Citi announced today that it has selected METACO to develop and pilot digital asset custody capabilities.

This collaboration brings together METACO’s technology and digital solutions with Citi’s expansive custody network to develop a platform to enable clients to store and settle digital assets seamlessly and securely. Citi intends to fully integrate METACO's bank-grade digital asset custody and orchestration platform, Harmonize, into its existing infrastructure, to develop and pilot digital asset custody capabilities.

“We are witnessing the increasing digitization of traditional investment assets along with new native digital assets. We are innovating and developing new capabilities to support digital asset classes that are becoming increasingly relevant to our clients,” said Okan Pekin, Global Head of Securities Services at Citi.

This strategic partnership enables Citi to extend its existing capabilities to digital assets while leveraging it's current technological, operating and servicing model. Citi’s extensive global network, coupled with the power of the Harmonize platform, will allow Citi to expand securely and effectively into new markets while utilizing its existing global operations, technology, and risk frameworks. The technology capabilities developed under this partnership will be an integral part of Citi’s Institutional Client Group digital asset strategy.

Adrien Treccani, CEO and Founder of METACO, commented, “We are pleased to team up with Citi, one of the largest securities services firms, to support them in their vision to bridge digital and traditional assets. This initiative is a market-defining moment for institutional adoption of digital assets.”

The leading technology provider to financial institutions in the digital asset ecosystem, METACO has supported several key implementations, including FINMA, BaFin, FCA, Banco de España, and MAS-regulated institutions.

With over US$27 trillion of assets under custody, administration and trust, and an industry-leading proprietary network spanning 63 markets, Citi Securities Services provides clients with in-depth local market expertise, advanced processing technologies, and a wide range of custody and fund services that can be tailored to meet clients’ needs.

Kernolab, the Vilnius-based fintech startup that focuses on helping businesses drive value through embedded finance solutions, is partnering with Ondato for all KYC compliance capabilities. The partnership comes as Kernolab prepares to make inroads in the booming marketplaces vertical, where merchant onboarding is heavily reliant on smooth KYC and compliance checks. Kernolab can now offer business clients and end-users an embedded finance solution with a fully integrated KYC compliance platform built-in, unlocking a tremendous amount of revenue opportunities.

Kernolab’s first important test case comes with its embedded finance solution being leveraged for Tokitus, an online platform for finding therapists; the compliance landscape within any medical services environment is particularly tricky. In addition to providing Tokitus’ payments and billing back-end, Kernolab is now also able to offer an integrated KYC compliance feature stack. Therapists in general have a unique and challenging set of compliance checks, especially so for a platform like Tokitus, which operates in 15 different languages across a spectrum of 11 different therapy types. 

Ondato for its part is getting an important test case in which it can challenge, refine, and expand its KYC compliance platform. As the demand for therapy and related services continues to rise, the need for flexible and responsive platforms is clearly mandated. Platforms will succeed by offering end-users a trustworthy and secure experience but also by making it easy for service providers to put their hats in the ring. The new Ondato OS defines a new technology category that integrates all the KYC, KYB and AML tools and services needed by online businesses to onboard customers quickly and safely, provide a deep level of monitoring and due diligence, and stay up to date with clients’ lifecycle management. Given the growing number of myriad marketplace platforms – in health services and a wide array of other verticals – the marriage of embedded finance with compliance services is proving to be an important one. 

“We are very pleased to be partnering with Kernolab,” said Liudas, CEO and co-founder of Ondato. “Our contention from the beginning has been that we help businesses realize the fact that KYC compliance can be a driver of new revenue growth when it’s done right, rather than a drain on resources. In the case of Kernolab, the business benefit is very clear as they move into the marketplace vertical. Together, we are literally making new kinds of business a reality.” 

“One of the biggest challenges for businesses like marketplaces is onboarding and verifying new customers as well as staying compliant over time and across geographies,” said Vachtangas Babunasvili, CEO and co-founder of Kernolab. “Ondato can provide not just flexibility and agility with these processes, but also the robust security and validation that they’ve built their reputation on. Not every business is going to be a fintech. But many businesses will be able to find new revenue streams by incorporating financial products and services into their core offering. Amongst that group of businesses, the ability to quickly and effectively integrate KYC, AML and other important compliance checks into those offerings will be another important aspect. We believe this new partnership with Ondato will be very fruitful for both parties.” 

