Published
- 07:00 am
Today Fiserv, Inc., a global leader in providing financial services technology solutions, revealed that Fulton Financial Corporation, a bank holding company headquartered in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, has signed a long-term agreement to renew its relationship with Fiserv.
“Technology will play a key role in the future of our business, and we look to Fiserv to provide technical solutions that will help us meet our strategic goals and objectives,” said Angela Sargent, senior executive vice president, CIO, Fulton Financial Corporation. “We recognize Fiserv as a critical partner in enabling us to achieve our business needs. One of the top strategic goals of Fulton Financial Corporation is to create new efficiencies that streamline processes and translate into a better experience for its employees and customers.
“Fiserv works closely with Fulton Financial Corporation to understand and support the organization’s vision, and to help deliver the experience its customers expect,” said Byron Vielehr, group president, Depository Institution Services, Fiserv. “Our focus goes beyond delivering innovative technology to providing a high level of partnership and expert services to make people’s financial lives easier, faster and more secure.”
Fulton Financial has licensed a number of Fiserv solutions, including the Signature core account processing platform, Weiland Account Analysis™ for commercial account analysis and billing, CheckFree RXP for electronic bill pay, Popmoney for person-to-person payments, EnAct™ for relationship sales management, Aperio™ for account opening and customer/account servicing, card services and more.
- 04:00 am
Today, Mastercard welcomed five new startups to its Start Path Global program – the company’s global initiative to support innovative later-stage startups who are reshaping the future of commerce. The program is open to startups who are rethinking banking and payments and have raised a significant seed or Series A round of investment.
“Fintech startups around the world are designing a digital future,” said Amy Neale, Vice President, Mastercard Start Path. “They’re bringing a different approach to enhance customer choice and experience across the industry. Our work with these startups helps connect new technology with reliable, secure financial networks and processes to create an even more rewarding and seamless commerce experience.”
Three out of the five startups joining Start Path’s 2017 spring wave are focused on artificial intelligence (AI). These startups are using AI to analyze consumer behavior, enhance in-store or in-branch customer engagement, and compute bill and payment data, driving a variety of retail innovations. The other two startups have developed solutions that extend retail access to consumers through point of sale innovations.
The spring 2017 Start Path class includes:
- Divido provides merchants and lenders with an omni-channel platform that allows their consumers to spread the cost of major purchases through installments.
- Endor is the first intelligence software platform that lets business users ask any predictive question and get high-quality results with unmatched accuracy and speed in any domain.
- Fluid AI combines artificial intelligence and augmented reality to help banks and retailers create next generation user experiences in-branch and in-store.
- NetPlusDotCom enables retailers to transition from ‘bricks’ to ‘clicks’ and support their customers with digital payments capabilities.
- Regalii works with more than 30 leading banks and fintech apps to give consumers an innovative way to manage their finances and pay their bills in the U.S. and Latin America.
Putting Ideas into Action
Since 2014, the Start Path team has received interest from 5,000 startups, leading to working with 100 companies spanning 24 countries. Through the first four classes, 20 percent of the participants have worked with Mastercard in commercial engagements or pilots.
Mastercard is collaborating with DigiSEq, an IoT payment device enabler, to connect DigiSEq device manufacturer customers with Mastercard tokenization services and enable payments on wearables. Kasisto, the company that created the conversational KAI Banking AI platform, is currently piloting a bot for banks for Mastercard employees that allows consumers to transact, manage finances, receive contextual offers and learn about benefits via messaging platforms. RecargaPay, a mobile payment solution that enables Latin American consumers to top-up their prepaid mobile phones and pay for utility bills, partnered with Mastercard to launch a card-on-file marketing promotion to attract new users.
- 04:00 am
Today BroadSoft, Inc., a world market leader in cloud business software for unified communication, collaboration and contact center reported that more than 100 channel partners, serving millions of business customers across the world, are in trials with BroadSoft Team-One.
The inability of today's siloed and often expensive business applications to integrate with one another is causing collaboration tool overload, and is a key reason why the typical worker spends nearly 20% of their week just searching for and gathering information. In November 2016, BroadSoft endeavored to solve this market challenge. This resulted in the launch of Team-One, a powerful team collaboration and personal productivity solution that places all the tasks, files, messages and notes a business user needs in one place, along with video conferencing, click-to-call, screen sharing and integrations with popular business apps.
In just a few months since its launch, the BroadSoft Team-One app has separated itself from stand-alone enterprise messaging and group chat applications with an integrated and affordable solution service providers can quickly take to market, along with an extensive set of capabilities, including:
- Built-in Contextual Intelligence (CI) & bots - Team-One's CI enhances one-to-one communications by searching a user's cloud applications for the documents, messages, and content relevant to the conversation or meeting they're having.
- Telephony and UC integration - Team-One integrates persistent team workspaces with click-to-call, HD instant video conferencing and screen sharing available through the BroadSoft Business UC-One application across any device.
