Published
- 09:00 am
Ingenico ePayments, the online and mobile commerce division of Ingenico Group, and Ingenico Labs, its innovation department, today announced a solution to provide eCommerce merchants with payment-enabled messaging bots. The initiative will allow consumers and online businesses to engage in social or ‘conversational’ commerce through popular messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, Skype, Line, Kik, Telegram, WeChat and Slack.
Over 3 billion consumers worldwide have an account with one or more messaging apps, spending increasing amounts of time within these apps. In fact, many millennials use messaging apps as their favorite tool to communicate and engage with the world around them, and are asking their favorite brands to engage with them in the same way. As messaging apps get more and more traction, brands and retailers increasingly look to leverage these apps to reach their customers in a more personal and conversational manner. However, the key challenge remains to convert these engagements into purchases.
By embedding payments directly into bots, merchants remove conversion-killing steps from the purchase process and enable a seamless consumer experience. With this new solution, Ingenico ePayments’ full portfolio of international payment methods and capabilities can now be integrated and embedded inside messaging bots, removing the need to go out of the messaging app to complete a purchase and thus increasing conversion and revenue.
Furthermore, the new solution is linked to all the major messaging apps, including Facebook Messenger, Line, Telegram, Kik, Skype and WeChat. This allows merchants to create their messaging bot user experience once, and deploy it across all networks. Lastly, the platform integrates with the merchants’ existing systems and allows marketers to augment CRM data with messaging data to enable truly holistic customer analytics.
Our innovation strategy always aims at anticipating new consumer habits as well as removing friction from the payment funnel to boost conversion. Social media and social commerce are definitely trends to watch, and focusing on adding payment into messaging apps seemed unavoidable. Allowing merchants to leverage our full portfolio of payment methods directly from a messaging bot will significantly remove friction from conversational commerce while boosting conversion.” said Michel Léger, executive vice president of Ingenico Labs. “This is also a new demonstration of how digital innovation can speed up the generation of new Ingenico offers.”
The payment process is the bottleneck in any conversion funnel, and that goes for conversational commerce through messaging apps as well. Remove friction from that process and you widen the funnel, boosting conversion,” explained Pierre-Antoine Vacheron, executive vice president of Ingenico ePayments. “With this new messaging solution, merchants can now easily access our full portfolio of international payment methods directly from any messaging bot, enabling their customers to complete a payment from within the bot without any need for redirects or other steps.”
- 01:00 am
The UK’s technology sector drew more investment than that of any other European country in 2016, according to data from London & Partners, the Mayor of London’s promotional company.
Measuring activity across private equity and venture capital deals, more than £6.7 billion ($9.5bn) was invested into UK tech firms in 2016, with London accounting for more than a third of the total.
The research also shows that the UK remains attractive to investors despite the vote to leave the EU, with UK tech firms receiving more venture capital investment than any European country post-referendum. UK tech firms have also looked attractive to deal-makers with a sharp rise in merger and acquisition (M&A) activity during 2016, with British companies seeing more investment than any other European country after the 23rd June.
Since the EU referendum vote, a number of the world’s leading technology companies have demonstrated their long term commitment to investing in London with Google putting forward a £1 billion investment plan for a new headquarters in King’s Cross, Facebook announcing an additional 500 jobs for London and Apple revealing its plans for new headquarters in Battersea. Earlier this week, Snap Inc, the company behind messaging app Snapchat, also announced it has established its international hub in London.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “With our unbeatable blend of talent, creativity and access to finance, it is not surprising that London continues to go from strength to strength as the undisputed tech capital of Europe. Despite the Brexit vote, the capital continues to attract record levels of investment and remains the best place in the world to grow a business. I have no doubt that this important sector of our economy will continue to generate jobs, investment and world-leading technology for decades to come.”
Eileen Burbidge, Partner at London venture capital firm, Passion Capital, added: “The UK is undeniably a leading destination for investors, entrepreneurs and businesses alike. With a diverse talent pool, global financial centre and a strong culture of innovation, it is no surprise to see that the London has attracted more investment than any other major European city in 2016. Recent investments announced by the likes of Facebook and Google further demonstrates the strength of London’s tech sector and shows that London is still very much open for business and investment.”
