TÜV Rheinland and Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, have launched a new initiative to support Alibaba Cloud‘s customers in achieving their sustainability goals. Both companies have now signed a memorandum of understanding to this effect. As a result, companies that use Alibaba Cloud’s ‘Energy Expert’ service will be able to have their carbon emissions verified and certified by TÜV Rheinland experts in the future. For the certification, experts from TÜV Rheinland will verify the actual carbon emissions from a company’s daily business activities – from procurement and supply chain management to the manufacture and distribution of products. The new offering is scheduled to launch in March 2023.

Energy Expert is a solution from Alibaba Cloud that helps companies manage their carbon emissions and other sustainability indicators. The Energy Expert solution uses Big Data computing and AI technologies to do so. Since its launch last year, Energy Expert has helped more than 2,300 companies achieve energy savings of more than 2 million kilowatt hours per day calculated and stated by Alibaba Cloud.

“We want to provide opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses in particular to achieve their sustainability goals in a cost-effective manner. Through our certification, Alibaba Cloud’s customers can transparently and credibly demonstrate the progress they have already made in terms of their carbon emissions and how they plan to further reduce their energy consumption and emissions,” explains Frank Dorssers, responsible for the customised certification standards business at TÜV Rheinland. 

“We hope to develop comprehensive energy-saving solutions together with our global partners. This will enable our customers, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, to achieve their net-zero goals in a cost-effective and time-saving manner and through a sound sustainability strategy,” said Raymond Ma, General Manager of Europe, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. “We are pleased to work with experienced industry partners such as TÜV Rheinland, and we look forward to expanding our global partnership ecosystem and bringing more advanced technologies and digital solutions to our customers in the near future.” 

NICE Actimize, a NICE business, has released "The 2023 NICE Actimize Fraud Insights Report" that delves deeply into the banking and payments landscape and uncovers the most pressing threats and patterns impacting financial institutions. Leveraging NICE Actimize’s X-Sight AI, which utilizes collective intelligence and Federated Learning to spot emerging threats and suspicious patterns of activity, the report was created by analysing billions of banking and payments transactions representing over $110 trillion in value.

NICE Actimize’s in-depth research showed that the rise of banking fraud is a growing concern for Financial Institutions (FIs) and consumers alike. Fraudsters are becoming increasingly sophisticated, shifting their tactics from traditional account takeover and unauthorised fraud to more complex authorised payments fraud (scams). This not only complicates the fraud threat landscape, but also puts FIs at risk of double loss scenarios - both first-party and third-party victims.

The report indicated that from 2021 to 2022, attempted fraud transactions skyrocketed by 92% and attempted fraud amounts have soared by 146%. This alarming trend highlights two key points: first, there is a dramatic increase in overall transaction volumes and second, fraudsters are becoming bolder and targeting higher fraud amounts. The report also stated that fraud is not limited to one specific channel; it’s a complex, multi-channel threat that is shaped by digital transformation, changing consumer behaviours and shifting fraud patterns. The report also estimated that the absolute amount of Attempted Authorized Payments Fraud overtook Account Takeover Fraud amounts with a 45.9% year-over-year increase from 2021 to 2022.

“Fraudsters are leveraging faster payments innovation to conduct sophisticated scams involving money mules who transfer funds away from the FI—funds that are often unrecoverable,” said Craig Costigan, CEO, NICE Actimize, “As the digital landscape evolves, so do fraudsters’ tactics. The threats identified in our report are a glaring reminder of the ever-present risk that looms over digital channels and payments. Financial institutions must fortify their defenses, and review digital channel controls, to stay ahead of new and emerging threats.”

As the world moves towards a cashless society, the volume of transactions is increasing, and so too is the amount of fraud across all channels and typologies, including online, mobile, and in-person transactions. NICE Actimize's research sheds light on this pressing issue and highlights the need for layering in cutting-edge technologies like Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to identify even the most sophisticated fraud schemes.

The report also indicated the Money Mule-related fraud is a leading challenge facing financial institutions. Money Mules are a key element in authorised payments fraud and scams, new account fraud, and in moving illicitly obtained funds. The report explains that while mules don’t generate direct loss at an FI, they do impact revenue because these accounts aren’t profitable, are costly to acquire and maintain, and expose FIs to regulatory scrutiny and reputational damage.

The NICE Actimize Fraud Insights Report’s data showed that:

• 59% of new account fraud is mule related, and the majority of these accounts demonstrate mule characteristics within 30 days, indicating that fraud is being conducted almost instantly.
• Money is typically moved in a mule network within two hours before its completely gone, exiting the account within 12 hours.

