Vayana Network, India’s largest 3^rd party Short-Term Trade Finance (STTF) platform, today announced crossing the USD 1 billion mark of trade financing on its network.  Vayana’s simple, cloud-based Network enables businesses and their trade partners get easy, digital and fast access to financing from Financial Institutions (FIs), such as Banks and NBFCs, at better than market rates.

Vayana has facilitated short term trade financing of Rs. 1,800cr. ($260M) in Q1FY19 which is 5 times more than Q1FY18 and 106% more than the previous quarter which is traditionally the strongest or the largest quarter. With a lot more trade financing programs expected to go live in this and next quarters, Vayana is on track to more than double in FY19 the $ 1 billion facilitated till date.

In India, the Network has processed 650k+ transactions till date and has helped finance 1000+ MSMEs in with more than 45% of them from beyond tier 2 cities. Customers are spread across 150+ cities across the country.

Key markets outside India include SE Asia and US where Vayana has customers in 12 states with their Suppliers located in 20 different countries. Financing on Vayana is based on valid Trade flows and relationships which makes the credit assessment by the lending partners really easy and quick. The company boasts of 95% customer retention with none of the partner FIs reporting NPAs.

Speaking on the achievement, Ram Iyer, Founder & CEO of Vayana Network said, “This is an incredible milestone for us as we continue to exponentially grow the volume of transactions on our Network. This has been made possible due to the ease, convenience and speed we have purposefully engineered into our financing programs which has also fueled our business outside India.”

“We have quickly established ourselves as the market leader in facilitating low-cost, hassle-free short-term trade finance for Corporates and their MSME counterparts. This was possible because of a strong commitment towards our customers and by staying true to our vision to democratize the access to trade finance for even the smallest of enterprises. We will continue to build on this foundation and intend adding at least 500 new customers this year,” Iyer further added.

Vayana Network raised USD 4 Million from IDG Ventures and Jungle Ventures in June 2017. Commenting on this milestone, Mr. T C Meenakshisundaram, Founder & Managing Director, IDG Ventures India said, “Vayana’s platform has disrupted the traditional landscape enabling the much-needed access to working capital for the SMEs to help them grow faster. Achieving $ 1 billion run rate in Q1FY19 is a significant milestone. The potential market opportunity in India is in excess of $ 125B+ and is expected to be the fastest growing segment in corporate loans. We believe that Vayana will redefine and continue to be a dominant player in the short-term trade financing market with the singular vision of providing the simplest and easiest access to low-cost finance to its customers. We are excited to be a part of their journey and will continue to support their growth in the years to come.”

 “We were impressed with Vayana Network’s innovative focus on solving a key challenge in the trade financing space. The problem is universal and the company’s rapid ascend to this milestone is a strong validation of their unique approach and the experience of the management team in this industry. We are proud to have partnered with them and help their expansion into other markets.”, added Amit Anand, Founding Partner, Jungle Ventures.

National Settlement Depository (NSD), Russia’s central securities depository, has signed an agreement to connect Kyrgyzstan’s Bank of Asia to SWIFT via NSD’s service bureau.

Alexander Nam, NSD’s Managing Director for Technological Services, said: “We are very happy that the Bank of Asia chose NSD to use the SWIFT system. Our attention has been always focused on providing our clients with high quality and reliable services, as well as optimal fees for these services. We see great potential for developing financial technologies in Central Asia and we are ready to cooperate with our clients and partners in this region.”

Being a certified SWIFT service bureau, NSD provides its clients with safe and reliable access to all SWIFT services. Working via the service bureau allows clients to optimize costs as they do not need to install and support specialised software and equipment in their offices.

Myktykbek Shokenov, Member of the Management Board, Bank of Asia, pointed out: “Taking into account the high level of security and reliability of NSD’s infrastructure and our cooperative outlook, the Bank of Asia chose this company as a partner to connect to the SWIFT system. Our choice was made based on our partner’s great experience in this area and its flexible fee policy. We are also interested in NSD’s new digital projects, including blockchain. We hope that our cooperation will be long term and mutually beneficial.”

About National Settlement Depository 

National Settlement Depository (NSD), a part of the Moscow Exchange Group, is the central securities depository* of the Russian Federation.  

NSD was founded 27 June 1996. On 31 March 2018, the value of securities under custody amounted to RUB 41.7 trillion. The Bank of Russia recognized NSD as a systemically important central securities depository, settlement depository, and repository. The NSD payment system has the status of a systemically and nationally important system.  

NSD offers a wide range of services to its clients, including settlement and depository services, OTC transaction registration (repository services), information services, collateral management services, and technological services.  

