Ant Group and Intel Form Partnership

FinTech Buzz

Ant Financial Services Group (“Ant Group”), an innovative technology provider, today announced a cooperative effort with Intel to make it much easier and cost-effective for SMEs to lease IT equipment, leveraging the application of blockchain technology to strengthen transparency and build a system of trust.

Using proprietary blockchain technology, the partnership aims to empower the IT equipment leasing industry while accelerating the digital transformation of SMEs, many of which have seen their capital flows and supply chains disrupted amid the COVID-19 pandemic.Fintech News

This partnership draws from Ant Group and Intel’s complementary strengths to bolster transparency and efficacy among IT leasing vendors, enabling them to serve more SMEs and help them grow their businesses with improved efficiency and lowered cost.

Ant Blockchain, Ant Group’s proprietary productivity blockchain platform, can help all parties in the entire IT rental and leasing process to build trust with each other. Intel’s cloud device management technology helps leasing vendors to check the use status of the authorized hardware device using Intel’s CPU. Increasing the level of trust and transparency among all parties in the leasing process enables financial institutions, such as insurance companies and SME loan providers, to swiftly make informed decisions about businesses, giving SMEs greater flexibility to expand their operations.

“We are excited to partner with Intel as we continue to help millions of SMEs transform their businesses and operations,” said Geoff Jiang, Vice President of Ant Group. “Blockchain technology can play a pivotal role in building a solid system of trust among multiple parties and bringing more value to consumers, vendors, and the communities they operate in.”

Yali Liang, Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Communications Group of Intel, said, “With Ant Blockchain, we can help SMEs reduce fixed costs and alleviate pressure from IT equipment maintenance, which will accelerate the digital transformation of SMEs through IT rental industry.”

Zugeliang, a Hangzhou-based IT equipment leasing platform, used Ant Blockchain to increase the level of trust among all parties involved in its leasing processes in 2019. Since then, the platform has seen a six-fold increase in the number of orders and a 200% improvement in the rate of timely payments.

FinTech Buzz

Rapyd acquires Iceland-based Korta to assist the merchants amidst COVID-19 outbreak

FinTech Buzz 2020-05-04

The global pandemic response for merchants has been short-lived and has also revealed that most of them will be needing a more powerful and solid option for digital payments.

This situation is acting as a trigger for fresh investments, partnerships, and acquisitions even though this was expected to be a low time for such activities.Recently Stripe had announced an investment round of $600 million to expand its product range which would allow enterprises to have easy and simple access to online payment transactions.And now, not long after that activity, a California based fintech Rapyd has acquired an Iceland-based merchant acquirer, Korta.

This acquisition has been put to motion with the intention of using the omnichannel card acquiring system of Korta to feed the hosted fintech services of Rapyd.Raypd has high hopes of attracting merchants who might want to build a local digital payment and shopping mix quickly by using the blend of automated self-service and API offered by Rapyd.Arik Shtilman, the CEO of Raoyd stated that in times like these, service providers cannot rely on providing physical services.

They have to be capable of providing 50% of their business services online.

This he believes is a feature of the new disaster recovery plan.The core business of Rapyd is supply chain automation where it enables merchants from one country to buy products from merchants in another country and make the payment to the seller merchants in their local currency using a digital wallet.

The seller merchant can then use that payment and pay their suppliers in their local currencies.The valuation of Rapyd is around $1.2 billion and it has processors of local payments to be capable of supporting e-commerce and B2B along with businesses sharing economy in the U.S. and overseas markets like Singapore and Brazil.The transaction details of the deal haven’t been disclosed but apparently, involve tens of millions of dollars.

The Future of Banking: Why Digital is Important?

PureSoftware 2021-10-08

Digital has been a buzzword in the ever-evolving banking industry across the globe.

This evolution focuses on designing a seamless, versatile and collaborative experience for the end consumers.

