To facilitate international payments, Bitso — a leading financial services company powered by crypto in Latin America with 7 million users — announced its integration with the Stellar network, adding new corridors between Latin America and Europe to Stellar’s growing Anchor Network. The solution, developed in partnership with the Stellar Development Foundation, allows companies from all over the world to carry out fast, affordable and secure transactions to Argentina, Colombia and Mexico.
 
The integration adds to the services that Bitso offers to companies and institutions — where it currently serves more than 1,500 clients. Thanks to this integration with the Stellar network, global companies will be able to carry out transactions in dollars, using USDC (the fully-reserved digital dollar issued by Circle) in countries where Bitso has a direct connection to the local bank system. This will open new possibilities for trade, financial inclusion and equitable access to the markets of Latin America and the world.
 
One of the most successful use cases of crypto technology is cross-border payments between countries, such as remittances or international transfers. Just last year, Bitso processed 3.3 billion dollars only in the Mexico - United States corridor and saw a 32% increase in total international transfers between July and December of the same year. According to Juniper Research, digital cross-border remittances are projected to grow to $428 billion by 2025.

“In recent years, we have seen an increase in cross-border payments globally for both international commerce and remittances. By leveraging blockchain technology and crypto assets, we can significantly improve settlement times and overall costs. This partnership between Stellar and Bitso is well aligned with our mission to make crypto useful by enabling businesses to perform seamless transfers of value across countries. Together, we aim to revolutionize global finance, fostering inclusivity and financial empowerment worldwide”, Santiago Alvarado, SVP of Institutional Product at Bitso, stated.

Although this is a new product offering, there are organizations that are already benefiting from this project, such as MYKOBO, a European-based company that is a pioneer in connecting the European financial infrastructure with blockchain technology and that has contributed to the success of this launch with the opening of a corridor for transactions between Europe and Mexico. 
 
Another example is PMI-Americas, a leading global payment services company, which is opening two important corridors, one between Chile and Colombia and the other between Chile and Mexico, using the services of this alliance as part of its objectives to create strategies and customized solutions that meet the needs of its clients in Latin America.

“We believe that the addition of Bitso into the Stellar Anchor network helps further the mission of the Stellar Development Foundation to promote financial inclusion around the world. The possibility of carrying out increasingly seamless transactions between countries, promoting cooperation, economic development and the opening of new commercial corridors, shows the potential of the Stellar network to make a real-world impact”, Mark Heynen, VP, Partnerships at the Stellar Development Foundation, said.

Through this integration, companies will be able to carry out transactions without the need for specialized knowledge of crypto and will gain the ability to conduct international operations without the need for any other intermediaries or banks.

Airwallex, a leading global payments and financial platform for modern businesses, today announced partnership with Brex, a leading U.S.-based financial technology company, to support its global expansion. Airwallex continues to assemble a rapidly growing ecosystem of customers and partners, validating its position as a catalysing force in global money movement infrastructure and proving the power of collaborative innovation in fintech.

“In today’s economic climate, every business is navigating two competing interests: expanding operations and saving costs,” said Jack Zhang, Co-Founder and CEO of Airwallex. “Traditional banking solutions make that nearly impossible as global expansion is often accompanied by burdensome complexity, slow time to market, and complicated regulatory requirements. We see a tremendous opportunity to connect more US-based businesses with our global network, and we’re thrilled to be able to support incredible fintech companies like Brex expanding globally.”

Brex, the first fully unified global spend platform, serves large multinational customers all over the world that need access to the same financial tools Brex offers in the U.S. in other countries. Through seamless integration, Brex is scaling fast by solving multiple financial use cases at once. The company is leveraging Airwallex’s suite of solutions, including local currency collections for its global corporate card as well as global employee expense reimbursements. Brex is leveraging Airwallex’s robust network of more than 50 global licenses to accelerate its market expansion.

Henrique Dubugras, Founder and Co-CEO at Brex, said, “Leading enterprises are expanding their footprints globally and are looking to Brex for employee spend and expense management across their operations. Brex has invested years and millions of dollars in the financial infrastructure to power this global money movement and therefore chooses its partners very carefully. We are pleased to be working with Airwallex due to its strong financial infrastructure in multiple markets and developer-friendly platform.”

