Today, Coincover, the leading digital asset protection company, announces a new partnership with Cobo, the largest digital asset custodian and blockchain infrastructure provider in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. This news comes shortly after Coincover’s recent successful $30 million funding round.  

Cobo is a pioneer of blockchain technology and is therefore constantly looking for innovative ways to improve the industry's security standard, with security becoming increasingly imperative. The partnership gives all of Cobo’s customers, including asset managers and exchanges, access to the market-leading protection against disaster situations, such as hacking, downtime, or loss through human error. Coincover’s position as a secure third-party can prevent Cobo’s clients from losing access to wallets should they fail to back up private keys independently.  

The partnership supports growth for both parties, ensuring Cobo’s offering is unbeatable and supporting Coincover’s expansion into APAC, while also giving wallet owners’ peace of mind in knowing their digital assets are protected to the highest standard available.  

Dr Changhao Jiang, Co-Founder & CTO at Cobo said, “This partnership is an important part of our strategy. We are taking digital asset infrastructure to the next level, which means we also need to provide our clients with the best protection standard. It soon became clear that Coincover was a service we needed to tap into. Coincover’s technology adds an essential layer of security in protecting our customer’s digital assets. This partnership also gives us a competitive edge on top of our recently announced SuperLoop, an off-exchange custody and settlement network, which helps reduce the risks of centralised exchanges. We are the first major infrastructure provider in Asia to partner with Coincover, meaning we are ahead of the curve on protection and are uniquely positioned to provide the most secure crypto wallets to financial institutions across Asia, and beyond.” 

Oliver Cummings, Strategy & Partnerships Director at Coincover said, “This marks a significant expansion of our technology into Asia. We are rapidly becoming the industry standard for security and are now well-established in the US and EMEA. But to succeed in our mission to make crypto as safe as possible, we must build our presence in Asia, which has a booming crypto market. The good news is we are in a very strong position to do so. It’s gradually becoming essential for crypto firms all over the world to have disaster recovery technology or they risk giving their competitors an edge. We want people to be asking ‘Do you have Coincover?’ when speaking to custodians. Eventually, it will be detrimental if you don’t, which is exactly what we want if we are going to transform attitudes to security in digital assets.” 

Kepler Cheuvreux, the leading independent European financial services company, is the first financial institution to adopt Opensee's cloud service for trade management and execution analytics. Kepler Cheuvreux, through its Execution activity KCX, will deploy the solution developed and tailored to its needs by Opensee, the leading platform providing financial institutions with multi-dimensional, real-time access to their data. 

The solution enables users to conduct an unlimited independent analysis of all their internal and third-party trading data, with tools to identify the drivers of performance and how to achieve optimal trade execution at lower costs. Kepler Cheuvreux intends to offer the service to its clients after an initial phase of internal use.  

Chris McConville, Global Head of Execution Services & Trading at Kepler Cheuvreux, said: “KCX is constantly on the hunt for technology that delivers a competitive edge. We were among the first to identify the massive potential Opensee’s platform offered in taking trade analytics to the next level. Our clients will gain fast, actionable intelligence without relying on us to intermediate. This solution brings full transparency, adds value to our service and allows us to forge better client relationships.”

The technology partnership on trade analytics confirms Opensee’s product roadmap, outlined in December, as the company branches out from implementing its solutions on-premise or on clients’ Private Clouds by offering a full SaaS deployment for a large variety of use cases. The strategy is to give banks, asset managers, hedge funds and brokers access to data at scale with embedded analytics for use cases including market and credit risks, liquidity management, trading analytics, and ESG.

Stephane Rio, Founder and CEO of Opensee, said: “Our long-standing cooperation with Kepler Cheuvreux is an important step in enabling all financial institutions to manage their trading data stack challenges as their volumes of data grow exponentially. We want to provide high performance tools that allow users to source valuable business intelligence for more informed decision-making, to identify opportunities for a competitive advantage or to respond better to client needs.”

