Mark Bernardini | AccessPay sets sights on US market with £2 million debt financing

Manchester, UK-based payments router AccessPay has secured £2 million in debt financing from Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank amid plans for a recruitment drive and expansion into US markets.

A specialist in cloud-based payments technology, with hundreds of UK-based customers and 35 employees, AccessPay enables payment routing through all of the major UK and international networks including Bacs, Swift, Faster Payments, Sepa and Direct Debit.

With a focus on organic growth, the orgnisation has its sights on increasing its business-reach to more than 10,000 organisations, who will join with other current high-profile clients such as Clifford Thames and European research organisation Cern.

Anish Kapoor, CEO of Accesspay says the funding will enable the business to recruit up to 60 new members of staff, including developers, sales, operations and marketing, before the end of 2017 and provides the platform for expansion into the US market later this year.

The firm has previously raised equity from two primary investors in the US: True Ventures and Route 66 Ventures.

Mark Bernardini | Number of U.S. bank branches to shrink 20 percent in five years: real estate report

The number of bank branches in the United States will shrink by as much as 20 percent in five years, according to a report from commercial real estate firm JLL.
This reduction comes as banks are looking for ways to cut costs and to encourage their customers to embrace mobile banking technology rather than completing basic transactions within a physical branch.
The U.S. banking industry could save as much as $8.3 billion annually if it trimmed the number of branches and downsized the average bank branch from 5,000 to 3,000 square feet, JLL found.
U.S. banks have reduced their footprint by around 8 percent since the financial crisis, from 97,000 branches to roughly 90,000.

Mark Bernardini | Canada-based real estate software firm transfers its U.S. headquarters

A leading Canada-based real estate software and technology corporation is moving its U.S. headquarters to Dallas to ensure a wider reach, the firm announced.

Based in Toronto and serving over 10,000 real estate firms and entities across North America, Lone Wolf Real Estate Technologies said that its former headquarters in Las Vegas will remain in operation. The centre of the company’s U.S. operations will be relocating to a 25,000-square-foot office space in the 717 Harwood tower in downtown Dallas.

“This building can accommodate the future growth potential for the company which anticipates potentially leasing up to 100,000 square feet over time,” according to the company’s filings with the city’s Economic Development Committee, as quoted by Dallas News.

“Also, the downtown location offers a favorable ability to attract technology workers in specialties of information technology, software engineering and systems architecture, along with other related fields.”

The firm added that a further 150 jobs will be made available in the new headquarters.

“We are recruiting pretty heavily down in Dallas,” Lone Wolf’s vice president for marketing Kate Annis said. “It’s a great place for technology and we are excited to be down there.”

“Expansion in the U.S. is our focus over the next few years.”

Mark Bernardini | Frivolous spends are leaving Brits out of pocket to the tune of £400 a year, new research has found.

Three quarters of Brits are frittering cash on purchases they don’t need on a daily basis, from takeaway coffees to nail varnishes. These unnecessary spends cost around £32.66 a month, leaving people almost £400 out of pocket every year, money which they could be saving instead of wasting.

Almost half of adults admit their extravagant spending means they often buy things they don’t need when shopping, just because the items are close to the till, with many saying they gorge on snacks they don’t want but can’t resist. Special offers on food and sale items are also among the top three impulse spends.

Kris Brewster, Head of Products for Skipton Building Society, who commissioned the research, said: “It’s surprising to see how much all of these little, everyday expenses can add up to, and how avoidable they can be. And if we’re honest, those ‘one-off’ bigger purchases are probably much more regular than we think as we sleepwalk into spending our money.

“It’s important that people stop and make the time to pause and think about their finances, considering how their spending habits big and small could have an impact on their personal savings. Without taking this time, we can all be led into to wasting money, just because bargains look too good to refuse!”

