AppTech Payments Corp. (AppTech), a Fintech company powering commerce experiences, is excited to announce a partnership that will enable transactions across international borders in a multitude of different retail outlets in Canada, including in-person retail, e-commerce, transportation, lodging, hospitality, automotive, and restaurants.

“We are thrilled to expand cross-border payment capabilities in Canada, setting the stage for future reach and access to AppTech’s transformative payment solutions,” said Virgil Llapitan, President of AppTech Payments Corp. “This partnership creates the foundation for enabling a full range of stellar commerce experiences for both brands and customers across borders.”

The advanced payments processing capabilities will support fully integrated Clover products, next-day settlement, support for multiple pricing strategies, cross-border remittance, omnichannel capabilities, strong PCI compliance, and a broad acceptance across multiple types of cards, including MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover, JCB, China Union Pay, and Interac Debit Cards.

The expansion into Canada further builds upon the strengthening of AppTech’s fully integrated approach to unifying a brand’s online and offline customer experiences and purchasing journeys. Today’s announcement comes on the heels of AppTech’s acquisition of Hothand Inc. (Hothand) in late May which gave the company ownership over the intellectual property rights to a thirteen-patent portfolio that broadly covers geofence triggered e-commerce and/or advertising via cell phone.

Fintech lender, Creditspring, is currently saving its members £17m in UK borrowing costs by offering a no-interest alternative to high-cost credit options, providing a lifeline to borrowers in the cost of living crisis.

On average, Creditspring’s 150,000 members save £118 each year on borrowing costs as they do not have to seek credit from high-cost lenders. Many of Creditspring’s members are classed as near-prime who struggle to access affordable credit.

Creditspring’s subscription model is a fixed-cost, low-risk credit solution that offers customers access to two advances per year, with clear repayments, capped costs, and no hidden charges. By paying a fixed fee to access credit, it is far easier for people to evaluate the true cost of borrowing and since there is no interest rate attached to the loan, there is no risk of a debt spiral so it can be used as a solution to unexpected expenses.

As a result of the cost of living crisis, the number of Creditspring members has increased by 50% since the start of the year and the company expects to add another 200,000 members by the end of the year. Of these new members, more than a third (14,000) applied to join the Stability Hub - a free tool that provides personalised support and actionable tips to encourage more informed financial decision-making.

Recent research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that two-fifths (40%) of people are behind on one or more bills, with the average amount of arrears across all bills held by low-income households sitting at £1,600. The research also shows that nearly a fifth (19%) of low-income households owe money to high-cost lenders.

Over the course of 2022, Creditspring plans to lend £100 million to support its members through its fixed-cost subscription loan services, compared to a total of £25 million last year.

With energy bills and the cost of goods increasing, at the same time as the real value of wages declines and with inflation likely to hit 11% this year, people are in increasing need of financial support.

Creditspring recently announced a successful fundraise of £48 million to supercharge its mission of improving financial stability across the UK – taking the total amount raised since launch to £70 million.

The funds will be used to support more members to avoid high-cost, unscrupulous lenders and manage their finances through the cost of living crisis, which continues to tighten its grip across the UK. In addition, the funds will allow Creditspring to substantially grow the team, as the employee base is set to double over 2022 to help it deliver on its goals.

Since its launch, Creditspring has provided over 95,000 borrowers seeking financial support, helping members achieve financial stability, with a 99.9% satisfaction rate amongst members.

Neil Kadagathur, Co-Founder and CEO of Creditspring, comments: “The cost of living crisis is highlighting just how perilous people’s budgets are and the UK’s reliance on credit. However, too many are still left with no choice but to seek high-cost credit to survive. The lending industry needs to do much more to provide more affordable alternatives to those struggling.

“Unfortunately, there are still too many predatory lenders in the industry; turning the current financial crisis to their advantage and providing credit with extortionate repayment terms.

“We’ve seen a major jump in the number of borrowers approaching us for financial support over the past six months and with the cost of living increasing, demand will continue to rise. We must do all we can to help people reduce their chances of falling into unmanageable debt. Creditspring’s no-interest, subscription model provides affordable credit without risking borrowers falling into a debt spiral as well as enabling them to build their credit files to unlock access to mainstream credit in future.”

