The main Spanish banking, energy and telecommunications companies, among other sectors, have established Alastria, the world's first regulated national network based on blockchain. This non-profit consortium was presented today simultaneously in the cities of Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Valencia and Malaga. It will develop the Distributed Ledger Technology (DTL), which is set to become the new data exchange ecosystem and which will enable and accelerate the digital transformation of different industrial and business sectors in the coming years thanks to its agility, veracity, security and efficiency.

The Alastria consortium has been created to accelerate the creation of digital ecosystems by providing a common collaborative platform: the Alastria network. Since its very creation, the consortium has been made up of about 70 of the largest companies and institutions in different sectors (*full list of Alastria partners and Executive board at the end of the press release).

Among its founders are also professionals such as notaries and lawyers who will ensure the security and veracity of information through the identification of natural and legal persons. Not in vain, the digital ID will be the main focus of Alastria in its beginnings through the standard of Digital Identity "ID Alastria", which will allow citizens to have control over their personal information in a transparent way following the guidelines set by the European Union.

Alastria is an open platform for more companies, startups, SMEs, large corporations, universities and other actors from all sectors in Spain to join. Those interested in joining can access further information at www.alastria.es or send an email to members@alastria.io.

The Alastria network will provide a shared platform on which the various participants, and in particular large companies, will be able to create digital representations of the assets with which they work in their usual economic activity, also known as "tokens". With these "tokens" it is possible to develop new products and innovative cutting services, in addition to being able to develop current processes faster, safer and more efficiently. In this way, the network accelerates the digital transformation of current processes and enables a new paradigm of collaborative and multisectoral innovation in a very efficient way.

Alastria's objective is to transcend the business sphere and has held meetings with representatives of the Public Administration and Regulators, who have expressed their interest in collaborating with the consortium. In this sense, Alastria has requested the opening of collaboration channels to identify cases of use in public agencies and monitor those services that are in the process of study and analysis. To promote awareness and adoption of the network, Alastria is organizing training sessions for the Administration.

Furthermore, the development of the platform will not remain in the growth of its number of partners, but in the own development of the technology, which will be open. In this way, the Alastria consortium will make resources and contacts available to the community so that the ecosystem can grow and expand its potential benefits to more companies and users.

Beyond companies, Public Administration, Regulators and the developer community, the university community will play an important role in the Consortium. At present, several agreements have already been signed with renowned centres and, in addition, it will be an open process in which a significant number of institutions and university centres will be added. The aim is to establish agreements that promote research, experimentation and training.

Julio Faura, president of Alastria, said: "It is not easy for so many important companies to decide to bet a project together from the very beginning. That's the best proof of the incredible potential that this technology and the consortium have. He added: "We should be proud that a pioneering and unprecedented project throughout the world has been born in Spain, which places the industries of our country at the forefront of digital transformation.”

Alex Puig, Alastria's CEO, said: "Blockchain has the potential to become the biggest breakthrough in history in the way we share any digital element, whether it's a document, a service, a show ticket or money. In this regard, he stressed that the birth of the Consortium was necessary because "the Internet is being reinvented so that we can share and do business in a verified and secure way, but it is necessary to have a standard that allows all industries and the developer community to work with the same base.”

What is blockchain?

The blockchain technology, born in 2009, represents an evolution of network communications as they are known today. The Internet and the world wide web have been transforming our lives for decades. Information has never been so accessible and instantaneous. However, the system is not perfect and the network currently suffers from unreliability of data, security shortages and lack of verification of those involved in the communication.

Blockchain or Distributed Ledger Technology (DTL) is probably the most disruptive technology since the arrival of the Internet and could transform industries by decentralizing trust, generating an exchange of goods and services without the need for third parties. This would be possible because the information circulating through shared accounting records will be verified, as will those at the extremes.

The information contained in this technology is entered by means of an unalterable registry (guaranteed by cryptography), replicated in all participants by means of a standard communications protocol, which is accessible to all of them, eliminating the need for acknowledgements of receipt and reconciliations. This allows the participants to offer and receive services with legal effectiveness in the Spanish environment and in accordance with European regulations.

