Cloud security pioneer, Cryptomathic, today announces an important update to Crypto Service Gateway (CSG 3.10), its popular crypto control center, which offers cloud-enabled enterprises and service providers a single interface through which they can deliver and manage all the crypto-security functions that secure their data and applications, both on-premise and in the cloud.

CSG 3.10 now offers full encryption and signing support via a RESTful API, enabling web services to integrate and exchange data in the cloud. Delivering appropriate security through web service APIs is a pre-requisite for compliance with a number of regulations shaping the future of data management around the world, including PSD2 and GDPR in Europe, and PCI-DSS in the US.

“We have seen a huge spike in demand for compliance-driven encryption, as businesses consider their compliance with data protection regulations,” comments Matt Landrock, CEO at Cryptomathic Inc. “By enabling crypto agility, Crypto Service Gateway can enable large organizations and institutions to respond to crypto attacks by transitioning from one encryption standard to another at a moment’s notice. These new options for business-critical cryptography enable users to comply with the dictates of new regulations via one efficient and easily-integrated solution.”

CSG 3.10 acts as both an HSM service and crypto policy management interface, for banks, institutions and large enterprises worldwide and solves over 50 common application crypto problems, including integration, data encryption, tokenization, transaction authorization, code signing and key management.

“CSG is designed to quickly and easily add encryption to applications without developers having to worry about algorithms and cipher-suite choices,” adds Landrock. “By centralizing the management of crypto-policy and offering true crypto agility, Cryptomathic is once again answering urgent market requirements.”

CSG is already trusted globally to accelerate the adoption of strong cryptography.  V3.10 has been specifically designed to reduce integration friction, in response to increasing demand for fast and efficient integration with a wide range of applications. By adding support for a lightweight and modern RESTful API, CSG builds on this promise, enabling dramatic reduction in integration lead times for business-critical applications, while providing enterprise-grade resilience, scale and performance. 

Merchants across the globe consider the increase of fraud – both in terms of number and sophistication – as one of their main concerns. No wonder: across the industry, they lose an average of 1.5% of annual revenue or 29 bn USD to fraud. Applying strict rules to block suspicious transactions is not the right answer, as it may backfire: 6 out of 10 consumers never return to a merchant who blocked their transactions. Where most payment providers use conventional built-in fraud engines, SIX Payment Services now launches a revolutionary product based on artificial intelligence (AI).  

“We help our merchants to minimize their (cost of) fraud and maximize sales: Fraud Free by SIX is a perfect addition to our range of value added services. Merchants that ‘ensure’ their transactions can expect to have less worry about fraud and chargebacks as Fraugster is taking over the liability. Plus: significantly fewer rejections of non-fraudulent transactions results in an improved conversion rate, generating a revenue uplift of up to 15%“, says Roger Niederer, Head Merchant Services at SIX Payment Services.

Fraud Free from SIX stems from the co-operation with the German-Israeli payment security start-up Fraugster. The highly sophisticated solution uses AI and combines the thought processes of human analysts with machine scalability, identifying new fraud patterns as they emerge, in real time, making it possible to detect fraud before it causes damage. Precise decisions, in as little as 15 milliseconds, ensure the highest conversion rate for merchants. Chargeback rates will drop immediately, resulting in reduced operational cost. What’s more, merchants don’t need any technical integration to use Fraud Free, as it is seamlessly integrated with Saferpay from SIX.

Anti-fraud insurance included

For merchants signing up for Fraud Free from SIX, Fraugster takes over the full liability for every payment transaction that Fraugster accepts. Hence, fraud no longer cuts into the merchant’s profit margins as Fraugster takes these losses, backed by MunichRe, one of the world’s largest reinsurers. “Fraugster is pleased to partner with SIX Payment Services. We are excited to support a pan-European payment provider with such a broad customer base in the retail sector. Delayed or complicated check-outs and frustrated customers are a thing of the past”, says Max Laemmle, CEO Fraugster.

