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Fintech

Turkish Merchants Can Now Connect With Chinese Visitors via Alipay and ininal Partnership

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Leading fintech company ininal becomes Alipay’s first partner in Turkey. ininal, Turkey’s leading new-generation payment platform and a subsidiary of Multinet Up, today announced its collaboration with Alipay, the world’s leading payment and lifestyle platform operated by Ant Financial Services Group, a related company of Alibaba, that Alipay will be available for Chinese mainland visitors at bricks-and-mortar stores in Turkey.

This service will be first available in the facilities of Dorak Holding, the tourism company who plans all activities for tourists and manages numbers of merchants throughout Turkey, serving more than 85% of Chinese tourists visiting Turkey. Merchants accepting Alipay include Turkish specialty retailers, hot-air balloons in Cappadocia, shops, hotels, and Turkish restaurants. Merchants can connect with Chinese customers with digital marketing via the Alipay app while Chinese tourists visit Istanbul and Cappadocia, and those customers can make payments by using the same Alipay app to scan an Alipay QR code displayed on card terminals at the checkout.

Through the collaboration between ininal and Alipay, while Alipay users pay in Chinese Yuan during their visits to Turkey, Turkish merchants will be able to receive payments from Chinese visitors in US Dollars at Dorak Tour locations. Later this summer, Turkish merchants will be able to receive payments in Turkish Lira at existing and new Multinet Up merchants including global chain restaurants and retailers. Multinet Up, ininal’s parent company and the leading financial services company in Turkey maintaining over 40,000 merchants, will utilize its experience in building a network and infrastructure to expand Alipay acceptability. ininal and Multinet Up will work in collaboration with Alipay to further expand the network across Turkey. Jewelers, luxury clothing stores, museums and duty free shops are expected to join in the near future.

“The collaboration with Alipay proves the success of our brand has attained in the last six years. Alipay is the most preferred payment method in China and is widely used by Chinese tourists overseas. The fact that Alipay is used more than cash, credit cards and debit cards is an important data demonstrating the satisfaction it creates. ininal will continue to work with powerful partners globally to bring advanced technology and services to Turkey,” says ininal CEO Ömer Suner.

Stating that the Chinese provided the highest increase in terms of not only the figures but also the tourist spending in Turkey, Ömer Suner continued: “We believe the payment convenience provided through this collaboration will increase the foreign currency that will enter our country and provide contributions to the reanimation of the economy.” In January 2019, a Nielsen report titled 2018 Trends for Mobile Payment in Chinese Outbound Tourism finds that Chinese tourists paid for 32% of transactions using mobile payment, overtaking cash for the first time, and that nearly 60% of merchants surveyed experienced growth in both foot traffic and sales after adopting Alipay.

“Alipay is finally coming to Turkey! We are excited to work with ininal to connect Turkish merchants with Chinese visitors before, during, and after their visit to this beautiful country, overcoming barriers of language and currency. We know our customers are attracted to the ancient and modern sights of Turkey, and the many different experiences it offers, from balloons, to bazars and beaches. As Chinese users’ preferred payment and lifestyle platform, we are always happy to introduce the best offers and must-visit locations of Turkey to our users through our platforms,” said Roland Palmer, Alipay’s Head of EuropeMiddle East and Africa.

 

SOURCE Alipay; ininal

Fintech

MapMetrics expands to peaq from Solana following addition of Solana compatibility to peaq’s Multi-Chain Machine IDs

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peaq, the blockchain for real-world applications, announces the expansion of its ecosystem and product offering. MapMetrics, a Web3 drive-to-earn navigation app, will leverage peaq as part of its decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) powering a Google Maps-style service. The development comes as peaq adds Solana compatibility to its Multi-Chain Machine IDs.

A Solana-originating project, MapMetrics will leverage the now Solana-compatible peaq IDs to build functions of the MapMetrics DePIN on peaq. These will include assigning peaq IDs to the navigator devices on its DePIN, using these IDs to authenticate the data collected by these devices, and a community voting mechanism.