Specifically, the Alastria network, a semi-public blockchain, is made up of nodes - computers hosted by several participants - and provides shared accounting recording services. In this way, the partners of this network will be able to develop services and products within Alastria with total confidence and security. The fact that each member's digital identity is certified and guaranteed allows them to use smart contract technology (smart contracts) on which they can offer services and exploit applications in a cross-sectional environment and with full legal guarantees in Spain.

Accuity, the global financial crime compliance, payments and KYC solutions provider, today announces the release of the Bankers Almanac Global Payments Web Service 2.0. With faster performance, new types of reference information, and increased security, this enhanced solution helps clients to process payments with greater accuracy and automation.

According to a 2017 industry survey, 53% of banks want to reduce the cost, time and effort it takes to process payments. However, they are also pressured to provide fast, innovative and reliable payments experiences for their clients, while addressing these operational concerns. Bankers Almanac Global Payments Web Service 2.0 allows payment services providers (including established financial institutions and emerging PSPs) to meet these competing challenges with source-verified reference data offered through an easily accessible API. Enabling new mechanisms for automation, integrating this tool into front or back office processes requires minimal resources.

In an increasingly competitive market, financial institutions and PSPs must create payment services that provide increased flexibility and an improved user experience. The Global Payments Web Service can validate bank details and enrich routing information at the point of capture, creating more seamless on-boarding. With a real-time connection to Bankers Almanac dynamic data, which is updated daily, this solution drives greater customer confidence and payments straight through processing.

Beyond the payments reference data included in earlier versions, this new release provides Standard Settlement Instructions (SSIs) to enrich cross-currency payment instructions. Additionally, clearing system participation details that ensure accurate routing over the last mile of the transaction and optimised national clearing code to SWIFT/BIC pairings for additional payments routing options now available through the web service.

Robert McKay, Executive Vice President & Managing Director at Accuity, commented: “The complexity and speed of today’s marketplace requires more accessibility to the data needed to accurately route payments.” 

“We have enhanced Bankers Almanac Global Payments Web Service 2.0 to facilitate greater automation in payments onboarding, enrichment, and routing, eliminating the need for manual intervention and the costs associated with it. Ultimately, this enables financial institutions, payments services providers and corporates to create an improved payments experience.”

With industry analysts forecasting unprecedented change for the Financial Services and Insurance (FSI) industry over the next three years,^[1] companies need a highly flexible, open and secure communications foundation with which they can confidently embrace the future. To that end, Avaya Customer Engagement Solutions hold the key for successfully navigating digital transformation initiatives, enhancing mobile services and incorporating emerging technologies. 

The FSI industry already faces a plethora of challenges, including decreased loyalty especially with younger consumers, complex operations, security and regulatory requirements that slow the pace of change, and increased competition from non-traditional companies such as Apple, Google and others. 

These challenges and the rapid growth in mobile transactions have FSI companies racing to implement a wide range of digital transformation strategies. As with many major technology transformations, however, there’s untold risk in choosing technology or implementing a strategy that ultimately constrains future business initiatives, results in lost revenue or worse, customers, as well as abandoned investments.

Institutions such as O-Bank, a Taiwan-based, all digital bank and Mashreq Bank in the UAE exemplify the changing financial services industry today. O-Bank selected Avaya Customer Engagement technologies for the first, Digital-From-Day-One financial services company in the country, with a 24/7 video center that enables the company to be available to customers any time of day, anywhere they need to bank. The company has plenty of room to grow its customers and to incorporate new technologies as needs arise.  Mashreq Bank is creating the Branch of the Future and expanding its mobile banking capabilities with Avaya Customer Engagement solutions, integrating the latest technology trends, including robotics, analytics, cloud and e-channels, into existing Mashreq Bank’s digital services.

