ANNOUNCEMENTSMaverick Payments was named ISO of the Year at the ETA Star Awards. The awards show was presented the first evening of ETA Transact, the Electronic Transactions Association's annual tradeshow, which took place April 24 through 26 in Atlanta. "Maverick is beyond honored to be recognized by the Electronic Transactions Association and our industry peers," said Alan Griefer, CEO of Maverick Payments. "The experience, passion and commitment our team brings to work every day is the reason why we have grown and achieved so much over the past few years." Benjamin Griefer, Maverick's COO, was also recognized by fellow ETA members during the show as one of the ETA's 40 under 40 extraordinary payments executives.
Payments technology company InComm Payments launched InComm Payments Brazil Technology Ltda., an information technology (IT) hub dedicated to developing payments solutions for industries including retail, financial services, mobile payments and more. Based in Fortaleza, the IT hub expands InComm Payments’ Brazil operations and is expected to create approximately 200 jobs throughout the country for various fintech development roles, which will support both local and international projects under the leadership of the company’s U.S. development teams, InComm stated.
Payroc has been named an Organization of the Year winner in the 2023 Excellence in Customer Service Awards presented by Business Intelligence Group. These awards, organizers stated, celebrate those who are winning by supporting their own customers and those who are developing the tools to help others find success. Payroc earned distinctions in 2021 and 2022, as well. "In every engagement we have with our merchants, we strive to serve them with excellence," said Ray Gallagher, vice president of Payroc's Merchant Contact Center. "We put them at the center of all we do with clear intent to keep improving and providing unique experiences for our customers."
RESEARCHA new survey of over 600 small and midsize business (SMB) owners by business payments company Corpay found that SMBs are investing in digitalization as a way to manage costs and accommodate changing customer preferences. AP automation is a key area of investment: 24 percent indicated they prioritize accounts payable automation software to control costs and manage risks of accidental payments. Also, accounts payable spend was up 54 percent year over year in the first quarter of 2023 for Corpay respondents. However, SMBs are facing significant barriers to transforming and digitizing their business payments processes: 29 percent of respondents considered security concerns as their biggest barrier to digitizing the payments process; 21 percent indicated concerns over the ease of integrating digital technologies; and for 23 percent of respondents, a preference for cash is their biggest barrier to digitizing their process.
Fabrick and its subsidiary Axerve, a payment solutions provider, released a white paper, Alternative payment solutions: how they are changing the payment scene, that explores how alternative payments are revolutionizing banking. The paper explores the evolution of alternative payment methods and analyzes the market penetration of different methods, such as digital wallets; account-to-account transfers; buy now, pay later options; and cryptocurrencies. Alternative payments are projected to reach more than $15 billion by 2027, researchers noted. This growth has been triggered by the increasing needs of merchants to follow the expansion of ecommerce, the inability of traditional payments to meet buyers' needs, and the complexity of the checkout process vis-à-vis the fast, frictionless technologies arising in the digital payments' world, they added.
Fifty percent of businesses recently surveyed are being paid late by their customers, according to a supplier sentiment study conducted by Taulia, a provider of working capital management solutions. This is the highest percentage since the annual survey began in 2014 and a sharp rise from 36 percent receiving payments late from the prior year, the company noted. This year, Taulia's Supplier Sentiment Survey collected perspectives from more than 9,600 respondents worldwide and found only 41 percent are paid on time by their customers. Adding to business' financial pressures, the survey noted, 42 percent of respondents expect an increase in borrowing costs over the next 12 months; of those 7 percent predicted their costs would increase by more than 10 percent. Fifty-nine percent of respondents expressed interest in taking early payment for a discount at least some of the time.
The Payments Association, which celebrates innovation and collaboration across the payments industry, released a white paper, Data Sharing to prevent Economic Crime: Why you can now share data with confidence, examining current arrangements for sharing data to prevent economic crime in the UK. The paper recommends ways in which data sharing in the UK could be improved to prevent economic crime while taking account of existing and forthcoming privacy legislation. The association stated, for example, that collaboration both between regulated entities and between public and private sectors is key to progress on data sharing to prevent economic crime. The report also presents changes that may be introduced by the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill now making its way through the UK Parliament. Researchers noted that global estimates suggest that $2 trillion is laundered annually, illicit finance has become a prevalent business worldwide, and "economic crime is, in short, the crime of our times, and is increasingly being recognized as a threat to the UK's national security."
PARTNERSHIPSAevi, a firm specializing in in-person payments, stated it partnered with XAC Automation Corp. to deliver highly integrated, compact, future-proof payment solutions to ISOs seeking entry-level, ready-to-go merchant solutions that combine payment acceptance and a white-labeled, light-weight POS application.The product, Android Starter Pack, is a low-risk entry point into the smart market, the partners noted, adding that ISOs can easily buy and sell with this plug-and-play user interface, making the process effortless and hassle-free and enabling ISOs to run their businesses more efficiently. XAC, Aevi stated, provides the payment terminal, which leverages an Android platform and secure payment modules in a compact design. In other news, Aevi launched its first pilot merchant on the TSYS processing platform in collaboration with Vivid Payments.
