The Netherlands-based Payment Orchestration Platform Akurateco announced its recent integration with AFS Benefit, Mercury, and UPC in order to boost clients’ business coverage and scale their market share.

Via the Arab Financial Services (AFS) Benefit partnership, Akurateco’s goal is to empower its clients by broadening their coverage in the Middle East region. AFS specializes in electronic payments outsourcing services in the MENA region. AFS is the leading digital payment solutions provider in the region and an industry leader in Islamic Credit Cards.

The company’s integration with Mercury will help Akurateco to leverage the reliability and streamline the efficiency of the clients' business in the region of the US and Canada. Mercury Payment Systems is one of the fastest-growing payment processing companies in North America.

Akurateco’s integration with Ukrainian Processing Center (UPC) aims to expand the payment capabilities of the platform’s clients. UPC is a Ukrainian card transaction processing company, a part of the Raiffeisen Bank International AG Group. The company provides a wide range of services for processing card transactions, offers advanced card money transfers, supports global payment wallets, and 3DS secure online payments.

Currencycloud, the experts simplifying business in a multi-currency world, has teamed up with Future FinTech Labs (FTFT Labs) to launch the remittance app Tempo to offer US-based immigrants a streamlined, secure and cost-effective way to send money.   Tempo currently serves money transfers to North America (Canada, Mexico), Europe (Italy, Spain, France, Germany, the United Kingdom), India and the Philippines.
 
By working with Currencycloud, FTFT Labs can provide its customers with a multi-currency wallet that makes sending money to the aforementioned countries easier and more cost-effective than many remittance services that charge high fees per transfer. Most importantly for FTFT Labs, the Tempo app is a remittance service that its users can trust, with features that make moving money seamless and with in-app customer support at their fingertips. FTFT Lab’s Conversion Tool means users can buy and trade currencies, while FTFT Labs Funds feature allows users to easily add funds to the digital wallet.
 
By continuously adding new features to the app FTFT Labs aims to bring the most innovative, easy-to-use financial products to the fingertips of an often overlooked market: US immigrants.
 

Mr. Sean Liu, CEO of FTFT Labs says of the launch: "Tempo represents an easy, fast and secure way to transfer money cross-border. Working with Currencycloud and using the breadth of services it allows us to offer our customers a seamless process from start to finish. We are confident we will be able to continue to make remittance a seamless process for our end users."

Lewis Nurcombe, Vice President of Sales, Currencycloud commented: “Migrants in the US should be able to send money cross-border without friction and without prohibitive costs. A fintech like Future FinTech Labs understands the needs of working people wanting to send money to family and friends, and as such is successfully reimagining how money flows for this huge market.”

The Tempo app is available to download from the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Sumsub, a regtech company that helps businesses stay compliant and fight digital fraud, has published  “KYC for the gaming industry: Europe. A complete guide to balancing compliance, conversions, and fraud protection,” 

The guide tackles the main challenges that the industry encounters today, such as staying compliant with KYC/AML regulations that vary from market to market, maintaining a high level of fraud protection, and building high-conversion verification flows.

The gambling market is set to grow by €140.05 billion from 2021-2026. With all this rapid growth comes greater exposure to different types of fraud attacks. So while gambling platforms aim to onboard more users as fast as possible, they can also neglect compliance and security requirements.  This can lead to massive fines and even licence revocation, with several multimillion-dollar fines already hitting several industry players in 2022.

“Compliance with local KYC/AML regulations is vital for gaming companies, as a single regulatory fine can easily cost millions and permanently disrupt their ability to operate. Our guide dives into the regulatory specifics for gambling platforms in the EU and the UK, providing insights on local regulation of state bodies, general requirements and individual market initiatives and policies,” notes Andrew Sever, co-founder and CEO of Sumsub.

Building effective KYC flows that meet the full range of European regulatory requirements is another big challenge for gaming platforms. Each platform must develop a program in accordance with its gaming and market specifics. Such programs should be secure and compliant, but also fast enough to keep user conversion high.  This guide shares best practices and easy practical steps to setting up level-based verification flow without compromising onboarding speed.

Ukrainian fintech company Weld Money officially launched their innovative product, which we have followed for a year - weld card. The product is expected to make a global step in the process of the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies.

We carried on the analysis of the market of fintech products with solutions for crypto payments and came to the following conclusions:

1. Fintech companies and crypto exchanges (like Revolut or Binance) cannot suggest Apple Pay/Google Pay feature or a cashback program to its users and simply doesn't provide a direct connection to the various crypto exchanges' wallets.
2. Banks are trying to implement solutions for buying and storing crypto assets. But the processes are performed indeed slowly, and these solutions still don't let the users perform daily crypto payments.
3. Crypto neo-banking companies are concentrated on designing and implementing unique solutions that solve the problems of the inapplicability of crypto. This is what Weld Money does.

