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Jan 13 2021

CardFlight Announces Small Business Pay Solution Expansion With SwipeSimple Register Product Line Addition

CardFlight, a U.S.-based SaaS payment technology company, announced on Wednesday the addition of the SwipeSimple Register product line to its hardware offerings. According to CardFlight, the product will feature the following models:

  • SwipeSimple Register 8: has an expanded 8-inch touchscreen that delivers full POS/cash register capabilities. Its easy swivel mount conveniently shows customer prompts for tips and digital receipts, to provide a speedy check-out experience without adding clutter to counter space
  • SwipeSimple Register 6: designed for less complex sales environments. It features a convenient 6-inch touchscreen and swivel base station with a built-in receipt printer, packing a complete point of sale into an elegant device
  • SwipeSimple Register 15: target merchants requiring specialized features, including more advanced retail and food & beverage establishments, and quick-serve restaurants. It features an extra-large 15-inch touchscreen to quickly ring up complex sales, even from a large catalog

CardFlight explained that with these new payment solutions, small business owners will gain access to sophisticated countertop devices that run the powerful yet easy-to-use SwipeSimple software.

“SwipeSimple Register offers merchants sleek countertop devices integrating a physical check-out experience with modern point-of-sale and payment acceptance technology.”

while sharing more details about the product and features,  Derek Webster, CEO and Founder of CardFlight, stated:

“The addition of SwipeSimple Register to the SwipeSimple suite of products furthers our mission to serve the full range of small businesses across industries. No two small businesses are the same, and neither are their needs—SwipeSimple Register product line will offer storefront merchants a range of countertop options, to meet the needs of their business.”

CardFlight went on to add that SwipeSimple Register’s Initial launch will begin in late Q1 2021 full line to release throughout the year.

Founded in 2013, CardFlight states it is committed to making payment acceptance easy for business owners.

Source

Written by bizbuildermike · Categorized: Crowdfunding · Tagged: 2021, business, Businesses, cardflight, ceo, company, digital, expansion, fintech, Food, founder, hardware, LINE, Merchants, models, more, Offerings, payment, payment solutions, product, product line, Products, retail, SaaS, small businesses, small-business, Software, swipesimple, target, Technology

Jan 06 2021

Sorted and Salt Edge Partner Up to Help Small Businesses with Open Banking Solutions

Salt Edge, and open banking service provider, has partnered up with Sorted – a Germany based accounting app that targets freelancers and self-employed.

According to a blog post, by utilizing the Salt Edge Partner Program, Sorted is able to connect to the customers’ bank account to retrieve the business transactions in a clear and categorized format and automatically create accounting records. Additionally, Salt Edge enables Sorted to connect to major German banks via one platform.

Vasile Valcov, VP at Salt Edge, said:

“Living in the current uncertain conditions, it is truly important to build services that are useful and bring value to freelancers, being, in some ways, underserved members of the labour market. That is why it is crucial to introduce valuable data-driven digital services that today’s customers expect and create decent conditions for people who want to build a career in the freelancing field. Here at Salt Edge, we are excited to team up with Sorted, holding similar views to create something worthful and significant together.”

Tom Raz, Co-Founder of Sorted, said the partnership with Salt Edge will help to optimize the financial routine for their  customers:

“Getting access to real-time banking data and obtaining all the transactions structured well in a pragmatic and visual way, help us to offer the best service for self-employed professionals and freelancers anywhere and at any time.”

Source

Written by bizbuildermike · Categorized: Crowdfunding · Tagged: Banking, Banks, blog, business, Businesses, Career, Co-founder, data, digital, fintech, Germany, Global, market, open banking, partnership, said, salt edge, small businesses, sorted, Transactions, uk, united-kingdom, us, vp

Dec 24 2020

UK – EU Reach Trade Deal for Christmas

The United Kingdom and the European Union have reached a trade deal just in time for Christmas.