As Russia's national numbering agency and the substitute numbering agency for the CIS, NSD is authorized to assign international ISIN, CFI and FISN codes. NSD has the status of a Local Operating Unit (LOU), which allows it to assign Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs) to corporate clients.  

The Bank of Russia has assigned NSD the status of an operator of the NSD Payment System (registered name).  

NSD settles on-exchange trades and conducts a major part of OTC settlements; it services Russian and foreign securities as the central securities depository. Currently, NSD has accounts with central securities depositories and international central securities depositories of eight countries, as well as correspondent accounts with major foreign and Russian banks. NSD services securities issued by companies representing more than 40 countries. The international rating agency Thomas Murray has assigned NSD an AA- rating as a central securities depository. 

Token.io Limited announces that its technology has been implemented by Sberbank in Slovenia as of today, 17 July 2018. Token is an open banking platform provider that allows a global ecosystem of banks, bank customers and developers to move money and information securely, instantly and without friction. Token’s Application Programming Interface (API) for banking infrastructure ensures that Sberbank Slovenia complies with PSD2.

FSS, a Payments and Fintech leader, today, announced the launch of FSS eFinclusiv, a second-generation financial inclusion solution that leverages the India Stack to promote financial deepening among underbanked customers.

India’s financial services landscape is rapidly evolving -- driven by a favourable regulatory environment, investments in the India Stack infrastructure and proliferation of mobile telephony services. Collectively these trends have improved financial services access and helped bring a wide segment of entry-level customer into the financial mainstream. With 800M Indians having bank accounts, driving account usage by delivering a range of banking and payment products represents a big potential opportunity for digital financial service providers. Most customers and small businesses in India today do not fully participate in the formal financial system. For instance, according to the World Bank Global Findex Report 2017, in India, 7 per cent of customers use their accounts to save and the share of customers making digital payments is an approximate 30 per cent.

Payments are a two-sided business, with the utility of the payment instrument dependent upon the number of points customers can transact. FSS eFinclusiv, an integrated payments suite, is designed to address the two-sided nature of payments. FSS eFinclusiv leverages the India Stack to bring consumers, merchants and suppliers of financial services, onto a single platform, generating network effects and fuelling transaction growth.

For customers, eFinclusiv supports account opening, cash deposits, withdrawals, money transfers and payments. The system supports card-based and card less transactions using the customer’s biometric (Aadhaar -- India’s national ID) throughout the process. For merchants, FSS eFinclusiv enables biometric-based payment acceptance using their mobile device. In addition, FSS eFinclusiv exploits the capabilities of the India Stack to offer electronic Know Your Customer, eSign and Aadhar Vault capabilities for cost-efficient and secure services delivery. 

FSS eFinclusiv exposes APIS enabling digital service providers profitably collaborate with third party applications. The eFinclusiv APIs includes cash withdrawal, deposits, digital KYC and more. Banks benefit as it helps them deepen the traditional customer-bank relationship and rapidly grow market share.

Commenting on the launch, Suresh Rajagopalan, President Software Products, FSS said, “We have shown great progress in improving financial services access in India. This brings sizable business opportunities to capture new markets and drive adoption of financial products among underserved segments. FSS eFinclusiv provides a commercially viable pathway to achieve universal financial inclusion by helping digital financial service providers innovate and efficiently deliver a broad portfolio of products.”

Built leveraging the India Stack, FSS eFinclusiv offers a complete digital payments solution for advancing financial inclusion and empowering underserved segments. The key solution components include:

• FSS eKYC: Aadhaar-enabled e-KYC processes help service providers fulfil their Know Your Customer requirements and halves costs and time relative to paper-intensive processes
• FSS eSign: Allows customers with a valid Aadhaar card and a registered mobile number to use the service to sign documents, enabling a range of use cases from remote merchant on-boarding to supplier contacts and payments
• FSS Digilocker Gateway: Allows customers to save as well as fetch personal documents from a  cloud-based repository (Digilocker account) for eSigning, Account, Loan Opening, eNACH
• FSS Aadhaar Vault: Tokenizes Aadhaar numbers by replacing underlying value with a unique equivalent. This removes identity information throughout the token domain where data can be vulnerable and, if stolen, used for fraudulent purposes
• FSS API Hub: Exposes APIs for rapid prototyping of a new breed of added value services including micro-loans, micro-savings, insurance, creating additional monetization opportunities for service providers
• FSS Aadhaar Enabled Payment Services: A doorstep agent banking solution, FSS AEPS leverages digital technology to expand the bank’s presence beyond traditional branches and provide services to dispersed rural and peri-urban populations
• FSS AadhaarPay: Builds a scalable, acceptance network by enabling micro-merchants to use low-cost mobile devices for accepting Aadhaar-based payments.

