Uplinq Financial Technologies (Uplinq) is delighted to announce a new partnership with a leading small business funding provider, Reliant Funding (Reliant). Reliant will engage Uplinq’s revolutionary credit assessment platform to help it make more accurate decisions in situations where standard approaches do not suffice.

Founded in 2008, Reliant’s aim is to help small businesses achieve big goals. To do this, the company helps facilitate funding for small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) by providing access to working capital when they most need it. However, given the nature of the Reliant prospect universe, a majority of current applications are being declined. Through its work with Uplinq, the company aims to significantly improve its approval and booking numbers.

Alongside providing more access to working capital, Reliant aims to use Uplinq’s system to better tailor the amount of money it advances, as well as to improve the terms of the merchant cash advances that it issues.

Speaking on the partnership, Ryan Goodman, Vice President of Business Intelligence and Analytics at Reliant Funding said: “We share a lot in common with Uplinq, including our commitment to helping improve opportunities for SMBs around the globe. With so much going on in the world right now, businesses need as much support as they can get. Since 2008, we have been there to offer that help, but now with Uplinq’s assistance, we are able to take our service to a different level. We’re so excited to see what the future has in store for both of us on this journey.”

Ron Benegbi, Founder and CEO at Uplinq commented: “We saw immediate synergies with Reliant the moment we began our conversations, and I’m thrilled that we can finally share this news. I’m confident that Uplinq’s solution will be able to make a material impact on their overall business for years to come.”

The agreement caps off a busy period for Uplinq recently, which has seen the announcement of several new partnerships, inclusion in the Station Fintech Montreal ESG Accelerator program, as well as the announcement of its USD $3.5m pre-seed funding round. As it enters the second half of 2022, the company remains committed to further scaling its operations and services around the world, as it looks toward fulfilling its mission of helping lenders achieve financial inclusion for all small business owners.

FXCM Group, LLC (‘FXCM Group’ or ‘FXCM’), a leading international provider of online foreign exchange trading, CFD trading and related services has won the Best Retail Forex Broker in Europe at the 2022 Global Forex Awards - B2B.

FXCM won the award following a public vote from the FX community and was recognised as offering the best all-around retail FX package and experience. Now in their third year, The Global Forex Awards - B2B celebrate forex and related businesses from around the world who are pushing the boundaries of innovation in B2B forex trading solutions.

FXCM has continually expanded its services throughout 2022, underlining its commitment to a “Client First, Trader Driven” approach. In addition to expanding its CFD offering with the doubling of its French, German and the UK share offerings, the firm also launched Australian single share CFD trading with zero data fees and commissions* to level up the service provided to clients.

Brendan Callan, CEO of FXCM, said: “It’s always rewarding to have your team’s hard work and the quality of your offering recognised by the wider FX community. We pride ourselves on our client-first, trader-driven approach which enables us to consistently deliver diversified products, new functionality and, ultimately, the trading experience our clients deserve. Accolades like this reflect the dedication and commitment of our global team and I want to thank my colleagues for the role that they play in ensuring FXCM remains the premier retail FX broker of choice.”

This award win follows up on the numerous awards won by FXCM in the past year, including Best Zero Commission Broker at ADVFN Awards 2022, Best Forex Trading Platform award at the 2021 Shares Awards, Most Transparent Forex Broker in Europe, Best Forex Trading Platform in Europe and Best Forex Mobile Trading Platform / App provider globally at the Global Forex Awards and Best FX Platform at the 2021 Online Personal Wealth Awards.

In mid-March, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a report highlighting how cyber actors routinely exploit poor security configurations, weak controls, and other poor cyber hygiene practices to gain access and compromise user systems. These included not enforcing multifactor authentication, primarily with remote desktop access, the use of vendor-supplied default login usernames and passwords, and the failure to detect and block phishing attempts.

CISA suggested organisations can help strengthen their network defences against commonly exploited practices by adopting a zero-trust security model, which enables users to be assigned only the access rights required to perform their assigned tasks. Access control can limit the actions of malicious cyber actors and reduce the chance of user errors.

However, CISA also stresses the importance of implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA) protocols, employing antivirus programs and detection tools and searching for vulnerabilities, as well as initiating a software and patch management program. These are all said to provide a higher degree of visibility into endpoint security, or else effectively aid in protecting against malicious cyber actors.

Julia O’Toole, Founder and CEO of MyCena Security Solutions, believes that these recommendations are simply not enough and that organisations need more than surface-level fixes to prevent cyber-breaches.

“Preventing malicious actors from gaining network access won’t happen through antivirus programs. These are simply temporary fixes that do nothing to correct the fundamental vulnerabilities in how organisations approach their cybersecurity. It’s time for businesses to take control and lead their own cyber resilience, rather than hide their difficulties behind third-party software.”

“We’ve seen earlier this year how MFA can be easily exploited by malicious cyber actors wishing to gain network access. These vulnerabilities are often known and exploited by hackers for months before affected organizations are made aware, posing a significant danger to those whose systems are compromised.”

