Fintech partnership Monese
Fintech Fintech Ecosystems Partnerships Trending World-Region-Country

Round-Up: The Fintech Partnerships Shaping the Industry Right Now

No man is an island when it comes to fintech, and in the pursuit of a better world driven by better financial services, it’s clear that standing together means progressing together. This September at The Fintech Times, we’ll be delving into every corner of what it means to be a fintech ecosystem. We’ve dedicated the entire month to investigating what makes a successful fintech ecosystem, how fintechs can work together more effectively, as well as providing a regional view of some of the industry’s best examples of community collaboration.

Having spent the first week of our coverage into fintech ecosystems with an overview of fintech partnerships, where we considered the benefits of outsourcing, ‘coopetition‘ and payment partnerships, today we’re rounding off the week with a look into some of the fintech partnerships that have broken headlines recently.

Easy4Cloud joins forces with Fabrick to expand its offer and launch ‘BancheinCloud’ in Italy and Spain

Easy4Cloud, which operates in Italy, the UK, Spain and the USA, digitising different business areas and simplifying their management, has chosen Fabrick to expand its offer and launch BancheinCloud, a business intelligence platform for the aggregated management of current accounts through which personal, family and corporate accounts can be linked to optimising administrative work.

BancheinCloud is designed for small and medium-sized enterprises that want to digitise and automate their management; the functions implemented to allow them to extract insights, set up reports and share information with third parties as well as import invoices, carry out payment reconciliations and compile first notes automatically.

“Open banking has started a real revolution in the financial world,” comments Alberto Graziano, CEO of Easy4Cloud. “Today we have the opportunity to transform the ‘banking movement’ into digital data available in real-time; information that is useful for implementing new value-added services and designing new business processes. The digitisation of companies, especially small and medium-sized ones, is today the key to achieving efficiency and competitiveness.”

Wealthtech Abbove supports Quintet Private Bank to bring digital wealth planning to its private banking clients in Belgium

The Belgian wealthtech provider Abbove has recently partnered with Quintet Group’s Belgian branch Puilaetco to provide digital wealth planning services to its private banking clients.

With the opportunity of expanding services to up to six new European countries, including the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, and the United Kingdom, this marks another step for the company in spreading its wealth planning platform; if the Belgian pilot roll-out proves successful.

Starting this week, Puilaetco’s clients, who will use the technology under the name of ‘Richer Life Plan’, will adopt the use of the platform.

By integrating the solution into its offer, the bank’s advisors can now give its clients an overview of their family’s entire assets, as well as create detailed simulations on the evolution of their wealth and the organisation of their inheritance, through the digital platform.

Guillaume Desclée, CEO and co-founder of Abbove
Guillaume Desclée, CEO and co-founder, Abbove

“Since the beginning, it has been clear that our solution and vision are fully in tune with Quintet’s ambition,” stated Guillaume Desclée, CEO and co-founder of Abbove.

“We develop a technology that helps financial institutions throughout the entire cycle of offering holistic wealth management services: from fully understanding a client’s global situation to delivering the best solutions based on his personal needs and guaranteeing a digital and interactive client experience.

“Not only our solution as such, but also our ambition to make our platform available internationally found a match with Quintet who have the will to spread the solution across its network in Europe after this first deployment in Belgium.”

Pleo teams up with open banking provider Yapily to boost cash flow for businesses

Fintech unicorn Pleo, which offers a smart business spending solution, has formed a partnership with the open banking platform Yapily to enable a simplified payments experience for its UK users.

Research shows that 82 per cent of businesses that fail do so due to poor cash flow management. Together, Pleo and Yapily are addressing this issue through the application of open banking.

Via Yapily Payments, Pleo users can now top up their Pleo account directly from their bank account. This allows customers to receive funds instantly, side-stepping lengthy settlement times at an average of 48 hours.

Olov Eriksson, chief product officer at Pleo
Olov Eriksson, chief product officer, Pleo

As a result, businesses and employees across Europe have been able to access faster cash injections where needed, and better calculate and manage their cash flow so they’re free to pay bills promptly and be agile in seizing opportunities.

“This partnership with Yapily is all about maximising the benefits of open banking technology to enable frictionless user journeys,” explains Olov Eriksson, chief product officer at Pleo.

“Manual processes, settlement periods, and bottlenecks in cash flow are all avoidable obstacles. We want to enable our users to focus on what really matters: growing their business and empowering their people.”

EIMF enters new partnership agreement with CISI in Cyprus

The European Institute of Management and Finance (EIMF) has partnered with the UK-headquartered Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment (CISI) to become its exclusive physical accredited training partner and to support individuals and firms booking training exams and memberships in Cyprus.

As part of this effort, EIMF has expanded the range of CISI certifications that it offers and will provide the local market with the training and tools needed for success. The CISI pathways include risk and compliance, operations, capital markets, corporate finance and wealth management.