The UK government said they have agreed on a zero tariff-free trade deal including a commitment to maintaining high labor, environment, and climate standards without giving the EU any say over our rules.

The government added that they may now take full advantage of the fantastic opportunities available to us as an independent trading nation, striking trade deals with other partners around the world – perhaps a tip in the direction of a US-UK deal.

The United Kingdom has agreed a Free Trade Agreement with the European Union.

See what this deal means for you ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/x4DetmQqcO

— UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) December 24, 2020

Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared victory in the arduous negotiations simply stating a deal is done.

The deal is done. pic.twitter.com/zzhvxOSeWz

— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) December 24, 2020

The UK Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) National Chairman Mike Cherry issued a comment on the news of a deal:

“After such a torrid year, and during such a disrupted festive trading season, it’s a huge relief to see negotiators finally strike a deal.  The work of looking through the detail of the agreement to map out exactly what it means for the small firms that make-up 99% of our business community now begins. As well as going through the terms of access to each other’s markets, we are keen to see the Small Business Chapter that we have championed and encouraged both sides to include. What we need from here is tangible, targeted support, including £3,000 transition vouchers that small firms can spend on the training and advice required to navigate a new trading relationship with our biggest export market.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated:

“We have, finally, found an agreement.  It was a long and winding road. But we have got a good deal to show for it.  It is fair and balanced. And it is the right and responsible thing to do for both sides.”

The agreement covers not just trade in goods and services, but also a broad range of other areas, such as investment, competition, state aid, tax transparency, air and road transport, energy and sustainability, fisheries, data protection, and social security coordination. The agreement is said to provide for zero tariffs and zero quotas on all goods that comply with the appropriate rules of origin.

Of note, there will be no more mutual recognition of professional qualifications. UK financial services firms will lose their financial services passports.

A document created by the Commission outlining the major changes is embedded below.


eu-uk_trade_and_cooperation_agreement-a_new_relationship_with_big_changes-brochure

Source

Written by bizbuildermike · Categorized: Crowdfunding · Tagged: Brexit, business, Businesses, Christmas, Community, data, deals, energy, Environment, European Union, federation of small businesses, financial services, fsb, General News, Global, going, government, investment, Labor, market, markets, more, news, note, other, passports, Politics, Legal & Regulation, president, said, security, small businesses, small-business, social, Social Security, sustainability, trade, trading, Twitter, uk, united kingom, united-kingdom, us, work, world

Dec 01 2020

Why Leading Cities and States Should be Protecting ‘Digital Citizens’ from Mobile Threats

Why Leading Cities and States Should be Protecting ‘Digital Citizens’ from Mobile ThreatsWhy Leading Cities and States Should be Protecting ‘Digital Citizens’ from Mobile Threats

When most people think of Zimperium, they may recognize us as the leader in enterprise mobile device and app security. Or, they have seen the recent news on the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) organization, selecting us to deliver comprehensive Mobile Endpoint Protection (MEP) to the unclassified government furnished (GFE) devices of servicemen and women around the world. 

In regards to the DoD announcement, this a watershed moment and we are honored to protect DoD mobile users and endpoints against phishing, malicious/risky apps, OS exploits and network attacks. 

We are also honored to be protecting the “digital sidewalks” – as Jordan Sun, the Chief Innovation Officer for the city of San Jose and Director of the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation (MOTI) referred to it in a recent commentary in The Hill – for New York City residents and Los Angeles Metro riders against mobile threats with the only machine learning-based, on-device mobile security solution. 

I recently had the pleasure of hosting a panel session during this year’s North American International Cyber Summit. The panel – The Future of Mobile Technology and Security for the Digital Citizen – featured: 

  • Mitch Herckis, senior advisor of New York City Cyber Command;
  • Douglas Anderson, senior director Information Technology for the Los Angeles Metro; and 
  • Jayson Cavendish, senior security architect for Tech System, contractor to the state of Michigan.

Below are select snippets from this lively, compelling and informative panel discussion.

