OptionsCity Software, the provider of electronic trading solutions, today announced that the company has completed conformance testing with CME Europe, a new London-based derivatives exchange (subject to Financial Conduct Authority Approval) and wholly owned subsidiary of CME Group. Upon the September 29, 2013 launch date of the exchange, and pending regulatory approval, OptionsCity will provide its clients that are members of the exchange with direct access to CME Europe.

“We are pleased to offer our customers access to trading futures on CME Europe,” replied Hazem Dawani, CEO of OptionsCity Software. “Our direct connectivity will offer highly reliable access and further competitiveness for our clients, allowing them to capitalize on opportunities in new markets. This is a milestone in our expansion in Europe.”

OptionsCity customers will be able to choose between trading the initial range of FX futures on CME Globex or by submitting block or EFPS trades via CME ClearPort for clearing. Clearing services will be provided by CME Clearing Europe, the London-based clearing house regulated by the Bank of England.

Customers will access products listed for trading on CME Europe via OptionsCity’s Metro and Freeway platforms. Metro, the firm’s flagship electronic trading and market making platform fully integrates with Freeway, a multi-asset automated trading platform that gives developers and traders a comprehensive development environment to create and back-test automated trading strategies, and execute trades to the market with micro-second speed.

Sathapana Limited (SPN), the leading MFI in Cambodia, has selected ECS to offer ATM and card services to their customers. The PA-DSS compliant electraSWITCH™ and electraDEBIT™ products, will power Sathapana’s endeavour to provide world-class electronic banking services to their customers. 

Sathapana operates through 101 offices (74 branches and 27 POS terminals) and covers 24 provinces including the capital Phnom Penh. The MARUHAN Japan Bank, has a majority stake in Sathapana Limited, and together aim to introduce new products and further expand the branch network and reach to the provincial customers. 

ECS’ electraSWITCH™ and electraDEBIT™ solution will facilitate Sathapana to offer to its customers access to a wide range of delivery channels. Sathapana plans to leverage the electra suite to roll out innovative and effective ways to deliver value to its account cardholders and will provide customers with an integrated and trusted micro-financial service that is secure and convenient. Sathapana will be offering a bouquet of value added services such as cardless remittance, mobile top-up, dual currency dispensing (KHR and USD), cheque and cash deposit through the electra platform. 

Dr. Bun Mony, Chief Executive Officer, Sathapana Limited said, “To accomplish the vision of long-term development, the company is committed to diversify services to meet consumers’ demand and expand operational areas to all provinces and cities in the country so as to fulfil the financial need of the Cambodian citizens. The function of microfinance institutions is the key to empowering the vast majority of Cambodians in their aspirations of becoming self-reliant and this is what Sathapana has been doing. The partnership with ECS is a step in this direction; towards economic growth.”

Solutions for Smart Order Routing (SOR) have been widely spread within the world financial market community in the past few years. Today many brokers use it as a principal technology for building trading strategies. Following the tendency as well as meeting client needs, ARQA Technologies has developed a solution to automate financial institutions operations at several trading venues to achieve a definite goal (for ex., best execution) - QUIK SOR. 

QUIK SOR functionality includes forming an aggregate Level2Qutes table for several trading venues (sources of liquidity), broadcasting the best quotes for given volumes and executing the sent orders at available trading venues. The module is connected to sources of liquidity both through standard interfaces available in the QUIK server as well as through the FIX protocol. 

QUIK SOR may be used both for prop trading and client servicing. At the moment the solution is applied to currency market instruments only and supports two types of currency pairs – simple and compound. On receiving quotes a client is able to send limit and market orders. If required the functionality can be expanded for equities market instruments. 

Vladimir Kurlyandchik, Head of Business Development of ARQA Technologies, said:
‘ARQA always works in close collaboration with its clients, and we listen to their needs how to expand the company’s product lines. The developed solution, QUIK SOR, will allow our clients to get new trading opportunities and build more sophisticated technological infrastructures in association with other ARQA’s software products.’

ARQA Technologies is an independent software provider of solutions for operating on financial markets. The company offers a range of front-to-back solutions (front-office QUIK, middle-office midQORT and back-office backQORT) as well as SaaS from its data-centres located in Novosibirsk, Moscow and Kiev. The clients of ARQA Technologies include over 300 banks, investment and asset management companies in various countries.

ARQA Technologies has completed the adaptation of its solutions for trading from mobile devices in the new trading regime T+. The product line includes iQUIK and iQUIK-HD which are client applications for iPhone and iPad, QUIK Android for Android devices and webQUIK Mobile which allows users to trade from any mobile phones or communicators with Internet access.

