Ozone API, a leading provider of standards-compliant open banking API technology today announced that the Ozone API software solution is available on Temenos Exchange partner ecosystem of integrated fintech solutions.

The Ozone API is the leading open API solution for banks and financial institutions, delivering ‘out of the box’ compliance with open banking standards and regulations around the world.

Temenos core banking customers can achieve near-instant open banking and open finance compliance. The Ozone API handles the complexity of open banking with out-of-the-box capabilities to stay up-to-date with all global standards, support fine-grained consent management, handle third parties throughout the lifecycle and deliver all of the required capabilities to deliver a great experience for both developers and the bank. Essentially, it provides everything a bank requires.

In addition, the Ozone API has a rich range of capabilities to go beyond compliance and deliver premium and value-adding APIs in order to unlock new revenue streams and drive growth.

Temenos Exchange brings innovation to market faster, and at scale. The ecosystem offers pre-integrated and approved fintech solutions that can be easily deployed on top of Temenos’ open platform for composable banking, enabling banks to accelerate the creation of new financial services, while reducing the costs of development.

Martin Bailey, Director of Innovation and Ecosystems, Temenos, said: “Temenos Exchange acts as an accelerator for fintechs and software developers, helping them develop, validate and monetize new banking solutions. Joining Temenos Exchange means Ozone API can write once and be readily available to the thousands of banks globally that run on our platform.”

Huw Davies, Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer at Ozone API said: “We're on a mission to help banks adapt to and thrive in the new world of open banking and remove complexity along the way. We're really excited to join the Temenos Exchange and make it super simple for any Temenos bank to deliver great open banking APIs that comply with regulation and go beyond compliance.”

Continuing to build its footprint as a leading global acquirer, global financial technology leader FIS^® has announced today its Worldpay merchant business will be expanding its payment processing capabilities into the United Arab Emirates (UAE) this year.

Worldpay has secured a category II payment services license that allows for card acquiring and disbursements. This new domestic license in the UAE will enable the company to offer its world-class payment services to both local companies with global ambitions, and rapidly growing enterprises looking to expand in the market. This comes on the back of its successful expansion into South Korea in 2022.

Our newest version of the Global Payments Report shows the e-commerce market in the UAE is projected to reach US$43 billion by 2026, with credit cards driving this growth, accounting for 41% of e-commerce transaction value in 2022. This makes it even more important for merchants to select the right payment partner for their business.

“The UAE presents fresh opportunities for global businesses and it’s an exciting time to be entering the market,” said Gabriel de Montessus, Head of Global Enterprise Merchant Solutions, FIS. “Our new domestic acquiring capability in the UAE will ensure seamless integration into the country for global merchants with a local presence, while local sellers will benefit from our leading geographic footprint, enabling them to expand globally. Our payments people have their fingers on the pulse of global payments trends. Their understanding of how local consumers prefer to pay will ensure merchants optimize their performance as they enter new markets and accelerate global commerce.”

Research from Freedom Finance, one of the UK’s leading digital borrowing marketplaces, reveals the leading challengers and neobanks added over £1.5bn of capacity to the UK’s unsecured personal loan market in 2022. 

The analysis reveals that a basket of challenger brands and digital-only lenders increased unsecured personal lending to consumers by over £1.5bn^*, an increase of 34% on 2021’s reported figures. That growth far outstrips the Bank of England figures for non-credit card consumer lending, which grew just 5% in the 12 months to December 2022**.

At the same time, Freedom Finance revealed that demand on its own platform is 50% higher now than at this point last year.

As demand has increased so too has the range of people using the platform. In 2022, both the size of loans applied for and the average household income of those applying for loans increased by 9%.

Much of the increase can be accounted for by new users, with higher incomes, coming to the marketplace.

This trend reflects the increasing demand for personal loans from households that didn’t previously use them, such as those looking to consolidate other more expensive types of short-term debt, and the growing awareness and popularity of digital loan search platforms, like Freedom Finance.

Customers who use Freedom Finance are able to search the widest panel of unsecured loan providers on the market. Its proprietary technology is dedicated to helping consumers find the best credit offer, in the easiest possible way, without damaging their credit scores.

On top of its direct-to-consumer services, Freedom Finance’s embedded finance platform integrations with brands such as Argos, ASDA Money, The Co-operative Bank, Creation and The Very Group help millions of customers find the best financial products available to them.

Emma Steeley, Chief Executive Officer at Freedom Finance said that tightening credit conditions are prompting more people to use soft credit search technology to shop around for competitive rates.

“Despite the worsening credit conditions at the end of last year, 2022 still saw significant increases in demand for credit on our platform and across the market. As loan sizes increased at the same time as credit conditions tightened, we have seen new lenders serving more affluent households shopping for credit products through our proprietary technology platform.

