Pegasystems Inc. (NASDAQ: PEGA), the software company empowering the world’s leading enterprises with strategic applications for customer engagement, today announced enhancements to its industry leading Pega® Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) and Pega® Know Your Customer (KYC) applications that provide the industry’s first unified solution for managing both corporate and personal banking customer journeys. No other solution allows banks to reduce the massive cost, regulation, and complexity they face from onboarding and offboarding clients across all lines of business on a global scale.

The growing list of complex onboarding and Know Your Customer regulations makes it difficult and expensive for banks to efficiently manage customers across their historically siloed lines of business and legacy systems. By extending the proven Pega CLM capabilities to personal banking channels, banks can drive these processes with a single master view of the client and all related parties, re-using data as they engage across the organization – from buy side and sell side to wealth and personal banking. This combined approach not only reduces costs and streamlines compliance but also provides faster and more consistent customer experiences that reduce the risk of abandonment.

New capabilities for both corporate and personal banking clients further simplify the massive complexity of driving client lifecycles across lines of business, including:

·         More efficient fund onboarding – Pega’s CLM capabilities for corporate and investment banking have been further extended to include bulk fund onboarding, making it the only application that allows for automated bulk onboarding of funds instead of manually rekeying fund information. Banks can instantly upload these fund details when onboarding a fund manager and add the related products for all or a subset of the funds. This automatically creates cases and related cases and dependencies, applying the right due diligence rules, dependencies, and processes.

·         Integration with industry leading data providers – Pega has partnered with leading service providers such as Thomson Reuters (i.e. World-Check), OutsideIQ, Equifax, NominoData, and Dunn & Bradstreet to develop and deliver APIs for leading sanctions, politically exposed persons (PEPs), high risk customer screening, and adverse media services. Additional partnerships with Kyckr and DTCC (Avox, Omgeo) will complement existing integrations with leading KYC utilities such as kyc.com (powered by Markit and Genpact) and Clarient. These integrations can be fully utilized across personal banking and Pega’s KYC application.

·         Expanded and updated KYC rules – Pega CLM offers full integration with the Pega KYC regulatory rules application. By partnering with leading regulatory advisor and global law firm DLA Piper, Pega KYC provides automated updates to more than 3,500 pre-built due diligence requirements and more than 3,000 pre-configured logic rules for regulations. This enables banks to be in step with changing regulatory requirements, including AML/CTF, FATCA, CRS, Dodd-Frank, EMIR, and MiFID. This also includes recent changes such as the new Fourth EU Money Laundering Directive and FinCEN’s new due diligence and ultimate beneficial ownership (UBO) rules.

·         Improved customer experience – Pega CLM provides new omnichannel capabilities that enhance the customer experience and drive higher customer satisfaction. Banks can guide clients through pre-defined, intent-led digital journeys with complete transparency across all channels, including mobile, online self-service, and branch.  

Pega CLM is the only globally scalable application for large complex financial institutions to manage end-to-end CLM – from client adoption, enrichment, and KYC due diligence to credit, legal, and risk assessment through to fulfillment – while allowing for multi-jurisdictional, multiproduct onboarding with pre-defined industry best practices. This industry-leading application can be deployed at the world’s largest institutions in as little as three months while speeding time to revenue with new and existing clients. Pega provides deep in-house industry KYC and customer due diligence (CDD) regulatory and onboarding expertise coupled with best-in-class partnerships. Pega’s global team of experts have deployed and built onboarding and KYC solutions for more than 10 years at more than 25 of the world’s largest financial institutions.

Available today the latest version of Pega CLM and Pega KYC will demonstrated at Sibos 2016 in Geneva from September 26-29, at stand E40. For more information, visit http://www.pegaonboarding.com

Intellect Design Arena Limited, the world's first full-spectrum banking and financial products company for the digital age, today announced that Capital Small Finance Bank Limited, India's first Small Finance Bank, has selected Intellect as its technology partner to drive its Digital Technology Transformation program.

Backbase, the omni-channel banking solution provider launched their new 60-second onboarding at FinovateFall 2016, the leading fintech conference in New York, United States. The demo showcased a streamlined, omni-channel on-boarding process and was voted 'Best of Show' by the audience of banking professionals.

It has become a necessity for banks to address their customers’ need for a real time, effective process that enables them to engage with the bank in the way they choose, and across multi-channels, to initiate requests. Banks need to realise the importance of being able to obtain the customer’s information at the first step of the customer journey and the customer lifecycle, regardless of the channel used.