The technology of Weld Money will let anyone perform daily payments for any goods and services directly from the crypto wallets using Apple Pay or Google Pay. Weld card today is:

• the first cryptocurrency card which can be connected to different exchanges
• the first product alike in the Eastern Europe region
• the cryptocurrency card that can be issued within a couple of minutes

What is Weld Money?

Weld Money is a Ukrainian fintech startup founded in 2020 by Alexey Bobok, Iryna Lorens and Alexey Meretskiy. The project launched its native token, WELD. The IDO was held on September 22, 2021. During the event, which lasted 4 single minutes, Weld Money managed to raise $3,6 million. Today, the token is listed on significant DEX (PancakeSwap, UniSwap) and CEX (Bitmart, Bitrue) platforms. The price of the WELD token already reacted to the news about the product launch by ~115% growth.

Investors have already estimated the innovative solution of the project at $100 million - this is how Round A was opened. According to analysts' forecasts, Weld Money tends to become the unicorn.

In late 2022 - early 2023, the product is planned to enter the European market. The global goal of Weld Money is to enable users to conduct transactions using their product with any digital assets (NFT, metaverse tokens, etc.) and pay directly from non-custodial wallets.

Glia, the leader in Digital Customer Service (DCS), and Veritran, a leading global Low-Code solutions provider, announced a strategic partnership to offer digital-first customer support to financial institutions worldwide.

The partnership integrates Glia’s seamless Digital Customer Service (DCS) solution with Veritran’s suite of Business Solutions to complement its digital onboarding, payments, digital wallet, retail- and business-banking offering. A simple integration between the two companies will allow financial institutions to significantly enhance digital-first customer service, increase conversion rates, reduce call times and improve overall satisfaction.

The companies complement one another, sharing a vision and focus on the financial services market. Both have a proven record of customer success and a commitment to innovation, integration, simplicity and improved customer satisfaction. Together they will deliver a best-of-class user experience that responds to the current needs of the financial industry.

“The addition of Glia’s Digital Customer Service (DCS) solution is a strong fit for Veritran’s offering, allowing Veritran to deliver seamless digital experiences, streamline complex processes and enhance customer service strategy,” said Dan Michaeli, CEO and Co-Founder of Glia.

Glia’s Digital Customer Service solution provides an online experience that meets customers and members online and keeps them OnScreen without breaking the digital connection. Through its ChannelLess Architecture, Glia enables effortless transitions across SMS, chat, OnScreen voice and video, with CoBrowsing and collaboration features to streamline engagements. Through its Enterprise Low-Code platform, Veritran speeds up and simplifies the development of digital solutions that create a top-notch user experience. The company serves the top banks across the globe, reaching millions of users and running billions of secure transactions annually. Together, Veritran and Glia can help financial institutions accelerate digital engagements, drive new efficiencies and improve satisfaction rates.

“At Veritran we believe in improving our clients' business by making customers' lives better. So, we are pleased to partner with Glia. This partnership is a great example of two companies coming together to complement each other’s digital offerings and provide viable solutions to financial institutions to continue supporting them in their digital transformations,” said Omar Arab, EVP of Corporate Business & Head of Global Alliances at Veritran. 

Today, Inc. Magazine revealed that leading payments processor VizyPay is No. 918 on its annual Inc. 5000 list, the most prestigious ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in America. It is the No. 3 fastest growing company in Des Moines and fourth overall in Iowa. The list represents a one-of-a-kind look at the most successful companies within the economy’s most dynamic segment—its independent businesses.

“Placing on this prestigious list in the top 1,000 for the second year in a row truly showcases how VizyPay is here to stay,” CEO and Founder Austin Mac Nab said. “I’m excited to continue disrupting the payments industry through our three core values of culture, transparency and being the voice of small business. I’ve seen small businesses repeatedly neglected – with VizyPay I set out to give them quality, money-saving services and support. This award proves it’s possible to achieve massive success without taking advantage of our customers.”

“Every day, I see our wonderful employees exemplifying the absolute best of a startup,” Managing Partner Frank Pagano said. “Without such fantastic employees behind us who are equally as passionate about VizyPay, we genuinely could not have gotten this far. This award is something I’m proud to share with this team.”

The Neat Company is the only small business financial management platform to offer inbound ACH/bank transfers at no additional cost. By eliminating the standard 1% ACH transaction fee, a subscription for Neat’s all-in-one financial management platform, which offers bookkeeping, invoicing, and financial document management, essentially becomes free to any small business that has $29,000 of invoices paid via bank transfer each year. Anything beyond that is money saved for Neat subscribers.

