ID-Pal, the identity verification provider, has been appointed by Lerex Technology, the payment solution provider, to help with its growing identity verification, e-verification, Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know your Customer (KYC) requirements. The partnership will see ID-Pal support Lerex Technology with AML compliance and the onboarding of new customers seamlessly across multiple European markets.

Lerex Technology is an E-money as a Service solution provider that enables businesses to offer next-generation payment systems to their customers. The platform’s services include prepaid cards, digital accounts solutions, and access to payment rails such as Faster Payments and SEPA.

To comply with the AML and KYC requirements of these programmes while offering a seamless user experience, Lerex Technology has partnered with ID-Pal for its identity verification needs. The solution performs document verification, facial matching, liveness testing and address e-verification in real-time. It offers industry-leading accuracy with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance built in, all while delivering a frictionless journey for the end user.

Lerex prides itself on leveraging cutting-edge technologies, an easy-to-use API for efficient connectivity and integration, as well as delivering world-class customer service, allowing business payments and consumer challenger banks to come to market quickly and easily.

The speed at which ID-Pal is able to implement the technology across multiple jurisdictions and channels along with its robust architecture were key drivers for the partnership. Lerex partnered with ID-Pal via their API Integration, making the process seamless for the business and its clients.

This partnership will enable Lerex and their clients to prevent fraud at source, simplify their onboarding experience for customers on any device and verify identities in any language or jurisdiction. The solution offers robust compliance, verifying more than 6,000 types of identity documents and cross-checking against 200 verified address databases.

Colum Lyons, CEO and Founder of ID-Pal, comments:

“Our partnership with Lerex is very strong and delivers significant benefits to their clients. Our businesses are aligned in the mission to make it easier for businesses to balance meeting compliance requirements with providing a positive experience for customers.”

On the partnership, Richard Ney, CEO of Lerex Technology, said:

“We needed an Identity Verification solution that augmented our focus on advanced technologies and delivering the best experience for our customers. Using ID-Pal makes the compliance and onboarding process seamless for Lerex and our end clients. The results and reports are detailed and clear, allowing us to turn applications around in a timely manner and onboard customers smoothly.”

watchTowr, a cybersecurity startup headquartered in Singapore has raised $8 million in a pre-series A round with contributions from five Indian angel investors including Saket Agarwal of Onnivation, Gaurav Gupta of Farfetch, Bikram Singh Bedi of Google India, and Gaurav Samdaria of Karza Technologies, alongside global investors, including Prosus Ventures and Vulcan Capital.

India represents the world’s third-largest technology hub with rapid penetration of the Internet. While this has created multiple new business opportunities with high rewards, it has also amplified the threat landscape for cyberattacks and ransomware threats. India reported more than 6.74 Lakh cybersecurity incidents in 2022 till June. This creates significant room for innovation, especially in the cybersecurity services and products sector, which recorded a combined revenue of USD 9.85 billion in 2021. Furthermore, the cybersecurity industry is expected to experience unprecedented growth as more businesses migrate to the cloud to improve efficiencies.

The fund infusion from the Indian investors will help the cybersecurity technology and Attack Surface Management startup to scale its operations in the country, explore fertile market opportunities, and address the rising cases of cyberattacks in the country.    

watchTowr's technology builds a real-time view of an organization’s attack surface in the eyes of an attacker, typically empowering CISOs with a 300-400% increase in attack surface visibility.

Benjamin Harris, CEO, watchTowr, said “In real-time, our technology gives organizations a visibility of how they could be compromised. watchTowr continuously incorporates the latest attacker tactics and techniques into the watchTowr Platform so that CISOs can understand their susceptibility to emerging vulnerabilities and threats in hours, rather than weeks or months.”

Over the last decade, organizational attack surfaces have ballooned to include outsourced technology, shadow IT, cloud environments and supply chain risks, to the point where most organizations have simply lost track of their attack surface. Harris says, “When one combines the ballooned attack surface with the ineffective and incomplete security testing approaches that are still utilized today, like penetration testing, organizations are not able to protect themselves adequately, especially when we consider the rapid and aggressive speed of change in cyber security. Attackers know this.”