London-based tech companies again proved to be the most attractive European destination for venture capitalists with firms securing around £1.4 billion ($1.9bn) of the total £1.9 billion ($2.6bn) raised by UK tech firms in 2016. VC investors continued to pump money into London tech companies following the EU referendum, with London companies raising over £668 million ($862m) during the second half of the year.
Capitalising on London’s attractiveness to venture capital investors, today London & Partners launches the ‘London VC Club’ - a bespoke programme to connect some of London’s leading investment firms with the capital’s fastest growing companies. A number of high profile VC firms, angel investors and crowdfunding investors have already signed up to participate in the scheme including the likes of Salesforce Ventures, Octopus Ventures and Seedcamp.
- 02:00 am
Calypso Technology, Inc., a leading provider of capital markets and investment management software, announced today it has launched a new Cloud Services Division featuring a comprehensive lineup of Cloud solutions.
"Our goal is to provide our clients with solutions that meet their unique needs and allow them to focus on their customers rather than on their IT infrastructure," said Corinne Grillet, Chief Customer Officer and Head of the Calypso Cloud Services Division. "Financial institutions are increasingly embracing Cloud strategies to improve agility, reduce costs, and accelerate compliance, and they need a partner they can trust."
"This is a major turning point for our clients and our firm," added Calypso CEO Pascal Xatart. "There is no doubt that the Cloud will play a progressively bigger role in capital markets technology, and we expect our new Cloud Services Division to lead the industry transformation. We have taken care to ensure our range of Cloud services is flexible enough to align with the IT roadmaps of institutions of all sizes, which we believe distinguishes us from other vendors in our space."
All of Calypso's applications run natively on the Oracle Cloud, but the firm also supports a do-it-yourself option for clients who prefer to deploy the platform using another Cloud provider. "We are thrilled to be partnering with Oracle as the backbone of our Cloud solution," said Jean-Marie Gatty, Director of Calypso Cloud Services. "They are among the giants of Silicon Valley, and they provide a complete, integrated, agile, security-focused Cloud solution at every layer of the technology stack. They also provide the scalability required to support the complete spectrum of Calypso clients, from the largest utility providers to smaller regional banks. Working with Oracle allows us to increase the quality, productivity, and reliability of our services."
"The Cloud represents a huge opportunity for our partner community," said Dan Miller, senior vice president, ISV, OEM and Java Sales, Oracle. "Calypso's commitment to innovation with Oracle Cloud and track record of quality execution can help ensure our mutual customers receive Cloud-enabled software solutions ready to meet critical business needs."
Calypso enables a wide range of sell-side, buy-side, and clearing firms to consolidate disparate businesses onto a single platform, standardize workflows, achieve economies of scale, and enable enterprise-wide transparency of trading and risk.
- 04:00 am
Leading global investment firm KKR today announced that HK Holdings Co., Ltd. (the “Bidder”), an entity owned by investment funds controlled by KKR, intends to make a tender offer for all the existing common shares and stock acquisition rights of leading power tool and life science equipment manufacturer Hitachi Koki Co., Ltd. (“Hitachi Koki” or the “Company”) (Code number: 6581, First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange).
In connection with the tender offer, the Bidder has entered into a tender agreement (the “Tender Agreement”) with Hitachi Ltd. (“Hitachi”), the lead shareholder in Hitachi Koki, to acquire in the tender offer Hitachi’s approximate 40.25% holding of Hitachi Koki’s common shares, and also with Hitachi Urban Investment, Ltd. (“HUI”) to acquire in the tender offer HUI’s approximate 10.90% holding of Hitachi Koki’s common shares. The tender offer will launch subject to the fulfillment of certain conditions in the Tender Agreement, and is expected to commence on January 30, 2017 (for details regarding the conditions for the commencement of the tender offer, please refer to the full text of the press release issued today by Hitachi Koki titled “Announcement Concerning Opinion Regarding the Tender Offer for the Shares of Hitachi Koki Co., Ltd. by HK Holdings Co., Ltd.” and its attachment titled “Announcement Regarding the Tender Offer for the Shares of Hitachi Koki Co., Ltd. (Securities Code 6581)” (the “HK press release”).
