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  • 04:00 am

Mizuho Financial Group, Inc., Mizuho Bank, Ltd., Metaps Inc., and WiL LLC signed an agreement for capital participation and business cooperation for the purpose of providing a new settlement service using FinTech. 

Based on a memorandum of understanding signed by the four companies on October 13, 2016, the four parties will establish a new company with the primary purpose of providing a new digital wallet app for electronic payments and leveraging big data.

This jointly-established new company will be able to take advantage of Mizuho's customer base and expertise in financial services together with Metaps' data analytics and electronics payments knowledge and smartphone app expertise, along with support from WiL, a venture capital firm with an extensive network of cutting edge service providers, to create and provide the new payment services detailed below.

Overview of New Company The following basic points were agreed upon regarding the company's establishment. The company's capital structure will be negotiated between the four founding companies with consideration of the new company's medium- to long-term outlook. 

1. Name: M Wallet Preparation Company Inc. 
2. Head office location: 6-8-1 Nishi Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 
3. Purpose of business: 1) Facilitation of electronic payment via digital wallet app 2) Payment data-leveraged marketing 3) Other related business 
4. Date of establishment: May 1, 2017 (scheduled) 
5. Representative Director: Mitsuhiko Ogihara (currently President & CEO of SPIKE Payment Inc.) 
6. Launch of operations: Summer 2017 (scheduled)  

Outline of Digital Wallet App for Electronic Payment* 
1. Issuance of e-money credited directly from bank account 
2. Provision of digital wallet app that utilizes e-money 
3. Targeted marketing that connects users with member stores through analysis of payment data 
 

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  • 01:00 am

Today Visa Inc. challenges start-ups and innovative fintech companies from 19 European markets to enter the first-ever European Everywhere Initiative. Competitors will have a chance to win up to €50,000 to support a development programme with Visa, or through business partnership with Visa’s financial institution clients. Successful entrants will have the opportunity to access Visa APIs through the Visa Developer Platform, executive mentors and technologists to help them further develop their ideas. 

First launched in the USA in 2015, Visa’s Everywhere Initiative is designed to encourage payment innovation as the payments industry shifts from plastic to digital, and nearly 1,000 start-ups that have participated have collectively raised $1.7 billion in funding. In addition to Europe, Visa will also continue to host Everywhere Initiatives in North America, Latin America and Asia this year. 

Bill Gajda, senior vice president, innovation and strategic partnerships, said: “The consumer experience is at the heart of the payments industry, a sector that is accelerating and developing at a greater pace than ever before, spurred on by new technologies. Through competitions like Visa’s Everywhere Initiative, we are spurring technological innovation to drive acceptance and promote even greater convenience for consumers. By focusing on local community and travel experience we hope to facilitate improvements to the everyday lives of people, wherever they are. Having already witnessed success across the Atlantic, we look forward to welcoming submissions from innovative European start-ups looking for funding and fruitful collaborations to help them realise great ideas.”

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  • 02:00 am

Today Fiserv, Inc., a global leader in providing financial services technology solutions, announced that SouthEast Bank, a $1.2 billion Tennessee-based bank, has selected Fiserv to support the bank’s continued growth, enhance the customer experience and provide its staff with modern technology to further productivity and efficiency. 

To meet these objectives, the bank will implement the DNA® core account processing platform from Fiserv along with a range of payment, branch banking, customer relationship management, business intelligence, and other solutions.

Having roughly quadrupled in asset size since 2013, SouthEast Bank was looking for modern technology to streamline account opening and automate compliance and other operations to support its continued growth. It also needed a platform that would enable the bank to deliver a seamless omnichannel banking experience to meet the needs of today’s online, on-the-go consumer.

“SouthEast Bank’s technical infrastructure is uniquely complex for its position as a community bank, and we needed a core platform that would keep pace and complement our advanced hardware network,” said John Arnold, Executive Chairman, SouthEast Bank. ”Of all the major vendors we considered, Fiserv offered the most up-to-date programming and technology, and was clearly the best choice for our future. We especially liked the way DNA displays the full customer relationship when an account is accessed, as this information enables our staff to assist the customer in making financial decisions.”

The bank selected DNA for its intuitive and highly customizable real-time software environment that can adapt to and automate many of the bank’s processes, enabling front-line staff to serve the bank’s customers more efficiently. As an example, the bank estimates that it will be able to reduce the time needed to open a new account from an average of 25 minutes to about 5 minutes with DNA thanks to its streamlined workflow.

