• Open online in less than 5 minutes
• No conditions or hidden fees
• In partnership with BNP Paribas for the sequestration of funds

The solution consists of a web and mobile online account to cash and withdraw money, process transfers and receive withdrawals, up to 4 MasterCard cards with optional travel insurance to settle expenses and make withdrawals, as well as a range of additional services to save money and better manage its budget.

The account is opened in less than 5 minutes online. The account is then capped and limited to certain features that can be extended by sending a copy of ID and a proof of address.

Unlike a traditional bank account, the Sogexia payment account does not offer chequebooks and works in real time. Transfers are credited upon receipt without additional value days (usually added to invest clients' funds), payments made are immediately visible in the transaction history and transfers between two Sogexia accounts are instantaneous. Notifications are also sent by SMS or e-mail during each operation carried out or future (for example a future levy).

"Sogexia was born out of our frustration with traditional banking services, and we believe that they can be simple, cost-effective and bring real added value, so over the past 4 years we have been reinventing the bank by creating We hope to attract 100,000 customers in the first year, both individuals and professionals, "said Kilian Füg, Managing Director.

An Expenditure Management module lets you easily understand where your money goes by quickly presenting the account balance, inputs and outputs, and intelligently categorizes transactions in an automated way.

Thanks to the Sogexia account, customers benefit from access to the Sogexia Club: a site allowing to obtain exclusive reductions negotiated by Sogexia with more than 850 partner merchants, including Auchan, SNCF, Orange, Fnac or Amazon. The use of this service makes it possible to realize on average 7% of economy on all its purchases on line.

For the professionals, the account simplifies the accounting. It is possible to take a picture of an invoice and link it to the corresponding expense. This data can then be exported for automated accounting integration.

In the near future, it will also be proposed to obtain a physical or virtual payment terminal in order to be able to accept payments by card online and at the point of sale.

From this date, the opening of the account is possible for any person residing in Europe.

"We anticipate the launch of several new innovative services over the coming months and then continuously, notably linked to the user experience, the improvement of existing tools and the integration of new partners on our platform, In order to reinforce the competitiveness of the offer by continuing to provide our customers with real added value compared to traditional banking solutions, "concludes Richard Füg, Sales Manager.

Mahindra Comviva, the global leader in providing mobility solutions, today announced that its comprehensive digital payment solutions mobiquity® Wallet and payPLUS are now available on the cloud. At a time when money is increasingly becoming digitized, Mahindra Comviva’s cloud hosted mobile financial solutions provide banks with a robust platform to further their digital payments strategy and cater to the needs of cashless societies in the post demonetization era.     

With Mahindra Comviva’s hosted digital payments solution, there is a strong incentive for banks to take the idea of cashless societies to every town and village. Besides CAPEX and OPEX savings, banks will be able to deploy services faster, adapt to markets quicker, and serve their customers better. Also, with digital payments primed to take off everywhere in the country, Mahindra Comviva provides a robust and scalable platform for banks to onboard both new and existing customers quickly as well as speed up deployment of services.        

Mahindra Comviva is of the view that demonetization is a move towards cashless societies and better governance through increased transparency and accountability. However, it also believes that the broader goal of creating a cashless society will only remain a mirage without the wholehearted support and acceptance of merchants as well as paying customers.  In this regard, demonetization could very well serve as the catalyst for onboarding merchants as well as customers on to the digital payments platform.

Srinivas Nidugondi, SVP and Head, Mobile Financial Solutions, Mahindra Comviva, speaking on the occasion said “In the follow up to demonetization, the market will require a digital payments platform that is comprehensive enough to cater to the entire ecosystem of payments. We are proud to announce that our cloud hosted digital payments solution is robust enough to cater to merchants as well as the customer for instore payments as well as online payments. Our products are already compliant with the India stack initiative of the government which makes onboarding of users through e-KYC and payments via UPI available to consumers as well as merchants, thus creating a strong base for cashless societies of the future.”       