The old manual, and paper-based onboarding processes during a typical customer onboarding process can cost up to 20 times more than computer-assisted, electronic document processing. However, the current computer-assisted onboarding processes are merely an online form, not a real engaging customer experience.

60-second onboarding leverages the latest modern mobile technology for simplified Know Your Customer (KYC) and seamless data-gathering technologies such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for scanning passports or credit cards combined with facial recognition. Powered by the Backbase Platform, the new solution will introduce true omni-channel onboarding across mobile, tablet and desktop. Banks will now be able to leverage these generic patterns and adopt the Backbase best-practice for fast, simple, seamless omni-channel onboarding.

"We are extremely excited to have been awarded ‘Best of Show’”, commented Jouk Pleiter, CEO of Backbase, “this award stands as recognition of our commitment to innovation and we have launched the right capabilities for financial institutions to leverage new technologies, reduce friction, and make onboarding a simple, seamless customer journey." He continued, “‘You never get a second chance to make a good first impression’ - this is also valid to customer onboarding. Onboarding is the first step to prove the kind of experience banks will offer to their customers. If not done right, it can kill the customer’s trust and ultimately, acquisition.”

 Kantox is blazing a trail again with Dynamic Hedging, a unique product that allows companies to fully automate the management of their multi-currency operations. Having enjoyed exponential growth in its first six months, in which more than $100 million were traded through the product, it represents a game-changer for companies' management of FX risk.

“Transparency, pricing and improving the user experience (UX) are essential to keep competing in the finance sector, but they are not enough. The launch of Dynamic Hedging positions us at the forefront of the latest trends in an increasingly mature fintech industry, where success depends on the creation of products that are truly innovative and sophisticated, in which cutting-edge technology is at the fore,” explained Philippe Gelis, Kantox's co-founder and CEO.

Dynamic Hedging delivers added value by monitoring currency risk in real time and enabling firms to hedge this risk dynamically and automatically. It therefore spares companies that handle high volumes of currency transactions from having to manually complete operations on an individual basis in order to protect against FX risk. The result is an improvement in their currency management and internal efficiency.

“For a travel firm operating on the global market, currency fluctuation makes daily planning more complicated. With Kantox's Dynamic Hedging product, we are able to fully monitor the risk related to exchange rate fluctuations and to execute hedging operations automatically. This way, we can optimise cross-border transactions with minimum effort,” said Jasmin Taylor, the Managing Director of JT Touristik. 

“Dynamic Hedging has seen exponential growth, so we expect to be managing $1 billion through this solution in 2017,” added Gelis.

What is Kantox Dynamic Hedging?

Kantox Dynamic Hedging is a solution geared towards companies that regularly make transactions in multiple currencies, allowing them to both automate and centralise the management of their multi-currency exposure. It is the ideal fit for such firms operating in sectors like travel and e-commerce, among others. 

Dynamic Hedging offers continuous, real-time monitoring of the exchange rate in every currency and execution of transactions in order to take advantage of market movements. Further benefits include time savings and increased security, because transactions, while automatically completed, are made according to clearly defined rules and with total visibility.

Saxo Bank, the online trading and investment specialist, announces today that it is transforming fixed income trading with the launch of the first truly digital trading solution for corporate and government bonds. As part of the launch, Saxo Bank will offer its clients access to trading opportunities in over 5,000 investment grade and high yield corporate and government bonds from all over the world and in 20 different currencies. The solution will be rolled out in October on SaxoTraderGO, the bank’s multi-asset trading platform.

Saxo Bank will combine its technological prowess and its relationship with 40 of the largest liquidity providers in the bond markets to offer both retail and institutional clients more transparent, cheaper and more efficient access to fixed income trading opportunities. The move is set to revolutionise the way investors trade bonds – a process which currently involves a manual “request for quote” from a very small number of banks, and in some instances a single bank. The current process is inefficient as it does not explore the depth of the liquidity and range of prices available in the marketplace.

Saxo Bank’s digital bond trading is connecting each client with the entire global bond market, in a direct, competitive, transparent, and efficient manner. Each bond order is directed to an optimized dealer auction which comprises up to 40 of largest bond liquidity providers. Thanks to technology, most trades are done within seconds, but, most importantly, clients will experience huge cost savings due to the competitive nature of the multi dealer environment. Saxo Bank’s ability to offer its clients a fully digital trading solution which has high scalability will allow it to offer, on average, a price improvement of 30 basis points for corporate bonds and 5-10 basis points for government bonds, according to the bank’s observations.