Digital transformation strategies planned by traditional or non-traditional financial institutions need to accommodate ongoing development of new and emerging technologies. Biometrics, artificial intelligence, mixed reality, IoT and analytics, as well as Blockchain already promise to have significant impacts on how banking is done. The technological underpinnings have never been more important to enable rapid, highly secure, cost-effective transformation and avoid delays and dead ends.

The Avaya portfolio of software solutions and services - including Avaya Breeze, Avaya Oceana, Avaya Oceanalytics  -- provides a platform that enables unique differentiation while future-proofing intellectual property. This flexible, secure foundation enables ongoing transformation with minimal disruption as new demands and technologies arise. In addition, Avaya Professional Services can assess current infrastructure, develop strategic plans and customise applications to help identify and ensure successful outcomes throughout the evolution of the business. With Avaya, FSI companies can comfortably leverage: 

·        Biometrics addresses an increasing need for security while streamlining the customer experience. Working with companies such as Nuance, Verbio and others, Avaya has been integrating biometrics into its customer experience solutions to help FSI companies enhance security for mobile transactions while delivering faster, seamless authentication.

·        Artificial Intelligence is alive and well in Avaya’s intelligent messaging automation solution that enables chat-bot and automated response capabilities for SMS and web chat conversations, and integrates with popular social media platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Instagram, Kik and WeChat. AI can serve a number of use cases, including effortless self-service, smart routing, agent augmentation and much more. Look for more from Avaya and its DevConnect technology partners such as Afiniti, Cogito and others on AI in the near future.

·        Augmented and virtual reality can deliver an immersive, collaborative experience attractive to millennials and younger consumers. Avaya is working with technology partners such as EXP360 to deliver a virtual reality experience through Avaya Oceana.

·        Internet of Things, including wearables, digital payment systems and sensors create both opportunities and challenges. On the plus side, with Avaya and partners such as Arrow SI with their IoT practice, companies can develop new services that drive additional revenue streams.

·        Big Data and Analytics are imperative for organizations to increase share of wallet, deliver more personalised engagements and aid in compliance and fraud detection. Avaya Oceanalytics and analytics services offer a unified view of customers across all touchpoints and relevant sources - Avaya, third party, mobile and IoT devices - providing real-time information, historical trends as well as predictive analytics to help drive business improvements. 

·        Blockchain is rapidly gaining momentum in the FSI industry, can be complemented by application development platforms like Avaya Breeze, that utilize workflow automation to create a seamless and automated customer journey – even when it spans multiple entities.

“This is a time of profound change for many companies and none more so than those in the financial services and insurance industry. We understand their unique challenges and how to help quickly close the gap between where they are today and where they need to be. Avaya’s portfolio offers the best opportunity to move to the future, adopting exciting emerging technologies on a flexible foundation that delivers an unparalleled customer experience.”

BNP PARIBAS ALM Treasury and EY today announced they successfully completed a pilot demonstrating the feasibility of using blockchain to optimize the global internal treasury operations of the bank. 

The ALM Treasury department, which manages the bank’s internal treasury, at the service of all three operating divisions of the Group, carried out a blockchain pilot, tested internally this summer. This pilot has highlighted how an internal, private blockchain could be used to improve operational efficiency by providing a more integrated cash management approach between businesses, allowing greater flexibility and a 24/7 capability.  

The pilot program, conducted with EY, marks a milestone in using blockchain-based solutions as a practical and innovative approach to respond to a business-driven need, in particular extending the working hours up to 11 hours.  This not only allows treasury optimization improvements, but also a common view of liquidity positions across locations globally. It also allowed the bank to boost the interoperability of the legacy systems combining the private blockchain with the existing IT environment via software robots and APIs.

This innovative and ambitious research project is part of a larger group of initiatives conducted by other entities of the bank regarding blockchain for example the Cash without Borders launched this year by our Transaction Banking business, and highlights how BNP Paribas is gaining on those technologies.

