Linedata, is launching a new version of its fund accounting platform, Linedata Mfact 11.3, streamlining and automating key operational processes to deliver increased efficiency for users. 

At the 32nd ASEAN Summit today, Singtel gave a demonstration of its initiative to connect mobile wallets across borders. 

In line with global trends and in support of the UAE’s smart nation drive, UnionPay International and Network International, the leading payment solutions provider in the Middle East and Africa, have extended their partnership to include online and contactless (NFC) payments across the country. 

The Western Union Company, a leader in global payments services, announced today that it has added WeChat Pay to its WU GlobalPay for Students product, through its alliance with Geoswift, a payment company specializing in payment solutions in and out of China. 

Traveller expectations are at an all-time high. In the age of on-demand, mobile services and the convenience of ‘tap-and-go’ M-Ticketing technology, the public transport industry is under increasing pressure to deliver the same, high-quality interoperable experience with its ticketing solutions. 

While the pressure is on to deliver new services, the benefits of next-gen ticketing are many and wide-ranging. In a rapidly evolving, converging and advancing market, public transport players are faced with several opportunities to meet both the rising expectations of end-users and tap in to new revenue streams. For the transport ticketing market, the time to innovate is undoubtedly now – writes Myung-Hwa Calais, Transport Market Director at FIME.

However, navigating the latest trends and technologies can be a complex and technically exhausting challenge. To help make sense of it all, let’s take a closer look at the front-running trends in the next-generation ticketing race, the benefits and challenges of implementation, and the key considerations players in the transport market need to guarantee a successful project.

Come together: converging services, new form factors and making the move to MaaS

As the industry’s latest buzz-word, it’s hard to avoid the growing popularity of Mobility-as-a-Service, or MaaS. As services increasingly converge onto smartphones, there’s huge potential for transport operators to deliver greater convenience to travellers. In addition, by translating multiple transit solutions, adjacent and value-added services into one simple, seamless app, there’s huge potential for operators to generate new revenue streams.

So, how best to make the move to mobile?

Partnering with handset manufacturers and mobile network operators (MNOs) to deliver a near field communication (NFC) based solution is one option, but not the only one. Host Card Emulation (HCE) technology for example, can offer a simple, considerably more cost-effective NFC solution for those looking to remain independent of OEMs and MNOs. However, security remains vital and additional considerations, such as implementing tokenization, may also be needed.

Wearables are also tipped to have a potentially revolutionary effect on transit ticketing, enabling passengers to ‘tap’ their way through the transit network without touching their wallets or bags. But with knowledge limited on these solutions, ensuring their security, functionality and interoperability across the network poses a real technical challenge that requires unique expertise.

Account-Based Ticketing: easy as A-B-T?

With capacity to simplify maintenance logistics, improve security and ultimately reduce costs, account-based ticketing solutions are proving popular too. As the traveller’s funds are managed in the back-office account and ‘payment’ occurs automatically after travel, ABT gives travellers the flexibility to choose between several fare media to authenticate themselves with, whether that is a smartcard, mobile device or a wearable. What’s more, while solutions can be done in conjunction with EMV, account-based can also be developed independently of EMV, accommodating support for young and unbanked travellers.

To guarantee a successful implementation and realize the full scope of ABT benefits, operators need to ensure solutions are secure and fully interoperable across all fare-media, with the capacity to work effectively both offline and during instances of poor connectivity, managing risks.

Offering open-loop EMV payments 

Following the success of Transport for London’s (TfL) implementation and the increasing penetration of EMV globally, it’s not hard to see why many operators are following suit and upgrading their systems to offer open-loop EMV payments.

Accommodating EMV payments in public transport networks offers travellers greater flexibility, convenience and, as with all contactless-centric implementations, reduced queues and quicker throughput. From an operator perspective, this also translates into a reduced need for transit-specific travel cards, cutting manufacturing costs and the need for on-the-ground resource to support issuance. These benefits also readily serve tourist markets, enabling visitors to easily board the local transport network with a fare-media that’s already in their pocket.

Whilst proven, secure and widely adopted across the payments market, the EMV ecosystem is complex, with several players, technologies and guidelines. For public transport players looking to cash in, getting to get to grips with these complexities first is essential.

Deciding the next steps 

The opportunities are evident, but to truly make the right choice in delivering high-quality ticketing systems, players need support right from the start of projects to fully evaluate their options. In-depth knowledge of the standards and requirements solutions must conform to, and how suitable these are to their respective systems will be key to a smooth and successful launch.