Seamless Integration is key

A true value added service, Fraud Free is available for E-Commerce customers from SIX without any further ado. As an integrated part of the payment transaction process through Saferpay, a merchant can use the service within days. From a merchant’s perspective, the process couldn’t be easier: Once a consumer has made a purchase decision in a web-shop, a data collection, including information on the cardholder, the device and purchase category is sent via Saferpay to Fraud Free. Fraud Free enriches every transaction with thousands of additional data points. The AI engine analyzes behavioral patterns and determines if a transaction is fraudulent. The result is a highly accurate decision that is fed back to Saferpay for immediate authorization – its accuracy being ensured by Fraugster. If desired, rejected transactions can still be feed into a backup authorization system like 3DS. Needless to say the solution is PCI-DSS certified and meets all GDPR requirements.

360° services in E-Commerce means for SIX:

• the acceptance of all card brands and new payment means like TWINT
  • Collection Services: SIX Payment Services enables transactions with alternative payment   
     methods like iDEAL through one central contract

·         Payment services for merchants dealing through marketplaces (via payment aggregators)  

·         And now also: superior fraud services through Fraud Free.

“With Fraud Free, we further underpin our position as a full service partner across European E-Commerce”, says Roger Niederer.

ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, today announced that Erste Bank Hungary (EBH), is leveraging  ACI’s UP portfolio of solutions to drive its open banking strategy, support new revenue streams and at the same time fully meet PSD2 and instant payments compliance requirements.

By utilising ACI’s UP Retail Payments solution, EBH will be able to ensure real-time balance data will be available 24/7 to all customers across all banking channels. The ability to provide such balances is a crucial compliance requirement of Hungary’s domestic instant payment scheme, which will launch in 2019. 

In order to comply with PSD2 and strengthen fraud protection around instant payments, EBH will also utilise the latest version of Proactive Risk Manager (PRM) and implement real-time prevention and detection capabilities. PRM will be fully maximised, especially for transaction risk analysis and reporting requirements in regard to the new Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) for ‘Strong Customer Authentication’ (SCA).

PSD2 requires payment service providers (PSPs) to improve the authentication of payment transactions to tackle fraud, introducing ‘Strong Customer Authentication’ as the means to do this. Under the new rules, exemptions from SCA are only allowed for those who can keep their fraud levels under specified reference fraud rates, which allows payments under certain thresholds to be secured using transaction risk analysis.

Ultimately, PRM will enhance EBH’s enterprise fraud detection capabilities and empower the bank to provide a better customer experience to both consumer and corporate customers.

“EBH is one of the first banks in the region to fully future-proof its payments infrastructure while laying the foundations for growth. ACI’s solutions support our customers in protecting their existing businesses and increasing their revenues, placing them in pole position in the new open banking and real-time payments ecosystem,” said Mandy Killam, group president, ACI Worldwide. “Our solutions ensure that financial institutions can take advantage of the new opportunities PSD2 and real-time payments present, by delivering openness while also ensuring the highest levels of privacy, data protection and fraud protection for their clients.”

“We are delighted to continue our partnership with ACI Worldwide. Our bank faced the dual challenge of meeting a very tight in-country deadline for Instant Payment go-live dates, while driving its digital transformation strategy at the same time,” said Tamás Foltányi, COO, Erste Bank Hungary. “ACI’s solutions will ensure our bank fully complies with new European regulations and will also enable us to drive additional revenue by rapidly delivering innovative products that meet our customers’ demands.”

EBH, a long-standing ACI customer, is a member of Erste Group, one of the largest financial services providers in Central and Eastern Europe, with 15.8 million clients across a network of more than 2,700 branches in 7 countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Croatia and Serbia).

Universal Payments (UP) is at the core of ACI’s strategy to provide the broadest, most integrated suite of electronic payments solutions in the market. UP is ACI’s vision of enabling real-time, any-to-any electronic payments for financial institutions, intermediaries, merchants and billers. Its unique underlying technology framework consists of flexible, open payment services that enable organisations to innovate quickly, reduce risk and gain choice, flexibility and control over their payment strategies.

Saxo Payments Banking Circle, the global scale financial utility, has won its fourth award of 2018. Cementing its position as an innovative and ground-breaking payments provider, it has been named Best B2B Payments Company in the FinTech Breakthrough Awards.