Large institutional investors have had access to electronic trading in liquid government and corporate bonds for a while, however, electronic bond trading has to date not been available to a large part of the investor base. Saxo Bank’s aim is to change that and democratise access to efficient bond trading.

Commenting on the launch Kim Fournais CEO and co-founder of Saxo Bank, said:

“It is hard to imagine a market which is more ripe for disruption than the bond market. Watching a bond trader trade over the phone, at a time when the internet has touched almost every area of financial markets, not to mention our lives, is a clear call for disruption. Investors need to ask themselves if they want to continue to trade based on an indicative price from a single bank or if they want to get the best price available from more than 40 global bonds providers, including some of the largest global banks.”

“Enabling our clients to trade bonds much more efficiently is an extension of our mission and history of democratizing investment and trading and levelling the playing field between institutions and retail investors when it comes to accessing financial markets“

Simon Fasdal, Head of Fixed Income Trading at Saxo Bank, commented:

“I am proud that the next step in Saxo Bank’s history of democratizing trading and investment is to truly digitize bond trading. Many providers who have attempted to address the issue of electronic bond trading have failed because they took the wrong approach by trying to copy equity style trading into a fragmented market and ignoring issues with liquidity and indicative prices. Others have stuck to a manual work stream, despite a digital frontend, and not really taken the step to a full digital value chain. We have engineered a front end that will present clients with a trading experience which is similar to that which they are accustomed to in equity trading, offering speed of execution and transparency, and the technology to cope with the much more complex nature of fragmented bond markets in a simple manner.”

“Client demand and regulatory pressure makes transparency absolutely key and with our new offering we will charge a commission, offering full transparency to clients, in contrast to the industry standard of a spread based system, which is not always a transparent way of pricing clients.”

As the SEPA scheme becomes applicable for non-Euro countries as well, EximBank, a Romanian state-owned bank dedicated to corporate financing,chooses to partner with Allevo in order to ensure the smooth alignment of bank operations to the SEPA standard.

By implementing the open-source transactions processing solution offered by Allevo,the bank nowprocessesits low-value payment instructions denominated in Euro according to the industry requirements.

Moreover, EximBank benefits ofa SWIFT validated solution for its conformity with SEPA (FinTP received the SWIFTReady SEPA label in 2008 and 2009) and of a practice proven open source solution, live with other banking customers both in Romania and abroad.

The successful collaboration between EximBank and Allevo started one year ago, when the bank chose to implementFinTP, the open source application for financial transactions processing developed by Allevo.

EximBank now takes one step further with the implementation of the feature dedicated to SEPA compliance. FinTP offers a technology that drives cost reduction and conveys full control over the source code of the application, thus eliminating the common vendor lock-in dependence, while gaining access to a transparentproduct development process and transparent product audit.

“EximBank is constantly concerned with upgrading its IT infrastructure aiming at supporting an improvement in services’ quality. We opted for Allevo’s solution dedicated to ensuring SEPA compliance after working closely with the company for automating the bank’s operations flows in relation with the external networks, but also considering the company’s expertise”,said Traian Halalai, Executive President  of EximBank.

Sorina Bera, CEO Allevo, commented, “Allevo is constantly working to ensure our customersimplementcompetitive solutions for their financial transaction processing in accordance with industryrequirements, standards compliance included. Weare recognized as one of the software vendorsthat allow our customersto remain competitive and improve their infrastructure for a long time now.”

HSBC UK business customers will enjoy a streamlined account opening experience following the launch of ‘selfie’ verification, giving businesses the option to complete ID security checks on their mobile device.

Available now, this latest digital enhancement simplifies the way businesses open an account by allowing ID verification to be securely completed in a few clicks on an Apple or Android device.

The mobile application works through utilising facial tracking technology to capture an initial headshot or ‘selfie’ of a customer. The headshot is then assessed against an ID document uploaded by the customer, such as a drivers licence or passport, with the application capable of recognising and verifying documents from up to 150 countries.

HSBC’s Head of Global Propositions for Commercial Banking, Richard Davies, said: “Through simplifying the ID verification process, we’ll be able to save our business customers time and open accounts quicker. We also expect the convenience and speed of a ‘selfie’ to become the verification method of choice for our customers, who no longer need to visit a branch to complete the process.”

