Published
- 09:00 am
New Zealand’s leading electronic payment network, Paymark, is partnering with Transaction Network Services (TNS) to reinforce its EFTPOS services with a new range of alternative, feature rich and highly reliable payment solutions.
Shane Ohlin, Chief Information Officer at Paymark, said: “We are delighted to be working with TNS to strengthen the New Zealand marketplace. We are dedicated to providing a high quality range of payments access services to support our merchants across the country.
“IP Dial remains an important access option for our customers and TNS shares our ongoing commitment to this technology. Partnering with TNS allows us to enhance our existing dial up offering while strategically expanding our portfolio and future-proofing our business with new wireless and IP offerings. It is important that we can be agile and responsive to changing market dynamics and we’re confident our agreement with TNS puts us in a strong position. We expect to also reduce our operational and support costs as working with TNS will help to streamline our infrastructure.”
TNS’ Global Wireless Access is a managed roaming wireless POS solution which will offer merchants greater security, coverage and reliability. It combines strongest signal detection with data roaming to overcome traditional blackspots allowing merchants to transact.
The TNSLink for Retail solution will replace Paymark’s OneOffice and RetailZone services for large merchants and offer additional functionality, including secure high speed bi-directional connectivity support for time reporting, inventory monitoring and other back office applications in addition to handling the POS transactions taken instore.
John Tait, Managing Director of TNS’ Payments Division for the Asia Pacific region, said: “We’re delighted to be working with Paymark and boosting the services it offers. Paymark is the leading processor in New Zealand and currently handles 75% of all card transactions in the country. This network includes 140,000 EFTPOS terminals across 80,000 merchants and sees approximately 1.2 billion transactions worth $60 billion carried each year on behalf of more than 50 card issuers and acquirers. We are excited at the role we will play in supporting this significant level of activity.”
New Zealand’s consumers are some of the world’s biggest users of debit and credit cards. Debit card usage, in particular, has soared over the last 30 years, fuelled by low fees and high consumer adoption.
Mr Tait said: “A number of New Zealand telecommunications providers have tried to move businesses off dial PSTN access as they seek to end of life their core infrastructure in favour of new IP and 4G/5G wireless networks. TNS is committed to being the ‘last man standing’ globally in providing dial POS solutions and supporting the long tail of merchants who are still gaining the benefits of this legacy technology. This new agreement with Paymark reaffirms this and demonstrates our continued investment in being a leading solutions provider for New Zealand.”
TNS’ Dial solution provides high availability with advanced node and circuit redundancy, back-up and flexible routing capabilities. It has been designed to deliver all types of transaction traffic, including credit and debit cards, pre-paid mobile top-ups, gaming, alarms, inventory control, order entry and other transaction-oriented applications. It delivers shorter and more cost effective transaction times than general purpose network service providers and supports all known POS protocols. Near real-time visibility, monitoring and reporting is provided by TNSOnline.
The TNSLink for Retail solution uses broadband with 3G/4G back-up or multi-network 3G/4G to provide failover and enable stores to continue to operate if the primary means of connectivity becomes available.
TNS’ Global Wireless Access can provide significant cost and time savings by allowing the bulk provisioning of SIMs, and the use of an advanced management and diagnostics portal gives flexibility and control over SIM deployment.
- 03:00 am
IBM today announced that any.cloud, which provides cloud hosting for customers across a wide range of industries, including digital media, has chosen IBM Cloud Object Storage for archiving services to help manage the company's massive amounts of unstructured data and help clients derive new insights and value from the data they store on any.cloud, giving both any.cloud and its clients opportunities for new revenue streams. any.cloud also recently tested IBM Watson Video Analytics, as the company seeks to provide new value-added services to clients in order to support video and picture tagging as a service.
The amount of data generated by digital media companies is growing rapidly. Analyst firm IDC projects the world's data growth to reach 163 zettabytes by 2025, with 80 percent of that growth coming from unstructured data created by the digital media industry.iManaging and storing growing digital media content can be both complicated and costly, leading some storage service providers to rethink their strategies in an effort to redefine the value of digital media content.
"We don't want to just offer storage to our customers. At any.cloud, our aim is to add value to our clients' businesses by providing them with safe, reliable and easy-to-use storage on a very large scale," said Gregor Frimodt-Møller, CEO at any.cloud. "One example of this is innovating our approach to data archiving to ensure we can deliver our customers always-on availability in combination with Watsonservices and technology."
