Saxo Bank, the online multi-asset trading and investment specialist, today announces the appointment of Ulrik Ross as Head of Group Treasury, effective March 1, 2018.  

Ulrik Ross will report directly to Steen Blaafalk, Head of Group Finance & Risk (GFR), and will be part of the global management team in GFR and Saxo Group’s Senior Management Team (SMT).

In his role, Ulrik Ross will assume the overall responsibility for all Treasury activities, including managing the bank’s liquidity and professional bank and broker relations. He will also be responsible for pricing the Bank’s capital and liquidity resources, as well as contributing to a strategic approach to both source of funds, taking industry and regulatory changes into account in a proactive manner. A key part of the responsibility is to be very client focused and in particularly interact with the Group’s White Label partner clients and institutional clients.

Ulrik Ross has extensive international experience from various senior level positions at Investment Banks and Financial Institutions in London, Helsinki and Copenhagen. The new senior hire most recently served as Managing Director Global Head of Public Sector and Sustainable Financing at Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) in London, where he successfully implemented a client and product focused growth strategy, which gained HSBC multiple financial markets awards.

Prior to this, Ulrik spent six years at Nomura International, where he led the Debt Capital Markets division for Northern Europe, CEE and Southern Africa. Ulrik initially worked as a treasury and funding specialist in Denmark and Finland, prior to the long career in London.  

Commenting on his appointment, Steen Blaafalk, Head of Group Finance & Risk at Saxo Bank, said:

“I am very pleased to appoint such a high caliber executive to take care of the Group Treasury and be part of the Senior Management Team. Ulrik is ambitious and result-driven with a proven track record in building and managing regional and global international businesses. He has successfully navigated multi-cultural opportunities offered by small and large cap companies and has consistently improved the performance of complex companies in international financial markets. I am sure that with Ulrik’s strong expertise in financing and capital markets, we will further improve the efficiency of our treasury activities.”

Ulrik Ross commented on the new role:

“I am very pleased to be joining Saxo Bank. It is very exciting to be part of such an agile and scalable FinTech Bank with state of the art client focused product offerings. Saxo Bank is a Financial Technology leader and a breath of fresh air in a fast-changing industry. I look forward to adding value to Saxo Bank and its clients as treasurer for the Group.”   

Unistream Bank now offers a more convenient and simple way of payment for everyday purchases via contactless Visa cards. To make a payment, all it takes is putting the card to the terminal to process in a few seconds; there is no need to hand it over to a cashier for a transaction. For purchases less than 1000 roubles, the transaction is made without a PIN-code.

Contactless payments have become popular in Russia lately. Today with a simple touch of a terminal one can make payments in large chains such as McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks, Azbuka Vkusa, Ikea, etc. Contactless payments can be made via all the terminals marked with a special "wave" symbol.

"Unistream Bank has always focused on developing and increasing the accessibility of new technologies that become incorporated into our modern society. We enjoy offering our clients instant payment contactless cards with Visa payWave technology thus making the process easier. Owing to the fast service, the reliability, as well as the high-progress service infrastructure, contactless cards will emerge into wide usage," said Nadezhda Kibalnik, Deputy CEO of Unistream Bank.

In 2017 alone Unistream Bank issued more than 70,000 cards, thus exceeding the total of 100,000. In 2017 card transactions turnover increased by 350 percent and exceeded 2.3 billion roubles. This impressive growth is the result of the high-quality customer service and the efficient distribution channels. Cards can be ordered through the Bank's website or via call-center with delivery to the client by courier.

Unistream Bank cardholders can also use a mobile banking app to make a wide range of transactions, including international money transfers and utility payments, at lower rates.  

Moving toward a world beyond cash, Mastercard is partnering with cities and other technology companies to improve overall quality of life, while helping them manage their logistics in a more efficient way.

Over the next few weeks, Valparaiso, Chile, one of the most iconic and touristic locations in Latin America, will enable contactless and mobile payments for transit.  With this move, Valparaiso joins a group of 100+ cities around the world including London, New York, Singapore, Sydney, Rio de Janeiro, Bogota and Mexico City that offers residents and visitors the opportunity to get on their way faster and easier.

Valparaiso Metro riders will soon no longer need to pre-pay their fare at the ticket kiosk, instead they will simply access their fare funds by tapping their contactless credit, debit, prepaid card, smartphone or wearables (such as wristbands and others) on the terminal reader.  Essentially, riders will pay-as-they-go speeding up their commute time.

“Latin America is the most urbanized region worldwide, with around 80% of its population living in cities. While every city has its own characteristics, they are all dealing with similar problems such as road congestion and pollution.  Cities across the region are looking for ways to modernize public transportation systems, making them more efficient and accessible to the population,” says Gilberto Caldart, president, Mastercard Latin America and Caribbean. “It will take a collaborative and holistic effort from both the public and private sector to meet these challenges – and Mastercard is taking a leading role in making cities more inclusive.”

Since the introduction of contactless payments across London’s transit system in 2014, almost half of all pay-as-you-go journeys on the city’s underground, buses and commuter rails are paid that way. When commuters tap their contactless card or device at one of the readers, they’re guaranteed the best available fare at the end of a day or week.

In New York, travelers can “Masterpass” their ticket on their mobile device to access commuter rail lines. In Bogota, more than 20 million trips on the city’s public transport system each year are made using a combined payment and transit card.

In Singapore, contactless ticketing was recently launched across the city’s transit network, making it the first city in Asia to bring this convenience to its commuters.

