The global identity verification and fraud prevention startup, iDenfy, joined forces with the leading NFT platform for creators and collectors, NeftyBlocks. iDenfy’s four-step AI-powered ID verification will secure NeftyBlocks and guarantee a swift customer onboarding experience. 

The success of cryptocurrency has impacted the NFT market, causing tremendous interest from the public eye over the past few years. According to estimates from Nansen, the NFT industry’s value reached $100 million in 2020. In 2022, this sum has increased to $11.3 billion, with the most expensive NFT sold for over $91 million. 

iDenfy officials explain that the significant popularity comes with a specific price for NFT platforms that are responsible for ensuring the complete safety of the digital collectibles. Since the market is relatively new, and the government doesn’t restrict it with tons of compliance regulations, it becomes an excellent branch for criminals looking for easy ways to launder digital funds and turn them into cash.

Securing the platform and preventing criminal activity is the main priority for NeftyBlocks. The platform helps users safely create, sell and manage NFTs via user-friendly community-driven tools. NeftyBlocks aims to add value to the NFT community’s creators and collectors not only with the wide range of NFTs but also with additional security tools, which were recently topped with iDenfy’s end-to-end ID verification service. 

According to NeftyBlocks, identity verification is vital, especially when working with digital assets. To secure its accounts and connect them with real identities, NeftyBlocks chose iDenfy’s identity verification solution. iDenfy specializes in Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance, helping businesses prevent fraud with AI-powered solutions. The startup ensures a user-friendly verification experience for NFT lovers who expect swift services on NeftyBloks.

iDenfy explains that a smooth onboarding process makes a great first impression, which is essential for businesses that want to secure a competitive advantage. It only takes a few steps for the user to complete the identification process, which consists of a document picture and a selfie during the onboarding. Once uploaded, iDenfy’s algorithm extracts and compares data while ensuring that only legitimate accounts have access to the NeftyBlocks network. 

After partnering with iDenfy, NeftyBlocks reached its goal of having a seamless identity verification process while reducing operational costs and lifting the need for an internal KYC specialist team. At the same time, with the help of the newly implemented solution, NeftyBlocks prevents money laundering and ensures that customers are transparent. 

“We’re thankful for the opportunity to partner with iDenfy. With the new ID verification solution, we can authenticate users without hassle. This helped us increase conversion and ensure that our platform meets security requirements.” — said Juan Paniagua, Co-Founder of NeftyBlocks. 

“Latest technological advancements have made it much easier for businesses to prevent illicit activity in a simple, time-consuming way. Our team is proud to partner with NeftyBlocks, a platform that cares about security and the future of NFTs.” — commented Domantas Ciulde, the CEO of iDenfy. 

Jens Woeste has joined Danish RegTech firm, Muinmos as Commercial Director.

His appointment is fuelled by increasing demand for Muinmos’ complete, automated client onboarding solution which has resulted in an organisational restructure.

Michael Thirer, Commercial Director at Muinmos since March 2021, has moved into the newly created role of Legal, Governance and Regulatory Affairs Director.

Jens Woeste joins Muinmos with over 20 years’ of sales, product development and technical experience in capital markets.  His career includes over seven years as Principal Market Specialist at Calypso Technology, where he worked with some of the world’s biggest financial institutions. He also spent seven year at Nykredit Markets, initially as Chief Analyst & Head of Quantitative Research before being promoted to VP Product Strategy and Development. Before that, he was a Senior Developer, Risk & Pricing Technology at Aloc Bonnier A/S. He joins Muinmos from Curo Investing, an advisory and software company which he founded in March 2020 specialising in intuitive tools and infrastructure for retail investors.

Remonda Kirketerp-Møller, Founder and CEO, Muinmos: “I am thrilled to welcome Jens to the team. He brings exceptional technical and commercial experience to the team and has a proven track record in sales, product management and building strong relationships with clients. He also has a strong network of institutional clients which he can leverage to help us achieve our growth plans. Jens fully understands the pain points we are addressing at Muinmos and, as part of his role, will work closely with clients to ensure they are fully utilising our platform to streamline and enhance their onboarding and compliance processes.”

