Wipro Limited, a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company,  announced the launch of its analytics solution, Data Discovery Platform. The solution provides pertinent business insights across the value chain of an industry through pre-defined "apps".

Relevant and actionable insights are imperative to making faster and informed decisions. However, organizations today across industries face the challenge of bridging the gap between what the business wants and what information is offered. Businesses grapple with the inability of traditional systems to provide the contextual insights needed to differentiate and drive the business in a hyper-competitive and digitally driven world.

Wipro's Data Discovery Platform will enable businesses to embark on an analytics journey with value added services of process simplification and business transformation. Leveraging techniques like visual sciences and storytelling with data, the Data Discovery Platform provides a unique value proposition around accelerated time to market for insights resulting in better adoption of insight driven decision making. The solution's modular, app driven approach coupled with machine learning, natural language processing, visualization and stream computing capability enables flexibility and scalability to meet evolving business requirements. The solution also plans to leverage capabilities from various partners to enhance the experience offered to the organizations.

Pallab Deb, Vice President & Global Head, Analytics - Wipro Limited said, "With more and more businesses moving towards accelerated decision-making, Insights-as-a-Service has taken priority and industry is looking for service providers, who can provide insights relevant to their business. The Data Discovery Platform, with its industry apps offers robust end-to-end fabric covering the entire spectrum of Data-Information-Insights, thereby empowering customers with pertinent insights to make faster decisions. Built using best of breed open source technologies, the solution leverages cognitive capabilities from Wipro HOLMES Artificial Intelligence Platform™ to bring to life the hidden insights in large & diverse data sets."

NuData Security announced  that Randy Lukashuk has been appointed to the new role of principal product architect and that Jon Cunningham has been named the director of customer development. Both will report directly to Christopher Bailey, NuData's chief technical officer. The moves reflect NuData's strategic growth in its product and customer development teams in response to high customer demand and customer focus values.

Following rapid adoption of its NuDetect solution, NuData more than doubled behavioral transaction volume in the past year and increased its revenue at a double-digit rate. These new appointments will help the company steward its growth to serve customers through ongoing innovation.

  As NuData's principal product architect, Lukashuk will focus on product-related design and architecture, plus contribute product knowledge and expertise to the technology and business teams.

    Previously the director of customer development at NuData, Lukashuk built out the integration, analytics and feature teams and assisted in onboarding key new customers. Previously, Lukashuk was the company's lead application developer. He has held developer or programmer roles at NuData, Threewave Software and Relic Entertainment.

  As director of customer development, Cunningham will lead the analytics, integration and feature teams.

    When joining NuData Security, Cunningham was the lead of feature development. He played a critical role onboarding new customers, delivering technical features and supporting key initiatives with some of NuData's key pilot projects. Before coming to NuData, he was the senior architect at Piranha Games Inc, the maker of Canada's largest massively multiplayer online game. In that role, he built out a massive distributed global data center with nodes in North America, the European Union and Asia. 

Christopher Bailey, CTO, NuData Security, said:
"Both of these appointments are well deserved. They reflect our determination to support all of our team members in seeking excellence and to reward outstanding performance. These promotions also signify our desire to constantly improve as an organization so that we can continue to provide the best of breed security products our customers expect."

On June 17-19, SDK.finance team was presenting loyalty program solution at BNP Paribas International Hackaton weekend in Warsaw.

Mixing the bold innovation of today’s tech startups with the insights and resources of a forward-thinking banking group, amazing things happen. BNP Paribas is committed to working side by side with today’s savviest tech entrepreneurs to unlock creativity and apply breakthrough solutions to real-life situations in order to make life easier for our customers.

The BNP Paribas International Hackathon brought out the best FinTech startups in an atmosphere of friend. The hackathon took place simultaneously across 8 cities (San Francisco, Istanbul, London, Rome, Warsaw, Brussels, Berlin and Paris).

SDK.finance team was presenting our solution in Warsaw. We had privileged access to external experts as well as a unique suite of resources to help us prototype: fresh customer insights, a sandbox API, as well as top experts ranging from marketing executives to IT architects.

The BNP Paribas API Sandbox allows to easily create financial applications that access bank, customer, account and transaction resources. BNP Paribas offers a large amount of anonymized data for the startups to shape a real-life solution. Open Bank Project was a technological partner of this competition.

Integration BNP Paribas databases and SDK back-end with Open Bank Project allowed us to get full-fledged loyalty program for bank’s Clients during one weekend.