The ‘selfie’ mobile application has been introduced to better meet the changing banking behaviours of customers, specifically their preference to use digital and online channels. This change of behaviour has become increasingly prominent in the way customers choose to open an account. Almost half of all new HSBC Business Current Accounts are now opened online, compared to just 10 per cent in 2013.

In addition to ‘selfie’ verification, HSBC also has the only digital platform that enables business customers to complete entire lending applications exclusively online. The LinkScreen service was launched for UK commercial banking customers in late 2015, and has since cut business application and approval times in half.

TAS Group, (Italian Stock Exchange: TAS), a global provider of innovative solutions in card management systems, financial messaging and capital markets, announced they have ranked in the Top 100 on the 2016 IDC Financial Insights FinTech Rankings. The most comprehensive vendor ranking within the financial services industry, the annual IDC FI FinTech Rankings is based on 2015 calendar year revenues attributed to financial institutions.
 
CEO of TAS Group Valentino Bravi said, “We are proud to continuously reaffirm our financial sector expertise, delivering first class software and services with a globalized footprint to our growing customer base in the Banking sector. Being recognized in the IDC Financial Insights FinTech Rankings for the eighth consecutive year witnesses our commitment and ability in adapting our functional and commercial capabilities to the rapidly changing competitive landscape.”

Already a leader in the Italian market and an integral provider of fintech solutions to commercial banks and central institutions throughout Europe, TAS Group has set their sights on increasing their global presence through their signature customer-centric approach for delivering innovative solutions. Ramping up of their card payments offering, cashless 3.0™, in Europe and the Americas, empowering their financial messaging Network Gateway proposition to cover Instant Payments and Distributed Ledger based real-time payments, plus driving the European T2S first wave migration of Securities Market operators through their unique Aquarius platform, are among TAS latest achievements.
 
Now in its 13th year, the IDC Financial Insights FinTech Rankings categorize and evaluate the top global providers of financial technology based on calendar year revenues from financial institutions for hardware, software and/or services. These providers supply the technological backbone of the financial services industry, an industry in which IDC Financial Insights forecasts worldwide spending on IT across the globe to reach half a trillion dollars by 2018.
 
The annual IDC Financial Insights FinTech Rankings has become an important measure of the health and direction of technology in the industry and the emergence of innovative solutions from new players. In addition, the IDC Financial Insights FinTech Rankings serve as a critical tool for financial services institutions to use during strategic planning and to review whenever they consider new investments in 3rd party solutions. IDC Financial Insights publishes a comprehensive report about the year's findings that is available to view or download HERE.
For more information about the rankings, visit HERE and follow on Twitter @IDC and look for #FinTechRankings.

A new study released by Cognizant, a global leader in information technology, business consulting and business process services, reveals that European CIOs must move out of a “cost centre” or “chief problem-fixer” role and into a strategic leadership position in an organisation to maintain competitive advantage as the digital wave continues to sweep the world. 

The report, Being Digital: How and Why CIOs in Europe Are Reinventing Themselves for a New Age, outlines that, for truly digital companies, the digital experience does not stop at the customer touchpoint but is reflected in everything the business does, from operations through to the culture itself. The CIO now plays an increasingly central role in this.

Act as digital strategists and transformational leaders

The survey found that European CIOs are up for this digital challenge. However, currently only one-third of respondents are involved with leading digital transformation at their organisation. The report discusses how, to elevate their role in this shift, CIOs need to redefine themselves as digital leaders, with 73% of CIOs believing they must act as digital strategists and transformational leaders (74%). Recognising their crucial role in digital transformation, two-thirds agreed that digital success requires them to take a hands-on approach to translating the vast possibilities into tangible business results.

Understand and take advantage of next-generation technologies

The technology approaches and IT infrastructures of the past cannot support the new capabilities demanded by the digital era. Today, CIOs need a next-generation IT strategy, which shifts away from a monolithic, big-system approach, to an agile, adaptive one that is made up of modular components, plug-and-play capabilities through open APIs, and easily implemented micro-services and as-a-service processes and applications and the latest technologies such as social, mobile, analytics, cloud, IoT, ‘bots’ and machine learning. The report is clear; successful digital leaders need to and make the most of these technologies to enhance automation, engagement, prediction and execution.