- Task and Project Management - Team-One enables users to have the ability to create, assign and track tasks for each project to simplify the workflow process.
- Personal Productivity - Team-One's workspace model gives users personal productivity tools that few other messaging-based app features, including: daily digests, task summaries, email and calendar integration, and the ability to tag anything and search everything.
"We were extremely excited to collaborate with BroadSoft in adding Team-One to our portfolio. Our reseller partners have deployed The Voice Factory solutions in more than 21 countries and with the addition of a European-based data center, Team-One is now perfectly positioned as a great addition to our BroadSoft Business product portfolio," said Paul Harrison, Managing Director of The Voice Factory, a service provider headquartered in the United Kingdom.
"As BroadSoft has introduced Team-One to channel partners and businesses, it has become clear that the modern workforce wants a single unified communications workspace that integrates everything workers need at their fingertips," said Taher Behbehani, chief digital and marketing officer, BroadSoft. "Our value proposition is resonating because we are enhancing productivity by bringing people, conversations and content together in one place to achieve more."
Team-One is part of BroadSoft Business, a fully integrated portfolio of enterprise-ready cloud, unified communications, team collaboration and contact center applications, delivered in the cloud. BroadSoft Business can scale to all market segments, and includes three core applications: UC-One, Team-One, CC-One, with BroadSoft Hub providing contextual intelligence across the entire platform so users can access the information and apps they need in one place.
- 04:00 am
Previousely, Lloyds Banking Group introduced a new mentoring scheme that sees FinTech start-ups benefit from the broad expertise of its colleagues from across the Group.
Amongst other relationships, Innovate Finance helped to identity suitable start-ups to benefit from the scheme, which sees senior Lloyds Banking Group colleagues act as mentors to help FinTech start- ups develop their business and proposition by sharing expertise. The scheme isn’t built on one-way exchange but through the value of reverse mentoring which is mutually beneficial.
The FinTech start-ups benefit from knowledge sharing of experienced Lloyds Banking Group colleagues to aid their development in the financial and technology sector. The support offered includes refining concepts, to strengthening business models within a flexible timeframe determined between the mentor and the start-up.
Diana Paredes is CEO and Co-founder of Suade, a start-up revolutionising the way financial institutions interpret and respond to financial regulations through building an open platform for financial regulation. Working with Ian Lloyd, Director, Digital Transformation & Group Design Authority, one of the Lloyds mentors, Diana said about the scheme:
“Ian is a legend, he has so much experience and knowledge as to how things work on the ‘inside’ but also about how to power through innovation in a tangible way. As an entrepreneur that kind of mentoring is very grounding and learning from him is a great opportunity!”
In return, Lloyds Banking Group gain first hand understanding of how the financial services landscape is changing, learn new ways of working and agile methodologies practiced by start-ups; along with building new connections in the wider FinTech ecosystem.
Ian added, “I wanted to be involved in the Lloyds Bank FinTech mentoring programme to get an insight into the talent, ideas and trends emerging in the Finance sector. I’m able to support Diana with the knowledge and experience I’ve gained in the sector and the collective experience of my network to help bridge challenges Suade may encounter.
I’m finding this unique mentoring relationship rewarding because it operates both ways. Sharing my experience and guidance with Diana not only reminds me of valuable lessons and insights I’ve gained over the years, but there is a lot for me to learn from her too especially through the perspective she has on the industry from a start-up / challenger viewpoint.
- 09:00 am
Now paymentwall is connected to all banks in Sweden, including Nordea Bank, SEB, Handelsbanken, and Swedbank, allowing every person with a bank account in Sweden to pay using online bank transfer.
Swedish Bank Transfer Checkout Flow is as follows:
1. Select your bank.
2. Login to online banking.
3. Choose preferred account and confirm the transaction.
4. Products are delivered instantly.
Over 85% of Swedes have access to online banking and research done by Paymentwall shows that 35% of people in Sweden prefer to pay online using direct transfers. Complete coverage of all major banks in Sweden, along with instant payment confirmation and chargeback-free processing, allows merchants from all over the world to increase conversions and decrease chargeback rates from regular card payments by activating online banking for their customers.
- 05:00 am
Today, Visa Inc. has become the first card network that allow participating issuers to provide their U.S. commercial accountholders a comprehensive view of their Amazon Business purchases. The new enhanced transaction data functionality, initially available to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi and PNC Bank, N.A., U.S. commercial accountholders through Amazon Business, provides full line-item details on Amazon Business customers’ purchases made with their Visa commercial card and can seamlessly integrate with popular reconciliation tools.
