Paysafe, a leading global payments provider, has been named winner of two high profile payments awards in the UK at the prestigious ‘UK Payment Awards’ event last week. The first accolade the company scooped on the night was for being the UK’s ‘Best Merchant Acquirer/ Processor’.  Paysafe then earned further recognition when Andrea Dunlop, Paysafe’s CEO of Acquiring & Card Solutions, was named the UK’s ‘Payments Pioneer’.

The UK Payments Awards recognize excellence within the card and payments industry on an annual basis. Winning entries are from companies, individuals and organizations that have launched or implemented the most outstanding payments solutions, initiatives and projects during the past year.   

When awarding Paysafe its two accolades, the judging panel cited how Paysafe’s evolving payments platform, which supports the global e-commerce market, was being developed with a clear focus on the unique needs of merchants and consumers across different industries.  Judges then went onto praise Paysafe’s Andrea Dunlop for her leadership, influence and extensive contribution to the payments industry.  Earlier this year Dunlop was appointed Deputy Chair of the Emerging Payments Association (EPA) Advisory Board.  She was also named the most influential contributor to the payments industry in the 2016 Payments Power 10 (UK) and is also considered a strong advocate of diversity in the industry.

“It’s a great feeling to be recognised for adopting our own unique approach in the payments industry, and running with it,” said Danny Chazonoff, Paysafe’s Chief Operating Officer.  “We differentiate ourselves by adopting a service-oriented, multi-solution approach for our merchants and focus on their specific requirements. At Paysafe we continue to innovate and enhance our industry leading technology as well as investing in the success of our merchants. These two awards speak volumes about our teams who have worked tirelessly to deliver pioneering acquiring and processing capabilities to the market.”

Chazonoff added: “My heart-felt congratulations also go to Andrea.  The individual award she won is well-deserved recognition for the exceptional work she does both for Paysafe as well as for the payments industry more widely.  She is a real asset to our leadership team.”

Andrea Dunlop, CEO of Acquiring & Card Solutions, Paysafe, commented: “The way people pay is continually evolving due to new technology and changing consumer demands and I am honoured to be recognised by my peer group for my contributions to the industry.”

In addition to winning the two UK payment awards last week, paysafecard, based in Austria and part of Paysafe Group, has also just been named one of Austria’s Leading Companies (ALC) by daily Austrian newspaper Die Presse, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the KSV 1870.  The ALC prize is considered one of the Austrian economy's most important awards, and, for the third consecutive year, Paysafe has taken first place in the "International Companies" category.

SumUp, the leading financial technology provider, and BancoEstado de Chile, the largest national bank of Chile, today announce the launch of a joint venture offering mobile card acceptance to small businesses. 

Valyou, a service from Telenor Group, will provide low-cost international remittance services to Myanmar in its effort to promote greater financial inclusion in Southeast Asia. 

Over 30 Proof of Concepts (PoCs) and partnerships have been secured at Kickstart Accelerator, one of Europe’s largest no equity, multi-corporate accelerator programmes that culminates today – most of them with leading corporations. Coop, Credit Suisse, Empa, EY, Helsana, Migros, PwC Switzerland, Raiffeisen, Swisscom as well as UBS have entered into partnerships with the entrepreneurs participating in this year’s acceleration programme.

At tonight's Closing Ceremony, the established PoCs and other partnerships will be announced in addition to the winners in each vertical, who will receive a 25,000 CHF grant. The accelerator – an initiative of digitalswitzerland and operated by Impact Hub Zurich – saw 29 startups as well as an intrapreneur team from AXA Winterthur andSwisscom working in collaboration for 11 weeks in the specially designed co-working space Kraftwerk . Their goal was to develop, scale and promote their business in the Swiss innovation ecosystem with the guidance of industry experts and unparalleled access to internationally recognized corporations. The programme also supported by C4DR and evitive, focused on the fields of FinTech, Food, Smart Cities as well as Robotics & Intelligent Systems, which is reflective of Switzerland’s heritage innovation sub sectors.