While many financial institutions are constrained by legacy data architecture, Opensee’s platform gives users the ability to explore 100% of their data at the push of a button, without limiting the size, history or granular detail. For legacy systems this can typically take at least a day and users are obliged to compromise on the dimensions of the data they require. 

The Opensee platform’s sophisticated calculators and embedded analytics complement full data access, enabling Front Office, Risk and Finance managers to manipulate the harnessed data for intelligence in a variety of use cases. Tier 1 banks currently use the Opensee platform for analysis and the production chain of regulatory reporting in capital markets, liquidity and capital reporting by finance departments. Asset managers, hedge funds and brokers use it for analysing and enhancing trade execution.                                                                                                                    

Anvar Karimson, Kepler Cheuvreux’s Chief Technology Officer, said: “Through our partnership with Opensee, we have developed a tailored solution that meets the needs of KCX and our clients, delivering granular visibility into trade performance with real-time actionable insights. Opensee and KCX are fully committed to continuously improving the performance of our Execution Analytics solution, ensuring that we meet the high expectations of our clients and providing them with the insights they need in a continuously evolving market landscape.” 

DirectID, a UK-based, global fintech specializing in credit risk, risk analytics and predictive modelling, using bank transaction data, today announced that Ingka Investments, the investments arm of Ingka Group, has made a EUR 9m minority investment in the company.

With a mission to promote financial inclusion through its global credit risk score, DirectID provides advanced data to optimize credit & risk decisions in a growing number of countries. The company gives risk managers a real-time dataset to drive efficiencies, optimize decisions and drive lifetime value across the credit life cycle. With DirectID’s insights, decision-makers can better assess risk regardless of age, location, and past credit performance.

James Varga, CEO and Founder of DirectID, said:

We're proud to join Ingka Investments' portfolio of market-leading firms. We are excited to be shaping a new global standard in credit scoring that enhances people’s lives by enabling access to products they need in an affordable way. Our coverage, advanced insights and predictive models provide a unique opportunity to achieve this by creating the world's first real-time, inclusive, credit score based on open finance data.

The funding provided will accelerate the market launch of the most advanced predictive models for credit & risk, built from open banking data. In addition, DirectID will expand their credit risk offering into new markets and accelerate the development of models for each stage of the credit life cycle, from originations through portfolio management to collections.

Peter van der Poel, Managing Director of Ingka Investments, said:

We are pleased to have made this investment in DirectID and are confident of their continued growth in the open banking market. They have developed an innovative solution with the potential to complement and disrupt the traditional credit and risk market and help drive financial inclusion for more people. Open Banking-enabled credit and risk insights is an area we believe can add value to Ingka’s financial services proposition in the future.

The investment is the latest in a series of investments made by Ingka Investments. The aim is to strengthen Ingka Group’s core retail business by investing in innovative companies in areas such as digitalization, customer fulfilment, fintech and sustainability, that support its ongoing transformation to become ever more affordable, accessible, and sustainable. 

Nethone, the challenger machine learning-based fraud prevention company that enables eCommerce merchants and financial institutions to holistically understand their end-users, has been awarded ISO 27001 certification by the International Organisation for Standardization.

The certification demonstrates Nethone's commitment to protecting the confidential information of its clients, employees, and business partners and enhancing the security of its fraud detection and prevention products. ISO 27001, the most widely recognized information security management standard, provides a systematic and risk-based approach to managing sensitive information. The certification process involved a rigorous audit of Nethone's information security management system, including its policies, procedures, and controls.

Founded in 2016 by a group of security experts, financial business executives, and data scientists, Nethone now solves fraud challenges for over 100 global eCommerce and financial industries players, such as BlaBlaCar, Azul, Grover, Ramp, Grupo Boticário, Wema Bank, and many more. In 2022, Nethone joined MangoPay Group, a pan-European provider of platform payment & wallet infrastructure, to offer enhanced anti-fraud capabilities catered to marketplaces and platforms.