The FinTech Breakthrough Awards, now in their third year, recognise the top companies and products in the financial services and technology industry. In 2017, Banking Circle won the Best B2B Payments Platform award.

“Saxo Payments Banking Circle has demonstrated exponential growth over the past several years, and we congratulate them on their success” said James Johnson, Managing Director, FinTech Breakthrough. “Saxo Payments Banking Circle provides businesses with several powerful solutions that enable them to seamlessly pay suppliers and partners, creating an innovative cross border payments solution and empowering truly global trade. Congratulations to Saxo Payments Banking Circle on their 2018 FinTech Breakthrough Award.”

Anders la Cour, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer commented, “Whilst still relatively new, the FinTech Breakthrough Awards are already highly regarded and we are honoured and excited to have won another award this year. The win also recognises the significant impact we are having on the sector, recognising us as Best B2B Payments Company.

“Banking Circle has moved from being a payments platform to leading the rise of the Financial Utility, handling non-core banking functions on behalf of banks and other Payments businesses such as PSPs and FX Payments businesses. 2018 has already started off with a raft of awards and initiatives, and there is more to come with new solutions and research set to be launched in the coming months.”

Turnkey open banking platform provider, Token, today announces its official authorisation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to deliver payment initiation and account information services, under the terms of PSD2.

Via its universal open API banking platform, Token enables banks, merchants and other third-party providers (TPPs) to connect to any bank in the EU for payments and account information requests, thereby solving the integration pain being felt across the industry caused by multiple, proprietary bank APIs.

“Token is the shortest, fastest and least expensive path for banks, merchants and other financial service providers to become PSD2 compliant and to expand into open banking-based payments and data aggregation services,” comments Marten Nelson, co-founder, Token. “From May 1^st, all transacting businesses can connect to Token and accelerate their growth in payments and data by leveraging open banking.”

“The power of PSD2 and open banking lies in promoting customer-centricity,” continues Nelson. “In the anticipation of a richer and more convenient user experience, account holders can permit a merchant, a bank or another service provider to access their account data and initiate payments. Unless that business can offer this facility to all its customers, however, the proposition falls flat; only a percentage can take advantage. That’s why Token enables full interoperability between banks, merchants, and service providers via a single standardised open banking platform. All parties can connect immediately, securely and at a lower cost than before.”

The FCA license, which permits Token to connect UK customers to its platform, is another step towards Token’s goal of becoming the de-facto open banking standard for payment and data transactions. With the UK license granted, Token now benefits from a ‘license passporting’ process that enables it to establish similar domestic authorisations in neighbouring EU countries much faster than before.

“Token’s ecosystem enablement begins with connecting banks, merchants and consumers across the EU together via an easy to integrate, low cost and secure platform,” adds Nelson. “Crucially, however, we’re also creating a platform that provides a great environment for third party developers. These are the businesses that will make open banking really fly, when they create all the awesome payment and aggregation apps and services that end-users want.”

Token is seeing demand from a range of industries and is already actively engaged with customers to help them capitalise on open banking through a variety of different use cases. Banks, merchants and developers interested in accessing any bank via a single API should contact Token at https://token.io/contact.

CKV Spaarbank, the independent Belgian savings bank, has chosen Wolters Kluwer’s OneSumX to provide its regulatory reporting and financial reporting software. The implementation of the integrated architecture is part of the bank’s drive to achieve compliance with a broad range of regulatory and financial reporting obligations.

CKV will specifically use OneSumX for Regulatory Reporting, for all national and European Banking Authority reporting obligations (including FinRep and CoRep). Importantly, the bank will also use the software for Analytical Credit Datasets (AnaCredit) – the European Central Bank project designed to set up a dataset containing detailed information on individual bank loans in the euro area, harmonized across all member states.

The bank has also signed up to use OneSumX for Finance, which provides financial institutions with fully integrated finance functionality, from event to disclosure, with built-in content and expert support to flexibly address the finance challenges in a fast-moving business and regulatory environment. Notably, CKV will use the solution for International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 9 reporting, using the software’s amortized cost-calculation engine for compliance with the accounting standard.