“MFA is not the solution CISA wants to pretend it is and enforcing the use of stronger passwords doesn’t stop the problem either. When, according to the 2022 Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report, 82% of network breaches start with a compromised login - whether using stolen credentials or phishing - the difference between “123456” and “1&!7A8%9gh3Tio” is negligible in protecting your network. Hackers don’t “hack in”, they simply log in using “found” passwords, be it through social engineering, phishing or even just paying employees for their credentials. Trusting employees to create their own keys is the ultimate problem that CISA should be addressing.”

Whilst O’Toole agrees with CISA’s advice to give role-based access, she explains this does not fix the credentials vulnerabilities. “The root cause of the problem is letting employees create their own passwords. Imagine if CISA let their employees make their own keys to walk into their Arlington facilities just because they have MFA!”

“In reality, they take far more precautions to ensure their systems stay secure, starting with keeping control of their access keys. Likewise, in the digital world, organisations can distribute end-to-end encrypted passwords to their employees to securely access their online systems, one by one, without ever seeing a password. Employees can only gain access to parts of the network for which they have the keys, which means: no key, no access.”

“As passwords stay encrypted from creation, distribution, use, to expiry, employees cannot give away by error a password they don’t know. This solves the problem of human errors leading to credentials compromise, which is the source of 82% of breaches. And contrary to other access management methods, there is no master password or identity to steal, so criminals cannot find a privileged account or single point of access to take control of the network and launch a ransomware attack.”

“Companies should be investing sooner rather than later to stop cybercriminals from gaining access to their systems through credentials. Keeping control of their own encrypted digital keys will protect them from over 4 out of 5 breaches. Without this minimum layer of cybersecurity, all it takes is one employee slip up to result in a potentially devastating and costly network breach.”

GCEX, which enables brokers, funds and professional traders to access deep liquidity in digital assets and FX, has been granted two licenses by the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority, the FSA  (FTID 17524). The rapidly growing digital brokerage has been granted a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) license and authorisation to provide currency exchange to professional clients.

The VASP license grants GCEX permission to provide clients with services such as:

• exchange between virtual currencies and fiat currencies
• exchange between one or more types of virtual currency
• transfer of virtual currencies

GCEX, which is also regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) (FRN 828730), has offices in London, Copenhagen, Glasgow and Kuala Lumpur. The firm has recently expanded its products in response to customer demand and currently offers more than 40 coins and tokens as well as FX liquidity from Tier 1 providers and a wide range of technology solutions.

Lars Holst, Founder and CEO, GCEX said, “It is a priority for GCEX to have multi-jurisdictional regulatory coverage as this gives clients the choice of trading with the regulated entity which best suits their requirements. As Brexit has completely changed the landscape for UK regulated brokerages in terms of passporting, we believe it is very important for us to be regulated in an EU country. The Danish FSA license, therefore, is a major milestone for the business. The fact that we have permission to run a crypto exchange globally from Denmark is also very significant.”

Michael Aagaard, Managing Director, GCEX Denmark adds, “Being a Danish authorised entity gives further credibility to our offering. We are now looking at expanding our operations in Denmark and will be growing our team across all functions.”

GCEX offers a wide range of products and technology solutions including White Labels. Its ‘Crypto In A Box’ plug-and-play solution comprises of a technology-agnostic platform which covers regulation, custody, safety of funds, liquidity and technology (both backend and frontend). GCEX’s unparalleled suite of integrated trading technology includes AI applications, allowing clients to automate onboarding, offer and trade digital assets, FX & CFD Indices, with deep streaming liquidity and solutions for clearing.

Netherlands-based payment service provider Akurateco has successfully deployed its Payment Orchestration Platform, a fully brandable white-label payment solution that allows users to own a ready-to-use PCI DSS payment gateway, to the Oracle Cloud. A primary objective of the Oracle deployment, according to Akurateco, was to create an On-Premises software platform in Saudi Arabia based on the client's request and to provide him with a ready-to-use payment solution that does not require investment and skills for its maintenance. 

One of the reasons for the On-premises software setup was that any payment provider in the Saudi Arabian market should be in compliance with the requirements of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) for the hosting of processing information inside the country. An On-premises setup is a viable solution since all data is processed on the local servers while the whole system is controlled remotely.

The architecture of the Akurateco Payment Orchestration Platform’s On-Premises system enables deployment on nearly any cloud. It took the team 2,5 months to make a deployment to Oracle. After the PCI DDS compliance was achieved, the system was launched and is now working at full capacity within the Saudi Arabia legislative framework.

Vladimir Kuiantsev, CEO and co-Founder of Akurateco, commented: “from the moment of deployment Akurateco Payments Orchestration Platform has become Oracle-ready. Consequently, now we can deploy our system in any country where Oracle Infrastructure is available within just 2-3 weeks, complying with all the necessary regulations. We have taken this strategic step as part of our expansion into the Middle Eastern market. Also, we already have Mastercard Payment Gateway Services and Cybersource integrations available, which is especially popular among our Middle East clients”.

SurePay, the leading Confirmation of Payee provider, announced that it has supported Virgin Money with the implementation of its UK Confirmation of Payee solution to protect consumers against fraud and misdirected online payments.