Mark Burton, Chief Technology Officer at Nethone, comments: “Obtaining ISO27001 demonstrates Nethone’s commitment to best practices in information security and will give our customers increased confidence in our platform. Nethone is a well-established and fast-growing company and certification was the next logical step in our information security programme to validate our operational excellence and we will continue to build further during 2023.“

Nethone has introduced on the market a modular Know Your User™ solution, enabling all online businesses to thrive without risk-related friction across channels, and is successfully addressing a wide spectrum of fraud types, such as bot attacks, ATO, CNP fraud, or chargeback fraud, while providing financial services companies and merchants with real-time actionable recommendations.

Thanks to its unique profiling solution that analyses unique hardware, software, device, network, and behavioural data on both web and native mobile app channels, and advanced ML technologies, Nethone brings out to the payments industry a modularized approach that offers end-to-end protection at every step of the user journey from login to post-payment. With the addition of the ISO 27001 certification, Nethone's clients and partners can have peace of mind that their sensitive information is protected to the highest standards.

In related news, Nethone also received SOC2 Type 1 certification, which confirms their security setup is compliant with the standard. This marks the first step to full SOC2 standard compliance. This achievement ensures the company’s controls operate effectively to meet trust.

TrueLayer, Europe’s leading open banking platform, has today announced its collaboration with the UK problem debt detection and prevention app SuperFi, which will provide open banking variable recurring payments (VRPs) to help customers repay borrowings and avoid fees.

SuperFi’s platform connects to users’ bank accounts and credit cards to track borrowings and overdrafts in a single interface. Customers can then select and follow personalised plans that help them pay off debt faster.

VRPs enable businesses to collect a series of payments from a customer at variable amounts or intervals for purposes such as moving money to a savings account or avoiding an overdraft. Enabled by open banking technology, they are a safer, more straightforward alternative to direct debits and card-on-file payments.

With VRPs from TrueLayer, SuperFi will support customers to set up more intuitive and flexible repayments. Through a process known as “sweeping” approved and mandated by regulators, VRPs allow users to set up automatic fund transfers of different amounts between two accounts that they own on a recurring basis.

For SuperFi and its customers, this will power processes that pay back debts faster and prevent fees. Customers will be able to use VRPs to “sweep” money between bank accounts, averting overdrafts and other penalties. They can also automatically ‘round up’ purchases to the nearest pound, using the spare change to pay down credit card debt.

Features like these address a need for better debt management solutions. As inflation has pushed household costs up over the past year, consumer debt has also increased. In November 2022, the Bank of England disclosed that consumers took out £1.5 billion in consumer credit borrowing in that month, with an additional to £0.5 billion of new borrowing in January.

The spike in debt has left many individuals and families in precarious financial situations. Nearly half (45%) of British adults have trouble paying essential bills, and about six million people have fallen behind on repayments according to an Oct 2022 survey from YouGov and StepChange Debt Charity. 

SuperFi’s debt support can help users alleviate these issues by leveraging technology. Customers get a holistic view of their borrowings and can set manageable repayment plans. VRPs can then help them carry out those plans automatically, settling their debts faster.

Tom Barltrop, CEO & Co-founder at SuperFi, said: “With millions of people struggling to repay their bills and credit commitments, the need for early detection and prevention of problem debt has never been more urgent. We are excited to harness the power of Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs) to enable our users to repay their debts faster and avoid unnecessary fees.” 

Matt Parish, Group Product Manager at TrueLayer, added: “By eliminating the need to authorise every transaction, Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs) enable people to repay their loans in a way that’s both worry free and frictionless. We’re excited to work with SuperFi to provide a more reliable approach to debt support.”

Penn Community Bank, the largest mutual bank in eastern Pennsylvania, announced it has implemented the Lenders Cooperative Loan Origination System (LOS) which is focused on small business and commercial product lending. The LOS platform provides a fully online digital experience for the bank’s customers allowing them to apply for their capital needs anytime, from anywhere. In addition to the enhanced front-end customer experience, the platform will automate many of the bank’s back-office workflow tasks, allowing the team to make decisions and close loans more efficiently and effectively.