Emmanuelle Bury, BNP Paribas Chief Operating Officer for ALM Treasury, said: “We launched the initiative 10 months ago with a view to address the current constraint on cash transfer capabilities limited to a range of 7 to 10 hours a day and ways to enhance operational efficiency. It was also important for us to start exploring the blockchain possibilities, in particular given the interest Central Banks grants to those technologies.”

Xavier Toudoire, BNP Paribas, Head of ALM Treasury IT strategy and architecture, added: “When used in a private manner, Blockchain allows the development of different business and operational processes that previously were not possible due to the distribution of data or trust among the parties in the system.  Although it is still too early to determine how the technology will evolve and whether it is suitable for large-scale deployment, our pilot has demonstrated the clear strengths of private blockchain and its potential as one of the most effective ways to improve the existing internal processes between different businesses on an international level.”

Jean-Michel-Bouhours, Partner, EY Financial Services France, said: “Using an agile approach, this journey allowed the treasurers involved to break the current boundaries by reading an accurate cash position of another closed treasury location, and perform operations on behalf of these locations on several currencies.” 

Philippe Limantour, EY Chief Innovation Officer for Financial Services in France, added: “Designing and executing processes making use of new technologies like blockchain to simplify the payments, financing and insurance processes can ultimately result in clear business advantages. In doing so in the present case, we came to realise that the use of robotics would provide an even greater added value to clients, both internally and externally.”

Accuity, the global financial crime compliance, payments and KYC solutions provider, announces the launch of Bankers Almanac Sanctions View. The new proposition allows financial institutions to gain a comprehensive and holistic view of their financial counterparties – including their ownership data together with any sanctions risk – to help them perform their KYC due diligence faster and easier. Algorithms that use Bankers Almanac’s extensive data, sourced from more than 50 regulatory bodies, against the details of over 23,000 banks, establish a strength score on the potential risks posed by counterparties.

Since the financial crisis, regulators across the world have continued to ramp up the pressure on financial institutions to know their customers and any indirect risks associated with them, for example, from nested relationships. This has led to compliance teams having to sift through reams of complex intelligence, regulatory data and lists, which is often done manually.

Bankers Almanac Sanctions View deploys advanced algorithms that enable financial institutions to gain insight into the risk networks of their counterparties and identify any sanctioned entities within those networks, in order to provide a greater degree of certainty as to who their customers’ owners and subsidiaries really are. In addition, the service assesses risks to current or prospective counterparties from a single source.

Patrick Hinchin, Senior Director, Product Management, Accuity, commented: “In a data-rich age, where business structures are becoming increasingly sophisticated, complex and global, financial institutions are facing an uphill struggle to know who their customers really are and meet their KYC burden. The sophisticated algorithms used in the Bankers Almanac Sanctions View simplify and potentially reduce the cost of financial counterparty KYC. The move is all part of Accuity’s ongoing mission to give its clients a complete view of their financial counterparties so that they can decide quickly and efficiently if they can do business with them.”

Mitek (NASDAQ: MITK, www.miteksystems.com), a global leader in mobile capture and digital identity verification software solutions, today announced that it has acquired ICAR, a leading provider of consumer identity verification solutions in Spain and Latin America, for an aggregate purchase price of up to €12.75 million (~US$15.0 million) paid in a combination of cash and shares of Mitek common stock.

The acquisition of ICAR strengthens Mitek’s position as a global digital identity verification powerhouse in the Consumer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) solutions market, which the April 2017 MarketsandMarkets report, Consumer IAM Market – Global Forecast,  estimates will reach US$16.6  billion by 2022.

Headquartered in Barcelona with offices in Madrid, São Paulo, and Mexico City, ICAR was founded in 2002 as a spin-off of the Computer Vision Center of the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona. Today, ICAR is a digital consumer identification leader in Spain and Latin America. ICAR’s channel distribution partners include Accenture, Informática El Corte Inglés, and other top technology solutions providers. Its customers are premier banks including Caixa Bank, Banco Neon, and Bancoppel, as well as companies in the telecom, insurance, travel, and energy sectors.