Top 20 daily frivolous purchases

Snacks you don’t really want but can’t resist the temptation
Special offers on food
Sale items you just can’t refuse
Impulse checkout sweets when queuing
Buying clothes you only wear once
Scratch cards
Buying clothes which then sit in the wardrobe, without being worn once
Lottery tickets
Lunch out instead of taking a packed lunch to work
Takeaway tea and coffee
Flowers for the house
Buying pre-chopped vegetables because you’re too lazy to cut your own
Nail varnishes when you have 20+ pots at home
Makeup
Useless kitchen gadgets
Magazines you don’t end up reading
Brand new notebooks even though you have several unused at home
Vitamin pills which you only remember to take for a couple of days
Shoes which don’t fit properly and you can’t be bothered to take back
Paying for subscription TV and then only watching a couple of channels

Tips to Save Money

Give up the daily coffee
Ditching the daily takeaway coffee habit could save a surprising amount over the course of a year. Giving up a £3-a-day coffee could save around £700 a year. Invest in a half-decent coffee machine and make coffee at home for pennies instead.

Skip the odd takeaway or meal out
Save a few pounds (cash and weight) and break out the cook books rather than takeaway menus. Cutting back on one £25 takeaway or meal out a month will save £300 over the year, as well as being good for your waistline. Plus, it’s a well-known fact that homemade food tastes better than anything you buy.

Downgrade your phone contract
With contracts for the latest flagship phones easily costing £50 or more a month in many cases, trading down to a much cheaper SIM-only deal can save a small fortune. By shopping around, you may be able to shave off £35 or more from your monthly bill. Over the course of a year, that could add up to £420.

Slash that massive pay TV package
Are you paying for satellite or cable TV channels or a package that you hardly use, like sports or movies? A top-of-the-range pay TV subscription can cost as much as £70 a month. Opting for a more basic package could save around £50 a month – or you could consider Freeview, which is free-to-air – and watch any big matches in the pub, saving as much as £600 a year .

Axe your gym membership
How many people signed up to the gym in a bloated, post-Christmas pang of guilt, only to trail off by late January? Get your running shoes on instead, hit the local pool or join the craze for bodyweight workouts (that’s doing press-ups and sit-ups for the rest of us). You could save £300 to £600 a year .

Skip the night on the town
With a night out weighing in at as much as £60, giving your wallet and liver a break once in a while can be a good idea. Stay home one extra night a month and save up to £720 a year.

Have some patience with gadgets and games
Are you the kind of person who just has to have the latest gadget or game as soon as it comes out? Maybe you time your phone upgrades around the Apple release cycle? The price of phones, consoles and other gadgets all tend to fall quite rapidly after their initial release – so having a little patience and waiting a few months can often be a shrewd move. Depending on how many you buy a year, you could save a few hundred pounds

Mark Bernardini | Russia denies involvement after US charges two FSB officers over 'state-sponsored' cyber attack

The Russian government says that its agents weren't involved in hacking 500 million Yahoo accounts after the US charged two spies two spies over a “state-sponsored” cyber attack.

The Kremlin said its FSB domestic intelligence service was not involved in any unlawful activity. It appeared to suggest that no Russian intelligence agents have ever hacked anyone else.

This week it emerged that the US Department of Justice would charge two Russian spies with hacking into Yahoo in one of the biggest cyber attacks in history. It said that FSB agents had paid hackers to steal people's email accounts and try and gather information about journalists and politicians.

Dmitry Peskov claimed Russia had received no official information about the charges and had gleaned all it knew about the case from media reports.

“We have said repeatedly that there can be no discussion of any official involvement of any Russian office, including the FSB being involved in any unlawful cyber activities,” he added.

The Department of Justice announced the prosecutions on Wednesday, calling the 2014 hack “one of the largest data breaches in US history”.

“The defendants include two officers of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), an intelligence and law enforcement agency of the Russian Federation and two criminal hackers with whom they conspired to accomplish these intrusions, “ said Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord.

“The Department of Justice is continuing to send the powerful message that we will not allow individuals, groups, nation states or a combination of them to compromise the privacy of our citizens, the economic interests of our companies, or the security of our country.”

She named two FSB officers, Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, who allegedly directed and paid hackers Alexsey Belan and Karim Baratov.

They are accused of targeting the Yahoo accounts of Russian and American government officials, including cyber security, diplomatic and military personnel, as well as Russian journalists other network providers and financial services employees.