On July 18, top crypto experts from huge international corporations will gather in Paris at the Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference France – large-scale event dedicated to cryptocurrencies, Blockchain and ICO.

The meeting will include conference and demozone. Presentations from leading specialists and expositions of the innovative solutions from blockchain-based startups are waiting for the guests.

Blockchain in France: Big Changes

According to the French Minister of Economy, the country is planning to become the main leader in European fintech industry. The claim is supported by recent actions of government officials.

In March 2018, French market regulator AMF announced the project of a new law which makes ICOs a legal means of investing. One month later, Council of State suggested reducing cryptocurrency operations taxes from 45% to 19%. Capital growth from cryptocurrency has been proposed to be counted as equal to non-fixed assets.

Parliament already discusses the DLT. Large banks, including BNP Paribas, Societe Generale and RCI Bank, introduce blockchain transactions, while the Bank of France helps startups based on decentralized technology.

Recent changes show that the government is interested in the blockchain-based business and cryptocurrency market development. This is why French crypto community welcomes blockchain events with open arms.

Who Will Present and What Will Be Discussed?

Stefano Tempesta, Regional Director at Microsoft, will deliver a presentation “Blockchain for Enterprise.” He will discuss smart contracts and cybersecurity, and will share real-life cases of blockchain integration into business operations.

The Founder and CEO at Chaineum Laurent Leloup will introduce the topic “The new use cases of blockchain for industrials and governments.” The expert will talk about the current trends in blockchain use and its innovative opportunities.

Marc Durand, a Blockchain leader at IBM Cloud France, will give a presentation “Industrial blockchain projects with Hyperledger Fabric: Feedbacks and Perspectives.”

Demozone

Apart from the conference, guests of the Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference France will have a chance to visit demozone where companies working in the blockchain industry will introduce their developments.

The event will include the networking time as well: companies will be able to find business partners, get business ties and sign profitable contracts.

Оrganizer

The event will be held by the company Smile-Expo, which has organized the Blockchain World Events series in 25 countries.

Venue

The conference will take place in the Hyatt Regency Paris Etoile hotel in the heart of Paris next to Arch of Triumph and Champs-Élysées. Address: 3, Place du Général Kœnig, Paris.

The detailed information about the event and registration are available on the official website Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference France.

Revolut strives to create a radically better banking experience for individuals and businesses alike.

Big banks are ramping up investment in digital services, as RBS announces a £ 2.5 billion investment and Lloyd’s announces an investment of £ 3 billion.

However, with TSB still reeling from its IT meltdown, banks must understand the complexities of their existing infrastructure, before they can transition to a more modern IT system, warns Nick Hammond, Lead Advisor for Financial Services at World Wide Technology.

Nick comments: “The approach to ‘going digital’ requires a step back to understand the sheer complexity of many modern banking IT systems, and the difficulty involved in changing them.

“Existing IT systems at older banks have grown into outdated, legacy infrastructures over years of successive development and acquisitions, with a convoluted web of interdependencies. Often the people who first set up these infrastructures have moved on from the company, leaving their successors with a complex, opaque network of applications which depend on each other in unseen ways, with no complete picture of how the system works.

“Before any change project can be implemented, banks must take the time to map out the existing systems and understand the interdependencies within the applications. To be able to adopt technology in a future-proof way, financial services firms need a bespoke strategy that accounts for every connection within the system before implementing change policies accordingly.”

BondIT today announced that leading fixed income house, FIIG Securities, has signed an agreement to use its bond portfolio solution for relationship managers.

Pay360 by Capita today launches Optimize, a state-of-the-art fraud and risk management solution to help financial services, retail and gaming organisations combat fraud, streamline customer authentication decisions and support revenue growth.

Six weeks since the TSB crisis and new research from business continuity and disaster recovery provider, Databarracks, has revealed that 85 per cent of organisations say they would struggle to survive if there was a loss of mission critical IT systems for longer than a month.

