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.

VASCO® Data Security International, Inc. (NASDAQ: VDSI), a global leader in digital solutions including identity, security and business productivity, announced today plans to launch a new initiative to help protect consumers and businesses from the increase in phishing attacks related to digital transactions and electronic document signing.

A leading analyst firm positions VASCO’s eSignLive as the third most popular e-signature solution in the rapidly growing segment. Additionally, VASCO’s e-signature business grew more than fifty percent last year. With the rise in e-signature adoption comes the added risk of phishing attacks. Leveraging its extensive history in transaction security and authentication, VASCO is protecting consumers and businesses by mitigating transaction risk factors through elements of the new initiative, which include:

• Enabling customers to white-label their e-signature solution. This allows end-users to rely on their familiarity with their service provider and reduces the risk of social engineering attacks and phishing emails;
• Launching a business education program with best practices to ensure that organizations using eSignLive are properly securing e-signature transactions; and
• Offering organizations and end-users resources to help identify high-risk transaction scenarios that could damage a company’s brand and reputation.

“The remarkable efficiencies of going paperless and digitizing traditional manual processes are helping evolve the e-signature market rapidly while introducing new challenges,” said VASCO CEO, Scott Clements. “The just-released Human Factor cybersecurity report from Proofpoint underscores this and noted that e-signature phishing email click rates were number one among email attacks targeting login credentials. Coming from a history in software security, we understand the importance of helping businesses implement e-signatures without exposing end users to increased risk.”

Ad networks, crypto trading brokers, gambling operators, ICO founders, exchanges, cryptocurrency developers and affiliates met at the main crypto marketing networking grounds once more.

Prague, Czech Republic, April 23-24, 2018 – Crypto Affiliate & Marketing Conference 2018 has given the recently created community of marketers and digital currency enthusiasts another chance to exchange ideas and engage into countless promotion deals for crypto-related projects of all kinds.

“First of all I’d like to thank all of our guests and sponsors, because they really gave us a sense of a strong community capable of creating and implementing unique business ideas and advance the industry beyond what’s been considered a limit. This year’s conference might not be a record breaker in the terms of raw numbers, but it felt like people were coming to CRAC 2018 with a strong confidence in what they’re doing and what they’re trying to achieve. Because, to tell the truth, our first conference last year was kind of a venture in the darkness, we had no defined agenda on crypto marketing and such, you know. But this time around, it’s been a pleasure to see full-fledged crypto marketers with actual experience and use cases, who stood firm in their belief that this is the future for both affiliate marketing and crypto industry. I think we’ve managed to set new heights for the events of such kind, and we will definitely continue our work in the future.”

Pavel Bykov, Founder.

The conference took place at Prague’s biggest exhibition area, within a massive yet elegant XIXth century building, the Industrial Palace. As always, the fun had started with a welcoming party at Pivovar Marina on the bank of beatiful Vltava river, where everyone enjoyed the finest Czech beer and friendly atmosphere. After the main event, the guests headed for the party of their lifetime at the famous Mecca Club. It was a fest of non-stop networking and glamorous fun.

All in all, CRAC 2018 has reaffirmed its status of the leading blockchain-themed event and outlined concrete goals for new crypto projects and marketing campaigns for years to come.

About Faunus Affiliate Network

Faunus is an affiliate network based in Prague, Czech Republic. Founded in 2008 as an analytical company, Faunus had a long and winding road to becoming a part of the affiliate community in 2012. For the last 5 years its main focus has been creation and promotion of Finance offers. With the new era of Crypto offers, Faunus is one of the leading affiliate networks on the market, that also develops its own crypto offers, trading solutions, and P2P games. To learn more visit faunusaff.com.

Finastra landed more global banking deals than any other provider in 2017, as outlined in a recent report by Forrester: True Digital Banking Drives Interest In Core Banking (Global Banking Platform Deals Survey 2017). The benchmark survey recognizes 363 combined sales for Finastra, more than double the next highest.

Nadeem Syed, CEO at Finastra, said, “This benchmark is an extremely positive reflection on our innovative banking solutions. It demonstrates our commitment to providing our customers with technology that enables them to meet today’s challenges right across the breadth of the financial services industry. The Finastra deal figures total more than the providers with the second and third highest number of deals added together which is testament to the richness of our offering and the value it creates for customers, and we believe it cements our position as leaders in the market.”

