BNP Paribas Fund Link aims to make the fund distribution process easier and more efficient, by facilitating the flow of information between fund buyers and sellers thanks to blockchain and smart contract technology. One of the main objectives of the platform is to speed up the onboarding process for both fund buyers and asset managers. Fund buyers using BNP Paribas Fund Link will only have to upload their profile and investor onboarding documents once. This information will then be shared easily with the various management companies on the platform. 

BNP Paribas Fund Link also aims to improve the process of buying and selling funds thanks to an efficient end-to-end trade execution solution relying on embedded business rules and shared information. This will allow for efficient control and transparency of the distribution chain while removing unnecessary delays and reconciliation costs. 

Finally, BNP Paribas Fund Link’s powerful analytics tools will help investors explore fund data to compare and select funds, and fund managers to fine-tune their distribution. 

Joseph Pinto, COO at AXA Investment Managers, said: “We are excited to work with BNP Paribas Securities Services on the development of this new platform. Operational efficiency is a key area for us in an increasingly competitive market environment where pressure on fees keeps rising. We believe that the new technologies used by this platform can significantly enhance our fund distribution process and ensure we are well placed to meet the continued regulatory demand for increased transparency.” 

SWIFT announces the launch of a significant information architecture and visual redesign for its online reference data tool, Bankers World Online. As SWIFTRef’s flagship service, the latest version of Bankers World Online has been designed to heighten customers’ overall navigation and user experience. 

SWIFTRef, the global reference data utility is a highly-secure platform offering the financial industry a single and unique source for the reference data and financial information needed for seamless payments processing, accurate regulatory reporting, counterparty risk analysis and due diligence. The Bankers World Online service includes essential reference data, including all SWIFT BIC codes, national bank sort codes, IBAN (International Bank Account Number) identifiers, global Legal Entity Identifiers (LEI), and more that are used to facilitate international payments and fulfil new reporting requirements. It also includes important financial information from market data vendors and credit rating agencies, including credit ratings, shareholder information, balance sheet information, cash flows, and many more data sets about customers, suppliers and service providers.  

The new-look Bankers World Online has undergone an entire revamp of its user interface, with the addition of improved search fields and seamless navigation for the customer. It has been designed so that professionals can more quickly and easily source the reference data needed to populate domestic, SEPA and international payments correctly, validate identifiers used in regulatory reports and find information to evaluate current and potential counterparty risk. This major overhaul was the result of carefully thought-out cross divisional and customer research, and collaboration between IT, UX and Marketing experts. The redesigning process engaged clients, non-clients and expert teams from SWIFT to feed their input into the design process. 

Hervé Valentin, Head of SWIFTRef, says, “Bankers World Online has a key role to play in achieving our 2020 SWIFTRef growth ambition. Beyond providing key data, we want to offer a great customer experience which will support our clients’ businesses. The new release of Bankers World Online is an important step in achieving this objective. Through a careful design process involving many clients and insight from various SWIFT teams, we can better understand the industry challenges and respond by regularly building improvements into our tools.”

Today FIME reported its central role in the development and rollout of Turkey’s first domestic scheme, TROY (Turkey’s Payment Method). TROY is a strategic initiative supported by all Turkish banks and managed by BKM (Interbank Card Center of Turkey). FIME was selected by BKM in 2015 to provide consultancy and training at the launch of the project. FIME was then engaged to define the scheme’s technical specifications, develop the certification body and process, and define test tools prior to the commercial launch of the new scheme for contact payments in April 2016. This was followed by the successful launch of contactless payments in April 2017. 

FIME’s test tools are qualified, and laboratories accredited, to support Turkish issuing and acquiring members in integrating with the scheme and launching TROY products and services. FIME is also working closely with payment terminal manufacturers and kernel developers to develop and certify TROY-compliant products.

“We decided two years ago that the time was right and FIME treated us like a scheme from the start,” comments Cenk Temiz, Executive Vice President for Card Payment Systems, at BKM. “Its consultancy, training and local support guided us through the whole process and we successfully launched the second phase of the scheme in April. We look forward to building on our close relationship as we work to drive adoption of contactless and, in time, mobile payments in Turkey.” 

“The Turkish market is evolving quickly and the development of a local scheme adds real value to an increasingly sophisticated payments infrastructure,” comments Arnaud Peninon, Vice President, Consulting & Engineering at FIME. “Having been central to the entire project, we are now ideally placed to help issuing and acquiring members to support the scheme. With contact and contactless card payment options already enabled, we are now working with BKM to enable secure mobile contactless payments for Turkish banks and consumers.”

Today Squawker, the platform for sophisticated trading communities to execute hedging and capital optimisation transactions on-exchange, announced the successful completion of the launch phase of its Equity Finance platform, with 6 out of the top 10 global investment banks live, and announced Ian Axe and Derek Bandeen as two new members to its Advisory Board.
 
Chris Gregory, CEO and co-founder, Squawker, comments: “The European Equity Finance market is currently estimated to trade over €2.5 trillion per annum. With six of the top ten banks live and trading through Squawker, we are already seeing some significant trading traffic over the platform. With a further three of the top ten banks close to completing their deployment projects, Squawker has worked hard to provide the essential support that the Equity Finance community has asked us for.”
 