Reporting was another factor in the bank’s decision to move to Fiserv. With DNA, the bank is able to build and generate reports directly from a single, relational core system database, saving time and effort.

“DNA is so intuitive and easy to use that staff with any computer expertise at all can figure out how to accomplish what they need to do very quickly,” said Mike Stone, Senior VP and Director of Operations, SouthEast Bank. “Because we can customize the system to match our specific processes and needs, things we used to do manually are now automatic and this helps us to provide a faster and better customer experience.”

In addition to DNA, SouthEast Bank is leveraging a range of Fiserv solutions including CardValet® alerts and notifications for debit card management; tMagic™ for automated teller capture; Intelligent WorkplaceSM for financial performance and financial risk management; Nautilus® for enterprise content management; Customer Relationship Management and Business Intelligence solutions; Financial Crime and Risk Management solutions; payments processing; and several DNAapps™ custom core extensions to add new reports and integrations to DNA. The bank is also using SentrySM Network Services for network design and management, and Sentry Unified Communications for its IVR system.

“SouthEast Bank is a progressive financial institution that recognizes the advantages of a modern, open technology platform,” said Byron Vielehr, group president, Depository Institution Services, Fiserv. “Benefits such as scalability, real-time performance, ease of use, and simplified integration with additional solutions from Fiserv and third parties, will help SouthEast Bank support its growth and meet the changing needs of its customers.” 

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  • 01:00 am

Nice Actimize, a Nice business and the industry's largest provider of a single financial crime, risk, and compliance software platform for the financial services industry has introduced ActimizeWatch, a cloud-based, fraud analytics optimization solution that uses consortium data to detect fraud-related attacks before they spread from one financial services organization to another.

Working in a cloud environment, NICE Actimize’s new ActimizeWatch solution continually monitors anonymized transactional data which has been pulled in from a wide range of financial services organizations, using machine learning to identify emerging threats. ActimizeWatch users receive enhanced, individualized analytics that speed the identification of fraud, while reducing operational costs for fraud departments.

ActimizeWatch then puts this intelligence to work, dynamically optimizing analytics for rapid delivery. Additionally, ActimizeWatch provides ongoing fraud intelligence and email advisories to keep financial services organizations abreast of emerging threat patterns, including information about targeted attacks against new faster payment types and digital channels.

“In this environment, fraudsters are innovating almost as quickly as the banks, and not just moving from channel to channel, but also moving from bank to bank,” said Joe Friscia, president, NICE Actimize. “When fraud hits this fast, it is imperative that analytics adapt and change more quickly. We predict that firms will update their approach to data sharing and collaboration by moving optimization to the cloud and working more closely together as an industry to stop fraud dead in its tracks.”  

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  • 06:00 am

Factom, Inc., a blockchain as-a-service (BaaS) technology provider has closed their Series A funding at $8,029,796 USD following the launch of its mortgage product, Factom Harmony.

“The Factom Harmony launch was such a resounding success that we extended the Series A round for additional investors,” said Peter Kirby, Co-founder & CEO of Factom. “We’re very appreciative of our early investors who doubled-down on their participation and the new investors who are helping us strategically extend our reach. Many highly intelligent people worked very hard to help us get to this point and we couldn’t have done it without them.”

Earlier during the Series A round, Factom closed $5,326,522 USD in funding from Draper Associates, Stewart Title, Overstock, Fenbushi Capital, and Plug & Play. Now, Peeli Ventures, Harvest Equity, and a number of local Austin investors added another $2,703,274 USD, closing out the funding round.

“Factom’s Harmony product creates a transformative approach for the compliance in the U.S. mortgage industry,” said Harry Qin, Managing Partner of Peeli Ventures. “It has great potential to impact the mortgage industry with increased transparency and immutable audit records.” 

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  • 03:00 am

Today Pegasystems Inc., the software company empowering customer engagement at the world’s leading enterprises, launched Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant, an artificial intelligence (AI) powered bot that easily turns applications into smart assistants on any channel – from SMS and email to Facebook, Alexa, Slack, and more. Pega evolves bots from simple chat and data fetching novelties into sophisticated digital agents that anticipate people’s needs, make helpful suggestions, complete complex tasks, and provide exceptional experiences. 