Technological advancement anchored this transformation by upgrading retail and mobile banking to neobank startups, propelling banking into a digitalized future.The rapid advancement in technology has created many challenges for the traditional brick and mortar branches.

Though they are well equipped with financial resources and consumer relationships with a decent reach, they need to adopt digital ways for banking to stay relevant in the future.Here are some ways how digital can shape the banking landscape:Frictionless banking through utilization of B-a-a-S or API Banking: Legacy institutions are best positioned to succeed if they commit to full-fledged digital transformation by introducing extremely adaptable solutions and can utilize Open APIs to integrate new financial systems and open banking software, allowing faster expansion.

The most common of these solutions is Banking-as-a-Service (B-a-a-S), where digital banks and other third parties can connect with the bank’s system directly via APIs.Emergence of Personalized banking tools — The emerging digital banking solutions focus on providing self-learning digital banking software tools sensitive and intuitive to customer needs by utilizing a range of cutting-edge technologies to increase consumer engagement, including AI-powered chatbots, wearable assistance, personal finance Management, P2P Payments through voice bots, and QR code scanning.Data Analytics for Customized Solutions: — Financial service providers will get a deep insight into customers’ lives owing to Big Data, IoT, Blockchain and Open Banking.

They can better the lives of their customer by employing the following techniques: -The technologies such as IoT tend to track the real lives of customers rather than relying on manual submissions, the customer data will be safe and secure through blockchain technology which would be further authenticated via AI.

How does Blockchain Affect Banking Industry in Positive Way?

DIRO Original 2021-08-05

What are the benefits of blockchain in the banking sector?

What is the role of blockchain & how does blockchain affect the banking & financial industry?Learn more: https://diro.io/how-does-blockchain-affect-banking-industry/

Top Benefits of Cross-platform App Development for Fintech Sector

Maegan Cook 2021-10-08

Advancing technology has started influencing the BFSI sector, and we witness innovative app solutions in financial services.

These solutions fall under the fintech category and contribute to improving services.

Mobile wallets, banking apps, and cryptocurrency-related apps are some of the most popular examples of fintech apps.

In this blog, we are going to understand the role and benefits of cross-platform app development for a fintech firm

Top 5 Factors Boosting Open Banking Industry

Prateek G 2020-08-17

Rise in adoption of new applications and services in the banking sector, supportive government regulations, and enhanced customer engagement with open banking APIs drive the growth of the global open banking market.

However, lack of awareness regarding open banking, data security, and management of security threats hinder the market growth.

On the other hand, collaboration activities between fintech firms and banks create new opportunities in the industry.The global open banking market generated $7.29 billion in 2018, and is expected to reach $43.15 billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 24.4% from 2019 to 2026.

The report provides an extensive analysis of changing market dynamics, market size & projections, top investment pockets, major segments, and competitive scenarios.Based on financial service, the banking and capital markets segment contributed to more than half of the total share of the global open banking market in 2018, and is expected to maintain its lead share in terms of revenue during the forecast period.

However, the payments segment is projected to witness the largest CAGR of 27.3% from 2019 to 2026.

The research also discusses segments such as digital currencies and value-added services.

Re-Modelling The Banking Customer Onboarding Process Through Automation

Indus Net Technologies 2021-08-03

If 2020 will be remembered as a dark year for the pandemic, it is darker for the banking sector. Focus on Customer Onboarding In a fiercely competitive market, banks must focus on customer onboarding with enhanced customer experience. Moreover, poor onboarding due to lack of automation process, reliance on manual workflow and long customer touchpoints will escalate the loss. According to the research report by Delloite, there are eight steps to be followed for the client onboarding process such as: Commercial banks are heavily reliant on completing these steps manually, thus slowing down the onboarding process. Thus banks must reconsider their onboarding model to be in line with the rising customer expectation of experiencing a fully digital experience. Remodelling the customer onboarding process The latest intelligent automation process can handle complex business-critical anti-money laundering (AML) and KYC process.

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