PoCs to deliver better air quality, blockchain-based e-voting-systems and ways to avoid food waste

In the Fintech vertical, 14 PoCs and other partnerships were secured with Kickstart Partners:

• Credit Suisse and Swiss-based Startup PriceHubble are exploring a cooperation in the field of mortgage business.
• Credit Suisse is looking into how to use Adjoint `s blockchain technology to improve compliance processes in their FX operations.
• Credit Suisse is discussing potential for a cooperation in the field of compliance with Zurich-based Apiax .
• Credit Suisse and Blocko are collaborating to explore opportunities in the field of blockchain-based e-voting systems.
• EY and Apiax are going to intensify discussions about a possible partnership.
• EY is collaborating with US-startup Adjoint to develop a PoC in the field of blockchain for a global insurance client.
• Helsana insurance and Fjuul are joining forces to further improve functionality and user experience of the new Helsana+ App .
• PwC Switzerland has signed a Letter of Intent with Zurich-based Apiax to intensify the discussion about joining forces to work on digitising compliance processes in the financial industry.
• PwC Switzerland and Finnish startup Fjuul have signed a Letter of Intent to further evaluate the option of jointly bringing exciting digital solutions to insurance companies.
• Swisscom is planning a PoC to integrate services that PriceHubble offers into their existing banking service.
• Swisscom cooperates with Apiax as well as SoBA on a PoC to work in the field of Open Banking.
• UBS and AAAccell , a University of Zurich spin-off working in the field of risk- and asset management, will start a PoC project to build a smart risk-based engine.
• UBS and PriceHubble , a startup offering innovative real estate software-as-a-service solutions, agreed on a common PoC to further develop UBS`s offering in the mortgage business.
• UBS and CityFALCON have worked closely together to explore different opportunities on how to leverage a potential partnership. Nothing has been agreed yet, however, it can be confirmed, that UBS sees value in exploring CityFALCON`s offering in a potential PoC.

The Food vertical saw four PoCs resulting from the programme:

• Coop has announced a collaboration with Swiss company KITRO . The two firms plan to test KITRO`s solution to prevent food waste at several Coop restaurants within a PoC next year.
• Raiffeisen Bank has acquired a Living Farming tree by the Italian Food startup Hexagro Urban Farming as the first step of a PoC and will validate a potential use in Raiffeisen offices.
• Coop and Migros have both agreed on individual PoCs with FlavorWiki. Their technology allows food producers, retailers and others to collect detailed data about consumer taste preferences. Coop and Migros will both test this technology internally.

The Smart Cities vertical resulted in seven PoCs and other collaborations:

• Swisscom Broadcast will work together with Zurich-based startup Antavi on a PoC to develop a smart tracking solution for public safety.
• Swisscom has signed a PoC with uHoo . The ICT-provider will integrate the indoor air quality device by the Singapore-based company in the Swisscom TestLab in Biel.
• Swisscom and Hawa Dawa have signed a PoC to develop a real-time data model of air quality in Zurich. The German startup is leveraging open data from the city of Zurich and is using big data analytics and machine learning algorithms to model the air quality in the whole city.
• The city of Bern provides Hawa Dawa in a PoC with data to establish a profound data model and to calibrate their instruments.
• Swisscom starts a partnership with BikeLook : The Irish startup will use Swisscom’s Low Power Network to have an improved battery lifetime.
• Empa will be launching a PoC with Zurich-startup Parquery that is working in the field of smart parking management.
• The cities of Zurich, Bern and St. Gallen, are discussing further collaboration and sharing of knowledge with different startups, e.g. with BikeLook from Dublin.

The Robotics & Intelligent Systems vertical saw one confirmed partnership:

• Coop has defined a PoC with Indian startup iFuture Robotics to test the startup`s autonomous robots to automate certain processes within Coop’s retail warehouses.

In addition to the cooperation between the startups and corporate partners, some of the startups have also started to cooperate with each other. For example, the intrapreneur team Rent`n`Share has partnered with the UK/Switzerland based startup Spark Horizon to offer a sustainable mobility solution. The FinTech startupsAAAccell , Blocko and Coincube confirmed partnerships to work on two individual blockchain pilots. Zurich-based Apiax is going to work with South African startup Libryo in the field of legal and insurance solutions. Meanwhile, CoinCube and CityFALCON will be working together on AI/blockchain solutions and London-based startup Nivaura , that took part in the 2016 programme, is starting a joint project with Adjoint from this year's batch focusing on blockchain solutions.