ION Markets, a global provider of trading platforms, analytics, and risk management solutions for capital markets, has today announced its new Compliance SaaS solution, which evolved from the hosted Compliance solution ION implemented in 2014.

ION’s Compliance SaaS solution unlocks greater investment transparency, enables real-time oversight of pre-and post-trading, and offers full coverage of asset types and geographies. Most importantly, it delivers an automated compliance checking process.

With increased regulatory change and pressure, and the use of complex asset types as firms enter new markets, compliance monitoring and investment transparency are critical. The Compliance SaaS solution uses a web-based user interface, enabling customers to manage exceptions through a standard workflow, and define and maintain investment rules. All dashboard, reporting, and management information can be shared easily across the business and is demonstrable for clients and prospects.

Moreover, asset managers face the challenge of balancing regulatory compliance with rising IT costs and the demand for real-time pre-trade oversight – principally not having to sacrifice growth for investment in compliance. Being cloud-based, Compliance SaaS involves zero infrastructure headaches and specialist resources are not needed, enabling firms to demonstrate compliance best practices to their clients and prospects.

Steven Strange, Head of Product (Asset Management) at ION Markets, comments: “Investment compliance is fundamental to the asset management process, and any breach can severely compromise both a firm's finances and its reputation. We’re proud to be partnering with several firms to evolve ION’s SaaS cloud service. We’re committed to ensuring the service can scale with business growth.”

Rapid business evolution demands better data handling

The journey from being a start-up to a full-scale fintech is thrilling – but one that’s also fraught with pitfalls if not navigated carefully. Scaling up involves several logistical and operational challenges that need to be overcome, with increased data reporting and reconciliation demands that can make the difference between success and failure.

Osper is a prime example of a company that has made this successful transition. Launched in 2013, it began its journey as a prepaid card platform designed to help children and young people learn about budgeting and financial management through an easy-to-use prepaid card and mobile app. Aside from helping make payments for things like gaming and shopping, Osper also enabled children to set their own spending categories and savings goals through its ap, empowering them with good financial habits.

In 2019, Osper re-focused its work on maximising the potential of Osper’s technology, including expansion into the B2B space. This strategy was successful, allowing Osper to open its technology stack to banks, fintech start-ups and others on a white label basis to launch their own unique products and services, without having to spend considerable time and resources building in-house tech stacks. The flexibility of Osper’s technology-as-a-service proposition allows its clients to continue using their own processors, acquirers or issuing partners or to simply use Osper’s.

But Osper’s transformation from the prepaid platform into a full tech stack servicing other fintech companies means its data reporting and reconciliation needs have changed and grown significantly, extending beyond prepaid transaction data. The company is now handling vastly increased data volumes on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, from many more sources than before. It’s not just the sheer size of the data pipeline that’s increased – Osper is now dealing with more fragmented raw data sets and formats than previously. When working with several processors and providers, data sets become more complicated and spread out across different sources.

According to Ester Piubeni, Operations Director at Osper: “Our growth means there is more work involved in data reporting and reconciliation. For example, the number of reports that we have to prepare for accountants and our issuing banks has grown. Of course, we get audited more often as well. But it's not just about the reporting we have to provide to issuing banks. It is also extremely important that we have the ability to generate meaningful insights into our customer base.

This is a common challenge for start-ups which make the transition into the scale-up phase, as the number of reports needed for reconciliations, accounting, auditing, regulatory reports and business intelligence insights increases significantly.

“One of the big challenges is that a company like ours has several providers,” adds Ester. “There are lots of data sets spread across different platforms, which makes reconciliations much more complicated.”

From complexity comes opportunity

Osper’s need for enhanced data reporting and reconciliation capabilities led it to identify Kani Payments as the ideal partner.

Kani Payments’ mission is to help businesses make sense of the vast volumes of data they have to deal with, through its award-winning SaaS platform, which consumes raw data from any processor or issuer, standardises it and presents it in an easy-to-understand away.

Working with Kani Payments has enabled Osper to streamline and standardise the increasing array of data sets it’s now dealing with. Osper can now speed up reporting times, generate deeper levels of actionable business intelligence insights and launch services for its clients in vastly improved time-to-market.

