allows Tremblant to access each of its 75+ brokers while significantly reducing third-party connectivity costs.

According to Jim Eckert, Tremblant’s Chief Operating Officer, LiquidityBook provides his firm several significant advantages.

“Since our inception in 2001 our firm’s complexity continues to accelerate, especially as the breadth of products we offer to our clients has increased. We conducted an intense search for a replacement POEMS, and after 18 months of analyzing multiple systems our team concluded Liquidity Book was the right solution. We needed an intelligent trading, intra-day reporting and compliance system but importantly we needed a platform that was flexible and will continue grow with us. We were very impressed with the attention to detail, sophistication and overall level of service the LiquidityBook team provided during our tight implementation window. We have been live for a few months now and the additional LiquidityBook functionality has been a great enhancement to our business,” he said.

“We are thrilled to add Tremblant Capital to our growing roster of clients,” said Sean Sullivan, Chief Revenue Officer at LiquidityBook. “In just four months, we worked with them to deploy a full POEMS replacement, developed a customized workflow that simplified their allocation methodology while offering them considerable cost savings.”

He continued: “Over the last year, the lion’s share of our new business has come from legacy system replacements. More and more managers are deciding that the case for a fully multi-tenant, SaaS-based system is too strong to ignore.”

The LiquidityBook platform delivers significant benefits in the following areas:

• Cost: LBX is a fully SaaS-based product, delivered 100% via the cloud leveraging AWS’s global footprint and architecture, which is the most reliable and secure in the industry. That means there is no need to pay for hosting, remote connectivity, back up of firm trading and position data or business continuity planning. The platform provides full redundancy and accessibility anywhere in the world; users simply need a browser and connectivity to trade.
• Stability and Service: LBX is an OMS/PMS/FIX order routing platform built on a single code base. Every client runs the same version, and updates are rolled out weekly. The platform is not an amalgamation of different stitched-together products; it was developed only a few years ago, making it far more reliable than competitive offerings. 
• Functionality: The fact that the product is one integrated platform has significant usability benefits. For instance, the GUI is incredibly flexible, allowing users to create custom columns and calculations on the fly.
• Business Model: Since LiquidityBook provides its products on a SaaS basis, the firm can offer them at a very competitive price point while still being able to fully fund development, growth and product enhancements. The firm is not and has never been dependent on transactional fees to drive revenue growth. Not only do those cut into broker commission wallet commitments that many buy side are struggling to reach, this model is also potentially considered an inducement under MiFID II unless the vendor also provides connectivity. 

The highly prestigious award concludes this year’s FinovateAsia, a major international fintech innovation conference which took place in Hong Kong on 29 and 30 October 2018. The event saw around 20 leading fintech firms, including Avaloq, demonstrate their tools and solutions to an audience of industry experts.

Avaloq presented Avaloq.One, its next generation ecosystem. Avaloq.One is an ecosystem marketplace that integrates fintechs on top of Avaloq’s banking software and makes their functionality available to banks and bank clients. Avaloq was awarded “Best of Show” based on the vote from the audience.

Juerg Hunziker, Avaloq’s Group CEO, said: “We are absolutely delighted to be awarded Best of Show. I’m very proud of our presenters, Stewart Chen and Bodo Grauer, and the entire team behind the Avaloq Ecosystem. This is another important milestone on Avaloq’s exciting innovation journey.”

Startupbootcamp Scale FinTech Mexico City announces the opening of applications for its second cohort and invites the best growth stage FinTech startups to apply by December 10th.

It is the only FinTech scaling program in Latin America and is designed for growth stages companies specialized in FinTech.

This initiative is managed by Finnovista, an impact organization that empowers FinTech ecosystems in Latin America and Spain. Its vision is to boost entrepreneurship in the region through the professionalization of high-impact financial-technology solutions and the incubation of innovation in the financial services sector.

According to the Global Entrepreneurship Index 2018, Latin America and the Caribbean are some of the highest rated regions on launching innovative products and services, and on creating solutions for new markets through new technologies. However, their entrepreneurs still face bottlenecks in the innovation of their processes and in access to venture capital.

For the second year in a row, Startupbootcamp Scale FinTech will offer five companies a semester of blended support in boosting and developing their businesses. It is designed to help founders tackle the many challenges related to scaling their technology business, related to raising funds, recurring sales, to expand globally and increase their revenues.