“We have also seen an increase in the number of people who have missed payments in the past using our platform. Because our soft search technology reduces the risk of people applying for loans that they are not eligible for, this is helping to protect their precious credit scores.

“These new users demonstrate the appeal that fintech platforms, like Freedom Finance, hold for increasingly savvy credit customers who are comfortable using digital tools to access the best financial products available on the market.”

KoinKoin, the Africa-focused digital assets exchange, has appointed Centropy PR to manage its global communications programme following a competitive pitch process.

The fintech company founded by former banker Ola Atose, announced revenues of over $40m last year and has offices in London, Nigeria, and Ghana. KoinKoin helps customers to buy, sell and transfer digital assets across Africa, Southeast Asia, and Western Europe. It says its annual revenues have now exceeded £40m.

Centropy will provide a suite of PR services to KoinKoin, including media relations, thought leadership, brand consultancy and social media consultancy.

Ola Atose, founder, KoinKoin said: “We were seeking a PR agency that could support our business through rapid international growth. The Centropy team has a proven track record of helping firms scale-up internationally as well as an energetic approach to PR. We’re very excited to be working with a partner which shares our ambitions.”

Steven George-Hilley, founder, Centropy PR said: “Ola is a true entrepreneur who has built an incredible international business from the ground up. Our team is very excited to work with such an ambitious brand as it enters its next phase of growth.”

FinCrime prevention technology expert, SEON, has added considerable expertise to its ranks with the hire of new Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), Matt DeLauro. Matt will help the company as it works to prevent more online financial crime globally, leveraging his previous experience as CRO and General Manager of Extend. 

Building from its acquisition of anti-money laundering (AML) specialist company, Complytron, SEON has announced the hire of Matt DeLauro as the company’s new CRO. The hire, which represents the culmination of a six-month process, forms part of the company’s plans to continue investing in its operations across North America, as well as its sustained expansion globally. In his new role, Matt will work primarily out of the company’s rapidly expanding office in the US technology hub of Austin, Texas.  

A seasoned industry expert, this is Matt’s third appointment as a SaaS CRO. Most recently, he was the CRO and General Manager at Extend, leading the business’ expansion from its Series A round, all the way through to Series C. During that time, Matt built the companies’ go-to-market strategy from the ground up. Matt’s leadership established Extend as the category leader and enabled explosive growth, from 30 employees and less than $5m USD in revenue to 500 employees and revenues in excess of $100m USD in less than two years.  

In hiring Matt, SEON has reaffirmed its commitment to its continued growth within the United States. Since 2022, the company has operated an office in one of the nation’s fastest-growing tech hubs of Austin. In that period, SEON’s US team has grown and now accounts for more than ten people, with the company looking to further grow that number in the coming months. Additionally, SEON now also serves notable US clients, including Patreon and global clients like Revolut.

Matt will help SEON align to the evolving fraud prevention needs across a number of industries, including Banking and Payments, BNPL and Online Lending, iGaming and Casinos, Securities Exchanges, Travel & Hospitality, E-commerce and many more. Matt will be working closely with the company’s existing investors, acting as a company ambassador, and representing SEON as an authority and educator on evolving fraud within the industry. Moving forward, SEON’s Sales, Business Development, Customer Success, Support, and Revenue Operations functions will now report directly to Matt. 

Speaking on his appointment, Matt DeLauro commented: “I’m excited to join SEON as it continues to tackle international FinCrime head on. I’m ready to guide the business as it presses along its path from high-growth startup to becoming the category-leading financial crime and digital fraud prevention platform. Both in the United States and globally, the company is primed for a transformative year in 2023 and I’m excited to be part of SEON’s move to stop fraud at the source.” 

Bence Jendruszak, SEON’s co-founder and Chief Operating Officer commented: “As businesses scale it’s important to add experienced hires, which is what we’ve achieved with Matt. His wealth of experience as a CRO made him the perfect exec for us, and he now joins our incredibly knowledgeable C-suite. I’m looking forward to working with him closely as we continue to grow our operations.” 

Matt’s hire caps off a busy opening quarter for SEON. Since the beginning of 2023, the company has already announced the acquisition of AML business, Complytron as part of its efforts to tackle the growing threat of financial crime. To date, the company has prevented over €160 billion in fraudulent activities and has earned the trust of more than 5,000 companies. On account of this performance, the company’s two co-founders, Tamas Kadar and Bence Jendruszak were recently named in the prestigious Forbes ’30 under 30 Europe’ list.

Provenir, a global leader in data and AI-powered risk decisioning software, today announced its Data and Decisioning Platform has been named a finalist in the “FinTech of the Future – Data & Insights” category for the Banking Tech Awards USA 2023.

