IBS Intelligence Global FinTech Interviews

Ozan Øzerk, Founder, OpenPayd UK brands will claim lion’s share of £619 billion European embedded financial services market in the next five years, according to new data collected by OpenPayd, a leading global payments and BaaS platform. In conversation with IBSi’s Reporter Gaia Lamperti, the company’s Founder Ozan Øzerk commented on the research’s findings and offered an outlook of upcoming trend...

Hitesh Mittal, Chief Executive Officer, BestEx Research The days of algo trading solutions provided by big banks and brokers may be numbered. Competitive trading technology is being created by companies that focus solely on developing trading solutions. These pure-play software providers may well provide more transparent, more effective solutions for institutions rather than those offered by the t...

Jay Dubina, CFCI, CCCI, Fraud System Administrator Manager, Jack Henry & Associates Technology can only go so far in protecting against fraud. We review the current trends in card fraud, including social engineering, card cracking and SIM swapping – in all cases the most powerful preventive tool that banks and financial services companies can employ is consumer education. Robin Amlôt of IBS In...

Stephen Ferry, Managing Director, Pay360 by Capita An overwhelming majority of consumers around the world expect their reliance on digital services to at least stay the same as during the pandemic, if not increase further over the next 12 months. Digitalisation is no longer about having a competitive edge. It’s about business resilience. It also means merchants have an urgent need to choose secure...

Jan Gonnissen, Director Payments and Financial Messaging, Broadridge Faced with a dynamically evolving payments industry, downward pressure on pricing and heightened client service expectations, European banks are turning to mutualised shared service models such as Payments as a Service and BPO to drive their transformation programmes. However, what are these challenges that Europe’s banks face in...

Caleb Sheridan, Core Developer, Eden Network   As ETH 2.0 is still in process, the Ethereum network upgrade will introduce a new set of considerations regarding how transactions are ordered and added to the blockchain. The upgrade will culminate into the transfer from proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake (PoS), making the network more scalable, secure, and sustainable. Caleb S...

Yusuf Ozdalga, Partner, QED Investors What makes a successful FinTech investment? Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence asked Yusuf Ozdalga, London-based Partner at QED Investors with a focus on European financial technology and consumer finance companies. Ozdalga joined QED in 2017, and his career has spanned roles as an operator, advisor, entrepreneur and investor. His current portfolio of investments...

Billy Sebell, Head of Ecosystem Development, XDC Network Trade finance processes have been traditionally offline and myopic, precluding smaller business participants in remote locations who lack access to financial services. Fostering a decentralised, and peer-to-peer approach will expand accessibility to everyone, particularly SMEs who struggle to access the trade finance market. Billy Sebell, He...

Asheesh Chanda, Founder & CEO, Kristal. AI India’s emerging affluent young investors are looking to investment alternatives and international markets, desiring access to high-potential startups and private companies. Many seek opportunities to invest in private equity, pre-IPO deals, VC funds and multiple global stock markets. Their outlook is international in their own businesses, and they wa...

Pankaj Balani, CEO, Delta Exchange Interest in crypto derivatives is surging as investors show an appetite to trade on the movement of Bitcoin prices without actually having to hold the cryptocurrency itself. Pankaj Balani, CEO of leading derivatives exchange Delta Exchange, discusses how crypto derivatives has evolved as an industry, the explosive growth of Bitcoin Future volumes, and some of the...

Martin Wilson, Chief Executive Officer, Digital Identity Net Digital identity hit the headlines in the UK towards the end of 2021 with a row over proposals for a Covid passport, raising concerns about data privacy. However, what many people fail to realise is that they have already given their identity data away with each of us having an estimated 200 digital identities online. What is needed is t...

Richard Meeus, Director of Security & Technology Strategy, Akamai Technologies Nearly four in five UK adults (78%) use online banking services at least once per week, and over half (58%) of those who bank online reported receiving scam attempts via email or SMS text message at least once per week, according to Akamai Technologies. So, what needs to be done to improve cybersecurity and how can...

Nicole Meyers, VP Strategic Account Management, Personetics Personetics is the leading global provider of data-driven personalisation and customer engagement solutions for the financial services industry, with bank customers worldwide. In a conversation with IBS Intelligence’s Reporter Gaia Lamperti, Nicole Meyers, VP Strategic Account Management at Personetics, discusses the rise of conscious con...

