Finastra has acquired Olfa Soft SA and its cutting edge FX e-trading platform for banks and financial institutions. The move enables Finastra to deliver a unique end-to-end real-time eFX trading solution for banks’ treasury departments, covering distribution, position-keeping, post-trade and payments.

Nadeem Syed, CEO at Finastra said, “As the FX trading market shifts to automated, machine-to-machine electronic trading, it is crucial that we also evolve our solutions to stay ahead of industry developments and meet our customers’ needs. Bringing Olfa Soft into the Finastra fold enables us to provide treasurers around the world with an innovative approach to eFX trading which is unmatched in comprehensiveness in the market. What’s more, this is our first acquisition as Finastra and signals our commitment to ongoing innovation and growth.”

Finastra has collaborated with Olfa Soft since June 2017 and has already seen significant interest from the market. Now, as one combined company, we can ensure even tighter integration of the FusionCapital Treasury solution suite with the Olfa Soft Seamless FX platform. Treasurers are able to manage FX positions and exposures in real-time with a single user experience, providing deeper insight across the entire trade lifecycle and mitigating operational risk end to end. As well as offering direct access to 48 liquidity providers, straight-through-processing (STP) capabilities in the platform mean treasurers can act faster in response to changing market conditions and benefit from a competitive edge where milliseconds count.

Based in Geneva, Switzerland, Olfa Soft specializes in the field of trading platform design and integration, providing seamless FX services. The company is a natural fit for Finastra given its complementary solutions and customers.

Fabrice Benouaich, Co-Founder and CEO at Olfa Soft said, “As FX markets become more competitive with trading increasingly conducted electronically, technology has to keep up with the pace and efficiency the market demands. We already know that our combined proposition works and now we’ll be able to help treasurers take eFX trading to the next level.”

Olivier Virzi, Co-Founder and COO at Olfa Soft SA said, “We’re extremely proud of the Seamless FX platform and the competitive edge it affords our customers. This new chapter enables us to combine our offering with Finastra’s leading solutions in this space to deliver even greater insight and efficiency to treasurers. We are thrilled to become part of the Finastra family.”

Nadeem added, “This acquisition is a great opportunity to build on our expertise, capture significant market share in this space, and retain our position as the leading FX trading system provider. It’s a very exciting time for our treasury and capital markets business.”

The combined eFX trading solution is already available and will be delivered as a micro-service on the Finastra FusionFabric architecture, adding value for capital markets clients who prefer a cloud-based approach. 

Olfa Soft SA was advised by Investment Bank Rochefort & Associates on the transaction.

• Developing issues like bitcoin, the gig economy, and how people pay HMRC are will have an impact on this self-assessment this year
• Emily Coltman FCA and Chief Accountant to FreeAgent outlines her five top tips for late filers

Nearly 11 million people are expected to file a self-assessment tax return before next Wednesday’s (31/01/18) deadline. Yet last year 14% of taxpayers (or 840,000 people) missed this deadline and incurred a fine of £100 from HMRC. 

However, this year’s self-assessment deadline is significant for a number of reasons. 

New Issues:

Those submitting self-assessment tax returns need to be aware of:  

• Bitcoin: In April 2017, a single Bitcoin was worth a little over £746 but by mid December it was worth over £14,000. However, HMRC’s guidelines on the crypto-currency may cause confusion among non-traditional investors looking to include the information in their Self Assessment tax return.
• Gig economy: With the average Airbnb host making at least £3,000 per year, these individuals need to assess whether they meet HMRC’s “badges of trade”, they will need to register for Self Assessment as soon as possible, or else receive a £100 fine from HMRC, and risk further penalties for not paying the tax they owe.
• Paying HMRC: While submitting a self-assessment tax return is free, due to new EU rules (the Payment Services Directive 2 - PSD2), HMRC will no longer accept credit card payments for late payers.
  • The decision was made in December 2017, despite 454,000 personal credit cards being used for tax payments last year.
  • Taxpayers can also no longer pay their tax bills at the Post Office.

Ed Molyneux, CEO and co-founder of award-winning cloud accounting software provider FreeAgent, said: "Every year, hundreds of thousands of people across the UK end up incurring fines for failing to file their tax return on time. Yet, in many cases, these penalties are entirely avoidable provided that people check the tax implications of what they have earned throughout the year and start their Self Assessment in advance of the filing deadline."