“Michael has played a fundamental part in Muinmos’ growth since 2021. I’m super excited to see him move into his new role, leveraging his expertise and many years of experience, and leading our legal, governance and regulatory affairs function to cater for our global expansion and global client base.”

Jens Woeste, Commercial Director, Muinmos: “Banks and financial institutions are struggling with how best to respond to regulatory requirements in a way that doesn’t disrupt their business. They need a solution which can be onboarded quickly, with an open interface which can easily be integrated with their existing infrastructure.

“Muinmos addresses this gap in the market with a nimble and agile solution. Muinmos’ client onboarding solution, combined with the unparalleled experience of the team, is a powerful offering – and I am therefore very excited to be joining this ambitious and visionary company and playing a role in growing the business.”

Michael Thirer, Legal, Governance and Regulatory Affairs Director, Muinmos: “As we continue to grow, we put more emphasis on processes and procedures which will enable our next stage of evolution. In my new role I will focus on continuing to develop our internal governance processes, as well as building up the legal and regulatory affairs functions in readiness for our next growth stage. These are of special importance in a RegTech company.”

Founded in 2012, Muinmos has developed the only client onboarding platform to fully automate the entire client onboarding platform, from AI-powered client categorization to fully automated KYC/AML checks and client risk assessments.  The platform also performs constant monitoring, keeping up-to-date with changes both in regulation, clients’ details and risk profiles.

With Muinmos’ technology, financial institutions can onboard any client type - retail, professional or institutional - in under three minutes. Muinmos’ platform is a ready-to-use SaaS product, which can be easily integrated within a few days, or can be used as a fully white-labelled, stand-alone system.

C6 Bank, a full-service bank for individuals and businesses based in São Paulo, Brazil, today announces it will be using core banking technology from Thought Machine for innovative products, which will be announced shortly.

C6 Bank offers banking services to more than 20 million customers and will build and launch innovative products running on Vault Core – Thought Machine’s cloud-native core banking platform.

An extensive testing and simulation phase is now in progress, proving Vault Core’s ability to run innovative financial products and scale as the bank grows. Further details of financial products running on Vault Core will be announced at a later date.

Paul Taylor, CEO and founder of Thought Machine, says: "C6 Bank is a digital-banking leader in Brazil and a critically important client for us as we continue our expansion in Latam. This partnership demonstrates the flexibility of Vault Core and the capabilities of its Universal Product Engine in building and running innovative financial products catered to our clients' specific markets."

Thought Machine’s client list includes Lloyds Banking Group, Standard Chartered Bank, Al Rajhi Bank Malaysia, Intesa Sanpaolo, Lunar, and Atom bank, among others around the world. The company has raised more than $500m in funding and has headquarters in London, with regional headquarters in Singapore, New York and Sydney.

In a proactive response to calls for transparency among digital assets exchanges, WOO Network has today launched a real-time reporting of its assets and liabilities - the first in this industry. WOO Network’s transparency dashboard, WOO X, includes live data reporting that updates every 15 mins, proof of assets and where they are held, information on liabilities, and additional information related to transparency.

In coming up with the dashboard, WOO Network also analysed other centralized exchanges (CEXs) including WOO X, to check for the transparency features that users are looking for. According to its study, not all the top 50 exchanges are confident to display their books.

Various solutions have been put forward after the FTX collapse, but many solutions including proof of reserves fall short of establishing consumer trust. To compare, proof of reserves is the equivalent of a bank showing how much capital they have, but not showing how much they owe to clients and to others.

Audited records are an important part of the push for greater transparency but have limitations in isolation. WOO Network believes that the value of the auditors is greater when they can also verify methodologies and identify whether inputs are accurate. As of today, many auditors still lack the knowledge to evaluate cryptocurrency exchanges fully.

In formulating the dashboard, Jack Tan, Co-founder of WOO Network described WOO X as much more than a simple exchange with its ability to aggregate liquidity from top trading venues and provide this liquidity at lower fees, through well-vetted and diversified holdings on other liquidity venues.

