AMLYZE, a leading RegTech firm specializing in anti-financial crime solutions for FinTechs, neo-banks and crypto businesses, has successfully concluded a $1 million pre-seed investment round. 

The round was led by Practica Capital, with participation from the Firstpick accelerator and venture capital fund. The funding will be used to scale AMLYZE's Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business, facilitate international expansion, and introduce advanced functionalities to its core product offering. These enhancements will enable AMLYZE to provide a comprehensive suite of integrated compliance services to its clients.

With a current client base primarily located in the Baltic States and the United Kingdom, AMLYZE is experiencing a surge in demand for its transaction monitoring, risk assessment, and case investigation solutions. The global scale of financial crime, estimated by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to account for 2% to 5% of the annual global GDP (€715 billion to €1.87 trillion), necessitates innovative solutions to combat these challenges. Furthermore, increasing regulatory scrutiny worldwide, driven by money laundering, terrorism financing, cyber security risks, and geopolitical tensions, has further emphasized the importance of anti-financial crime and sanctions compliance.

Gabrielius Bilkštys, CEO and co-founder of AMLYZE, stated: "As our mission is to help the world overcome financial crime, we have assembled a core team comprising seasoned IT and Anti-Financial Crime professionals, as well as former regulators and supervisors with backgrounds in central banking and law enforcement. We consider ourselves industry experts who possess an insider's perspective on the sector, enabling us to assist financial institutions in meeting escalating regulatory requirements and enhancing their compliance efficiency."

Practica Capital, one of the leading venture capital firms in the Baltics, expressed its support for AMLYZE's mission.

"Given the significant knowledge and experience that has been accumulated across all levels of the FinTech ecosystem in Lithuania over the last decade, it comes as no surprise that a company like this has emerged here. AMLYZE, bringing together an outstanding core team on a clear mission, has firm ground and the potential to bring category-defining products to the vast and growing market," commented Donatas Keras, Founding Partner of Practica Capital.

The pre-seed round also saw participation from the Lithuanian accelerator, FIRSTPICK, which has been an early supporter of AMLYZE since its inception.

Marijus Andrijauskas, partner of FIRSTPICK, said: "The surge in demand for AMLYZE's anti-financial crime solutions comes as no surprise given the increasing regulatory scrutiny worldwide, which threatens the growth of the FinTech industry. We, at FIRSTPICK, are proud to support AMLYZE's mission to combat financial crime and help FinTechs comply with increasing regulations. With their expert team and comprehensive suite of compliance services, AMLYZE is well-positioned to drive innovation in the industry and streamline compliance processes for their clients."

Global fintech CANVAS, today made financial history by facilitating the first Foreign Exchange transaction using an Australian CBDC. 

The historic trade was conducted as part of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) and Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) CBDC pilot. CANVAS, is a global financial technology company with a mission to digitize finance and was selected to test FX transactions and International remittances with the RBA’s CBDC - the eAUD. 

The first FX transaction was successfully completed between ASX-listed DigitalX (ASX:DCC), and Fund Manager TAF Capital, to trade eAUD to USDC stablecoin on Wednesday 17th May. 

Today’s transactions were settled atomically (instantaneously) and demonstrated the benefits that CBDC’s can bring to Financial Markets, Institutions and Governments, such as 24/7/365 FX trading, no cut-off time for international remittances, and improving a Financial institution's capital efficiency. 

Canvas’ CBDC exchange facilitates trade between eAUD and foreign currencies on its privacy-focused Layer 2 Blockchain with assurances of confidentiality, compliance, scalability & low-cost transactions. 

Traditional Foreign Exchange (FX) Markets & International Remittance networks are renowned for being slow, expensive and prone to errors. Canvas CBDC exchange showcases how the RBA’s eAUD can be successfully used to trade AUD for other international currencies in faster and more efficient ways. 