“Tracking and reconciling online purchases made with commercial cards can be a time-consuming task, and at Visa, we are continuously looking for innovative ways to simplify the process,” said Vicky Bindra, global head of products & solutions at Visa Inc. “Visa’s collaboration with Amazon Business and our bank partners will ultimately help our commercial accountholders in the U.S. spend less time on reconciliation of their purchases and allow more card management options – all with the existing value and cost-savings that come with an Amazon Business account.”
“As organizations’ buying patterns move toward online marketplaces, access to this critical data will help with reconciliation and audit,” said Jennifer Petty, head of Card and Comprehensive Payables for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “We’re excited to announce this strategic relationship with Visa and Amazon Business to deliver this valuable service to our clients.”
“B2B payments require enhanced data for proper audit, reporting and purchasing control,” said Morgan Salmon, global commercial cards B2B product head at Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions. “We are pleased to join Visa and Amazon Business in offering a streamlined purchase and reconciliation process for our clients.”
“In today’s ever-evolving digital economy, straight-through processing is becoming a requirement, not a luxury. PNC’s ability to collaborate with Visa and Amazon on this initiative will enable us to deliver to our customers richer data attached to each transaction, resulting in more efficient processing and a better understanding of their purchasing activity,” said J. Christopher Ward, executive vice president and head of Product Management for PNC Bank’s Treasury Management division.
- 07:00 am
Today Motion AI, the major chatbot building platform that services global consumer brands including Kia, Fiverr, Sony, Wix and many more, unveiled the first-ever chatbot store, Bot Store. Bot Store is a marketplace built on top of Motion AI's leading visual bot-building platform that offers turn-key templates for many chatbot use cases including customer service, meeting scheduling and surveys.
This one of a kind marketplace gives companies the opportunity to easily customize and deploy pre-built bots to their business on a variety of highly trafficked platforms, including Facebook Messenger, Slack, SMS, and the web. While using Bot Store requires zero programming skills, the Bot Store also allows coders to deploy Node.js code directly from the Motion AI interface - making integrating bots with third party APIs, databases and services simple.
At launch, the store will initially feature bots developed by Motion AI and their user base including:
- Customer service assistance bot which allows companies of all sizes to take advantage of bots that help offload customer inquiries
- Survey bots, to collect customer feedback
- A personal meeting scheduler, powered by Calend.ly
More bots will be added regularly and developers will have the opportunity to be positioned prominently in the store. In short, the Bot Store will simplify bot deployment even further than Motion AI already has with its existing platform, by creating a templating system around common chatbot use cases.
"Our focus at Motion AI has been to significantly simplify the creation of chatbots. The platform dramatically reduces the amount of effort and cost associated with building and deploying a bot," says the company's CEO, David Nelson. "The introduction of Bot Store makes it even easier for companies to launch bots on the platform by providing in-depth templates that, in many cases, require little to no coding or training for customers."
Christian Voigt
Senior Regulatory Adviser at Fidessa
The current debate between ESMA, the see more
- 02:00 am
Today Avis Budget Group, Inc., a global leader in providing vehicle rental services, reported the completion of a transaction that will allow the Company to operate the Budget brand in Poland directly and to expand its presence in the Polish market. Prior to the transaction, the Budget brand had been operated in Poland by a third-party licensee since 1990. Avis Budget Group had previously acquired its Avis licensee in Poland in November 2015.
The transaction affirms Avis Budget Group's commitment to the fast-growing Central European markets, further increasing its ability to serve commercial and leisure customers there. The transaction will add more than 300 vehicles to the Avis Budget Group fleet and seven airport rental locations, including Warsaw, Krakow and Gdansk.
Mark Servodidio, President, International, Avis Budget Group, said, "We're excited to announce this transaction. Managing both the Avis and Budget operations in Poland will enable us to drive synergies in the business as well as accelerate the enhancements to the customer experience that our licensee partner has supported for a number of years."
- 02:00 am
Doxly, a secure portal for end to end corporate transactions, continues to delight its customers by introducing their new Signatures Simplified solution. This game-changing new feature will eliminate the need to create signature blocks, pages and packets manually, saving law firms time, mitigating risk associated with human error and adding speed and accountability to the M&A deal process. The company, which is proud of itself on developing a product that provides attorneys a centralized hub for managing their legal transactions, was founded by Haley Altman, who has over a decade of experience working on complicated transactions in the corporate, private equity and venture capital verticals.
Additionally, the signer experience is flexible and friendly on any device, anywhere, at any time. Even if the traditional method is preferred (print, sign and scan method), Doxly’s advanced technology will receive and track those signatures as well. “In a sense, when it comes to signature management, attorneys and their teams have been relying on a horse and buggy, and the automobile is now available - it is a huge leap forward,” says D.Wayne Poole, COO of Doxly.
Doxly truly transforms the signature process from a completely manual process to an organized and systematic practice. The team at Doxly continues to focus on refining the deal process for attorneys by increasing profitability and decreasing the amount of non-billable time spent on administrative tasks associated with signature management. Click here for additional detailed product information.