The initiative has the corporate support of VISA, Fiinlab powered by Gentera, Banregio, HSBC Mexico, EY Mexico, IGNIA, Latinia and White & Case.

“Our program allows startups to reach their next level by providing them with the necessary tools to expand and achieve exponential and sustained growth. Also, through our customized support and encouraging active collaboration with the industry, we aim to mature our ecosystem and seek to create innovation in Latin American financial services", says Christine Chang, Program Director of Startupbootcamp Scale FinTech Mexico City.

By participating in the program, the chosen startups will obtain:

• Ease of collaboration with different key agents of the industry in the development of tools that facilitate their scaling and presence in new markets or, their growth in the financial markets.

• Financial support of $30,000 dollars.

• Access to the most important venture capital funds in the region focused on FinTech.

For the startups on-site participation is expected for one week each month for workshops and events and will be asked for 4% equity.

Those startups interested in applying to the Startupbootcamp Scale FinTech Mexico City program must have a validated business model to cross borders successfully, be preparing for their series A; have relevant traction and a solid customer base; have a value proposal and a validated product-market fit, or seek to optimize their operations to generate sustained and exponential growth.

"For us, it is exciting to enlist a new group of companies that will be our second cohort and become an example to follow in the technological entrepreneurship community in Latin America," concludes Chang.

FinTech services and products that remain effective are those related to digital banking, payments and remittances, financial inclusion, lending, Insurtech, Artificial Intelligence applicable to the financial sector and personal finance management, to mention some.

Financial-technological innovation in the region is constantly evolving, so it is essential to back the forward-looking companies, offering them to participate in programs that guide and inspire them.

Today, LogMeIn, Inc. (Nasdaq:LOGM) introduced the next wave of intelligent customer engagement by adding proactive AI and language features to the Bold360 platform. LogMeIn has taken the world-class attributes of Bold360 and created an even more powerful solution with expanded use cases designed to help companies build a highly personalized and relevant customer experience across the digital journey.  Bold360 anticipates customer needs and promotes engagements at the right time, in the right way and in the right language.  Bringing timely and relevant content across the entire customer journey – from acquisition, through conversion and into post-sale support -- Bold360 provides companies the tools they need to create an exceptional experience for customers around the world.   

“Artificial intelligence has already shown great promise in reinventing how businesses tackle customer service and support both in direct communications with the customer and in supporting agents,” said Mary Wardley, VP Customer Care and CRM, at IDC.  "The next evolution is proactive AI, where customers can get timely and relevant information throughout their entire journey.  As companies continue to implement AI, they have a tremendous opportunity to use the technology – not just for call deflection – but instead to offer the type of concierge-level service that breeds long-term brand loyalty.” 

Building on the launch of Bold360 ai earlier this year, today’s announcement reinforces LogMeIn’s commitment to helping companies reimagine how they engage with their customers in a highly-differentiated and scalable way.  Proactive AI opens the door for companies to interact with prospects and existing customers in a much more personalized and intelligent way – similar to an in-person experience.  It is also ready around the clock with tailored content based on customer analytics and insights so no matter when a customer is ready to connect, so is the business.   

What’s New in Bold360 

Proactive Engagement: Timely and relevant outreach generates meaningful experiences that establish trust and keeps customers coming back. Bold360’s Proactive AI enables companies to be there for their customers when they need them most, no matter the time of day or the channel of engagement.   

Support for a Global Customer Base:  Customers are less likely to buy from a company that does not support them in their native language. Bold360 offers a growing base of languages fueled by Natural Language Processing but also includes a native integration with GeoFluent by Lionbridge to make customers, agents, and bots fluent in nearly every language.  

One Solution for the Entire Customer Journey: Single-purpose chatbots force companies to invest in multiple technologies, leading to a disjointed customer journey and a poor experience. From marketing, to sales, to care, Bold360 provides a single solution that delivers intelligent, proactive engagement from the first interaction all the way through customer service and support.   

“Today we are bringing the personalization of an in-person customer experience to the digital world,” said Paddy Srinivasan, General Manager, Customer Engagement & Support Solutions, LogMeIn.  “By putting everything online, we’ve lost the humanity that generally comes with a one on one engagement.  Ironically, bots are going to help us bring that back.  By adding proactive AI and language support, we are continuing our mission to not only help companies create connections with their customers, but do so at the right time, with the right context and in the right way.”