Form collaborative partnerships across the organisation

The report also found that to be seen as a digital leader, CIOs need to nurture strong partnerships within the organisation, advising and serving as a key influencers or a “centre of excellence” for all things digital. In fact, nearly three-quarters of respondents named C-suite collaboration as key to digital success. However, this is not the only partnership the CIO must make. The CIO must become directly engaged and embedded in key digital initiatives and play a central role in the development and commercialisation of these initiatives, working with different teams and departments from across the entire business. Above all, the CIO needs to change core processes and culture, enabling a more agile approach, rather than traditional, slow means of securing investments in IT projects.

Develop digital talent a key requirement

The study also found that CIOs need to recruit, nurture and retain digital talent, emphasising not just technical, but also creative, social and business skills. Over two-thirds of respondents said that a key element of success for digital transformation is the CIO’s ability to actively collaborate with talent acquisition teams to attain the required skills. CIOs have to concentrate on balancing their team with people who excel in, for example, design thinking or technology architecture and bring together these two schools of thought when designing a solution.

Phil Dunmore, Head of Consulting, UK at Cognizant, explains: “CIOs need to lead the change for companies to go from merely ‘doing’ digital to ‘being’ digital to enable new business models, improve operational agility, develop innovative products and services, and deliver a more personalised and engaging customer experience. We see true IT leaders poised to be the next CEOs, moving away from simply being the ‘Chief Problem Fixing Officer’. Now is the time for CIOs to take the leap — to fully commit to a new way of thinking and truly transform themselves to be digital in the new age of business.”

The report Being Digital: How and Why CIOs in Europe Are Reinventing Themselves for a New Age, also identifies six key steps that CIOs should take to drive digital.

Apple®  introduced iPhone® 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, the best, most advanced iPhone ever, packed with unique innovations that improve all the ways iPhone is used every day. The new iPhone features new advanced camera systems that take pictures like never before, more power and performance with the best battery life ever in an iPhone, immersive stereo speakers, wide color system from camera to display, two new beautiful finishes, and is the first water and dust resistant iPhone. iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will be available in more than 25 countries beginning Friday, September 16.

“iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus dramatically improve every aspect of the iPhone experience, reaching a new level of innovation and precision to make this the best iPhone we have ever made,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “The completely redesigned cameras shoot incredible photos and videos day or night, the A10 Fusion chip is the most powerful chip on any smartphone while delivering the best battery life ever in an iPhone, and an entirely new stereo speaker system provides twice the sound, all within the first water and dust resistant iPhone.”

New Advanced Camera Systems

iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus take the world’s most popular camera and make it even better with entirely new camera systems. The 12-megapixel camera includes optical image stabilization on both iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, and a larger ƒ/1.8 aperture and 6-element lens enable brighter, more detailed photos and videos, and a wide color capture allows for more vibrant colors with more detail. iPhone 7 Plus features the same 12-megapixel wide angle camera as iPhone 7 and adds a 12-megapixel telephoto camera that together offer optical zoom at two times and up to 10 times digital zoom for photos.

Coming later this year, the dual 12-megapixel cameras also enable a new depth-of-field effect, using both cameras on iPhone 7 Plus to capture images, while sophisticated technology including Machine Learning separates the background from the foreground to achieve amazing portraits once possible only with DSLR cameras.

Additional Camera Advancements Include:

• New Apple-designed Image Signal Processor, which processes over 100 billion operations on a single photo in as little as 25 milliseconds, resulting in incredible photos and videos;

• New 7-megapixel FaceTime® HD camera with wide color capture, advanced pixel technology and auto image stabilization for even better selfies; and

• New Quad-LED True Tone® flash that is 50 percent brighter than iPhone 6s including an innovative sensor that detects the flickering in lights and compensates for it in videos and photos.

More Performance & Battery Life

The new custom-designed Apple A10 Fusion chip features a new architecture that powers these innovations, making it the most powerful chip ever in a smartphone, while also getting more time between charges with the longest battery life ever in an iPhone. The A10 Fusion’s CPU now has four cores, seamlessly integrating two high-performance cores that run up to two times faster than iPhone 6, and two high-efficiency cores that are capable of running at just one-fifth the power of the high-performance cores. Graphics performance is also more powerful, running up to three times faster than iPhone 6 at as little as half the power, enabling a new level of gaming and professional apps.