CANVAS Digital CEO, David Lavecky said “We’re excited as part of the eAUD pilot, to have our CBDC exchange facilitate this historic FX trade. The eAUD, as a CBDC, holds the potential to address crucial challenges in both FX and International Remittance Markets such as improving transaction times, reducing fees, and providing more open access.” 

“We believe that CBDCs, Tokenised Bank Deposits, and Digital Securities will radically transform finance and markets over the next decade. Our use case demonstrates the benefits of using CBDCs in tokenised FX transactions and how our privacy focused Layer 2 blockchain provides improvements over traditional markets by eliminating market inefficiencies, errors, and settlement risks.,” he said. 

Canvas is one of a handful of selected Use Case Providers in the RBA eAUD project alongside ANZ Bank and The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) & MasterCard. Canvas is showcasing

Tokenised Foreign Exchange (FX) and the benefits of using CBDC & Digital Currencies in place of traditional fiat currencies and legacy networks. 

Canvas was Co-Founded by successful Australian tech entrepreneur brothers David & Daniel Lavecky in the belief that Blockchain, CBDCs, Digital Securities & Tokenised Assets will radically transform financial and capital markets over the next decade with trillions of $ of securities and currencies to be tokenized and traded 24/7/365. 

Digital X CEO Lisa Wade: 

“DigitalX is proud to be a part of this historical moment that will revolutionise traditional financial systems. We believe CBDC’s are a natural evolution of Currency and we’re delighted to be testing FX transactions on Canvas CBDC exchange and Layer 2 Blockchain. It will supercharge the rollout of our key strategic initiatives, our real-world asset tokenisation fund and digitising investment processes.” 

“Canvas Connect assures us confidentiality, high speed and low transaction costs. Canvas CBDC exchange eliminates FX market inefficiencies and settlement risks for DigitalX.” 

TAF Capital Co-Founder Michael Prendiville: 

“This transaction is an exciting step, radically transforming financial and capital markets, creating efficiencies not available until now. We’re thrilled to partner with Canvas and use their Layer2 Blockchain technology. Traditional Foreign Exchange (FX) Markets & International Remittance networks are renowned for being slow, expensive and prone to errors, we now have a safe and secure solution.” 

Corserv, a company that empowers banks and fintechs with payment programs, has implemented an industry-leading credit card program with Pennsylvania-based Meridian Bank to serve their business and commercial customers.

Meridian Bank is a $2 billion full-service commercial bank, founded in 2004 and headquartered in Greater Philadelphia with offices in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Florida. Corserv’s robust program enables Meridian Bank to continue offering innovative solutions to its customers through credit card products with a variety of APRs, rewards, and features. For Meridian Bank, it was crucial that their credit card program offer extensive commercial and business capabilities.

“Because we run Meridian like a business, we understand the needs of our community business owners,” said Jason Rose, Vice President, Treasury Sales and Service at Meridian Bank. “We found that virtual card support, automated credit-decisioning, extensive spend controls, business self-service features, and free expense reporting from Corserv’s program allow us to offer specialized features to our business and commercial customers.”

Anil Goyal, CEO at Corserv said, “Our turnkey card issuing program minimizes the disruption, cost, and resources needed for typical card programs while enabling our partners to average over 8% Return on Assets on the business card program. It is our core mission to provide institutions like Meridian Bank with payment card features that compete with the largest banks, while doing what community banks do best – serve the specific needs of their community.”

Castlepoint Systems, experts in data management and ethical AI for cybersecurity has won the prestigious ISACA Innovation Solutions Award.

Castlepoint Systems, a disruptive governance, risk and compliance platform, has won the industry-leading ISACA Innovation Solutions Award as the world’s first technology to help manage, protect, and de-risk all information everywhere in a single interface within an enterprise.

Trusted by some of the largest government departments and enterprises in Australia and New Zealand, and now launching globally, Castlepoint helps organisations meet their data security obligations to their stakeholders through complete visibility and control. The platform addresses the entire information governance lifecycle through a single pane of glass while remaining invisible and non-disruptive to users, existing systems, and source data.