A little bit of background

Mitch: 

“NYC Cyber Command is a relatively new organization, particularly by New York City standards, where we have some agencies that marked their life in over a century. We were created just three years ago by executive order and we were formalized into the city charter just this past month. 

“As the senior advisor for operations for the organization, I helped with the central part of our mission which is to implement cybersecurity as a central authority across a hundred plus agencies. 

“We also have a resident phasing mission, ensuring residents of New York City are able to be safe in their own digital lives.” 

Doug: 

“LA Metro is the third largest transit company in the U.S. We transport about 1.3 million riders a day. It is a sizable agency and because of that we have a fairly large presence. 

“One of the things my team is challenged with, is looking at using technology for innovative ways to enhance the customer experience. Equity is another big issue here for Metro. We have a lot of riders that are low-income and cannot even afford connectivity. 

“Even though it is not blanketing the city, our routes do cover the entire city and they are basically based on population and ridership density, those kinds of things. Where there are more people there are more routes. It seemed like a good way to maybe accomplish some of the goals that the city wanted to do.” 

NYC Secure and LA Metro Secure

Mitch: 

“The NYC Secure initiative is the name of our citizen-focused initiative and it was announced back in March 2018. The goal of it is essentially to defend New Yorkers from malicious cyber activity on mobile devices across Wi-Fi networks and beyond.

“There are two major pieces to this initiative. One is the NYC Secure app, which is free for folks to download through the App Store and Google Play. It is security for anyone who downloads it – focusing on providing New Yorkers a level of protection. It alerts you to risks, threats and attacks including  if you are connecting to unsecured Wi-Fi networks.

“More people have moved to mobile – – over 50 percent of traffic is mobile these days. So, there are increasing attacks there.  

“We realized this was the right thing to do, that we commit to keeping people safe in their daily lives from crime and we should want to bring that same commitment to protecting New Yorkers into cyberspace. 

“We figured out we need to do it in a way that reflected their values and preserved individual privacy and the NYC Secure initiative and the NYC  Secure app is what came out of it.”

Doug: 

“My CIO actually went to New York and saw Mitch’s project out there and that is how we got involved in looking at protecting the devices. 

“The folks using our Wi-Fi on the buses are not the most sophisticated users. They are low-income. They do not have their own data plans and don’t necessarily have a carrier helping to protect their device. 

“They rely heavily on various forms of public Wi-Fi to communicate. Some have older devices. They are cheaper devices. They do not necessarily keep them up-to-date. 

“Basically, as long as they can access Wi-Fi and there are a number of apps they can download and use, they are able to communicate. It was a pretty big, challenging environment. One of the things that we really wanted to do was keep it as simple as possible. 

“When people transfer from one vehicle to another – there are hundreds of thousands of transfers in a given day – their phone will automatically re-login to the new Wi-Fi network, when they board a new vehicle. However, that causes a bit of a problem because now you have individuals who will try to spoof the network, to access a million plus riders here in Los Angeles.” 

Should cities protect their citizens?

Jayson: 

“When the pandemic started, for those with the ability to work at home, they were now relying on networks they typically reserved for play or entertainment. Further, as they started doing that, K-12 and higher education started going completely online, that happened back in April and May. 

“As we came into August this year, a lot of the universities made the decision to go fully online. Some like Central Michigan University have students on campus but most of their classes are online. 

“We need to figure out how we make sure we use trusted Wi-Fi networks. For example, my wife and girls may go shopping for shoes at a local retailer. While they are there, they jump on Wi-Fi for free while shopping for shoes and are buying other things while on that network. I can tell you this, because they come home and I ask if they bought other clothes on their mobile devices while shopping for shoes. I ask if they use their credit cards. Of course the answer is ‘Well, yeah.’

“I think the reality for most of our constituents is that this isn’t top of mind for them. We need to give them a tool or a way that they can put on the digital mask to protect each other.” 

