Fintech, Finance, Technology, Banking Highlights – 18 October 2017
Chinese tourists in NY and Vegas can now pay for taxi fairs with Alipay
Verifone (NYSE: PAY), a world leader in payment and commerce solutions, and Alipay, the world’s leading third-party payment platform, announced today the extension of their existing global partnership to Verifone Taxi Solutions.
Through the agreement, Chinese consumers traveling in New York and Las Vegas will be able to pay for taxis in the U.S. for the first time using their Alipay Mobile Wallet.
By the end of October, 2,100 taxis in Las Vegas will accept Alipay upon checkout, and an additional 14,000 taxis in New York City are slated to accept Alipay in November this year.
“Paying for taxis can be one of the most stressful elements of traveling abroad, particularly if you don’t speak the language,” said Souheil Badran, President, Alipay North America. “By extending our partnership with Verifone to taxis in New York and Las Vegas, two of the most popular destinations in America for Chinese tourists, we are giving greater confidence to Chinese travelers that they will be able to pay for their taxi ride using the same convenient payment method they use at home, without language barriers.”
Hermes selects IHS Markit for TCA
IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO), a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions, today announced that Hermes Investment Management has selected its Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA) platform.
“The codification of best execution as a fiduciary obligation is a major challenge for asset managers,” said Michael Richter, director of trade analytics at IHS Markit. “Firms will need to think about best execution analysis and TCA as essential parts of their risk management process, particularly as execution analytics expand in fixed-income and move from post trade to the entire trade lifecycle.”
The TCA service from IHS Markit is an independent, multi-asset analysis platform that combines execution, algorithmic, venue and smart order router analytics.
The service provides actionable insight to brokers and asset managers to evaluate the quality of their trade execution, by analyzing order routers for efficiency in finding liquidity, venues for fill probability and opportunity costs and order types for information leakage and market impact.
TreasuryXpress secures $5 million funding round
TreasuryXpress, the global leader in frictionless and on-demand treasury management solutions (TMS) today announced that it has closed a growth investment of $5 million from a consortium of investors including MEVP, iSME Capital, and Azure Fund.
The investment provides TreasuryXpress with an opportunity to continue to leverage the growing market need for on-demand treasury management and financial products. Following two consecutive years of triple digit growth in the US and EMEA regions, the investment allows the firm to continue to expand their on-demand business model into key markets with treasury-friendly fintech solutions.
“Over the past three years, TreasuryXpress has redefined the treasury management market by increasing the buying power of treasurers worldwide,” says Anis Rahal, CEO and founder of TreasuryXpress. “By delivering solutions that change the way treasury teams can purchase, implement, and consume treasury and financial technology, we have successfully introduced a new model of TMS to the market that allows companies to automate and improve processes quickly and scalably. We are thrilled that our investors recognize both the potential of the on-demand treasury management solution market and TreasuryXpress’ ability as the leading innovator of modern TMS technology.”
Billtrust and Visa buddy up
Visa (NYSE: V) and Billtrust today announced a strategic partnership to help streamline the reconciliation of B2B payments and increase automation of virtual card payments for financial institutions and their corporate customers.
This effort is part of a multi-pronged strategy Visa and Billtrust are pursuing to support critical growth in the B2B segment. Visa has also made a strategic investment in Billtrust to help accelerate Billtrust’s growth strategy.
The opportunity for corporate virtual credit cards that provide a unique 16-digit virtual account number for each payment continues to grow, providing value and efficiency over paper-based payment options such as checks. However, the process for accepting and processing virtual card payments has increased manual data entry and reconciliation challenges for accounts receivable departments. Visa and Billtrust are partnering to integrate Visa’s Straight Through Processing (STP) capabilities with Billtrust’s Virtual Card Capture solution to simplify receipt and reconciliation of B2B payments and bring automation to accounts receivable function.