“It is great to see the number of partnerships between the startups and the corporates has increased significantly compared to last year,” said Patricia Schlenter, Programme Manager at Kickstart Accelerator. “This shows that Kickstart Accelerator has the potential to truly support international startups to gain access to the Swiss innovation ecosystem.”

International tech companies anchor in Switzerland

Several of the participating startups have already or are planning to bring units of their businesses to Switzerland. For example, the Ghana-based food tech startupFarmerline is planning to base their third office in Zurich and US-startup RADiCAL is opening the first office outside New York in Zurich to attract talent in the areas of AI and autonomous systems, with the Zurich office expected to serve as the company's research and development lab. In addition, US-startup COINCUBE is incorporating in Switzerland to implement projects in the digital asset space. More incorporations are being planned.

International and local funding floods in: More than 8 million CHF raised in 5 months

Furthermore, since the start of the programme in July this year, the Kickstart Accelerator startups all together have raised more than 8 million CHF funding from international and Swiss investors. “At the beginning of the programme, we set ambitious goals - and we are overwhelmed to even have exceeded them. Besides the promising cooperation agreements, several of the startups are also hiring Swiss employees or even plan to open a new office here," Programme Manager Patricia Schlenter said. "In addition, the quality of this year's startups was exceptionally high - as for example shown by the investor funds raised since the programme started. We are convinced that Kickstart Accelerator 2017 has once again contributed to strengthening the Swiss innovation ecosystem.” 

Volante Technologies Inc., a global provider of software for the integration, processing and orchestration of payments and financial messages on premise or as a cloud service, today announced its partnership with eVision to deliver efficient and agile payment solutions across the Egyptian and North African banking and finance markets.

eVision is a leading software solution provider in North Africa with a strong presence in Egypt that focuses on solutions to help clients with Payments, Financial Transaction Dispute Management, Anti-Money Laundering and SWIFT Message Archiving and Workflow. Through interactions with its local client base, eVision recognised a growing appetite for the latest payments processing technologies. After rigorous evaluation, eVision chose Volante to address their clients’ needs in the payments market in an efficient and agile manner. Many banks in Egypt still rely on legacy systems for their payment and remittance processes, but there is a growing acceptance of the need to implement flexible payment platforms to compete with international and local banks and collaborate with fintech disruptors looking to increase market share. 

The VolPay Suite is designed specifically to accelerate all aspects of payments transformation projects, including the cost of change in local and international financial message standards.

Mick Fennell, Vice President, Middle East & Africa, Volante Technologies, commented, “We are delighted to partner with eVision to extend the reach of Volante’s payment solutions to the Egyptian and wider North African market. Market participants no longer want to depend on external specialist consultancies - they need tools to create more agile, efficient systems meeting the needs of a changing and dynamic payments landscape.”

Amr Soliman, Founder & CEO, eVision, said, “When it comes to Volante’s Microservices-based architecture, we believe it is second to none and, unlike legacy products their technology enables customers to build highly configurable and extensible business services. Our markets are opening up, and banks need to invest now for the future to compete against local and foreign financial institutions and disruptors for real time execution, open banking standards, and next generation market initiatives. We are excited about what VolPay is able to offer them.”

FlexTrade (@FlexTrade), a global leader in multi-asset execution and order management systems, today announced the rollout of  an enhanced version of its multi-OMS aggregation functionality, an in-built feature of the FlexTRADER EMS, which allows users to merge and net orders across multiple OMSs regardless of the underlying version or implementation.

“With a number of major asset manager mergers over the past few years bringing together a variety of OMS technologies, we have seen a surge of interest in FlexTRADER’s unique abilities in cross-OMS order aggregation,” said Oliver Boatfield, EMEA Sales Director at FlexTrade UK.

