Toast Restaurant POS, an all-in-one restaurant technology platform, announced today it has launched self-serve kiosks, a new product designed specifically to enhance guest experience and improve operational efficiency for restaurant operators. The Toast Kiosk provides customers with easy, accessible, and flexible ordering options, resulting in decreased wait times and increased productivity for restaurant operators.
Category: Fintech
Tradier names noted fintech industry leader Stephen Ehrlich as its new CEO
Tradier, Inc., an industry leader in providing next generation brokerage solutions that enable Platform Providers and Developers, Digital Advisors, Registered Investment Advisors and Registered Broker-Dealers to offer trading access to the US Markets through its bundled APIs from their platforms, today announced that Stephen Ehrlich has been named as its next Chief Executive Officer as of June 1st 2016.
Mr. Ehrlich succeeds Founder Dan Raju who will assume the role of the Executive Chairman and Chief Information and Product Officer. Mr. Ehrlich has had a distinguished 25-year career in the financial services industry serving global retail and institutional investors and traders. Previously, he was the CEO and Founder of Lightspeed Financial and under his leadership Lightspeed expanded to become the fourth largest volume based retail broker-dealer. Prior to Lightspeed, Mr. Ehrlich was the CEO of the E*TRADE Professional Trading Group. At E*TRADE he played a pivotal role in Brokerage Strategy, Product and Services.
TradeBlock provides Cumberland Mining with Order Management, Execution Tool
TradeBlock is now the order management system and execution tool set for Cumberland Mining, an affiliate of principal trading firm DRW. Cumberland is provider of liquidity in bitcoin and ether digital currency markets.
The rapid growth of institutional digital currency trading has driven demand for a variety of products and services. The over-the-counter (OTC) digital currency market is growing rapidly by providing a network of deep, instant liquidity directly between institutions and their counterparties.
TradeBlock provides professional clients in digital currency markets with trade management tools, wallet integrations, KYC/AML automation, accounting tools, and exportable records, all on top of a suite of market and blockchain data.
Flywire launches cross-border payment service in Japan
Flywire, a leading provider of cross-border payment solutions, today announced its expansion into Japan. Operating as Flywire GK and based in Tokyo, the company will serve the increasing number of educational institutions in Japan attracting foreign students, as well as Japanese students studying abroad. The move builds on Flywire’s recently launched operations in Shanghai, China and broader business expansion across the Asia-Pacific region including Australia and Singapore.
“Japan is one of the key countries in Flywire’s APAC expansion and we are investing significantly there to help Japanese educational institutions make the payment process easy, efficient and transparent for their international students,” said Mike Massaro, CEO at Flywire. “We have an outstanding local team in place there with years of experience in the education and payments business.”
Eris Launches Major Expansion of Standard Swap Futures
Eris Exchange (Eris), a U.S.-based futures exchange offering swap futures as a regulatory-compliant and capital-efficient alternative to OTC swaps, announced the expansion of its flagship Eris Standard U.S. Dollar Interest Rate Swap Future complex on January 11th . This launch follows a record year in 2015 for Eris Exchange in terms of volume, open interest, trade count, and number of participants, as well as the addition of multiple new Liquidity Providers, clearing firms, and execution platforms.
“The Eris product design is best in class – and this launch represents a quantum leap forward in terms of extending the product to a wider set of structures that capture the valuable flexibility previously only found in OTC swaps,” said John Coleman, Director of the Fixed Income Group & Senior Vice President of R.J. O’Brien & Associates. “Now mortgage hedgers can better manage risk in the 12- to 15-year points on the curve, banks can efficiently manage swap spread risk, and insurance companies can address long-dated liabilities.”
Recurly Reports Holiday Season was Exponentially Successful for Subscription Companies
This morning subscription management platform Recurly announced results of the 2015 holiday season, which was exponentially successful for subscription merchants.
The results were drawn from a sample of 450 business-to-consumer subscription-based merchants who are clients of Recurly. The study period was two weeks long from Sunday, November 22 through Saturday, December 5, 2015, which included Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Recurly reported the following results:
- On Cyber Monday, subscription-based merchants experienced a 230% jump in sales compared to other days during the study period.
- Same-store sales on Cyber Monday grew 83% compared to the previous year.
- From Black Friday through Cyber Monday, same-store sales grew 70% from the previous year.
- Three times more coupons were redeemed on Cyber Monday compared to other days during the study period.
In specialized cross-border payments space, Flywire expands from universities to hospitals
Started as a way to help university students drastically reduce fees associated with cross-border tuition payments, Flywire began partnering with hospitals last year to extend its business model to international patients. The expansion is a sign of both the growth of cross-border payments, and the growing number of choices targeting the parties making those payments.
The cross-border payments space, estimated to be $300 billion at the end of 2015, has become increasingly competitive in recent years. The number of companies eyeing cross-border payments as a corner of banking where technology can slash traditional costs, prompted PYMNTS.com to begin tracking 192 cross-border payments companies last year, through its X-Border Payments Optimization Index, powered by Digital River World Payments. Many of those companies are highly specialized, focusing on subsets of the cross-border payment industry ranging from remittances to large international business to business transactions.
Stride Health Partners With Beam Dental To Redesign Dental Care For Self-Employed Americans
Stride Health, the company redefining the way independent working Americans access health care and coverage, announced today that it has partnered with Beam Dental to offer self-employed workers simple, affordable and personalized dental insurance.
As Stride Health rapidly expanded to a national presence over the past year, it found that: (1) there is high demand among self-employed workers for dental coverage, but also (2) individual dental plan options were generally unattractive due to lengthy waiting periods, high purchase processing fees (fees can be greater than 100 percent of the first month’s premium!) and confusing benefits structures
BBVA Compass Teams Up With Robo FutureAdvisor
BBVA Compass, the Sunbelt subsidiary of the Spanish banking giant, has announced it will partner with FutureAdvisor to offer its customers digital investment management, popularly known as Robo Advisors. It is the first major bank to sign on with FutureAdvisor since the advisory firm combined forces with BlackRock, the giant asset management company, last year.
“FutureAdvisor gives us a way to connect more of our clients with convenient, affordable and trusted advice,” said BBVA Compass Chairman and CEO Manolo Sánchez. “The ultimate goal here is to help our clients take greater control of their finances so they can build bright futures.”
Tradier Reaches Milestone of 100 Financial Services Firms Integrating Directly with its Brokerage Platform
Tradier, Inc., the innovative cloud-based financial services API firm, today announced that over 100 financial technology companies are now adopting its Tradier API to provide individual investors, traders and advisors with convenient and easy access to brokerage services. As the fastest-growing brokerage technology firm, Tradier is at the forefront of the brokerage-as-a-service evolution, democratizing access to brokerage capabilities for third party financial technology providers and allowing for greater access to capital markets for retail investors. The Tradier API is leading the fast-growing era of investor choice by eliminating the need for financial platforms and developers to invest in costly and infrastructure and massive regulatory hurdles to gain access to brokerage services.