Saket Agarwal, Founder & CEO, Onnivation, said, “Penetration testing is still a very manual and abstract process, given that most organizations do not have penetration testing as a core competency. A significant lack of awareness also exists regarding the tools and solutions that can assist companies in achieving this. In this context, watchTowr is going to be a game-changer in the Indian cybersecurity industry. With their platform, companies can transform their cyber-defence mechanisms by developing a risk analysis approach that includes continuous monitoring, stress testing, and real-time assessments. This makes threat detection faster and proactive, and thus reduces the time taken to respond to any attack.”

Operational since late 2021, watchTowr has seen high interest for its platform from some of the world's leading banks, financial services, insurance companies (BFSI), as well as e-commerce and technology brands.

Open banking platform Yapily has today launched Yapily Variable Recurring Payments (VRP) to accelerate innovation across the open banking ecosystem.

Put simply, VRP allows businesses and consumers to use open banking for recurring payments of varying amounts, without the need to re-authenticate every transaction. This could be automatically moving money between their own bank accounts now and paying subscriptions or household bills in future. VRPs are a much anticipated open banking solution that promises greater returns for merchants and much safer and more convenient payments for end users. 

Volume, the one-click checkout payments platform, will be using Yapily VRP to enable its UK merchant customers to save costs, increase payment volumes, and provide a frictionless alternative to standing orders and direct debit payments over time. 

As part of the launch, Yapily is enabling more participants within the open banking ecosystem to benefit from VRP by partnering with Ozone API. Together, Yapily and Ozone API bring a complete solution for banks and financial institutions to go beyond minimum regulatory requirements and commercialise their APIs.

The announcement follows the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) mandate that the UK's nine largest banks must support VRP for sweeping (me-to-me payments) by 31st July 2022. 

Ben Aier, VP Product at Yapily, remarked: “This is a great example of how Yapily and open banking are helping to create a healthy payments ecosystem where there is value for every participant. We are proud to be breaking down the barriers to innovation in this space and meeting the evolving needs of banks, merchants, PSPs, businesses, and consumers alike.”

Simone Martinelli, Founder and CEO at Volume, said: “VRP has triggered the next wave of disruption at the checkout. It is the direct debit equivalent of open banking, except where the movement of money is quicker and cheaper, and the customer has more control. This has the potential to be transformative for any business. At Volume, we are on a mission to remove hidden fees at the online checkout for both consumers and merchants, and Yapily is helping us to turn that vision into a reality.”

Huw Davies, Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer at Ozone API, commented: “We founded Ozone API when we saw how difficult, expensive, and time-consuming it can be for banks and financial institutions to deliver high-quality and standards-based APIs. Partnering with Yapily means we can now deliver the benefits of VRP to these firms, enabling them to build deeper customer relationships, reduce losses to payments fraud, and ultimately generate new revenue streams. Together with Yapily, we have everything a bank needs to switch on and monetise this opportunity. Now the CMA VRP for sweeping deadline has passed for the UK’s nine largest banks, it’s our mission to ensure that no bank gets left behind.”

Maria Palmieri, Director of Public Policy at Yapily, added: “We have seen a positive response from industry to the implementation of sweeping, however, only when VRP APIs become more widely available will the truly innovative use cases for open banking be unlocked. This will not only enable better and fairer financial services for everyone but will lead to increased adoption from both consumers and businesses. Now, more collaboration between banks, third-party providers, and policymakers is needed to ensure the transition from me-to-me to me-to-business payments materialises.”

To reinforce and grow its best-in-class offerings, Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc., a global Fintech leader, is excited to announce the opening of a new office in Singapore for its APAC headquarters. Amid continued growth momentum and expanding opportunities to support financial services clients across the region, this investment reaffirms Broadridge’s deep on-the-ground commitment to the market.

“To better serve clients in Asia on their digital transformation journeys and enable them to simplify their technology stacks to address cost pressures, inefficiencies and legacy systems Broadridge is investing heavily in the region to support our growing client base,” said Samir Pandiri, President of Broadridge International. “To help clients respond quickly to market changes and leverage new technology to drive efficiencies we expanded our bench of senior leaders based in Singapore, as well as taking steps to quickly build on the operational and technological synergies presented from our acquisition of Itiviti.”