“The team at Lenders Cooperative has been a great partner over the years,” said Jake Iampietro, Director of Retail Banking at Penn Community Bank. “We leveraged their LOS platform to provide access to SBA PPP Funding to thousands of our small business customers during COVID and as we transitioned to the new lending products and workflows in the LOS, we have continued to receive positive feedback from our customers relative to their experiences accessing the Platform. The Lenders Cooperative development team has combined both conventional portfolio lending products and Small Business Administration (SBA) lending products in a seamless end-to-end workflow which allows us to extend more of the needed capital to our customers who are building and growing their businesses across our communities.”

“Lenders Cooperative is excited to expand our partnership with Penn Community Bank to provide innovative lending products and solutions to meet the needs of their customers,” said Loughlin Cleary, President, and National Sales Director at Lenders Cooperative. “With many former bankers on staff, Lenders Cooperative is uniquely positioned to help Penn Community Bank reimagine the customer lending experience, so they can focus on supporting and providing capital to their customers in the communities that they serve.”

Today, Flywire Corporation (Flywire) (Nasdaq: FLYW) a global payments enablement and software company, is announcing a partnership with FranConnect, the market leader in franchise management technology, to streamline the payment experience for franchisors looking to grow their businesses both domestically and internationally. FranConnect is expected to extend Flywire’s B2B payments platform through its marketplace to enable franchisors to easily collect royalties and fees from franchisees in different currencies around the world.

The partnership between Flywire and FranConnect is designed to provide franchisors more efficiency and access to analytics that enable them to accelerate the payment collection process. Flywire integrates directly into the FranConnect software, helping franchisors to automatically power every transaction, ranging from the initial payments required to sign a franchise agreement, all the way through to managing the ongoing royalty and fee payments from franchisees. Because franchisors can leverage Flywire all from within the familiar FranConnect platform, they can benefit from the ability to easily track and access payments, and to quickly and efficiently settle and reconcile payments.

“We’re thrilled to partner with Flywire and integrate their B2B payments platform into our marketplace,” said Gabby Wong, CEO, FranConnect. “Our brands leverage the FranConnect platform for everything from unit sales and territory development, to brand consistency, performance management, and royalty management but a critical missing piece is providing a seamless payment experience, for everything from set-up fees to managing ongoing royalty fees. Flywire enables us to meet that need, and our users will look to their payments capabilities to help them open-up new growth areas both domestically and abroad.”

The economic impact of the franchise industry is significant. The most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau suggests that 10.5% of all businesses are franchises, contributing $790 billion to the U.S. economy and creating more than 8 million jobs. Franchising is also one of the most common growth strategies for businesses in the U.S. as it enables them to expand into new regions without significant overhead. And increasingly, U.S. franchisors are looking to expand their business internationally to pursue revenue opportunities. The latest data from FRANdata expects franchises’ gross domestic product contribution to the overall economy to be 3% in 2022, with a growth higher than the pre-pandemic level, totalling a $501 billion economic contribution.

Despite this growth potential, it can be difficult for franchisors to scale internationally. They face common headwinds, such as regulatory and statutory requirements in different countries. Additionally, the process of issuing invoices and collecting payments from multiple countries, in different payment types and often in different currencies is highly complex, and traditionally fraught with inefficiencies. In a recent Flywire survey, 88% of surveyed finance professionals said the complexities of collecting cross-border payments impacts their ability to grow internationally. Specifically, 95% say if they could deal with exchange rates in an easier way, they could accelerate their global expansion efforts.

The integration between Flywire and FranConnect enables franchisors to overcome these common hurdles by providing a streamlined payment experience that can be tailored to their franchisees around the world. Powered by Flywire’s global payments network that supports more than 140 currencies in more than 240 global countries and territories, the payment experience through Flywire enables franchisees to pay in their local currency, and in their preferred payment method. Direct integration with FranConnect, as well as with other systems of record like NetSuite and other enterprise resource planning software, helps franchisors to easily collect royalties and fees on time and with full transparency into the payment statuses. Additional benefits for franchisors may include lower international processes fees, faster cash conversions, shorter collections cycle, and a reduction in days sales outstanding.