Free navigation apps have become trusty companions for countless people around the world, with Google Maps alone boasting over a billion users. But despite a lack of an upfront cost, they come with a price of their own. When something is free, you are the product; when navigation is free, your personal data is being monetized. From leveraging the user’s position data for valuable insights on specific locations to serving them targeted location-based ads, the companies behind such apps profit from our sensitive data, sometimes without giving much thought to its privacy and protection. And in the case of massive companies like Google, they combine this data with the data sourced from all other Google-related data points to create digital models of ourselves, able to predict our behavior than ourselves.

MapMetrics is changing the equation by putting navigation on Web3 rails. It uses location trackers that enable users to share their anonymized data with the network, earning cryptocurrency and NFTs as rewards. While featuring its own ad engine, it makes sure that no private user data is exposed to the advertisers and shares the ad revenue with the community. It boasts 3,500 devices in the network and 5,000 users across 73 countries.

As part of its integration with peaq, MapMetrics will use peaq’s Multi-Chain IDs to enable devices to connect with the peaq network. It will build and deploy some of the core functions powering its navigation DePIN on peaq, using peaq IDs to authenticate and sign the anonymized data that the devices collect. It will also tap peaq to build a community voting pallet — a building block that other projects will be able to use as well — which will enable the community to contribute to its Google Maps-style navigation service by adding the locations of speed cameras and other objects and validating it with votes.

This comes as peaq expands the compatibility of its peaq IDs to include Solana. Enabling this is an address map running as part of the peaq storage pallet, pallets being modules for building blockchains in the framework that peaq runs on. This map works like an address book, linking addresses of different standards used on various networks and thus enabling cross-chain communication and information exchanges.

For example, with this integration, a solar panel with an ID on Solana will be able to connect to an energy marketplace on peaq. The previous updates made peaq IDs compatible with Binance’s BNB Chain, Ethereum Virtual Machine, and Cosmos. peaq’s steps toward its Multi-Chain vision have already eased the transition for projects coming from Algorand and Polygon, and will now unlock new opportunities for MapMetrics and other projects in the Solana ecosystem.

The peaq ID compatibility expansion enables teams originating on Solana to expand and leverage peaq’s DePIN functions without friction or fragmentation. With peaq Multi-Chain IDs, Solana-originated projects can easily tap peaq for some of their crucial functions.

“With its DePIN-focused functions and economics, peaq is the perfect home for DePINs,” says Brent van der Heiden, CEO of MapMetrics. “We are excited to be joining this bustling ecosystem, and the newfound compatibility between peaq IDs and Solana addresses is making this process significantly more convenient.”

“We believe in an open, Multi-Chain Web3 with seamless communication and value exchange between a plethora of protocols,” says Till Wendler, co-founder of peaq. “By making peaq IDs compatible with Solana, we take another step toward bringing this vision to life — and it’s invigorating to see excellent projects such as MapMetrics use this technology to solve real business problems with the DePIN model.”

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Spool hones in on bringing institutions into DeFi by launching its expansive V2 upgrade

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Spool DAO, or Spool, the platform allowing institutions and users to build customizable risk-managed DeFi products, launches its V2 upgrade. Spool’s new platform expands its original DeFi infrastructure and tools, with heightened decentralized access and new capabilities. Institutions of all sizes can now leverage its slate of new features and interface updates to build, manage, and explore DeFi products with unparalleled flexibility, risk reduction, and security.

Despite crypto’s whirlwind year, DeFi’s blue-chip protocols managed to largely withstand the industry-wide chaos. But that doesn’t mean the DeFi landscape hasn’t changed at all. Looming regulatory steps, such as the new bipartisan bill entering the U.S. Senate, aim to monitor DeFi apps similarly to banks, setting the stage to accommodate increasing interest from legacy financial institutions. Banks and institutions clearly see potential in crypto and DeFi’s financial possibilities, but they lack the proper tools to enter it easily, compliantly, and on their terms.