11:11 Systems (“11:11”), a managed infrastructure solutions provider, today announced that it has expanded its relationship with Amazon Web Services (AWS) by joining the AWS Partner Network (APN) and will offer customers holistic data protection strategies that include additional Veeam Software solutions on AWS. The APN is a global community of AWS Partners that leverage programs, expertise, and resources to build, market and sell customer offerings. 

“Extending our data protection services globally is the logical next step towards our mission to ensure that our customers’ networks and infrastructure are always running, accessible and protected,” said Brett Diamond, CEO, 11:11 Systems. “Expanding our relationship with AWS allows us to quickly deploy our award-winning data protection services to the geographies where our customers are doing business and across their entire IT portfolio, including their current and future cloud environments. This results in greater protection for our customers in an increasingly hostile cyber-security landscape.” 

According to Gartner, the total projected worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services will reach a record $597.3 billion in 2023.

11:11 Systems is a seven-time winner of the Veeam Cloud & Service Provider (VCSP) Impact Partner of the Year award for North America. 

“11:11 Systems’ reputation among customers—which is enhanced by its recent acquisitions of the Sungard AS’ Recovery and Cloud Managed Services businesses and iland–- is renowned,” said Matt Kalmenson, vice president of Global Cloud and Service Providers, Veeam®. “The Veeam Cloud Protection Trends Report 2023 shows that 98% of organisations utilise a cloud-hosted infrastructure as part of their data protection and ransomware recovery strategy and this expanded relationship offers customers unlimited flexibility in executing against that strategy.” 

The industry-leading combination of 11:11 Systems and Veeam technology offers customers comprehensive solutions and enhanced expertise to address escalating cyberattacks and protect their data, no matter where it lives. These solutions include: 

·         11:11 Cloud Backup for Veeam Cloud Connect 

·         11:11 Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365 

·         11:11 Cloud Object Storage 

Following the successful acquisition of Five Degrees by Topicus, the combined force will offer turn-key banking tech-stacks that challenge technology providers incumbent to the sector. Topicus and Five Degrees vocalized their ambition at the Five Degrees offices during a recent networking event. The event featured Sabyasachi Sengupta of ABN AMRO Bank as keynote speaker and Topicus CEO Daan Dijkhuizen elaborating on the strategic direction.

The primary strategic focus revolves around vertical market solutions, commonly known as FinTech stacks, within this market. These fully integrated, end-to-end solutions are designed to support specific business domains. The initial rollout will focus on Retail Lending, with comprehensive stacks planned to cover the entire banking landscape, catering to private banks, mortgage banks, mobile-only banks, and commercial banks.

While Topicus has long been a trusted provider of banking technology for established banks, the acquisition of Five Degrees brings vertical solutions closer to the core banking capabilities essential for mission-critical operations. This integration enables seamless alignment between specialized solutions and essential banking functions across the organization, enhancing efficiency.

Financial institutions (FSIs) can derive substantial benefits from these solutions, as they have the opportunity to collaborate with a sole provider rather than integrating solutions from various vendors. This enables FSIs to streamline their implementation projects and operations, resulting in enhanced governance and overall efficiency.

Moreover, adopting these stacks allows FSIs to operate at the forefront of the industry. Leveraging next-generation cloud-native technology, they can meet the ever-evolving needs of customers in a timely manner. This positions FSIs to stay ahead of the curve, keeping up with emerging trends and maintaining a competitive edge in the market.

Both Five Degrees and Topicus bring extensive experience in delivering mature solutions using innovative technology in complex banking environments. Their combined offering covers everything from customer engagement to core banking, as well as lending and wealth management, providing a comprehensive suite of solutions for financial institutions.