In Latin America, Jundiaí (SP) is the first city to equip its 350-strong bus fleet with Mastercard’s contactless payment technology, allowing riders to simply and conveniently tap their device of choice. Brazilian cities are moving fast towards smarter solutions for transit. Rio de Janeiro has contactless enabled payments live in 5 train stations, while São Paulo, Porto Alegre, Curitiba and Brasília are piloting the system, which will be expanded in the next few months.

In Mexico City, the Metro authority has just announced that 450 thousand contactless Mastercard debit cards are now available for sale in two metro lines, as part of the efforts launched in November 2017 to modernize the transportation system in the city that presents the worst traffic in the world, according to the most recently TomTom Traffic Index, released in February 2017.

Colombia, the first country to launch a contactless solution for transit in Latin America & Caribbean region, has already 5 cities benefiting from a faster and easier way to pay. Up till now, more than 2 million hybrid cards have already been issued in the market.

BAIC (Blockchain of AI and IoT) is a decentralized platform with the aim of promoting data interconnection, transaction settlement and smart contract between IoT and AI. BAIC believes that the data generated by human activity and the biological signals that are generated by the activity, representing all forms of labor, will become the value basis of the future AI world. BAIC's goal is to integrate AI, data and IoT by leveraging the BAIC value chain.

With data as its core value, BAIC provides end-to-end handling of data storage, data trading and data collection. Based on directed acyclic graph or DAG technology, the platform uses IoT devices and equipment as nodes to validate transactions, and, by amassing and collecting together nodes, can generate huge amounts of computing power, provide the critically-needed security, set up the reimbursement mechanism and reduce transaction barriers through a flexible charging mechanism for fees.

With the aim of promoting data trading and settlement between IoT devices and AI applications and encouraging consumers to share their data, the BAIC community launched a blockchain technology-based point token system based on incentives and the circulation of the value provided by IoT data.

For example, if an air conditioner part has failed or worn out, the platform can automatically notify the vendor who can change or repair the part and the transaction can be settled with tokens. The daily usage data collected from smart home appliances are shared with vendors, so that vendors can accurately deliver fully relevant advertising and return the advertising revenue to users through tokens, benefiting users.

"The goal of the BAIC community is to connect AI applications, Internet of things devices, and data through blockchain technology, enabling the data to be traded and circulated directly between users, data buyers, device vendors and advertisers and settled using BAIC's Token system, making users the true beneficiaries of their personal data." The idea gained a lot of support after it was shared with companies from different industries. The open-source blockchain technology community BAIC was established on this support.

The BAIC community was initiated by Terry Tan. Tan is an internet entrepreneur, the founder of IMIO Labs which is an AI enterprise and the chairman of the IEEE Smart Home working group. He studied in the United States, graduating from the University of Southern California with an MBA degree. He founded the world's largest Chinese Android developer community GFAN.COM, as well as the first Chinese hardware community PCBIRDS.COM and China's first online games company SQUARE ENIX.

Tan said: "AI and the Internet of things need technology support in terms of how the two will communicate with each other, and that can be provided by blockchain. The Internet of things and blockchain technology are key steps in the transformation from weak to strong artificial intelligence. I believe there is a great likelihood that this transformation will lead to the second explosion of science and technology after the industrial revolution, and that it will produce artificial intelligence on a level that is far superior to the human variety in the foreseeable future."

On the technical side, Tan said that the existing public blockchain is more or less unable to meet the needed levels of performance or functionality, so BAIC has chosen to launch its own public blockchain and provide two kinds of smart contracts. One is called the standardized smart contract, which targets straight-forward situations, fulfills the necessary business requirements, is standardized and highly efficient when it comes to execution. Without needing any further development, the contract provides the service on the blockchain via simple parameter configuration. The second, known as programmable smart contracts, supports fast blockchain applications by providing rich components tailored to the needs of users.

Mr. Tan added, "China now makes up 99 percent of the global production capacity of IoT devices. With that in mind, I believe that, as the technologies have been created by teams of developers located in China, these same teams should be involved in and even lead the development of the global public blockchain and the development of the standards. By working closely with the BAIC community and IoT firms across China, I have reason to believe BAIC has the potential to become the world's first widely-deployed IoT blockchain application and build the world's first test network connected to tens of millions of IoT devices."

BAIC hopes to integrate big data, AI and IoT via the blockchain and utilize a machine trading system and complete smart contract platform as the basis for the establishment of an IoT-AI ecosystem platform, which is able to supply data exchange, device settlement, as well as AI-enabled AIaaS services, in addition to providing manufacturers with self-directed access to the chain, all of which will benefit mankind.

Tradeshift, the world’s largest business commerce platform, today announced the official launch of Tradeshift Frontiers. 

Roostify, a provider of automated mortgage transaction technology, today announced that it has integrated its online mortgage platform with LendingTree, the nation’s leading online loan marketplace. 

Pindrop, the pioneer in voice security and authentication, today announced their proprietary Deep VoiceTM biometric engine, which utilizes the latest deep neural network technology for speaker recognition, to passively identify legitimate and fraudulent callers, solely by voice. 

Integral, the financial technology partner trusted by leading banks, brokers, and investment managers to design, deliver and grow their FX businesses, announced today that it has expanded its market data offering for cryptocurrencies to include 14 major cryptocurrencies connecting to all major exchange sources across the U.S., Europe and Asia including Japan and Hong Kong.

A pioneering mortgage monitoring service provided by online broker Trussle is today being made available to all UK homeowners.