The win reinforces how, in the current climate of high-profile data breaches and rise of ransomware attacks, citizens globally expect their data to be protected, and how this platform allows the custodians of data to minimise the risk through better information controls. ISACA awards recognise outstanding and impactful contributions that advance the professional community and for Castlepoint, it noted the win “for innovating in the area of information risk and security management with artificial intelligence.”

Rachel Greaves, Castlepoint CEO, said: “We’re incredibly proud to be recognised for our technology that makes information protection and compliance stronger, for both the organisations holding the records, and the individuals whose data they hold. We founded the company in the belief that there had to be an easier, more streamlined and manageable way to de-risk our networks and protect our stakeholders. With Castlepoint, we have proven that this is not only possible, it is simple, and has enormous and rapid returns when it comes to efficiency, risk, and compliance. ISACA’s recognition of Castlepoint reinforces thatt cyber security strategies cannot be focused only on reducing the likelihood of breaches – good cyber management is just as critical to reduce the impact of any data spill.This is only possible by knowing ahead of time what data you have, where it is, who is doing what to it, and what inherent risk or value it has (as well as what regulatory rules apply to it).”

As threats continue to grow and breaches are accelerating in a climate of new tech and greater data sharing, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for organisations to properly manage their sensitive data and high-value information. In addition, data regulations are becoming more onerous, resulting in hard-earned goodwill being easily lost when mismanagement or data breaches occur. Being faster, more responsive, and smarter with data is key to tackling these significant challenges and this is exactly how Castlepoint is enabling and supporting its customers

It has been an excellent year for Castlepoint Systems, who are expanding their global reach. Earlier this year Castlepoint Systems was listed in the fourth annual CyberTech100 list. Rachael Greaves was also recently included in the Innovate Finance ‘Women in FinTech Powerlist 2022’ in the category Senior Leaders (CEOs, CFOs, Founders, Executive Team Members) as a result of her outstanding hard work and achievements over the previous 12 months. In 2022, Rachael was announced Australia’s most outstanding woman in IT security, and also won the RegTech female entrepreneur of the year category, with her business also taking home the RegTech Association’s Australian business award.

Ripple, the leader in enterprise blockchain and crypto solutions, announced today it has agreed to acquire Metaco, a Swiss-based provider of digital asset custody and tokenisation technology. Diversifying into custody solutions is a milestone in Ripple’s business and product strategy, bringing new revenue opportunities to the company.

Ripple and Metaco share strong crypto DNA, top-tier institutional customers, and a long history of working with regulated entities to create secure enterprise-grade solutions. With this acquisition, Ripple will expand its enterprise offerings, providing customers with the technology to custody, issue, and settle any type of tokenised asset. Metaco will dramatically accelerate its growth trajectory through access to Ripple’s established base of hundreds of customers, capital to address new demand, and resources to continue delivering on its commitment to banking and institutional clients. 

“Metaco is a proven leader in institutional digital asset custody with an exceptional executive bench and a truly unmatched customer track record,” said Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple. “Through the strength of our balance sheet and financial position, Ripple will continue pressing our advantage in the areas critical to crypto infrastructure. Bringing on Metaco is monumental for our growing product suite and expanding global footprint.”

Best known for its flagship payments products, Ripple was the first company to address the multi-trillion dollar pain points in cross-border payments utilising blockchain and cryptocurrency. The company focused on solving the hardest problems – such as building blockchain-enabled payments infrastructure from the ground up – before expanding its product offerings to address new use cases like liquidity management and tokenisation, including Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Today, Ripple serves hundreds of customers in over 55 countries and 6 continents with payout capabilities in 70+ markets.

Metaco offers secure and versatile mission-critical custody infrastructure for institutions to scale new business models in the crypto economy. Its primary offering Harmonize is the institutional standard for digital asset custody and tokenisation infrastructure, chosen by the world’s largest global custodians, top-tier banks, financial institutions and corporates. Metaco’s technology solutions are currently offered across various jurisdictions, including Switzerland, Germany, Turkey, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong and the Philippines, among others. 