SDK.finance loyalty program solution for BNP Paribas

The face of the bank is changing and customers demand more from their chosen bank than just traditional banking services. SDK.finance developed new value for bank named Loyalty Net. It is an addition to the bank account of the user which displays all discount options and loyalty offers and tracks the money saved.

The bank gains higher loyalty of existing customers and creates new traction through the merchants that are part of the system. Loyalty Net allows all the clients of the bank to be a part of a new ecosystem and all in one account. It is simply enough for a customer to open a bank account with BNP Paribas and get an access to all privileges of Loyalty Net.

‘Loyalty functionality is fulfilled on our software. The only one thing we need is the data exchange with BNP via API. All customer data is stored on the bank's side. It is 100% secure. It means that we can integrate it to the BNP Paribas systems with Open Bank Project within one week. It should be noticed that this solution is highly customizable to reflect the changing needs of the retailers, BNP Paribas and its customers.’, comments SDK.finance CTO Pavlo Sidelov.

This hackathon was a great win-win event for all participants. BNP Paribas got easy access to ready-to-scale product innovations and validated disruptive business models. They met new products and potential partnerships with new high-growth businesses which demonstrated new opportunities for the bank. FinTech companies like SDK.finance and Open Bank Project got the possibility to demonstrate the functionality and scalbility of their solutions. It was was a mutual enrichment event where top FinTech players shared their experiences and knowledge on how to develop new products in the fastest way.

Our congrats to the winners of this year in Warsaw electronic signature platform Autenti and investment software Indata. Special thanks to  BNP Paribas hackathon expert group, support team and Thibaut Rouquette, head of Ecosystem Development at D-RAFT. He was a head of organization team and recommended SDK.finance to BNP Paribas hackathon. We are grateful to him for that.

We are planning to organize our own hackathon for FinTech developers to demonstrate the opportunities of our multi product platform SDK.finance. A wide variety of payment products can be built using our platform, including payment system, E-wallet, payment processing, P2P money transfer, gift & prepaid cards, currency exchange, card-to-card payments, mobile bank and Internet banking. Stay updated.

The 2^nd edition of the BNP Paribas International Hackathon took place last week-end in 8 countries simultaneously. 96 startups competed to create solutions around the theme: “Streamlining the Customer Journey through co-creation with startups.”

Last week-end, startups joined forces in order to find the best solutions to address this year’s theme: “Streamlining the Customer Journey through co-creation with startups.”

In San Francisco, London, Paris, Brussels, Rome, Berlin, Warsaw and Istanbul, teams including both startups and experts from different divisions of the Group, were all interconnected simultaneously, to develop solutions for the benefit of clients.

This event was organised and sponsored by Thierry Laborde, BNP Paribas Deputy COO and Head of Domestic Markets and Jacques d’Estais, BNP Paribas Deputy COO and Head of International Financial Services.

On Sunday night, 18 startups were selected to develop their projects during the second stage: the Digital Boot-camp.

The winners per country are:

In the UK for BNP Paribas CIB:

·         Atsora platform is a “virtual CFO” for SME helping with cashflow and business model planning, cost optimization and sales. Platform is seamlessly integrated with bank account, online accounting and other SaaS business applications in order to provide real-time view on business and help with day-by-day decisions. 

·         Symetrics is a risk technology company that offers SyMath, a strategic risk analytics software platform for financial institutions.

In France:

For Retail Banking France and Cardif:

·         Excense SAS co-creates, designs and develops software solutions to enhance human-to-human interactions in commercial and collaborative environments.

·         Cadre de Vie sells several APIs to generate real-estate leads. It identifies customers likely to move in the short term and shares this information with other partners  who can benefit  from additional  leads.

·         For Personal Finance:

·         Carsift is a car recommendation engine which understands consumers’ emotional and practical needs to help them find the perfect car.

In the US for Bank of the West:

·         KaChing makes it easy for parents to create custodial investment accounts for their kids so that families can start investment portfolios with the touch of a button

·         Spacequant provides an automated research platform for commercial real estate investors and lenders, helping analyze where to invest and how well a property is likely to perform

In Belgium for BNP Paribas Fortis:

·         Birdee/Gambit repositions clients at the center of the investment advisory process with an adaption of a robo-advisor solution.

·         Ixor used its IoT platform IxorTalk to create a product adding value and convenience to BNP Paribas Fortis clients. Through the EasyBanking app, they allow the clients to access the BNP Paribas parkings and meeting rooms in a frictionless way using their smartphone.