Today Feedzai, a leading provider of financial crime and risk management solutions, is introducing Railgun, its next-generation AI engine designed to target and intercept financial fraud before it can occur. In order to scale, today's risk engines force financial institutions to limit the data they use to make risk decisions – typically by looking only at a limited history of data, and by using only a subset of relevant data inputs. Railgun removes these constraints, so financial institutions can now use a complete history of all relevant data – enabling them to assess the likelihood of fraudulent activity with unprecedented accuracy.

As sophisticated criminals embrace new techniques using generative AI, and as financial crime surges, new AI-based fraud-fighting technologies like Railgun will be critical to protect both consumers and financial institutions. Railgun’s breakthrough technology is the result of years of intensive research and development, and the product of multiple Feedzai patents in the area of streaming analytics.

Fraud detection engines typically rely on risk profiles that capture customer information, such as transaction history over specific periods, and assess the likelihood of a fraudulent payment based on a real-time comparison between current transactional activity and past typical behaviors. In the past, fraud detection suffered from a paucity of data to build these risk profiles, but now  our digital age ensures almost limitless information. However, risk engines have struggled to keep up with this change, because storing profiles for numerous customers, cards, and terminals requires massive amounts of low-latency memory space at scale. As a result, current systems simplify data inputs and limit historical context, diminishing fraud detection accuracy in order to achieve scalability. And because updating risk profiles is an offline process that is time consuming and expensive, these systems are also less agile, taking more time to adapt to rapidly evolving fraud patterns. Altogether, the result is a failure to prevent significant financial crime.

Railgun’s patented technology addresses the compromises inherent in today’s fraud detection systems, delivering:

• Enhanced accuracy - Railgun enables real-time calculations based on data across much longer time windows, providing financial institutions with better observability and understanding of customer behaviors, resulting in more precise detection of suspicious activities.
• Greater agility - Early production results show that Railgun improves the speed of risk strategy updates by 4x or more, enabling swifter responses to emerging fraud threats. New rules become effective almost immediately and risk recalculation no longer imposes a heavy burden on data science teams.
• Scalability and lower latency - With Railgun financial institutions can confidently handle increasing transaction volumes without compromising accuracy or decision latency

Railgun is the latest innovation from Feedzai, which has invested over $100M to build its RiskOps platform, the world’s most comprehensive suite of solutions to combat financial crime. Feedzai invests heavily in basic research, and in the last three years has created nearly 100 patents and pending patents in the US and Europe, covering innovations in a wide variety of areas including applied AI and machine learning, fraud detection, streaming data processing and analytics, money laundering detection,  rules management, and AI explainability and fairness.

Pedro Barata, Chief Product Officer at Feedzai said, “As technology continues to evolve and tools such as AI become more readily accessible, fraud detection systems need to be able to keep pace and reliably combat criminal activity. Railgun is a significant weapon in the fight against financial crime, allowing banks and other financial institutions to accurately and cost-effectively turn the tide on the rising levels of fraud. With Railgun, banks no longer have to make assumptions or generalizations when it comes to risk profiling – helping protect millions of people worldwide.”

 Core10, Inc. (Core10), a U.S.-based financial technology company that provides lending, account opening, and BaaS products, as well as software development services, today announced that it is expanding its participation in the Jack Henry™ Vendor Integration Program (VIP). Participation in the program provides Core10 with access to Jack Henry’s technical resources to enable Core10 to integrate with Symitar®.  VIP is designed to help ensure that Jack Henry clients can easily deploy third-party products. 

Core10 has been a VIP member since 2020 via jXchange™ and now integrates with Symitar via SymXchange™, a services-based programming interface that enables third-party vendors and credit unions to access the platform’s core data and business rules. The integrity of data is maintained throughout any data exchange, because access to business rules and data is managed through a service layer which governs these interactions.

Core10 provides community financial institutions and fintechs with subscription and project-based API integration solutions to eliminate backlogs, reduce staffing costs and support business growth opportunities. The company’s Accrue platform is a highly configurable, OEM Salesforce Platform solution designed specifically to provide digital account opening, digital lending and core/fintech connectivity to accelerate community financial institutions’ digital transformation strategies. Existing integrations with the SilverLake System® via jXchange and the new integration with Symitar via SymXchange will help ensure Core10 is better positioned to serve more Jack Henry customers.