In this, the second year of the Banking Tech Awards USA, outstanding achievements in the banking and fintech industry across the country are recognized. Winners of this year’s awards will be announced at a gala dinner ceremony in New York City on June 1.

“Provenir is honoured to be named a finalist for this awards program that celebrates the best in financial services technology across the country,” said Kathy Stares, Provenir’s Executive Vice President for North America. “Our AI-Powered Data and Decisioning Platform provides financial institutions with the data, automation, and forward-looking predictions to power smarter risk decisioning.”

Provenir’s AI-Powered Data and Decisioning Platform is managed through a single user interface, empowering organizations to innovate further and faster than ever before, driving the continuous optimization they need to power growth and agility, without increasing risk. Financial services providers and fintechs are empowered to take control of their risk strategy with unified decisioning, data and AI, capabilities via a unified, no-code platform.

Pyypl  - pronounced “people” – the international payment technology and financial services provider using blockchain in its core systems, announces the commercial rollout of its social, micro-investment platform for self-employed entrepreneurs and micro-SMEs in Africa.

The rollout is commencing via an initial partnership with Kenya’s Tuk Tuk Operators Network (“TTON”), a pan-African mobility network connecting Tuk Tuk operators across 47 counties. Pyypl’s platform will accelerate the digitalisation of these operators via Pyypl’s virtual debit cards, which will directly, and positively impact TTON’s growth. 

The partnership will support TTON’s long-term vision of connecting three-wheeler players in Africa’s informal transport industry to a common socio-economic, sustainable, inclusive mobility platform under structured transport Savings and Credit Co-Operative Societies (SACCOs). SACCOs encourage saving and help members obtain affordable loans that otherwise might not have been accessible.

The partnership and rollout follow a significant thirteen months for Pyypl. The company’s revenues tripled in the four-month period October 2022 to January 2023, inclusive, and were eight times greater than 2021. This revenue upsurge bookended a year of notable operational KPIs: the company’s App 2.0 launched in eight different languages, its prepaid card was transacted at 30,000 different merchants across 150 countries and 100 different currencies. Pyypl also handled over 1 million customer chats.

Antti Arponen, CEO of Pyypl, said:

“We are proud to partner with the Tuk Tuk Operators Network to provide short-term, fair and transparent investment alongside Pyypl’s leading digital financial services to the benefit of its members across Africa.

“Community groups form the core of Kenyan society, representing taxi drivers, delivery riders, farmers, youth development groups, and Tuk Tuk and Boda Boda riders, among others. With over 126,000 TTON members representing more than 1.6 million Boda Boda operators across Kenya, this demonstrates the huge opportunity for Pyypl’s debentures platform as we build out partnerships across multiple African countries.”

As relationship organisations such as SACCOs and trade unions maintain high levels of trust with their strong communities, Pyypl’s debentures platform aims to build out a social ecosystem for entrepreneurs across Africa and improve access to digital financial services for informal employment sectors. 

While currently working directly with trade organisations, Pyypl expects investors in the near future to include larger organisations such as World Bank and International Finance Corporation.

Vincent M Were, Network Lead for TTON, said:

“In the process of seeking meaningful partnerships to grow the sector, the Tuk Tuk and Boda Bodas of Kenya appreciate the engagement of Pyypl and their services. Access to debentures via our connection with Pyypl has opened a new window of opportunity for our transport ecosystem, meeting our most critical financial needs while in line of service.

“This oiling of transport business activities through Pyypl’s micro-investment product has contributed positively to the growth of our economy as a sector and even as a country. We look forward to a time when both the three-wheeler and two-wheeler sectors in Kenya will all have fully subscribed to Pyypl’s debenture platform.”

Pyypl’s strong capital base is turbocharging regional growth as the company executes its mission to offer financial services to the 800 million financially underserved smartphone users across Africa and the Middle East. Pyypl does this via internationally accepted virtual and physical prepaid cards, instant domestic and international user-to-user transfers, plus remittances to 42 currency destinations.

ITRS, the leading provider of real-time enterprise monitoring and analytics software, today announces the appointment of Tim Blunt as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) and member of the Executive Leadership Team. The appointment comes as part of ITRS’ plans to significantly scale its growth in the year ahead.

Tim has over three decades’ experience within the technology industry, holding previous positions at CatchPoint and NICE where he scaled both businesses significantly as a result of the robust processes and strategies he implemented whilst there.

In his role, Tim will work alongside ITRS’ senior management team to lead its market and sales activities and ensure ITRS continues on its strong growth trajectory.

The appointment comes as part of ITRS’s wider mission to continue its accelerated global growth as business leaders worldwide adjust corporate strategies to further embed operational resilience and monitoring capabilities.

