Europe’s first Crypto Art Festival  Rare Effect returns this month to Lisbon, Portugal - bigger and better than ever. From October 27 to November 06, Arroz Estúdios, an acclaimed work and event space for emerging artists to showcase their work, will host the exciting event, which promises to bring together art lovers and creative communities from around the world. The project is being funded by DGArtes and NEAR Foundation - the non-profit organisation that funds social impact development projects built on the world’s fastest-growing climate-neutral blockchain NEAR. 

Now in its second year, Rare Effect will explore the relationship between the physical and the digital world, creating a bridge between the traditional art world and the metaverse.  Rare Effect 2022 will have more than 90 exhibiting artists, both national and international, afternoons with a 10-day program of music with renowned musicians, panels discussions and workshops about Crypto Art, Web3 and cryptocurrency, as well as interactive installations and performances including Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and light installations and sculptures. 

This project is built to showcase both local and international artists and creatives and to educate them about future technologies. The theme for this year's Rare Effect is to build awareness of the issues surrounding Migration. The Rare Effect Open Call goes on to say “Migration is happening all around us. It's a part of many animals' yearly cycle and it's necessary for our acceleration in the technological world. As humans, we have developed the ability to migrate but it's not always a privilege afforded to us all.” 

Through the concept of Migration, artists will submit and present many different types and mediums of digital art for example screen-based crypto art, VR, AR, projections, performances, music and cultural panels to discuss what it’s happening and changing in the cultural and technology world.

The Migration theme has been broken down into five categories: 

*Climate Migration* - the forced migration of humans and species due to climate change

 *Transhumanism* - the migration of the human consciousness into computer systems 

*Freedom of Movement and Forced Human Displacement* due to conflict or persecution (refugeeism)

*Seasonal Migration Systems* - swarms, flocks, pods... 

*Gentrification vs. Regeneration* - the process of city development and how we can nurture our communities as they grow. 

As with past editions, Rare Effect vol. 3, will show and share the possibilities that technology brings to the art world. From innovative media exhibitions, to the use of tokenization/NFTs and crypto wallets, visitors can interact with the art installations as well as to break with some of the barriers existing between what is physical and what is real. 

Idealised, conceived and built from a community of artists, creators and enthusiasts all over the world - this is an event not to be missed. “We are more than a festival and we’ve kept the same mission since Rare Effect, Vol. 1 in February 2021. We are the materialisation of the digital, a sandbox for ideas and creation, an event to stimulate experimentation,” said Steven MacKay, Cofounder and President at Arroz Studios. 

CLOWD9, the world’s first cloud-native, cloud-certified, decentralized, payments processing platform, has launched today, revolutionizing the technology that sits behind global payments transactions.

Stripe has appointed Microsoft and Meta veteran Vivek Sharma as its first head of revenue and financial management.

In the new role, Sharma will oversee an increasingly important part of Stripe's business as it continues to expand beyond payments and become a financial one-stop shop for internet businesses.

Among the products under his command will be Stripe Billing, Stripe Invoicing, Stripe Tax and Revenue Recognition.

Sharma joins Stripe from Meta, where he spent six years helping to bring Facebook Marketplace to a billion people and most recently worked on the immersive social network Horizon as part of the firm's metaverse push.

Before that he spent more than a decade at Microsoft in a host of senior roles, helping to turn Office 365 into a SaaS business.

In a LinkedIn post on his new role, Sharma says: "We’re helping businesses earn more money in more ways—vital in the current slowdown—and make accounting, tax and analytics a ton easier so they can manage that revenue for a lot less effort."

Madhav Kalyan has been appointed as head of Asia Pacific payments for JP Morgan as part of a reshuffle of the bank's senior management in the region.

Based in Mumbai, he succeeds Sridhar Kanthadai who will remain with the firm as the newly appointed co-head of global payment rails and payment VAS.

Kalyan joined JP Morgan in 2009 as head of corporate banking for India and became a senior country officer for India in early 2021.

That role will be taken on by Kaustubh Kulkarni who will also continue in his current role as vice chair of Asia Pacific. 

In addition, Navin Wadhwani has been appointed as head of investment banking for India while PD Singh has been promoted to the dual role of head of corporate banking, India and interim CEO of JP Morgan Chase Bank, India.