“What we love about the Kani platform is its ability to pull in data from different sources and reconcile it in a few minutes, whereas before reconciliations would take several hours. The system we were using before required users to know SQL and coding to interpret the data. For someone like me, who only knows basic SQL, it means I needed IT engineers to merge different data sets to make it understandable. Now, we don't have to bother the engineers because we can get the information ourselves,” Ester says.

“It’s so useful to have all of that data flowing into one central platform, where our team can access it easily. That's one of the biggest benefits of the Kani platform. It presents all of this data in a way that everyone in the company can understand and can access those insights to launch services or get fresh marketing insights a lot quicker than they would have done previously.”

With the time saved through automating reporting and reconciliations, it means Osper can deploy team members to more projects, creating even more operational efficiencies and agility. And when data insights are standardised and presented through Kani’s easy-to-navigate dashboard, business intelligence becomes accessible to everyone in the organisation who needs it to build better products and services.

“It’s a fantastic tool to gain insights into what our customers are doing. We can see how account holders are using our cards for spending, which are the most popular merchant locations and so on. This gives us much-needed insight into cardholder behaviour and lets us see what our customers want. That kind of information can create a massive difference in creating marketing partnerships and is essential in designing future campaigns.

The success of Osper’s partnership with Kani Payments has given it the springboard to scale globally. Osper is now embarking on the next phase of its expansion plans, thanks to the new capabilities created through Kani Payments’ enhanced data reporting power. “We’re working with partners in the MENA region allowing us to service banks and brands in those countries. ,” Ester says.

Through the strength of partnerships like these, and in just under four years since its inception, Kani Payments has already reconciled more than €10 billion in processed payments volume to date, bringing intelligent automation, accuracy and compliance to payments reconciliation and reporting to fintechs, acquirers and financial institutions worldwide.

Plum, the smart European personal finance app, is today announcing its launch in Belgium.

Belgians can now link their accounts to Plum from nine major banks including BNP Paribas Fortis, ING, and Hello Bank. Once the account is linked, Plum’s artificial intelligence analyses the customer's transactions and starts to automatically set aside small amounts of money regularly, adjusting to their spending and what they can afford. And customers can see their bank accounts in the Plum app so they have a complete picture of their finances in one place, giving them more control.

Belgian customers also have access to the Plum Pro account, which offers additional features for only €2 per month. In addition to savings rules such as the 52-week challenge and Rainy Days, which puts aside extra money when it rains, Plum Pro subscribers can set aside money in several customizable pockets based on their goals. 

Plum is entering the Belgian market with inflation reaching a new high in June at 9.65%, according to Statbel. As prices continue to rise, money management is even more important and Plum wants to help Belgians set aside money automatically and effortlessly through its technology. Plum has already helped people across Europe to set aside more than €1.3 billion.  

The launch marks the next step in Plum’s European expansion, having successfully launched in the UK, France, Spain and Ireland. The business, which has maintained its rapid growth, now has over 1.3 million customers. 

Victor Trokoudes, co-founder and CEO of Plum, comments: "We’re delighted to bring Plum to Belgium and help people here manage their finances. This is such a challenging period as people are experiencing levels of inflation not seen in decades, leading to a rapidly increasing cost of living. The need for long-term financial resilience has arguably never been clearer and we created Plum precisely to help people tackle this issue, ensuring that your money management is automated and looked after for the future. 

“Launching in Belgium is the latest major milestone in our expansion, demonstrating we truly are a European company. The intelligence of our app means we can offer a smart alternative to traditional tools and help people make their money go further in multiple ways. We’re excited about the new features we will offer soon, including providing retail investors with a simple, low-cost and accessible way to invest for the long-term.” 

In the coming weeks, Plum will also launch an investment feature, helping Belgians to make their money go further over the long term. The feature will allow people to invest in more than 500 U.S. stocks for as little as €1.

SEON finds that a recent shift from physical branches to digital banking has changed the world of online and mobile fraud, making the need for effective fraud prevention solutions more important than ever before. 

Notably, the new review by SEON found:

• Online banking fraud accounted for the largest proportion of US fraud in 2021 and 2020
• For US retail, mobile fraud now accounts for 27% of the total fraud cost, which is a 19% increase
• The number of cyberattacks has almost doubled since 2021

With new ways of accessing, buying, and exchanging money online, the threat of fraud to all banks, organizations and individuals has never been higher. Now, online fraud fighters, SEON, has revealed how companies across the sector are dealing with the growing challenge in its comprehensive new report, entitled: ‘Global Banking Fraud Index: The Cost of Fraud to Banks & Organizations’.