This data was taken as part of its Data Health Check survey, which investigates views and opinions from over 400 IT decision-makers on a range of subjects relating to IT.

The findings illustrate the reliance organisations have on IT systems. Delivered effectively, technology streamlines processes, improves productivity and delivers cost savings across a business, but when systems are unavailable, major problems can ensue. The TSB banking crisis was a testament to this, with an estimated 1.9 million customers unable to access their accounts following a poorly coordinated IT upgrade, provoking much scrutiny and backlash for the bank.

According to Groucutt, as businesses increasingly digitalise their operations, the fallout from any IT related downtime becomes much more impactful:

Groucutt adds: “The findings taken from the Data Health Check reinforces how reliant we are on technology. For many organisations, there are now very few business processes that do not depend on a computer to deliver them. In general, automated processes are more dependable but when systems do fail, there are less manual processes to revert to. Without IT, businesses simply can’t survive.

“Digital Transformation requires some new tactics to maintain resilience but the principles of business continuity remain the same. When we design our mitigation solutions, we need to consider diversification, replication, stand-by and post-incident acquisition. We apply these principles to all aspects of the business, from the work environment, the people, our suppliers and our technology.”

Groucutt states regardless of whether a process is digital or manual, certain fundamentals must always be present in your continuity planning: “Designing solutions for how an organisation is going to continue operating following a disruption should be based on the business continuity requirements identified in your business impact analysis (BIA), and the outcomes from the risk assessment. Critically, any business continuity solution should include these fundamental elements:

Diversification – Firstly, having the ability to run different activities and functions across different locations, means that if a problem or a disruption does occur at your current location, you can move to an alternative site and pick up activities with minimum impact to the business.

Replication – Another facet of diversification might be duplicating resources. This means that if there is a disruption, activities can be mirrored elsewhere enabling the business to recover quicker.

Stand-by – If, for example, an organisation has a ‘recovery time objective’ (RTO) that provides a longer response time for an incident, an alternative solution might be to have a standby location available, which enables you to become operational in the allotted RTO.

Finally, Post-incident acquisition means that if your agreed RTO’s are measured in days or weeks, a firm can actually source the resources needed to fix it, in the post-disruption stage. To be effective though, it’s important a firm uses a pre-defined and prioritised list when acquiring these resources, whether it be specific skills, equipment, facilities or supplies.

Groucutt concludes: “For organisations unsure about how best to approach improving their resilience, information provided by the Business Continuity Institute (BCI) outlines not only the fundamentals needed for designing a plan but also implementation and evaluation.”

nexo standards, the international association dedicated to enabling fast, interoperable and borderless payments acceptance, today announces that ID TECH has joined its membership.

Founded in 1985, ID TECH is a leading authority on the design and manufacture of point of sale (POS) peripherals and payment terminals, specialising in secure payment solutions for the unattended, mobile and tier two retail sectors.

As an Associate Member, ID TECH will contribute valuable expertise in both POS devices and on-board payment applications, to support the ongoing development of nexo’s messaging protocols and implementation specifications. 

nexo standards enables fast, interoperable and borderless card payments by standardising the exchange of payment acceptance data between merchants, acquirers, payment service providers and other payment stakeholders. nexo’s messaging protocols and specifications adhere to ISO20022 standards, are universally applicable and freely available globally.

Eric Lecesne, VP of EMV® Strategy, ID TECH, comments: “ID TECH fully supports nexo’s mission to harmonise payment acceptance by eradicating fragmentation in the market and creating a unified global card payment acceptance ecosystem through the use of common, open standards.  We are focused on making card acceptance standardisation a reality in the unattended payments space; stakeholders in this sector operate in multiple geographies and are challenged by a lack of consistency and interoperability in their POS services. By using nexo standards it is possible to create a payment application that delivers a universally consistent user experience, tailored to the specificities of a particular country.”