- 07:00 am
Exiger, the global regulatory, financial crime, risk and compliance company, announced today that it has acquired OutsideIQ, the company that developed the groundbreaking cognitive computing and intelligent search platform DDIQ.
Exiger’s acquisition recognizes the urgent need for financial institutions and corporations to right-size compliance resources, manage voluminous data, and respond to regulatory demands. OutsideIQ’s development team and Exiger’s subject matter experts will join forces to use DDIQ to deliver solutions, at the enterprise level, that solve critical financial crime compliance issues—including customer, transaction, counterparty and third-party risk. The acquisition further positions Exiger as one of the leading providers of sustainable compliance solutions.
“Banks have spent the last 10+ years in response mode - reacting to regulators’ demands while trying and failing to contain the cost of compliance,” said Michael Beber, Exiger President and CEO. “The banks have been forced to give up compliant as well as non-compliant customers because they haven’t had the solutions to allow them to distinguish between them cost-effectively. With this acquisition, Exiger is uniquely positioned to implement a solution that meets the compliance demands of regulators and the profitability requirements of shareholders. Our entire Exiger team looks forward to working with Dan Adamson and the entire OutsideIQ team to solve what are clearly, some of our clients’ most important problems.”
“This acquisition reinforces our continuing commitment to best-in-class technology as the fulcrum of our client-centric solutions,” said Brandon Daniels, President, Exiger Analytics. “The global banks know that they are facing an imperative - restructure processes, deploy the right technology, and do a lot more for less while maintaining compliance. The acquisition of OutsideIQ/DDIQ will augment our ability to deliver purpose-built, AI-based solutions that transform how global banks and multi-national corporations meet the evolving expectations of regulators looking for truly measurable and auditable solutions. Exiger will build on DDIQ’s success to deliver enterprise level, RegTech solutions that respond to this shifting paradigm with our focus being to deliver solutions that address transaction alert monitoring, KYC onboarding, counterparty and third-party risk.”
Dan Adamson, Founder and CEO of OutsideIQ, said: “The financial services community clearly sees cognitive computing based solutions as critical to achieving cost efficiency, consistency and global scale in financial crime compliance. Yet, the identification of areas that are ripe for automation and the design of reliable solutions can only be driven by financial crime subject matter experts. We believe that this move solves that dilemma and will allow the combined OutsideIQ/Exiger team to seamlessly bring AI solutions to the financial markets with clear, impactful use cases. This transition is a logical step in our shared view of the dominant role that cognitive computing solutions will play in compliance. We look forward to enhancing what is already a very productive relationship and working closely with the entire Exiger team to bring critical, enterprise level solutions to the FI community.”
- 03:00 am
ItzCash, India’s largest digital payments company and the leading player in domestic remittances, has further ventured into cross-border remittances through its collaboration with Prabhu Money Transfer India, a leading remittance company in Nepal. With this initiative, ItzCash will enable Nepali diaspora settled in India to remit money back home through its 75,000 agent network spread across 3000+ cities.
India has witnessed significant migration from Eastern, Western and Central regions of Nepal, especially to key Indian cities namely Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Surat, and Ahmedabad. The other key regions for Nepali migrants are Northern Indian states like Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Punjab, and Haryana. According to World Bank report, remittances from India to Nepal accounted for more than $1 billion for the year 2015.
Mr. Ravi Singh - Chief Business Officer, ItzCash, said, “It is estimated that about 10 percent of total remittances from India are processed through formal channels which underlines the huge existing opportunity in remittances sector. With the new offering, we are aiming to digitise a sizeable chunk of the remittances business through our Phygital network inclusive of over 75,000 physical touch points and digital transfers.” He added, “Our partnership with Prabhu Money will connect customers anywhere in India at their doorstep while strengthening our cross border presence.”
Miss. Kusum Lama, Prabhu Money Transfer, said, “We are extremely proud to be associated with such a renowned brand in India. Our close liaison with almost all the major banks of Nepal enables us to cater to the Indo-Nepal remittance service efficiently. This will facilitate the huge Nepal diaspora based in India especially among the working and labor-class to remit their hard-earned money through a safe and secured network of a reliable partner while delivering a high quality end user experience.”