The new report, which was drafted by SEON’s Product Evangelist, Gergo Varga assesses how fraud is impacting banks, organizations and individuals across the United States, and the United Kingdom. Using data from S&P Global, LexisNexis, Guidehouse, Identity Fraud Research Center, KPMG and Action Fraud, the new report paints a comprehensive picture of the cost of fraud to financial institutions in 2022.

Through this research, SEON reveals that the total cost of fraud has steadily increased over the last three years in the US. In the UK, banking fraud has shown similar growth, with this type of attack happening 66% more in 2021 than in 2020. As part of its efforts to help mitigate the effects of online fraud, SEON’s report concludes with several relevant pieces of fraud prevention best practices that individuals and companies should follow.

Speaking on the new report, Gergo commented: “Fraud continues to be an expensive issue, especially within the banking and financial services sector. Every $1 lost to fraud costs businesses in the US around $3.60 to address, for US Financial Services specifically, that figure is closer to $4. Considering growing economic pressures, it’s now paramount that businesses do all they can to avoid incurring these costs before they happen.

“Alongside documenting some of the most significant increases in different forms of fraud, the new report highlights the general direction that fraud is trending in within the United States and the United Kingdom. As the report explains, the pandemic has clearly pushed consumers and fraudsters towards digital transactions, which has in turn, resulted in a major surge in mobile fraud that must be recognized by businesses and consumers alike.”

The new report is available on SEON’s website. The document forms part of the company’s comprehensive, and growing content portfolio, which contains articles, case studies and guides that cover a myriad of topics within the world of online fraud prevention and cybersecurity. The company is now actively working on several additional reports, which will further breakdown the threat of online fraud in 2022.

Origin, the London-based fintech digitising debt capital markets, has launched Origin Extract to digitise any manually created bond termsheet, extracting structured data to automate and streamline the processes that depend on them.

Origin Extract automatically analyses trade documentation, extracting all relevant information accurately and efficiently, enabling all involved players easy access to standardised, structured trade data. Users can now drag-and-drop PDF termsheets into the Origin platform, and the product uses machine learning (ML) to identify important bond-specific data points informed by Airbrush, Origin’s industry-leading interface data standard, launched with the aim of being a universal language for bond issuance market participants.

Documentation – slow, repetitive, and prone to error

The widespread and well-understood frustrations with the current issuance process show it’s not fit for purpose, riddled with complexity, manual tasks, repetitive data entry and a high risk of inaccuracy or error. Bond settlement can take up to five days – a process complicated by the number of different parties involved. From the initial creation of the termsheet, right through to final terms and settlement, the information about a trade has to be passed through different systems, at different stages, by multiple market participants. Documents typically exist as PDFs, which require each party to re-key and proof the terms of the PDF into their own system at each change of hands. The demand from market participants is clear. Exchanges, IPAs and clearing houses alike have expressed a need for a streamlined process and structured trade data.

Origin’s platform already structures and stores data for trades that take place within the Documentation product, meaning dealers and issuers alike can use the platform to collaborate on documents and through automation of the process, can work more effectively and efficiently together. For any trade that is not happening on the platform yet, Origin Extract creates a new path to digitise the trade and automate its processing.

Streamlining the process

Attempts to optimise the documentation process do exist – from mandated standardised templates, or the use of optical character recognition (OCR) technology – however their success levels vary and as such the industry-wide problem endures. Origin Extract has been launched with the aim of paving the way to a world in which the entire process is seamless, accurate and efficient. Importantly, it is integrated into the Origin Documentation product, and works as a complement to Origin’s existing Termsheet Generator. By having two entryways into the workflow, users can ensure structured data is never missed.

John Judeh, Lead Product Manager at Origin, said: “We see this as an essential step in paving the way to more seamless and efficient bond issuance. This will enable more effective collaboration between market participants by adding automation to a greater proportion of issuances. This is a big step towards our mission of enabling a fully digitised debt issuance market.”