Confirmation of Payee is a way of giving consumers greater assurance that their payments are being routed to the intended recipient and are not being accidentally or deliberately misdirected. The SurePay algorithm is specifically designed for Confirmation of Payee from scratch and fully operates in line with the Pay.UK requirements and specifications.

According to UK Finance, there has been a 71% increase in authorised push payments (APP) fraud during the first half of 2021, with APP fraud overtaking card fraud losses for the first time.

SurePay already covers over 99.5% of the Dutch market, having performed nearly 5 billion checks, and leading to an 81% drop in fraud to Dutch IBAN’s and 67% less misdirected payments. In the UK, SurePay was selected to protect some of the country’s leading financial institutions’ customers, checking 35% of all bank transfers.  

Since July 2021, Confirmation of Payee functionality has been extended with a revised capability and simplified processes. This second phase ensures the value of Confirmation of Payee is introduced more widely to new participants with the aim of increasing the number of customers that can benefit from the extra layer of security.

David-Jan Janse, CEO of SurePay, said: “SurePay’s aim is to make online payments safer and easier to use for the benefit of our clients and their customers. Ensuring best in class fraud prevention for consumers has never been more important – as online spending continues to grow, so does fraudulent activity. We are incredibly proud to be working with Virgin Money. Together we bring a best-in-class solution helping to keep their consumers safe.”

Fergus Murphy, Chief Customer Experience Officer at Virgin Money, said: “We are committed to protecting our customers from fraud and Confirmation of Payee is a valuable tool in achieving that. SurePay have extensive experience in providing Confirmation of Payee solutions, both in the UK and other countries, which is why we chose to work with them to implement this important protection for our customers.”

Revolut Business lets UK companies accept payments from US clients without costs.

Revolut, a fintech app, has launched fee-free USD transfers to the UK.

The new feature of Revolut allows UK businesses get access to US bank details so they may accept USD transfers from US-based consumers, apps, and marketplaces for free. Senders save time and money as more UK B2B customers trade with the US.

Revolut's Business customers can now receive up to $1,000,000 over the ACH Network. SWIFT users can still receive USD payments via IBAN.

Revolut Business customers can access their new US account data by heading to the 'Home' menu, selecting the USD pocket, touching the USA flag, and selecting 'Local' This shows the sender's account information. Today, all UK corporate customers will have access.

Revolut Business director James Gibson said:

“With so many UK-based companies doing business in the US, we’re excited to move one step closer to borderless accounts. Allowing our clients to receive payments from a foreign country without asking the sender to use SWIFT saves the sender both time and money.” 

Last month, the company introduced a new 'spend management' feature that allows customers to issue unlimited physical and virtual cards to their teams and monitor their usage.

In February, it added salary calculations, taxes, pensions, and pay runs.

Revolut Business customers can accept payments in up to 28 currencies.

Ebury, the global financial services firm helping to simplify international trade and one of Europe’s largest fintechs, is preparing to welcome leading industry experts to its second edition of Tech in Finance.

The technology event for financial developers will be held in Malaga on 19 September and for one day turn the city into the European capital of technology and digital transformation in the financial services sector

The first edition of the event was held in 2019 with the pandemic preventing its return until now. It will bring together 200 developers and specialists working in the area of technology in the financial services sector.

This year’s Tech in Finance event will be held in the Casa Diocesana de Málaga and will focus on how technology and its application can improve operational efficiency in the payments, digital currencies, cryptocurrencies, currency exchange and P2P payment sectors.

Victor Tuson Palau, CTO of Ebury, will be leading the event with other attendees so far including Pedro Barreiro, Brazil Banking Expansion at Wise; Charles Delingpole, CEO and founder of Comply Advantage; Niall Twomey, CTO at Fenergo, and Steve Judd, Jetstack Senior Solutions Architect among others.

Digitalis, a company specializing in enabling enterprises to adopt cloud-native systems and distributed databases, and Jetstack, a Venafi company providing cloud-native security products and Kubernetes and OpenShift consulting services, will be platinum sponsors of the event.

Comply Advantage, the leading provider of financial crime detection technology, will attend as a silver sponsor.

Victor Tuson Palau, CTO of Ebury, says: "We are delighted to finally be able to bring back Tech in Finance this year after such a successful event in 2019. We look forward to continuing to support the community of specialist developers working in the financial services sector in Spain and throughout Europe at the event and to harness the benefits of our shared expertise.”

The Call for Papers for those wishing to speak at Tech in Finance is open now and welcoming submissions on subjects such as logging technologies, Big Data analysis, Machine Learning, Cloud Computing, APIs, Kubernetes, Blockchain, Salesforce and Python. The deadline for speaking entries is 30 June.

Tickets for attending the Tech in Finance event are on sale now: https://techin.finance/

For more information about the event, please contact: techinfinance@ebury.com

Ebury employs more than 200 people in Malaga bringing together 27 nationalities from four continents. 

• 13.06.2022 -- 11:06 am

• 13.06.2022 -- 09:57 am

Financial IT Interviews Patrick Murphy, Director of UK at Eightcap