Fintech, Finance, Technology, Banking Highlights – 3 January 2018
Vela adds Virtu Financial to trade execution hub
Vela, the premier market access technology provider, today announced the addition of Virtu Financial, one of the largest global electronic market making firms, to the growing list of electronic liquidity providers delivering market data through its new Systematic Internaliser (SI) Data Hub, part of its comprehensive MiFID II solution suite. Based upon Vela’s core feed handler technology, the SI Data Hub provides a low latency, high performance normalised market data solution. The functionality aggregates SI data and allows clients to receive their own bespoke SI price feeds through a single connection and unified API. The SI Data Hub also provides clients with their own configurable Best Bid and Offer feed for a holistic view of an instrument’s liquidity across venues. Vela delivers a similar solution for exchanges and multilateral trading facilities (MTFs) with the European Best Bid and Offer (EBBO) feed.
Ollie Cadman, Head of Business Operations EMEA, at Vela, commented, “We are pleased to have added Virtu’s Equity and ETF data feeds to our SI Data Hub as well as a new feed within our SMDS direct feed handling product.” Adding, “Our agile feed handler integration process means that as more firms register as SIs, we can work with them to become a member of our SI Data Hub and ensure our mutual clients are receiving the data.”
Kroger to accept Chase Pay
The Kroger Co.(Opens Overlay) is teaming up with Chase Pay—the digital engagement wallet from JPMorgan Chase & Co.— to offer mobile payments starting with select retail markets and e-commerce programs in 2018.
Kroger’s payment solutions are a part of the company’s Restock Kroger Plan(Opens Overlay), the strategy to create shareholder value by redefining how America eats. One of the key strategic drivers is to expand partnerships to create customer value, which includes Kroger forming alliances to accelerate digital and e-commerce platforms.
“Technology is transforming our customers’ experiences and greatly influencing how we are reimagining the store of the future,” said Chris Hjelm, Kroger’s Chief Information Officer. “Mobile wallets enable a more seamless shopping experience for our customers and at the same time, can help us drive cost out of our business.”
“This is a significant win for our customers who now will be able to save time and money using Chase Pay at one of the top retailers in the country,” said Jennifer Roberts, Head of Digital Products at Chase. “Kroger is one of the places our customers shop the most, and it’s great to deliver more value to both a key partner and our customers.”
ICE completes acquisition of Virtu BondPoint
Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE:ICE), a leading operator of global exchanges and clearing houses and provider of data and listings services, announced it has completed its acquisition of Virtu BondPoint from Virtu Financial for $400 million in cash.
“We are excited about the addition of BondPoint and the ability to offer additional fixed income execution services,” said ICE President Ben Jackson. “BondPoint is an integrated, automated platform offering one of the broadest sets of fixed income instruments. Combined with our fixed income data and transaction solutions, we will expand our ability to meet the rising global demand for efficiency and information.”
BondPoint is a leading provider of electronic fixed income trading solutions for the buy-side and sell-side offering access to centralized liquidity and automated trade execution services through its alternative trading system (ATS) linking more than 500 financial services firms. BondPoint will become part of ICE’s fixed income trading and data solutions that includes Creditex for CDS markets, ICE Credit Trade for dealer to dealer corporate bond trading, NYSE Bonds for retail bond trading, BondEdge for bond portfolio analytics and ICE’s award-winning fixed income pricing and evaluations for approximately 2.7 million securities, reference data for more than 10 million financial instruments and analytics.
PumaPay Protocol bids to enable merchants to process cryptocurrencies
Decentralized Vision, the blockchain company creating a payment protocol that combines the benefits of traditional billing systems and blockchain technology, announces today the launch of its PumaPay Protocol; an all-in-one solution that overcomes existing blockchain payment limitations and offers robust billing mechanisms for e-commerce, online services and traditional merchants.
To date, the majority of retail commerce, both online and offline, revolves around credit cards: whether direct credit card processing or via ‘wrapper’ services. These methods impose high commission fees ranging around 3%-15% and feature other drawbacks to both merchants and consumers, that are common to centralized systems. Crypto currencies holds a great promise to overcome these disadvantages, but have yet to evolve into a widely accepted means of payment.