Nutanix has announced the general availability of Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) on Microsoft Azure, extending its hybrid cloud environment to Microsoft Azure dedicated bare metal nodes. 

NC2 on Azure offers a seamless hyperconverged infrastructure and unified management spanning private and public cloud environments to accelerate hybrid cloud adoption. NC2 on Azure enables customers to deploy and manage their workloads in their own Azure account and VNet enabling them to keep the operating model simple and consistent between Azure and on-premises. 

With license portability of Nutanix term-based software and the ability to leverage all Microsoft Azure benefits, NC2 on Azure provides customers the investment protection and choice to run their workloads in a hybrid cloud environment. NC2 on Azure is now generally available to customers on Azure dedicated bare metal nodes in North America Azure regions, with additional global Azure regions to follow in 2023.

“Organisations are embracing hybrid multicloud to easily scale from on-prem to the public cloud, optimise costs for performant and secure workloads, and tap into a flexible subscription model,” said Rajiv Ramaswami, President and CEO of Nutanix. “NC2 on Azure gives our customers a frictionless on-ramp to Azure with consistent management of apps and data across their hybrid multicloud environment.”  

“While public cloud has solidified as a crucial investment for businesses, many customers need to run and manage workloads across public and private cloud environments,” said Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President, Cloud + AI Group, Microsoft. “NC2 on Azure provides consistent management for businesses’ infrastructure across on-premises and cloud, reduces network latency, and increases cost efficiency.”

Customers can now run workloads on NC2 on Azure and manage Azure instances from Nutanix's management interface. This enables customers to run hybrid workloads seamlessly across private clouds and Microsoft Azure without needing to re-architect their applications. The expected result is simplified and consistent IT operations across clouds, hybrid cloud adoption in hours, and lower total cost of ownership when compared to other cloud deployment solutions. 

Customers can also take advantage of Azure Hybrid Benefit as well as Extended Security Updates to improve cost, security, and efficiency. Nutanix customers will be able to port their existing term licenses to NC2 on Azure or get on-demand consumption of Nutanix software through the Azure Marketplace, enabling frictionless movement between private clouds and Microsoft Azure. 

“Customers are struggling with the reality of managing workloads across private and public clouds, and this challenge is not going away,” said Paul Nashawaty, Senior Analyst at The Enterprise Strategy Group. “This Nutanix and Azure solution addresses key challenges many enterprises are facing by providing unified management across clouds with applications, data and license portability.”

Customers can leverage NC2 on Azure to: 

• Simplify and optimise disaster recovery, eliminating the need to maintain a secondary site by utilising Microsoft Azure's on-demand capacity for failover.
• Access on-demand capacity bursting to Microsoft Azure, rapidly scaling capacity while leveraging existing applications and tooling.
• Migrate and modernise their datacentres by easily moving their existing applications and data as-is without costly and time-consuming refactoring or retooling.

“As we strive to financially protect 39 million customers around the world with our products and services, we continue to see hybrid cloud as a key milestone in our digital transformation journey,” said David Fitzgerald, Assistant Vice President of IT Delivery at Unum. “With NC2 on Azure, we are excited about leveraging a seamless hybrid cloud platform for disaster recovery as well as to migrate and run workloads in Azure to handle a myriad of hosting scenarios. We can now, on-demand, expand our Nutanix Cloud Platform to Azure regions without having to re-factor our applications. We look forward to continuing our strong partnership with Microsoft and Nutanix.”

"TCS has a long track record of embracing technology innovations to satisfy customer demand and enable them to focus on business outcomes,” said Dinanath Kholkar, SVP and Global Head of Partner Ecosystems & Alliances at TCS. “Microsoft Azure and Nutanix have been popular technology choices of TCS customers looking for digital transformation, and NC2 on Azure is an attractive option for us to help our customers extend and migrate their on-prem workloads into a cloud space more easily. The ability to rapidly deploy and burst workloads through NC2 on Azure is vital to our customer’s hybrid and multicloud strategy.” Dina added, “TCS Microsoft Business Unit (MBU) is looking forward to taking this solution to our joint customers.”