“Airbnb rents and other earnings from the gig economy can often trip people up when it comes to knowing whether they have to file a tax return. But this year, an added complication could come from Bitcoin, as some investors in the crypto-currency will have taken advantage of its high valuation this year to cash out their investments."

“It’s likely that HMRC see Bitcoin profits being subject to Capital Gains Tax, but there does not appear to be a definitive answer on the issue yet, which could cause confusion among investors. I would therefore urge anyone who has made money from Bitcoin to contact HMRC directly to check whether they need to include the information in their Self Assessment tax return or in a different capacity."

Volante Technologies Inc., a global provider of software for the integration, processing and orchestration of payments and financial messages, announced today that it has been collaborating with BNY Mellon on creating and deploying technology to enable real-time payments in the US and internationally.

BNY Mellon is a leader in offering faster and improved payments solutions to its corporate and institutional clients, as well as in advocating for payments modernization within the industry. As a part of BNY Mellon’s payments modernization initiative, the bank launched two services leveraging VolPay Hub technology provided by Volante. 

BNY Mellon’s first such initiative was to become the first bank to successfully originate a real-time payment over the The Clearing House’s new Real-Time Payments network. It has worked extensively with The Clearing House and other banks to define standards for clearing and settling payments in real-time.

BNY Mellon’s second initiative was to launch a new service, called "BNY Mellon Tokenized Payments® – now available with Zelle®", which will further accelerate the transition from paper to electronic payments for their clients.

In support of these initiatives, Volante developed its TCH RTP Processor Module in collaboration with BNY Mellon to process real-time payments  and to  allow a transaction to reach its recipient within 15 seconds or less. 

“We are creating the building blocks for an integrated payments ecosystem both for today’s needs and for the next generation. This approach allowed us to be first to market with RTP and will also serve us well over the long term,” said Saket Sharma, Chief Information Officer for BNY Mellon Treasury Services. “Working closely with trusted and innovative fintech providers such as Volante and our own development resources helps us deliver sustainable value quickly.”

Vijay Oddiraju, CEO, Volante Technologies said, “Our collaboration with BNY Mellon on first-to-industry payments solutions further establishes our payments innovation capability. We are enormously proud to have played such a significant role in the historic moment of US real-time payments. Implementing the first RTP processing hub in the US is the perfect example of collaborative teamwork between BNY Mellon and Volante, bringing greater value to BNY Mellon’s clients.”

Oddiraju continued, “This successful deployment further reinforces our core principle of using automation to reduce implementation time and cost for our customers. Adding tokenized payments capability to BNY Mellon’s real-time payments technology platform is a further testament to how we continue to collaborate and help our customers build out their future payment capabilities.”

West Corporation ("West") and Nasdaq, Inc. jointly announced today that West has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the public relations (Public Relations Solutions) and webcasting and webhosting (Digital Media Services) products and services within Nasdaq's Corporate Solutions business for approximately $335 million, subject to adjustments. Public Relations Solutions and Digital Media Services consist of a comprehensive portfolio of communication tools, media intelligence and multimedia services for organizations across all industries. These solutions help enterprises more effectively communicate with their investors, customers and employees and increase the relevance of messaging by ensuring that it reaches the targeted audience.

The products and services included in the transaction are:

• GlobeNewswire: a global press release distribution platform and media contacts database with analytics
• Webhosting: a web hosting service purpose-built for investor relations and external communications functions
• Webcasting: a multimedia service that publishes webcasts, webinars, video presentations and other content
• Media Intelligence: a media monitoring and analyst-curated daily news reporting service
• Influencers Database: a service to identify and connect with relevant journalists and social media profiles

As part of the terms of the transaction, Nasdaq has agreed to an exclusive multi-year partnership with West to provide eligible Nasdaq clients seamless access to certain products and services included in the transaction.

"West is a leader in technology-enabled communication services and is focused on growth and expanding the depth and breadth of its enterprise communications client relationships," said John Shlonsky, Chief Executive Officer of West Corporation. "This acquisition will complement and broaden our portfolio of products and services. We see tremendous opportunity to grow and enhance this business. We are also excited to partner with Nasdaq and add the talented Public Relations Solutions and Digital Media Services teams to West."

