Leading mobile-first iGaming platform provider CashBet today announced it seeks to raise $40 million through an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) to develop the world's first complete crypto-ready mobile iGaming platform. Interactive gaming, which includes real money, social, skill-based, esports and sports betting, hit $91 billion in 2016, led by mobile gaming. Despite strong growth,  current iGaming operations continue to face three major issues: trust, speed, and cost. CashBet is the first and only vertically integrated iGaming solution to leverage blockchain technology for transparent operations, increased speed, and lower transaction fees. The CashBet Coin will be available in pre-sale starting January 24, 2018 at 5:00 p.m. GMT, with a 20 percent discount offered. A public sale will follow in March 2018.

While most iGaming ICOs and solutions are presented by newly formed companies, CashBet has been in business since 2012, supports over 450 games on its platform, and is venture-backed and profitable. As the only crypto-casino platform licensed by the world's most reputable tier 1 gaming jurisdictions, CashBet is fully committed to delivering an iGaming experience that is legal, safe, fun, and profitable. CashBet recently won first place out of 32 contestants at CoinAgenda's ICO competition in Las Vegas, and second place out of 42 contestants at the World Crypto Economic Forum's ICO competition in San Francisco.

"We are thrilled by the business and cryptocurrency community's recent support of CashBet's blockchain integration and upcoming ICO," said Mike Reaves, CEO and Co-founder of CashBet. "The iGaming marketplace demands more transparency and flexibility, and we're confident that our crypto solution will deliver a superior player experience."

The CashBet Coin will be used for payments on any casino app or website powered by the CashBet platform, lowering transaction fees and increasing the speed of payouts. CashBet Coin will democratize access to CashBet's world-class entertainment by enabling players in markets underserved by the payment card industry to wager in CashBet-powered casinos.  Players will benefit from access to a greater variety of provably-fair content, reduced transaction costs, and faster payouts.  To learn more or to participate in the CashBet Coin pre-sale, please visit https://coin.cashbet.com, and join in on the conversation on Telegram at https://t.me/cashbetcoin. 

Coinsource, the world’s largest Bitcoin ATM network, has unveiled a new in-house software stack that will significantly improve the user experience at each of their nearly 200 machines across the nation. Previously powered by a third-party software, the new Coinsource proprietary software will reduce Bitcoin transaction delays, improve QR code scanners, support bill pay functionality in the near future, and introduce a one-time promotion for fee-free purchases for first time users.

Coinsource CEO Sheffield Clark said, “Moving away from third-parties is one of the fundamental principles of Bitcoin, so it is only fitting that we created our own technology to streamline access to our generation’s fastest growing digital asset.The technology makes visits to our ATMs much quicker and easier, and it allows for seamless integration of additional products and services such as other digital currencies to be added in the future. As our customer base continues to grow at unprecedented rates, we are focused on continually improving our services, as well as expanding into new cities, states, and countries across the world.”

Currently, Coinsource offers the lowest fees of any Bitcoin ATM operator, with transaction fees never going over 8 percent in costs. And as part of the company’s 2018 “New Coinsource Experience” initiative, the company’s move to in-house software is helping the company refine the Coinsource ATM and mobile enrollment user experience so that users of any age or technical expertise can easily use its services. The software will be operable in all US states, and in any country across the globe, as well as allow for future integrations of digital currencies at Coinsource’s terminals.

Coinsource’s 2018 growth strategy includes expansion into 25 US states, with over 400 machines across the country. They currently have almost 200 machines in 15 states; California, Oklahoma, Nevada, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Arizona, Georgia, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts.

“Even though the number of digital currency traders, investors, and enthusiasts increases by the day, there are still hundreds of millions of people around the world that don’t have the technological know-how to get involved. We have built our company around breaking down the barriers to entry, and facilitating access in a way that almost anyone can understand, and in a way that they are already accustomed to. Our new mobile enrolment feature allows anyone to sign up to a Coinsource account remotely, from any device in the world, and activate a free first time transaction,” Clark said.

KICKICO is making work with projects and authors more effective and it is to provide the campaign information to its community in the most comprehensible, transparent and tractable manner. A new renovated and improved interface for campaign authors and followers: all the data in one page, including count downs, fundraising statistics and campaign updates are put together for best convenience and integrity, facilitating the user to make a conclusion regarding investment in the project.

User can always browse KICKICO website to check out all the changes, here let KICKICO quickly walk through the new stuff to stay on the same page with all the members of its 50 000 community:

First, with every new campaign now there is a new widget to keep track of the oncoming campaigns and stay tuned, so every backer and follower could stay tuned and never miss a great chance with the desired tokensale. With this particular campaign that has recently finished, user receives all the info about the duration and collections of the tokensale and the number of backers, also available in the linear chart form.

