Aite-Novarica Group research reveals that payments is an important area of growth and innovation within the commercial banking space, and legacy systems cannot support end-user demand for better payment capabilities. Almost half of banks surveyed say fintechs, which typically provide a smooth customer experience, have already taken at least 10% of their payments volume. Recognizing this trend, the majority of banks globally are investing in modern payments technology, with 94% of respondents considering varied levels of investment in the next 24-36 months. Of those respondents, 65% plan a significant or moderate level of investment in payments technology during the same period.  

The ‘Payments Modernization and Technology: Priorities, Challenges, and Partnerships’ survey finds that Real-time payments are one of the largest drivers of payments modernization. Many financial institutions are somewhere in the process of deploying new payment rails, with about 72% of respondents having completed a project, having one in-progress, or with plans to implement. This suggests that most banks are welcoming modernization as a key differentiator and opportunity to innovate. Despite this shift to real-time payments, many banks experience implementation challenges, with 57% of respondents reporting that adapting legacy infrastructure makes modernization efforts extremely or very challenging.

Many banks report that they lack the resources for integrating legacy systems and modern technology, making modernization efforts even more complex and demanding. About 70% of banks believe that the technical challenges of integrating with legacy systems are either somewhat of an obstacle or a major obstacle, highlighting the need for technology partners that offer agility and streamlined implementation. 

The research was conducted amongst 108 banks in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. It reports on the payments strategies, priorities, and challenges that these banks are experiencing in both the short and long-term.

Other insights include:

• Cross-border payments present significant challenges: For all banks, the biggest challenges around cross-border payments are compliance and security concerns. 56% of banks report compliance and security to be either extremely or very challenging.

• Positive views of the cloud are now mainstream: Banks are recognizing the importance and benefits of moving payments processing to the cloud, with only 9% of respondents having rejected the move altogether.
• Payments-as-a-Service (PaaS) reduces time to market: There is a clear perception that PaaS can help reduce time to market and offer businesses more robust payment capabilities. 73% of those surveyed reported that PaaS will enable them to launch new services faster.

“As we can learn from the survey findings, the payments industry is facing a perfect storm of challenges, but with it comes new opportunities for growth. Selecting the right partner to navigate these challenges has become more critical than ever before,” said Barry Rodrigues, EVP, Payments Business Unit at Finastra. “At Finastra, our mission is to be that partner and to help our customers successfully unlock new opportunities.” 

"As businesses demand more efficient and advanced payment capabilities, banks across the world are recognizing that if they do not invest in more robust technology, they will quickly find themselves falling behind their competitors,” said Erika Baumann, Director, Commercial Banking and Payments at Aite-Novarica Group. “Our research shows the common global theme of creating a better, more innovative suite of payment services built on the right infrastructure with the right partner is crucial to success in a real-time environment.”

Verto, a fintech company specializing in cross-border payments for emerging markets in Africa, has launched its new and improved website. The platform is designed to streamline the cross-border payment process for businesses of all sizes, making it fast, secure and convenient.

The refreshed website features a sleek design, intuitive navigation, and detailed information on Verto's range of products and services, including global payment solutions, multi-currency wallets, payout in 50 currencies, and a range of currency exchange tools, including its unique FX Marketplace. The website is also packed with informative content, including customer success stories, whitepapers, upcoming events, and product guides.

"We are proud to unveil our new website to our clients and the public," said Anthony Oduwole, Co-founder and CTO of Verto. "Our team has worked hard to create a visually appealing and user-friendly platform that provides visitors with an informative and streamlined experience."

Mr. Oduwole added, "Our new website will help businesses get the information they need to take control of their cross-border payments and expand their operations in emerging markets across Africa and Asia. We invite everyone to explore our new website and discover the range of solutions and services that Verto can offer."

The new website can be accessed at www.vertofx.com. Businesses can sign up today and take their operations to the next level with Verto's innovative cross-border payment solutions.

With a background in KYC data and automation services, Mike has spent his career developing global regulatory, financial crime and risk compliance companies with international companies.

A strong leader with a history of building successful SaaS teams in start-up and accelerator organisations, Mike is looking forward to developing new opportunities for smartKYC, expanding their customer base and effectively developing policies, procedures and programmes to create a sustainable compliance environment, supporting smartKYC’s recent growth.

Prior to joining smartKYC, Mike also enjoyed success at various risk and compliance companies including Exiger, LexisNexis, Kyckr, Wealth-X and World-Check, where he held senior sales and consultancy roles.

“Organisations are looking to stay connected with customers and partners across distributed teams more than ever,” said Dermot Corrigan, CEO at smartKYC. “With the addition of Mike’s industry experience, we are looking forward to further developing smartKYC’s industry relationships whilst continuing to create KYC solutions for the unique needs of our customer base.”

Intergiro, a leading European Banking as a Service (BaaS) platform based in Sweden, announces its partnership with Retreeb, a Swiss payment solution empowering consumers to support social causes. This partnership marks a significant milestone towards the launch of Retreeb's sustainable payment solution and reinforces its commitment to value redistribution and corporate social responsibility (CSR), supported by Intergiro’s innovative embedded finance technology.

Retreeb's innovative payment model distributes 33% of revenue towards CSR initiatives, reflecting its vision to reinvent payment systems for a sustainable future. Intergiro will be supporting this vision with its BaaS platform and will provide Retreeb with an off-chain financial flow management services in the Eurozone, enabling the Swiss fintech to create Euro accounts for its users and offer an enhanced payment experience.