Stacie Swanstrom, Executive Vice President, Nasdaq Corporate Solutions, added, "We are confident that West will be able to provide the resources needed to accelerate the various Public Relations Solutions and Digital Media Services product initiatives that are already underway, while providing additional flexibility and resources to deliver increased value for our clients and their communications needs. We look forward to our continued partnership with West. This strategic decision will allow us to focus our efforts on strengthening technology, data and analytics capabilities within our core investor relations and board collaboration solutions, which are an important component of Nasdaq's relationships with its corporate clients."

This process is a result of Nasdaq's refined strategic direction and its decision to explore strategic alternatives for these products and services that was announced in September 2017.

The closing of this transaction, which is subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions, is projected to occur in the second quarter of 2018. Nasdaq expects to use the proceeds from the sale for share repurchases. In conjunction with this, Nasdaq's board of directors has authorized an additional $500 million for the share repurchase program to facilitate additional share repurchases and support the existing buyback objective of maintaining a stable share count.

Advisors and Financing Providers:

Credit Suisse and LionTree are acting as financial advisors to West. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz is acting as corporate counsel to West and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP is acting as financing counsel to West. Transaction financing is being provided by Credit Suisse and RBC Capital Markets.

Evercore is acting as exclusive financial advisor to Nasdaq. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP is acting as lead corporate counsel, Baker McKenzie is advising on international issues and Jones Day is acting as antitrust counsel to Nasdaq.

With Open Banking set to shake-up retail banking in early 2018, challenger banks are being advised to take advantage of Open Banking.

This insight comes from leading end-to-end quality specialist SQS and follows research, which showcases the importance of challenger banks focusing on building a strong bond with consumers by positioning themselves at the forefront of digital transformation. This is highlighted by 76 per cent of consumers looking to their banking provider to pick up the pieces if something goes wrong, while more than a third see technology failures as a trust turn-off.

The Open Banking era is set to deliver greater insight into banking behaviour and offers challenger banks the opportunity to tailor their services to the changing needs of the modern consumer. Currently, only 26 per cent of consumers see Open Banking as a reason to switch banking provider, highlighting the work which remains to be done by banks outside the ‘big five’ whilst the figure grows to 38 per cent when looking solely at the 18-34 market, compared to just 13 per cent of the 65+ market showcasing a clear generational divide.

Challenger banks that target younger customers by embracing the latest technologies – such as chatbots and AI – may see the number of brand advocates skyrocket in 2018. There is a significant business growth opportunity for the more agile challenger banks who are not  restricted by legacy IT systems and extensive infrastructures which plague the industry leaders. Richard Lowe, Business Unit Lead - UK BFSI at SQS, says, “While it is unclear whether we can expect a mass exodus of consumers from one provider to another, the competitive market will make way for challenger banks with innovative offerings that play directly into the consumer’s interests and needs. 2018 will see consumers put firmly in the position of power.

“In almost every sector, disruptive innovation has seen start-ups transform entire industries and consumer expectations, yet the banking industry remains potentially over reliant on the traditional in comparison. To change the status quo, challenger banks must look at how to create brand advocates out of the market most willing to change provider – the tech savvy younger generations. 

“The market leans towards best of breed and often the best mobile platform providers prove most successful. Customers have historically opened a current account with one bank and will then use the same provider for everything from their mortgage to their insurance. The introduction of Open Banking is likely to cause customers to pause for thought and shop around for the provider offering the best deals for specific products. It is those challenger organisations that will create a niche, or answer a demand which the traditional banks can’t fulfil.  This raises the question of who will make up the ‘big five’ in years to come?

“2018 is the year when Open Banking becomes the digital disruptor for retail banking. If any providers are going to disrupt the market and truly challenge the ‘big five’ now is the time to step up and be counted. Failing to do so could be the difference between making or braking the next big banking brand. By working with a quality specialist, placing quality and customer journey first, banking providers can ensure their digital customer experience is flawless and truly challenge the ‘big five’ in 2018.”

Aptean, a leading global provider of mission-critical, industry-specific software solutions and support, has introduced a new, modern identity to reflect the company's transformation and expansion since its formation five years ago.

"Aptean is now 2,100 employees, 7,000 customers and close to 50 products strong, with a renewed focus on operations and innovation so we can continue to serve our customers well," said CEO Kim Eaton. "We're bigger, better and different than we were five years ago, and that means we need a different way to present the company to our markets. I'm very excited to be at a point in our evolution that calls for a fresh new identity."