A Strong, Established Presence in Singapore

“We believe Singapore offers the perfect base to capture emerging opportunities present across the APAC region,” said Ian Strudwick, Managing Director and Head of APAC at Broadridge. “We are witnessing more financial institutions pivot their focus meaningfully toward this region of the world to participate in the rapid expansion of the financial services industry. Our team is excited to continue our journey of growth and support our clients, industry partners and associations far into the future.

The new office, located in Singapore’s Central Business District (CBD) at 30 Raffles Place, brings together dedicated teams from product development, implementation and support, research insights, sales, marketing and finance. The office space is completely redeveloped and is a sustainably designed built environment that seamlessly facilitates flexible working and the enhancement of employee well-being as the team continues to grow.

Luno, the global cryptocurrency app that puts the power of crypto in everyone’s hands, has today announced that it has been awarded a digital asset service provider (DASP) registration in France by the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), following clearance by the Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution (ACPR). 

The landmark achievement will enable Luno to offer its services directly to customers in France and is a testament to the company’s commitment to working with regulators and meeting the requirements of local legislation. Going hand in hand with this extensive regulatory engagement is Luno's commitment to setting the gold standard for compliance in all the markets in which it operates. 

In line with this commitment, Luno France is now moving towards obtaining the optional license from the AMF, which has to date not been awarded to any DASP.

Moving forward, Luno will continue to work with regulators globally to promote the development of new regulatory frameworks for crypto assets and continue to grow its portfolio of regulatory permissions around the world.

Marcus Swanepoel, CEO and Co-Founder at Luno, said, “Since our founding in 2013, our mission has been to put the power of crypto in everyone’s hands. As part of this, compliance and security are deeply ingrained in our culture and we have always prioritised a proactive approach to ensuring the safety of our customers and the industry. We believe that regulation is vital in crypto's path to mass adoption and our DASP registration represents a key step towards achieving our strategic growth plans.” 

“We are actively working with a number of financial regulators across multiple countries and continents to drive regulation in the sector,” said Thomas Tudehope, Global Head of Public Policy at Luno. “We are moving towards obtaining the full license from the AMF which will put us in a unique position as to date no DASP has obtained the full license in France. We have seen first-hand the positive impact that proper regulation can have and we look forward to working closely with the AMF and ACPR to continue lifting industry standards.” 

Géraldine Filippi, General Manager Business France UK & Ireland commented: “I welcome the decision of Luno to choose France for its EU headquarters and congratulate them on their DASP registration. When supporting Luno on its expansion, it was clear that France’s ecosystem, talent pool and the spirit of our regulator perfectly aligned with their ambitions of growth and innovation while keeping the safety of customers a priority! With a team expected to grow quickly, we wish them a brilliant future in France”

A desire to reduce the risk of financial crime (FinCrime) is behind an exciting new partnership between Experian and, leading CRM data quality experts, DQ Global, as they launch a new data-driven solution, DQ Compliance.

By combining Experian’s KYC (or know your customer) data with DQ Global's suite of no-code fintech products, FCA-regulated customers can now quickly access a robust view of a business, what they do, and the people behind them to help rule out financial crime before working with them.

This is particularly important for small businesses going through a corporate finance application process for KYC and customer due diligence purposes. Regulated firms must identify and verify anyone they work with, to ensure they don’t unknowingly become involved with a business or individual with a history of financial crime, or sanctions.

The solution also enables customers to meet anti-money laundering (AML) compliance obligations, as well as allowing them to carry out periodic AML checks on existing accounts.

Financial crime has risen significantly in recent years, with 2-5% of Global GDP estimated to be from money laundering. Fines totalling £10.8 billion due to FinCrime were handed out in 2020 and money laundering is estimated to cost the UK more than £111 billion a year.

Recognising the importance of combatting illicit financial activity, Experian and DQ Global have combined the former's incredible data utilisation and capabilities into the latter's innovative Microsoft product suite.

Grant MacDonald, Director of FinCrime Market Engagement at Experian, said: “This is incredibly exciting and will transform the accessibility and speed of SMEs detecting and mitigating the impacts of financial crime resulting from incomplete, inconsistent, and incorrect customer data.”