Tim’s role will have a global focus, spending a lot of time in Europe and Asia, while helping to scale activities in North America from his base in Boston.

Guy Warren, CEO of ITRS, comments on the appointment: “We are thrilled to welcome Tim to the ITRS team. His proven track record for growth, alongside an impressive wealth of experience in the software space will be vital as we embark on an ambitious growth strategy that will see ITRS continue to strengthen its ability to deliver advanced monitoring solutions whilst extending our market reach in North America. We look forward to welcoming him onboard.”

Tim Blunt, CRO at ITRS, adds: “I’m delighted to join ITRS at a pivotal time for the business and help significantly drive growth. With businesses across the world operating in increasingly complex IT environments, the solutions that ITRS provide are critical to long-term success and I’m excited to be joining the team at such an interesting time for the industry.”

Volante Technologies, the leading global provider of cloud payments and financial messaging solutions to accelerate digital transformation, has released a partner-authored paper featuring insights into the banking sector and projections for innovation-driven growth.

The report, the first in an annual series, incorporates contributions from fifteen global software integrators, vendors, and consultancies. It highlights industry trends such as central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), distributed ledgers, real-time payments, and investment in AI and machine learning.

According to Volante’s strategic partners, CBDCs will dominate the payments sector within the next few years, prompting banks to adopt distributed ledger technology-aware payment solutions. Additionally, banks are expected to adopt a data-driven approach to improve customer insight and develop better products, leveraging AI and machine learning enabled by cloud and Payments as a Service (PaaS).

Volante's partners also emphasized the importance of innovation and technologies that accelerate the modernization of banking infrastructure, particularly in payments. Approximately 90% of the data received by banks today and 75% of ISO 20022 commercialization use cases are related to customer payment data. The report also examines the global move towards the ISO 20022 standard in payments, highlighting how banks can exploit the richer data to differentiate themselves in the market.

“This report showcases our belief that a global partner ecosystem harnesses the power of collective wisdom and best ideas, enabling financial businesses to achieve new levels of success and business impact. The contributors of this report alone represent over 350 years of experience,” said Jim Chow, VP Partnerships, Volante Technologies.

The paper draws on the contributions of partners from the US, Europe, and the Middle East, including Accenture, AWS, Capgemini, Cornerstone Advisors, Delta Capita, HCLTech, KPMG, Mambu, MDSL, Microsoft, Persistent Systems, PwC, Q2, Red Hat, and Salesforce.

"At Volante Technologies, we recognize that our ecosystem partners play a vital role in driving the transformation of banking infrastructure, especially in payments. We work closely with our partners across the globe to bring the best of our combined solutions and value propositions to our mutual customers," said Vijay Oddiraju, CEO, Volante Technologies.

Read Planning for the Next Decade by clicking here.

VIXIO Regulatory Intelligence, the leading provider of regulatory and business intelligence to the global payments and gambling industries, announced today that it has launched a new tool and a first of its kind for the industry,  which provides an at-a-glance view of 140+ global jurisdictions’ approaches to online gambling.

The Market Assessment Tool (MAT) enables clients in compliance and strategy roles to quickly filter and compare key variables to support decision-making around market entry, new product launches and expansion plans.

According to MAT, approximately 58% of covered global jurisdictions across Europe, North and Latin America, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region have either fully or partially regulated their online gaming and betting markets, or are actively in the process of establishing a licensing regime. Almost half of these fully or partially regulated markets can be considered to have either restrictive or very restrictive regulatory regimes, offering limited licensing opportunities, requiring high upfront fees, or otherwise establishing burdensome compliance obligations for operators.

Some 32 jurisdictions, primarily in Europe, have restrictive or prohibitive approaches to online gambling advertising and 16 jurisdictions covered by MAT are in the process of tightening their regulatory regimes to establish stricter rules.

By offering a balanced view of risks and opportunities in one dashboard the MAT provides immediate insight into the 140+ covered jurisdictions available, with additional markets to be added in future. MAT also takes collation a step further with a range of functions that allow users to interact with the data directly, giving our clients the ability to compare variables across jurisdictions in order to identify market opportunities that meet specific characteristics based on their company’s profile.

The nine key variables provide insight into each jurisdiction’s regulatory status and restrictiveness through to market size and growth trajectory.

Roseanne Spagnuolo, VIXIO Chief Content Officer, said: “Over the past few years, online gambling regulation has spread quickly outside of core European markets into the Americas, parts of Africa and Asia. This means leading operators and suppliers need to monitor and understand an increasing number of diverse regulatory regimes on a global scale. 

“Feedback from our executive clients stated that they need to be able to find this information quickly, and we are proud to be able to support this requirement by launching a new powerful tool – saving considerable time when assessing compliance and business requirements.”