The announcement marks a significant shift for Squawker, the facilitator of hedging and capital optimisation transactions. Designed and developed in partnership with the world’s leading investment banks, Squawker’s new platform provides a central hub for the European Equity Finance community to bring the execution of equity hedge trades on-exchange. The solution provides Equity Finance traders with settlement against the three largest equity CCPs and facilitating compliance with their trade reporting, MiFID II and MiFIR regulatory requirements. In addition, Squawker’s solution overcomes several key operational issues that currently restrict and limit trading in certain markets, such as automatic registration of share ownership in Spain.
 
Ian Axe, the recently-designated CEO of Panmure Gordon, former chief executive of LCH.Clearnet, and previously global head of operations and COO for EMEA at Barclays Capital, and Derek Bandeen, former Global Head of Equities at Citigroup join Squawker’s advisory board.

Ian Axe comments: “The top-tier investment banks are under increasing regulatory pressure for on-exchange transparency and central clearing counterparty (CCP) cleared models across their operations. They are all seeking to implement Straight-Through Processing for Equity Finance to replace the traditional OTC process.”

Derek Bandeen adds: “Squawker’s platform enables the large Equity Finance players to bring their execution of equity hedge trades on-exchange and provides a structure for them to manage their counterparty risk with Central Counterparty clearing.”

Today Chargebacks911, a globally-renowned leader for risk mitigation, announced the appointment of Kristjan Gjura as VP of Business Development, an integral component of Chargebacks911’s continued global expansion. 

Gjura will join Chargebacks911’s innovative team leaders as they build upon the company’s North American efforts and expand opportunities in Europe. His efforts will focus primarily on assisting merchants in verticals with emerging risk, as well as expanding deeper, exclusive relationships with leading aggregators, third-party vendors, acquirers and financial institutions. 

Gary Cardone, CEO of Chargebacks911, said: “I have admired Kristjan for years and couldn’t be more thrilled that he is joining us at such a pivotal time in the industry. He has broad and diverse connections and an impressive understanding of payments and fraud. But what really attracted us to Kristjan is his ethics and philosophy of doing business. Monica Eaton-Cardone and I built this business under one shared belief system—to be best-in-class, to exchange in abundance, and to ensure every commercial deal that is done is a measurable win-win for all parties involved.  Kristjan has built a track record in perfect alignment with these same principles.”

The world we are living in is driving unparalleled transparency—and subsequent efficiencies. Without clear and measurable value propositions, many business models will fail in the next two to five years. While many businesses in payments have been designed around exploiting inefficiencies, our objective is to make payments more efficient; to help eradicate friction, leakage, and losses; and to design products, technology and services built to solve problems—not exploit them. Kristjan, in tandem with the other key team members, will help play a critical role in this process.”

Kristjan Gjura joins Chargebacks911 from Ethoca, bringing over a decade of financial sector experience from his time with B+S Card Service and Deutsche Card Services. He added: “It’s a thrill to join Chargebacks911. I’m looking forward to helping support the company’s global expansion and further its leadership role across the payments industry. Chargebacks911’s unrivalled and comprehensive chargeback technology—directed at the actual problem, not the symptoms—was simply too attractive and compelling to pass up.  It is very rare to see a company able to successfully scale and scope in the global payments industry without outside funding or investors.  Their unique approach—including their understanding of the problems, technology, and intellectual capital—is unequalled. I’m honoured to be a part of it.”

Gjura will be instrumental in bringing Chargebacks911’s services to the European market and advancing the company's award-winning, global chargeback management platform.

Masterpass-enabled bots work across multiple verticals – from restaurants to retail – making conversational commerce frictionless while delivering a more personalized experience. The bots allow consumers to engage with brands in new places where they are already spending their time, as messaging apps and platforms like Messenger currently represent many of the top 10 global apps used by billions of people worldwide. The bots will also support all Masterpass-enabled wallets from banks including Citiand Capital One.

“The Mastercard vision is to support all forms of commerce – addressing the full range of merchant experiences and consumer needs, and ensuring that every one of our accounts is as digital as the people using them. Masterpass-enabled bots on Messenger offer both merchants and consumers innovative, compelling and secure digital payments on an extremely popular and active platform,” said Garry Lyons, Chief Innovation Officer, Mastercard.

• FreshDirect – FreshDirect is an online fresh food grocer delivering to residences and offices throughout seven states, including the New York City and Philadelphia metropolitan areas, and the District of Columbia. Working with Mastercard, FreshDirect now makes it easy for customers in those markets to browse, shop and purchase their groceries directly within Messenger. [video]
• Subway – Subway restaurants, the world’s largest restaurant brand, is launching a bot for Messenger that enables guests to order a sandwich or salad with their choice of fresh vegetables, cheese, sauce and toppings as well as chips, cookies and drinks. The bot deployed today to more than 26,500 Subway restaurants in the U.S. Guests can checkout securely using Masterpass. [video]
• The Cheesecake Factory – Consumers looking to purchase personalized gift cards can now do so simply with just a few clicks and keystrokes within Messenger. [video] To enable this, The Cheesecake Factory uses CashStar’s real-time gifting capability, which instantly approves and activates gift cards. The Cheesecake Factory is the first brand in CashStar’s portfolio of leading merchants, retailers and restaurants to implement the bot capability for Messenger.