Using anonymised data, insights for this report were secured across online and offline payments channels, including P2P, ACH, wires, checks, and card transactions.

To download a copy of NICE Actimize’s 2023 Fraud Insights report, please click here.

Fintech lender Sonovate has surpassed £3.5bn in total funding and £1 billion in annual funding for the first time as rising costs force businesses to seek finance to manage cashflow and drive growth.

During 2022, Sonovate provided businesses with £1.1 billion in finance, a 58% increase on the £700 million lent in the previous year, and more than double 2020’s figure of £444 million. Lending hit £312 million in Q4 2022 alone – up 30% from the same period in 2021.

Last year also marked the first time the amount of funding provided in a month surpassed £100 million, with Sonovate initially hitting this sum in October, then again in November when £110 million was loaned to businesses. This high was a 22% jump on the previous highest performing month, when £90m was provided to businesses.

Sonovate’s record performance was driven in large part by the expanding adoption of its business finance and technology services by consultancies, recruitment agencies and labour marketplaces throughout the world to allow them to pay contractors on time.

The increase in finance deployed to businesses was made possible by the securitisation deal with BNP Paribas and M&G Investments that Sonovate completed in Q3 2022. This deal added £165 million to Sonovate’s funding structure, increasing its capital efficiency and expanding its customer base, especially in the enterprise space, whilst delivering added flexibility for export financing.

The volume of funding provided to customers over the course of 2022 increased by 50% year-on-year as adoption of embedded finance models gains momentum. Meanwhile, enterprise customers* receive approximately one third of Sonovate’s total lending volume. This significant increase in volume demonstrates the continued growth in the use of contract and freelance labour, and indicates the market potential in the years ahead.

In September 2022, Sonovate surpassed £3 billion of funding since inception – an increase of £1 billion in just 12 months as the lender continues to scale at pace. Sonovate envisages continued strong growth as it expects to continue on its growth trajectory in the UK and plans to enter new markets.

Richard Prime, Co-founder & CEO of Sonovate, commented: “Rising costs have presented many challenges, but ambitious businesses are embracing the opportunities to drive growth and increase their competitiveness by securing finance to invest in their workforce.

“With workers demanding new ways of working in response to both the pandemic and the cost of living crisis, and businesses looking to reduce costs where possible, more and more companies are building their teams around a contract-based workforce. Businesses benefit from this approach as they’re more agile to adapt to changing workload or cashflow and, as this trend continues, the need for on-demand funding will continue to soar.”

To date, more than 33,000 freelancers, contractors and gig workers in 44 countries have received payments from over 3,300 businesses supported by Sonovate. During 2022, Sonovate onboarded more than 170 new customers.

To support this growth, Sonovate is accelerating recruitment and aiming to expand to 230 employees during 2023.

Cyber security consultancy CyberScale has appointed former CISO of the Bank of England Professor Cameron ‘Buck’ Rogers as the first member its newly established advisory board. 

Having enjoyed an accomplished career in Cyber Security with roles that include Global Head of Resilience Risk at HSBC and latterly, Head of Cyber and Information Security at BAE Systems, Buck will bring a wealth of skills and knowledge to CyberScale at a crucial time in the next chapter of the company’s growth and development. 

Darren Chapman, founder, and Principal Consultant at CyberScale said:  “This is a key appointment at CyberScale, and comes at a pivotal time for us as we expand our footprint, particularly across the SMB (small and medium business) space.  The focus of Buck’s role will be to help us ensure that we continue to provide both the most relevant, and highest impact security services to our current and future clients.  His knowledge, experience and contacts in the industry will be invaluable as he helps us optimise our portfolio of Cyber & Information Security Services as well as mentoring our already skilled and experienced team”. 

Professor Rogers said that joining the CyberScale Advisory Board was a very simple decision to make, commenting;  “Having experienced first-hand the quality of CyberScale’s work and their commitment to making vital cyber security services accessible to any type of business, I was delighted to accept the opportunity to help.  I was excited by the company’s new initiatives in helping small and medium businesses to face up to the challenge of cyber security when they don’t have access to the same resources as larger enterprises.” 

Buck’s Professorship is in Cyber Security and Digital Innovation at Gloucestershire University. Outside of his Professorship, Buck is a Fellow of CREST (Council for Ethical Security Testers). 