“We’re thrilled to partner with FranConnect as the first payments provider to help streamline both international and domestic payments for their network of franchisors,” said Greg Leven, SVP of B2B, Flywire. “With our powerful integration, the 1,500 franchise brands who use FranConnect to manage their operations can also rely on Flywire to power their critical transactions, all within a familiar interface.”

“My experience with global remittances before Flywire was characterized by payments being a number of days late, being hit with hidden fees, and managing a difficult reconciliation process,” said Jim Perkins, EVP International Development and Support, Dickey's Barbeque Pit. “Working with and incorporating Flywire as the payment option has been a productivity improvement for my partners, as well as a clear path to timely and financial clarity for all involved.”

Glia, the leading provider of Digital Customer Service (DCS), and ebankIT today announced a partnership aimed at humanizing the digital banking service experience for ebankIT clients. ebankIT will now offer Glia’s DCS solution for digital-first customer service as part of its digital banking platform.

“Partnering with Glia is an important step forward for ebankIT on the continuous process of humanizing the digital banking experience. ebankIT and Glia share a similar vision about the future of digital banking and the importance of creating great customer and member experiences. The growing number of banks and credit unions worldwide that subscribe to the ebankIT Omnichannel Platform will now also have the opportunity to explore Glia’s customer service technologies, offering new solutions to their end-users,” said Renato Oliveira, CEO for ebankIT.

Pre-integration of Glia’s Digital Customer Service suite within the ebankIT digital banking platform accelerates deployment and time-to-market. Glia’s DCS solution enables a seamless digital-first customer experience across all channels—SMS, chat, voice and video—without breaking the digital connection. Online collaboration tools, including CoBrowsing, allow institutions to guide customers, accelerate engagements and improve satisfaction to build loyalty.

“ebankIT’s commitment to humanizing the digital banking experience strongly aligns to Glia’s mission to reinvent how businesses support customers in a digital world. This partnership will greatly help our joint clients to improve the customer experience they offer while driving new efficiencies through a seamless, single-platform service approach,” said Steve Kaish, SVP of alliances for Glia.

The joint Glia-ebankIT solution is available for financial institutions across North America, including Canada. For more information, go to https://www.ebankit.com/partners

AML RightSource, the leading provider of Anti-Money Laundering (“AML”), Know Your Customer (“KYC”) and Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) compliance solutions, announced today that Florida-based bank Banesco USA has selected its Automated EDD (Enhanced Due Diligence) solution for efficient, compliant customer risk reviews with streamlined, AI processes that deliver detailed assessments and reporting.

AML RightSource’s AI-powered Automated EDD solution assists Banesco in efficiently conducting periodic risk reviews using Bank customer and corporate registry data. Focal entities and their counterparties are evaluated across a broad array of risk-bearing characteristics, including adverse media, PEP/SOE, watchlists, cryptocurrencies and more. The solution also characterizes related transactions using multiple criteria including transaction type, jurisdiction, and line of business to spot anomalous activity. The solution uses this information to produce algorithmic risk scores and dynamically determine customer risk segmentation based on definitions established by Banesco.

“Our deployment of the AML RightSource Automated EDD solution is an integral part of our strategy to integrate innovative and intuitive technology into our compliance program to efficiently reduce risk and prevent financial crimes across our operations,” explained Alba Prestamo, Banesco USA Executive Vice President, Chief BSA and Compliance Officer.

The AML RightSource EDD solution not only automates data-intensive research required to accurately assess risk, but also presents its findings to AML/BSA investigators in detailed High-Risk Entity Reports (HRERs) that provide scored risks with key details auto-generated case narratives for fast, consistent reporting and decisioning. Additionally, the Compliance and IT teams at Banesco benefit from AML RightSource’s secure cloud-based environment, ensuring full implementation in less than 90 days.