FSS eFinclusiv’ modular architecture offers digital financial service providers the flexibility to deploy all or select service components. Hosted on FSSNeT, FSS’ private cloud, eFinclusiv enables services consumption on a pay-per-use model,  eliminating the need for upfront technology investments, thereby, transforming the economics and the ability to innovate for underserved segments.

Fonetic, a global leader in voice processing, compliance and surveillance technology, has selected three industry veterans to create a new product advisory board.  Nick Child, Sandy Broderick and Oliver Blower will provide Fonetic with expert advice on regulatory compliance, surveillance and technology.

The purpose of the advisory board is to ensure each solution that Fonetic develops has industry relevance and leverages each board member´s market exposure and regulatory and trading floor expertise.  

MiFID II is currently a key focus for banking executives. With this in mind, former Citi markets compliance head Nick Child is a welcome addition to Fonetic as Chairman of the Advisory Board.  Commenting on his appointment, Nick said: “Firms are struggling to adapt old tools to new challenges. The tools simply aren’t suited to the more onerous requirements of MiFID II and MAD/MAR. Addressing these issues takes precious time and, of course, money. Fonetic has the technology to reduce compliance headaches for financial institutions.”

Ex-Société Générale MD Sandy Broderick brings over two decades experience in derivatives trading and post-trade infrastructure. He commented: “With the Senior Managers Regime (SMR), individuals have a greater responsibility to ensure and demonstrate greater oversight and control of their businesses. It gives them increased personal liability. Fonetic supplies powerful tools that can extract and analyse multiple sources of information, making regulatory oversight a much more cohesive and immediate process.”

Oliver Blower, CEO of RegTech firm VoxSmart and formerly of Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Barclays Capital, completes the team. Oliver’s experience in high-growth technology enables him to enhance Fonetic’s surveillance capabilities.  Oliver added: “Conduct and cyber risk are the emerging systemic risks the financial system is facing today. There is no question that Fonetic’s unique surveillance capabilities and industry experience play an important role in helping market participants mitigate these risks.”     

Founder and CEO of Fonetic, Juan Manuel Soto, concluded: “We’re extremely proud to have assembled a team with such wide-ranging and in-depth knowledge directly relevant to our business goals. Collaborating with senior practitioners with a proven track-record will help ensure our product remains a leader in the face of continued regulatory and market infrastructure change.”

In the wake of the TSB IT debacle, the Bank of England (BoE) and the FCA have given financial services firms three months to explain how they would deal with technology failure. The discussion paper outlines the importance of operational resilience and warns that banks could face fines if service disruptions lasts longer than two days. The regulators also caution that upgrading computer systems could lead to service disruption.

For many financial institutions, upgrading their IT systems is their only viable route to survival, as it enables them to compete with the uprising of challenger and digital banks. Therefore, their ability to safely and securely upgrade their systems is a crucial investment linked to creating significant operational efficiencies for the IT department and ultimately the whole organisation. Additionally, these IT migration projects are seeking to provide customers with a seamless and convenient mobile and web banking services that meet the demands and expectations of a 21st century customer. 

Discussing the FCA’s and BoE’s guidance paper, Carl Davies, CEO of TmaxSoft UK says: “Even before we started to see IT disasters play out in the public domain, due to the level of risk involved in largescale migrations, many IT leaders and CIOs have been delaying implementing their digital transformation projects. And now, with the FCA’s and BoE’s warning, these anxieties are likely to be heightened further still. This move will discourage the financial sector from taking on the change programmes they need to survive. At this stage, many traditional financial services firms should be making the necessary steps to move away from the legacy technologies, such as mainframes, that hold them back.

Davies continues: “Although BoE and the FCA’s acknowledgement of risks involved in IT projects is important, companies can minimise the chances of disruption by taking the steps required. When it comes to moving away from mainframes, one of the riskiest tasks is altering programmes and applications, or re-writing code. Re-engineering systems can take years, which means that the scope for error is far-reaching. However, financial institutions have the option to re-host their mainframes, meaning that they can simply lift existing mainframe assets and shift them to new open platforms. Re-hosting is faster, less risky, and helps systems to operate in the exact same way, but many organisations still choose outdated strategies that put them at harm.

