Alipay, the world’s largest online and mobile payment platform operated by Ant Financial Services Group, and The Dubai Mall, the world’s largest and most-visited retail and entertainment destination, located in the heart of the prestigious Downtown Dubai, today jointly announced that Chinese mainland visitors can now use Alipay to pay for a wide range of shopping, dining and must-see leisure attractions.

With the remarkable growth and importance of Chinese tourism to Dubai, The Dubai Mall is continuing to look at ways to accommodate their needs, which includes multilingual Guest Services staff and Chinese language Mall Guides. 

Chinese visitors can now look for stores across The Dubai Mall through Alipay’s in-app Discover platform, and pay for their orders in RMB via Alipay at the cashiers.

Key destinations include The Souk, an elegantly designed precinct featuring jewellery shops, accessory outlets, traditional Arab clothing and handicraft stores; or The Village, which offers a rich collection of denim brands and brings an outdoor community feel with tree-lined walkways, cafés and restaurants; or the newly expanded Fashion Avenue, which provides a significant boost to Dubai’s premium shopping options, with over 150 luxury shopping and dining experiences including flagships and new concepts.

In addition, Chinese visitors can use Alipay at all The Dubai Mall’s popular entertainment attractions including Dubai Aquarium & Underwater Zoo, the newly opened VR Park, Dubai Ice Rink and At the Top, Burj Khalifa, the world’s highest observation deck with an outdoor terrace. 

With a total internal floor area of 5.9 million sq ft, The Dubai Mall has 3.77 million sq ft of gross leasable space and over 1,300 retail outlets including two anchor department stores – Galeries Lafayette and Bloomingdale’s – and over 200 global food and beverage outlets. The Dubai Mall offers an unparalleled retail mix combined with world-class dining, entertainment and leisure attractions.

The Dubai Mall, the world’s largest shopping and entertainment destination, is part of Downtown Dubai, Emaar Properties’ flagship mega-development. 

Alipay currently has over 520 million active users in China. According to a report from Alipay and Nielsen, ease of payments is also a leading factor when it comes to key purchase decisions for Chinese tourists. 91% of Chinese tourists claimed they would show greater willingness to spend and shop if overseas merchants accepted Chinese mobile payments.

Statistics by The Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing in Dubai show that over 764,000 Chinese tourists visited Dubai in the fiscal year of 2017, with a year-on-year growth of 41%, ranking China as the 5^th largest source market of Dubai. Over 68,000 Chinese tourists visited Dubai this January*.

SSP, a global provider of technology systems and solutions across the entire insurance industry,has integrated iPipeline's award-winning SolutionBuilder® quote and apply system with its next generation financial services software, SSP Adviser. SSP is offering this industry innovation to its customer base to accelerate and simplify quoting, applying, analysis, illustrations and product comparison reporting all at the point of sale.

With a simplified and responsive user interface, SolutionBuilder enables advisers to easily compare both single and multi-benefit products, such as term assurance, life and critical illness all on one screen. This ensures advisers can quickly identify the right protection for their client's needs.

Integrating this functionality with the modern web-based SSP Adviser client and policy management solution enables SSP's customers to gain increased efficiencies at point of sale. The integration saves time by pre-populating client data to streamline the quote request, as well as facilitating the analysis in SolutionBuilder and automatically bringing back key facts illustrations (KFIs), comparison reports and illustrations to support the recommendation. It also sets up the policy proposal and details of the expected commissions due, allowing advisers to achieve greater efficiency across the whole process.

Whilst the analysis is done in SolutionBuilder with quotes available for up to 90 days, the quote, product and comparison details are brought back into SSP Adviser, allowing the documents to be retrieved with ease of access.

Adrian Coupland, Customer and Marketing Managing Director at SSP said:"I am really excited by the additional capabilities SSP can offer its existing and new customers through this partnership with iPipeline. Our customers are the heart of SSP, and this is the first of a number of exciting initiatives we have planned to ensure they get the most out of their SSP Adviser solution."

Paul Yates, Product Strategy Director at iPipeline said: "We are delighted to have integrated SolutionBuilder with SSP Adviser in a partnership that allows advisers to service simple and complex protection needs effectively across single and multi-benefit solutions. We believe bringing new and innovative technology enhancements to advisers' processes are a key component to help grow their protection business. SolutionBuilder is an example of this, as evidenced by a 28% increase in protection business via iPipeline during 2017."

