Author: Digital Trade Outlook

Financial crime compliance provider ThetaRay has appointed Luis Pinedo, former Vice President at Santander Group, as Chief Strategic Customers Officer to drive enterprise AI adoption across global tier-one banks. Pinedo spent 16 years leading financial crime transformation at Santander. At ThetaRay he will oversee product strategy and engagement across the full compliance stack: transaction monitoring and screening, customer risk assessment and agentic AI investigations. The hire comes as regulators shift to effectiveness as the primary measure of compliance. FinCEN, the UK’s FCA and the EU through AMLD6 are all moving towards data-led supervisory workflows, and rules-based systems cannot keep pace…

Treasury Intelligence Solutions (TIS) has issued a warning to corporate treasury, finance and IT teams: ISO 20022 is no longer a bank-only issue, and companies treating it as a simple messaging upgrade risk payment delays, rejected transactions, more manual intervention and reconciliation problems. The pressure comes from SWIFT’s phase-in of ISO 20022 as the sole standard for interbank payment instructions. From November 2026, unstructured address data will no longer be accepted for many cross-border payments, MT101 payment initiation messages will be retired, and the high-value US systems Fedwire and CHIPS will move to full enforcement. Non-compliant cross-border payments will be…

Modern Treasury has announced a partnership with Sardine to strengthen transaction monitoring and fraud prevention for businesses moving money across the US and globally. Integrating Sardine’s real-time monitoring and risk infrastructure gives Modern Treasury customers an additional layer of fraud detection on top of the platform’s built-in compliance controls, payment rail connectivity, US account infrastructure and ledgering. The logic is straightforward: as payments get faster and more embedded into software, fraud grows in both speed and sophistication. Teams need infrastructure that monitors transactions in real time, adapts to evolving threats and supports compliance without adding friction to the payment experience.…

Verification provider Sumsub has partnered with Ras Al Khaimah Innovation City, the world’s first free zone dedicated to digital asset companies, AI, Web3 and innovation businesses, to help international firms set up compliant operations in the UAE from day one. Companies in the Innovation City network get streamlined access to Sumsub’s verification and compliance stack, including Know Your Customer (KYC), Know Your Business (KYB) and related services. The aim is to close the gap between incorporation and operational readiness, so businesses launch already meeting regulatory requirements. “We’re excited to announce a strategic partnership between Innovation City and Sumsub to simplify…

Feedzai has launched Feedzai IQ Score, a fraud risk scoring solution that gives banks real-time access to anonymised, aggregated insights from its $9 trillion global transaction network. It is delivered through a single API and available on AWS Marketplace. The launch targets what Feedzai calls the “Silo and Legacy Paradox”: fraud data trapped inside internal sources, and risk infrastructure too disruptive to replace. With fraudsters attacking across multiple channels, a limited view of data is no longer defensible. Integration is light by design. No historical data requirement, no lengthy model training, no heavy operational lift. Banks can go from integration…

EY has launched a Managed Treasury Service (MTS) powered by FIS: outsourced, cloud-based treasury capabilities run by EY professionals on FIS technology. The pitch to finance leaders is simple, shift time from operations to outcomes. MTS covers cash and liquidity management, payments, bank relationship administration, debt and capital management, cash forecasting, financial risk across FX, interest rates and commodities, intercompany activities, and advanced reporting. The model targets a familiar bind. Sophisticated treasury operations are costly and complex to build in-house, especially for middle market organisations. Outsourcing the operational layer promises cost certainty, regulatory confidence and scalability, freeing internal teams for…

Fraud prevention and AML compliance provider SEON has launched an MCP server that lets fraud and AML analysts connect external AI tools, including Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, directly to its data layer of more than 900 real-time risk signals spanning identity, device, behavioural, AML and IP data. The launch also includes Network Detection, an AI Chart Builder and an AI Playbook for risk and compliance teams, all available immediately to existing SEON customers. The MCP integration targets a specific operational gap. Analysts already have AI tools, but no structured way to get investigation data into them without manually…

Pharos Network, a blockchain built specifically for financial applications, has partnered with KUN, a licensed digital payments company operating across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. The partnership has a clear focus: turn supply chain credit assets — invoices, receivables — into tradeable digital tokens, and build payment rails that let businesses settle cross-border transactions directly on-chain. The problem they’re solving Small and mid-sized suppliers in emerging markets routinely wait 30 to 90 days to get paid after delivering goods. That gap ties up working capital and stunts growth. Traditional financing options are slow and expensive, and most…

Coupa has taken over Tonkean, a workflow automation startup, as part of its push to make business purchasing run with minimal human involvement. The move extends Coupa’s reach across its network of 3,500 corporate buyers and 10 million suppliers, giving them a single system that handles everything from raising a purchase request to issuing payment. For CEO Leagh Turner, the logic is straightforward. Running autonomous trade at scale needs three things: solid orchestration, reliable workflows, and trustworthy data. Between this deal and last year’s Rossum acquisition, she believes Coupa now has all of them. Tonkean is the fourth company Coupa…

Geopolitical instability was supposed to slow global commerce down. Instead, it is forcing the financial plumbing of international trade to grow up — faster than anyone planned. Nobody in trade finance wants to say it plainly, but the evidence is hard to ignore. The past four years of geopolitical upheaval — sanctions cascades, trade wars, tariff shocks, armed conflict — have done more to push the industry into the digital age than a decade’s worth of conferences and innovation white papers ever managed. I say that not to be provocative, but because I think the industry keeps misreading why transformation…