“We arrived at this solution by coming up with a wishlist for what we want to see from other exchanges. So we are holding ourselves to the same standard and being the first to act with this type of radical transparency and live data. Our transparency dashboard is just one of the steps towards our goal of making CeFi more transparent than traditional banks and financial institutions,” Tan noted.

WOO X took the following approach to maximize transparency and timeliness, aided by on-chain proofs wherever possible:

• Real-time, verifiable information on assets and liabilities 
• Over-collateralization of assets to liabilities to act as a buffer
• Users are entitled to the benefits of senior creditors to the extent of applicable laws
• External auditing and verification of completeness and accuracy of the methodology
• Conservative and diversified holdings on liquidity venues such as Binance and OKX
• Embracing DeFi and non-custodial trading as a fundamental solution to counterparty risk

“The practice of using market-makers and other venues to enhance liquidity is widely used but has never been particularly transparent until now. From job postings for internal market-makers by CEXes to the contract fine print enabling the rehypothecation of client assets on Wall Street, this is a trend of opacity that originated in traditional finance and has crossed over into crypto. Going forward, users need to know how much risk is taken with their assets and which venues are being used, an area in which we are now leading the way.”

On top of the live dashboard, Tan said WOO Network’s Terms of Services ensure that users are entitled to the benefits of the senior creditors to the extent acceptable under the law. This legal language is crucial for determining the safety and retrieval of users’ funds in the worst-case scenario.

WOO Network is working to implement Merkle Tree proof to verify all WOO X user assets are accounted for in liability calculations. Merkle Trees allow users to cryptographically verify that their balances are included in the complete snapshot of liabilities. Moreover, WOO Network aims to complete a financial audit by a reputable, independent third party to verify the data reported is accurate and complete.

How transparent are centralized exchanges? Not all are excited to display their books.

Not all the top 50 exchanges are excited to display their books. As covered in various media, crypto holders wanted to make sure that the information that they get is always updated, and covers both assets and liabilities. They also said that having a Merkle-tree proof of reserve would be the closest to being a transparent exchange.

WOO Network looked at the top 50 exchanges on CoinMarketCap and checked their websites and Twitter accounts for their statements about proof of reserves, looking for what traders use as a gauge of transparency. The analysis also included WOO X’s dashboard in this informal survey.

Out of the 51 exchanges surveyed, only 18 including Binance, OKX, and WOO X have proof of reserves statements that can be found either on their websites or Twitter posts. A few of those 18 exchanges have a dedicated page that talks about their proof of reserves while some posted the information directly on their Twitter pages.

Only 5 exchanges are providing live data. For example, WOO X updates its proof of reserves page every 15 minutes. Others such as Kraken, Korbit, and Phemex also update their page regularly at different times of the day. Out of 18 exchanges that have shown their proof of reserves, seven have also displayed their liabilities, including WOO X.

The survey was conducted on December 4, 2022. The full report can be found on here.

ION, a global leader in trading and workflow automation software, high-value analytics and insights, and strategic consulting to financial institutions, central banks, governments, and corporates, announces that FinTech Global has listed ION products XTP Risk JANUS, XTP Central Limits, and Fidessa Surveillance in the RegTech 100 list for 2023.

The RegTech100 is an annual list of 100 of the world’s most innovative RegTech companies. These are the companies every financial institution needs to know about as they consider and develop their mission-critical RegTech and digital transformation strategies. The list helps senior management and compliance professionals evaluate which solutions have market potential, and are most likely to succeed and have a lasting impact on the industry.

ION's products solve the challenge of identifying risk as it happens, or before it becomes a serious problem. XTP Risk JANUS is a real-time position-keeping system with alerting capabilities. It can be used pre-trade, at-trade, or post-trade. The system implements more than 80 risk analytics ranging from balances and margins, through exposures, position limits, and Greeks, to trade surveillance. A flexible portfolio hierarchy allows the system to aggregate risk in different ways in real-time — by client, region, desk, market, asset, or any other measure of interest to the financial institution.