DigitalPayExpo2018 offers a complete spectrum of experience to stakeholders and the general public as relating to payment systems and fintech technology. It will feature specialized forums focusing on the next disruptive payment solutions that will impact economic sectors such as transportation, entertainment, commerce, telecommunications, insurance, pension as well as general retail and public sector business.

Digital PayExpo2018 offers strategic insights into emerging trends in the payment and fintech space globally. Our platform is an assembly of fintech innovators, banks and financial services stakeholders, payment service providers, and subject matter expert-speakers whose insights will propel a future direction for your brand.

With the focus on financial inclusion for the unserved segments, you will harvest values from market-focused programs like mCash Fintech Startup Challenge designed to identify micro-payment solutions suitable for deepening financial inclusion for SMEs; also featuring Data Fiesta, the forum that will highlight how telcos can drive universal inclusion leveraging users’ data and mobile devices. These two platforms aggregate the energy of this era and present actionable insights for deepening digital financial services for the vast unserved segments.

The event also features scheduled e-payment clinic where appointments are made with subject matter experts to advise organisations on latest e-payment strategies and models free of charge.

Over 50 exhibitors are expected to showcase cutting edge fintech and e-banking solutions to the teaming delegates and visitors. The Exhibition will feature a global mix of products, services and solutions. You can anticipate surprise discovery of disruptive innovations even with Nigeria, lookout to benchmark your processes against global best practices and sell to an audience of decision makers just out for products you offer.

encompass, the only provider of simultaneous, real-time access to multiple sources of global company and person data, today announced a new partnership with Wisers Information Limited, the world’s leading provider of Chinese media and business intelligence. 

As European and US governments continue to enhance anti-money laundering (AML) regulations, financial institutions operating in Asia Pacific have ramped up their AML controls to ensure full compliance. New procedures put in place by many regulated firms include the requirement for more in depth KYC (Know Your Customer) information prior to onboarding new customers, and for this information to be updated more frequently. As a result, the cost and time spent on KYC is increasing at an unsustainable rate.

Local regulators strongly back the use of innovative technology to streamline Know Your Customer and regulatory compliance, and in March 2018 encompass launched operations in Hong Kong to better meet increasing demand for their KYC automation solution. The integration of Wisers into the encompass platform ensures regulated firms now have seamless access to a wealth of critical, regional KYC data.

According to Paul Charmatz, Managing Director at encompass, “By robotically automating information and news discovery for KYC, encompass dramatically improves the productivity of compliance teams, which is top of mind for Asian financial institutions. Wisers is a critical source of information for this market and we’re excited about the powerful combination of our technology and Wisers data, especially for the Greater China region and the benefits this will bring to our customers”.

“Compliance teams are under tremendous pressure to improve productivity, and feeding Wisers data directly

With only 30 days until implementation, more than 50% of investment firms globally are unlikely to be ready for the European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on 25 May 2018. This is according to a global industry survey of over 250 financial firms carried out by Cordium, a leading provider of governance, risk and compliance services, along with AmberGate, a data protection and security compliance specialist. 

Designed to benchmark investment management firms’ readiness for GDPR, the survey revealed a lack of preparedness in advance of the regulation’s implementation date. With time running out, only 2% of surveyed firms had finished putting their GDPR policies and procedures in place; 59% of firms said they were unprepared to comply with the required 72-hour window to report a personal breach to regulators; and 64% were unprepared to respond to an exercise of data subject rights. 

Michael Corcione, Managing Director, Cybersecurity and Data Protection Consulting Services at Cordium said: “Companies that have not yet started their GDPR program – or those still at the early stages – expose themselves to significant compliance and reputational risk. Lack of readiness is due to a failure by firms to understand their exposure to the regulation, as well as MiFID II’s earlier deadline, leaving GDPR to fall down the priority list. With just a four-week window firms should be practicing these procedures, not defining them.”

