Glyd announced today the launch of the Glyd Prepaid Corporate Card for SMEs in partnership with Mastercard which will help small businesses manage their expenses better, enabling them to save time and money.

Controlling and tracking business expenses is among the top 3 challenges that SMEs say they face while running their business. Mixing personal and business expenses, managing cash flow for expense advances, and controlling employee spending are just some of the challenges businesses must deal with. Glyd enables businesses to solve these problems with ease.

“We are delighted to power Glyd which will enable businesses to set their budgets and build expense policies into the Glyd Prepaid Corporate Card,” said Rajnish Kumar, Co-Founder and CEO of Instapay Technologies Sdn Bhd.  “This allows them to manage expenses and gain insights into their cash flow and prevent unauthorised spending before it happens. And what’s more, through tie-ups with partner merchants, Glyd will enable customers to get substantial discounts on their purchases, giving customers more reason to use their Glyd Prepaid Corporate Card for their official purchases.”

Beena Pothen, Country Manager, Malaysia and Brunei, Mastercard said, “Mastercard is delighted to partner with Glyd to launch a prepaid corporate card for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) enabling them to digitalize operations including managing expenditure and cash flow. Digital payments have become a way of life for many people and businesses around the world since the onset of the pandemic. Therefore, supporting SMEs should be the foundation of our communities and it’s even more important now to help these SMEs transform digitally so that they can grow and protect their business.”

The partnership brings together the FinTech expertise and market understanding of Glyd and Mastercard’s global acceptance. With Glyd, customers get prepaid corporate cards for their employees along with access to its expense management portal. Businesses will be able to set their expense budgets and define where, how, and how much each employee is authorised to spend. They can get physical or virtual cards, depending on their business requirements. The software provides real-time updates on spends, leading to better control and visibility over company expenses, eliminating fraud and administrative overhead. 

Finastra today announced that Union Bancaire pour le Commerce et l’Industrie (UBCI), a large Tunisia-based corporate bank, has selected Finastra’s Fusion Corporate Channels to support trade and cash management. The best-in-class digital banking offering will enhance the customer experience for the bank’s corporate clients, while reinforcing its position as a leader in the market for transaction banking.

Nadia Maslah, Chief Information Officer at UBCI said, “Finastra’s Fusion Corporate Channels stands out with its proven capabilities that support growth and corporate banking digitalization. The end-to-end automation of cash and trade services will enable our clients to grow their business through the highest quality digital experience. We look forward to building a new level of client satisfaction with Finastra’s expertise and knowledge of the corporate banking market.”

Fusion Corporate Channels is an industry-recognized digital banking platform with deep functionality across corporate banking services. The solution delivers a single, intuitive portal to unify trade, cash, supply chain finance, lending, and treasury services for corporate clients, giving them the digital channel they need for a holistic view of their business that can be used on demand and on any device.

“As one of Tunisia’s most forward-thinking banks with a corporate banking platform, UBCI is paving the way for digital transformation of corporate banking in Tunisia,” said Kamal El Khoury, Managing Director for Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, Lending at Finastra. “With our open banking architecture which enables a smooth integration, we look forward to helping UBCI enhance its operations and generate growth for the bank and its corporate clients alike.”

The solution is being implemented with Finastra’s partner, Tesselate.

Helodrium has a proven track record of bespoke compliance and regulatory support, helping businesses begin trading in the London & International Insurance Market. With 50 years of experience in this area, they identify their clients’ requirements and potential risks and create tailored strategies to ensure success. The Helodrium team has a detailed understanding of insurance and reinsurance across industries and classes, bringing a commercial viewpoint to regulatory issues. Businesses can rely on Helodrium to help them get started, including tasks such as becoming authorised by Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

The Helodrium team will enhance Stubben Edge Groups’ current offering to brokers, combining Stubben Edge’s innovative approach to insurance with Helodrium’s regulatory and compliance expertise. Additionally, Helodrium’s international outlook and specialism in governance will further support current and future brokers in their businesses.

Neville Hunt, CEO of Helodrium, says, “I am delighted that Helodrium will be joining forces with Stubben Edge. Two innovative, client-focused firms combining to provide ideas and solutions to the financial services world. Together we will grow beyond the current range of territories in which we have clients as the combined resources and experience of the firms will naturally also extend our reach. We believe that client experience will be enhanced with the greater range of capabilities and solutions that we can jointly bring to the table.”

Chris Kenning, CEO of Stubben Edge Group, notes, “We are so pleased to have Helodrium join Stubben Edge Group. Their unmatched knowledge and expertise of setting up Lloyd’s brokers backed by their strong London Market heritage will enable us to help our brokers expand into Lloyd’s as well as into international markets, supported by our offices in South Africa, India and Guernsey, and to continue to provide our brokers and Appointed Representative network with the highest quality services and support in starting, running and growing their businesses.”

Representatives from Flashpoint VC, Lytical Ventures, the Sony Innovation Fund, and Talis Capital will gather online on November 3, 2022, to discuss the investment in regulatory technology and what it means for tech companies, consumers, and investors everywhere.