Leading payment orchestration platform IXOPAY has partnered with Concardis / Nets Group, a payment service provider that provides a complete service for cashless and digital payments. Together they give businesses access to state-of-the-art infrastructure and payment processing.

IXOPAY’s intuitive architecture and three solutions give merchants complete control of their payment setup no matter their size. As a best-of-breed payment orchestration platform, users benefit from simplified integration of acquirers, payment service providers, and risk service providers, as well as centralized reconciliation and settlement services.

Concardis / Nets offers an all-in-one payment service from card acceptance and payment processing to payment devices and payment solutions. Their innovative solution is easy to use and can be managed by someone who does not have any IT or programming knowledge.

This partnership will allow merchants access to the Concardis / Nets offering while providing them with support and access to more complex setups with IXOPAY.

“We are excited to collaborate with Concardis / Nets. Their goal of providing an easy-to-use and transparent payment experience aligns perfectly with IXOPAY’s payments vision. With two integrations to Concardis and Nets easy platform, we can offer merchants a solution that will enable them to grow.” Said Laura Allan, VP Marketing, BD & Partnerships at IXOPAY.

“Concardis / Nets is always looking for innovative ways in which to help our clients. With IXOPAY we can pool our knowledge and resources, giving our users access to game-changing features like smart transaction routing and reconciliation services.” Said Michael Santner, Head of PSP DACH at Concardis / Nets.

This new partnership strengthens IXOPAY’s reach across Europe and gives merchants of all sizes access to another innovative payment provider.

Hyve Managed Hosting, a leading UK cloud hosting provider, has today released findings which reveal that UK shoppers will overlook existing brand loyalties - jumping ship to a competitor - if their preferred retailer's website experiences even a minute of downtime. The research, carried out by leading research provider Censuswide and commissioned by Hyve, shows that 42% of consumers would move to a competitor’s website after less than a minute if their go-to brand suffered an outage, with 34% prepared to wait no longer than 30 seconds in those circumstances. 

Despite e-commerce usage growing and brands across all industries moving online, website downtime is still common among retailers. The research revealed over one-third (38%) of UK consumers have been unable to access a company’s website in the past 12 months, with nearly a quarter (23%) of respondents experiencing this situation more than once. When faced with this situation, UK consumers are willing to shop elsewhere, with nearly 40% (39%) admitting they’d consider using a competitor’s service in this situation. 

Downtime can occur at any time and be linked to a range of issues. One key driver is websites being unprepared for a sudden increase in visitors. However, even when a surge in web traffic is expected, issues can still occur without prior planning to manage peaks and effectively load balance. The research highlighted this issue – over one-fifth (21%) of UK consumers reported being unable to access a website to buy a newly launched product or service in the past 12 months. This can also negatively impact the wider brand, and this sentiment is held by younger consumers. In a separate research project, Hyve found millennials are particularly unforgiving, with 57% of this age group saying that site downtime causes immediate negative brand perception. 

“I hope this research serves as a wake-up call to brands on the importance of running their operations on high availability platforms. Consumers have never had so much choice online and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they’re willing to shop with competitors if their first-choice service is unavailable,” explained Jake Madders, director and co-founder of Hyve. “We’re used to seeing outages around busy shopping days such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. But more recently, energy providers also suffered outages as concerned customers tried to log their gas and electricity usage ahead of the April price cap increase. We imagine the same thing will happen again in October if providers don’t take remedial steps. 

“No matter what sector a business operates in, more needs to be done to mitigate the risk of downtime by scaling up resources at appropriate moments,” Madders continued. “Currently, a high percentage of businesses are totally reliant on a single public cloud provider, which means internal teams are responsible for anticipating scaling, which can be an arduous task. For any business looking to manage traffic spikes more effectively, the answer is to either diversify risk by using multiple providers or to partner with a managed service provider to ensure this is taken care of.”

Global fraud fighters, SEON is delighted to announce a new partnership with Provenir, a global leader in AI-powered risk decisioning software for the fintech industry. The exciting partnership will help organizations to build powerful new fraud prevention solutions.