To truly realize seamless transport ticketing, open standards will also play an increasingly important role. Delivering interoperability and the capacity to transform the business models of the global ticketing industry, understanding and integrating these standards can deliver real value. Partnering with a business enabler helps you evaluate all of the options in line with your strategy.

This ensures the quality of projects from the start, minimising unnecessary delays and guaranteeing a smooth, cost-effective path to market. A thorough testing and certification plan is also key to guaranteeing secure and interoperable solutions first time. During this implementation process, defining a robust quality assurance (QA) system will ensure your solution runs smoothly and efficiently, year after year.

The convergence of payments, mobile and transit holds exciting possibilities, but also increased risk. Expert technical consultancy, from implementation partners well versed in payments and developing new, innovative solutions across form factors, is essential.

Choosing a trusted implementation partner

With over 20+ years of experience ensuring the efficient and successful implementation of card and mobile transaction service, FIME is well-equipped and experienced in supporting the transport market in delivering the next-generation of transit ticketing solutions. With unrivalled expertise in EMV and developing mobile payment solutions, FIME can provide end-to-end support for your projects, from technical consultancy and training, through to design support, quality assurance, field testing and certification services.

DealCloud, a technology leader for CRM and deal management in the private capital markets, and PitchBook, the premier data provider for the private and public equity markets, announce today a strategic partnership to integrate PitchBook data within the DealCloud DataCortex.

With the launch of this partnership, DealCloud clients can now search and query PitchBook's data sets directly from within the DealCloud platform, including hard-to-find financial data on private and public companies, investors, funds, limited partners and service providers. PitchBook's data - which is captured by web crawlers, machine learning technology and verified by specialized data teams - is increasingly sought after by the institutional investment community to make informed investment and business decisions.

"To meet the demands of the competitive climate, today's dealmakers must have powerful and easily accessible data in their toolkit," says DealCloud Chief Operating Officer Lokesh Seth about the integration. "This partnership with PitchBook will allow private capital markets professionals to have a more centralized location for all of their data and will be the fuel behind more meaningful analytics."

Over 400 principal investing firms, investment banks, and operating companies rely on DealCloud's vertical customer relationship management (CRM) technology for storage of proprietary data, deal sourcing, origination and deal management. DealCloud customers can now leverage data from many leading industry providers, including PitchBook, in DealCloud's business intelligence platform and mobile applications, with custom workflows and notifications for immediate actions.

"In today's private capital market, with well over $1 trillion in committed capital sitting in the coffers of private equity and venture capital funds worldwide, the ability to gather and make sense of data as quickly and as accurately as possible is table stakes," said Steve Carver, managing director of strategic initiatives at PitchBook. "Our data, combined with DealCloud's technologies and tools will allow customers to achieve stronger market coverage and to execute more effectively on their business development initiatives."

Exponea, the leading global software as a service (SaaS) and Experience Cloud provider has announced it has appointed Steven Ledgerwood as chief revenue officer. Steven brings over 15 years’ experience in the marketing technology sector to the role, leading both small to mid-sized SaaS companies around the world. 

The announcement comes as Exponea enters another period of extensive growth, following its ranking last year as the fastest growing SaaS business by SaaS1000 and 2nd fastest growing business above $1m ARR according to Latka100. Exponea recently announced it had become the first GDPR-certified SaaS company in the world. 

As chief revenue officer, Steven will take charge of all commercial aspects of the Exponea business, including ownership of revenue, growth and retention. He will focus on driving growth of Exponea’s cloud-based platform, which offers a full suite of personalisation and engagement solutions to drive revenue and engagement throughout the customer journey.

Steven Ledgerwood, chief revenue officer, Exponea, comments:

“Exponea’s powerful GDPR-certified platform is already redefining the way businesses engage with customers and reshaping the ecommerce industry. I’m thrilled to be joining an ambitious, game-changing company that is shaking-up the market and setting a new agenda for customer relationships. By bringing together technical expertise, with effective, personalised content strategies Exponea will continue to transform and lead the industry forward.”

Peter Irikovsky, CEO, Exponea comments:

“Steven is a seasoned marketing tech specialist, bringing energy and extensive international experience to drive our business forward. His ability to deliver highly effective customer, marketing and sales strategies will be essential as we enter our next phase of growth.”

At NACHA Payments 2018, ACH Alert, an award-winning provider of patented, innovative fraud prevention technology for financial institutions of all sizes, announced the launch of two new services: PRO-TECH RT and PRO-TECH CR. The solutions enable account holders to accept or reject incoming real-time payments and incoming ACH credits, respectively.