Martin Doyle, CEO and founder of DQ Global, added: "We are excited to tackle the rise in financial crime through our combined forces with Experian and look forward to using our new DQ Compliance solution to help clients reduce costs and FinCrime risks.”

Fintech application Open Banking One has joined forces with Nordigen to provide their customers with a simple way to interact with all their bank accounts at once. 

Open Banking One (OB1) is the brainchild of the developers at Cabora Technologies, which specialise in mobile applications centred around financial services, e-commerce, retail and fitness. OB1 was created to enable customers with multiple banks or credit card accounts to access all their accounts from a single application, making their banking experience much more seamless, simple and time-efficient. Consumers can track their account totals, transactions and movements.

To bring their idea to life, Cabora Technologies decided to partner with Nordigen to utilise safe and secure bank connections on offer through their dedicated APIs. 

"Selecting the right partner was key for what we wanted to achieve. Having looked at a number of partners, it became evident that Nordigen was the key strategic partner in helping us deliver an open banking solution. Their input from start to finish has been nothing short of excellent. At every turn, they were there to advise, direct and support us in building an amazing app that offers tremendous value for people with multiple accounts. I can only see our relationship becoming stronger," explains Ash Khan, Director of OB1. 

“We are thrilled to be partnering with Open Banking One. Open banking was created in part to enable more streamlined financial procedures and simplify money management as a whole, and we are excited to see all these new products and services emerge because of this technological phenomenon. Multiple bank account owners will surely find OB1 helpful in managing all their different assets and will benefit from a consolidated view of all their finances," says Rolands Mesters, co-founder and CEO of Nordigen.

The global identity verification and fraud prevention service provider, iDenfy, expanded its solutions kit by presenting a new, user-friendly WordPress plugin. Now, iDenfy’s AI-powered ID verification solution can be easily integrated into any WordPress website. 

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alone calculated that there were more than 5.7 million reports last year, of which 49% were for fraud and 25% for identity theft. Crime numbers are rising due to the widespread use of the internet and online services. For this reason, according to iDenfy, website security is one of the most important factors in preventing hackers and cyber thieves from accessing sensitive data. 

iDenfy believes that integrating customized plugins is one of the easiest options to increase website security and prevent fraud. To simplify its standard identity verification integration, the ID verification company developed a unique, user-friendly alternative for WordPress users. As claimed by iDenfy, the new WordPress plugin ensures a hassle-free identity verification process, focusing on saving time and costs for WordPress users that want to step up their security game. 

Typically, plugins save a lot of development time, which results in optimizing the business’ overall budget. As reported by iDenfy, many companies today search for quick onboarding solutions that authenticate customers who are registering on the website. The company says that the goal is always the same – customers need to be verified while ensuring efficient fraud prevention. 

Asked about the challenges, iDenfy mentioned the lack of support and clear guidelines as one of the issues that push businesses away from choosing identity verification as their potential fraud prevention method. For this reason, iDenfy’s vision regarding its plugin was to transform complex implementation procedures into a simple ID verification integration process that would be understandable for anyone with a WordPress website. 

Whether it’s an e-commerce website, an online forum, or a teaching platform, iDenfy claims to support all entities from various industries publishing content on WordPress. The newly launched plugin by iDenfy proposes seamless integration: customers need to install and activate the plugin, create an account, and then download and add the API key as well as the API secret credentials to enable the automatic ID verification. 

iDenfy explains the user-friendly approach by noting that customers don’t need to study documentation independently or have any programming knowledge. On top of that, iDenfy doesn’t require customers to pay maintenance fees, adding that the company takes care of all API and onboarding charges. 

“Modern businesses evaluate the benefits and choose to enhance their security by integrating digital ID verification. The security factor, speed, and cost, not to mention user-friendliness, attract more organizations to switch to an automated authentication approach rather than sticking to lengthy, manual processes.” — said Domantas Ciulde, the CEO of iDenfy. 

Listed interest rate derivatives and commodities futures and options performed best for proprietary trading firms in the first half of 2022 as fears of a recession and soaring inflation caused volatility across global markets, this quarter’s Acuiti Proprietary Trading Managers’ Insight Report has found, conducted in partnership with Avelacom.