XTP Central Limits is a tool to manage the limit workflow approval process, with a complete audit trail of changes, automatic update of pre-trade risk layers of trading platforms (where an API is available), and reconciliation of limit definitions.

Fidessa Surveillance is a flexible buy- and sell-side, multi-compliance solution covering market abuse detection, regulatory reporting and analytics. The system’s features include integrating data and events from multiple internal and external sources to deliver consolidated record-keeping, monitoring, and reporting. A unique approach to compliance prioritizes data quality enforcement during collection, stressing validation, accurate synchronization, and correlation across multiple sources. The combination reduces the risk of reporting wrong or incomplete information, or missing abusive behaviour detection.

Francesco Margini, Chief Product Officer, Cleared Derivatives at ION Markets, said, “We are pleased to be listed on the prestigious RegTech 100 list. Our inclusion in the top 100 confirms that we remain at the forefront of innovation in technology for financial markets. It also recognizes that our products create value for our clients by streamlining processes and supporting their decision-making.”

He adds, “XTP Risk JANUS is a multi-asset, currency and market, real-time risk management and order validation system for exchange-traded financial instruments. It meets the industry’s urgent need to monitor all trading activity and margin exposures in real-time. Whereas XTP Central Limits is a unique offering that solves a complex, labor-intensive, and error-prone problem by providing an efficient and controlled way to maintain multiple high-performance trading platforms.”

Commenting on the achievement, Robert Cioffi, Global Head of Equities Product Management, said, “Fidessa Surveillance is evidence of the functional and technical evolution of our trading, surveillance and risk management products to support the growing complexities, volumes, and extreme events in financial markets. It navigates through all the major regulatory landscapes and complies with European surveillance regulations, meeting the obligations embodied in MAD/MAR, as well as Canada, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Singapore, and the USA.”

Starling Bank is introducing virtual cards for Personal Current Account customers and updated its Spending Insights. These new features add to the bank’s money management tools, designed to help people track their spending and provide greater visibility of their budgets.

A virtual card works just like a normal debit card for payments, but it’s linked to a Saving Space in the Starling app, instead of the main account balance. Like physical cards, virtual cards have a unique card number, expiry date and CVV.

Starling customers can have up to five virtual cards at any one time and can choose a different colour for each one, free of charge. To help customers with visual impairments differentiate the cards, each colour also has a unique shape, such as a circle or triangle, in the top-right corner of the card.

Virtual cards are being rolled out to customers from today.

Better budgeting
Each virtual card is assigned to a dedicated Space in the Starling app that can be personalised to give customers more control over their budget. Payments can be made directly from a Space, such as a daily bus fare from a ‘travel’ Space or food from a ‘groceries’ Space, rather than coming out from the customer’s primary account. When the budget is used up, the virtual card will decline instead of dipping into the customer’s main balance. Spaces can be topped up any time through one-off, weekly or monthly transfers.

Supercharged subscriptions management
Customers can use their virtual card for all sorts of payments, depending on how they want to organise their personal finances. In addition to Starling’s Bills Manager feature which is used to pay for Direct Debits and standing orders from a particular Space, virtual cards can make it easier to manage subscriptions straight from a Space.

By setting up a 'Subscriptions' Space and virtual card, customers will be able to see all their payments for streaming platforms, magazines, apps and organisations in one place. This can make it easier to review or cancel.

Helen Bierton, Chief Banking Officer at Starling Bank said: “Our customers asked for virtual cards and we’ve delivered. Virtual cards allow people to completely compartmentalise their personal finances for better control of their spending, making it easier to stick to budgets.”

To set up a virtual card:
 • Open the Starling app and head to Card from the home menu
 • Create a new Space or choose an existing one
 • Follow the instructions to link this to a virtual card

Starling Bank intends to roll out virtual cards to Business Current Account users in 2023.

Supercharged Spending Insights
Starling’s popular Spending Insights tool has been redesigned to give customers even more clarity over their finances. Customers can now analyse their spending from specific Spaces, gain extra insights from custom date ranges, and benefit from interactive graphs to understand their spending patterns inside out.

