IBS Intelligence Global FinTech Interviews

Ivan Soto-Wright, CEO & Co-Founder, MoonPay   Supporting 45 fiat currencies and more than 60 cryptocurrencies, MoonPay recently marked its second anniversary by processing more than a million transactions. It has also announced in-principal approval for a Class 2 Virtual Financial Assets licence from the Malta Financial Services Authority. The company’s latest move is to provide payment tools...

Matteo Dante Peruccio, President International, Wave Financial Group Matteo Peruccio of Wave Financial Group has previously been CEO of Pioneer Investments and also a board member of Jupiter Asset Management, but his journey has now taken him to the digital asset space. He discussed how traditional asset management and custodian firms are coming to grips with digital assets on the new frontier of...

Karen Penney, VP Payments Products UK, Western Union Business Solutions The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the potential opportunities for women in the growing digital economy. Remote working and flexibility, together with the requirement for a fresh take on leadership that unites employees, clients and partners, have served to demonstrate how a new way of working can help personalise customer...

George McDonaugh, Managing Director and Co-Founder, KR1 KR1 is a London-based digital asset investment company investing in digital and cryptographic assets of decentralised networks and DeFi projects at an early stage. It also seed-funds early-stage blockchain and DeFi companies and holds private equity long-term. Managing Director and co-founder George McDonaugh is a founding member of the Multi...

Jonathan Allan, Chief Marketing Officer, Puzzel The pandemic has brought with it sweeping changes in customer behaviours and expectations. Willingness to self-serve has increased exponentially and voice-assisted service has also grown. However, expectations have also grown – what customers need, how and when they need it – has changed and banks need to adapt to ensure they are providing the type o...

David Foss, President & CEO, Jack Henry ; Alex Carriles, Digital Head, Simmons Bank On the back of its tech strategy and partnership with Jack Henry, Arkansas-based Simmons Bank saw a 30% rise in digital banking users in 2020 with an IOS App store rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars. The bank’s performance highlights how community and regional banks in the US can leverage digital technologies to comp...

Tom Stelzer, Cryptocurrency expert, Finder So the price of Bitcoin is volatile – that’s a given – but almost one-fifth (19%) of potential or existing UK crypto investors told a survey commissioned by personal finance website Finder that their decision to invest was influenced by a view that it ‘seems an easy way to make money’. That’s a worrying number and a worrying attitude. Robin Amlot of IBS I...

Thomas Schumann, Founder, Thomas Schumann Capital ; Markus Barth, CEO, Anatase Ltd The TSC Water Risk Index went live in January 2021 through a partnership between Thomas Schumann Capital and Anatase Ltd, a consultancy specialising in index development. The investment ethos behind it is guided by Thomas Schumann Capital’s support for UN Sustainable Development Goal SDG6 – sustainable management of...

Sassan Danesh, Managing Partner, Etrading Software; James Haskell, Business Operations Officer, Etrading Software Etrading Software has been nominated as the exclusive Registration Authority for the new International Organization for Standardization’s standard for Digital Token Identifiers. The crypto asset class includes cryptocurrencies, stable coins, security tokens and utility tokens. Developi...

Elena Sinelnikova, co-Founder, Metis , and CEO, Cryptochicks Metis recently raised $1 million in seed funding to assist with the release of its new blockchain solution for decentralised autonomous organisations. Company co-Founder Elena Sinelnikova explains the concept to Robin Amlot of IBS Intelligence. Sinelnikova is also CEO of Cryptochicks, a non-profit blockchain educational hub which aims to...

Scott Johnson, Head of Product, Western Union Business Solutions Western Union Business Solutions, the payments arm of Western Union, is expanding its global B2B payments platform. The expansion includes adding SWIFT gpi and expanding the currency portfolio within its Mass Payments API to cover 130 currencies. The increased functionality will enable partners to send up to 10,000 payments in a sing...

Colette Miller, Director Payment Solutions, moneycorp Americas Corporate culture is at a crossroads. One recent report suggested that 80% of the workers who left the US labour force in January were women. This abrupt slump needs to be addressed through a more balanced corporate culture. Robin Amlot of IBS Intelligence spoke with Colette Miller of moneycorp Americas, asking her how the business env...