The report shows the highest key area of growth coming from lending  and regulatory compliance functional elements. Of the 363 combined sales recorded for Finastra, 100 of these are new customers – the highest recorded figure in the survey of new name deals for last year.

Report author Jost Hoppermann, Vice President, Principal Analyst at Forrester wrote, “State-of-the-art banking platforms – or their elements like core banking and digital channels – can create fresh opportunities for banks and their application development and delivery (AD&D) teams to deliver great customer experience (CX) and generate new business value more efficiently. The 2017 survey recorded 2% year on year growth across the industry for new name clients, and extended business deals up 19%, compared to 8% and 5% respectively for 2016*.”

Finastra is also positioned at the top of the ‘2017 global banking platform vendor pyramid’ for combined deals. This ranking recognizes top global players with over 150 combined deals (new names and extended deals with existing customers) in more than five regions.

eBay and PayPal have confirmed the signing of a previously-announced agreement to offer PayPal as a way to pay on eBay until July 2023. This new agreement builds on the payments partnership between the companies to make PayPal available as a payment option on eBay’s new intermediated payments model.

“PayPal has been a great partner for eBay, and as part of our new payments experience PayPal will continue to be a key form of payment for our global customers,” comments Devin Wenig, president and CEO, eBay. “We are pleased to continue to offer PayPal as a form of payment on eBay and look forward to a continued, strong partnership with PayPal going forward.”

As previously announced, the new agreement between eBay and PayPal will ensure that PayPal as a form of payment continues to be available to buyers on the eBay marketplace. PayPal as a form of payment includes payments through the PayPal payment button, as well as value-added services such as fraud detection and buyer protections.

“We are proud to have extended our relationship with eBay and our commitment to build on more than 15 years of collaboration and innovation with a great partner,” said Dan Schulman, president and CEO, PayPal. “We are excited to continue to provide our millions of mutual customers with innovative, trusted and seamless PayPal payment experiences.”

PayPal continues to provide a comprehensive payments solution to eBay under the existing Operating Agreement through July 2020.

Earlier this year, Google pushed out a redesign to its mobile wallet and changed the name from Android Pay to Google Pay. Now, Google Pay has passed 100 million installs from the Play Store. 

Google Pay is currently available for free download from the Play Store, which makes it available for pretty much anyone that wants to give it a try. Given that recent polling suggests that smartphone users are using their devices for payments as much as possible, this could be a good sign going forward. However, given that adoption rates are still lagging the market, the promise implied by the polling and numbers of downloads may not be readily met.

In fact, other reports suggest that Android Pay is to be part of a much larger ecosystem, giving customers with accounts on Google Play, on Assistant, or even on YouTube access to the Google Pay infrastructure. This potentially opens up an even wider pool of users and suggests that Google could be primed to run the table.

As revealed by Pali Bhat, Google’s vice president of project management for payments, Google ultimately wants to make every one of its users able to pay via Google Pay, whether they’ve downloaded the app or not.

The problem, of course, is that intent and possibility don’t always translate into tangible reality. We’ve already recently seen how mobile payments in general may be poised for an uptick thanks to a growing number of users who either have already or are planning to put mobile payments to work. Yet as anyone who’s made a particularly difficult New Year’s resolution already knows, it’s not always easy or even possible to convert plans to actions.

Google Pay has made impressive inroads, bringing in a whole lot of new business along with plenty of old business from Android Pay users who migrated to Google Pay once Android Pay was no longer a thing. Even in the midst of this, however, just because an app has been downloaded doesn’t mean it will be put to use with any kind of regularity.

Mastercard is looking to inspire the next generation of curious minds with its appearance at Coolest Projects International in Dublin on May 26^th, which is expecting more than 15,000 attendees. The company’s signature ‘Girls4Tech’ STEM education programme will be running throughout the event for attendees to explore new ideas and solve challenges through fun exercises.

Why Girls4Tech?

Within the next decade, 80 percent of global jobs created will require a combination of science, technology, engineering and maths skills[1], and while women now represent 47% of the work force, only 12 percent of engineers are women[2].  With Girls4Tech, Mastercard hopes to make an impact and inspire young girls all over the world to enter the world of data analytics, digital convergence and cryptology, and to #StartSomethingPriceless by pursing their interest in STEM.