Arnaud Crouzet, General Secretary, nexo standards, adds: “Success in our mission to harmonise card payment acceptance globally relies on our engagement with key payments stakeholders like ID TECH. The company has a well-defined, expert focus on the unattended space which perfectly complements our development work to date. We are delighted to welcome them as a nexo member and to work together to establish a standardised and universally beneficial way to apply ISO20022 to the world of card payment acceptance.”

As part of its ongoing efforts to offer next-
generation trade finance solutions to its clients, Natixis has announced that it has joined

the trade finance network Marco Polo. Marco Polo is one of the fastest growing trade
finance business networks and is a joint undertaking with enterprise software firm R3,
trade finance technology firm TradeIX and a network of the world’s largest financial
institutions.
Natixis is now part of a growing number of leading banks such as BNP Paribas, Commerzbank,
ING, Standard Chartered Bank, Bangkok Bank, SMBC, DNB and OP Financial Group that are
part of the Marco Polo initiative to provide a trade and supply chain finance platform built on an
interoperable business network powered by open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and
blockchain technology.
“We are delighted to become a member of the Marco Polo network and offer trade and supply
chain finance solutions leveraging blockchain technology. This initiative belongs to Natixis’
continuous transformation plan, which is putting digital technology and innovation at the core of
its strategy to improve the experience of its clients.” said Anne-Cécile Delas, Global Head of
Global Transaction Banking at Natixis. "We look forward to active collaboration with the other
key members of the initiative and believe that there will be significant opportunity to synergistically
drive the adoption of blockchain and new trade solutions in the trade finance market."
Based on R3’s Corda blockchain technology, the infrastructure provided by Marco Polo is
focusing on open account trade finance orchestrations with data matching, designed to be
integrated in new and existing solutions and other trade networks. The principal focus of the Marco
Polo initiative is adding new bank members, offering trade finance solutions to their corporate
clients and the opportunity to distribute trade assets and data with other members.
“Blockchain’s potential to transform the trade finance ecosystem has always been clear. With the
Marco Polo network on our Corda platform we are moving forward from potential to reality. We
are pleased to welcome Natixis on board,” said David E. Rutter, CEO of R3.
“We are very pleased that Natixis has joined the Marco Polo network. This should be a signal that
there is broad agreement in this sector that crosses some significant strategic and organizational
boundaries about collaboration, leveraging new technologies and to provide standards and best
practices in the traditionally fragmented regional trade finance space," said Daniel Cotti, CFO
and Bank Partner Relationships at TradeIX.

Form3, the cloud payments platform has joined forces with Mambu, the leading SaaS banking engine, to deliver a cloud-native and pre-integrated payments processing service. In an industry first, Form3 will provide access to real-time payments processing in the UK and Europe, integrated into Mambu. 

The partnership will help lower the barriers to entry for new players and help established institutions build for the future by simplifying what has, until now, always been a highly complex integration process. Financial institutions will benefit from a cloud-native integrated best-of-services offering that gives them the agility to adapt to market changes and consumer demands simply, securely and efficiently. 

“The growing acceptance of cloud services combined with higher customer expectations means we are in an environment where institutions are searching for quick and agile solutions,” says Michael Mueller, CEO of Form3. “We have individually partnered with clients looking to transform their operations through cloud-based services and our approaches to integration and speed of services are perfectly aligned. This made the partnership a natural fit.”

“Customers see real-time payment processing as a basic service and a necessity for any institution hoping to remain relevant in an increasingly crowded market.  Together with Mambu we offer clients significantly reduced time to value and market,” added Mueller.

Commenting on the partnership, Ben Goldin, CTO of Mambu said: “No single vendor can be the best at all components of a banking architecture which is why we partner with the best service providers to offer clients simplicity, ease of integration and speed.” 

“We have seen both established players and new entrants encounter difficulties building and adapting to the constantly evolving environment. In this market, which is hungry for innovative solutions, our partnership with Form3 is a game-changer. Together, our services give clients a powerful tool with which to both rapidly deliver and efficiently manage business change, reduce risk and future-proof their business,” says Goldin.