The report, which is based upon a quarterly survey of the Acuiti Proprietary Trading Expert Network, a group of over 100 senior proprietary trading executives from across the globe, found that 58% of firms reported commodities trading to be either exceptionally or very profitable while over half of respondents said the same for listed interest rates.

Cryptocurrency trading also performed well with over half of firms reporting strong profitability in that asset class. The recent falls in crypto prices have not deterred traditional proprietary trading firms from entering the market. Overall, 22% of respondents said that they had accelerated plans to enter the market as a result of the volatility. 13% had increased trading and just 3% had exited the market.

Overall, the sustained volatility experienced during the first half of the year has benefitted proprietary trading firms with 76% of Acuiti’s Proprietary Trading Expert Network reporting a better than average six months.

This quarter’s report also analysed technology setups at proprietary trading firms and found significant levels of in-house development across a range of functions.

Respondents also gave their views on how well third-party vendors served the proprietary trading market and found strong demand for more specialist risk management software that reflected the complexities of proprietary trading.

“Ultra-low latency firms have the most unique requirements towards technology setups. That creates opportunities for third-party vendors that can provide services to these types of firms and cover their needs,” said Aleksey Larichev, CEO of Avelacom.

Sentiment among senior proprietary trading executives fell slightly last quarter but remained high as managers maintain expectations of continued volatility in the second half of the year.

“Volatility has remained elevated during the first six months of 2022 and this has increased the requirement for firms to hedge and reposition,” said Will Mitting, founder of Acuiti. “Proprietary trading firms provide liquidity to listed markets and their role is particularly important during times of market stress.”    

Prytek, a global technology corporation, today announces the launch of 1TX, an ecosystem for accelerating Innovation and end-to-end Software QA engineering and testing services focused on delivering Innovation as a Service, Testing as a Service and Automation as a Service. 1TX is an innovation platform by Prytek and forms part of their technology arm.

Following the merger announcement in July 2021, QAssure Technologies and Prytek-owned prooVTM have merged to become 1TX, the first full end-to-end 360 solutions for technology & innovation adoption: before, during and after the PoC, enterprises can assess and test multiple technologies simultaneously to identify feature sets, scaling challenges, performance bottlenecks, and security risks before releasing an application to production.

1TX combines the knowledge and experience within the technology sector to provide a unique understanding of challenges that innovators, enterprise and crowd testing communities face and offers a complete outsourcing solution providing key services at each stage of the innovation process from ideation to deployment

Current proof-of-concept (PoC) processes consume far too much time and resources. By centralizing the PoC process, 1TX’s end-to-end PoC platform shortens the time from discovery to the deployment of the right solution by about 75%, so enterprises can adopt new technology while it is still new. The 1TX PoC platform allows for the acceleration of smart, secure technology adoption.

Prytek is a multinational technology group that provides managed services for the Cyber & Tech Education, Financial Services and HR-tech sectors. In addition to 1TX, Prytek’s companies include Delta Capita, TipRanks, ThriveDX, and Hirewell.

Prytek strives to create industry impact through vertical integration between these companies to establish turnkey solutions for end clients.

Andrey Yashunsky, CEO of Prytek says: “With this merger, we are creating deep tech proof of concept and digital assurance platform company that help accelerate and fast-track open innovation. With a strong implementation support centre based in Singapore, an R&D team based out in Israel and an offshore development team based out in India, we will be able to bring the best minds to build and deliver great technology and services addressing the global customer needs.”

Toby Olshanetsky, CEO and co-founder of prooV™ adds: "We are very excited with this merger, in prooV™ we created the first PoC as a Service platform and now we create the first full end-to-end solution for technology & innovation adoption, using prooV™ and QAssure we provide a 360 offering: before, during and after the POC, enterprises can assess and test multiple technologies simultaneously to identify feature sets, scaling challenges, performance bottlenecks, and security risks before releasing an application to production".

Durairaj Dhanasekaran, Founder and CEO of QAssure, says: “With this merger, we are bringing in a unique offering that makes 1TX stand out in the market. QAssure’s strong managed testing service capabilities and testing platform along with prooV™’s patented deep tech platform mean we can now help enterprises accelerate innovation starting from ideation to testing and deployment to commercialization. With solid backing from Prytek, we can expand the market now and deliver innovative services to our existing and new customers”.