Tech companies join banking industry to tackle fraud

Take Five to Stop Fraud has announced that a number of technology companies, including Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft and TikTok have pledged to support Take Five to Stop Fraud, the anti-fraud campaign run by UK Finance.

The technology companies are collectively donating US$1m worth of advertising to the campaign which will help publicise the Take Five to Stop Fraud advice and enable it to reach a significant proportion of the online population with these important messages. The technology companies will also be making use of the Take Five content in their own communications.

This pledge of support flows from the work of a recently established Online Fraud Steering Group, which brings together representatives from the technology and banking industries and law enforcement to work together to tackle fraud. Increasing consumer awareness about the types of fraudulent activity online is an important part of this collaboration.

"Fraud poses a major threat to the UK and criminals are continuing to find new ways to target people with online scams," commented David Postings, chief executive of UK Finance. "Tackling fraud is an absolute priority for the banking and finance industry, but it’s one that requires work across different sectors of the economy. We are delighted that these major technology companies have agreed to support the work of Take Five as part of our collaborative approach to tackling fraud. The advertising that is being provided will enable Take Five to reach a wider audience and is an important step in our efforts to help consumers stay protected from fraud and scams."

 

Surecomp promises 10-week delivery of back-office trade finance SaaS solution

Surecomp has announced the expansion of its Trade Finance-as-a-Service (TFaaS) offering to enable smaller and mid-sized banks to improve their trade finance processing efficiencies and customer service. The new service offering allows banks to benefit from DOKA-NG - its back-office trade finance solution - via a cloud-based SaaS deployment.

Following the introduction of the TFaaS solution in 2020, this service expansion aims to reinforce Surecomp’s mission to digitise the trade finance domain and facilitate a more efficient and customer-centric trade finance operation for every bank.

Within 10 weeks from project initiation, resource-constrained banks can be live with a state-of-the-art solution to automate the processing of letters of credit and guarantees for a subscription fee starting from US$50,000 per year.

"By committing to deliver our powerful, cloud-based trade finance solution in such a short timeframe, we are helping drive growth of not just our banking customers, but of their extended customer network who will benefit from importing and exporting goods faster than ever before," said Enno-Burghard Weitzel, SVP of Strategy, Digitization and Business Development at Surecomp. "While quick and easy to onboard, we are also offering the ability to scale as transaction volumes grow and future needs evolve."

 

ReceiptHero partners with Mastercard and Visa

ReceiptHero, a digital receipt platform based in Finland, has announced new partnerships with Visa and Mastercard to provide an alternative to the paper receipt. The collaboration allows ReceiptHero to scale their operations across Europe and subsequently provide more merchants the opportunity to send their receipts to private and business customers digitally.

ReceiptHero will leverage both Mastercard and Visa’s platforms for real-time transactions to be used as part of the digital receipt delivery process. Unlike an email or paper receipts, a truly digital receipt matches the structured purchase data automatically to the right transaction. ReceiptHero says that having both card networks supporting it technically will allow for a giant step in making digital receipts widely adopted.

With ReceiptHero’s platform being fully operational in Finland for just two years, the company has activated thousands of merchants big and small across the country. Two of the largest corporate banks in the region, SEB and Nordea have also embraced digital receipts with direct integrations with ReceiptHero. Finland has been accelerating towards digital receipt adoption and the model will be replicated for other European markets.

By partnering with ReceiptHero, Visa aims to drive digital receipts into further adoption across Europe and anticipate the impact of eliminating paper receipts can deliver value towards key customer experience and sustainability goals. Specifically, ReceiptHero will benefit from the use of the Visa Offers Platform - an API based tool that will enable them to access authorisation data across Europe and expand their merchant customer base.

Mastercard has been investing in its sustainability efforts. One of those being the Priceless Planet Coalition, whereby Mastercard aims to restore 100 million trees by 2025. Where Mastercard and ReceiptHero can have direct impact is encouraging people to make mindful spending choices through personalised insights, which can be visible on a digital receipt.

 

Neo multi-currency accounts hit US$1bn in transactions in 14 months

In the 14 months since Neo launched, it has generated international bank account numbers (IBANs) for more than 200 corporates in Europe and made them 'reachable' to all the banks in the world over the SWIFT network. Indeed, more than 3,000 banks are connected to Neo's BIC code. The company has now announced that, as of 31 August 2021, it has cleared more than US$1bn of transactions and facilitated payments in more than 30 currencies in near real-time.

Neo's IT and Ops teams worked together to develop proprietary technology for a full core banking system (CBS) including a banking ledger, a payment file generator, data-driven analytics and more. The firm says this was critical to its mission to remain independent and gave them the ability to scale services while responding quickly to customer requirements and structural changes in the market.

Over the coming months, Neo says it is accelerating the rate of innovation and doubling down on the features and support that its customers need, including multi-currency payouts APIs and extended ERP and PSP connectivity.