Buck also provides cyber expertise to the International Monetary Fund, an agency of the UN, where Buck helps Countries to understand and regulate Cyber risk. He sits on the expert panel for Regulation Technology Associates and is cyber security advisor to Cyb3r Operations, a cyber intelligence company.  Buck has also worked with the G7/G20 via the Carnegie Endowment for Peace on Cyber Security, and the global financial system.  

Feedzai, the market leader in fighting financial crime with AI, has partnered with UK Finance, the trade association for the UK’s banking and financial services sector, to deliver its Annual Fraud Report.

UK Finance has chosen Feedzai as the lead sponsor and contributor for the next edition of its Annual Fraud Report. The report highlights the key themes, opportunities and challenges for the UK’s banking and finance industry in its continued efforts to protect customers from fraud and is a valuable resource for industry professionals, regulators, and policymakers.

Combining aggregated data supplied to UK Finance by some of its largest banking and financial services members with its industry knowledge, Feedzai will use its analysis to derive insight into the number of cases and the value of fraud losses in the UK. It will also complement UK Finance’s long standing industry engagement, with additional analysis and commentary on potential trends as to the prevalence of specific types of scams committed over the period. The report will be published by UK Finance, in partnership with Feedzai, later this year. 

Commenting on the partnership, Pedro Barata, Chief Product Officer, at Feedzai said:

“We are delighted to have been chosen by UK Finance as their trusted partner in delivering this year’s edition of the Annual Fraud Report. The report represents a vital point of reference for all professionals working to prevent financial crime across the UK and is an important benchmark in tracking the progress of this endeavor. Being a part of this important research will help to build a clearer picture of how all parties can best work together to address financial crime across the UK.”

Lee Hopley, Director, Economic Insight and Research at UK Finance, added:

“We are excited to be working with Feedzai on the upcoming edition of our Annual Fraud Report, their expertise in this field make them the perfect partner to deliver additional insight and analysis that makes the report a valuable resource for the industry. The quality of data combined with key insights shared by those experienced in this area makes our Annual Fraud Report  a key marker in evaluating the ongoing fight against financial crime.”

Feedzai will also be involved in UK Finance’s flagship conference, Economic Crime Congress 2023, taking place on Thursday 30 March 2023 at The Brewery, London. The event brings together professionals from across the entire community of those working in financial crime to discuss the most pressing issues affecting anti-money laundering, financial sanctions, fraud protection and data sharing.

Daniel Holmes, Feedzai’s expert in Fraud Prevention, will join a line-up of key industry experts at the conference to lead a panel discussion on ‘The role of the wider ecosystem: Collaborating to tackle fraud’. The session will focus on looking outside of the financial services sector at other key areas and players within the wider finance and technology industries and explore how all parties can best collaborate on various initiatives towards the united goal of reducing the threat of economic crime.

Carrefour Italia and Nexi announce a partnership that allows citizens to pay postal payment slips and PagoPA notices at the checkouts of more than 190 stores in Italy, including Carrefour hypermarkets and Carrefour Markets. The service, created in collaboration with Poste Italiane, enables payment to be made using any method.

Based on Nexi's technology platform, this solution is the only one of its kind in Italy and guarantees Carrefour the possibility to manage, with one integration, the interface of the checkout system with the PagoPA node and with Poste Italiane's systems. This allows them to simultaneously enable the collection of both postal payment slips and PagoPA notices.

The service, which is available during all store opening hours, enables barcode reading of payment slips and QR code reading of PagoPA notices, allowing for checkout payment of bills, utilities, taxes, fines, school services and other payments to Public Administration bodies, with the assurance of a simple, reliable and secure payment experience.

“Our customers are always the focus of our strategy, and thanks to the partnership with Nexi, we will be able to meet their needs further, improving their shopping experience in our stores," says Alessandra Grendele, Director of E-Commerce, Marketing, Data and Digital Transformation at Carrefour Italia. "In fact, in addition to postal payment slips, it will be possible to make payments to Public Administration bodies at the checkout, in a simple, fast and secure manner.”  

“This agreement with Carrefour Italia allows us to continue to support the modernization of the country, contributing to the further spread of digital payments, specifically towards Public Administration,” says Andrea Pennacchia,  Head of Banking & PA Solutions at Nexi. “This partnership also allows us to take another step in the digitalization of points of sale, while guaranteeing large-scale retail trade the opportunity to expand the range of services they offer their customers without increasing complexity at the checkout. We are the only player in Italy, in fact, that offers the integrated management of both postal payment slips and PagoPA payment notices.”