“CKV required a solution not just for AnaCredit, but also more widely for our regulatory reporting obligations and IFRS9,” commented Rudi Deruytter, Chief Executive Officer of CKV Bank. “Wolters Kluwer was able to provide a truly integrated approach that matched our exacting requirements. The implementation of OneSumX will be vital for ensuring we are able to manage our increasing range of reporting requirements in the most effective way.”

“Like many saving banks, CKV was aware that the manual process for managing reporting was sorely lacking. The bank’s decision to implement an integrated solution with OneSumX reflects our leading position in helping banks across the region navigate the increasingly complex regulatory landscape,” says Kris Van Bavel, Managing Director, EMEA, for Wolters Kluwer’s Finance, Risk and Reporting business. “More than 100 institutions across the region have chosen our AnaCredit solution in the past year and we are delighted to add CKV to this growing list. I look forward to working with CKV to ensure the bank’s reporting obligations are achieved.”

Path Solutions, a leading provider of Islamic banking software systems announced today that the company has topped IBS Islamic Sales League Table (ISLT) 2018. This marks the sixth consecutive year, nine times in total in which Path Solutions holds on again to the No. 1 spot on this iconic international list.

IBS Intelligence has unveiled that not only Path Solutions has been recognized as a winner in its primary line of business, being the vendor of choice for Sharia-based core banking platforms for major Islamic financial institutions around theworld; it also ranked ‘4^th Best Selling Primarily Universal Banking System Provider Worldwide’ in IBS SLT 2018.

IBS SLT is the ultimate banking industry list of which vendors have sold the largest number of their key systems. It provides a hugely informative guide and tells the industry accurately what has actually been acquired by banks and financial institutions during the past year. It aims to identify the industry’s most successful IT providers, and features software giants such as TCS, Finastra, and Oracle FSS.

According to the list, Kuwait-based Path Solutions continued its dominance in the Islamic banking category with 37% market share registered by the end of 2017.

IBS spokesperson commented: “With great pleasure we congratulate you on your impressive performance in the 2018 IBS ISLT. This has been a record year of industry participation with over 51 suppliers providing insights on 1078 system sales concluded with 917 financial institutions in over 124 countries across 10 system categories. Once again, Path Solutions has been identified as a top-performing Islamic software vendor. The company continues to focus on the African and Middle East region, winning all deals from these regions. It had a particularly good performance in the Iraqi market winning four deals in this country, notable client being newly established Zain Iraq Islamic Bank”. 

“The most important benchmark of business performance is client satisfaction”, said Mohammed Kateeb, Path Solutions’ Group Chairman & CEO. “The fact that we continue to significantly increase our client base year after year, while delivering innovation, software reliability and ROI to our clients, fills me with great pride. Path Solutions’ impressive showing on IBS 2018 prestigious ISLT and IBSI Leadership Club is a clear testament to our commitment to meeting and surpassing our client expectations while expanding our technology global footprint”.

IBS Intelligence is a leading UK-based financial technology research, publication firm, and the news and media division of Cedar Management Consulting International LLC. Cedar is a leading global consulting, research and analytics firm with network offices in 16 countries, and hundreds of consulting projects executed globally. Their SLT provides a vital tool to those in financial institutions who have the responsibility for selecting IT vendors for RFIs, and is likely to influence vendor selection across many financial industry sectors.

For the full results, go to IBS April Journal Online

To learn how Path Solutions is engaging differently, you can schedule a meeting with us by visiting this link:

www.path-solutions.com

This Friday, after 6 months of heavy planning, organising and negotiating, the first community-shaped blockchain conference will take place in Kromhouthal, Amsterdam. The team has developed a network of brands, enterprises and experts that will create a memorable event for blockchain industry. But what exactly is Chainges?

Let’s check it in numbers:

• 60 experts from 22 countries like China, USA, Ukraine, Poland, Netherland, Hong Kong and more; that will hold speeches, panels, workshops and AMA sessions to present practical cases to our attendants;
• over 40 partners, including 31 exhibitors that will present their crypto & blockchain projects during our expo, giving a chance to all attendees to meet their teams and projects achievments, goals, and missions;
• 27 Ask-Me-Anything guests, that will answer all of your questions concerning speeches, panels and future of cryptocurrencies;
• over 28 hours of content presented to international audience during 2 days of Chainges Conference;
• 2 stages dedicated to different areas: technology and business, where anyone will find something for himself;
• 2 big announcements that will stir the industry, made by our partners: Vaultoro, Stellite.cash;

Only 1 Chainges Conference, shaped by the community, for the community. The Event that will unite evangelists, developers, experts, investors, and hotheads of blockchain & crypto industry under one roof in Kromhouthal - great industrial venue in a heart of Amsterdam city.