For nearly 50 years, small businesses have relied on ACH/bank transfers for both safety and convenience when sending and receiving electronic payments. According to Nacha, the organization that operates the ACH payment system, more than 29 billion ACH payments were made in 2021. These payments were valued at close to $73 trillion. Small businesses are commonly subjected to a 1% ACH fee on every transaction, even though each transaction may cost the processor less than a quarter to facilitate. For a consultant, freelancer, or contractor, these fees add up quickly. With The Neat Company, these fees are gone.

“As a small business owner myself, I always sought to maximize value from the services I used and from every dollar that came into my hands,” said Garrett Baird, President & CEO of The Neat Company. “Neat customers deserve those same advantages. Not only will our customers be able to receive electronic payments for the invoices they issue through the Neat system, but by avoiding overblown ACH/bank transfer fees on receivables, they can effectively pay for their Neat subscription with the ACH fees they save.”

This ACH savings is the latest example of what the Neat product team works to develop and refine every day. To calculate potential savings, all small businesses need to do is identify the percentage of their receivables currently paid via bank transfer and then calculate what is 1% of that number. Neat also offers a simple calculator for those who want to see how much they can save by accepting bank transfer payments free of fees.

Neat continues to redefine how small businesses do their bookkeeping. Its platform permits small business owners to quickly and confidently manage their books and keep business finances in order — whether they’ve done it for years or are bookkeeping beginners. The Neat platform provides customers with:

• Fast and secure online payments from their customers 

• Unlimited customizable invoicing in just a couple of taps

• Comprehensive financial document storage and organization 

• Easy-to-use bookkeeping with real-time data from anywhere

Neat is priced at $288 for an annual subscription ($24/month) or $29 month to month with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Scalable Capital has exceeded the ten-billion-euro mark in client assets. Within one year, the company has more than doubled client assets. With more than 600,000 clients on its platform, Scalable Capital is one of the leading digital investment platforms in Europe and one of the fastest-growing European FinTechs.

‘In just a few years, our assets went from zero to ten billion euros. We’re delighted about this milestone, especially in view of the current challenging market environment. It shows that investors remain focused on their long-term wealth accumulation’, says Erik Podzuweit, co-founder and co-CEO of Scalable Capital. ‘This achievement further motivates us to enhance our offering and expand our investment platform across Europe. The entire team continues to deliver outstanding work. Together, we want to make Europe a continent of investors – and we are just getting started!’

Since its founding in 2014, Scalable Capital has pursued the mission of empowering everyone to become an investor. With this aim, it has consistently made use of cost-effective financial instruments like ETFs, both with its digital wealth management and later with its online broker. As a recent analysis shows, ETFs (exchange-traded funds) are by far the most popular investment category in the Scalable Broker: Two-thirds of the clients invest in ETFs which, for instance, replicate stock market indices such as the MSCI World. In this context, the younger the investor, the more popular the ETF is, with almost three-quarters of the 18- to 26-year-olds investing in ETFs vs only 60 per cent of over 65s. The data shows how Scalable Capital has introduced young investors to long-term and diversified investing with its simple and affordable brokerage offering.

In recent years, Scalable Capital has continuously enhanced its offering. Following the launch of the neo broker in 2020, the company launched a crypto offering at the end of last year. With ‘Scalable Crypto’, clients can invest in cryptocurrencies easily and intuitively via secure access to regulated exchanges in Germany. A separate wallet is not required, as the crypto securities are held in the clients’ existing brokerage accounts.

In addition, the company has lowered the entry hurdles over time and thus made it possible for an even broader group of people to invest in the capital market. For example, the original minimum investment amount of 10,000 euro applicable for Scalable’s digital wealth management has been significantly reduced. By the end of 2021, every client can start investing with just 20 euros per month via a savings plan. One-off investments without a savings plan are possible from as little as 1,000 euros. Scalable Broker clients can invest in stocks, ETFs and cryptocurrencies using savings plans from as little as 1 euro - without any order fees. In digital wealth management, Scalable Capital recently launched ‘Wealth Select’ with eight additional ETF-based investment strategies. This allows investors to have their assets managed in a way that is even more tailored to their preferences.

Furthermore, Scalable Capital is continuing its path to becoming the leading digital investment platform across Europe. Investors in France, Spain, Italy and Austria now also have easy, low-cost access to trading and savings plans in stocks, ETFs and cryptocurrencies. The company thus already reaches 60 per cent of the population in the European Union.