To accelerate the adoption of digital payments amongst merchant as well as consumers, Mahindra Comviva provides a comprehensive portfolio of digital payment products. At the issuer end mobiquity® Wallet enables banks to provide its customers with mobile wallet enabling them to make quick, seamless and secure cashless payments. On the acquirer end, payPLUS equips merchants with affordable and robust mobile POS enabling them to process and accept card payments quickly and seamlessly thus completing a comprehensive end to end digital payments cycle.      

mobiquity® Wallet offers a feature-rich digital wallet for consumers and a robust and flexible platform for service providers and their partners. It combines innovations in payments with attention to human factor, behavior-centered experience design, and innovative digital technology. Designed to support a large and complex ecosystem, mobiquity® Wallet enables financial institutions, retailers, telecom operators and other consumer service providers to re-engage and connect directly with their consumers, drive growth, and strengthen their brand by staying abreast of an ever-evolving market and consumer behavior.  mobiquity® Wallet brings an evolution in mobile commerce by integrating payments, identity, loyalty, mobile marketing, location and social features. It leverages NFC (HCE), BLE, QR Codes, biometrics, geofencing and sound based payments creating compelling consumer experiences. It also supports e-KYC as well as payments leveraging the UPI infrastructure, to simplify the user experience as well as offer a multitude of options to consumers for remittance and merchant payments. With lots of new consumers being brought on-board the wallet idea, there is a need to cater to an ever increasing number of new customer segments with unique requirements of their own. mobiquity® Wallet platform provides a unique service creation platform which allows for easy customization of customer experience and quick turnaround to the market with these customizations.

payPLUS empowers bank’s or acquirer’s merchant partners with a unified payment acceptance platform that enables the acceptance of any payment instrument such as Cards, Digital Wallets, UPI & mVisa across channels such as In-Store, App & Web thereby significantly reducing the barriers to adoption of these new technologies. The merchant no longer has to remember multiple passwords across instruments, worry about new technology hitting the market or spends hours every day just checking sales across different digital instruments and channels. payPLUS offers a unified interface for merchants and acquiring entities to manage all instruments, channels and technologies through a single interface right from a mobile POS to new age wallets and the recent UPI & mVisa. payPLUS is geared to extract the most out of the recent policy changes with its merchant self-onboarding functionality which significantly lowers the onboarding cost and allows the merchant to start accepting payments by downloading the app.  

E-Business publication, FinTech Finance, has recognised the Isle of Man as FinTech Region of the Year in its 2016 awards. 

Presented at a ceremony in London on the 8^th December, the award identified the Isle of Man for its quality of professional services, regulation and level of investment in the sector.  The Isle of Man fought off the other finalists, Malaysia and Northern Ireland, to secure the accolade.

Laurence Skelly MHK, Minister for the Department of Economic Development commented:

‘E-Business is the Isle of Man’s fastest growing sector and now contributes to approximately 28% of GDP. The Department has been instrumental in securing both private and public sector investment in the infrastructure to support this growth, along with attracting many new businesses to the Island as a result. FinTech is an exciting avenue for the Isle of Man’s e-Business sector, drawing on the Island’s years of experience within financial and professional services. It is fantastic to be recognised for these achievements.’

The award was accepted by Brian Donegan, Head of e-Business Operations at the Department of Economic Development, who commented:

‘The Isle of Man has worked hard to create an eco-system where FinTech and e-Businesses can thrive. We have both financial assistance schemes and a technological offering that includes 97% 4G broadband coverage and six tier 3+ data centres. This combination now makes the Isle of Man an extremely attractive location for new and established FinTech and e-Businesses. 2016 has been another great year for growth in this sector and I was delighted to accept the award on behalf of all the Island’s businesses.’

Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: BR), a provider of technology and operations, communications , data and analytics solutions for financial services firms, has significantly expanded its on-the-ground presence in the region, affirming its commitment to the Asian market.

