CORE BANKING
Mastercard | September 08, 2021
Mastercard today announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Aiia, a leading European open banking technology provider offering a direct connection to banks through a single API, allowing its customers to develop and launch new digital solutions that meet the needs of everyday life, work and play.
Open banking is democratizing financial services by putting consumers at the center of where and how their data is used to provide the services they want and need. Fintechs and banks use this consumer permissioned data to provide easier and more inclusive access to credit, personal financial management, digital wallets and payments services. Mastercard plays a central role in this ecosystem as a trusted intermediary and secure data network.
“The value of open banking comes through empowering consumers and businesses to use their own data to obtain financial services solutions simply, securely and quickly. The addition of Aiia anchors our European open banking efforts and allows us to continue to meet our customers where they are,” said Craig Vosburg, Chief Product Officer, Mastercard. “As open banking continues to ignite innovation, we’re committed to providing a unique set of technology platforms, data connectivity and infrastructure combined with data privacy and security principles. This will help fintechs and financial institutions innovate, gather feedback and scale faster and more effectively than ever to power smarter, more meaningful experiences.”
Today, Aiia’s open banking platform and expertise, including strong API connectivity and payment capabilities, has shown significant growth coupled with a relentless focus on quality. Aiia has brought to life a unique model for open banking in Europe, driven by data privacy, security, quality and access. Its customer-centric approach and ambition to create open banking that simply works complements Mastercard’s existing distribution channels, technology and data practices.
“For the past decade, we have worked to build Aiia into a leading and quality-driven open banking platform, which has onboarded hundreds of banks and fintechs onto safe and secure open banking rails. We have worked closely alongside banks, customers and local authorities to ensure that our APIs show the true effect of open banking. We’re excited to become a part of Mastercard and progress our journey of empowering people to bring their financial data and accounts into play - safely and transparently,” said Rune Mai, CEO & Founder, Aiia.
Solidifying a Foundation for Innovation
Mastercard was an early advocate of open banking across the globe. The company has made bold moves to blend its proprietary technology and multi-rail payments expertise with strong partners offering complementary services. In 2019, Mastercard launched its first open banking connectivity offering in the UK and Poland through a partnership with Token.
With the acquisition of Finicity in 2020, Mastercard bolstered a strong commitment to its customers by bringing together top-tier technology platforms, dedicated resources and a global infrastructure to catalyze innovation and continue to deliver localized customer service. This commitment continued earlier in 2021 with Mastercard Payment Services, a broader set of account-to-account payment and open banking capabilities gained in the acquisition of the majority of Nets’ Corporate Services business.
Aiia’s expertise in providing safe and secure data access complements Mastercard’s data responsibility principles, continuing to put the individual at the center of the process. This relationship reinforces work led by Mastercard’s Finicity team to extend data-related best practices across multiple industries. The connectivity of Aiia in Europe will enable Mastercard to deliver the credit decisioning and credit scoring applications of Finicity to European clients. Similarly, the connectivity of Finicity in the U.S. will help deliver the account information services and payment applications of Aiia to U.S. clients – giving customers globally easier, faster and safer access to open banking services.
Aiia is a licensed Payment Initiation Service Provider (PISP) and Account Information Service Provider (AISP) and operates under the supervision of the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA).
About Mastercard
Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry. Our mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart, and accessible. Using secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments, and businesses realize their greatest potential. Our decency quotient, or DQ, drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our company. With connections across more than 210 countries and territories, we are building a sustainable world that unlocks priceless possibilities for all.
About Aiia
Aiia is a leading open banking platform in Europe, with more than a decade of experience in fintech and with hundreds of clients servicing both businesses and consumers. The mission of Aiia is to empower people to bring their financial data and accounts into play safely and transparently. Aiia’s platform allows businesses and financial institutions to integrate financial data and account-to-account payments into their services for millions of European citizens. Today, Aiia has connections to more than 2,700 banks across Europe, processes more than 10 million bank logins, and more than a million account-to-account payments every month for large banks and e-commerce payment gateways. Aiia provides open banking services to a long list of banks, challenger banks, fintechs, accounting system providers and payment companies. Aiia won the award for Best Mobile Payment Solution at Finovate Awards in 2020 for live open banking payment solutions built with its customers.
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PAYMENTS
Sushi | January 19, 2022
In a major milestone for the project, a leading payment and decentralized finance (DeFi) blockchain player, Fuse Network, today announced their integration with leading mutlichain DeFi protocol Sushi. This comes after rapid platform and ecosystem growth for Fuse.