Despite the hype, today’s chatbots and virtual assistants don’t provide the human-like experiences they’ve been promised to deliver. Customers and employees are left with one-dimensional interactions in stilted language that perform only the simplest of tasks and add little value. According to Pega’s newglobal survey on AI, only 20 percent of consumers prefer chat-based customer service, and 80 percent still want a live human typing on the other end. Meanwhile, developers struggle to build and manage even more bots for the latest channels and establish a connected experience between them all. 

Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant – part of the Pega Platform – overcomes these shortfalls by elegantly extending any Pega enterprise application to any conversational interface. It turns these channels into intelligent assistants that make personalized customer service and real work possible using natural language in voice or text. This makes bots more intelligent, useful, and gratifying for customers and employees to use in a variety of scenarios, such as:

·         A banking bot alerts a customer checking her balance on Alexa to a suspicious charge, opens a charge dispute, and orders her a new card – all in the same session using natural language.

·         A mobile service provider bot helps a subscriber on Facebook Messenger understand why he went over his data limit, suggests a plan better suited for his lifestyle, and immediately activates it so he can continue to stream the big game.

·         A company’s internal IT helpdesk bot helps an employee diagnose a laptop problem with a series of questions, opens a ticket with the IT staff, and seamlessly connects her to a helpdesk staff member if the issue becomes overly complex.

With decades of customer engagement and operational efficiency technology experience, Pega provides the most complete bot solution in the market by uniquely combining:

  • AI with predictive analytics and decisioning that senses user need and offers the right solution at the right moment for a hyper-personalized experience.
  • Natural language processing (NLP) and text analytics that make it intuitive for people to engage in the same way that they normally speak or type. 
  • A unified architecture that enables people to seamlessly move from one channel to the next – including from a bot to a human agent if needed - and pick up exactly where they left off.
  • A code-free development environment that makes it easy for any business user to configure, simulate, and manage the bot to achieve their business goals. 
  • Case Management and Business Process Management (BPM) that drive work behind the scenes to make conversational UX (user experiences) more useful, practical, and functional.

Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant comes preconfigured to extend to Facebook Messenger, Alexa, and Google Home. Business users can easily build their own extenders to other popular messaging apps such as WeChat and Skype, as well as business collaboration apps such as Slack and Yammer. Organizations can test their bots with an integrated simulator in the native interface, ensuring the virtual assistant responds as intended before it goes live.

Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant is available today as a key capability of the Pega Platform, Pega’s market-leading model-driven application development environment. It can extend most Pega applications – including CRM apps for marketing, sales, and customer service and any custom-built Pega apps – with conversational UX functionality. The Pega® Customer Decision Hub provides the virtual assistant with AI power to analyze information, anticipate needs, and make optimal decisions.

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  • 04:00 am

Today Pay by Bank app reported the appointment of Agnes Woolrich as Marketing Director, the latest in a series of senior level appointments as it prepares for the next stage in its development.  This follows the appointment of Rajiv Garodia, Managing Director, in May 2016.

Agnes brings proven expertise in driving sustained growth and expansion, globally, across the card payments landscape.  Agnes joins from American Express, where she spent 11 years in senior marketing roles, most recently as VP Marketing, Bank Partnerships, where she was responsible for establishing new businesses and driving growth in Africa and the Middle East.

Prior to this, she was responsible for growing the value of American Express’ relationships with its largest global merchants. Rajiv Garodia, Managing Director of Pay by Bank app, commented, “We have spent the past couple of years perfecting a mobile payment solution that will become the UK, and in time global, standard for mobile payments. The solution has significant advantages over other alternatives, as it integrates within mobile banking apps, operates on the Faster Payments system and is linked directly to banks’ current accounts.

“Agnes’ appointment supports our planned growth phase, where we will be rolling out the solution to the UK market and, using our experience and learning gained in the UK, globally.  Her experience in driving growth globally through building bank and merchant partnerships will be invaluable to support our ambitious plans.”

Agnes Woolrich, Marketing Director of Pay by Bank app, commented, “It’s clear that, out of the myriad of mobile payment solutions in the market, those that can integrate seamlessly with people’s bank accounts have the highest potential to achieve widespread adoption. I’m therefore excited to join Pay by Bank app at this exciting stage in its development. I look forward to working closely with Rajiv and the rest of the senior team in their mission to make Pay by Bank app the global mobile payment standard.”