Along with the ability to dynamically merge orders within and across OMSs, FlexTRADER provides highly configurable allocation logic with several out-of-the-box rules, including LIFO, FIFO, pro-rata and optimal average pricing. It can also be configured per-market and per asset class, based on any order attribute in the system. This flexible approach to merging and order routing ensures optimal access to liquidity and fair execution allocation by factoring in broker restrictions per order and time of merging orders to an existing block.

With MiFID II legislation coming into effect in just under two months, ensuring “all sufficient steps” have been taken to achieve Best Execution is now top priority for all asset managers. This new version of multi-OMS aggregation is another tick box for FlexTrade’s comprehensive platform, which provides traders with one consistent approach to Best Execution, irrespective of order source.

Aggregation across multiple OMSs works in combination with FlexTrade’s MiFID II APA integration to ensure any trade reporting obligations are catered for in the FlexTRADER EMS in real-time.

Framework, the private equity (PE) investment data firm, enabling PE investment management enterprises to deliver transparency, insight and accountability to their investors, today announced the appointment of Jesper Steiness, as Director of Global Business Development. The appointment will strengthen the leadership team as Framework concentrate on accelerating their current growth and focus on innovation in private equity operations.

Launched in 2000, Framework provides enterprise investment data management solutions for the global private equity sector. Framework is experiencing a period of growth and change, as is private equity. The industry is seeing: larger allocations from Institutional Investors; larger funds; bigger deals and volumes of business. Added to this, the regulatory environment is encouraging higher allocations and more and more investors are expecting full visibility of their investment managers’ processes.

Harnessing it’s 17 years expertise and experience in the sector, Framework’s solution has been re-designed to meet the evolving data management needs of the private equity world. Framework brings private equity investment data from multiple, sometimes disparate sources into a single point -  a central, operational data hub. That single source supports the needs of all the stakeholders in that data - within one enterprise, and across the wider investment community; including investors, administrators and management companies.

Jesper Steiness will apply over 20 years of experience in the global financial industry; he has an extensive background in information technology, asset management and fund administration. He comes to Framework from a senior position at SS&C Advent. Jesper started his career gaining a full appreciation of how funds work operationally and since has predominantly focused on business development and client relationship management.

Bertil Rouveure, Owner of Framework, said: “Jesper brings with him the exact expertise and industry relationships Framework needs to accelerate growth and innovation. His experience of driving new business initiatives, industry relationships and developing strategic partnerships will complement Framework’s vision and help current and future clients realise new opportunities.”

Paul Whapham, Managing Director of Framework, said: “The PE industry is developing and some firms are finding it difficult to keep up with their clients’ increasingly complex data management needs. Jesper’s extensive experience in operations, business development and strategy will help the transformation of data management we want to achieve.”

Jesper Steiness, Director of Global Business Development, added: “Twenty five years in different positions in financial services companies has taught me the value of customer relationships. I am looking forward to helping the Framework team deliver for clients and prospects. I am particularly excited about the data management innovation that Framework is driving that delivers incredible value to enterprise systems, flexibility and growth for customers.”

Custom Connect has further proved its commitment to the quality assurance of its services and processes by obtaining an ISO27001 certification. For a company that serves some of the biggest global brands on the planet with enhanced data communication services, this information security management certification underlines their dedication to customer security.

ISO27001 certification is just one element in an extensive program at Custom Connect to keep Information Security of the Managed Data Communication Services Provider at the highest level across the company. In fact, Custom Connect is at the forefront of this quality and continuity-oriented approach within their market.

“When you are the preferred data communication provider of the largest global enterprises on this planet, you must comply with the highest requirements for security and business continuity. That goes far beyond just ticking the right boxes in a procurement questionnaire," explained Olav van Doorn, CEO, Custom Connect. "These companies carefully inspect how you operate and what you actually do to protect their data and to secure their communication. That’s why we always have been very keen on quality assurance of our services and processes -- and even more so with all the security incidents and data breaches in mind that make the news on a daily basis.

To obtain an objective review of its quality status, the company went through the rigorous ISO27001 certification process.  