Both phones include support for up to 25 LTE bands, for the best worldwide roaming in the industry, and LTE Advanced for three times faster data rates than iPhone 6 at up to 450 Mbps. For customers in Japan, iPhone will now support the leading FeliCa contactless technology, bringing the ability to use credit and prepaid cards, including on iD and QuicPay domestic networks, and Suica, Japan’s dominant transit card issued by JR East, the world’s largest transit operator.

An Amazing Audio Experience

New stereo speakers offer amazing and immersive sound that is two times louder than iPhone 6s, offering increased dynamic range of sound and a higher quality speakerphone. The new iPhone comes with EarPods® with Lightning® connector to deliver incredible sound, as well as a 3.5 mm headphone jack adapter that allows customers to use old headphones and accessories.

New AirPods™, Apple’s innovative new wireless headphones, weave simplicity and technology together to reinvent the wireless experience making headphones easy to use. Featuring the new Apple W1 chip, AirPods have extremely efficient wireless communication for a better connection, improved sound and industry-leading battery life. AirPods harness the power of Siri®, allowing you to access your favorite personal assistant with just a double tap.

Design That Makes a Splash

The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus come in a gorgeous design in silver, gold and rose gold finishes and introduce two all-new black finishes, a beautiful black finish that has an anodized matte appearance, and an innovative jet black finish that has a deep, high-gloss look. The new jet black finish is accomplished through an innovative nine-step process of anodization and polish for a uniform, glossy finish. An entirely reengineered enclosure results in a water resistant iPhone offering protection like never before against spills, splashes and dust.

The new iPhone features the brightest, most colorful Retina® HD display ever in an iPhone, now with a wide color gamut for cinema-standard colors, greater color saturation and the best color management in the smartphone industry. An all-new, advanced, solid-state Home button on iPhone 7 is designed to be durable and responsive, and working in tandem with the new Taptic Engine®, provides more precise and customizable tactile feedback.

Featuring iOS 10, the Biggest iOS Release Ever

iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus come with iOS 10, the biggest release ever of the world’s most advanced mobile operating system. iOS 10 introduces a huge update to Messages that delivers more expressive and animated ways to message friends and family, the ability for Siri to do more by working with apps, new ways to interact with apps and even more places to use 3D Touch™, beautifully redesigned Maps, Photos, Apple Music® and News apps, and the Home app, delivering a simple and secure way to manage home automation products in one place. iOS 10 also opens up incredible opportunities for developers with Siri, Maps, Phone and Messages APIs, allowing customers to do more than ever with the apps they love to use.

Pricing & Availability

• iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will be available in silver, gold, rose gold and the new black finish in 32GB, 128GB and 256GB models starting at $649 (US), and the new jet black finish will be offered exclusively on the 128GB and 256GB models from Apple.com, Apple Stores, Apple Authorized Resellers and select carriers.

• Through Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program, customers in the US, and for the first time in the UK and China, can get an unlocked iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus, with the protection of AppleCare®+, choose their carrier and have the opportunity to upgrade to a new iPhone every year. The iPhone Upgrade Program is available at Apple.com and Apple Stores in the US with monthly payments starting at $32.

• Customers will be able to order iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus beginning Friday, September 9, with availability beginning Friday, September 16, in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, UAE, the UK, US Virgin Islands and the US.

• iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will be available in Andorra, Bahrain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Greenland, Guernsey, Hungary, Iceland, Isle of Man, Jersey, Kosovo, Kuwait, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Maldives, Malta, Monaco, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia and Slovenia beginning Friday, September 23. iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will also be available to customers in India beginning Friday, October 7.

• The new Apple-designed wireless AirPods including charging case will be available for $159 (US) from Apple.com and Apple Stores beginning in late October. All iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus models will include EarPods with Lightning Connector and a Lightning to 3.5 mm Headphone Jack Adapter, also sold separately at Apple.com and Apple Stores, for $29 (US) and $9 (US), respectively.

• Apple-designed accessories including leather and silicone cases in a range of colors will be available starting at $35 (US) and iPhone 7 Smart Battery Case will be offered in black and white for $99 (US) from Apple.com and Apple Stores. Lightning Docks in several color-matching metallic finishes will also be available for $49 (US).

• Every customer who buys iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus from Apple will be offered free Personal Setup, in-store or online, to help them customize their iPhone by setting up email, showing them new apps from the App Store® and more.

• Anyone who wants to learn more about iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus or iOS 10 can register for the free workshops offered at every Apple Store®.