The Monday Roundup: what we are watching this week | August 5th

By Puja Sharma

The Monday Roundup sets the scene for the week’s biggest news stories, industry deals, and upcoming events. For Prime subscribers only.

AI-focused Center of Excellence

Backbase, the global Engagement Banking provider, has announced the establishment of its first global Center of Excellence (COE) focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

The COE will serve as the development hub for Backbase’s AI banking solutions worldwide and will be led by Head of AI Chris Shayan, a former CXO at Techcombank and HDBank.

Backbase’s strategic decision to establish this COE in Vietnam underscores its commitment to Asia. Vietnam is pegged as the fastest-growing digital economy in Southeast Asia and is recognised for its rapid digital transformation, innovative spirit, and growing pool of talent. Asia is a core region for Backbase, and Vietnam has become one of the fastest-growing markets in Asia, with key banks including Techcombank, TPBank, ABBANK, and OCB driving digital transformation through the Backbase Engagement Banking Platform.

MultiBank Group, the financial derivatives institution headquartered in Dubai, has announced its strategic partnership with Mashreq to launch the latest technology enabling instant payment solutions.

This collaboration aligns with MultiBank Group’s dedication to providing advanced, user-friendly financial services. It seeks to enhance transactional efficiency and improve operational transparency for a diverse global clientele of over 1 million traders across 90 countries.

By integrating Mashreq’s advanced payment processing capabilities, MultiBank Group will be able to provide its clients with nearly instantaneous deposit and withdrawal services, available 24/7.

“Our collaboration with Mashreq represents a significant milestone in our commitment to digital innovation,” said Naser Taher, Founder and Chairman of MultiBank Group. “The integration of Mashreq’s instant payments service will enhance our transaction processes, providing our customers with quicker and more dependable services.”

A financial crime intelligence platform

Tuum, a next-generation core banking platform, has announced its partnership with ComplyAdvantage, a financial crime intelligence platform.

This partnership leverages Tuum’s API-first approach to integrate complementary solutions, ensuring that financial institutions can meet their unique needs effectively and efficiently with a modern solution, providing advanced tools to detect and prevent financial crimes seamlessly.

Tuum’s API-first and cloud-native architecture enables seamless integration with top-tier technology solutions. While this partnership with ComplyAdvantage helps financial institutions quickly adapt to regulatory changes and improve their compliance posture, Tuum also integrates with other solutions to deliver a comprehensive end-to-end proposition beyond core capabilities.

By partnering with ComplyAdvantage, Tuum expands its platform’s capabilities to offer robust, real-time financial crime detection and compliance solutions. This partnership underscores Tuum’s commitment to providing comprehensive, region-specific solutions that are deployed quickly and address the financial industry’s complex regulatory requirements.

Nium, the global real-time cross-border payments, has announced the expansion of its local funding and collection capabilities to more than 40 countries and 15 currencies, with more to come.

The move makes Nium one of the only providers to offer a network this wide. Customers can access the broadest range of local currencies through wires and local payment rails, with an extensive selection of currencies tailored to meet the diverse needs of various markets, including developing and emerging economies.

Nium’s local currency account offering makes it faster and more cost-effective for businesses, digital platforms, and marketplaces to receive money in the desired country, either for their business or for their customers, without having to manage the complexity of setting up a local entity or opening and managing additional operating accounts.

What is the Buzz

Infibeam Avenues, a payments solution provider, has announced its plan to acquire a 54% stake in Rediff.com India for Rs 50 crore, with the investment split equally between equity and debt. Based in Gandhinagar, Infibeam Avenues, which operates the CCAvenue payment gateway, aims to leverage Rediff’s 55 million monthly visitors and extensive email service users to gain valuable insights into consumer behavior. This acquisition will enable Infibeam to explore cross-selling opportunities for financial products such as loans, insurance, and investments.