With its innovative technology, Provenir provides an AI-powered decisioning platform that can assess risk in areas like identity, credit, and fraud. The company prides itself on working with world-class partners, such as SEON who are able to provide groundbreaking technology that can be incorporated within its Marketplace ecosystem.

The Provenir Marketplace provides organizations with a one-stop data hub that makes it easy to access information covering Open Banking, KYC/KYB, fraud, credit risk, verifications, social media, collections, affordability and more. This comprehensive fintech data and business intelligence ecosystem bring together offerings from data vendors around the globe into one, easy-to-use cloud solution for data consumption.

SEON’s powerful system can establish an individual’s digital footprint based on their email address, phone number, IP address, or location in real-time. This GDPR-compliant approach to analyzing a user’s digital footprint helps companies to accept more transactions while blocking fraudulent ones. This service provides secure customer identification, while not interfering with the optimal customer journey.

As a business, SEON is on a mission to provide more digital businesses with access to the best fraud prevention solutions. This goal is now more important than ever, particularly as businesses around the world battle for financial recovery, and even survival amidst a continued economic downturn. By partnering via the Provenir Marketplace, SEON and Provenir are helping such businesses to better defend against fraud.

Speaking on the partnership, Jimmy Fong, CCO at SEON commented: “SEON and Provenir perfectly complement each other, which makes our new partnership a match made in heaven for businesses across a number of sectors. From the first interactions, it was clear that our two businesses’ visions were fully aligned. Now, together, we will improve experiences for users across the company’s platform, while reducing the risk of fraud.

“Provenir is a great partner as they target identity, fraud and credit risk. Now, with access to our data sources, the company is able to provide customers with more data choices to include in their credit risk management solutions. In addition, our technology is helping to enrich know-your-customer (KYC) checks to further mitigate the risk of fraud and to enable better customer decisions. By working collaboratively, we’re able to ensure this process is as seamless and straightforward as possible.”

Carol Hamilton, Senior Vice President, Global Solutions, Provenir, added: “We’re excited to have SEON join the Provenir Marketplace to help customers gain real-time insights from social and digital sources to verify identity and combat fraud. SEON’s rich data and flexibility allow customers to customize their rules and risk models as needed to make instant, accurate decisions.”

The new partnership is now fully live, with SEON’s solution already helping to improve fraud detection performance in conjunction with Provenir’s platform.

Banyan, an investment facilitator for sustainable infrastructure headquartered in San Francisco, has confirmed a USD $8.2m Series A round led by VoLo Earth Ventures with several notable venture capital firms joining the round.

The sizable funding round, which values the company at USD $47m, will enable Banyan to further scale its go-to-market engine, as well as enhance the support it’s able to offer to exist customers.

Just 18 months since its initial product launch, Banyan’s Series A round reaffirms the considerable industry interest currently surrounding the innovative platform. Led by VoLo Earth Ventures, with additional investment from Ulu Ventures, Vista Verde Capital, Nomadic Venture Partners and Industrious Ventures, the round puts Banyan in the perfect position to achieve its goal of digitizing and onboarding sustainable infrastructure investments and loans with higher velocity, standardization, and transparency.

Despite the advances in the availability of asset and financial data, investing in sustainable infrastructure remains a largely manual and inefficient set of processes relying heavily on spreadsheets and disconnected systems. Banyan’s platform tackles this issue head-on. By providing dynamic online checklists and scorecards, approval-based workflow automation, APIs to existing data sources, a centralized data vault to complement existing virtual data rooms, and a self-service client portal, the company provides a platform purpose-built for project finance and sustainable infrastructure teams.

Since its inception, Banyan has helped to deploy and manage over USD $1bn of capital towards sustainable infrastructure developments. However, set against the backdrop of rising climate concerns, as well as a more concerted global effort by major institutions and nation-states to address environmental challenges, the demand for such projects continues to rise. Thanks to its Series A raise, Banyan can help its customers meet this growing demand faster and more effectively by simplifying and optimizing the mechanisms needed to finance the switch to low carbon infrastructure. In meeting this demand, Banyan brings real technology to bear and helps to tackle the cost of capital, whilst still accelerating the deployment of necessary sustainable infrastructure globally.