The first merchant to go live with what Aevi described as its cloud-based payment orchestration platform is a salon in North America. This marks a significant milestone for Aevi, the company noted, as it is ready to expand its reach and bring innovative digital payment solutions to more TSYS ISOs. The top priority for TSYS, Aevi added, is to establish mutually beneficial partnerships with ISOs, making it easy and profitable for ISOs to acquire merchants.
Alacriti, a fintech company specializing in payments, partnered with Socure, a provider of digital identity verification and fraud solutions, to deliver third-party and synthetic identity fraud prevention for instant payments. This partnership allows financial institutions to utilize end-to-end, turnkey, instant payment solutions with integrated fraud prevention, Alacriti stated, adding that its Cosmos Payments Hub, which is on the Orbipay AIQ platform, enables financial institutions to deliver modern money movement experiences to their customers, reduce operating costs and accelerate time to market. Orbipay AIQ is a cloud-based, machine learning-based fraud prevention solution designed to manage fraud and risk associated with instant payments processed through payment rails such as The Clearing House's RTP network, the FedNow Service, Visa Direct, or conventional payments such as ACH or wires.
Toast, which offers a digital platform for restaurants, chose Bluefin, a provider of encryption and tokenization technologies, to offer select Toast enterprise customers an additional encryption option via PCI-validated point-to-point encryption (P2PE) for POS payments. Toast will white-label Bluefin's Decryptx solution, which is designed to deliver PCI-validated P2PE as a service. This technology immediately encrypts sensitive payment data at the POS and renders it useless in the event of breach, the partners stated, and they will work together to develop and commercialize the solution later this year.
ACQUISITIONSSales Empowerment Group, an outsourced sales and marketing consulting firm, acquired sales training company Action Selling. Founded in 1990 by Duane Sparks, who authored the productivity-focused training program, Action Selling has trained, assessed, and certified over 500,000 salespeople, SEG stated. The combination of SEG and Action Selling, SEG added, provides clients a comprehensive suite of solutions across the entire revenue function: SEG, with core competencies in virtual sales teams, consulting services, sales playbooks, sales assessments and a proprietary technology platform, and Action Selling, with its tried and true, multi-program sales training platform.
APPOINTMENTSMonica Eaton transitioned to the position of CEO at Chargebacks911 and sister company Fi911, replacing Gary Cardone, who held the title for 10 years and recently retired from the business to pursue other strategic investments. Eaton, who co-founded the company with Cardone in 2009, previously served as chief operating officer. In her new role, she will continue steering and executing the company's global vision and strategy, driving digital transformation to deliver robust solutions that address the growing scope of chargeback and dispute management objectives, Chargebacks911 stated.
NMI, a full commerce enablement technology company, hired Tiffany Johnson as its new chief product officer to support the company's growing product suite. Johnson brings more than 15 years of experience in payments, fintech and finance to NMI, and she will ensure that user experience and scalability are at the core of all of NMI's offerings, NMI stated. Johnson's immediate priorities will focus on delivering a strong payments infrastructure to the market that prioritizes choice, modularity and flexibility for NMI's ISV and ISO partners. Johnson most recently served as head of product for North America at UK-based Railsr (formerly Railsbank), leading new product development in North America including banking, payments, debit and credit-as-a-service offerings. She was also recognized by American Banker as one of 2022's Most Influential Women in Payments for being a change agent in the space.
Sift, a provider of digital trust and safety, selected Armen Najarian as its chief marketing officer. Najarian comes to Sift with more than 20 years of marketing experience and expertise in creating award-winning marketing programs at several fraud prevention and digital identity companies, Sift stated.
"Najarian's success in brand strategy, team building, and revenue generation was instrumental in three company exits, including Agari and ThreatMetrix, which were acquired by HelpSystems (now Fortra) and LexisNexis Risk Solutions respectively," Sift said. He also held marketing leadership roles during DemandTec's initial public offering and subsequent sale to IBM and was most recently CMO at Outseer, a spinout of RSA Security, where he drove the new corporate identity and stood up a new worldwide marketing organization.
To advance its long-term strategic growth plans, Darwinium appointed Bill Sytsma and Alex Forss to strategic U.S. sales leadership positions. Sytsma has an award-winning track record of closing multi-million-dollar enterprise opportunities and building hyper-growth sales organizations at ThreatMetrix, (acquired by LexisNexis Risk Solutions), BioCatch and Callsign. Forss joins him from tenures at ThreatMetrix and Callsign, where he built and led enterprise sales teams for fraud prevention and PayPal, following the successful exit of his previous startup.
In addition, Vanita Pandey joined the company's advisory board. She is chief marketing officer at Caf, an ID tech company, and is a fraud expert with previous experience as CMO at Arkose Labs and as a marketing executive at ThreatMetrix and Simility, (acquired by PayPal). She also worked at such financial institutions as Standard Chartered Bank, ABN AMRO Bank, Capital One and Visa. Menekse Gencer also joined the advisory board. She is a board director, adviser and prior Fortune 100 senior executive with 30 years of experience at companies including Wells Fargo, PayPal, AMD and PwC. 
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