Hitachi Koki is a leading supplier of high performance, high quality power tools and life science equipment, competing in the global marketplace to introduce cordless technology to a wider range of power tool products and applications. The Company is actively pursuing expansion in global markets, and has acquired German power tool company metabo Aktiengesellschaft in March 2016. It has also formed a strategic alliance with major North American hardware chain Lowe’s Companies, Inc. in 2015.
Pending a successful outcome in the Bidder’s tender offer, KKR intends to work closely with Hitachi Koki’s management and employees, leveraging Hitachi Koki’s excellent technology development capabilities and KKR’s global resources and the experience of its worldwide team to identify opportunities to strengthen the Company’s business platform. These opportunities may include implementing operational improvement initiatives and identifying and executing acquisitions globally with the aim of growing Hitachi Koki’s corporate value.
Under the terms of the announced offer under Japan’s Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, among other terms, the Bidder will commence the tender offer to acquire the issued common stock and stock acquisition rights of Hitachi Koki. In addition, based on the Bidder’s proposal, Hitachi Koki plans to pay a special dividend (the “Special Dividend”) conditional upon the success of the tender offer, with a record date of January 29, 2017. The Bidder has set a value of Hitachi Koki common shares of JPY 1,450 per common share. Assuming the payment of the Special Dividend of JPY 580 per common share upon the success of the Tender Offer, the Bidder has set a tender offer price per common share of JPY 870. The tender offer price per Hitachi Koki stock acquisition right will be JPY 144,900. (For further details please see the HK press release issued by Hitachi Koki today)
The value per share represents:1
- A premium of 89.8% to Hitachi Koki’s 12-month average closing price to October 4, 2016
- A premium of 108.0% to Hitachi Koki’s 6-month average closing price to October 4, 2016.
Since the total number of Hitachi Koki’s common shares is equal to 101,429,921 (number of issued shares excluding treasury shares; including the number of shares subject to stock acquisition rights), this transaction values Hitachi Koki at JPY 147.1 billion (approx. US$1.28 billion at the exchange rate of US$1=JPY115).
Mr. Hiro Hirano, Member of KKR and CEO of KKR Japan, said, “Hitachi Koki is a world-class manufacturer of power tools and a developer of innovative tool technologies. The Company is well-positioned for further organic and inorganic growth given the high quality of its products, its high-caliber team and the attractive environment for power tools through cordless and digital trends. Looking ahead, we are fully committed to leveraging our global network and resources to provide full support to Hitachi Koki in pursuing its growth strategy.”
KKR makes its proposed investment predominantly from its Asian Fund II. KKR has been investing in Japan through its pan-regional private equity funds since 2010. Japan has been and continues to be a key focus for KKR in the region. To date, KKR has completed three acquisitions in the market: Intelligence Ltd., a leading human resources services company; Panasonic Healthcare, the carve-out health care business of Panasonic Corporation; and Pioneer DJ, the carve-out DJ equipment business of Pioneer Corporation. In addition, on November 22, 2016 KKR announced the launch of a tender offer for Calsonic Kansei.
This press release should be read in conjunction with the full text of the HK press release, which is available on www.jpx.co.jp.
This press release has been prepared for the purpose of informing the public of the tender offer and has not been prepared for the purpose of soliciting an offer to sell, or making an offer to purchase, any securities. If shareholders wish to make an offer to sell their shares in the tender offer, they should first read the Tender Offer Explanation Statement for the tender offer and offer their shares or stock options for sale at their own discretion. This press release shall neither be, nor constitute a part of, an offer to sell or purchase, or a solicitation of an offer to sell or purchase, any securities, and neither this press release (or a part thereof) nor its distribution shall be interpreted to be the basis of any agreement in relation to the tender offer, and this press release may not be relied on at the time of entering into any such agreement.