ZEDRA, an international provider of corporate and global expansion, active wealth, Pensions & Incentives and Fund solutions, today announces its partnership with Clausematch, a technology company developing solutions for regulatory compliance. The company is adopting Clausematch's policy management platform to streamline compliance across multiple jurisdictions.

ZEDRA has acknowledged the volatile and rapidly evolving environment (regulatory, political, social, and criminal) that the industry is facing. One of the most significant changes that have occurred in the personal finance space over the past couple of years has been the accelerated digitisation of risk and compliance functions. The company has invested significantly in digitalisation and in the right tools to react in a timely manner to any changes. Clausematch is one of them. Its technology offers an important multijurisdictional dimension when dealing with policies and procedures, ensuring they are easy to find across the entire group and with jurisdictional variations that are easily accessible as well.

There are around 2,000 internal compliance documents, i.e. policies, procedures, standards, and controls in place that ZEDRA is working with and a uniform system to manage compliance documentation and to shore up any inefficiencies.

"ZEDRA had policies and procedures that differ at group-level and jurisdictions. With the use of Clausematch, the firm created standardised templates that will guide document owners to create documents with the same look-and-feel and content structure,” said Ace Huang, Project Manager at Clausematch.

Stuart Esslemont, Global Head of Compliance at ZEDRA, commented: "After completing the sandboxing and the testing of Clausematch's solution, we understood that user experience is what's key to all of this. The formatting of policies and the audit trail on Clausematch are really helpful. The way the platform works avoids a fragmented approach to naming, tagging, structuring and formatting compliance documents.”

Another area that unifies the process is reporting – for example, where exact information of particular policies and procedures were last reviewed when they are next for review, who is the owner of a document, and which category a document falls into (compliance, HR etc.). Clausematch provides a single platform with solutions to those challenges, as well as standardisation, management and a structure to documents. 

Theresa Powrie, Compliance Manager at ZEDRA, added: "Being able to see where a policy sits works well. You don't need multiple versions of a document sitting outside the system and remembering to replace them. On Clausematch, we can actually just edit a document and an automated audit trail will be maintained."

In addition to showing edits, suggestions, comments, and approvals in the audit trail, Clausematch’s Solution Consultant, Pedro Fernandes, championed the company’s dynamic chart reporting as a significant benefit for ZEDRA.

“With dynamic chart reports, ZEDRA will also be able to identify documents that are due for review or are simply overdue,” commented Fernandes.

How do consumers want to access secure services online? With face verification. That’s the key finding from a recent report by iProov, the world leader in biometric verification and authentication technology, which surveyed 16,000 people in eight countries to assess their attitudes to online security and digital identity.

Seventy-two per cent of respondents in Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, the UK, and the U.S. said they would prefer to use face verification for secure online transactions. Sixty-four per cent said they either already use face authentication for accessing their mobile banking app or would do so if it was available, while 55% said they already use biometrics to unlock their mobile devices.

The appetite for more online services was even more pronounced, with 80% saying they would like to see driver’s license renewals, passport renewals and other government services supported digitally. But awareness of the risk of cybercrime was also high, with 86% saying they were worried about identity theft.

The five key findings from the survey:

Face verification is preferred for online security by almost three-quarters of consumers worldwide

●      Seventy-two per cent of respondents said they would prefer to use face verification for secure transactions online.

●      Sixty-four per cent said they either already use face authentication for accessing their mobile banking app or would do so if it was available, while 55% said they already use biometrics to unlock their mobile devices.

●      This roundly dispels the myth that consumers don’t like face biometrics – the security and convenience clearly appeal to people in all regions of the world.

The vast majority of consumers want additional secure services online and they welcome ID checks

●      Eighty per cent said they wanted to see more government services offered online, with driver's license renewals, vehicle tax renewals, passport renewals, voter registration, and filing of tax returns on the most wanted list.

●      These services all require stringent online identity verification, which underlines the need for face biometric verification and liveness detection.

●      Eighty-four per cent said they expected online payments to be verified over a certain value threshold, with Spain and Italy having the lowest thresholds.

Identity theft is a concern for nearly 9 out of 10 consumers – protection is critical

●      Eighty-six per cent of respondents said that they were worried about identity theft, with 37% saying they had been a victim or knew someone who had. Americans were most likely to have suffered directly.