- 05:00 am
Temenos, the software specialist for banking and finance, has today announced that the winner of its global Innovation Jam contest is fintech start-up Paykey.
PayKey, winners of the heat in Miami, was selected by a panel of banking experts as being one of the most innovative fintech start-ups.
Speaking of the award, David Arnott Temenos CEO said “Innovation Jam is about scouring the world to find the most innovative fintech developers and working with them to help bring the benefits to Temenos customers. Innovation is moving at a blistering pace in the banking industry and its companies like PayKey that continue to disrupt.”
PayKey will be made available through Temenos’ Market Place which launched last year in recognition of the opportunity for banks and fintech companies to work together. Market Place is an online store of fintech solutions that have been pre-integrated with the Temenos Suites. There are now over 100 fintech solutions available that are certified by Temenos bringing together banks with technology that can revolutionise the business.
Guy Ziv, Vice President of Sales with PayKey said “We are honoured to have been chosen by a community of banking experts as the global winners of the Temenos Innovation Jam 2017 This is another milestone on our mission to put banks exactly where their customers are; on social networks.”
In addition to the overall winner, the Judges Award this year went to Blue Code a cashless payment app. The judges choice was determined by a panel of 3 Temenos experts, 2 representatives from banks and a leading consultancy.
- 09:00 am
Hamburger Sparkasse (Haspa), Germany's largest savings bank, has extended its successful IT outsourcing partnership with Diebold Nixdorf (NYSE: DBD), a global leader in driving connected commerce, for an additional seven years.
With this agreement, Diebold Nixdorf will support the decentralized IT operations for approximately 6,000 of Haspa's work stations and the management of its self-service network of more than 800 systems, including cash management, network services, file and print services, the operation of servers for a range of applications, the management of middleware and database applications, and a user help desk.
"Drawing on Diebold Nixdorf's expertise, this partnership has enabled us to ensure the consistent availability of our systems," said Rudolf Hoyer, the head of information technology and organization at Hamburger Sparkasse. "In addition, Diebold Nixdorf has been supporting our efforts to further develop our technologies and infrastructure as well as in reducing costs."
"We will continue to rely on Diebold Nixdorf's expertise as we plan the migration of our core banking system," added Frank Rollenhagen, deputy head of information technology and organization at Hamburger Sparkasse.
"The continuation of key partnerships with leading financial institutions, such as Haspa, is a key aspect of our services growth strategy," said Olaf Heyden, Diebold Nixdorf senior vice president, services. "Through our comprehensive services portfolio, we are driving the future of consumer transactions by helping banks fully focus on their customers and facilitating the rapid transformation of financial institutions throughout the world."
- 04:00 am
Mastercard today announced the appointment of Ed McLaughlin to president, Operations and Technology, effective May 1, 2017. McLaughlin succeeds Rob Reeg, who will move to a consulting role reporting to Ajay Banga, president and CEO, and will help to ensure a smooth transition through October 1, 2017.
“Ed’s experience and know-how across our portfolio, combined with an entrepreneurial mindset, made him the ideal choice to continue the growth and advancement of our technology operations,” said Banga. “He’s a proven entity to our teams, our customers and industry stakeholders. It’s this foundation of delivering meaningful products and the highest levels of security that will continue to differentiate us in this increasingly digital world.”
In 2010, McLaughlin was named chief emerging payments officer, leading the development and launch of the company’s digital strategy, partnerships and platforms, including Masterpass, Mastercard Send and Mastercard Digital Enablement System (MDES), the digital token program. McLaughlin joined Mastercard in 2005 as head of bill payment and healthcare, and was named chief franchise development officer in 2008.
Prior to joining Mastercard, McLaughlin led product and strategy at Metavante, a financial services technology company, and was co-founder and CEO of Paytrust, an online payments company acquired by Metavante in 2002. Earlier in his career, he was the executive vice president of product and marketing at LogicWorks, Inc., a start-up data modeling software. McLaughlin is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
Over the course of 22 years, Reeg played a significant role in guiding the organization through its evolution as a technology company. He was the chief architect of the company’s strategic processing platform and global network operations.