Last October, the company made a commitment to reach 200,000 girls by 2020. So far, 21 countries have participated in the program and Girls4Tech will extend into additional countries in 2018. 

How to connect with Mastercard at Coolest Projects International 

• Mastercard will be showcasing Girls4Tech at the event. Student attendees will be able to take a short quiz via iPad that directs them to a station connected to his or her interests.
• Three technology-based stations will be available for students to learn through a consumable, hands-on approach.
  • Station topics are Cryptology and Algorithms
  • Each station takes about six minutes to complete
• Mastercard employees will be on-hand to take the students through the programme

About Girls4Tech™

Launched in 2014, Girls4Tech™ is Mastercard’s award-winning, signature employee volunteer and education program aimed at creating future problem solvers. Based on global science and mathematics standards, the curriculum was created in conjunction with top engineers and technologists at Mastercard to teach the foundations of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) principles.

The highly-anticipated Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) opened in Beijing on April 26. Now in its tenth year, GMIC has become the world's most influential mobile internet business platform. AI leaders including Geoffrey Hinton, Michael I. Jordan and Yann Lecun were present at the event. Ping An Technology CEO Ericson Chan was invited to deliver a keynote speech on the application of AI in the financial and medical sectors at the main forum.

On the occasion of its 10th anniversary this year, Ping An Technology showcased the innovations that the company has been researching for the past decade at the event, providing attendees with interactive experiences based on what four AI recognition technologies - facial recognition, voiceprint recognition, micro-expression recognition and intelligent insurance claim handling - can deliver. 

Unlike previous events, Ping An Technology showcased its commercially available high-tech products at this year's GMIC. Attendees were visibly drawn to the facial and voiceprint recognition screens in front of the Ping An Technology's exhibition area, and many stopped to get a closer look and give the applications a trial run. Are you an overbearing boss or a pushover? For a woman, are you someone that many would refer to as "cute", or are you a fashion queen? Ping An'svoiceprint will "mischievously" tell you. 

In the micro-expression interactive area, the application can capture a visitor's blinks or any subtle changes in expression and quickly determine his or her mood at that moment. Another highlight was a sand table model which demonstrated the smart city cloud platform being built by Ping An Technology, revealing what future cities and lives will be like. 

Mr. Chan said that Ping An Technology has achieved huge breakthroughs involving five innovative technologies: facial recognition, voiceprint recognition, AI prediction, AI decision-making and blockchain. The accuracy rates have been head turners among industry watchers with facial recognition at 99.8 percent, voiceprint recognition at 99.7 percent and micro-expression recognition at 98.1 percent. 

Creating new experiences for financial lives

With openness and confidence, Ping An Technology is seeking to share their technologies with all industries, propelled by the firm's strategy of creating a tech-driven company that can meet the rigid demands of various industries. In terms of the facial recognition technology alone, Ping An Technology has collaborated with firms and organizations spanning more than 200 market segments including banking, stock trading, insurance, healthcare, security and education. The technology can be flexibly applied in many service scenarios across the public, financial, educational and private sectors, including but not limited to real-name authentication when opening an account, identity verification when sitting for an exam as well as facial recognition for access control and for bank withdrawals. 

"AI not only refers to facial, voiceprint and image recognition, but also integrates the technology into living scenarios, allowing more people to enjoy the convenience and improvement in the overall quality of life brought about by technology advances." 

Opening a new chapter in medical lives

If the application of AI in the financial sector only benefits a small segment of the population, Ping An Technology's use of AI in the medial sector makes a bigger difference. The company has successfully created a complete medical system which promotes the AI-based development of China's medical industry through new technologies and applications. It provides disease prevention for governments, including the predication of the incidence of infectious and chronic diseases, intelligent medical image reading for healthcare providers, auxiliary diagnosis and treatment services for patients, as well as protection against fraud and intelligent insurance for policy holders. 

AI is the future development trend, and the adoption of AI is a topic receiving a lot of attention. The theme of this year's GMIC - AI Genesis – was chosen in recognition of the fact that AI has successfully opened the next golden era as the current era defined by the mobile internet reaches full maturity. Mr. Chan, the CEO, summed it up succinctly with an explanation of the firm's mission: with the help of internet cloud services, Ping An Technology looks forward to promoting AI technology with its partners, making AI accessible and available to everyone and to every aspect of our lives.