Issues and challenges

Mitch: 

“This is also an equity issue. Not everyone has access to their corporate account, a secure corporate environment or certain protections as mentioned through their provider. In fact, something like 17 percent of Americans have smartphones only. I think it goes much higher if you look at some equity issues that are particularly around low-income individuals or folks who are in lower income brackets. 

“Our vision is for New York to be the most cyber resilient city in the world and to achieve that vision, it means giving everyone the tools they need to do what is necessary to protect themselves. Sometimes it is about giving them the things to recognize that, that might not be a link to NYC Wi-Fi, that might be someone down the street. 

‘The reality is, not everyone has access to security measures and NYC Secure is a very simple tool that they can use for security while maintaining their privacy. 

‘During this time of COVID in particular, there have been malicious attempts at applications that mimic the sort of things that we would expect from a tracing app, those have been passed via email or phishing attempts. I think providing this basic security to folks is something we see as protecting everyone, all New York.”

Doug: 

‘We discovered that we had a huge number of kids using Wi-Fi, believe it or not, to do their homework on their way to school because they did not do it the night before. They were taking advantage of the fact that they had Wi-Fi on the buses to do their homework. 

‘But again, you have got a very unsophisticated audience there and it can easily be fooled into things.

“One of the things we specified on a login page, in the terms and conditions page before you go to an active portal, was that we wanted to indicate  that we were not tracking their device. That is a big deal here. A lot of people are riding the buses. We really want to know where they are going, that is very helpful to us to understand the ridership patterns, but people do not like to be individually tracked, especially a number of individuals and the lower-income group.”

User privacy

Jayson: 

‘We are evaluating opportunities to make this available to the citizens of Michigan. One of the most important facets of that would be that the tool does not retain or send back or keep any information about the citizen. 

“Can it protect me from mobile malware? Can it tell me where solid safe networks are? Can it help me protect against phishing attacks? And can it do all of that and not send any of my data back to a monitoring device or spy on itself? I think those are the real critical aspects of this entire area that we are looking into.”

Mitch: 

“There is a lot of really interesting data we could have gotten if we decided to take that in. It would be fascinating data and helpful data, but the reality is no one, no New Yorker probably really wants an organization called New York City Cyber Command taking their data off their phone and frankly, we do not want that to be. 

“We want to provide the tools without people questioning our motives. To put a very fine point on it, the city sees nothing. If you choose to download and install the app, we will not be able to see information about you on your mobile device. There is a strict privacy policy and technical controls to ensure the privacy is respected. 

“New York City was hit hard during this global pandemic. As part of our own response in trying to do things to help our citizens, we put out advice to small and medium-sized businesses on working from home. I think people think of New York and they think of big buildings, but the reality is there are a quarter million small and medium-sized businesses in New York –  from that one guy working alone to a small group of people who are doing something like a small startup. 

“We put working from home guidance out for small businesses. These were kind of very broad but one of them was, if you do not have mobile security you should be looking at the NYC Secure app because people out there who are doing everything from deliveries to running a small business, who may have had a small stand before but are trying to find out new ways to get their products out there. So, you never know why you need mobile security necessarily, but it is always going to be people who need it and we were happy to be able to do it for New Yorkers during this time.”

Contact us

For more information on how we can help secure the citizens in your area, please contact us.

Previous Zimperium Mobile Security Blog PostPrevious Zimperium Mobile Security Blog Post Zimperium Names Proven Finance and Operations Leader, Brian Szeto, Chief Financial Officer

Why Leading Cities and States Should be Protecting ‘Digital Citizens’ from Mobile Threats