Robert Baugh, Founder and CEO, AmberGate, said: “The lack of GDPR preparedness in the industry is concerning, particularly given the risk of regulatory action and the potential impact to a firm’s reputation. Many firms will now need to divert significant resource and time to the project – there is clearly still much to do across most organisations. Firms will face growing pressure from an internal governance perspective, from investors, and from regulators likely to take an increasingly firm stance on the issue.”

The European Union’s GDPR comes into effect next month and introduces a demanding set of data privacy and security requirements on firms, with potential global reach. GDPR greatly extends EU data protection law’s territorial reach, not only applying directly to firms based in the EU but also, for example, to those offering services to or monitoring the data of individuals in the EU, irrespective of where the firm is located.

World-leading biometrics company, Fingerprint Cards (Fingerprints™) today announces its collaboration with IDEMIA, the global leader in Augmented Identity, on Japan’s first biometric payment card trial, a key milestone in the roll-out of biometric payment cards. Utilizing Fingerprints’ sensor technology, the pilot will run on Japan’s leading payment network, taking the region one step closer to commercial roll-out of biometric payment cards.

“Japan is renowned for early adoption and, with this initiative, it is once again leading the way in launching the latest digital payment technologies. The ongoing EMV® migration ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games makes it a perfect testing ground for PIN-less, painless and secure contactless payments,” comments Thomas Rex, SVP of the Smartcard Business Line, Fingerprints.  

IDEMIA’s F.Code solution, replaces PIN or signature authentication with a fingerprint. This delivers greater security without impacting the frictionless payment experience of contactless cards.

“Everyone can benefit from these new cards,” adds Thomas. “Banks can reduce fraud and grow trust to retain and attract customers. For retailers, streamlining the authentication process with biometrics can achieve higher customer throughput and reduced drop-outs, increasing revenues. Importantly, too, the cards work and are processed the same way as standard contactless cards, with no upgrades required to existing acceptance infrastructure.”

The trial is using a FPC1300-series sensor, has ultra-low power consumption, superior biometric performance, a key requirement for handling both contact and contactless transactions.

PayKey (http://www.paykey.com), a Social Banking solution provider, today announced that Banco Davivienda has been recognised by Celent as a winner of the Model Bank Award for Consumer Channel Innovation for the DaviPlata digital wallet. Celent is a global research and advisory firm for the financial services industry.  

Recognising that consumer mobile needs and expectations were rapidly changing, Banco Davivienda decided to address the changes in user behaviour as customers were spending more and more time on fewer apps.  To remain relevant and drive adoption, they needed to meet customers at their preferred points of interaction.

With this in mind, Banco Davivienda developed the DaviPlata digital wallet with the aim of ensuring that users’ needs were met, either for unbanked or traditional digital-first consumers. In order to create a seamless and intuitive user experience, Davivienda enlisted the help of PayKey, to provide a solution that allows users to access bank services, directly from the smartphone keyboard. Incorporating this solution into the DaviPlata digital wallet enables users to make payments within any social and messaging app such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Twitter. The solution allows users to instantly transfer money to friends and family through the existing chat interfaces they already use on a daily basis and to bridge the gap between social media use and bank transactions.

“We have seen a huge cultural shift in the way consumers use their mobile phones, and users are increasingly expecting to access companies and services from their smartphones instantly and seamlessly noted Guy Talmi, CMO PayKey. It’s great to see Davivienda has been recognised for its innovation and our ability to really streamline the customer experience.”

“Winning the award has highlighted our success with the DaviPlata wallet and the PayKey Mobile Smart Keyboard™. Davivienda can deliver the ultimate user experience enabling their customers to receive money, check balances, make P2P payments, top up their mobile phone balance, and withdraw money, instantly, from within any mobile application. It’s exciting to see our customer receiving the award and know that we are pushing the envelope on innovation.”

According to Stephen Greer, Senior Analyst at Celent: “The Model Bank Awards recognise how banks are using technology to change the face of banking. Davivienda are a prime example of how an institution can create a compelling bank-branded mobile experience through some of the most popular and oft-used smartphone apps.”

Celent’s annual Model Bank Awards recognise the best practices of technology usage in different areas critical to success in banking. Nominations are submitted by financial institutions and undergo a rigorous evaluation process by Celent analysts. Celent judges submissions on three core criteria: demonstrable business benefits of live initiatives; the degree of innovation relative to the industry; and the technology or implementation excellence.