Financial institutions providing PRO-TECH RT and PRO-TECH CR can empower account holders with greater visibility and control over their finances, which has become increasingly important as real-time payments and same-day ACH transactions become standard. 

With PRO-TECH RT, account holders can establish parameters for incoming real-time payments and determine what conditions should prompt an alert. The alert, which can be sent via text, email or both, provides visibility on the status of the payment. Additionally, account holders can set up in advance an approved or blocked list based on factors such as payment amount, frequency, sender and start/end dates to automatically manage future payment decisions in real time.  

PRO-TECH CR provides similar support for convenient, interactive control over incoming ACH credits using functions like those offered by ACH Alert’s PRO-TECH solution for debits. This proactive, customer-centric approach to fraud prevention enables financial institutions and their customers to protect their funds and effectively monitor account activity. Account holders enrolled in PRO-TECH CR decide what conditions should prompt an alert. Upon receipt of the alert, they can then return or accept the incoming ACH credit and if desired, add the sender to an approved list. 

ACH Alert hosted a real-time payments focus group earlier this year with treasury management professionals from five of its largest financial institution clients and explored the strategic payments issues they face. ACH Alert also invited Mark Majeske, Vice President of Product Development and Strategy for The Clearing House, to join the discussions and share his expertise. 

“Making sure that financial institutions are comfortable with the risk of receiving real-time payments is crucial to achieve widespread adoption. Beyond offering heightened visibility, PRO-TECH RT and PRO-TECH CR ensure that incoming payments are processed according to account holders’ preferences, which is vital for certain industry verticals like mortgage originators, insurance providers and property management companies,” said Deborah Peace, chief executive officer of ACH Alert. “For instance, if cancellation, eviction or foreclosure proceedings have started, it is critical that these companies can reject incoming payments.”

“Since its founding, The Clearing House has played a key role in addressing various regulatory and payments issues within the financial industry to support a safe, sound and competitive banking system. Our latest efforts have been focused on the launch of a real-time payments system,” said Tim Mills, Vice President of Business Development at The Clearing House. “We strive to deeply understand the challenges financial institutions face with real-time payments processing, fraud and security. By doing so, we can ensure that all institutions, including community banks and credit unions, can effectively leverage the latest payments infrastructure.”

NMI, a leading provider of payments enablement technology for independent sales organisations (ISOs), independent software vendors (ISVs), value-added resellers (VARs) and payment facilitators, and Paysafe, a leading global payments provider, today announced an expanded partnership which sees NMI leverage Paysafe’s global acquiring and processing reach and Paysafe deepen its integration and offering accessible through NMI’s payments enablement technology. Together, the two organisations have developed a customisable payment processing solution that provides flexibility and a range of features and payment method acceptance to their merchants and partners based on their specific gateway and acquiring requirements.

For more than a decade, NMI has worked with Paysafe to deliver its ISOs, ISVs and VARs value-added, innovative payment processing solutions.  Through the new collaboration, partners using the NMI gateway can further enhance their platforms by enabling their merchants with a frictionless on-boarding experience and secure processing of credit card and direct debit (ACH) payments through Paysafe’s supported platforms in the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia.  A further benefit is that Paysafe is a principal member of Visa and Mastercard in Europe, meaning it can directly acquire and process Visa and Mastercard transactions across the continent. The Paysafe solution also allows for fast and easy account on-boarding for merchants. In addition, this collaboration will bring value to Paysafe customers by leveraging more than 150 NMI shopping cart integrations. And with NMI’s strong U.S. distribution and multi-tiered hierarchal portfolio management capabilities, Paysafe partners can more easily on-board and manage their merchant customers.

"Our core focus is on delivering value to our partners and taking away the headache of having to develop their own technology, and our partnership with Paysafe is based on this guiding principle," said NMI CEO Roy Banks. "Paysafe is a very flexible partner, focused on providing customizable solutions for its partners and is also gateway agnostic, unlike other processors in this industry.  It’s strong, relevant partnerships like this that make sense for us and enable us to deliver innovative solutions to our partners."

"Our ethos is that one size does not fit all and we need to be flexible and allow our merchants and partners to easily plug into our platform in order to grow their business," said Paysafe CEO of Payment Processing for North America Todd Linden. "This expanded partnership with NMI reinforces this approach and our commitment to developing an unrivalled payments platform for our customers - something we continue to focus on and invest in.”

For ISOs, ISVs and VARs wishing to use the technology provided through this partnership, NMI and Paysafe will work closely together to ensure seamless integration, operation and customer support.