Source

Written by bizbuildermike · Categorized: Mobile Security · Tagged: advanced mobile threat defense, american, android, App Security, App Store, Apps, blog, business, Businesses, Cities, company, connectivity, constituents, Credit Cards, Crime, cybersecurity, data, Department of Defense, digital, DoD, Education, email, Enterprise, entertainment, Environment, finance, Future, girls, Global, Go, Google, government, higher education, information, Information technology, innovation, iOS, Jordan, kids, LA Metro Secure, Los Angeles, malware, MEP, Michigan, Mobile, mobile attacks, mobile device, mobile devices, Mobile Endpoint, Mobile Malware, Mobile Security, Mobile Threat Defense, Network attacks, New York, new york city, news, NYC Secure, other, pandemic, Phishing, Privacy, Products, security, Shopping, small businesses, small-business, Smartphones, startup, Sun, tech, Technology, transfers, u.s., us, WiFi, work, world, ZIMPERIUM, zSecure

Nov 15 2020

Blockchain Platform Sikoba Partners with Horizen to Bring “Transparency” to Decentralized Credit Market

Horizen, a tech platform that allows businesses and developers to launch their own public or private blockchains, has partnered with Sikoba, a “decentralized” blockchain-enabled system for peer-to-peer IOUs.

According to a release shared with CI, Horizen and Sikoba will offer their users “the ability to obtain legal certainty, establish credit history, and verify financial transactions in a safer and more secure manner.”

Sikoba plans to make informal credit (when IOUs are used instead of making cash payments) a lot more efficient. Informal credit is used by SMEs in developing nations, however, it suffers from “a lack of legal recognition, the inability to transact outside of one’s trusted network, and the absence of a verifiable audit trail,” the release noted.

Sikoba aims to address these challenges by registering debt on a public blockchain-based platform.

As explained in the announcement:

“Through Sikoba, users obtain legal certainty, have the ability to establish a credit history and can transact beyond their immediate circle of trust with identified trusted intermediaries. Finally, Sikoba also reduces the need for cash settlement by automatically clearing circular debt. As debts and credits registered on Sikoba’s federated blockchain fall into the category of financial data, this information must remain private, and within a trusted system. Sikoba users, however, should still have the ability to verify and generate proofs of their transactions, within a public ecosystem, as needed.”

Alex Kampa, Founder at Sikoba, noted that to implement the solution, they will be writing these proofs onto a public Horizen sidechain, by using Horizen’s zero knowledge toolkit and the Zendoo interoperability protocol. He explained that Horizen technology will allow them to offer a key service to Sikoba users.

As mentioned in the announcement, Zendoo (which is Horizen’s sidechain technology) will be integrated into Sikoba’s platform. This will allow for an additional layer of security and transparency for its users.

Sikoba will be anchoring its own distributed ledger tech (DLT) platform to Horizen’s public blockchain by building on top of Horizen’s sidechain protocol, Zendoo. As explained in the release, the Merkle root of each block of Sikoba’s federated blockchain will be recorded on a Horizen sidechain.

The release further explained that Sikoba will also “generate a corresponding Merkle path for every transaction.” After this step, users can then “verify their transactions using only the Merkle root on the public blockchain and the transaction’s Merkle path.” And “by layering the two chains, utilizing Zendoo, Sikoba can establish trust that its users’ debts and credits are properly registered.”

Rob Viglione, Co-Founder of Horizen, remarked:

“Due to the nature of Sikoba’s financial data, its blockchain system needs to be completely reliable for data management – Horizen is thrilled to partner with Sikoba to provide this, and to help its users obtain transaction certainty and establish a credit history via the blockchain. Horizen’s partnership with Sikoba is a great early use case for Horizen’s sidechain technology, Zendoo, as it showcases one of the many mainstream adaptations for interoperable and transparent sidechain tech.”

Source

Written by bizbuildermike · Categorized: Crowdfunding · Tagged: alex kampa, blockchain, Blockchain & Digital Assets, blockchains, Businesses, Cash, circle, Co-founder, data, debt, decentralized, decentralized credit market, distributed ledger technology, dlt, financial transactions, founder, horizen, information, legal, market, partnership, payments, rob viglione, security, sikoba, small businesses, SMEs, tech, Technology, transaction, zendoo

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