“As the go-to provider for traditional finance companies looking to integrate crypto and blockchain solutions, Ripple is uniquely positioned to address the growing institutional crypto custody market, expected to reach nearly $10T by 2030. Custody is a key facet of the infrastructure required for enterprise crypto services. Adding these capabilities to Ripple’s already growing product solutions means we can continue to support customers as they look to utilise crypto and blockchain for real-world use cases across all phases of adoption,” said Monica Long, President at Ripple.

Adrien Treccani, Founder and CEO at Metaco said, “Our mission has always been to enable institutions to thrive in the digital asset economy with the help of our core infrastructure and expertise, and we are delighted to join forces with the team at Ripple, who share that passion. This deal will enable Metaco to leverage Ripple’s scale and market strength to reach our goals and deliver value to our clients at a faster pace. We look forward to continuing to serve unprecedented levels of institutional demand with the utmost excellence in delivery, as our clients have come to expect.”

Ripple will become the sole shareholder of Metaco, which will continue to operate as an independent brand and business unit led by Founder and CEO Adrien Treccani. 

Arteria AI, an award-winning global leader in enterprise digital documentation infrastructure, today announced its strategic partnership with Compliance Systems, the financial industry’s leading provider of dynamic compliance documentation, to introduce an integrated solution to address the needs for better documentation processes for today’s community financial institutions. With this partnership, the same cutting-edge technology that has been so transformational for the industry’s largest banks will now be accessible to community banks and credit unions, regardless of asset class.

This new integrated joint solution will leverage aspects from both the Compliance Systems and Arteria technology platforms to provide customers with streamlined, compliant digital documentation in a single solution giving them enhanced collaboration, workflow and data capabilities while driving efficiency and operationalizing the data within their documents.

With decades of experience serving banks and credit unions of all sizes and backgrounds, Compliance Systems is trusted by hundreds of institutions across the U.S. to help them meet their documentation compliance and legal needs while mitigating risk and redundancies. Built by technologists, scientists, lawyers and financial services experts, Arteria AI’s platform has been deployed at some of the largest, top-ranked financial institutions around the world, focused on accelerating documentation and data processes to deliver fast and accurate documentation experiences to customers, while lowering the cost and risk of doing business. Together, the two leading fintech companies bring an innovative product built and tested for the largest and most innovative institutions to the broader banking market.

“Partnering with Arteria AI in this capacity will provide institutions the ability to leverage Compliance Systems’ compliant transaction content in a fully contained software ecosystem throughout the negotiation process with debtors and their counsel,” said Chris Appie, President of Compliance Systems. “This is particularly important and valuable to commercial lenders. Further, the partnership and combined integration solves for a big void in the marketplace and that is the ability to negotiate content and preserve the integrity of the underlying compliance warranty and this luxury does not exist elsewhere in the market.”

“We are excited to partner with Compliance Systems to offer this transformational solution and address today’s documentation challenges and needs,” said Shelby Austin, Co-founder and CEO of Arteria AI. “For community financial institutions, so many critical business activities are driven by documents and the data within them, but often the most powerful solutions have been out of reach. With this new offering, we can help community banks and credit unions level the playing field with fast, intelligent document processing capabilities that streamline operations and reduce inefficiencies, giving better insights and enhancing both compliance and the documentation experience.”

Bank ABC’s commitment to digital disruption remains resolute, as its retail arm ila Bank has launched Bahrain’s exclusively digital, Shari’a-compliant banking offering for individual customers - ‘alburaq.’ This Islamic banking experience from ila Bank brings customers a host of intuitive Islamic banking products and services at their fingertips, through ila’ state-of-the-art mobile app.

‘alburaq’ is backed by Bank ABC’s long-established Islamic finance subsidiary, Bank ABC Islamic. Recently named the ‘Best Islamic Financial Institution in Bahrain in 2023’ by Global Finance, Bank ABC Islamic has been been at the forefront of cutting-edge developments in the Islamic banking space since the 1980s. 