The tender offer will be conducted for common shares and stock acquisition rights of Hitachi Koki, a company established in Japan. The tender offer will be conducted in accordance with the procedures and information disclosure standards prescribed by Japanese law, which may differ from the procedures and information disclosure standards in the United States. In particular, Section 13(e) and Section 14(d) of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the rules prescribed thereunder do not apply to the tender offer, and the tender offer does not conform to those procedures and standards.
Unless otherwise specified, all procedures relating to the tender offer are to be conducted entirely in Japanese. If all or any part of a document relating to the tender offer is prepared in the English language and there is any inconsistency between the English-language documentation and the Japanese-language documentation, the Japanese-language documentation will prevail.
The financial advisors to the Bidder and the Company as well as the tender offer agent may engage in the purchase of shares of the Company for their own account or for their customers’ accounts to the extent permitted under the Japanese Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, and the Bidder acknowledges such purchases. In the event information regarding such purchases is disclosed in Japan, such information will also be disclosed in English on the website of Hitachi Koki or the financial advisor conducting such purchases or the website of the tender offer agent, or will otherwise be made publicly available.
- 09:00 am
KIOSK Information Systems (KIOSK) is announcing a new bill payment software platform at the NRF Big Show, 2017, Booth #3805. The modular application provides a complete user flow for payment of multiple bills (via cash, card, and check) and common account inquiries. While unique customer features or additional flow paths can be readily integrated by KIOSK’s Application Development team, the base product license accomplishes the most common transaction functionality KIOSK has encountered with other major retail bill payment and money services clients.
KIOSK CEO, Tom Weaver, states, “Without question, bill payment is KIOSK’s most consistent and dominant market application. Many of our clients are in their second or third generation of self-service having already proven the enormous impact of automating literally millions of transactions each year. The ROI on in-store bill payment has moved it from a ‘nice to have’ in-store feature to a ‘must-have’ element to maximize store profits.”
Having worked with most of the dominant phone and cable service providers as well as leading electronic bill payment and money transfer clients, KIOSK’s Development Teams embarked on creating a more turnkey and modular software product, with a pre-established user flow for multi-bill account look-up and payment processing. By offering this as licensed functionality, KIOSK can reduce development timelines by 50% or more, leaving only specialized requests and client-specific API integration to complete.
KIOSK CTO, Charley Newsom, adds that “Our team has integrated our bill payment software with CORE K-NECT to include our proprietary remote monitoring and real-time alerts on connectivity, application status, and advanced payment component-level monitoring in the base product license. This capability, combined with our Intel Security Suite software stack options, creates a secure and PCI compliant total solution that has been vetted and deployed with Fortune 500 client applications. The custom hardware has always been a ‘given’ with KIOSK, but over the course of several years, we have developed a fully secured and finished TOTAL payment solution that we are very proud and excited to bring to market.”
- 06:00 am
Curve have teamed with over 50 leading UK retailers, including Marks and Spencer, House of Fraser, Boots, Waterstones and more with the launch of Curve Rewards, rewarding Curve users with up to 5% back on their spending at participating retailers.
What sets Curve Rewards apart from other loyalty schemes is that you can earn Curve Rewards with any card that you have selected in the Curve app. The points are also applied to your Curve Rewards account instantly, displayed in the app by the virtual Curve Rewards card - no more submitting receipts or waiting to cash in vouchers to redeem points. Curve Black Cardholders will earn up to 5% on their spending at participating retailers, while Blue Cardholders will earn up to 2.5%.
Card holders can additionally collect Rewards Points by referring friends to the Curve platform using a unique referral code. For each referral made, both the parties will earn £5 of credit onto their Rewards card in the app.
When it comes to redeeming and spending with Curve Rewards, you can spend your points using your Curve card anywhere Mastercard is accepted - over 35 million merchants worldwide, excluding ATMs and cash withdrawals. Your Rewards balance will be updated immediately after every purchase, and your up-to-date total balance can be viewed anytime in the app.
Selected Curve Rewards retailers today include a number of high street retailers, business services, restaurants, and hotels. More merchants will be added as Curve expand their Rewards programme beyond the UK.
On the release of Curve Rewards, Curve CEO Shachar Bialick had this to say:
“For the first time in the UK, we’re seeing a payment card and loyalty card combined into one digital wallet. We're excited about working with merchants to make it easier for them to launch loyalty programmes to their customers, and we’re equally excited to make it simpler for our users to earn rewards on their spending, allowing them to get more from their money - without changing their bank.”