●      Forty-nine per cent hadn’t been affected but were still worried about it.

●      Consumers care greatly about identity theft and organizations must reassure their customers with appropriate online security measures.

Ninety per cent of consumers might consider using a single secure digital identity

●      There is huge consumer demand for single secure digital identity services when the concept is explained. Ninety per cent of respondents said they already use one or might consider doing so.

●      Banks, governments, credit card firms, and Google were most trusted to deliver digital identity services.

●      However, the survey also discovered that only half of the consumers understood what the term “digital identity” meant. For governments and other organizations delivering digital identity services, consumer education on purpose and benefits will be key.

Passwords have to go: a third of consumers had requested a password reminder in the previous 24 hours

●      Thirty-two per cent of respondents said they had been forced to request a password reminder either that day or the previous day, with 55% saying they had done so during the previous week.

●      This not only represents a huge level of unnecessary online customer frustration but it’s also lost business; 32% also said they abandon online transactions at least once a month due to password frustration.

“This research highlights that consumers want the security and reassurance of online face verification, as well as the convenience that it delivers,” said Andrew Bud, Founder and CEO of iProov. “Consumers care deeply about identity theft, and face verification provides the best possible protection against it, enabling organizations to deliver secure services online with an effortless user experience. A simple face scan can unlock access to every kind of service online, replacing hideously outdated passwords.”

iProov’s patented face biometric verification and authentication technology is used by organizations globally to confirm that an online user is a right person, a real person and that they are authenticating right now. Its Genuine Presence Assurance^® and Liveness Assurance™ technologies deliver an effortless user experience with the highest levels of security to help prevent fraud, identity theft, and other cybercrime during online onboarding, authentication, and identity recovery.

After years of growth and recent investment, Backbase refreshes its brand to reach evolving banking industry.

Backbase’s entrepreneurial culture is driving organic growth across the world, in terms of revenue and customers, as the company’s mission to re-architect banking around the customer through Engagement Banking is gaining global traction. That culture, growth and mission were externally validated by the €120 million investment Backbase received in June 2022, and now it will be reflected in a refreshed brand.

With 2,000 employees and 14 offices worldwide, Backbase is the digital backbone of hundreds of financial institutions, and part of the daily banking experience of over 50 million customers. Having raised capital to accelerate the Engagement Banking vision, Backbase is on a mission to re-architect banking around the customer.

People expect seamless journeys, and Backbase is leading the charge to bring banking out of the past of broken experiences and into the platform era. The unified Backbase Engagement Banking platform delivers seamless journeys and orchestrates the full customer lifecycle.

“The new brand exemplifies the growing ambition, cultivated in the Backbase culture, to help banks dream big, make the paradigm shift, and re-architect banking around the customer,” said Jouk Pleiter, Backbase Founder and CEO. “Our proven growth model has brought us to where we are today and it’s time to evolve our branding to reflect that growth. Backbase is the innovation partner enabling traditional banks and credit unions to take the leap into the platform era, and we’re just getting started.”

With the new brand developed fully in-house, the rebranding process further illustrates the Backbase culture and commitment to staying true to its roots and empowering craftspeople in the company to lead change. The values that brought Backbase to this stage of growth - Curious, Can do, Entrepreneurial, Craftspeople, Together - will continue to define the company culture.

“With a new, bolder logo and visual identity, and a clearer, sharper messaging and mission, our brand looks into the future, '' Nicole Rosanella, Backbase Director of Brand, explained. “Without ever forgetting who we are, or where we came from, we’re telling the same Backbase story, and adapting it for a much bigger stage.”

The new brand will be unveiled at ENGAGE, Backbase’s annual flagship customer event. ENGAGE will bring together more than 750 banking senior executives, practitioners and technology leaders from around the world to make progress on their digital transformation through keynotes, networking and hands-on workshops.

“When we decided it was time to refresh the brand, we asked our employees what was most unique about Backbase,” Rosanella explains. “They mentioned our entrepreneurial spirit, our can-do mentality, and how our products improve banking experiences for millions of people around the world. By combining all of this, we created a brand that reflects our culture and identity and drives our bold ambitions for engagement banking.

Barclays Bank UK PLC is today announcing two new non-executive appointments to further bolster its Board. Bernadette Wightman joined as an independent non-executive director in September while John Liver commences his role today, 17 October 2022.