Historically, experienced AML/BSA investigators spend an average of 12 to 15 hours conducting comprehensive EDD reviews. The AML RightSource Automated EDD solution has proven to cut this time to only three to four hours, providing an efficient, time-saving solution that collects and analyzes two to five times more case-related data than manually intensive EDD processes.

“Financial institutions are plagued by lengthy EDD refreshes that demand significant time from even the most experienced investigators,” explained David McLaughlin, Executive Vice President of Technology Sales at AML RightSource. “Our Automated EDD solution offers an improved experience for a bank’s compliance team by enabling investigators to focus on adjudicating and evaluating a case without spending hours collecting and compiling data.”

G-P (Globalization Partners), the leading Global Employment Platform™, and Wise, the global technology company building the best way to move money around the world, today announced a partnership that will power the future of how businesses pay international freelancers and contractors.

Through the integration with G-P and Wise, companies will have direct access within the G-P platform to an efficient payment system that ensures fairness and pay transparency for all talent. Traditionally, cross-border transactions have been limited to time-consuming and manually intensive bank transfers for payment processing, providing no choice to customers or professionals. G-P Contractor will now deliver flexible payment options and a straightforward view into the entire payments process — including the mid-market exchange rate. 

“Together with Wise we are creating a world that is unhindered by traditional financial systems, providing customers and contractors an ethical and transparent employment and payment process for all talent through our Global Employment Platform,” said Nat Rajesh Natarajan, chief product and strategy officer, G-P. “At G-P, our mission is to create a borderless and equitable world of work. Delivering flexible payment options is critical to delivering on that mission and meeting the needs of today’s professionals.”

Unlike other solutions, there are no hidden transaction fees — giving businesses more control and autonomy over their international payments. They can choose the time, frequency and currency of payments, and will see a full breakdown of transaction details and real-time payment status. These payments will save time and labour on individual invoices, ensure timely delivery of funds, provide the current FX rate, avoid inefficiencies and create a more transparent process for all involved. It also provides a significant benefit for those that don’t have access to stable currencies or are experiencing rapid inflation around the globe.

“We’re excited to work with G-P to provide an easy and transparent way for companies to bring on global contractors and better manage these relationships,” said Steve Naudé, head of Wise Platform. “We’ve seen a growing need from companies to have more control over their international payments, especially to contractors, and are proud to see G-P trusting Wise to manage and power their cross-border capabilities. We look forward to working with G-P as they break down the barriers to global business.”

New capabilities for G-P Contractor customers include:
 • Choice of payment method, including bank transfer, credit/debit, ACH, Wire and International Wire
 • Contractors across 180+ countries can now get paid in 50+ currencies including: USD, AUD, GBP, SGD, CAD and EUR
 • Batch payments for invoices in the same or different currencies
 • Real-time guaranteed quotes at the time of payment — avoiding any exchange fluctuations that occur as the transaction progresses 
 • Transparent payment summaries for companies to see exactly what fees they pay — nothing is hidden — and the mid-market exchange rate being applied
 • Payment status updates to monitor the transaction throughout the payment process; more than 50% of payments powered by Wise are instant

New capabilities for G-P contractors include:
 • Choice of payout method to receive funds with multiple options, including: bank transfer, virtual cards, wallets, ACH, Wire and International Wire
 • Choice of 50+ currencies for payment 

With G-P Contractor, businesses can hire contractors in 180+ countries, quickly and easily. An extension of G-P's best-in-class Global Employment Platform™, this offering provides support throughout the entire lifecycle of contractors hired for both short- and long-term projects.

Wise helps people and businesses securely hold and move money in over 50 currencies and send USD to over 190 countries. It is further growing the offerings of Wise Platform to allow banks and businesses to embed the power of Wise into their existing platform. 

The Wise Platform allows partners to take advantage of one of the largest global engineering teams focused on helping move money around the world. The team also has dedicated delivery, engineering, customer and product specialists who work collaboratively to seamlessly integrate the Wise APIs into partner dashboards and user interfaces.