First Data and InstaReM partner for digital payments

InstaReM, a fintech company that offers faster and cost-effective digital cross-border payment solutions for individuals and businesses across 55+ countries, has announced a partnership with First Data (NYSE: FDC), a global leader in commerce-enabling technology and solutions. The partnership, combining InstaReM’s digital payments and remittance solution with First Data’s debit processing solution, delivers a powerful proposition for businesses like corporates and Fintechs with a need to issue cards to employees, vendors or consumers.

“Our partnership aims to address an ever-increasing problem for businesses that operate globally, which is, how to pay overseas suppliers, service providers and employees in a cost-effective and secure way whilst enabling the recipient to conveniently access the funds in their local currency – instantly.” said Prajit Nanu, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of InstaReM.

Leveraging First Data’s global presence and robust and flexible technology platform, InstaReM is able to issue cards for a number of use cases, such as travel and expense programs with set limitations, vendor or supplier payments, payroll for employees, and much more. The solution will be launched in Singapore in the next few months with rollout in Europe and Australia expected by the end of the year and then expanding globally. “With First Data’s First Vision API-enabled technology solution and InstaReM’s ability to issue cards, together we can rapidly bring to market a cost-effective, secure and convenient solution to support multi-currency debit wallets for corporates and consumers,” said Ivo Distelbrink, First Data’s EVP, Head of Asia-Pacific.

Recently, InstaReM joined the global payments technology giant Visa’s Fintech fast-track program, which makes it quicker and easier for Visa’s partners in the Asia Pacific region to build and deliver new commerce experiences on Visa’s payments network. As part of partnership with Visa, the two companies are working together to build new solutions for moving money to and from different countries in fast, convenient ways that provide users with seamless digital payments and money transfer experiences.

Avaloq signs clients for PSD2 service

Global fintech leader Avaloq has announced that 12 financial institutions have signed up to its dedicated Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) solution to meet the 14 March deadline. The firm launched the service at the end of last year to help banks and wealth managers meet the requirements of and capitalise on PSD2 and the need to work seamlessly with third party payment service providers. The mid-March deadline means institutions have to offer to third party payment service providers the testing facility six months ahead of the final September 2019 PSD2 implementation deadline.

PSD2, which came into force in January 2018, regulates payment services and payment service providers throughout the European Economic Area. It means that third parties will be allowed to access bank client data and provide value-added payment and banking services if permitted to do so by bank clients. Under the implementation process, financial institutions have to offer their open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to third-party payment service providers six months before September 2019.

Thomas Beck, CTO at Avaloq, said: “Our PSD2 solutions have been designed to simplify the testing and implementation process for financial institutions, as well as to reduce time-to-market and increase security. As such, the implementation risks associated with such programmes are significantly decreased. Avaloq is serving some of the largest financial institutions in the region and expects continued demand for solutions that help with the IT and regulatory challenge they face.”

Avaloq launched its PSD2 software and PSD2 as a service solutions in December 2018, offering an unparalleled range of deployment options tailored to different configurations. Its PSD2 as a service solution comes already integrated into the Avaloq Banking Suite. It is delivered as a turn-key, secured solution, to banks and wealth managers using software as a service (SaaS) or business process as a service (BPaaS) models as well as banks running the Avaloq Banking Suite on their premises. Paco Hauser, Regional Manager EMEA at Avaloq, added: “The PSD2 countdown has now truly begun for Europe’s banks and wealth managers. It is crucial that they implement their digital infrastructures to make sure they are fully compliant ahead of the September deadline. Some are seeing it as a threat but Avaloq believes that it PSD2 a huge opportunity for the institutions that embrace it.

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Ramco’s will be implementing its Integrated Logistics ERP Software including Warehouse Management, Transportation Management, as well as Rating and Billing along with ERP Financials to automate operations and invoicing. Ramco’s clear and comprehensive Logistics software, will increase productivity, cashflow and utilisation rates and help removing major redundancies and revenue leakages in varioust business applications across JP Logistics operations.

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Avaloq joins the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
Source: Fintech Finance

Avaloq announced that it has joined the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), the world’s largest open source blockchain initiative.

As a member of the EEA, Avaloq will collaborate with industry leaders in pursuit of ethereum-based enterprise technology best practices, open standards, and open-source reference architectures in order to develop new innovative banking use cases leveraging the Ethereum technology.

“We are very excited about joining the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. This is an important step for us to further drive innovation connected to the blockchain technology”, said Thomas Beck, CTO at Avaloq. “The EEA offers us access to additional knowhow and ideas to leverage this ground-breaking technology to address specific, enterprise-based use cases in the financial industry, but also in other fields relevant to our clients.”

With more than 400 member companies, the EEA membership base represents a wide variety of business sectors from every region of the world, including technology, banking, government, healthcare, energy, pharmaceuticals, marketing, and insurance. The EEA’s industry-focused, member-driven working groups are each tasked with creating and delivering specific advancements to the development and use of ethereum-based technologies.

HSBC launches PSD2 developer portal
Source: Bankingtech

HSBC has unveiled its PSD2 developer portal designed to allow third party payment providers to develop products and services across Europe. The bank says this is in line with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) Open Data Specifications – and will help the bank to meet the requirements of PSD2.

The portal is a sandbox environment where developers can test APIs for three services: account information, payment initiation and funds confirmation. Developers can access mock data from retail and corporate payment accounts.

Nadya Hijazi, global head of global liquidity and cash management digital, HSBC, says the portal brings “new innovation to the market through an intuitive developer ecosystem”.

This testing facility provides developers with the choice of Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) and STET standards, with work underway to include the Berlin Group standards. You can access the portal here. The bank is usually active in the fintech space.

A few days ago, Proactis, a spend management and B2B e-commerce company, secured £20 million in funding from HSBC UK for its SME market ambitions. Over in the States, HSBC US Commercial Banking teamed up with Neptune Financial to target middle market businesses. While last month, HSBC began beta testing its PayMe System for businesses, with 15 retailers in Hong Kong now able to accept payments from customers using the e-wallet app.

Barclays DOWN: Barclays mobile banking not working as customers report connection issues
Source: Express

Barclays appears to still be suffering from problems hours after they were first reported. Customers started having issues just after 9am in the morning (28th). However, Down Detector is still registering reports from users insisting Barclays’ Barclaycard app and mobile banking is not working as usual.

Barclays mobile banking allows customers to manage and move their money with ease. Independent outage monitor Down Detector registered over 370 reports from users at one time from users insisting they were experiencing problems with Barclays.

In response to the outage, a number of Barclays customers have taken to Twitter to vent their frustration. One said: "App down again. Really should be able to rely on accessing money when needed. "Launchpad down too. Always recommended Barclays, but this is really letting you down." Another wrote: "Love that your app’s gone down the day after pay day. "No bills can be payed. My payments late on my credit card.

Link: https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/1093709/Barclays-down-mobile-banking-not-working-connection-problems

TSB online app and website down leaving customers locked out of accounts AGAIN
Source: The Scottish Sun

Customers with TSB bank were locked out of their accounts AGAIN for the second time in a week after online services went down in the morning (28th Feb).

Dozens of people have reported problems with the app crashing on what is payday for many around the country.

The Down Detector service – which tracks websites when they go offline – said there are 65 reports of issues with the app and online banking services at the moment.

It’s the second outage in a week, after customers also had trouble logging onto the bank’s app and website last Wednesday.

It comes after banks started revealing how many outages they have to the public. Major banks suffer at least one major technical glitch a month, the BBC reports.

Link: https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/money/3936274/tsb-online-app-and-website-down-leaving-customers-locked-out-of-accounts-again/