Now accessing any campaign’s page a visitor can access three fields below the chart, the first one giving a general overview and detailed description of the campaign, updates and comments. The comments are pretty self-explanatory, this is where a user can direct all the questions, concerns and inquiries immediately to the campaign team and get feedback without ever closing the page or using side channels.

The updates field is a new feature to make following a campaign most convenient: now is shall be made unnecessary to follow an obnoxious set of 15 separate chats, channels and tweets from various resources since the campaign’s author will be able to upload all the news, posts, inventions and new developments directly to the campaign. Thus, making a smart decision becomes much easier and consumes far less time. Besides, we encourage users to participate in commenting and discussing campaigns and their updates right there: first, putting many heads together definitely provides a broader overview and judgement of a project’s aspects, and second, there is nothing more valuable to give to a new campaign rather than your feedback.

Developing backer-oriented smart projects is the major priority in KICKICO’s performance. Bringing up the most balanced user-friendly functionality of KICKICO that would fit both backers and campaign creator: the current one is to precede a wide set of many changes and upgrades to provide the user with the best service. A whole series of multiple development and campaign features that will now start to come out regularly to make KICKICO and its community the highest advance peak of the market.

Rival Systems (Rival), an award-winning provider of trading and risk management software, today announced that the firm has already established readiness for the Feb. 25 planned migration of Cboe Futures Exchange (CFE) onto the Bats technology platform. Rival has completed testing and received certification by the exchange for the integration of market data and order entry technology, promoting a seamless transition for clients participating in markets affected by the change.

Rival Systems CEO Robert D’Arco said: “Our team has been working hard to ensure we are ready well ahead of the Feb. 25 migration.  We've conducted extensive functional and performance testing to ensure our clients have the best system in the market on day one.  The migration will be seamless for our CFE futures traders as well as the VIX options market makers who drive their option quotes off of the CFE futures.  Users of our Rival API will not have to make any changes to their code to migrate to the new CFE platform.  We are now focused on getting the Cboe equity feeds online for our clients who run low latency equity strategies and for equity options market makers who drive their options quotes off of the equities feed.”

"We’re pleased Rival made the migration of CFE to Bats technology a high priority and is ready for the planned February 25th transition,” said Chris Isaacson, Cboe Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer. “These efforts by customer firms are vital to a successful and seamless migration."

Rival supports Cboe’s PITCH full depth-of-book market data feed and Binary Order Entry (BOE) to provide users with the lowest latency possible, D’Arco said. The firm also supports good-’til-canceled (GTC) orders, as well as all other order types, and provides top-of-the-line hardware, colocation hosting and market data vendor-of-record services.

Beginning in February, Rival will also support market data feeds for Cboe’s U.S. equities exchanges, EDGX Equities, EDGA Equities, BZX Equities and BYX Equities.

eGain (NASDAQ:EGAN), the leading provider of cloud customer engagement solutions, today announced that the company will showcase its award-winning digital engagement suite for the Cisco contact centre infrastructure-eGain Solve(TM) for Cisco Unified CCE(TM)-at CCW 2018 in Berlin, scheduled for February 26th  through March 1st , 2018.

Proven in world-class deployments, eGain Solve suite helps companies simultaneously elevate the customer experience (CX), business experience (BX), and agent experience (AX) to make digital transformation of experiences (DX) easy and successful. The solution dramatically improves metrics such as NPS (Net Promoter Score), CSAT (Customer Satisfaction), FCR (First-Contact Resolution), AHT (Average Handle Time), speed to agent competency, training time, and compliance.

At CCW 2018, eGain will exhibit eGain Solve(TM) for Cisco Unified CCE(TM) at the Cisco stand (C14/D9) in Hall 3). The solution can be deployed in a matter of hours by leveraging an ingenious hybrid cloud model that is highly secure, scalable, and compliant with PII, PCI, HIPAA, and Safe Harbor standards, as well as GDPR.

Capabilities that will be demonstrated include:

• Knowledge and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for process guidance
• Connected analytics for contact centre operations and customer journeys
• Digital customer experience, including mobile, chat, cobrowse, and messaging
• Proactive engagement with chat and contextual offers

Wealthsimple, a global online investment manager, today announced the launch of Socially Responsible Investing portfolios. 

