Azentio Software (“Azentio”), a Singapore-headquartered technology firm owned by funds advised by Apax Partners, today announced that it has been named as a Contender in The Forrester Wave™: Anti-Money Laundering Solutions, Q3 2022 report. Azentio Software was amongst the 15 most significant anti-money laundering (AML) solution providers assessed against 26 criteria across categories of current offering, strategy and market presence.

The report evaluated Amlock™, Azentio’s Financial Crime Detection and Management Solution, an integrated and flexible platform with advanced capabilities that leverage risk calculators, fully featured tools and BI technologies for monitoring money laundering activities, risk analysis and powerful insights.

According to the Forrester report, “The vendor has been expanding its supported database platforms and invested in a smart ID card reader solution for customer KYC processes. It also added transliteration services for names from English to Arabic and vice versa. In its current offering, the vendor shows strength in evaluating rule changes (what-if testing), rule versioning, and reporting on rule performance. Unsupervised and reinforcement learning capabilities are also above par.” The report further adds, “Azentio is a good fit for organizations wanting to digitize and modernize their KYC and CDD processes and add AI and ML to enhance them.”

Azentio received the maximum possible score in the enhancements: Watchlist management criterion, with the Forrester report stating, “The vendor demonstrated strong and leading WLM product enhancement roadmaps, and its market approach is on par with other vendors in this evaluation.”

Tony Kinnear, Chief Executive Officer of Azentio, stated, “We are grateful to be acknowledged as a Contender in The Forrester Wave™ report for AML solutions. We believe that as regulations widen their ambit to capture new and emerging threats, the roles of AI and ML technologies will be a critical factor in adding insights and helping organizations to make vital risk-related predictions and decisions. Azentio has been investing in its AML solutions to add innovative, market-driven AI and ML features. We believe Forrester’s assessment reflects our commitment to helping organizations worldwide effectively meet their AML requirements.”

Azentio’s roadmap for Amlock™ includes improvement of screening algorithms with phonetic search; solution integration with ID verification portals; and enhanced alerts and rule builder.

In Forrester’s recent Global Banking Platform Deals Survey 2022, Azentio ranked high as Regional Pursuer in the New Named Deals category; Major Cross Seller in the Extended Business category; and Major Player in the Combined Deals category.

Embedded finance pioneer, Weavr, has announced the latest evolution of its Plug-and-Play Finance solution with three Financial Plug-ins, which provide the essential tools digital businesses need to offer financial services.

Weavr’s Financial Plug-ins service a wide range of use cases with unrivalled simplicity. In a matter of weeks, businesses can be up and running, providing the financial services that their customers require. In comparison to traditional Banking as a Service (BaaS) solutions, Weavr’s products allow this process to happen at a fraction of the speed and cost, significantly lowering the barriers to market entry for innovative minds across sectors.

The bottom line for businesses is that they can now launch, validate and multiply the revenue per user from financial services with comparatively low time and resource commitments. 

The three Financial Plug-ins are already providing powerful financial capabilities for digital businesses across a myriad of sectors. Recently, they have been deployed by leading innovators across sectors, including freelancer cash-flow app, MONET, a universal invoice-netting solution, Troc Circle, and finway, a financial management platform for SMEs.

The three Financial Plug-ins are highly accessible, both in how they can be implemented, as well as their pricing structure. Weavr’s tailored pricing models make them accessible for businesses at all stages of growth. As a result, the company is helping innovators to maximise their return on investment and funding, both of which are increasingly important amid current economic uncertainty.

The three Financial Plug-ins launched are:

Supplier Finance Plug-In

Includes everything that SaaS-platform builders need to power B2B payments within their accounting, procurement, logistics, order-management or other back-office solution. With the Supplier Financial Plug-in, innovators can provide their customers with the financial tools they need to make, receive and automate payments within the innovative platform they already use and without the hassles of having to log into the bank to move money.

Employee Finance Plug-In

Allows innovators to build SaaS applications complete with the financial infrastructure to power employee-directed payments, such as employee benefits or expenses. With the Employee Financial Plug-in, innovative businesses can add the financial superpowers needed to onboard teams, configure financial controls and manage employee payments and expenses, for example.

Worker Finance Plug-In

The Worker Finance Plug-in enables platforms to power payments for freelancers, gig workers, creators and influencers of any type. Platform builders can add the financial infrastructure that freelancers need to manage cash flow, make payments and reduce admin, and much more, all of which allows them to instead focus on more important tasks, such as growing revenues.