Evgeny Likhoded, CEO and founder at Clausematch, says: “Companies need to evolve their approach to compliance from reactive to proactive and dynamic. That’s why the trend of compliance departments turning to regulatory technology and automation is accelerating. We are seeing a growing investment and M&A activity in the Compliance and RegTech market, because the regulatory burden is increasing and compliance is not optional. The recent spotlight on ESG also means that companies need to address risks posed by the "extended enterprise" and push their ESG obligations down their supply chain. What follows from that is the requirement even for small suppliers to maintain and prove compliance with obligations imposed by their enterprise customers.”

The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with The Securities and Exchange

Commission of Thailand (SEC), to enable open dialogue about technology-enabled financial innovation in financial services, including FinTech and Regulatory Technology (RegTech).

The MoU was by Ian Johnston, Chief Executive of the DFSA, and Ruevadee Suwanmonkol, Secretary-General of the SEC on 18 October 2022.

The agreement provides a framework for further cooperation between the two authorities on regulation, policy and trends in financial services and markets.

Ian Johnston, Chief Executive of the DFSA said: “As the financial services sector evolves at an unprecedented pace, it is key for regulatory bodies to share knowledge and to stay abreast of innovation within their markets. This strategic partnership provides a strong foundation to strengthen the cooperation between our two countries. We are confident that bringing together the expertise of the DFSA and the SEC of Thailand on emerging technologies will further advance the development of our respective economies.”

Ms Ruenvadee Suwanmongkol, Secretary-General of SEC Thailand, said: “As the innovative development in the financial services sector is growing exponentially, our collaborative partnership is an important initiative that enables both authorities to keep pace with innovations and address emerging complex challenges. This MoU also underlines SEC Thailand’s focus on strengthening relationships with leading regulatory authorities, including DFSA. We strongly believe that a close collaboration between DFSA and SEC Thailand is a stepping stone towards the stronger and continuing development of financial innovations and regulations in our respective jurisdictions.”

Exactpro, an independent software testing services provider for financial market infrastructures, is honoured to be recognised winner of the Digital Assets Ownership challenge of the Swift Hackathon 2022 alongside BNY Mellon prevailing in the Interoperability challenge.

The Hackathon finale came as part of Sibos 2022, Europe’s premier financial services conference, taking place last week. In line with this year’s Sibos theme of Progressive Finance for a Changing World, the Hackathon’s focus was turned to digital assets. Challenge 1 teams tackled the problem of interoperability between ledgers, as well as between traditional and distributed ledger technology (DLT) systems. Challenge 2 addressed the issues of ownership of digitally native assets.

Exactpro’s winning solution – Project “Footprint" – is an analytical framework intended to collect and analyse ownership-related information of digital assets and visualise the data in an intuitive way in the form of profiles. The Exactpro team's expertise in software testing helped shape the approach.

“Our test data generation and aggregation capabilities are at the core of the solution. With the technical disparity we are currently seeing in the digital assets space, we’ve had to come up with an architecture that can accommodate changes to systems and protocols for years to come. We also kept in mind that in the hyper-connected world of today, a solution to tracking ownership should draw from a multitude of channels and go beyond just the trading platforms,” comments Marina Kudriavtseva, Head of DLT, Exactpro.

Iosif Itkin, co-CEO and co-founder of Exactpro, adds: “We have been taking part in large-scale digital transformation projects with our clients over the past few years, and it’s nice to see the experience we have gained in the DLT domain carry over to addressing the finance community’s most pertinent challenges. We are delighted to win this award, following on from our runner-up position in the Swift Hackathon 2021 challenge on Building ‘synthetic’ data-sets required for AI-based product development, whilst protecting privacy.” 

Provenir, a global leader in AI-powered risk decisioning software for the fintech industry, today announced its finalist status in the “Credit Risk Solution” and “Compliance & Regulatory Technology Solution” categories for the Credit & Collections Technology Awards 2022.

Winners will be revealed on Nov. 17 during an awards ceremony at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, United Kingdom.

Now in its sixth year, the Credit & Collections Technology Awards highlight the success of companies and individuals leading the way in enhancing credit and collections technology.

“It’s a tremendous honour to be named a finalist in both the Credit Risk Solution and Compliance & Regulatory Technology Solution categories, as it illustrates that financial services organizations see AI-enabled risk decisioning as key to improving credit risk profile accuracy, fraud prevention, regulatory compliance and financial inclusion, and achieving cost savings,” said Frode Berg, General Manager, Europe, at Provenir. “Provenir’s AI-Powered Decisioning platform empowers organizations to innovate further and faster than ever before, driving the continuous optimization they need to power growth and agility, without increasing risk.”

Provenir’s industry-leading AI-Powered Decisioning Platform enables financial institutions to rapidly overcome the challenges that hold them back – data integration, AI deployment and decisioning automation. With data more accessible and usable than before, financial institutions can automate complex decisions that drive world-class customer experiences, addressing identity, credit and fraud for quicker onboarding and frictionless service.