Adyen, the global financial technology platform of choice for leading businesses, announces that its annual Accelerator program is returning this spring to empower another round of high-potential social enterprises and impact startups. EMEA-based businesses committed to furthering the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can enter to join the program as of Thursday 9th March for a chance to win €30,000 of prize money and two weeks of dedicated Adyen mentorship. Adyen will cover the cost of accommodation and travel to the company’s Amsterdam headquarters for two representatives from each of the ten successful enterprises.

Following the program’s success over the previous two editions, Adyen’s upcoming Accelerator will comprise an immersive program taking place from 5th-9th June, during which ten invited enterprises chosen on the strength of their written application will attend a range of workshops, presentations, and training. These sessions are designed to deepen their practical knowledge, sharpen their skills, and ultimately provide the tools needed to scale their impact. Session topics will range from refining business values to building a growth strategy, the power of brand storytelling, and how to pitch to investors.

“Adyen’s Accelerator program embodies our core mission, which is to empower businesses to achieve their ambitions faster,” commented Ingo Uytdehaage, CFO at Adyen. “We are excited to be returning with a focus on supporting social enterprises and impact startups.  All participants of global commerce can simultaneously help tackle social issues and take climate action. The businesses who participate in our Accelerator set a strong example of how to simultaneously support the UN SDGs, and we’re proud to help drive their growth.”

At the end of the week of interactive learning, all participants will showcase their products in Adyen’s pop-up impact market, where they will receive product feedback from Adyen employees, merchants, partners, and investors. One ultimate winner will be announced on the program’s closing day, during which the startups will have a chance to pitch their business on stage to a panel of impact-focused investors and Adyen board members.

The winner of the Accelerator will receive €30,000 in prize money as well as two weeks of mentorship from the Adyen team. This mentorship will be tailored to the winner’s needs. Adyen is in a valuable position to give back to budding businesses advancing the UN SDGs. With their experience sustainably scaling the company to partnering with some of the world’s largest enterprises, Adyen looks forward to sharing actionable lessons and tools to accelerate the growth of ten impact-driven startups. 

“Adyen’s Accelerator was a fantastic experience for us,” added Alice Moxley, Founder & CEO of Pivot, the winner of Adyen’s 2022 EMEA Accelerator. “We thoroughly enjoyed our time during that special week in Amsterdam as well as the mentoring that followed from the Adyen team. The backing of organisations like Adyen means so much to social enterprises like ours in what has been a challenging couple of years.”

The 2022 EMEA Accelerator winner, London-based jewellery social enterprise, Pivot, recently showcased their work in Adyen’s Amsterdam HQ storefront. Adyen’s mentorship, guidance, and financial support enabled Pivot to extend its increasingly important mission of alleviating the effects of homelessness through creativity and business confidence.

Pleo, one of Europe’s leading business spending solutions, has teamed up with strategic coaching company Skiller Whale to upskill its engineering staff, with a programme centring on developing best-in-class API integrations. Through a focus on continuous learning that can be immediately applied and experimented with, Skiller Whale coaches will be working with Pleo’s own engineering team to accelerate expertise and specialist knowledge. 

By investing in existing teams rather than bolting on skill gaps through new employees, Pleo is making an impact through smarter growth and enabled teams. Upskilling teams also has the opportunity to motivate and challenge existing employees, helping to grow and retain them, which Pleo believes will set up the business for long-term success. This chimes with findings from Pleo’s recent ‘State of Spending 2023’ report, where 48% of UK businesses were found to be swapping surface level employee niceties —things like work perks, gifts, socials—and giving employees what they really want—for instance, better pay, training or travel expenses.

Meri Williams, CTO at Pleo, agrees; “We really gelled with the Skiller Whale mentality that learning shouldn’t be a bolt on, or a perk. It’s a key part of our long-term technology strategy and will help us continue pushing our innovation and strengthening our overall product offering. It’s a bit of a no-brainer really - we want to help our engineering teams build their careers with Pleo and this is a fantastic way to personalise and super-charge that learning and development.”  

Hywel Carver, Co-Founder and CEO of Skiller Whale comments, “The idea for Skiller Whale grew out of a frustration with not being able to execute on ambitious tech strategies due to team skill gaps. Live team coaching was designed to enable tech leaders to quickly change the shape of their team’s capabilities. Pleo’s bold tech strategy of being “best in class in the API ecosystem is exactly the type of scenario we built the company for.”