Right now, BaaS solutions are creating an innovation bottleneck, exacerbated by time-consuming and costly integrations. By contrast, Weavr’s Financial Plug-ins make embedding powerful financial services fast and easy, allowing innovative businesses to deploy new services that can increase revenue per customer by 2x to 5x [1]. What’s more, Weavr takes care of all regulatory compliance, which allows companies to focus instead on economic performance and product development.

Speaking on the development, Alex Mifsud, Co-founder and CEO at Weavr commented: “Today, we take a major step towards delivering on our promise to provide a radically simpler way to embed finance.  We do that by curating financial engines for specific types of use whether that’s accounting software saving time and reducing errors for their business customer by integrating payment to suppliers, HR systems empowering any employee to make payments with control but without bureaucracy or even powering up platforms for the creator economy with much-needed financial services tailored for influencers and other creators. Through the launch of our Financial Plug-ins, businesses can benefit in the very short term from adding financial services to their applications,  thanks to their simplicity and cost-efficiency.

“In the past, the cost of building financial infrastructure has been prohibitive, and running it entails the significant and ongoing burden of regulatory compliance, risk management and data security. Our innovative solutions remove these obstacles, as Weavr shoulders all of them for innovators. Our approach is to make embedding finance simple and accessible to all innovators, helping them to overcome the traditional BaaS barriers and accelerate real-world benefits.”

India’s leading consumer neo-banking platform, Niyo, announces the appointment of Kiran Kulkarni as its Head of Design. Kiran brings with him over 18 years of leadership experience in product and interfaces design. At Niyo, Kiran will take a lead in enhancing Niyo’s banking app’s experience for Niyo’s 5 million strong customer base.

Prior to joining Niyo, Kiran was associated with Paypal as their Senior UX Manager, Consumer Experiences. In the past, he has built the design research for tech-giant Yahoo! India and worked as a senior lecturer at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

At Niyo, Kiran will play a crucial role in spearheading the endeavour to make the user experience seamless for Niyo’s 5 million+ strong millennial and SME customer base. With his expertise, Kiran will also be responsible for creating design-driven product development at Niyo.

Niyo’s Co-founder and CEO Vinay Bagri said, “Customer centricity has been the key factor in the growth and success of Niyo. It is imperative to us that the user experience journey for all the customers is seamless. I am excited to welcome Kiran to our Niyo family to spearhead this endeavour of ours and maximize our customer delight. I am confident that his vast experience in humanizing businesses, technology, and its limitations will support Niyo in maintaining its delightful customer experience delivery promise.”

Kiran Kulkarni, Head of Design, Niyo said, “I am passionate about negotiating relentlessly to create fresh, simple, elegant experiences by systematic thinking, visualizing complexities, and playful experiments. Niyo’s vision to provide a more modern and expansive user experience and features to banks with a clear strategic direction gained my interest. They have introduced several industry-first innovations since its inception. I look forward to beginning working in this new capacity and contributing to the company’s growth journey."

Over the past few years, Kiran has continuously and consistently acquired and honed skills through various interventions. His appointment is yet another step in strengthening Niyo’s core team.

Niyo currently has a strength of 500 employees and plans to hire talent across key functions - technology, product, strategy and design.

Jack Henry & Associates, Inc. announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Payrailz, adding the company's next-generation digital payment capabilities, including real-time person-to-person (P2P) payments, to Jack Henry's payments ecosystem.  

Based in Glastonbury, Conn., Payrailz provides cloud-native, API-first, AI-enabled consumer and commercial digital payment solutions and experiences that enable money to be moved in the moment of need, and banks and credit unions to successfully compete with industry disruptors.

"We are excited about the opportunity to add these next-generation solutions to our payments capabilities," said Greg Adelson, President and COO of Jack Henry. "Our company is engaged in technology modernization that is supporting banks and credit unions with innovative solutions that enable them to respond to business opportunities and challenges and to improve the financial health of their account holders. Considering the importance of modern digital and payments strategies to financial institutions, we plan to acquire Payrailz as a strategic addition to our payments ecosystem, which enables our clients to simplify the complexity of payments, modernize their existing payment channels, and remain at the centre of their account holders' payment experiences."

Acquiring Payrailz supports Jack Henry's next-generation technology strategy that helps banks and credit unions innovate faster and meet the evolving needs of consumer and commercial account holders. This acquisition also reinforces the company's mission to strengthen connections between people and financial institutions through technology and services that reduce the barriers to financial health. 

