STAMFORD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 19, 2024--
SwiftConnect, the access network for connecting people to the right place at the right time, and Modo Labs, a top Workplace Experience (WEX) App provider, today announced a strategic partnership to accelerate the adoption of fully digitized access solutions for enterprise organizations. Modo Labs is now an authorized reseller of SwiftConnect technology. This collaboration combines SwiftConnect’s award-winning SaaS platform and access network with Modo Labs’ innovative workplace experience app platform to streamline and enhance everyday workplace interactions.
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Together, SwiftConnect and Modo Labs are simplifying how enterprise customers engage with their workplaces. Through the integration, organizations can embed digital NFC wallets for building access, powered by SwiftConnect, directly into Modo-powered workplace apps. This allows employees to effortlessly access offices, meeting rooms, and resources with a single, secure mobile solution. SwiftConnect also centralizes and streamlines access management, the provisioning of digital IDs, and the entire credential lifecycle, making it easier for enterprises to manage access efficiently and securely.
“Our partnership with Modo Labs expands our access network, offering enterprises more flexible choices and the ability to deliver hassle-free access experiences that employees love, while enhancing efficiency and increasing their security at the same time,” said Matt Kopel, Co-CEO of SwiftConnect. “Leveraging our vendor-neutral platform, SwiftConnect has the unique capability to integrate Modo’s feature-rich workplace experience app into our access network of customers and partners and technological innovation to provide a completely seamless journey for employees, from street to seat.”
This collaboration is expected to accelerate digital transformation efforts across organizations, providing a fully integrated mobile-first solution that supports hybrid work and boosts employee satisfaction by enabling quick, convenient, and secure access to essential spaces and resources.
“The integration of digital access control credentials into Modo-powered workplace apps has been one of the most requested features from our customers,” said Sean Kae, Chief Executive Officer of Modo Labs. “Partnering with SwiftConnect allows us to meet this demand, delivering a seamless, secure experience for employees–while ensuring companies can manage digital IDs with robust security and separation.”
SwiftConnect and Modo Labs have already garnered traction with their combined solution at several major financial services institutions with over one hundred thousand employees. Enterprise customers across several vertical markets are also seeking to deploy the streamlined workplace experience and seamless access solution.
About SwiftConnect
SwiftConnect is the access network for connecting people to the right place at the right time. We delight users with elegant ways to interact with places, spaces and things by ensuring your digital pass is on your phone, watch or anywhere it needs to be. Powering connected access experiences for commercial real estate owners and enterprises across financial and professional services, life sciences, technology, and other leading organizations, our platform integrates with existing mobile platforms, credential technologies, and business systems to provide authorized access to everything, everywhere through centralized access management. Our Street-to-Seat TM solution provides a seamless journey that users love, automation that redefines operational efficiency, and a foundation of security and privacy that administrators trust so you can navigate your world better For more information visit www.swiftconnect.com and follow us on LinkedIn.
About Modo Labs
Modo is the world’s leading platform provider of workplace and campus apps. Trusted by global Fortune 1000 brands and the world’s most prestigious institutions, the Modo digital engagement platform delivers a unified, fully customizable, mobile-first user experience to simplify anytime access to information and services students and employees need to feel supported, engaged, and inspired. For more information, visit www.modolabs.com.
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BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — Just as a simple lever can move heavy objects, rich nations are hoping another kind of leverage — the financial sort — can help them come up with the money that poorer nations need to cope with climate change.
It involves a complex package of grants, loans and private investment, and it's becoming the major currency at annual United Nations climate talks known as COP29.
But poor nations worry they’ll get the short end of the lever: not much money and plenty of debt.
Half a world away in Brazil, leaders of the 20 most powerful economies issued a statement that among other things gave support to strong financial aid dealing with climate for poor nations and the use of leverage financial mechanisms. That was cheered by climate analysts and advocates. But at the same time, the G20 leaders noticeably avoided repeating the call for the world to transition away from fossil fuels, a key win at last year's climate talks.
Money is the key issue in Baku, where negotiators are working on a new amount for aid to help developing nations transition to clean energy, adapt to climate change and deal with weather disasters. It’ll replace the current goal of $100 billion annually — a goal set in 2009.