“The technical and cultural fit between ICAR and Mitek is a tremendous opportunity to maximize value for shareholders, while expanding our mission to bring the highest quality user experience and digital identity verification solutions to our customers globally,” said James B. DeBello, Chief Executive Officer of Mitek and Chairman of the Mitek Board of Directors.

Xavier Codó, Chief Executive Officer of ICAR added, “This combination provides a major growth opportunity and allows us to extend cloud services to our partners and customers in Spain and Latin America. It gives us the ability to offer our customers comprehensive identity document coverage throughout the U.S. and Europe. Mitek’s financial stability and commitment to research and development will also enable us to develop the industry’s most comprehensive, versatile, and advanced digital identity verification platform.”

“We have integrated ICAR’s automated identity identification solution. We view Mitek as a strong, established identity verification solutions provider and believe the combination will deliver additional capabilities to our platform giving us a competitive edge,” said Joan Manuel Tabero, CIO of Consumer Finance at Caixa Bank. 

Following the acquisition, Mitek will offer extensive identity document coverage in North America, Europe, and Latin America. ICAR will increase Mitek’s digital identity verification capabilities with several new factors of authentication. The acquisition also further enhances Mitek’s desktop capture capabilities, which will enable customer on-boarding and authentication using computers in addition to mobile devices.

ICAR’s computer vision experts are tightly aligned with the Computer Vision Center of the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona and dedicated to ongoing research and development. The merging of these experts with the Mitek Labs’ machine learning and computer vision scientists will create one of the most powerful research and development teams in the digital identity verification industry.

Volante Technologies Inc., a global leader in the provision of software for the integration, processing and orchestration of payments and financial messages, today announced that the entire range of the VolPay Suite of payments processing products is now available on Microsoft Azure. 

This gives financial institutions an added choice for their payments transformation projects. Cloud-based technologies continue to increase in popularity as banks and other financial institutions look to reduce IT costs, improve scalability and benefit from using on-demand products and services. By accessing VolPay on the cloud, users can avoid hosting on-premises, or in their data centres, and benefit from reduced software and hardware costs, and immediately take advantage of new functionality as it becomes available.

Used by a wide range of firms today, the VolPay Suite promises to dramatically accelerate all aspects of payments initiation, validation, enrichment, processing and orchestration, and reduce the time, complexity and cost of payment transformation projects. Volante’s customers use VolPay in a number of business applications including VolPay Channel for bank on-boarding of corporate payments, VolPay Foundation for payments messaging integration, VolPay Hub for payments processing and orchestration, and VolPay Gateways for connecting to clearing houses.

Azure is an open, flexible, enterprise-grade cloud computing platform and set of integrated services that developers and IT professionals use to build, deploy and manage applications through a global network of data centres. Financial institutions turn to Azure to digitally transform their businesses, capitalizing on the global scale, economic benefits and intelligent capabilities the platform and services provide, underscored by Microsoft’s investments in security, privacy and regulatory compliance.

Vijay Oddiraju, CEO, Volante Technologies, commented, “We like to stay ahead of our clients’ requirements, and investing in cloud-based technologies now ensures that we are in a perfect position to give banks and institutions the option of moving away from the traditional model of in-house deployments.”  

Oddiraju continues, “Improving business agility is central to our belief and we already pride ourselves with dramatically accelerated payment transformation projects compared to other more traditional approaches. Cloud takes this to the next level of acceleration, cost savings, and convenience for firms in the payments business.” 

Janet Lewis, vice president of Worldwide Financial Services, Microsoft, said, “Technology is increasingly providing financial institutions with a competitive edge, and we are thrilled Volante is bringing the VolPay Suite to Microsoft Azure offering our mutual clients flexibility and choice. Having Volante Technologies on-board delivers significant advantages to clients who are looking to optimise the use of cloud technologies and benefit from a reduction in hardware and software costs.”

Bank of America Merrill Lynch, a leader in global transaction services, is pleased to announce that it has expanded its payments capabilities with the launch of Multicurrency Netting.