Launched in 2020, Sushi's components include a decentralized exchange (DEX) protocol, the Kashi lending protocol, the BentoBox dApps ecosystem, the xSUSHI staking platform, the Miso initial DEX offering (IDO) platform and the upcoming Shōyu NFT marketplace. Sushi's native SUSHI token powers the platform's governance and is used to reward the liquidity providers on the incentivized trading pools on SushiSwap.
As part of the integration, the SushiSwap automated market maker (AMM)-based decentralized exchange (DEX) and the liquidity provisioning interface have been deployed to the Fuse Network blockchain. At a later stage, the Kashi lending network and Miso initial DEX offering platform will be added.
In order to bootstrap liquidity to the new major DEX, Fuse will also launch liquidity rewards programs on certain trading pools on SushiSwap. The exact trading pools and details of the program will be announced separately.
Sushi is a multichain powerhouse in the DeFi space that was among the technology's pioneers before it was cool. Sushi's extension to Fuse is testimony to the progress that Fuse has made since its launch and its unique value proposition as a mobile-centric blockchain platform."
Fuse Network CEO Mark Smargon
About Fuse
Fuse is a platform featuring a fast and low-cost, Ethereum-compatible blockchain, a robust plug-and-play mobile-centric crypto payments infrastructure for creating token-based applications and a rapidly growing ecosystem of payments, decentralized finance and NFT projects.
About Sushi
Sushi is a leading all-in-one DeFi platform and ecosystem running on multiple EVM-compatible blockchains. At its core it relies on the AMM-based DEX SushiSwap that is listed in the top 5 DEXes by trading volume. Sushi's community governance is powered by the protocol's native SUSHI token.
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CORE BANKING
TransferGo, Thought Machine | February 12, 2021
TransferGo, a money transfer company, announced a partnership with a cloud-native core banking technology company, Thought Machine. The partnership aims to propel its drive global expansion into markets and continuous product innovation. By taking benefit of Thought Machine's next group cloud-native core banking platform Vault, TransferGo will emphasize empowering its client experience through more and better progressive platform competencies.
Structuring on a fruitful 2020, throughout which TransferGo challenged market prospects to see international payments raise by over 60%, Vault will be a dire constituent for continued development. By holding payment services that are extremely scalable, stretchy, safe, and reckless in the cloud, Vault will authorize TransferGo to enlarge its real-time expenditures platform, shape products fast, and release upcoming card and account competencies without interruption.
Prominently, Vault covers no inheritance technology and so allows TransferGo to shape and bring payment services to its correct requirements. The know-how will provision TransferGo's assignment to unceasingly drive development to its numerical payments facility and the client capability for the migrant employee community, serving them to transfer their money around the world rapidly, securely, and as cost-effectively as possible.
This announcement echoes the sustained venture TransferGo is making in its award-winning payments platform. With over 2 million operators and safeguarding over $14 million in savings last year, it is dedicated to increasing its global footmark and initiate new facilities on its international payments platform. TransferGo also lately joined with Mastercard and Visa and boosted its senior management team through the hires of Francesco Fulcoli as Chief Compliance Officer and Edgardo Savoy as Chief Technology Officer and. These new growths will superpower its roadmap of technology innovation
About TransferGo
TransferGo, founded in 2012, has recognized itself as one of the maximum reliable money transfer facilities around the world. Its emphasis on bringing fast and reliable remittances has directed it to develop the only Pan-European money transfer business that can assure a person's money will reach its destination in less than 30 minutes.
CEO and founder, Daumantas Dvilinskas, was included in the Forbes 30 under 30 of 2017. The company was also nominated for "Fastest Rising Startup of the Year" and listed by TNW as one of five hottest UK start-ups in 2019.
About Thought Machine
Founded in 2014, Thought Machine has the mission to make banks organize modern systems. Also, move them away from the traditional IT platforms that make the banking industry standstill. We do this through Vault, our cloud-native core banking platform. This next-generation scheme has been written from nothing as a fully cloud-native platform. It does not cover a single line of code which is pre-cloud.
The company was founded by Paul Taylor, a well-known entrepreneur. Customers of Thought Machine include SEB, Lloyds Banking Group, Standard Chartered, Monese, Curve, and Atom bank. We are presently a group of more than 450 people with offices in Singapore, London, Melbourne, Sydney, and New York. We have also raised funding OF more than £110m from Draper Esprit, Eurazeo, SEB, IQ Capital, Playfair Capital, British Patient Capital, Lloyds Banking Group, Nyca Partners, and Backed.
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