Dave Millican, Co-Founder and CTO at Skiller Whale added,  “I think we particularly appealed to Pleo for this project because unlike typical training organisations, we offer a live coach who is a domain expert engineer - not a full-time coach. They are there to challenge and support learning and provide industry context because they work with the technology every day.”  

FintechOS, a leader in fintech enablement, is to collaborate with PwC to support its new digital banking solution: Infinite Financial Solutions for Banking. Powered by Microsoft’s Cloud for Financial Services and leveraging FintechOS’s technology platform, the solution enables financial institutions to accelerate digital transformation and elevate customer experience in a cost-effective way. 
  
Infinite Financial Solutions for Banking combines proven cloud-based technologies, cutting-edge fintech innovation, and deep industry insight and understanding, as well as broad experience across strategy, regulation, controls, and cybersecurity. By simplifying fintech development and deployment, and greatly reducing the time required to develop new services, the solution enables institutions to accelerate the launch, servicing, and expansion of their financial products and services. 
  
With the aim of creating exceptional customer experiences and delivering rapid innovation for financial services providers, all at reduced cost, PwC and FintechOS are collaborating to enable the dynamic orchestration and hyper-personalisation of digital customer journeys. FintechOS has a proven track record of helping financial institutions to quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively launch personalised and differentiated financial products and customer journeys at scale. 
  
For Infinite Financial Solutions for Banking, the FintechOS platform will: 
  
 • Act as the integration and orchestration layer, simplifying and enabling connections with a wide variety of systems, such as identity verification, Open Banking, payments, and neo-core technologies 
 • Provide a low-code/no-code approach to configure and update financial products and to create data-driven customer journeys, avoiding dependency on scarce technical talent, and 
 • Enable PwC to launch new, innovative solutions with financial customers in fewer than 12 months while reducing total cost of ownership by up to 40%. 

In addition to PwC’s deep digital banking expertise, the solution also leverages Microsoft’s Cloud for Financial Services to provide a single customer services platform and support hyper-personalisation.  

“FintechOS enables our clients to create hyper-personalised digital customer journey experiences and access a rich catalogue of configurable banking service capabilities. Through its powerful low-code design studio, FintechOS allows business teams to dynamically change customer journey flows, business rules, and customer personalisation. This is a unique combination and a game-changer in driving business agility,” said Mike Kennelly, Senior Director at PwC. 

“FintechOS can plug in anywhere in the tech stack, working with existing and legacy technologies,” said Mike Hughes, Vice President, Product Marketing at FintechOS. “This enables PwC – with its Infinite Financial Solutions – to bring together best-of-breed cloud services, integration and orchestration layers, and deep digital banking know-how to help institutions pioneer new products and services.”

SAP Fioneer, a leading global provider of financial services software solutions and platforms, has announced the launch of Fioneer Financial Control. Leveraging the unique connection to S/4HANA, SAP’s ERP software platform, the solution reduces the total cost of accounting, finance operations and closing processes significantly while minimizing risks and manual labour associated with financial closing and reporting.

Fioneer Financial Control is an extension of the standard software solution SAP Financial Product Sub Ledger (FPSL) and developed as one integrated solution that follows the single source of truth concept on the S/4HANA platform. The solution is designed to increase efficiency by avoiding data replication. With financial services institutions (FSIs) facing high expectations to accelerate closing processes and publish financial numbers faster, Fioneer Financial Control provides a solution which is fit for purpose. It accelerates and simplifies this process, enabling FSIs to execute finance and compliance operations with increased speed and accuracy by managing reconciliation on a daily basis, intraday corrections and adjustments as well as conducting a proven substantiation process.

The solution was launched at the SAP & SAP Fioneer Financial Services Forum 2023 in Boston and has been developed together with Standard Chartered as part of a Co-Innovation project: Through the co-innovation approach, customers can actively shape future solutions which fit their purpose, shorten the time to value and ultimately becomes SAP Fioneer standard software.

Frank Hammann, Managing Director Finance and Risk at SAP Fioneer, said: “There is a strong need for accounting and finance departments to manage data in a way that enables efficient processes both now and in the future. Built as a centralized end-to-end solution deeply integrated with FPSL and the General Ledger, Fioneer Financial Control will be an important building block of their success in an environment that is getting more complex to navigate.”

“Continuing our growth story, we are delivering on our promise to enable financial services organizations to innovate and elevate their processes through rock-solid standard software. Financial Control significantly accelerates and simplifies financial closing”, Dirk Kruse, CEO of SAP Fioneer, commented on the launch.

Fioneer Financial Control can be deployed on premise as well as in the private cloud and will be available as of April 2023.