Experts put the need closer to $1 trillion, while developing nations have said they'll need $1.3 trillion in climate finance. But negotiators are talking about different types of money as well as amounts.
So far rich nations have not quite offered a number for the core of money they could provide. But the European Union is expected to finally do that and it will likely be in the $200 to $300 billion a year range, Linda Kalcher, executive director of the think tank Strategic Perspectives, said Tuesday. It might be even as much as four times the original $100 billion, said Luca Bergamaschi, co-founding director of the Italian ECCO think tank.
But there's a big difference between $200 billion and $1.3 trillion. That can be bridged with “the power of leverage," said Avinash Persaud, climate adviser for the Inter-American Development Bank.
When a country gives a multilateral development bank like his $1, it could be used with loans and private investment to get as much as $16 in spending for transitioning away from dirty energy, Persaud said. When it comes to spending to adapt to climate change, the bang for the buck, is a bit less, about $6 for every dollar, he said.
The World Bank president said all the multinational development banks could spend $125 billion on climate loans. Then those loans could be used as leverage for even more spending, several climate economics experts said.
“That's a big lever,” said Melanie Robinson, global climate economics and finance director at World Resources Institute.
But when it comes to compensating poor nations already damaged by climate change — such as Caribbean nations devastated by repeated hurricanes — leverage doesn't work because there's no investment and loans. That's where straight-out grants could help, Persaud said.
If climate finance comes mostly in the form of loans, except for the damage compensation, it means more debt for nations that are already drowning in it, said Michai Robertson, climate finance negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States. And sometimes the leveraged or mobilized money doesn’t quite appear as promised, he said.
“All of these things are just nice ways of saying more debt,” Robertson said. “Are we here to address the climate crisis, which especially small developing states, least developed countries, have basically done nothing to contribute to it? The new goal cannot be a prescription of unsustainable debt.”
His organization argues that most of the $1.3 trillion it seeks should be in grants and very low-interest and long-term loans that are easier to pay back. Only about $400 billion should be in leveraged loans, Robertson said.
Leverage from loans “will be a critical part of the solution,” said United Nations Environment Programme Director Inger Andersen. But so must grants and so must debt relief, she added.
Bolivia's foreign policy director and chair of the Like-Minded Group negotiating bloc Diego Balanza called out developed countries in speech Tuesday, saying they have “squarely failed to provide committed support to developing countries.”
“A significant share of loans has adverse implications for the macroeconomic stability of developing countries,” Balanza said.
Rohey John, Gambia's environment minister, said the absence of a financial commitment from rich nations suggests “they are not interested in the development of the rest of the mankind.”
“Each and every day we wake up to a crisis that will wipe out a whole community or even a whole country, to a crime that we never committed," she said.
The G20's mention of the need for strong climate finance and especially the replenishment of the International Development Association gives a boost to negotiators in Baku, ECCO's Bergamaschi said.
“G20 Leaders have sent a clear message to their negotiators at COP29: do not leave Baku without a successful new finance goal,” United Nations climate secretary Simon Stiell said. “This is an essential signal, in a world plagued by debt crises and spiraling climate impacts, wrecking lives, slamming supply chains and fanning inflation in every economy.”
But the G20 failed to talk about how much the funds will be for the new goal, said Shepard Zvigadza, from South Africa’s Climate Action Network. “This is a shame,” he said.
Analysts and activists said they were also worried because the G20 statement did not repeat the call for a transition away from fossil fuels, a hard-fought concession at last year's climate talks.
Veteran climate talks analyst Alden Meyer of the European think tank E3G said the watering down of the G20 statement on fossil fuel transition is because of pressure by Russia and Saudi Arabia. He said it is "just the latest reflection of the Saudi wrecking ball strategy" at climate meetings.
There's also debate in Baku about whether to reiterate last year's statement calling for transition away from fossil fuels.
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Activists participate in a demonstration against fossil fuels at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
People arrive for the day at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)
Bolivia foreign policy director and Like-Minded Group chair Diego Balanza speaks during a plenary session at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
Activists participate in a demonstration for climate finance at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