In Italy for BNL:

·         Almonds provides semantic analysis and a new collaborative space with accountants

·         Windmills “BNL|US” funds customer dream home with an innovative loan that let borrowers get more capital by leveraging trust from friends, family and fans

For Personal Finance:

·         All Industries “Web 3.0 Innovative Chat Bot” allow customers to interact smartly with their Bank!

In Germany for Consorsbank:

·         Hi Emma helps users who want to do their banking in a hassle freeway by providing a human interface to banking services. It has set up a bot in established messaging channels that connects to the user’s financial account.

·         Aboalarm is a leading mobile & web-based contract management service in Germany enabling private persons to easily cancel contracts and keep the perfect overview of all contracts (insurances, cable, electricity,gas, etc). Aboalarm is the only full-service/web-service that helps users to cancel auto-renewing contracts.

In Poland for BGZ BNP Paribas:

·         Autenti is a platform that approves documents and signs contracts online to bring more sales and happy customers with one-click e-signatures

·         Indata provides advanced IT services and complex software products supported by professional business consulting services

In Turkey for TEB:

·         Birlikte.al is a real estate crowdfunding platform which offers instant credit to customers in order to invest in real estate, while enabling SMEs to find funds through the platform by selling their property and become a renter.

·         Hesapkurdu is a single platform and a continuous experience for a fast, easy-to-use digital mortgage process and immediate online approval.

The BNP Paribas International Hackathon encompasses 3 steps: 1/ the Week-end, 2/ the Digital Boot-camp, where startups will be able to call upon the know-how of BNP Paribas experts so as to optimise their chances of success. After this 5 month period, teams will present their projects to an international jury at the international Demo Day… to enter, maybe, the phase 3/ the Prototyping period in order to implement their solution within the BNP Paribas Group.

 Fidessa group plc (LSE: FDSA) has today announced a new partnership with Commcise that brings to the market a transactional method for funding Research Payment Accounts (RPAs). This allows the industry to support evolving MiFID II regulatory requirements whilst at the same time improving operational efficiency.

It is estimated that 75% of European buy-sides pay for research via Commission Sharing Agreements (CSAs) which allows them to reward providers of research via dealing commissions. But under the new rules endorsed in the Delegated Directive released by the European Commission on 7th April 2016, buy-sides must clearly demonstrate that the research charge is separately identifiable to the client. In addition, they will need to be able to demonstrate that they have robust processes in place for tracking and measuring what is spent. One approach to the problem is to charge upfront research fees to end investors which are then used to fund an RPA. This approach, however, requires renegotiation of every single relationship between the fund manager and their end investors and, under current legislation, will also be liable to VAT. As a result, many firms have been looking at how they can fund their RPAs using dealing commissions thereby maintaining the approach introduced by CSAs.

Under the traditional CSA model buy-side and sell-side firms agree commission splits in advance of executing a trade. The new approach moves this decision into the post-trade arena which makes it both more efficient and less open to conflict. Furthermore, the asset manager is now empowered to determine exactly how much commission should be added to trades at a fund level. This creates a model that respects fund level budgets and can also be considered across asset types.

Fidessa and Commcise have worked together to provide a solution that leverages the strengths of the market-leading technology that both firms represent. Commcise Buy, the award winning buy-side focused commission management platform, provides an algorithmic rules engine that dynamically calculates research charges at allocation level for the asset manager. Fidessa's award winning AMS global post-trade utility provides buy-sides and sell-sides with workflow and technology to confirm and affirm these trades. Under the terms of the partnership, AMS has been extended to support this buy-side determined research charge so that can it can be delivered directly into sell-side settlement operations.

Steve Grob, Director of Group Strategy at Fidessa, commented: "Firms wishing to use an RPA have to demonstrate competence in three distinct areas: (i) funding; (ii) research evaluation; and (iii) reporting. The approach proposed by Fidessa and Commcise reuses existing CSA infrastructure to simply and effectively solve this funding challenge for the industry. We were approached by Commcise as they have already solved the research evaluation and reporting elements required to demonstrate compliance with the new MiFID II regulations."

Amrish Ganatra, Managing Director of Commcise, commented: "We are excited to announce our partnership with Fidessa as it provides the industry with a natural evolution to the existing CSA model. By allowing asset managers to determine a research charge independent of their trade execution, any suggestion of conflict is removed and, at the same time, the research charges can respect budgets. Above all, they can be calculated in a manner that is not linked to trading value or volume which lies at the heart of the new regulations. Whilst we have started with cash equities, we know that this can be applied across multiple asset types too. Fidessa AMS is not based around central matching and so allows the buy-side to drive this process. In this way, AMS provides the ideal transport mechanism and workflow to ensure that trades can efficiently settle under this new model."