Chainges will bring a unique atmosphere during the whole event. All guests will be participating in something big. That is why the location had to be special too. Chainges will be the heart of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and design.

During Conference, except of speeches, interactive panels and Q&A sessions, attendants will have a unique opportunity to participate in practical workshops:

• Developing Applications with NEM blockchain technology;
• Building the best scheme to secure your favourite cryptos, with Vaultoro;
• Exploring blockchain use-cases with Aeternity;
• Exonum Framework for blockchain.

Check the event website and see you at Chainges!

Major conference on AI, ML and Sentiment Analysis in Finance, London, 27 - 28 June 2018

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is seen by many as the main driver of the 4th Industrial Revolution. According to IDC, the AI market will grow to more than $47 billion in 2020.  The Finance industry has been leading the way in adoption of AI with a significant projected increase in spending over the next three years. In order to process and understand the masses of data currently available, machine learning and sentiment analysis have become essential methods that open the gateway to data analytics, and these methods must themselves continually improve and update.  That is why we are holding a unique conference on AI, ML and Sentiment Analysis applied to Finance, to demystify the buzz and gain real insights from use cases.

Building on years of success, starting from 2009, this event returns in 2018 with RavenPack signed up as Platinum sponsors. Their Chief Data Scientist, Peter Hafez, will be giving a keynote presentation on “News Sentiment Everywhere!”, which explores the smarter side of big data.

Peter joins a range of international expert speakers on applications of leading edge technology to Finance; these include

• Bloomberg
• IBM
• MarketPsych
• BlackRock
• Santa Clara University (USA)
• University of Porto (Portugal)
• University of Milano Bicocca (Italy)
• WU Vienna University of Economics and Business (Austria)
• and many more. 

The presentations cover the latest state-of-the-art research, practical applications and case studies.

Participants will benefit from excellent networking opportunities throughout the days with their peers, the presenters, investors and exhibitors from around the world – so far representatives of 20 different countries are registered to attend. For further information and to book, please visit our website: http://conferences.unicom.co.uk/sentiment-analysis-london-2018/.  

This conference is organized by UNICOM, a UK company with substantial experience in events organisation.  It is co-located with “Applying Data Science, AI and ML to Industry and Commerce”.

• Introducing Dell EMC PowerMax, the world's fastest storage array built for mission-critical applications of today and tomorrow 
• PowerMax engineered with end-to-end NVMe, ready for Storage Class Memory (SCM) and NVMe over Fabrics 
• Dell EMC VxBlock System 1000 will support end-to-end NVMe with PowerMax for extreme performance without compromise for mission-critical applications 
• Dell EMC XtremIO adds native replication, new entry point X-Brick system at up to 55% lower cost than previous generation and support for VxBlock 1000 
• Sneak peek of new Dell EMC PowerEdge MX infrastructure coming soon

Full story

Dell Technologies is launching several new breakthrough Dell EMC storage and server products backed by a comprehensive services portfolio. Raising the bar yet again to power up the Modern Data Center, these new products are designed to address a wide range of traditional and emerging data center workloads to help customers drive better business outcomes.

As organizations race to capitalize on the benefits of emerging technologies ahead of their competitors, they are faced with new demands that require IT modernization to achieve higher levels of performance and automation in the data center. According to a recent ESG global survey commissioned by Dell EMC and Intel of 4,000 IT decision-makers, 81% agree if they do not embrace IT Transformation, their organizations no longer will be competitive in their markets.

"The Modern Data Center is the proving ground for our customers to gain a digital advantage over their competition and achieve better business outcomes," said Jeff Clarke, vice chairman, Products & Operations, Dell. "Dell EMC is delivering the Modern Data Center innovations that our customers require, with new solutions that are engineered using future-proof technology to take on the data center challenges of today and to support the next big thing that our customers are imagining for tomorrow."