The major change in all these solutions is the possibility to limit operations and calculate obligations for different execution dates (TO, T1, T2) as well as to display a planned position on different settlement dates for one client account. Thus, the company supported the opportunity to participate in trading with deferred settlement dates for all its client applications.  

From the 2^nd of September all shares of the Moscow Exchange Stock Market will be transferred to the new trading mode with deferred settlement dates.

ElectraCard Services powers e-Revenue Gateway (e-RG), a payment processing and electronic transaction switching company, to launch contactless electronic payments in Nigeria.  ECS’ PA-DSS compliant platform will help e-RG to launch programs with multiple financial institutions and channels like ATM/ POS/ Internet/ Mobile on the same platform. Contactless, otherwise commonly known as “tap & go” payment cards, are more convenient to use and perfectly aligns to “Cashless Nigeria” initiative of Central bank of Nigeria (CBN).

The eRG payment cards offer consumers a choice of debit or prepaid Smart Cards with the first NFC (Near Field Communication) capabilities in the country. e-RG’s platform is meant to better serve clientele in making and accepting payments, tax remittances and utility bill payments. This is the next generation payment technology that enables the customers to make payments without swiping their card.  

The launch of this card by e-RG enables all card users to pay their bills in a safe, secure and seamless environment along with the use of the card for personal requirements. The electra iTx suite of products will assist e-RG in its plans to increase the card base to 50 Million users in the next five years. The CBN’ Cashless Policy is a vision of a world beyond cash and believes that electronic payments can enable economic growth and create a more financially inclusive economy.

Mr. Ramesh Mengawade, CEO, ElectraCard Services said, “We are extremely proud to implement the electra suite of products for e-RG as it is the first-of-its-kind project in Nigeria. The electra suite offers customers the flexibility to implement innovative payment solutions and empowers them to deploy new services in the market quickly. We are certain that this project will be a trendsetter and will raise productivity and provide widespread benefits to consumers.”

Mr. Benjamin Adebajo, CEO, e-Revenue Gateway said, “We are very happy with our choice in ECS, as they have been able to provide us with end-to-end solutions for our payment requirement. The ECS suite is scalable and provides enhanced security, ease of integration and their expertise in working with MasterCard PayPass makes them the ideal choice.”

OptionsCity Software announced that a Tokyo-based financial institution has deployed OptionsCity Metro and OptionsCity Freeway to its traders in New York and London. The OptionsCity trading platforms were adopted by the bank's energy trading operations for trading on NYMEX and its Over-the-Counter trades in Europe.

"Our client is an international firm that requires a robust technology to complement their trading capabilities, and we are delighted that OptionsCity was selected as a partner," said Jerald David, Chief Business Development Officer of OptionsCity Software. "We are seeing solid demand and growth for our solutions within institutional customers in both North American and Europe."

The bank integrated their internal systems into Metro via the Freeway API and will utilize Metro SmartComplete, a feature that reduces response time for pricing complex spreads. Recent enhancements have also been made to the Metro market making engine, allowing the bank to take advantage of optimal quote prioritization.

Activation of the new trading regime T+2 at the Moscow Exchange (at the main market) in March this year required ARQA Technologies, a leading ISV in automation of operations in Russian financial markets, to modify significantly its software solutions for keeping client positions with deferred settlement.

Implemented modifications cover a wide spectrum of QUIK line software products (a front-end trading platform) as well as software solutions based on QORT platform – middle-office midQORT and back-office backQORT.

A new limitation scheme of keeping a client position for different settlement dates was added to QUIK platform’s main functionality. The scheme allows keeping client obligations for different settlement dates - T0, T1 and T2, as well as building a planned position for these settlement dates and considering operations in different trading modes separately for one client account.

Currently the new limitation scheme is supported by several new versions of company’s software products such as: QUIK server itself, QUIK Workplace and Workplace for risk manager ‘CoLibri’.

Additionally, the new versions of middle-office midQORT and back-office backQORT are now suitable for downloading trades in T+2 regime from a QUIK server. They now form limits for loading them into a QUIK server with due account for deferred settlement dates (T1 and T2).

The new limitation scheme will be supported in other QUIK line software products in the nearest future.

Yury Voronov, CEO of ARQA Technologies, said: “We have always worked in close collaboration with the Moscow Exchange. And we are doing our best to make sure our clients are equipped with effective solutions to catch new trading opportunities provided by the exchange.”