Camilla Falkenberg, Co-founder, Female Invest Founded in 2017, Female Invest is Europe’s largest financial education platform and community for women. The firm is empowering women to increase their understanding of personal finance and investing in a world where almost three quarters of stocks are owned by male investors. Camilla Falkenberg, Female Invest’s Co-Founder, discusses the company’s miss...

Harpreet Singh, Business Head – Digital Lending & Cards, Intellect Design Arena Security and scaleability are the watchwords but banks also need a fast, efficient credit decisioning process. Consumers are used to dealing with BigTech firms that respond in seconds. They are no longer prepared to wait days for decisions whether in their personal or business lives. Nor are they likely to be satis...

Jonathan Wilson, Chief of Risk & Compliance, AU10TIX While AI has been touted as the big answer to fraud in banking and financial services, bad actors are also embracing new AI technologies so what steps can be taken to combat this? Data privacy is a big issue. But there are solutions that institutions and individuals can implement to limit their vulnerabilities. Jonathan Wilson, Chief of Risk...

Gabriele Sabato, Founder and CEO, Wiserfunding   Brief glimpses of positive economic indicators after the pandemic have quickly been overshadowed by inflation fears, labour shortages and supply chain issues that could set the UK on course for a sustained period of stagnation. In this context, what’s in store for SMEs when the government support that has been artificially keeping them alive during...

Matt Rowsell, Chief Product Officer Merchant Services, nets So the pandemic introduced everybody to online transactions but what are the next steps in digital payments? Will transactions involving digital currencies and/or cryptocurrency become next evolution in payments. What learnings are there from chip & PIN and the introduction of contactless payments for the banking sector with the prosp...

Angela Koll, Senior Business Expert for Trade & Supply Chain Finance, Commerzbank The Marco Polo Payment Commitment is a blockchain solution for trade finance, originally established in 2017 by Commerzbank, members of the R3 Blockchain Fintech Consortium and representatives of European and Asian banks. Angela Koll, Senior Business Expert for Trade and Supply Chain Finance at Commerzbank is a c...

Bob Dowd, Chief Executive Officer, moneycorp Americas The B2B payments landscape changed in the wake of the pandemic but implementation of technology in B2B payments hasn’t grabbed headlines in the way B2C payments have. That looks set to change with rising demand for modernised payments infrastructure and digitisation at all points of sale. Bob Dowd, Chief Executive Officer of moneycorp Americas...

Rodrigo Vicuna, Chief Financial Officer, Prime Trust This year will see increasing adoption of digital assets while innovation in FinTech will see services become commoditised, an increasing focus on retail ‘hobby’ investors and a move away from institutional investors, and further evolution in digital currencies. That’s the gospel according to Prime Trust, a US-based infrastructure platform for F...

Daniel Kornitzer, Chief Business Development Officer, Paysafe The pandemic has seen many businesses accelerate plans to upgrade their online checkouts as consumer payment preferences have evolved. Analysis of ecommerce trends by payments platform Paysafe, published in Lost in Transaction shows SMEs globally ranking reliability, cost and security as their top 3 priorities in payment partners. Along...

Scott Eaton, CEO, Nivaura   Nivaura is digitising capital markets and simplifying processes to allow transactions to flow unfettered through financial channels, dramatically reducing the time and cost of capital markets transactions. The company’s CEO Scott Eaton spoke to IBSi’s Reporter Gaia Lamperti about the improvements that can be made to ensure efficiency in primary markets with the use of d...

Alessandro Tonchia, Head of Strategy, Private Banking & Wealth, InvestCloud Wealth management firms are not yet using the knowledge they have to boost client interaction. Too much of what they know resides in the heads of wealth managers, private bankers and relationship managers rather than in a database the firm itself can leverage. Robin Amlôt of IBS Intelligence speaks to Alessandro Tonchi...

Piers Marais, Product Director, Currencycloud   Just 1 in 4 consumers say they prefer to buy their products and services from a single company, yet about 88% of financial services companies see themselves as a one-stop-shop. The figures were among the findings of B2B Payments firm Currencycloud’s recent report ‘Elastic Bundling in Financial Services.’ In an interview with Gaia Lamperti, IBS Intell...