From consulting to deployment and support, from managed services to education, Dell EMC Services are available to help drive the rapid adoption and optimization of the Modern Data Center, making it easy for customers to integrate new technology and make it a productive component of their business.

Dell EMC PowerMax

Dell EMC's PowerMax, the future of enterprise-class storage, is architected with end-to-end NVMe and a built-in, real-time machine learning engine. Building on the legendary architecture and capabilities of Dell EMC's flagship storage system, PowerMax is the world's fastest storage array1, delivering up to 10M IOPS2 and 50% better response times3 – 2x faster than the nearest competitor4. 

Architected with end-to-end NVMe to support NVMe-over-Fabrics and high-speed, low-latency Storage Class Memory (SCM)5, PowerMax is not only fast, smart and efficient, but also engineered to handle the world's most demanding application workloads. 

In addition, the PowerMax OS includes a built-in machine learning engine, which makes autonomous storage a reality, leveraging predictive analytics and pattern recognition to maximize performance with no management overhead. Built-in machine learning is the only cost-effective way to leverage SCM. Dell EMC is also the only company that can provide this level of storage software intelligence – currently analyzing 425 billion data sets in real time6 across its high-end All-Flash customer base.

PowerMax also includes inline deduplication and enhanced compression providing up to 5:1 data reduction7, while delivering industry-leading security, protection and resiliency. It achieves greater than "six nines" availability8 to help ensure zero downtime of business-critical applications.

Storage solutions are increasingly being consumed within converged infrastructure, namely the Dell EMC VxBlock System 1000. As the industry's leading provider of converged infrastructure systems9, Dell EMC offers expanded options for VxBlock 1000 customers who can benefit from fast, smart and efficient storage with new support for PowerMax with end-to-end NVMe and XtremIO X2 All-Flash arrays. This means that the VxBlock system breaks the physical boundaries of traditional CI and offers enterprises even greater simplicity and flexibility to help accelerate their IT and digital transformation efforts.

To speed implementation of PowerMax or VxBlock in their environment, customers can take advantage of Dell EMC ProDeploy Plus services for up to 66% faster deployment10 and up to 49% fewer technical support calls.11 Customers can also choose ProSupport Plus for consistent best-in-class support delivered across their environment and up to 75% faster service request response time.12

Dell EMC XtremIO Replication and new entry price point

XtremIO X2 All-Flash arrays gain major updates with the new XIOS 6.1 operating system, including delivering the industry's most efficient replication across a wide area network (WAN)13. X2 metadata-aware native replication is highly efficient and provides an added level of data protection for application workloads. XtremIO replication sends only unique data to the remote site to minimize bandwidth requirements by 75% or more14, enabling potential network cost savings. XtremIO replication requires up to 38% less storage space15 at disaster recovery sites and operates with predictable performance to achieve recovery point objectives of 30 seconds16. 

Dell Technologies also introduced a new Dell EMC X2 entry model for customers, at up to 55% lower cost than the previous generation17. Designed with XtremIO's unique metadata-centric architecture with full data services including inline data reduction (in-memory space-efficient copies, deduplication and compression), XtremIO can also achieve over "five nines" availability,18 offering customers enterprise-grade capabilities that start at midrange prices. 

Dell EMC PowerEdge MX

Dell EMC will preview PowerEdge MX, a new modular infrastructure solution for the modern data center. Designed with Dell EMC's kinetic infrastructure, PowerEdge MX will enable customers to flexibly configure and optimize their IT infrastructure for new and emerging workloads.  

Available in the second half of 2018, PowerEdge MX will bring new levels of flexibility to IT, ideal for dense virtualization, software-defined storage and networking, network functions virtualization (NFV) and big data analytic environments.

Availability

Dell EMC's Modern Data Center solutions PowerMax and XtremIO X2 with native replication, as well as VxBlock System 1000 with XtremIO X2, are available now. VxBlock System 1000 with PowerMax support will launch this summer. Dell EMC PowerEdge MX has planned global availability for the second half of 2018.