This acquisition enhances Jack Henry's payments-as-a-service (PaaS) strategy, which is a natural extension of its commitment to open banking and the ability to enable embedded finance and embedded fintech. Jack Henry supports the growing demand for PaaS with a virtual payments hub that consolidates money-moving solutions and supports numerous payment channels and types. Payrailz strategically complements this hub with next-generation capabilities for consumer and commercial bill pay, real-time person-to-person (P2P), account-to-account (A2A), and business-to-customer (B2C) payments, and more.

"We are confident joining Jack Henry is in the best interest of our clients and our associates," said Fran Duggan, Payrailz CEO and Founder. "As part of Jack Henry, we have the opportunity to leverage its financial strength and stability, extensive operational infrastructure, and industry, payments, and security expertise. Joining Jack Henry also enables us to build on our market reputation and accelerate our vision of providing smarter payment experiences. This acquisition provides significant growth opportunities with frictionless access to Jack Henry's existing clients and offers our clients peace of mind that Jack Henry has a long-term commitment to investing in the Payrailz platform and shares our service culture and standards. We are sincerely excited to join one of the industry's most respected and successful fintechs."

Financial details and terms of the definitive purchase agreement were not disclosed. The acquisition is expected to close on August 31, 2022.

The latest edition of World Finance magazine is out now and has confirmed ICS Financial Systems (ICSFS) as Best Islamic Banking & Finance Software Provider as part of its 2022 Islamic Finance Awards. ICSFS has been supporting the Islamic banking sector through its Shari’a-compliant ICS BANKS Islamic software solutions, for more than two decades now, with bespoke Islamic products and services that have helped financial institutions to achieve a competitive edge.

ICS BANKS Islamic is fully integrated software, with a powerful Digital platform, that provides Shari’a-compliant products with international standards, real-time business processing, and value-added capabilities of tailoring products, on-premises, hybrid or in the cloud. It future-proofs banking activities by providing a broad range of seamless and flexible features. 

London-based global fintech Unlimint, has announced it is expanding its alternative payment methods portfolio with the addition of one of Mexico's largest electronic payments platforms, Cobro Digital (CoDi). This integration will allow Unlimint’s clients to offer their users a quick and secure way to complete payment and collection transactions through electronic transfers. CoDi® uses the technology of QR Codes, free two-dimensional barcodes, that are easy to implement on any mobile device. Unlimint is an award-winning global fintech offering advanced payment capabilities through an evolving financial interface to startups and businesses across the globe, operating from five continents.

CoDi was created in 2018 by the Bank of Mexico (Banxico) aiming to enable users to charge and make payments through their smartphone or directly from their internet browser. The platform was designed to stimulate the transition to a cashless economy. By April 2021, 287 thousand online money transfers were performed in Mexico using CoDi amounting to more than 146 million Mexican pesos. By adding CoDi to its portfolio, Unlimint will allow merchants to expand into the Mexican market more easily while ensuring they remain competitive in the region.

Consumers can choose to pay via CoDi at a merchant's checkout page, and they are redirected to the platform’s payment page with the QR code. The user opens their banking app on their mobile phone and chooses the option to pay with CoDi, prompting the bank’s app to launch the camera to scan the QR code. Once scanned, the money transfer is confirmed in the app by the user and they are redirected to the merchant’s success page having completed the transaction. This new addition to Unlimint’s portfolio will enable businesses from the UK and Europe to deliver a seamless customer experience by offering regional clients a full set of secure payment methods to choose from.

Consumers have been shifting towards card and digital payments as awareness grows around electronic banking and mobile wallets. According to Statista, while cash remained Mexico's most used payment method since COVID-19, its market share decreased severely with only 4 out of 10 transactions in physical stores done via paper money in 2021.

Commenting on the portfolio expansion, Irene Skrynova, Chief Customer Officer at Unlimint, said:

“We are delighted to be able to offer a new alternative payment method to businesses in Mexico. As consumers become more aware of online payment methods, it is important for merchants to facilitate secure transactions without cash. Adding CoDi to our portfolio proves Unlimint is committed to enabling clients to grow anywhere in the world and incorporate popular local electronic payment methods into their operations to remain competitive.”

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) granted Mswipe Technologies, India's top point of sales (PoS) solutions provider and an end-to-end digital payment enabler for MSMEs, has received an in-principal Payment Aggregator (PA) License. As opposed to previously outsourcing their transaction settlement to partner companies, Mswipe will now be able to develop an in-house online payment gateway. The PA License will allow the company to bridge the gap between merchants and customers by accepting and processing digital payments.