ElectraCard Services announced that AB Bank, the first private sector bank in Bangladesh, has chosen ECS’s electraiTx series - the latest version of the electra payment suite to run their ATM network and process credit and debit cards. ECS has provided AB Bank with their PA-DSS certified electraSWITCH®, electraDEBIT® and electraCREDIT® solutions from the product suite.

AB Bank runs a domestic network of 230 ATMs and is looking to rapidly expand their services within the country and expects to double their card users by 2015. They are leveraging ECS solutions to implement a safe, secure and convenient platform for enabling all their payment requirements. The electra solutions will enable the bank to seamlessly integrate with leading payment associations like VISA® and MasterCard®. This is also the first time AB Bank is launching a complete suite of credit cards for their customers. ECS offers maximum flexibility, scalability and quick turnaround on customizations to meet Bangladesh’s banking standards and ensures the credit cards are compliant in all respects.

electraSWITCH® will also be implemented for managing the switching solutions of the Cashlink Bangladesh Limited (CBL) Network, which is being managed by AB Bank. Bangladesh’s leading banks form a part of the CBL network and is presently used by major local banks as a shared network for ATM switching as well as managed service provider. With the ECS product solutions AB Bank will be able to grow their network, increase the number of ATMs and cardholders.

Mr. Reazul Islam, Head of eBiz and IT, AB Bank said, “We were in need of a platform that was highly scalable and flexible which could be implemented quickly and meet our specifications. We chose ECS because they have proven installations across the globe and a faster go-to-market strategy that fits into our expectations. The product is extremely user friendly and easy to adapt to. We are confident that our partnership with ECS is in tandem with our business objectives.”

“We are pleased to be associated with AB Bank a pioneer in the Bangladesh banking industry,” said Mr. Ramesh Mengawade, CEO, ElectraCard Services. “AB Bank has always been successfully implementing new and innovative ideas in the country. ECS will provide them with the technology solution necessary to help take Bangladesh to becoming a cashless society.”

The electra iTx series platform is a next generation PA-DSS certified secure transaction platform, built from the ground-up on open standards and industry best-practices to support the service oriented architectures (SOA) that are fast becoming the technology backbone of today’s leading organizations. This platform drastically reduces the time to market for integration and to roll out new services.

Joint projects of Thomson Reuters and ARQA Technologies have years of history. Recently ARQA Technologies developed new solutions which are based on Thomson Reuters’ platforms. One of the solutions allows receiving Market Data from international trading venues with minimal delays; another is used for access to Thomson Reuters Spot Matching platform.

ARQA Technologies with support from Thomson Reuters developed a QUIK module which allows receiving real-time Market Datafrom international trading venues supplied by Thomson Reuters (Information interface of TREP-RT system). The interface uses a piece of Thomson Reuters infrastructure - TREP-RT (Thomson Reuters Enterprise Platform for RealTime). Users have access to any level of quotes such as Level I and Level II. If this market data is combined with a FIX-integration of QUIK to a trading platform of an execution broker this may become a fully-functional technology for access to international markets.

Using the same information interface for FOREX market resulted in a QUIK solution for trading through another popular platform – Thomson Reuters Spot Matching.  This trading platform facilitates trades by over 1000 participants – banks dealing in 54 currency-pairs.

‘We are happy to develop mutually beneficial partnership with Thomson Reuters – a leading Market Data vendor and provider of technologies for financial market trading. The interfaces we developed have expanded our range of solutions for trading at international trading venues currently sought by our clients’–said the General Director of ARQA Technologies, Yuri Voronov.

AnreyMaslov, the Technical director of Thomson Reuters pointed out: ‘Many Russian traders now mostly use QUIK software from ARQA Technologies for trading at internal markets. Thanks to the interface implemented with TREP-RTQUIK users may obtain full and reliable information for trading at all principal international venues. Close integration of complimentary solutions is a necessary condition for implementation of modern business processes in electronic trading. Thomson Reuters and ARQA Technologies have completed a successful project which allows their clients to implement most advanced trading strategies’.

ThomsonReuters is a leading provider of analytical information for businesses and professionals. Thorough understanding of industry and employment of innovative technologies allows the company to deliver information for decision-making in finance, legislation, taxation, science and media.

ARQA Technologies is an independent software providerof trading solutions for financial markets. The company offers a range of front-to-backsolutions (front-office QUIK, middle-office midQORT and back-office backQORT) as well as SaaS from its data-centers located in Novosibirsk, Moscow and Kiev. The clients of ARQA Technologies include over 300 banks, investment and asset management companies from different countries.