This is the second update to Starling’s Spending Insights this year, after 36 new spending categories were added in June.

“We’re constantly thinking of how we can help our customers manage their money better. We’ve been busy building these new features, as well as our new Budget Planner, to help us continue this mission” Helen said.

ZebPay, India’s oldest and most trusted crypto asset exchange, announced today that Rahul Pagidipati has been back in charge as the CEO of ZebPay effective December 1, 2022. Rahul will spearhead ZebPay’s operations and work with the current leadership team to grow current and new lines of business.

Rahul Pagidipati first became CEO of ZebPay in January 2020, when he acquired majority ownership from the three co-founders. In June 2021, ZebPay announced that Rahul Pagidipati and Avinash Shekhar would share responsibilities as co-CEOs, with Avinash focusing on increasing ZebPay’s market share in India as well as growing the company’s revenue, while Rahul led international growth and strategy. In December, Avinash took over as the CEO, while Rahul continued to support and guide him as chairman, with the in-house title of Un-CEO. The new title was designed to complement and empower Avinash and reflected the company’s long-term goal of becoming more like a DAO (decentralized autonomous organisation).

Also joining ZebPay’s active leadership will be Dr. Devaiah Pagidipati, current board member and founder of NAADAM (National Association for Advancement of Dalits, Adivasis, and Minorities). A successful serial entrepreneur and investor, Dr. Pagidipati will guide a new ZebPay unit focused on service to governments and NGOs.

Rahul has been investing in blockchain and digital currencies since 2011 and strongly believes that blockchain technology has the potential to transform the world across numerous industries and public services. As CEO, he plans to expand ZebPay’s business with innovative products and services tailored to retail and institutional customers, as well as government and nonprofits. ZebPay will continue to focus on investor education and creating a seamless user experience.

The former CEO, Avinash Shekhar, will embark on his entrepreneurial journey with the launch of his own venture in the Web3 space.

On his appointment as CEO, ZebPay, Rahul Pagidipati said, “I’m excited to be back as CEO of ZebPay. I never stopped being involved at the strategic level, but this year my focus has been on growth and investment opportunities. As I step back into daily operations, we will build new products and services focused on the specific needs of our different customer groups, whether they be individuals, institutions, or government”.

“That includes the needs of regulators, because even as we innovate, we remember that ZebPay has a unique legacy of trust. Most Indian crypto investors started at ZebPay. We’ve been keeping customers’ funds safe since 2014 and we’ve worked with law enforcement on numerous cases. We’ll continue to set the standard for trust and transparency so that black swan events do not impact ZebPay and its customers”.

“Avinash has been a great partner in building ZebPay’s India operations and has contributed significantly in strengthening ZebPay’s position as one of the leading crypto exchanges in India. We wholeheartedly support Avinash’s aspirations to become an entrepreneur and will be a stakeholder in his new venture as we believe in his vision”.

Avinash Shekhar, former CEO at ZebPay said, “I am grateful to have had the opportunity to lead ZebPay, a firm proud of its strong business and ethical values. Building ZebPay has been a wonderful and rewarding journey as I was able to closely witness India’s potential for the crypto and Web3 space. This, in fact, birthed the idea for my new venture. Rahul has always been my sounding board throughout my journey at ZebPay and has been nothing but supportive, when I expressed the desire to take the entrepreneurial route. I am confident that Rahul’s expertise and passion for the Web3 space will help ZebPay in reaching new heights”.

In addition to being the CEO of ZebPay, Rahul is also a Chief Investment Officer at Ayon Capital, where he guides research and strategy for Ayon’s blockchain investments, including ZebPay, Brave, and Ledger. Rahul has an JD/MBA from the Northwestern University School of Law and Kellogg School of Management.

Cashflows, the platform that makes it easy for merchants to accept payments, today announces new research showing that 20% of UK small and medium businesses (SMBs) are considering making redundancies to help contend with rising inflation. A further fifth (19%) have already cut staff.