Speaking on the raise, Will Greene, Founder and CEO at Banyan commented: “The face of infrastructure projects is changing. While the era of megaprojects is far from over, developments are generally becoming smaller and cheaper. However, the cost and complexity of lending or investing have hardly changed. In response, infrastructure companies are increasingly interested in solutions to help manage growing pipelines and portfolios and take advantage of this market opportunity.

“Thankfully, by automating contractual compliance and synthesizing key insights, Banyan offers the ideal system for addressing this challenge. Now, with our Series A raise, we’re able to take this offering to the next level. More than ever, customers can rely on our solution to proactively mitigate risks by providing greater transparency across all counterparties. In short, our tech-first platform is helping to provide loans and investments originated at a higher velocity, serviced at a lower cost, and syndicated with greater liquidity.”

Alongside the raise, Kareem Dabbagh, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at VoLo Earth Ventures will join Banyan’s Board of Directors. Kareem is a solar industry veteran, with considerable experience pursuing soft cost reductions on sustainable infrastructure projects by prioritizing innovation, quality control, and process improvement. As such, he represents the ideal addition to the company’s growing employee ranks and will bring several key skills, which are integral to Banyan’s core business mission.

Speaking on his involvement in the raise, alongside his appointment to the company’s board, Kareem told us: “Banyan is an exciting business that is helping to reshape the world of sustainable infrastructure. By working with direct lenders, banks and project owners, the company can deliver a service that is long overdue, with a value proposition to save clients money and provide actionable insights into sustainable assets. What’s more, by offering this service through a SaaS distribution model, Banyan is helping to make its solution as accessible as possible, allowing it to benefit the largest number of people while accelerating deployment in the sector.”

ChainUp Group, a blockchain technology solutions provider, today announced a strategic partnership with Singapore-based asset and wealth management firm Bedrock Trust Pte Ltd (“Bedrock”). This marks a significant first step in the collaboration between both firms to strengthen their core competencies and provide clients with comprehensive digital asset management solutions.

Through the partnership, both firms have developed a number of digital asset management strategies including the IPFS Infrastructure Fund, Stable Returns Fund, Enhanced Beta and Venture Capital Fund.

Headquartered in Singapore, ChainUp offers a complete suite of blockchain solutions for businesses in both traditional and blockchain-related industries. Its range of products and services includes infrastructure development and the provision of essential resources and technical capabilities to facilitate blockchain adoption and integration into business operations.

As a Licenced Fund Management Company (LFMC) regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Bedrock provides clients with investment solutions tailored to their long-term requirements. The company holds a Capital Market Services (CMS) licence for the regulated activity of Fund Management under the Securities and Futures Act (SFA) as well as the status of Exempt Financial Advisor under the Financial Advisers Act (FAA).

Mr. Jeff Mei, Chief Marketing Officer of ChainUp Group said, “The applications of blockchain are wide-ranging. Our partnership with Bedrock signifies a step in the right direction towards our goal of making blockchain technology more accessible to businesses in different industries. With Bedrock’s expertise in traditional finance, we look forward to bringing clients better digital asset management solutions through our collaboration.”

Ms. Choo Shu Hui, Founder & CEO of Bedrock said, “Bedrock’s heritage lies in managing high net-worth clients’ wealth and assets within a multi-family office platform. As we continue to innovate and provide clients with portfolio resilience and diversity, we are pleased to leverage ChainUp’s expertise in blockchain technology through this partnership to bridge the world of digital asset management and traditional finance.”

The United Kingdom is expected to add nearly 15,000 technology-related jobs this year, according to a new report released today by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), the nonprofit association for the information technology (IT) industry and workforce.

CompTIA’s “State of the Tech Workforce U.K.” reports that organisations employed approximately 1.98 million tech workers in 2021. Job growth was slower than expected as the U.K. continued to navigate through the widespread economic impact of the pandemic, but the tech industry avoided the job losses that affected many other industry sectors in the region.

The tech industry accounts for 5.5% of the U.K. economy, or £82.6 billion.

