News

WHY BIOMETRIC CONTACTLESS CARDS WILL SOON BECOME THE NEW STANDARD

Payments should be time convenient and secure at the same. Biometric contactless cards not only meet these standards, but go above and beyond them. Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) names five key reasons why the future of contactless card transactions belongs to biometric payment cards.

Enjoying the convenience of “tap & go” contactless card payments while benefiting from the security of strong authentication: biometric contactless cards make it possible. During the “tap & go” hand movement, the owner simply places a finger onto an embedded fingerprint reader on the card. This activates the comparison of the fingerprint with the card owner’s initially registered fingerprint, which is securely stored on the card. The result of the comparison – the confirmation or the rejection – is then sent via wireless connection to the cash register’s terminal, enabling or blocking the payment transaction.

G+D predicts that such biometric payment cards will soon find their way into the wallets of average consumers due to their undeniable advantages:

Safety and data protection: The biometric data never leaves the card. It is neither transmitted to an external system nor stored in a central database. No one but the owner themself can use the card, so hackers and thieves are left with empty hands and pockets.
Increased convenience: The payment process is extremely fast and easy. Users do not need to type in a PIN or give a signature, they can apply the same ergonomic “tap & go” movement as with their normal contactless cards, which has already become their habit.
Freedom from restrictive transaction limits: Payment with conventional contactless cards is usually restricted to a specific limit. Not so with biometric payment cards. Due to their high security level, no restrictions are necessary with biometrically secured contactless card payments.
Higher hygenic standard: Holders only have physical contact with their own card. Foreign PIN pads or touchscreens do not have to be touched. Especially in times like these, this is an attractive option.
Usable (nearly) everywhere: The biometric cards work with all point-of-sale (POS) readers that are contactless-payment-capable and support Near Field Communication (NFC), meaning they are compatible with the vast majority of existing readers globally.

“The future belongs to payment solutions that are easy to use and secure at the same time,” says Mikko Kähkönen, responsible for the Card Products Portfolio at G+D. “As our pilot projects with several commercial banks worldwide underline, this is particularly true with biometric payment cards, because they accomplish a remarkable feat: they increase security without compromising convenience. Usually, you cannot have one without the other.”

Finance

HIVERA BRINGS REGULATORY RISK SCORING TO FINANCIAL SERVICES

Financial services Chief Risk Officers and Heads of Compliance can now, for the first time ever, visualise and mitigate the regulatory risk in their entire unstructured data estate, thanks to hivera, a new regtech platform for financial services firms, designed to bring regulatory risk under control.

A new platform from data solutions provider, Automated-Intelligence, hivera enables clients to observe their unstructured data, assigning a tailored regulatory risk score based on the financial services firm’s risk appetite to that data, and automating the identification and remediation of threats to help mitigate associated risks.

Demonstrate Control
An estimated 80 percent of all data is unstructured. Until now, due to the challenges associated with discovering, analysing and managing unstructured data, this has created a significant challenge for compliance professionals, who are under increasing pressure from regulators to demonstrate compliance against policies and regulatory standards over all of their data.

hivera solves this problem. It indexes text-extractable content, providing users with advanced search capability to categorise personal information and commercially-sensitive data through metadata, security, keyword, phrases, and regular expression pattern matching.

Meanwhile, through the hivera dashboard, firms are presented with a risk score which correlates to the regulations they are subject to. In-depth insights enable them to visualise and address key compliance and regulatory risks within their data, whether retention related, security-related or a matter of personal and sensitive data. Moreover, with its user-friendly reporting modules, compliance professionals can quickly and easily provide compliance updates within the organisation or to regulators.

Automate Regulatory Risk Mitigation

In addition to significantly reducing regulatory risk and minimising human error, the hivera platform also offers huge resource, time and cost savings through automation. This is achieved through the application of fully-audited polices to categorised data, which enables ongoing data compliance and remediation. Policies applied against categorised data can perform deletions or archiving according to organisational retention schedules.

“hivera is transforming how financial services firms view unstructured data,” comments Simon Cole, CEO at Automated Intelligence. “By providing greater visibility and control over their unstructured data estate, we’re improving data analysis, data privacy, data protection and risk mitigation capabilities of our clients.”

News

FORTU WEALTH PARTNERS WITH CURRENCYCLOUD FOR SEAMLESS CROSS-BORDER PAYMENTS

The partnership will enable high net-worth (UHNWI) clients to make multi-currency payments globally

Fortu Wealth – a London-based fintech providing a revolutionary all-in-one personal finance platform for high-net-worth individuals and a B2B banking-as-a-service (BaaS) solution for private banks and wealth managers – has today announced that it has partnered with Currencycloud, a leading provider of B2B embedded cross-border solutions, to allow its clients to make multi-currency payments globally through its Currencycloud Spark solution.

The modern world is increasingly interconnected and interdependent, with capital flowing across a variety of different jurisdictions as consumers manage their money. Unfortunately, much of the corresponding infrastructure used by the financial services industry has yet to catch up to this reality, and for many the process of making payments in foreign currencies is both slow and expensive.

Sharing a common mission of wanting to simplify the process of financial management, Fortu and Currencycloud have come together to provide a solution to this issue. The partnership will see Fortu customers now gain access to leading foreign exchange rates, international payments in all major currencies, as well as the provision of virtual IBANs through Currencycloud Spark.

The partnership represents the latest development on Fortu’s journey to revolutionize the worlds of private banking and wealth management. In a sector fraught with inertia, Fortu has created a groundbreaking all-in-one financial solution which meets the everchanging needs of the busy UHNWI millennial, signing up Swiss Banking Group as a pilot customer for their BaaS product.

Speaking on the partnership, Fortu co-founder and CEO, Azamat Sultanov, said: “For too long, our customers have had to deal with slow legacy technology and an outdated approach when it came to making international payments. The partnership will allow all Fortu users to be truly global in their approach, making cross-border payments seamlessly.”

Nick Cheetham, Chief Revenue Officer at Currencycloud commented: “Private banking has been the reserve of a select few traditional names, but Fortu is changing the dynamic of the industry and appealing to a broader, digital audience that has been under-served by traditional institutions. We are thrilled to be working with Fortu to help deliver a 21^st century solution for their customers.”