“We have always operated along ISO standards and practices and it is rewarding to get this confirmation from ISO itself. The auditor complimented us for having implemented the ISO27001 ways of working for what they are meant for: the full implementation of the code for Information Security in all primary business processes," Van Doorn went on to say. "Many companies do just a little to get the certificate, we adopted all the works. It is a pity that ISO27001 does not show gradations in the scope of the standards that have been adopted. As an example: many companies have ISO-ed just their physical access policies, but we went all the way by adopting military grade ISO compliance across the company and all our processes -- including ongoing awareness programs."

One important aspect of every approach for Information Security -- ISO, GDPR and the like -- is the classification of data. At Custom Connect, all data that are related to customers have the highest, ‘critical’ classification during the end-to-end customer lifecycle: registration in CRM, quotations, service delivery handovers, invoices, support tickets, e-mail. All data about Custom Connect customers are encrypted are handled with the highest levels of confidentiality.

“We are like a bank in handling our data. That includes the separation of responsibilities in associated processes. The process owner is always supervised by someone else, who is supervised by our CSO, who is supervised by a fourth pair of eyes.”  

Getting to this quality level was a long, intense process but ultimately the best choice. “We made mistakes and encountered pitfalls. For now, we are happy with the results. But we see this is a continuous process and we will proceed with an ambitious improvement plan. As a transparent company, we are willing to share the lessons we learned in our journey. Simply contact me to learn from our experiences,” invites Van Doorn.

ADVA today announced that Hetzner Online has deployed its FSP 3000 CloudConnect(TM) with QuadFlex(TM) technology to meet soaring data demand from private customers and enterprise clients. Hetzner Online, one of Germany's leading web hosting providers and data center operators, is using the data center interconnect (DCI) solution to boost the capacity of its national backbone network to 400Gbit/s and beyond. The upgrade to Hetzner Online's legacy infrastructure involved the deployment of pairs of 200Gbit/s connections operating at 16QAM. These dual wavelengths create 400Gbit/s links between hosting and colocation facilities in Frankfurt and Nuremberg as well as the company's data center park in Falkenstein and other key sites. Installation was carried out by ADVA's Elite partner Axians.

"We're seeing fierce data growth from private and business customers across the country. Deploying 400Gbit/s technology in our transport network is a major part of our response. The ADVA FSP 3000 CloudConnect(TM) platform, with its low power consumption, high density, and flexibility, enables us to provide more in terms of both capacity and value," said Martin Fritzsche, head of network engineering, Hetzner Online. "We believe in harnessing cutting-edge innovation. That's a key part of our strategy as we strive to give our customers flexible, high-quality services at the most attractive possible prices. ADVA Optical Networking's DCI equipment empowers us to handle huge increases in traffic volume while also making savings on rack space and power consumption. That's good news for customers and the environment."

Using the ADVA FSP 3000 CloudConnect(TM) and its QuadFlex(TM) technology, the new infrastructure is now transporting 400Gbit/s data loads over distances stretching to 250km without the need for signal regeneration. To achieve this channel capacity, the network is configured with two 200Gbit/s wavelengths operating at 16QAM modulation within an optical super-channel. Multiple 400Gbit/s cards are also being run in parallel for even greater speeds. Designed for scalability and bandwidth optimization, the ADVA FSP 3000 CloudConnect(TM) platform offers unrivalled efficiency. It delivers huge energy savings and, with its incredibly small footprint, occupies very little rack space. The solution also uses DP-QPSK modulation to enable legacy 100Gbit/s wavelengths to operate flawlessly alongside the new 400Gbit/s streams. This protects Hetzner Online's investments and enables a smooth migration to ultra-high capacity.

"Hetzner Online's new transport network doesn't just exceed expectations today, but will continue to do so in the future. The inherent scale of our FSP 3000 CloudConnect(TM) technology ensures that they can plan for further expansion as soon as their customers require it," commented Josef Sißmeir, director, sales, Central Europe, ADVA. "Hetzner Online is fiercely ambitious about providing the highest quality hosting products at the most competitive prices. It's no surprise to see it leading the way as the first cloud company in Germany to leverage our FSP 3000 CloudConnect(TM). Hetzner Online's drive to deliver excellence and value is something our teams have in common, and we're proud to be building a network that can continue to grow as they do. I anticipate we'll be helping Hetzner Online to transmit multi-terabit traffic in the very near future."