Kuberplay, an SDK-based service, offers a solution for app developers to monetize their applications, retain users and enhance consumer experience by empowering mobile users who choose to watch videos, subscribe to services, install applications and participate in other types of advertisements.

India with around 300,000 app developers is the second largest Android-developer community in the world and with the average mobile app usage in India growing by at least 131%, India has outpaced the global growth rate in app development. App development has created about 75,000 direct jobs in India, and has the potential to reach 600,000 over a period of time. However, monetisation of app development remains a challenge. Over 70% of app developers close shop because of inability to monetize their apps.

Kuberplay will help app developers monetize their app, especially for the customers who only access the free component of the app and desire the complete app but are unable to buy the app because they are expensive. The global purchase of in-app purchase is only 2%; through Kuberplay this can increase up to 10% helping them towards financially-viable business models. By integrating Kuberplay into their app, the revenue of an app developer in consumer premium space can increase by 25 to 30%.

Upal Pradhan, Founder and CEO, Kratos, says, "Kuberplay will change the game for app developers, and this will be the impetus for an evolution in mobile app development. Mobile has become a part of an individual's life management, and there is considerable development happening and possible through creation of new apps. We are happy to contribute towards this, as it will unleash creativity and innovation, that earlier faced the challenge of monetisation. As a company, we have always been innovative in using our competencies in technology and our deep understanding of the mobile ecosystem to create platforms that provide a win-win scenario for all. We are hoping for this to be a complete game changer for the mobile app ecosystem."

DHgate and SGS announce a Strategic Cooperation Agreement. SGS has rich experience in the product verification industry and quality control of e-commerce products. DHgate will work with SGS on improving the quality of sellers' services and products, thereby building brand image and reputation.

Rapid globalization and fierce competition have changed the consumers' shopping behavior. Consumers not only care about the price of products, but also the safety, quality and environmental friendliness. According to the Strategic Cooperation Agreement, SGS will provide DHgate's sellers with many services, which include on-site inspection, product testing, verification, consultancy and other quality control services. The on-site inspection will contribute to DHgate's digital supply system, so that DHgate will be able to accurately meet consumers' needs and promote cross-border e-commerce on a larger scale. The product testing is expected to mitigate risks and shorten the time for listing products, in addition, it will also prove the quality and safety of raw materials, spare parts and products.  

The on-site inspection and product testing will constitute part of DHgate's guaranteed services. The products which pass the verification and testing process will have special indicators and enjoy many privileges, such as more traffic, advertisement on the DHgate APP promotion zone, and will be featured on a special zone of DHgate.com for products that specifically pass SGS inspection. This guaranteed services will develop more high quality sellers and promote positive seller performance.

• 14.06.2016 -- 10:40 am

Chris Principe interviews Kurt Cavano Founder, Vice Chairman & Chief Strategy Officer at GT Nexus (FormerlyTradeCard) at The Talent Show SCF in Copenhagen.

Path Solutions, the first Islamic IT provider, proudly announces today the successful upgrade of iMAL core banking system at Gulf African Bank in Kenya. The Islamic core banking system was upgraded to R14 on 30^th April 2016.

Gulf African Bank has scaled up its investment, upgrading to the latest Java version of iMAL as part of a major modernization project across its retail and corporate banking business.

By upgrading to iMAL R14 across all areas of the bank, Gulf African Bank will benefit from the open architecture and componentized approach that underpins the bank’s resilient operational performance. With a more efficient branch network, a feature-rich banking experience and the ability to add on new functionalities quickly and easily, Gulf African Bank will be able grow its business and meet changing customer and market requirements.

Gulf African Bank Managing Director, Abdalla Abdulkhalik commented on the success of the system upgrade saying: “We took up the opportunity to upgrade our core banking system as a result of business growth coupled with a need to meet rapidly evolving market requirements”. And he continued, “The transition to the latest version of iMAL fits perfectly with our aim of modernization and will help Gulf African Bank deliver on its strategy. In doing so, we can realize our clients’ expectations of being the central hub for all of their Islamic banking needs. We remain confident that iMAL R14 will enable us to differentiate ourselves in a highly competitive market and achieve our goal of being the number one Islamic bank in Kenya”.