Pay By Bank app has announced the confirmation of significant new bank and merchant commitments in recent weeks, with HSBC and first direct  joining Barclays, Bank of Scotland, Halifax and Lloyds Bank in signing up to the service.  The availability of Pay by Bank app on the mobile banking app of each individual bank depends on that bank’s development priorities/ schedule.

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  • 04:00 am

SIA’s Ordinary Shareholders’ Meeting, held today under the chairmanship of Giuliano Asperti with the participation of 95.84% of the Company’s capital, approved the balance sheet for the financial year 2016, the distribution of the dividend and appointed the new Board of Directors for the three-year period 2017-2019.

The Shareholders’ Meeting decided to distribute an ordinary dividend for the financial year 2016 of 44.55 million, corresponding to 0.26 for each of the 171,343,227 shares. Said dividends will be paid starting from Monday 24 April 2017.

NEW BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND APPOINTMENTS

The Ordinary Shareholders’ Meeting of SIA also appointed the new Board of Directors - whose period in office will expire on the occasion of the approval of the 2019 balance sheet -, Giuliano Asperti as Chairman of the Company and the directors Fabio Albano (F2i SGR), Massimo Arrighetti, Alessandro Garofalo (Banca Mediolanum), Federico Giordano (Unicredit), Marco Lucchini (Cdp Equity), Barbara Poggiali (Poste Italiane), Salvatore Poloni (Banco BPM), Guido Rivolta (Cdp Equity), Marco Siracusano (Poste Italiane) and Valerio Zappalà (Orizzonte Infrastrutture Tecnologiche).

The new Board of Directors of SIA is made up of eleven members elected on the basis of lists presented by the shareholders who, individually or together with other shareholders, represent at least 4% of the company capital.

The new SIA Board of Directors, meeting immediately after the close of the Ordinary Shareholders’ Meeting, passed the appointment of Massimo Arrighetti as Chief Executive Officer, and also granted him the necessary operating powers for the management of the Company and the Group. 

 

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  • 07:00 am

Trax, a leader in providing of regulatory reporting, trade matching and capital market data services, has bolstered its strategic alliance with the CME by integrating the workflow of the CME Global Repository Services (GRS) into the Trax Insight™ platform to facilitate regulatory reporting of derivatives.

The alliance leverages mutual synergies, connecting the regulatory reporting and technical expertise of Trax with the global reach of CME's Trade Repositories. Firms can now seamlessly connect to the Trax Insight reporting system, directing G20 reports to the CME GRS for all in-scope derivatives asset classes, including credit, interest rate, equity, commodity and foreign exchange derivatives. Trax Insight features a customisable, web-based operational tool to actively manage and monitor the status of reporting activity through a single interface. Clients can quickly identify exceptions and data quality issues as well as view industry leading analytics and peer benchmarking reports across multiple reporting jurisdictions.

By connecting to Trax, firms can easily satisfy their EMIR derivatives reporting requirements, as well as satisfy their broader cross-asset class MiFID I transaction reporting and MiFID II/MiFIR trade and transaction reporting requirements.  This alliance aims to provide full G20 coverage, including Dodd-Frank and other derivatives regulations around the globe. As a single connection for derivatives reporting and risk controls, the alliance between Trax and the CME Trade Repositories improves operational efficiency through integrated technology and a single interface.

Trax Insight offers a complete derivatives reporting solution through its state of the art user interface, including eligibility determination through the Droit regulatory rules-based decision engine in addition to reporting connectivity to the CME European Trade Repository, which was originally announced in 2014.

Chris Smith, Head of Trax and Operations Services, MarketAxess and Trax, comments, "Trax and CME Group have a long history of building technology to help improve the functioning of post-trade operations. With CME Group's strong market position in the global derivatives market combined with Trax's reporting experience and technical proficiency, this relationship helps firms confidently meet their cross-regulation reporting obligations."

"CME Group is committed to providing feature rich and value-added multi-jurisdictional reporting solutions," said Jonathan Thursby, Executive Director, Global Head of CME Global Repository Services. "This collaboration with Trax is another way for clients to leverage CME's global portfolio of trade repositories through their market leading and proven processes designed to optimize compliance and efficiency."

 

 

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