Masterpass-enabled Bots on Messenger Drive Conversational Commerce

• “We are thrilled to partner with Mastercard to deliver a conversational shopping experience, offering our customers a new option to seamlessly shop for groceries,” said FreshDirect CEO and co-founder Jason Ackerman. “As a food tech company, it’s our mission to keep fresh at everyone’s fingertips. By harnessing the power of Messenger, we’re able to engage with our customers on a platform that fits their lifestyle and allow them to easily shop FreshDirect as well as collaborate on carts with family and friends.”
• “Our bot for Messenger, deployed in more than 26,500 U.S. Subway restaurants, is the largest deployment of a Messenger bot in the restaurant industry. We’re proud to offer our guests an innovative new way to order and pay outside the restaurants,” said Carman Wenkoff, Subway’s Chief Information and Digital Officer. “This is a new initiative in the quest to enhance the guest experience.”
• “The Cheesecake Factory is known for delicious, memorable food and wonderful hospitality, and we are always looking for ways to further enhance our guest experience,” said David Gordon, President of The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated. “Through this commerce-enabled bot we are able to leverage a new engagement channel with our guests. The bot experience delivers the convenience of customizing a gift card through Messenger integrated with Masterpass payment functionality to enable a simplified checkout experience.”

Earlier this year, Mastercard opened up its experimental Masterpass Chatbot API on the Mastercard Developers platform to help merchants begin to test the technology and enable commerce within their own branded solutions across multiple channels and digital platforms. Mastercard and Turkish mobile retailer Getir developed a Masterpass-enabled bot that allows consumers to shop and pay for more than 600 everyday items within Messenger, receiving guaranteed 10-minute delivery of their purchased goods.

Synpromics Ltd, the leading synthetic promoter and gene control company, is delighted to announce that it has completed a financing round of £5.2M. Participants included existing investors Calculus Capital, the Scottish Investment Bank, the investment arm of Scottish Enterprise and private shareholders.

Synpromics has grown rapidly over the past two years as it expanded its portfolio of international customers. These include leading gene therapy companies and multinational technology corporations, most recently GE Healthcare.

The majority of the new investment will be used to further develop and exemplify Synpromics proprietary PromPT™ synthetic promoter design platform. PromPT™ enables the design of unique synthetic promoters which give precise control of gene function in many areas of gene medicine including gene therapy, cell therapy and gene editing. The Company is also preparing to move into a larger, new purpose built, facility.

David Venables, CEO of Synpromics, commented “Since our last fundraising round 18 months ago the business has grown rapidly as we’ve signed more commercial partnerships with companies in the US and Europe. We see an exciting opportunity to fund further rapid expansion of our business, supported by our innovative science and novel capabilities.”

Alexandra Lindsay, Investment Director at Calculus Capital, added “We have been delighted with the progress which Synpromics has made since we made our first investment some 18 months ago. They have a very strong team and the technology has been clearly validated through partnerships with some of the world’s leading gene medicine companies.”

Kerry Sharp, Head of the Scottish Investment Bank, said “Having supported Synpromics from an early stage it is great to see the progress that has been achieved to develop and grow the business in the highly dynamic synthetic biology industry. We look forward to continuing to work with the company, both from an investment perspective and through our account management support, to deliver its long term growth ambition.”

Today the Western Union Company, a global payments leader, announced an innovative and compelling way for Facebook Messenger users in the U.S. to send money to more than 200 countries and territories across 130 currencies. The announcement was made at the F8 Facebook Developer Conference in San Jose, California.

The funds can be received into billions of bank accounts around the world or in cash at half a million global retail Agent locations from the world’s largest metro areas to remote villages. More than 1.2 billion people around the world use Messenger every month.

Messenger users in the U.S. will have access to Western Union’s industry-leading digital and retail cross-border money transfer platform, as well as many innovative features including access to real-time foreign exchange rates and automated customer support. The Western Union bot for Messenger enables a digital-and-physical gateway for money movement, bringing access, convenience and leading-edge technology to U.S. consumers.

“Western Union’s global money movement platform—trusted by millions of customers worldwide—can now be accessed through the world’s largest social network platform by users in the U.S., enabling convenience, access and simplicity to further connect individuals and communities all over the world,” said Odilon Almeida, President, Global Money Transfer at Western Union.

“The Messenger platform allows Western Union to interact with our U.S. customers where they are, when they need us, in the most natural, conversational way,” he added.

“Our Messenger community in the U.S. can now connect with the rest of the world via Western Union’s services—either digitally or to a physical location—when sending money,” said David Marcus, Vice President of Messenger. “We are thrilled that the Western Union money transfer bot for Messenger is launching today.”

Today banking challenger Revolut has teamed up with the UK’s first online mortgage broker Trussle to give users direct access to its mortgage broking service, which searches thousands of products from over 90 lenders to find the most suitable deal for a borrower.