Crawford Gillies, Chair of Barclays Bank UK PLC said: “As Barclays UK continues to transform and grow, it is imperative that the Board has the diversity of thought and skillsets needed to ensure success. Bernadette brings knowledge of transformation, technology, and digital innovation to enhance customer experience, whilst John brings expertise in financial regulation. Their experience and insights will complement and enhance the Board’s existing skillset to help accelerate Barclays UK’s strategic transformation.”

Bernadette Wightman has extensive experience in digital technology and driving global business transformations. She is currently Senior Vice President of Worldwide Partners and Global Accounts at Genesys, a US business specialising in omni-channel customer experience and contact centre solutions, based in the UK. Previously, she was Managing Director for BT Group’s banking and financial services business. She also had a 20-year career at Cisco, where she managed large global businesses and served as the President and CEO of Cisco Canada.

John Liver is a leading advisor on financial services regulation in the UK and internationally. A former UK regulator, his most recent role was as a Partner at professional services firm EY, where, working with authorities and major institutions, he co-chaired the Global Financial Services Regulatory Network, and led European work on the post-2008 regulatory reform agenda and conducted regulation. He is a trustee of Rethink Mental Illness, a charity dedicated to supporting people severely affected by mental illness.

As a result of these changes, Barclays Bank UK PLC Board comprises:

Chair:

• Crawford Gillies, Chair of Barclays Bank UK PLC

Executive Directors:

• Matt Hammerstein, Barclays UK CEO
• James Mack, Barclays UK CFO

Independent Non-Executive Directors:

• Vanessa Bailey
• Tracy Corrigan
• Michael Jary
• Avid Larizadeh Duggan OBE
• John Liver
• Kathryn Matthews
• Chris Pilling
• Andrew Ratcliffe

·       Bernadette Wightman

Beams Fintech Fund, India’s first Growth Stage Fintech Fund, has invested in the Series C round of Progcap, India's leading supply chain finance company. Beams has invested alongside Google, Creations, Tiger and Sequoia in this round. Other investors in this company include GrowX, CIBIL chairman MV Nair, Freecharge co-founder Sandeep Tandon. 9Unicorns & ZNL Growth Fund also participated in the round along with Beams.

Founded in 2017 by Pallavi Shrivastava and Himanshu Chandra, both richly experienced finance professionals with deep knowledge of supply chain and microfinance. Progcap is revolutionizing the way financial credit is delivered to small and medium retailers of the Indian retail economy.

Having worked at Global organizations such as the World Bank and IFC, Pallavi has a nuanced understanding of how innovative financing structures can be used to propel the growth of underserved businesses and how this can be applied in the Indian context. On the other hand, Himanshu comes with deep experience in supply chain finance, having built the supply chain finance portfolio at Standard Chartered Bank.

Supply chain finance is the need of the hour with many companies facing cash flow crunches and unorganized collections processes, Progcap is bridging the gap between distributors and retailers through specialized finance, payments and technology.

To date, Progcap has disbursed more than $1 billion in loans, and grown 4X annually. It has worked with over 700,000 SMBs.

Beams Fintech Fund’s ecosystem and network of LP's, which includes leading Banks and NBFC’s, will look to cross-pollinate with Progcap. Beams value add strategy is to cross-pollinate between its LP’s and portfolio companies. Beams will facilitate access to its banking network and open doors to its group’s portfolio of 250+ startups for partnerships, collaboration, and potential acquisition opportunities for Progcap.

Sagar Agarvwal, Managing Partner & Co-Founder of Beams, said, “We are pleased to have backed Pallavi & Himanshu, building one of the fastest growing and disruptive supply chain finance platforms in the country. Supply chain is a deep problem in India with a credit gap of more than $300 Billion and SME/MSME’s require access to capital through innovative financing solutions. We are excited to work with Pallavi and Himanshu on building the future of supply chain finance and payments in India”.

“We are excited to join hands with Beams team to solve challenges faced by MSMEs/SMEs in their financing requirements. Beams has built an interesting value add strategy towards companies & we are looking forward to working together with them on problems being solved by Progcap,” said Pallavi Shrivastava, Co-founder