As a result, Mswipe will have the opportunity to grow as a full-stack payments company and lead both, the offline and online payment ecosystems. Obtaining a PA license will allow the company to develop new products and innovate processes, enabling them to make life easier for merchants. In addition to being cost-effective, PA License will serve as a catalyst for Mswipe's growth by providing the fuel needed to expand its outreach, offer in-house online and offline solutions to merchants, and further Mswipe's goal of being a bank for the merchants.

Commenting on the news, Ketan Patel, the CEO of Mswipe Technologies said, “With receiving the in-principal approval for payment aggregator license,  we aim to ease the lives of merchants across the country. MSMEs are the backbone of the Indian business ecosystem, and the PA License will enable us to provide them with simpler, affordable and integrated digital payment solutions. Our aim at Mswipe is to be the one-stop shop and provide merchants with a host of services which help them in their digital transformation journey. ”

In addition to providing its current merchant ecosystem with the opportunity to use the payment gateway, Mswipe will now concentrate on expanding and reaching out to more MSMEs by offering them all the options, including PoS terminals, QR-code payments, boombox (payment soundbox), payment gateways, and even lending solutions.

iDenfy, the global remote identity verification, and fraud prevention company, joined forces with Peccala, the cryptocurrency investment platform that provides tokenized crypto Robo-investor services. From now on, Peccala’s customers will be securely onboarded through iDenfy’s full-stack 4-step ID verification procedure. 

As security remains challenging, governments and regulators continue to create laws guiding companies towards a clear fraud prevention strategy. Stricter laws have the potential to safeguard long-term investors and prevent criminal activity within the crypto landscape. Keeping that in mind, with high net fraud rate numbers, the crypto market is known for its identity fraud issues.

According to recent findings by PYMNTS Intelligence, identity fraud makes up 44% of the incidents in the crypto sector. On top of that, iDenfy claims that purchasing crypto anonymously poses security risks, as anonymity can become a critical tool for money laundering. For this reason, as per iDenfy, Know Your Customer (KYC) obligations should be valid for the crypto industry, requiring all customers to verify their identity before or when transacting. 

The growing community of crypto lovers, large high-value transaction numbers, and increasing fraud risks motivate financial institutions to search for secure digital identity verification solutions. Consequently, Peccala is no exception. While Peccala is still growing, the crypto company explained that finding ways to adhere to compliance standards as significant players in the industry can be challenging. Despite that, the company found a way to overcome this challenge by partnering with iDenfy. 

Peccala is a fully automated and hassle-free crypto investment platform for anyone who doesn’t want to deal with the complexities of the crypto landscape, claiming to operate at the crossroads of the Fintech and Crypto industries. The company focuses on bringing everything needed for crypto investing into a simple, all-in-one platform. Pecalla’s platform offers actively managed investment strategies allowing users to easily choose a risk level that they are comfortable with.

According to Peccala, when the business was choosing new ID verification suppliers, a few main factors that determined their decision were efficiency, security, and easy integration. iDenfy was able to tick all of the boxes. The company’s AI-powered identity verification process consists of four steps: selecting the document’s country and type, capturing a photo of the ID or passport, and then taking a selfie. The onboarding process for Pecalla’s customers now takes less than a few minutes, making it a user-friendly experience. 

iDenfy’s newly integrated ID verification solution prevents unwanted registrations and suspicious identities from entering the crypto investment platform. iDenfy’s biometric ID verification is powered by 3D liveness detection, which creates a face map of the user, which can be later used to blacklist clients or to find duplicates. iDenfy’s facial recognition system detects masks, deep-fakes, and other fraudulent attempts to pass the identity verification process. The KYC business is certified by ISO/IEC 27001 standard, guaranteeing data security and a smooth onboarding process for Peccala’s customers. 

“Our biggest priority right now is to grow our user base. We believe that a fast and smooth onboarding process is one of the key components to achieving this goal. That’s why our team is happy to partner with iDenfy,  a trustworthy, transparent company that fulfills all of our requirements regarding a secure identity verification process.” — said Laura Arcade, the Co-founder of Peccala. 

“Our new partner shares the same values regarding compliance and security. For this reason, we’re thrilled to start this long-term collaboration with Peccala.” — added Domantas Ciulde, the CEO of iDenfy.