Bharat Mistry, Technical Director, UK & Ireland, Trend Micro While cybercriminals are beginning to use more complex attacks on the cloud, according to the 2020 Cloud App Security Report from Trend Micro, high-risk email threats rose by 32% in 2020 and email remains the largest single threat vector. Robin Amlot of IBS Intelligence discussed the report’s findings with Bharat Mistry of Trend Micr...

Ian Henderson, Chief Executive Officer, Kyckr Regulators across the globe took aggressive action against AML violators, handing down major financial penalties and in some cases, lengthy prison sentences to the individuals involved. 28 financial institutions were issued fines totalling more than $3.2 billion for AML-related violations last year, according to Kyckr’s 2020 AML Bank Fines Report . Rob...

Anthony Culligan, Chief Engineer, SETL  Following on from the first successful live settlement of a fund using Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) tokens what are the next steps in the development of CBDCs. How will they work and what will that mean, not just for banks but for all of us? Anthony Culligan of London-based settlement and payments infrastructure provider SETL spoke with Robin Amlot o...

Matthew Williamson, Vice President Global Financial Services, Mobiquity It may not quite be a case of ‘go digital or go dinosaur’, but it is close! Digital banking is the way of the future with 13.6% CAGR forecast over the next six years, and the number of online and mobile banking users estimated to reach 3.6 billion by 2024. Matthew Williamson of Mobiquity discusses the outlook and the firm’s di...

Josipa Majic, Founder and CEO of Revuto Has every consumer-facing service provider adopted a subscription model? Sunniva Kolostyak speaks with Josipa Majic, Founder and CEO of Revuto, about investors’ preference for subscription-based companies – and how to help younger generations protect themselves against both the subscription economy and buy now pay later schemes.  

Mathieu Gorge, Founder & CEO; Rowan Fogarty, Chief Operating Officer, Vigitrust Data security and compliance are just a couple of the issues that may get more complicated for UK and European firms in the wake of Brexit.  Robin Amlot of IBS Intelligence discussed the potential stumbling blocks and how to address them with Mathieu Gorge and Rowan Fogarty of Vigitrust. Gorge is the author of The...

Nick Jackson, President, CIMA , and Finance Transformation Leader, Oracle A new global survey by Oracle claims that people now trust ‘robots’ more than themselves to manage their finances. The study included more than 9,000 consumers and business leaders in 14 countries. The role of finance teams and financial advisors is going to change and, the survey says, it is time to embrace AI to manage fin...

Justin Pike, Chairman, MYPINPAD Software-based consumer authentication solutions enable businesses to define and create tailored, end-to-end customer experiences, shifting payments onto commercially available mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. But how secure is this? PCI DSS has introduced standards for both Software Payments on Consumer off the shelf devices (SPoC) and Contactless pa...

Andrew Shikiar, Executive Director, FIDO Alliance The FIDO Alliance is an open industry association whose members include the likes of Apple, Google, American Express, Samsung and Microsoft. Its aim is to develop authentication standards to help reduce our over-reliance on passwords. Robin Amlot of IBS Intelligence spoke with Andrew Shikiar of the FIDO Alliance about the progress being made toward...

Rob Shore, Chief Financial Officer, EML Payments EML Payments is based in Brisbane, Australia, providing back-end solutions to other FinTechs. Robin Amlot of IBS Intelligence spoke with Rob Shore of EML Payments about being a white-labelled B2B service provider. Shore also outlines how the pandemic has accelerated business adoption in a disruptive time for payments.

Christian Reuss, Head, SIX Swiss Exchange After initial volatility in, particularly, the first quarter of 2020, you could be hard-pressed to find signs of the economic downturn in the performance of the world’s capital markets with the latter part of 2020 seeing rising share prices and an increase in the number of IPOs around the world. Christian Reuss of SIX Swiss Exchange talked to Robin Amlot o...

Amber Ghaddar, Founder, AllianceBlock Late in January 2021, AllianceBlock signed an agreement to join the London Stock Exchange Group’s partner platform, providing institutional members with the ability to have direct market access to AllianceBlock. The firm is building the world’s first globally compliant decentralised capital market. But what does that actually mean? Amber Ghaddar of AllianceBlo...

Arik Shtilman, CEO and co-Founder, Rapyd 2021 has begun with a bang in FinTech with 10 deals worth more than $100 million making headlines in a matter of weeks. How and where will newly deep-pocketed companies invest? Arik Shtilman of FinTech-as-a-service platform Rapyd discusses the changing nature of the digital payments space and the growth of eCommerce with Robin Amlot of IBS Intelligence.