Since 2016, tech employment increased by an estimated 62,140 new jobs or about 10,356 new jobs each year. “The tech sector in the U.K. is strong and growing stronger each year,” said Graham Hunter, executive vice president at CompTIA. “The evidence is clear: A well-trained and certified tech workforce makes a significant impact on the nation’s economy. And businesses of all sorts will need more skilled workers if we are going to maintain the growth resulting from the ongoing digital transformation efforts that accelerated during the pandemic.”

Nearly 20% of all employer tech job postings in 2021 were for positions in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, automation, blockchain and the internet of things, or jobs requiring skills in those areas.

Most tech workers (591,335 employees) are tied to employers in IT consultancy and services, such as managed services providers (MSPs). Other industry sectors that are well represented include telecom, data processing and web portals (269,336); software and custom development (232,965); and tech manufacturing (109,868).

“Over the last few years, the technology industry and technology professionals have proven how vital they are to the entire nation,” said Estelle Johannes, senior director of global communities at CompTIA. “The drastic changes and ongoing uncertainty highlighted how important a robust technology ecosystem is to the success of the economy.”

There are 188,812 tech firms with payrolls across the UK with 44,831 tech business establishments in London. Other markets with strong tech sectors include Manchester (6,408 tech companies), Bristol (3,847) and Birmingham (3,129).

Northern Ireland is projected to see the largest percentage increase in net tech employment this year, with Scotland and England following and with tech employment expected to remain steady in Wales.

Other data points in the report illustrate the strength of the UK tech sector. For example:

• The top four metropolitan areas (London, Manchester, Bristol and Glasgow) are home to more than 572,500 tech industry and tech occupation workers or about 1 in 3 tech workers in the region.
• Birmingham saw the highest increase in net tech employment year over year.
• Six metropolitan areas (Edinburgh, London, Bristol, Leeds, Glasgow and Nottingham) have a higher concentration of tech workers than the national benchmark of 6.3%.

CompTIA’s “State of the Tech Workforce UK” report provides data and analysis on tech employment, economic impact, technology trends, salaries, hiring activity and other measures for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and 13 metropolitan regions across the U.K. The complete report is available here.

Fusion Risk Management, Inc. (“Fusion”), a leading provider of operational resilience, business continuity, and risk management software and services, today announced it was named ‘Continuity & Resilience Provider’ and ‘Continuity & Resilience Innovation’ at the 2022 BCI Americas Awards.

The BCI Americas Awards recognize individuals and organizations who made outstanding contributions to business continuity, risk, and resilience over the last year in the Americas. Winners of the awards are determined by a panel of esteemed judges consisting of BCI members.

“Fusion is honoured to be named both ‘Continuity & Resilience Provider’ and ‘Continuity & Resilience Innovation’ at the 2022 BCI Americas Awards,” said Michael Campbell, CEO of Fusion Risk Management. “These wins demonstrate our steadfast commitment to fostering a culture of innovation to provide our customers with the products and services they require to achieve operational resilience. As the risk landscape continues to evolve, Fusion will continue to work directly with our customers to deliver innovative best-of-breed products and white glove customer service that helps organizations achieve their North Star of resilience.”

The wins are attributed to innovations to the Fusion Framework® System™ and its Scenario Testing solution. The Fusion Framework System, known for its state-of-the-art risk and continuity management, combines resilience modules under one comprehensive framework. The platform allows firms to evaluate all aspects of operational resilience, including risk management, IT (information technology) and security risk, crisis and incident management, business continuity and disaster recovery, and third-party management. Fusion’s out-of-the-box capabilities empower firms to efficiently aggregate risk assessment information for accurate risk reporting and control monitoring across the organization, building a culture of resilience as a guiding North Star and enabling clients to go beyond reacting to ongoing threats to more proactively managing their resilience posture.

Fusion created its innovative Scenario Testing functionality in response to increasing disruptions and changes in the regulatory landscape. The functionality enables organizations to test and analyze the impact of severe but plausible events in real-time. The Fusion Scenario Testing solution allows businesses to visualize real-life risk scenarios and bolster resiliency programs to become more prepared, agile, and responsive when recovering from current or future disruptions. The Fusion Framework System and Scenario Testing capabilities help customers solve their real resilience challenges and achieve operational resilience.