“Core10 strives to drive engagement and streamline processes for credit unions through API-enabled connections to the core,” said Jeff Hanson, CEO of Core10. “We’ve expanded our partnership with Jack Henry to better serve our credit union partners and allow them to maintain a competitive advantage in an evolving marketplace. By integrating with Episys, Core10’s credit union customers can deliver modern solutions that improve member engagement and introduce innovative account opening and lending products.”

Jack Henry’s VIP takes the customer out of the middle, providing vendors with direct access to Jack Henry’s technical resources and test systems. VIP inclusion is not an endorsement of the vendor’s product.

Elliptic – the global leader in cryptoasset risk management – has announced a partnership with FOMO Pay, a leading payment institution headquartered in Singapore that aims to build a cohesive payment ecosystem in Asia with seamless interoperability between fiat and digital currencies.

The new partnership will see FOMO Pay work with Elliptic to enhance its customer onboarding due diligence check process.

FOMO Pay uses Elliptic's solutions to maintain comprehensive digital asset compliance capabilities in a fast-growing and increasingly regulated market. The company utilizes Elliptic's wallet intelligence tool to screen digital currency wallets and its transaction intelligence functionality to screen transactions in real-time. Elliptic's multi-asset screening tool also enables FOMO Pay to trace cross-asset and cross-chain activities all concurrently.

Lim Wee Teck – Head of Compliance at FOMO Pay – expressed his delight in collaborating with Elliptic. He said: "One of the main reasons we partnered with Elliptic was for their high asset coverage, in-depth data intelligence and quick turn-around time, which allow for accurate and efficient identification of anomalies in digital asset transactions as compared to conventional manual eye-balling methodologies. This has allowed us to scale our operations efficiently while ensuring compliance in the field of digital asset business."

The integration of Elliptic's advanced solutions highlights FOMO Pay's unwavering dedication to bolstering its investments in leading technologies for compliance monitoring, thereby solidifying its commitment to upholding industry standards in compliance.

Through strategic system implementation, FOMO Pay has successfully enhanced its capabilities to support larger volumes of platform flows, elevate the client experience, minimize friction, and ensure adherence to anti-money laundering (AML) and crime-prevention obligations.

In response to growing client demand, leading financial software company NeoXam has bolstered its involvement in Australia with the appointment of Daniel Joseph as country head for Australia.

Daniel joined NeoXam on 26^th of June and will be reporting to Tim Versteeg, NeoXam’s head of sales and general manager of the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region at NeoXam. Daniel’s main responsibilities are in running the Australian office and will include growing the team, managing client accounts, increasing new client partnerships, and growing the NeoXam brand and reputation.

Daniel brings more than 16 years’ experience operating in the financial services sector, spanning reputable institutions on both the buy and sell side of the capital markets. Before joining NeoXam, Daniel held a senior position at global IT service provider and software development company Luxoft, where he led various engagements related to consulting and the outsourcing of data management solutions. Prior to this, Daniel worked at Bank of New York Mellon’s data and analytics business, focusing on developing and delivering innovative buy-side solutions for clients.

Tim Versteeg, head of sales and general manager for APAC at NeoXam, said: “We are thrilled Daniel is joining the team at such an exciting chapter in NeoXam’s growth journey. With over a decade of experience building bustling new business pipelines for highly reputable global firms, his wealth of experience will be instrumental in supporting our rapidly growing Australia team as it seeks to continue delivering on new client partnerships.”

Daniel Joseph, country head for Australia at NeoXam, added:

“NeoXam has built considerable traction over the last couple of years globally and especially in APAC. The company has committed to investing in the Australian and New Zealand markets with now a local presence in Australia. This will give our existing and new clients the local touch point that is required to have successful partnerships. I look forward to working alongside the host of exceptional professionals at NeoXam and to contributing to the company's success.”

Daniel’s appointment continues a promising year for NeoXam in terms of its international expansion. The company announced Florent Fabre as its new CEO in April, a move that coincided with a €100m investment from private equity house Eurazeo, made principally to support the company’s global growth ambitions.