Path Solutions’ team executed the project upgrade according to agreed timelines, within budget and to a quality that exceeded Gulf African Bank’s high expectations, with improvement in system performance as a result of a major architectural change and technology enhancements. The success of this upgrade is the outcome of excellent cooperation amongst all stakeholders including Gulf African Bank’s management and project team.

The relationship between Path Solutions and Gulf African Bank began in 2007, and has seen great milestones over the years. This successful upgrade is set to further support Gulf African Bank’s growth aspirations of achieving new heights in the Islamic banking sector.

BNP Paribas is to run a second International Hackathon from 17 to 19 June. More countries will be involved this year – eight, up from five for the 2015 event. The theme of the 2016 Hackathon is: ‘Streamlining the Customer Journey through co-creation with start-ups.’ 

This year San Francisco, London, Paris, Brussels, Rome, Berlin, Warsaw and Istanbul will all play host to the BNP Paribas International Hackathon. In each of these cities, 10 - 15 tech start-ups will be working in tandem with various BNP Paribas businesses on customer-oriented projects designed to improve the customer journey in such areas as home purchase, consumer goods, treasury services for small and medium sized businesses, and online finance advisory.

Interested tech start-ups may apply to take part in the event – entitled ‘Streamlining the Customer Journey through co-creation with start-ups’ – via the international-hackathon.bnpparibas/ website. The selected teams will work simultaneously in the eight host cities on the weekend of 17 -19 June.

The start-ups will be working alongside a number of BNP Paribas Group businesses including French Retail Banking, BNP Paribas Fortis, Bank of the West, TEB, BNL, BGZ BNP Paribas, Consorsbank, BNP Paribas Corporate & Institutional Banking, BNP Paribas Personal Finance and BNP Paribas Cardif.

“The BNP Paribas International Hackathon is a multi-country, multi-business programme which demonstrates our long-term involvement with start-ups,” underlined Jacques d’Estais, BNP Paribas Deputy COO and Head of International Financial Services, explaining: “Following the weekend event, the selected finalists will be invited to take part in a 5-month Digital Bootcamp, where they will fine-tune their projects with assistance from the Group’s in-house experts and will make their final pitches at the Demo Day in December. The winning teams will then go forward to the prototyping phase, during which they will each work hand-in-hand with one of the BNP Paribas Group’s businesses.”

“With this second round of the International Hackathon, we continue to drive forward our digital transformation in a spirit of partnership that is mutually beneficial to both the Bank and the participating start-ups. This is yet another addition to the strong ecosystem that we’re building around Open Innovation,” stressed Thierry Laborde, BNP Paribas Deputy COO and Head of Domestic Markets, pointing out: “These efforts we’re making will enable us to develop technological innovations in line with the various Customer Journeys that we’ve set out in our 2020 Strategic Plan.” 

The start-ups will retain their rights to the intellectual property arising from any projects that are implemented at the Group. Each of the six winning start-ups from the 2015 Hackathon is currently working to develop its project in tandem with one of the BNP Paribas businesses.

What has happened in the meantime to last year’s winners?

 is offering a single user identification service, which transforms the final user’s smartphone into a simple and secure authentication key. Logmote is currently taking part in an incubation programme at the WeAreInnovation (WAI) space in Paris, with support from tech innovation specialist L’Atelier BNP Paribas and French Retail Banking.

draws up behavioural profiles by analysing the characteristics – speed, force applied, etc. – of users when they identify themselves on their various connected devices, including mobile phone, PC and tablet.

, which specialises in Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning applied to business needs, has set out to revolutionise Social Media Intelligence with its unique platform, which is designed to understand concepts expressed in texts such as Tweets and email messages and in images on sites such as Instagram according to their context, as a human being would do, but in an automated manner and on a very large scale. The team, which is currently undergoing Incubation at the WAI space in Paris with support from L’Atelier BNP Paribas and BNP Paribas Personal Finance, is preparing a POC for a semantic analysis engine.

 uses customers’ transaction and biographical data in order to establish behavioural profiles and identify their various life events. This information enables service providers to address the customer in the most appropriate way. The start-up has just signed a contract with insurance specialist BNP Paribas Cardif to test out this solution.

has come up with a solution for making cheque payments paperless. SnapCheck shares offices with L’Atelier USA in San Francisco, which is helping the start-up to forge partnerships with Bank of the West in-house teams and external suppliers.

 , which has developed a mobile app that facilitates invoice settlement, is currently reviewing its partnership strategy with support from the teams at Bank of the West.

Programme site: international-hackathon.bnpparibas