OpenLink, the global leader in trading, treasury and risk management solutions for the financial services, corporate, energy and commodities industries, has been positioned as a Leader in Gartner’s November 2016 Magic Quadrant for Trading Platforms for the third consecutive year. Compared to 2015, Gartner’s analysts have placed OpenLink even further along the ‘Completeness of Vision’ axis.

OpenLink's trading platforms cover full front to back office and risk management across financial and physical transactions in the energy, financial services and treasury markets. Last month, at its Global Client Summit, OpenLink unveiled its plans for Cloud ahead of a formal launch in early 2017 – a move that was very well received by its global user community.

Ken Knowles, Executive Vice President of Enterprise Strategy and Business Development for OpenLink, said: “Today’s market conditions and low interest rates have heightened the importance of multi-asset trading. We are pleased to be recognized by Gartner for our comprehensive capabilities in this area, as well as our strengths across operational lifecycle management.”

Knowles added: “We continue to invest heavily in our solutions, which are being used across an increasingly diverse set of client use cases. OpenLink’s recent Global Client Summit showcased the investments in our platform, including a transformational Cloud initiative and ongoing functionality enhancements in areas such as regulatory reporting and collateral management.”

OpenLink has had a highly successful 2016, and this latest accolade follows a number of other awards across the breadth of its products:

• Best Derivatives Operations Solution, FTF News Awards

• FinTech Quadrant Category Leader for Enterprise Collateral Management, Chartis

• Top ranking in Treasury Management Systems Guide, Bobsguide and GT News

• Best Overall ETRM Platform, Energy Risk Rankings

• Software House of the Year, Energy Risk Asia Rankings

• Top Commodity Vendor, Asia Risk Technology Rankings

• CTRM Market Leader, ComTech Advisory

• Top Energy Trading Risk Vendor, Chartis RiskTech100® Rankings

ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, has been named by EBA Clearing as one of the ‘frontrunner service providers’ for the pan-European EBA SEPA Instant Credit Transfer Scheme, due to go live in November 2017. The scheme will enable consumers and businesses to make euro credit transfers in real-time between accounts across an international area that will eventually span over 34 European countries. The first pilot banks are expected to start testing as early as Q1 2017.

ACI Worldwide will support and provide assistance to a number of banks joining the scheme. ACI’s UP Immediate Payments solution provides a single point of access and liquidity control to all Immediate Payments (IP) schemes globally. Available via a SaaS delivery model or on-premise, the solution is fully designed to provide connectivity to the pan-European EBA SEPA Instant Credit Transfer Scheme (SCT Inst).

Barry Kislingbury, Director Solution Consulting, Immediate Payments, ACI Worldwide comments:

“We are delighted to have been named as one of the ‘frontrunner service providers’ by EBA Clearing for the new European instant payments scheme.  ACI’s Immediate Payments experience is unrivalled—we have assisted financial institutions in the UK, Singapore and Australia to connect and integrate payments systems into their domestic schemes.

“ACI’s UP Immediate Payments offers a proven solution for financial institutions that need connectivity to one or multiple IP schemes. We not only provide our customers with a technical gateway, but also full real-time payment processing and liquidity functionality, guidance on compliance, fraud, scheme rules, testing and certification, as well as support throughout the complex on-boarding process.”

ACI has an unmatched global customer base of financial institutions, payment service providers, fintechs and schemes using its UP Immediate Payments solution. In the UK, ACI’s solution has been used by financial institutions to access the UK Faster Payments scheme since its launch in 2008. Currently 9 out of the 14 direct participants of the UK’s Faster Payments Scheme use ACI’s solutions. The central infrastructure of FPSL, widely considered a global model for the industry, also utilises ACI’s UP Immediate Payments solution.

Gemalto, the world leader in digital security, today released the findings of its Authentication and Identity Management Index, which revealed that 90% of enterprise IT professionals are concerned that employee reuse of personal credentials for work purposes could compromise security. However, with two thirds (68%) saying they would be comfortable allowing employees to use their social media credentials on company resources, Gemalto’s research suggests that personal applications (such as email) are the biggest worry to organisations.