As the UK sinks further into recession, payment decision-makers said they are considering a range of options to counteract the impact of inflation which has so far led to increases in shopping cart abandonment (35%) and bills (34%), alongside decreasing sales (29%). To cut costs, businesses are considering cutting staff benefits (31%) and hiking product prices (35%), with 60% of business owners having already increased their prices to maintain cash flow. 

Although businesses are already being forced to take these drastic steps, few have considered switching merchant acquirer, with just 13% of businesses having done so since January and only 6% of payment decision-makers considering doing so in the future. Switching acquirer can not only ensure that businesses get better value, enabling positive business outcomes, but also leads to optimising the payment and checkout process to help businesses actively reduce cart abandonment and increase sales.

June Ahi, Chief People Officer of Cashflows said: “Understandably, during these times of economic uncertainty, redundancies, reducing staff benefits and increasing prices may seem unavoidable for many businesses. But before taking these steps, payment decision-makers have an opportunity to review existing processes and suppliers to see where improvements can be made. Switching acquirer, for example, can lead to savings, access to higher quality strategic advice, and the ability to leverage new, optimised payment solutions.

“This, however, can be challenging due to the jargon used by payment providers, which makes it hard for payments decision-makers to effectively compare solutions. Indeed, in its 2022 investigation, the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) outlined a need for increased transparency and more standardised language in the payments industry for this very reason, and our own research found that 78% of those managing payment acceptance at SMBs do not know how to conduct a search for a new acquirer. Cashflows strongly supports any initiative makes it easier for businesses to switch providers and make the right payment decisions to cut costs, at a time when every penny counts.”

The full research can be viewed in Cashflows’ latest report, People Behind Payments Chapter 3: Imagining success in the face of inflation, which can be downloaded here. 

Zaggle, a profitable SaaS FinTech company and a pioneer in digitizing business spends, has been awarded with ‘The Next 100 Global Awards 2022 - Spend Management Solutions’ for their product ‘Zoyer’. Infosys, Finacle, Banco Santander (Chile), Maveric Systems, Union Bank of the Philippines were few of the other corporates recognized at these awards.

‘Zoyer’ is a cloud-native platform, available on a SaaS model and automates complete accounts payable lifecycle of a corporate. Zoyer unites accounts payable and credit card payments onto a single platform to enable enterprises streamline business to business payables for effectively managing operating cash flows and maximizing business performance.

The Global Banking and Finance Awards recognize organisations across the banking and FinTech industry. The awards felicitate companies at the forefront whose strategy, achievements, dedication, and leadership demonstrate outstanding achievement and are committed to delivering the products as per clients needs, acting as a catalyst for the industry. Since 2011, these awards have been reflecting the progressive and inspirational changes taking place within the global financial community.

Raj N, Founder and Chairman, Zaggle said, "It is a proud moment for all of us at Zaggle to have been recognized by the Global Banking and Finance Awards. With innovation at the crux, we work hard to provide organisations with new and innovative solutions to maximise organisation efficiency and employee productivity. ‘Zoyer’ a cloud native platform is available on a SaaS model and it simplifies, automates B2B payments for enterprises and SMEs thereby helping in efficiently managing cash flows. This award acknowledges Zaggle's progress and motivates us to push the envelope and further disrupt the Spend management sector which presents a huge opportunity in itself.”

Avinash Godkhindi, MD & CEO, Zaggle said, “We are honoured to be recognised at the Global Banking and Finance Awards. At Zaggle, our aim has been to develop cutting-edge solutions that will automate processes and empower companies to boost its productivity, efficiency, and transparency. Some of the biggest corporations and SMEs in India currently use Zaggle's multi-product suite to enhance organisation efficiency, maximise employee productivity and channel incentives. This award is a testament to Zaggle's innovation and contributions to the SaaS FinTech sector.”

Zaggle has had a phenomenal growth journey in the $1 trillion addressable Indian spend management market. The company provides its customers with a unique expense management system along with employee rewards and recognition program services. Zaggle has been consistently expanding its product line with an aim to tap into the spend management space in the country.