Other Curve app features include the ability to get an overview of all your spending in real-time (with instant notifications) and search through, tag, and export your spend history across all your linked bank accounts. Additional benefits when using the Curve card include considerably reduced foreign exchange rates and convenient security features, such as the ability to lock and unlock your Curve card from the app in the event that your card is lost or stolen.
Chris Skinner
Chief Executive Officer at The Finanser Ltd
So one of my 2017 forecasts is coming true already: it is the year that blockchain moves out of proofs of concept and work and into the mainstream. Two great examples broke out this week from skun see more
- 05:00 am
Toward the end of 2016, ESMA published guidelines for transaction reporting under the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) and Regulation(MiFIR).
MiFID II and MiFIR increases the scope of regulatory requirements on reporting entities in the following areas: reference data, transparency, double volume cap and transaction reporting. Therefore, the release of the technical requirements and reporting templates further serve market participants in their operations under MiFID II and MiFIR.
In order to ensure a smooth transition from the current reporting regimes, under MIFID I, ESMA will begin data collection in advance of the date of application of MIFID II and MIFIR. As you may be aware, from the 3rd of January 2018, MIFID II and MIFIR will apply within Member states and, by starting data collection early, ESMA aims to provide the relevant reporting entities with the appropriate system implementation time prior to go-live.
Martin Emms
Research Associate at Newcastle University
- 07:00 am
Deloitte, which works with 90 percent of the largest financial institutions across its audit, tax, consulting and advisory businesses globally, has announced it has opened a client-focused blockchain lab in New York’s Wall Street district.
“Innovation is a top priority for Deloitte – we continue to strategically invest in our capabilities to help clients adapt to a world where success or survival depends heavily on innovation,” said Joe Guastella, a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP and global financial services consulting leader. “Our ecosystem for education, ideation, strategy, application prototyping and development is there to support Deloitte’s clients and practitioners across industries in harnessing the opportunities and capabilities that blockchain technology has to offer.”
This builds on Deloitte’s broader digital transformation and innovation efforts, called “Grid by Deloitte,” which constitutes a network of labs around the world, among other initiatives. Deloitte Ireland opened the first blockchain lab in May, making the New York lab at 140 Broadway the second formal hub in Deloitte’s global network. While a number of centers of expertise for blockchain have organically grown within Deloitte’s network over the last two years, Deloitte expects to announce additional formal labs in 2017
The Americas blockchain lab has a dedicated team of more than 20 blockchain developers and designers. The team will focus on developing strategic blockchain capabilities and proofs of concept into functioning prototypes to create “ready-to-integrate” solutions for financial services clients.
The lab will work alongside specialist teams from other countries and with Deloitte’s network of more than a dozen preferred technology companies.
“With the technology not yet having reached widespread adoption, 2017 could be the make-or-break year for blockchain technology,” said Eric Piscini, a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP, who leads the consultancy’s digital transformation and innovation efforts in the financial services industry. “Financial institutions have the power and ability to move blockchain to the next level. To get there, companies will need to move away from churning out proofs of concept and begin producing and implementing solutions. That’s a big part of the goal with Deloitte’s blockchain lab.”
In a recent Deloitte survey of blockchain-knowledgeable executives, just 12 percent of financial services executives surveyed said their company has deployed blockchain in production. But they are aiming to pick up the pace: 24 percent say their companies plan to go live with blockchain efforts in the coming year.
While the Americas blockchain lab will be mainly focused on working with financial institutions, it will be working with other industries as well, given blockchain technologies’ ability to create opportunities across all sectors of the economy.
Deloitte’s blockchain team – comprised of more than 800 professionals across 20 countries – works with international organizations looking to roll out blockchain-enabled solutions.
Deloitte has developed more than 30 blockchain-related prototypes, covering a multitude of uses such as digital identity, digital banking, cross-border payments, trade finance, and loyalty and rewards solutions, as well as distinct efforts for the investment management and insurance sectors.