Convergence of Personal and Workplace Identities

The enterprise and consumer worlds are merging closer together, with enterprise security teams under increasing pressure to implement the same type of authentication methods typically seen in consumer services, such as fingerprint scanning and iris recognition. Six in ten (62%) believed this was the case, with a similar amount (63%) revealing they feel security methods designed for consumers provide sufficient protection for enterprises. In fact, over half of respondents (52%) believe it will be just three years before these methods merge completely.

Consumer breaches impacting enterprise security

Identity theft accounts for 64% of all data breaches across the globe[1], and consumer service breaches continue to rise, resulting in almost nine in ten (89%) enterprises addressing their access management security policies. Half of enterprises have implemented extra training (49%) to allay their security concerns, 47% increased security spend, and 44% allocated further resources.

Employee expectations around usability and mobility are affecting how enterprises approach authentication and access management.  Nearly half of respondents stated that they are increasing resources and spending on access management. Deployment rates are also increasing:  62% expect to implement strong authentication in two years’ time – up from 51% of respondents who said the same thing last year, and nearly 40% responded they will implement Cloud SSO or IDaaS within the next two years.  

Enterprises are clearly seeing the benefits, with over nine in ten (94%) using two-factor authentication to protect at least one application and nearly all respondents (96%) expecting to use it at some point in the future.

Mobility security still a challenge

As more enterprises become mobile, the challenges in protecting resources while increasing flexibility for employees working on the move increases. Despite an increasing amount of businesses enabling mobile working, a third (35%) completely restricted employees from accessing company resources via mobile devices and nine in ten (91%) are at least part-restricting access to resources. This is backed up as half of businesses (50%) admit security is one of their biggest concerns to increasing user mobility.

In order to protect themselves against threats from increased mobility, enterprises are still most likely to be using usernames and passwords – two thirds of users at respondents’ organisations are using this authentication method, on average. Currently, 37% of users at respondents’ organisations are required to use two-factor authentication to access corporate resources from mobile devices, on average. However, like the rise for access while in the office, on average, respondents believe this will increase to over half (56%) in two years’ time.

“From credential sharing to authentication practices, it’s clear that consumer trends are having a big impact on enterprise security,” said François Lasnier, Senior Vice President, Identity Protection at Gemalto. “But businesses need to make sure their data isn’t compromised by bad personal habits. It’s encouraging to see deployment of two-factor authentication methods on the rise, and increased awareness for cloud access management, as these are the most effective solutions for businesses to secure cloud resources and protect against internal and external threats. For IT leaders, it’s important that they keep pushing for security to be a priority at the board level, and ensure that it’s front of mind for everyone in an organisation.” 

Related Resources

• Download the full Authentication and Identity Management Report here
• Download the Infographic here
• Access full global and regional data on the Authentication and Identity Management website here
• Read more about Gemalto’s Identity and Access Management solutions

 Finimize, the London-based start-up making finance more accessible for millennials, has today launched Finimize MyLife, a revolutionary free-to-use online platform that helps people plan their financial future.

The platform will initially be available in its ‘alpha’ preview version to the first 500 people on the waiting list, which was only soft launched a month ago and is already 8,000-strong and growing. Users can climb the waiting list by sharing and referring friends to the platform.                                                                                               

Requiring no knowledge or experience of finance, Finimize MyLife takes just three minutes to provide a detailed and personalised financial plan guided by Finimize’s deep research and algorithms. The platform will publicly launch in beta in early 2017.

Max Rofagha, the co-founder & CEO of Finimize, said:

“We are proud to launch the alpha version of Finimize MyLife to the first 500 people on our waiting list. We listened to our loyal community of over 60,000 Finimize users, who are mostly in their 20s and 30s, and they told us that they are desperate for help with their financial lives but don’t know where to turn.

“We heard their concerns and we have built a free platform that will give practical, actionable guidance to all those who struggle with their personal finances. We believe that Finimize MyLife will change the way the millennial generation approaches finance and we can’t wait to open the platform more widely early next year.”