Commenting on ila’s foray into the Islamic banking space, Bank ABC’s Acting Group CEO, Mr. Sael Al Waary said: “Bank ABC revolutionised the retail banking landscape in Bahrain with the launch of our digital mobile-only – ila Bank back in 2019. We are now merging the deep Shari’a-compliant banking expertise of our Islamic finance arm with ila’s disruptive digital capabilities to offer consumers a first-of-its-kind, extremely personalised digital Islamic banking experience through ‘alburaq’.”

“By introducing this purely Islamic account from ila, we endeavor to offer Bahrain an all-inclusive banking experience that caters to the country’s diverse market, with a wide range of banking products that meet varying customer preferences, enabling us to further bolster financial inclusion in the country. With alburaq, ila now offers strictly Shari’a-compliant money management solutions that are fast, convenient, and seamless, empowering our customers to attain their financial goals and aspirations in the manner that best suits them,” added Mr. Al Waary. 

Existing ila customers can switch to ‘alburaq’ effortlessly via the ‘Profile’ section on the ila mobile app, while new customers can enjoy a fast and seamless onboarding process and simply choose to open an ‘alburaq’ account, a conventional account, or both. Given ila’s integration with the national eKYC system, the account opening process can be completed within minutes by scanning one national ID card, taking a selfie, and answering a few questions. 

Completely segregated from ila’s conventional accounts, ‘alburaq’ provides customers a host of digital Islamic banking services, including multi-currency accounts, all linked to a new alburaq debit card and a suite of day-to-day banking services such as local Fawri, Fawri+ and Fawteer services, international transfers, card control functions and more. The new alburaq account can be linked to Benefit Pay and the alburaq debit card can be linked to Apple Pay, Garmin Pay, Fit Bit pay, and other payment wallets enabled for ila customers. 

Customers of ‘alburaq' can also take exclusive advantage of ‘Wakala Investment,’ a product that provides the opportunity to invest their funds for a definite period and earn Shari’a-compliant profit on their investments. Wakala will initially be offered in BHD and US$ and multiple Wakala Investment deposits can be created according to the customers preference at attractive rates.

Glia, the customer interaction leader unifying Digital Customer Service (DCS), phone and automated self-service on a single platform, continues to grow its leadership team, appointing Lisa Paccione as the Executive Vice President of Sales. She brings decades of financial services and mobile technology expertise as well as extensive global sales experience. In this role, Paccione will scale the sales organization to expand into new markets and geographies.

“In addition to Glia’s game-changing customer interaction technology, enviable customer base and highly talented team worldwide, I’ve been impressed by its strong culture of continuous improvement, led by Glia’s core values of collaboration, challenge, master and perseverance,” said Paccione. “This is fueling exciting new innovation for our future and driving incredible opportunities. I’m thrilled to join the Glia team to help us scale globally and expand into new markets.”

Paccione joins Glia from Twilio, where she was Vice President of Enterprise Sales. She helped Twilio increase revenue, up nearly $1B during her tenure, including a dollar-based net expansion rate exceeding 120%. Prior to that she was Vice President of Sales for Everbridge, a leader in critical event management and public warning software solutions.

At Syniverse, a Carlyle-owned Company, Paccione held several Vice President of Sales and Business Development roles that were integral in scaling the company’s Enterprise business globally from $5M to $200M+ during her tenure. She also served on the Syniverse board of directors, appointed to one of four seats for minority stakeholder Twilio.

“Lisa Paccione has an impressive track record in driving business worldwide and successfully scaling companies through the $1B revenue milestone,” said Jeremy Smith, COO of Glia. “Coming from Twilio, she’s hitting the ground running with deep industry expertise and strong relationships with many of our key partners. We are excited for Lisa to join Glia and lead our sales organization in our next stage of growth.”