Intergiro's regulated services are offered exclusively via API, covering the entire payment value chain, and are backed by Swedish electronic money (EMI) license. This license permits Intergiro, and by extension its partners, to serve the European Economic Area (EEA) as a payment’s provider and electronic money institution. By partnering with Intergiro, Retreeb is now licensed to deploy its solutions throughout Europe.

The collaboration between Intergiro and Retreeb exemplifies Retreeb's "blockchain for good" mission, which aims to transform the finance industry’s aim from "make as much profit as possible" to "make as much profit as possible to share". This partnership represents a significant step forward in creating sustainable financial ecosystems that empower individuals to make a positive impact on society and the environment.

The Intergiro partnership plays a crucial component in Retreeb’s ongoing commitment in creating a sustainable payment solution. With each other’s support, Intergiro and Retreeb are well-positioned to transform the payment industry, driving innovation and positive change.

Intergiro's CEO Nick Root, comments on the partnership, “We are excited to be working with Retreeb and committing our efforts into creating more sustainable payment options. Fintech innovation is constantly evolving to help make a real impact on the world and help influence individuals to make the right environmental, social and financial decisions, and that is exactly our focus with this new partnership with Retreeb.”

This partnership follows on from Intergiro’s recent response to the ongoing economic crisis and inflation, where the company is now offering free banking services to merchants who open an Intergiro merchant business account.

Digital Asset Research (DAR), a leading provider of ‘clean’ crypto data and insights, today announced an expansion of its executive team amidst increased demand for institutional-quality digital asset market data. Co-founder Erin Friez has returned to DAR as Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Brian Stern joins as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). Their hiring follows Kerstin Krall Walz joining the firm in 2022 as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and comes as DAR continues to add headcount while advancing a risk management focus as it helps clients confidently navigate the crypto space.

Despite a market downturn, crypto assets and the benefits of their underlying technology remain attractive to many of the institutional clients DAR serves. DAR continues to build for the next evolution of crypto by offering tools and data to assess risks and avoid the pitfalls of weak counterparties and subpar assets.

“From the crypto winter to FTX, this downturn has institutional clients asking for research that can help them conduct due diligence in the digital asset space and for the highest quality data to run their operations.” said Doug Schwenk, DAR’s CEO. “We see this as the perfect time to build transparent solutions that institutions can trust to grow their digital asset businesses. To better meet that client demand, we’ve been hiring for key positions and we’re excited to welcome Erin, Brian, and Kerstin to the executive team.”

From 2021 to 2022, DAR doubled its headcount and is continuing to add new positions this year. Erin Friez steps back into the role of COO at DAR with more than 15 years leading legal, regulatory, and product initiatives in the tech and fintech space. She has extensive experience in corporate and M&A law, advising companies from founding through successful exits. Erin previously served as Director of Crypto at PNC Asset Management and General Counsel/Head of Digital Assets at YieldX (sold to FNZ). 

As CRO, Brian Stern brings twenty years of sales leadership to DAR with a track record of building, managing and motivating teams in early and high-growth stage companies while driving significant revenues. Previously, Brian held senior sales positions at AI and cybersecurity companies Cortical, RiskSense, and Electric Cloud. Brian holds BS and MS Engineering degrees.

CMO Kerstin Krall Walz is a sales-driven marketer laser-focused on growing DAR’s business by increasing awareness, trust, loyalty, and retention. Using her decades of marketing expertise at Walz Marketing, Saatchi & Saatchi, and Y&R, she helped clients identify differentiated positionings, bring brand identities to life, and develop breakthrough marketing plans.

Currently, DAR is hiring for a variety of positions. Specifically, the company is looking for Crypto and Market Data Technologists, Developers, Quants & Data Scientists, Research Analysts, Legal & Regulatory Experts, and Marketing and Sales personnel.

GIACT, an LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group) business, today announces a partnership with Mastercard, a global technology company in the payments industry, to leverage its Open Banking capabilities to provide a secure account verification solution for customers. 

The partnership will build on LSEG’s existing suite of digital identity and fraud solutions, allowing businesses to use a multi-method approach to verify account information for over 95% of U.S. deposit accounts.  

With Mastercard’s Open Banking technology, GIACT will be able to deploy Nacha-compliant account verification solutions across its growing array of Customer and Third-Party Risk businesses.  GIACT customers will have access to consumer-permissioned data to verify bank account owner, income account balance and transaction information. By allowing customers to verify a vast array of information within a single bank account, institutions can fulfill customers’ needs more quickly and reliably – streamlining onboarding, decreasing fraud exposure, and supporting compliance. 

Phil Cotter, LSEG Group Head of Customer & Third-Party Risk Solutions, said, “The partnership with Mastercard builds on our continued investment in digital identity fraud solutions for LSEG customers. By providing customers with consumer-permissioned open banking account verification through Mastercard, our customers can more effectively manage fraud and meet their compliance obligations, whilst providing a differentiated digital experience to their customers.  

Together with Mastercard, LSEG is building on two decades of experience in developing customer and third-party risk solutions for the world’s leading global banks and corporations to extend our offerings across customer risk screening, due diligence, identity verification and fraud prevention, supporting our customers’ digital strategies.” 

Andy Sheehan, Mastercard’s EVP, U.S. Open Banking, said, “Digital acceleration has changed how people think about money and what they expect from financial services. We are proud to be partnering with GIACT’s team to provide their clients the ability to automate account verification using consumer-permissioned, real-time bank data.”