“Although there are risks involved in any transformative projects, both the FCA and BoE should inform firms that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Organisations will be in a much stronger position once they have migrated to new systems, achieving the desired outcome and becoming a modern organisation that provides customers with personalised, seamless and uninterrupted services. Transformation does not have to be a dangerous journey. It is therefore imperative that any organisation that is considering a transformation project first identifies any gaps in their knowledge and works with the right partner to secure the smoothest transition possible.” Davies concludes.

  Hassan Suffyan joins Excelian Luxoft from Coutts as a Director & Head of Wealth Practice in the UK

Excelian, Luxoft Financial Services, the financial services division of Luxoft Holding, Inc (NYSE:LXFT), today announced that Hassan Suffyan has joined as a Director & Head of its Wealth Practice in the United Kingdom.

Hassan Suffyan joins Excelian Luxoft’s team in London having previously spent over five years at Coutts, most recently as a Director in Wealth & Investment Management Delivery. Hassan was responsible for delivering scalability and operational efficiency through enhancements to Investment Management technology, processes and operating model at the Bank. Hassan brings over 10 years of experience to Excelian Luxoft with previous appointments at Ashcourt Rowan (acquired by Tilney), Canada Life and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.

Under Hassan’s leadership, Excelian will continue to build its strategic partnership with Avaloq through a significant increase in local and near-shore functional and technical expertise. Avaloq is a Swiss company which develops and provides software for core banking and, as one of its lead partners, Luxoft develops its solutions and delivers its services from 41 dedicated delivery centres worldwide. Hassan will also leverage Luxoft expertise in Artificial Intelligence, Robotic Process Automation and Machine Learning to help Private Banking & Wealth Management clients unlock the potential of powerful new technologies.

“Excelian is committed to helping clients realise strategic goals through optimising their use of core banking platforms and digital services to ride the wave of digital disruption,” said André Müller, Managing Director & Global Head of Wealth Practice at Excelian, Luxoft Financial Services. “With the acquisition of Unafortis nearly a year ago, Excelian’s Wealth Practice has quickly become a 360-degree partner of Avaloq for both implementation and product development. Hassan’s expertise in finding innovative solutions to complex challenges makes him ideally placed to complement our mission and lead the UK Practice.”

Hassan Suffyan said “Technological innovation and a renewed focused on both distribution and operational agility are at the top of the agenda for executives in the wealth management industry. When it comes to implementation of these trends the right technological approach can ease the transition from inefficient workflows and processes to cutting-edge services that help unlock distribution channels and operational capacity. Excelian is well-positioned to provide the delivery and transformation services that make these changes happen and I am excited to become part of its continued journey in wealth management."

nexo standards, the international industry association dedicated to enabling fast, interoperable and borderless payments acceptance, today announced that Discover Global Network has joined its membership as a Principal Member. 

Discover Global Network, the global payments brand of Discover Financial Services, processes millions of cardholder transactions each day and has alliances with more than 10 payments networks around the world. As a Principal Member of nexo standards, Discover will have the opportunity to participate in the work of nexo technical working groups and committees, working alongside other members to ensure that the nexo specifications and protocols address the current needs of the payments industry. Discover will also participate in meetings of the nexo General Assembly and provide input to the strategic direction of the association.

“As a leader in global payments, Discover Global Network works with a wide range of industry partners with an eye toward continuously improving the payment experience,” comments Cheryl Mish, head of global payment standards at Discover Global Network. “We support nexo’s aim to promote the worldwide interoperability of card payments through the use of common standards. In the months ahead, we look forward to working with other nexo standards members to contribute to the nexo specifications and protocols.”

nexo standards works on behalf of all card payment stakeholders to harmonise contact and contactless card payment acceptance globally. nexo standards’ messaging protocols and specifications adhere to ISO20022 standards and are universally available and applicable. The protocols promote interoperability between card acceptance and acquiring solutions.

Arnaud Crouzet, general secretary, nexo standards, adds: “nexo is pleased to welcome Discover Global Network to its growing portfolio of Principal Members. Discover is committed to providing effective solutions that evolve as the requirements of the payments ecosystem change. Discover will bring a wealth of payments experience to help influence the development and implementation of nexo messaging protocols and specifications across Europe, US and worldwide. Our vision of creating a unified global card payments acceptance ecosystem cannot be achieved without engagement from global payment stakeholders like Discover. We look forward to working with Discover to develop our messaging protocols and take further steps towards removing the barriers present in today’s fragmented global card payment acceptance ecosystem.”

The Ethos Bedrock platform will be integrated with Payroc’s payment gateway platform, enabling a simple “Pay with Crypto” button to be placed on merchant websites, giving consumers the option of paying with cryptocurrency in addition to traditional payment forms. The companies made their partnership intentions known late last week during Digital Currency Con in Park City.