Finimize MyLife builds on Finimize’s already phenomenally successful daily news briefing, which demystifies financial news and has quickly amassed over 60,000 subscribers and has open rates of 40-60%. This is unprecedented for financial content – validating the existing appetite of millennials to engage more with financial news, events and services. 

The launch comes shortly after Finimize announced a successful seed-funding round of £450,000, led by Passion Capital and Jason Butler, author of the FT’s Guide to Wealth Management.

Eileen Burbidge, partner at Passion Capital and HM Treasury Special Envoy for FinTech, said: "Financial inclusion and literacy are massive issues for us as a society to solve – and which I'm confident the tech sector can help to address. Millennials in particular have the lowest levels of financial literacy across the United States and other regions around the world.”

Finimize was founded in 2015 by Max Rofagha and Scott Tindle – two university friends who wanted to re-design the way millennials approach their finances. Max was named one of Forbes’ “30 under 30” for 2016, having previously co-founded DeinDeal, a Swiss ecommerce company which now employs 200 people, which he sold in 2015. Scott is a CFA and spent seven years at Barclays Capital in London before helping to start Finimize.

 Register for the waiting list here: http://www.finimize.com/mylife

Qlik®, a leader in visual analytics, today announced that Teachers Mutual Bank (TMB), one of the largest mutual banks in Australia, has deployed QlikView®, Qlik Sense®, and Qlik NPrinting™ to analyze customer data from several disparate sources to improve its marketing campaigns and business performance. By leveraging the Qlik analytics platform, TMB has transformed internal processes, significantly improving reporting times and integrating new external data sources for more targeted marketing campaigns. Marketing and financial reports that once took 16 days to produce are now produced in a few minutes, and as a result of the Qlik implementation, TMB’s data accuracy has improved by 30 percent, whilst reducing IT support costs.

Teachers Mutual Bank has more than $5.5 billion in assets and over 177,000 members primarily employed by the Australian education sector. With a growing customer base, TMB generates significant amounts of data that requires a robust and sophisticated solution to satisfy its current and future analysis needs. Prior to implementing Qlik, TMB’s accelerating data demands had outgrown its original Excel-based technology solutions, which struggled to collate and present data in a visual way. TMB faced business-critical issues, including disorganized data from multiple sources, dated reports, and information that was not structured in a timely and effective way for management use. TMB needed a solution that quickly and effectively provided a simple, visual and interactive snapshot from a trusted source of data.

With Qlik and its partner Satsumas, TMB is now able to effectively visualize and associate member data such as demographics, spatial distribution, and eligibility for home loans. Disparate data that is aggregated from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, census data, and TMB’s customer data are merged and analyzed dynamically to create highly targeted marketing reports and campaigns. This improves business uptake and decision making for a more efficient organization – ultimately creating maximized value for customers.

“Qlik enables us to piece together insights derived from all our data sets far more efficiently so that we understand our customers and their behaviour better,” said Dave Chapman, Chief Information Officer at Teachers Mutual Bank. “We have streamlined the view of our business processes in our analytics and reporting, reduced administrative time and increased workflow efficiency. This has allowed us to leverage the insights we’ve uncovered from using Qlik to market ourselves more effectively to our customers.”

“Qlik provides financial institutions with the ability and agility to derive actionable insights that drive better outcomes for their customers,” said Paul Van Siclen, Market Development Director, Financial Services. “Our work with Teachers Mutual Bank is a great example of how the strategic use of visual analytics can lead to better customer satisfaction and a streamlined operational approach to become a more efficient and profitable financial organization. Data is a powerful ingredient for financial organizations and we are delighted that Teachers Mutual Bank is able to see their whole story in their data to serve their customers better in the future.”

TMB intends to expand the deployment of Qlik solutions throughout the company, including finance, risk and operations. As the bank is maturing in its analytics capabilities and management of big data, it is focused on expanding its functionality to ensure that its customers are able to make better financial decisions.