Raja Palaniappan, CEO at Origin, said: “Origin Extract is another arrow in Origin’s quiver as we make progress on our mission to digitise the entire bond issuance process. The development of Origin Extract shows the value of our team’s commitment to constant improvement, innovation, and experimentation. The entire Origin platform was built internally by our world-class team of engineers and designers, and it’s fantastic to see that talent produce exciting new developments such as this one.”

Origin Extract is the latest addition to the Origin product suite which already includes Origin Marketplace, which brings together investment banks and frequent borrowers to identify issuance opportunities; Origin Documentation, which automates document creation (such as termsheets, final terms, and accession letters); and Origin Post-Trade, which sends data to exchanges, agents and clearing houses without any human intervention through APIs. Last year, Origin also launched Airbrush, a universal data standard for bond issuance, alongside an “instant ISIN” feature to allow automated allocation to Eurobonds for frequent issuers, both in partnership with Clearstream (the Luxembourg Stock Exchange also supported Airbrush).

Origin announced its Series A round closed at $7 million at the end of 2020, led by Clearstream and the Luxembourg Stock Exchange, which brought total funding to $10 million.

Yapily, the leading open banking platform, today announces the appointment of Caroline Abercrombie as Chief People Officer (CPO), as it continues to rapidly grow its team and reach in Europe. 

With over two decades of experience in turbocharging growth for tech start-ups through successfully managed teams, Caroline will be leading Yapily’s efforts to acquire top talent, support a thriving and dynamic team, and continue embedding diversity and inclusion into the company’s fabric. 

During her career, Caroline has scaled up technology start-ups into industry leaders, supporting companies such as Bazaarvoice as they navigated M&A and IPO deals across UK and US markets. Caroline joins Yapily from the leading student affinity network UNiDAYS, where she spent almost two years as VP People. Prior to this, she held the role of Global Head of People for Verizon Digital Media Services, playing a key part in the global HR leadership team that delivered on the $4.4bn acquisition and integration of Yahoo!.

Caroline’s appointment follows the appointment of new Chief Technology Officer Noam Oren in June, as the company continues to strengthen and expand its pan-European reach. Yapily, having recently acquired Germany’s leading open banking provider, finAPI and announced multiple new strategic partnerships, is now poised to take on the mantle as the largest open banking platform in Europe. 

Caroline Abercrombie, Chief People Officer, Yapily, said: “Open banking is a budding industry, so it is a very exciting time to be supporting a fast-growing and disruptive team like Yapily in scaling-up and realising its growth ambitions. With Yapily’s current focus on rapid growth in the continent as well as in the UK, I look forward to working with a very talented and diverse team to scale up in multiple geographies.”

Stefano Vaccino, Founder and CEO, Yapily, added: “With a focus on innovation, creativity, and a people-first culture, Caroline will be a valued addition in our mission to grow high-performing teams and nurture talent. 

“As we continue to scale, her expertise will help sustainably drive our growth and support securing industry-leading talent. Our people are central to our success, and Caroline’s work in attracting and retaining top talent will be integral in Yapily’s next chapter of growth.”

Simpl, India’s leading 1-click checkout network, has partnered Zymrat to facilitate Pay-in-3 feature for customers of the popular D2C performance wear brand.

Commenting on the partnership, Simpl Co-Founder and CEO, Nitya Sharma said, “We are delighted that Zymrat has joined our 20k+ and growing merchant partner network. Simpl users now have access to yet another formidable D2C brand. Pay-in-3 allows D2C brands to provide greater convenience and ease of payments to their customers, thus providing the best consumer experience.”

‘Pay-in-3’ is the latest product from Simpl that empowers customers to shop with ease and pay later in 3 equal instalments at no extra charge. The split payment feature is developed on three key pillars: smart budgeting, transparency and convenience. It aims to strengthen trust between D2C brands such as Zymrat and their customers.

“We are excited to partner with Simpl as our checkout plus conversion partner. This partnership will allow #TheZymratTribe to experience a safe, transparent and seamless purchase experience with Simpl. We are counting on this partnership to be long and fruitful,” said Ujjawal Asthana, Co-Founder, Zymrat.

Simpl’s Pay-in-3 comes with a host of value-added features that enable spend management while combining transparency, convenience, ease of use, and best of all, a smooth payment experience.