To meet this institutional need, Spool now provides a completely rebuilt platform for risk-managed and automated DeFi yield. Created from the ground up to be faster, more efficient, more composable, and easier to use than its predecessor, V2 represents a leap for Spool and institutions expanding their DeFi presence. The upgrade expands upon Spool’s core offering and introduces several key features to maximize the effectiveness of institutional DeFi investment. These features and enhancements include:

    • Multi-Asset Smart Vaults: Institutions creating Smart Vaults can now build them to contain a range of yield strategies using multiple assets. Multi-asset Smart Vaults enhance functionality in addition to Spool’s classic auto-swapping and auto-rebalancing capabilities. Investors can simply create or pick an existing Smart Vault that matches their investment preferences, and send the assets they have available. The assets are then automatically swapped and implemented in audited and battle-tested smart contracts to attain the best yields possible while allowing funds to be withdrawn at any time.
    • Smart Vault Guards: Institutions building Smart Vaults can now dictate which users can deposit or withdraw from the Vault based on specific criteria, mirroring traditional investment funds. This helps institutions tailor DeFi offerings not only to regulatory compliance but to their specific client needs as well. Institutions can create KYC and AML-compliant Smart Vaults, for example, and only allow access to vetted investors through whitelisted wallets. Other parameters include NFT or Token Gating (where a user must hold a specific NFT or token amount to access the vault), and Time Locks.
    • Actions: Spool builders can now implement customizable actions tied to user activities such as entering or exiting a Smart Vault that is configured during its creation. Actions help support institutions by creating a framework that feels familiar to traditional finance and includes features such as deposit or withdrawal fees, deposit insurance fees, and automated asset swaps that help streamline the once-manual process for yield farming.
    • Liquid Staking Derivatives (LSDs) Support: LSDs are tokens issued in return for staking cryptocurrency through a staking provider. This comes in handy for networks such as Ethereum, where validators must hold a minimum of 32 ETH to access staking and validator privileges. LSDs also allow users to withdraw staked ETH, which validators cannot do. As strategies using LSDs become more popular and prevalent, adding support in V2 enables greater convenience.
    • Advanced Automation: One of DeFi’s major obstacles lies in manual asset management within yield farms. V2 improves upon Spool’s original automation features while maintaining decentralization and self-custody. Once assets are within a Smart Vault portfolio, V2 automatically rebalances them between various strategies configured in the Vault. Spool also now offers automated collateral conversion, meaning clients investing in a Smart Vault can utilize any underlying asset they have available. Spool automatically converts the asset before investing, granting increased ease and choice.
    • Deposit NFTs (dNFTs): D-NFTs provide users with an immutable NFT receipt of their Smart Vault deposits, enabling the withdrawal of funds. ERC-20 Smart Vault Tokens (SVTs) are created by burning D-NFTs and act as yield-bearing stablecoins, which can be easily transferred or traded on a secondary market, creating a new liquid financial instrument.

Check out Spool’s video here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/150B6sSdX9gMAjdig-5675nLfftciWidJ/view

More detailed video with features overview can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uIr_AJ_iHKErkHR5lFaUWk39A4-NUtEo/view?usp=drive_link

Among these new features, Spool V2’s completely redesigned interface allows institutions and asset managers to have a birds-eye view of their Smart Vault portfolio. The platform champions accessibility while providing the comprehensive tools and oversight that institutions require. This includes tools for easily white-labeling Smart Vaults for client access with their own branding and unique insights into Smart Vault performance based on customizable KPIs.

By enabling the codeless creation of financial services and products backed by audited financial primitives, institutions that don’t have DeFi-specific teams are now able to easily access DeFi. The upgrade’s capabilities set the stage for large-scale institutional partnerships in the pipeline for Spool, following a steady stream of integrations and collaborations leading up to its launch.