Rob Reeg, President, MasterCard TechnologiesReeg originally joined Mastercard in 1995, before being named chief technology officer in 2005. He assumed his most recent position on the company’s executive management team in May 2008. Prior to joining Mastercard, Reeg held IT and business leadership positions with Sprint Corp., Cleveland Pneumatic, Totco Inc. and Conoco Inc.
“It would be impossible to recount all of Rob’s many contributions and accomplishments over the past two decades,” said Banga. “He’s pushed us to be at the cutting edge of operational efficiency and accuracy. Rob brought that same passion and caring to our culture and our people, being a tireless advocate for diversity and inclusion initiatives. We wish Rob and his family every happiness in this next chapter.”
- 02:00 am
Key people behind a planned new Israeli bank account switching service turned to the experienced team behind the UK’s Current Account Switch Service (CASS) to tap into their knowledge and expertise.
The two day visit gave the Israeli delegation an insight into how CASS was created and implemented, as well as the research that has informed latest developments, and the strategy for building on success moving forwards. Bacs also arranged for the visitors to meet with representatives from Her Majesty’s Treasury, the Payment Systems Regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, and the Competition and Markets Authority, as well as people from the UK Open Banking team.
Anne Pieckielon, Bacs Director of Product and Strategy, leads on CASS for the UK. She said: “CASS is clearly recognised as a world leading switching service and we were delighted to share our knowledge and experience on how we have made the service such a success since launching almost four years ago.”
Kfir Battat, from Israel’s Ministry of Finance, said: “The visit to Bacs to talk about CASS exceeded all our expectations and we thank Anne and all her team for the opportunity to learn more about the UK banking market and in particular CASS. The UK clearly has an excellent switching service and we are very grateful for the two day visit.”
- 01:00 am
LCH Ltd, a leading global clearing house, announced today that it has established deposit and intraday liquidity facilities with Norges Bank, the central bank of Norway.
As part of the account opening process, LCH has become a direct member of NBO, the payments system operated by Norges Bank which allows financial insititutions to settle payment obligations on a real-time gross settlement basis.
Martin Pluves, CEO, LCH Ltd, said: “As a global leader in clearing and risk management, LCH is delighted to announce the opening of this new account with Norges Bank. Adding this central bank account strengthens credit and liquidity risk management at the CCP and expands sources of liquidity, in line with international standards for financial market infrastructures.”
LCH also maintains central bank concentration accounts in Australian Dollars, Canadian Dollars, Euros, Sterling, and Swiss Francs.
- 04:00 am
Gemalto, the world leader in digital security, has opened a new banking card personalization center in Dubai, bringing the benefits of highly responsive, locally-based support to the region's fast developing financial services sector. The new center is fully certified by Visa and MasterCard, and offers a one-stop solution for EMV card personalization and associated services such as PIN by SMS, including the option of same day delivery. Banks will therefore be able to offer their end users an enhanced customer experience, and reap the benefits of improved flexibility, business continuity, reliability, and cost efficiency.
The first customer to take advantage of the new center is Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB), a leading Islamic financial services group with 88 branches and a presence that extends across the UAE and six other Middle East and European countries. Gemalto will provide ADIB with personalization services for debit and credit cards, along with an enhanced and fully integrated packaging, fulfillment and PIN mailer service that is tailored precisely to the individual requirements of the bank and its clients. As a global company, Gemalto's new personalization center also supports the ability to securely deliver replacement banking cards to VIP customers when they are traveling abroad.
The opening of the Dubai center reflects and supports the rapid migration to EMV banking that is taking place throughout a region where cash has traditionally dominated. By 2021 it is predicted that 902 million EMV bank cards will be in circulation in the Middle East and Africa, up from 303 million in 2015.
"The Millennial generation is increasingly demanding an instant, personalized service and ADIB is fully committed to a program of digital transformation that can meet and exceed their expectations," said (name), (job title) for ADIB. "This collaboration with Gemalto is central to this goal, helping us deliver exceptional reactivity and protection for our customers."
"The Middle East is experiencing a dramatic shift in the financial landscape, as citizens recognize the benefits of cashless transactions and banks pioneer a range of innovative digital products and services," said Eric Claudel, Senior Vice President Banking & Payment CISMEA at Gemalto. "Employing highly innovative technology, our new center offers a 360º solution that will keep banks at the forefront of this rapidly changing market, facilitating broader commercial strategies and providing greater freedom to focus on core activities."