ChainSafe Systems, one of the world's top blockchain infrastructure firms, announced today that it has secured US$18.75 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round. The investment was led by Round13 with participation from new investors NGC Ventures, HashKey Capital, Sfermion, Jsquare, and returning investors ConsenSys, Digital Finance Group, and Fenbushi Capital. Concurrent with the funding round, Khaled Verjee, Managing Partner of Round13’s Digital Asset Fund, is joining ChainSafe’s board of directors alongside current board member Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and founder of ConsenSys.

Headquartered in Toronto with offices in Berlin and Zagreb, ChainSafe operates globally and has more than 120 employees across 33 countries. The company was launched in 2017 after its founding team came together at an Ethereum meetup in Toronto. Together, they turned a passion for open-source and decentralized technology into a profitable web3 business. Five years later, ChainSafe has evolved to become the leading multi-chain research and development company with a focus on infrastructure development and web3 gaming. As ChainSafe looks ahead to the future, it will use this investment to enhance its support for the adoption and sustainable growth of the web3 ecosystem.

“We have been close to ChainSafe since the early days when decentralized protocols were defining themselves and coming into their own. No organization has done a better job of establishing beachheads in important ecosystems and consistently making fundamental contributions. The people of ChainSafe combine integrity and excellence as well as any company in our ecosystem, and no organization has earned trust more broadly among its peers. This Series A raise enables ChainSafe to continue on its rapid growth path of strategic and synergistic protocol and product development,” said Lubin.

One of the company’s flagship products is web3.unity, a software development kit (SDK) for connecting Unity games with blockchain technologies. Web3.unity is designed to reduce complexity and introduce a new level of ownership to gaming. Currently, in production with more than 100 teams, the SDK is a catalyst for the rapidly growing blockchain gaming space, which is anticipated to reach US$2.8 billion by 2028. In addition, ChainSafe’s cross-chain bridging solutions have connected major blockchains together including Ethereum, Polygon, and Avalanche, and in turn, secured over $600 million in cross-chain token transfers. Designed and released by ChainSafe, these bridges are being used in a new cross-chain interoperability project for which ChainSafe is the leading contributor.

“Since 2017, ChainSafe’s work has been instrumental in developing the web3 ecosystem,” said Verjee. “Their research, development work, and products touch all aspects of today's blockchain infrastructure. We look forward to having a front row seat to ChainSafe’s journey as the company brings its architecture to the forefront and makes it accessible to all.”

ChainSafe has built a reputation as a core protocol developer for Ethereum, Polkadot, Filecoin, and other leading blockchain ecosystems. Given its mission to “onboard the next million web3 developers,” the company’s ambition is clear. With a multi-chain approach, ChainSafe is creating open-source infrastructure and tooling that empowers developers to build the decentralized web. With this investment, ChainSafe will accelerate product development, continue building its team, and fuel the adoption of web3 technology.

“ChainSafe was started with a vision that decentralized technologies could change the world. As time has progressed, the importance of our contributions has become increasingly clear. I am proud of ChainSafe’s impact on the community and, with new partners joining our team, we are looking forward to accelerating the growth of the web3 ecosystem,” said Aidan Hyman, CEO and co-founder of ChainSafe.

In the first 6 months of the year, Nexi recorded a 185% increase in in-store smartphone transactions in Italy, representing a 164% growth in volumes, compared to the same period in the previous year.

In the first half of 2022, the PayTech processed 76% of all in-store mobile transactions in Italy, increasingly driving the development of this segment which is confirmed to be growing steadily - indeed, according to figures released today by the Innovative Payments Observatory of School of Management of Politecnico di Milano, in the first six months of the year there has been an overall increase of 139% (vs. first six months of 2021), reaching a value of €6 billion.

90% of this amount, representing a further acceleration from previous years, was generated by purchases made with apps such as Google Pay, Samsung Pay and Apple Pay, which provide for the virtualization of the card on a smartphone - a clear indication of how Italians prefer these solutions for their in-store mobile purchases.

Confirmation of this can also be found in the growth of Nexi cards registered on payment apps: +58% in the first six months of 2022 compared to the same period of 2021.

Jack Henry & Associates, Inc. announced today the promotion of Vance Sherard, who leads Investor Relations, to vice president.

Sherard has been with Jack Henry for 25 years and has led Investor Relations since 2015.  His additional roles at Jack Henry include experience in sales, corporate development and finance.

“Vance has a broad array of experiences, extensive industry and company knowledge, highly valued strategic vision and outstanding financial and analytical skills,” said Jack Henry CFO Mimi Carsley. “He is a proven leader who has been a key driver of our company’s success for many years. We are pleased to recognize Vance’s contributions with this well-deserved promotion.”

Sherard holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation from the CFA Institute. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia and an MBA in Finance from the Crummer Graduate School of Business at Rollins College.

“The team and mission of Jack Henry make it an amazing place to work,” Sherard said. “I’m grateful for the opportunity to work with so many great people over the years, including our shareholders and analysts, and I look forward to continuing these conversations on Jack Henry’s extraordinary history and future.”