“We are incredibly proud to launch Spool V2 after countless months of our team developing, testing, and listening to the feedback and needs of our institutional partners,” says Philipp Zimmerer, Lead of Token Strategy of Spool. “This lands at a pivotal moment in crypto in a year that has been all about responsibly rebuilding the industry and forging a new path for DeFi. Improving access, flexibility, and security will not only garner further institutional support but set a new standard for what DeFi can make possible for any investor.”

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SquaredFinancial embarks on the next phase of growth, setting the backbone of business success

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Founder and CEO of SquaredFinancial Group Philippe Ghanem, a 20-year veteran in the financial industry, had issued, at the beginning of this quarter, an inspiring call for talent to join his leading company, highlighting that people are the cornerstone of any successful enterprise, catalysing growth and steering innovation.

As the Group embarks on an exciting phase of expansion and growth, it bolsters its leadership team with six industry-seasoned executives. The latest key appointments will strengthen the current team comprised of industry experts and professionals, which had laid the groundwork for a revolutionary path.

SquaredFinancial Group’s exceptional journey in financial technology since 2005 has been marked by innovation and an unwavering commitment to providing top-tier service to investors around the world. Fuelled by a steadfast vision, the company, alongside its management and team, has always stayed at the forefront by leveraging cutting-edge technology, offering a diverse range of services to investors.

The new appointments:

Craig Jenkins, Chief Legal & Compliance Officer. He brings more than 16 years of expertise in Legal, AML and Compliance, and will oversee the consolidation and health of the compliance system.

Thomas Selby, Chief Sales Officer. With 15 years of experience in sales and business development in prime FinTech and online trading, he will lead the business development strategy to drive more revenue growth.

Thomas Selby, Chief Sales Officer. With 15 years of experience in sales and business development in prime FinTech and online trading, he will lead the business development strategy to drive more revenue growth.

Dominique El Khoury, Global Head of Sales and Business Development – GCC & MEA. Having 12 years of experience in the trading industry, he will spearhead the expansion of sales initiatives and business growth within the region.

Drosoula Hadjisavva, Chief Marketing Officer. With 13 years of proven track record in heading global marketing operations across leading fintech, she will be responsible for redefining the marketing strategy and brand positioning.

Spyros Andreou, Chief Technology Officer. With a stellar background in IT and network engineering, he will harness and leverage technology to optimize organizational and operational performance and security.

Catharine Ioannou, Chief Human Resources Officer. With proven expertise in human resources, talent acquisition and advancement, she will steer the company’s efforts to create a more inclusive workforce, nurture loyalty and foster a culture of merit and excellence.

Commenting on the announcement, Philippe Ghanem said: “People are catalysers of growth and drivers of innovation. I’m happy to welcome these new forward-thinking minds, as their arrival marks a significant milestone for SquaredFinancial. Each of them has proven expertise and will bring, in strong collaboration with the current team of talents, strategic value and experience to the company, further shaping its future. But most of all, I feel deep responsibility towards all our stakeholders – our employees, our clients and our shareholders – as we write this new chapter of our company’s 15-year legacy. The rapid growth that our company has witnessed over the past couple of years has forged new challenges but also great opportunities, and we are well-positioned to seize them, today more than ever. The industry is witnessing transformative change, and we are more than ever committed to supporting our customers with passion, professionalism and dedication to address their needs with the utmost standards they deserve.”

The recently appointed executives will join the current leadership team comprised of:

Philippe GhanemFounder and CEO
Manie Van RooyenPartner and Chief Operations Officer
Ali RupaniPartner and Global Head of Front Office
Stathis Flangofas, Group Chief Financial Officer
Philios Petrides, Chief Data & Product Officer
Noureldeen Hammoury, Chief Market Analyst
Chrysovalantis Karageorgiou, Global Head of Operations
Constantinos Ghalanos, Head of Dealing

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