Fintech, Finance, Technology, Banking Highlights – 2 July 2018
UnionPay QR code payment debuts in North America
UnionPay International announced that it has partnered with Bank of China (Canada) in enabling all the stores of Foodymart in Canada to accept UnionPay QR code payment. Cai Jianbo, CEO of UnionPay International, Li Aihua, President of Bank of China (Canada), and Wei Chengyi, Chairman of Foodymart attended the launching ceremony. Some food and beverage merchants in California, the US, have recently started accepting UnionPay QR code payment too. This is the first time that UnionPay’s QR code payment is launched in Canada and the United States. It is expected that the number of merchants accepting UnionPay QR code payment in North America will reach 5,000 within this year.
North America is a major destination for Chinese outbound tourists. China has been the largest source of international students for the US and Canada for many consecutive years too. Through cooperation with major institutions in North America, UnionPay International has continued to improve its local acceptance network. So far, almost all ATMs in the US accept UnionPay cards for cash withdrawal. Over 80% of merchants in the US accept UnionPay credit card. In Canada, with the top five banks have all carried out UnionPay cards acceptance, 90% ATMs and over 160,000 merchants accept UnionPay cards.
PensionBee launches native mobile app
The online pension manger has launched its native mobile app, allowing customers to manage their pension easily from their smartphone. By using the latest in app technology, PensionBee has launched the app simultaneously for iOS and Android users. The app launch comes off the back of PensionBee being named as one of the hottest fintech companies in Europe, based on an independent panel of judges from banks, venture capital firms and leading tech businesses.
Using the app, PensionBee customers can securely access their live pension balance and track the performance of their pension. Customers can expect other features such as calculators, transfer updates and contributions to be rolled out shortly.
Commenting on the app launch, Jasper Martens, VP Marketing of PensionBee said: “Our new mobile app removes any visible barriers to your pension and helps you to plan for your retirement. Our customers have requested and contributed to the development of the app with many customers taking part in our test programme. The app is a clear example of how we’re using technology to take the complexity out of pensions.”
Nice Actimize extends fraud cloud to P2P payments
Are financial institutions’ fraud solutions fast enough for the challenging faster payments environment? NICE Actimize, a NICE (Nasdaq: NICE) business and the leader in Autonomous Financial Crime Management, has launched an innovative approach to real-time Peer-to-Peer payments by expanding its market leading Fraud Essentials Cloud solution to address the fast-growing, P2P environment. NICE Actimize’s Fraud Essentials cloud environment enables faster deployment and lower total cost of ownership, bringing sophisticated fraud analytics to all sizes of financial institutions, including community and regional institutions and credit unions, which typically might be unable to access these benefits due to high operational costs or infrastructure requirements.
The Actimize Fraud Essentials cloud-based offering provides industry leading, end-to-end fraud management capabilities with real-time fraud detection, cross-channel analysis, and multi-payment coverage, as well as extensive fraud alert and case management. Leveraging the insights and experience gained from more than a decade supporting the world’s largest banks and FIs, the Actimize Fraud Essentials P2P enhancement combines expert-driven models and advanced algorithms to produce the best possible risk score with the lowest rate of false positives. The P2P capability features analytics trained to recognize known P2P fraud scenarios, dynamically builds entity profiles which learns typical user behavior, enabling detection of anomalies indicative of fraud.
GBST unveils digital platform
GBST, the global financial services technology provider, has delivered a state of the art digital platform, Catalyst. Initially targeted at new and existing wealth management and pensions clients as part of its wider technology upgrade programme.
Following significant investment in research and development, GBST’s Catalyst enables the creation of modern digital products and solutions that seamlessly integrate with existing robust GBST systems. The new digital platform replaces the current Composer Web platform and will provide clients with a highly-configurable solution that offers multi-device access, can be integrated into a client’s existing website and is fully customisable to their own look and feel. Clients have the option to maintain the system themselves or partner with GBST’s new UK based digital team.
The digital platform provides advisers the ability to onboard and service their customers, with access to illustrations, applications, transfers, client management and document storage, all accessed, delivered, actioned and stored via a simple, secure online interface. End investors can also onboard and service their account, with access to their daily valuations, holdings and all documents relating to their investments on their desktop, tablet or phone.