Piccadilly Group has launched NEURO, an AI business platform that will eradicate the need for one in four management consultants, saving businesses approximately $122.bn globally. Neuro can provide in real time, through simple voice command, better project insights than a typical team of highly paid consultants in a fraction of the time, and free of any managerial bias. Furthermore, using its machine learning capability NEURO can accurately predict problems before they occur or were even contemplated by a whole team of consultants.

NEURO will widen the impact of AI on the labour market from manufacturing and process driven manual labour roles, to those in management. NEURO can provide real time managerial analysis, like defect reporting and status updates, without the politics and excuses humans make, and at a significantly lower cost. CEO’s can literally speak to Neuro to get an update, at the precise moment they want it, without anybody having to leave the room to pull together a report. 

NEURO was developed by the Piccadilly Group, themselves management consultants trusted by Allianz, Barclays, Bank of Ireland and RBS, who have worked over the past three years to develop an AI capability with the express purpose of putting themselves out of business.

Dan Hooper, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Piccadilly Group:

“Our AI will do for management what Sat Nav did for navigation. Business leaders, are on the cusp of a major disruption in their sources of advice and information moving the role of middle management from analysis to judgement”

Financial Services firms are making improvements but still behind retailers and travel providers on customer service, according to The Institute of Customer Service. Although banks featured in the top 10 places in the UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI), there is still a long way to go. 

This comes amidst the biggest shake up in the banking business model, with the UK's four big high street banks closing a total of 948 branches. The customer service delivery model is changing, shaped by new regulatory frameworks, changing customer behaviour and intensifying competition. Despite the growing trend to shut down branches to manage cost pressures, customers still desire in-person services when making financial decisions. 

Banks are now ploughing investment into their back-office to boost operational efficiency to reduce customer churn and resolve customer enquires faster. For example, technology which recognises customers’ voice when they use telephone banking, can predict the purpose of their call based on the status of their account. This enables individuals to be automatically forwarded to the correct department, streamlining the customer experience to avoid them spending hours on the phone to their bank.

Bhupender Singh, CEO of Intelenet® Global Services comments, “The need for in-person service will always be relevant and innovation should be directed towards creating a technology-enabled, data-empowered system which puts the customer at the heart of every business decision. Banks are now in an optimal position to direct their attention towards long-term growth transformation strategies enabled by new innovations.

NelsonHall, the industry's leading BPO analyst firm, identified Intelenet® Global Services’ overall analytics capability and improved cost reduction as market leading for retail banking. 

Bhupender continues, “It is not game over for banks. Branches have changed to offer more financial guidance and advice to customers. With the support of automation, staff are more empowered and skilled to resolve complex issues, which mean branches will not just sustain but will also revive the banking experience for customers. One UK national bank used technology to reduce complaints by 25% and reduce customer churn by 12% by using data analytics to recognise customer needs in advance and resolve issues faster.”

• 4most Europe will help FICO customers deploy and get rapid value from FICO^® Decision Central^™ software for analytic model governance.

• FICO has built Decision Central frameworks, in collaboration with 4most, for Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR), Internal Ratings-Based (IRB) Basel approach and the European’s Central Bank’s Target Review of Internal Models (TRIM).

Analytics software firm FICO today announced a partnership with risk analytics consultants 4most Europe to help European financial institutions comply with banking regulations. 4most, a leading European firm in regulatory risk analytics and programme management, will deliver FICO^® Decision Central™ software for analytic model governance to customers, and provide consulting.

Under European regulations, it is increasingly important for financial institutions to document the decisions they make on customers, the factors that drove those decisions, and the performance of the analytic models used to make decisions. With FICO Decision Central, financial institutions can monitor and manage the evolution of every component that goes into making a decision. This gives visibility and control over an entire decision strategy, including data quality, predictive models, optimisation models, machine learning algorithms, strategy trees and rule flows. 

The frameworks that can be deployed within Decision Central help lenders comply with the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR), Internal Ratings-Based (IRB) Basel approach and the European’s Central Bank’s Target Review of Internal Models (TRIM). These frameworks can cut the time needed to achieve compliance by up to six months.

“We have first-hand experience of regulatory projects where Decision Central would help define and deploy compliant processes more efficiently,” said Damien Burke, partner at 4most. “The FICO software also makes ongoing compliance and interactions with auditors and regulators more effective, as all model governance information is centrally held and easily accessible.”

“4most’s insight and experience have helped us tailor Decision Central to new regulatory demands, making it easier than ever for customers to deploy,” said Steve Hadaway, general manager for FICO in EMEA. “Our software and embedded frameworks can dramatically reduce the time and effort required to become compliant and demonstrate compliance.”