In addition to a new logo and visual identity, Aptean is introducing new positioning to describe what the company does and its importance to customers. "We have survey data showing that 77% see workarounds such as managing by spreadsheet as a problem in their organizations. Too many companies spend too much time making homegrown, generic solutions do things they were never designed to do," Eaton said. "We're on a mission to end our customers' workarounds and provide them with purpose-built software, expert support and new ideas and innovations."

Since Aptean's formation in 2012, the company has grown significantly through acquisition, adding 16 product lines to its portfolio of offerings. Acquisitions the company made in 2017 added strategic products and capabilities to complement Aptean's ERP, supply chain management, asset management, complaints management and public sector solutions.

"When it comes to our customers, our mission to end their workarounds is one we couldn't be more serious about," Eaton said. "Whether through acquisition or innovation, our track record proves our dedication to offering industry-specific software to solve the problems of every production supervisor or customer relationship manager who has said 'there has to be a better way' to do their work."

Arcserve will be announcing a new cloud-based disaster recovery service that, for the first time, makes enterprise-grade data recovery times and data recovery points affordable for SMEs, midsizes and the public sector, offering an excellent business opportunity for its channel partners, whose customers may lack WAN/bandwidth, have large data sets, and those with limited resources that need secure offsite backup and disaster recovery without additional infrastructure to support growth.

The new service brings disaster recovery to sectors that were previously priced out of enterprise grade disaster recovery, but which are just as dependent on timely data for their continuity. Arcserve is also introducing a new UK datacentre to underpin the service in EMEA.

With downtime measured in minutes and seconds becoming increasingly disastrous for data-dependent organisations there is a surging demand for DRaaS. However, since Enterprise grade disaster recovery services are charged at enterprise pricing, there has been a massive gulf between demand and supply. By closing that gap, Arcserve has created a solution for a problem for a significant number of organisations across EMEA. This in turn creates a substantial business opportunity for its resellers and service providers across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

As the first backup-to-failback solution born exclusively in the cloud, Arcserve’s new release does not require an appliance as it transfers data directly to, from and between cloud storage. This accelerates deployment, lowers on-premise complexity and supports extremely stringent SLAs.

SpherePay, Singapore's homegrown mobile payment app, announced today that it has completed its fundraising exercise which saw the company raising over USD 10 million. It has not disclosed the name of investors due to on-going developments.

With this latest round of funding and the affirmation of its strategic partnership with oBike since last December, SpherePay is well-placed to be the top three payment platforms in Southeast Asia. It currently serves over five million users and has more than 10,000 merchants in the region. 

Last year, SpherePay announced its strategic partnership with oBike, Southeast Asia's largest bike sharing operator. In a move that is set to deepen its partnership, SpherePay will integrate oBike's operating system into its app. This means that SpherePay will be able to support all services available on oBike's app including its geofencing feature and crowdsourcing delivery service, oBike Flash. 

"Since our inception last year, we have been making good progress to ensure that SpherePay will be one of the most highly utilised mobile payment apps in the region. Our completion of the recent fundraising coupled with the strategic partnership with oBike, are testament to the commitment and rapid development of SpherePay. This partnership with oBike saw an immediate acquisition of over 5 million users in South East Asia and we are putting together new features that will bring even greater benefits to all our users." said Mr Joseph Chen, CEO of SpherePay.

With the launch of this integration which will complete by March 2018, users of oBike and SpherePay will be able to access both services on their preferred app. oBike users can now log in to SpherePay from their oBike account. Similarly, SpherePay users can scan, unlock oBike bicycles, and even book for deliveries via SpherePay. 

Upcoming enhancements of SpherePay will include new features like merchant deals listing which will be supported by a LBS (Location Based Services). This means that users will be notified of a merchant deal happening near them. This new function will also enable merchants to list their own products and promotions in the SpherePay app at their convenience. Other new functions that will be introduced in SpherePay will be the addition of payment capabilities such as booking of events, courses and classes, paying for bills such as telco and utility bills and booking of tickets such as cinema, flight or hotels in the later stage of developments.

While SpherePay has recently announced its regional expansion plan to Indonesia and Thailand last December, the company has now confirmed a bigger plan to rapidly expand throughout South East Asia covering Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia. The target date to complete this expansion plan is by second quarter of 2018.