Marios Siathas, EIMF’s CEO
Marios Siathas, CEO, EIMF

“Our team is excited and eager to continue growing the CISI brand in Cyprus, now as its exclusive local distribution partner,” comments Marios Siathas, EIMF’s CEO.

“Our efforts moving forward will focus on boosting CISI’s already sterling reputation on the island, growing the range of educational opportunities available to local professionals, and providing even more value to Cypriot members,” he continues.

EIMF wants this agreement to nurture new and unique relationships with other regional and international professional bodies to work together for the betterment of the local financial services profession.

INSHUR partners with Premium Credit

INSHUR, an embedded insurance company for taxi, private hire, food and parcel delivery drivers has chosen Premium Credit as its insurance premium finance partner in the UK to deliver a more well-rounded solution that benefits its drivers.

By partnering with Premium Credit through an integration with its payment portal, INSHUR’s customers are offered a premium finance payment option compliantly, allowing customers to spread the cost of the cover.

Following its significant investment in the technology, Premium Credit was able to provide INSUHR with end-to-end integration.

“We are delighted to have partnered with Premium Credit. As a like-minded, digitally-led business, we understand each other and the importance of being able to deliver a best-in-class, tech-forward insurance offering,” discusses Milan Chavda, head of pricing at INSHUR.

“We now have a partner with the technology and the team for us to develop a long-term strategy of mutual growth,” he added. “Premium Credit’s ability to support our future digital roadmap was key to us choosing them as our insurance premium finance supplier.”

StashAway partners with BlackRock to launch a new portfolio offering

StashAway, a digital wealth platform, and BlackRock have come together to offer a suite of globally diversified multi-asset model portfolios that are built from BlackRock’s analytics and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which are managed by StashAway.

Peter Loehnert, head of ETFs and index investing APAC at BlackRock
Peter Loehnert, head of ETFs and index investing APAC, BlackRock

“We are excited that StashAway is launching portfolios powered by BlackRock’s analysis,” says Peter Loehnert, head of ETFs and index investing APAC at BlackRock.

“This partnership will give more investors across Asia access to BlackRock’s insights and investment capabilities via StashAway’s platform, offering diversified and liquid ETFs as building blocks for portfolio construction, maximising the value of ETF investing.”

The portfolios will be available to investors via the StashAway app. All new deposits into general investing powered by BlackRock will be managed for free through 31 July 2023.

Thereafter, the management fee is the same as StashAway’s other portfolios, 0.2 to 0.8 per cent per annum.

SmartStream and Kynec partner to deliver an integrated OTC bilateral and cleared margin solution

SmartStream, the financial transaction lifecycle management (TLM) solutions provider, is to deliver consolidated margin positions across global over-the-counter (OTC) cleared and bilateral markets through its newfound alliance with Kynec, a provider of front office clearing solutions.

Financial institutions are looking to better manage their collateral – this alliance integrates cleared margin data from Kynec’s Rubicon platform, together with bilateral OTC margin data from SmartStream’s TLM collateral management solution.

Robert McWilliam, CEO of Kynec
Robert McWilliam, CEO, Kynec

Collateral operations can now access this information for workflow management and reporting, whilst the front office will be able to access information directly to manage liquidity, margin funding and collateral optimisation across bilateral and cleared margin positions.

Robert McWilliam, CEO of Kynec, states: “We are very excited to form a strategic alliance with SmartStream, who I have known for many years as the leading OTC collateral management system.

“This alliance meets client needs for consolidated margin workflow and front office decision making across cleared and bilateral OTC markets,” he continues.

Exabel and Helios collaboration produces ‘comprehend: composites’ insights platform

Exabel, the data and analytics platform for investment teams, has partnered with Helios to deliver an insights capability for Helios’ investment research clients.

The insights platform, to be named ‘Comprehend: Composites’, will provide hedge funds and asset managers with curated insights based on Helios’s acoustic analysis technology. This offering is built off of the quantitative dataset of Helios.

The platform incorporates user dashboards, price forecasts and additional earnings intelligence capabilities.

Joining forces with Exabel provides alternative data vendors with a value-added presentation and monitoring layer and is backed by Exabel’s artificial intelligence (Al) analytics, financial modelling and data science platform.

Commenting on the partnership, Neil Chapman, Exabel CEO said: “We are delighted to be working with Helios to bring Comprehend: Composites to the market. Unlocking the value of tonal/acoustic properties of human speech using AI and speech analytics is at the cutting edge of what is technologically possible today.

“The team at Helios have achieved great feats in producing such valuable datasets using these techniques.

“The use of data, including alternative data, in financial markets is vital. Modelling data in-house has become a prohibitive burden in time and cost, and we are on a mission to change that.”

“We are looking forward to working with Helios to create actionable insights on its data,” continues Chapman. “Dashboards, intelligent screening and company drill down tools are just some of the features the platform can generate – all via an easy-to-use cloud interface.”

Alpian partners with Visa to offer digital payment solutions for Switzerland

The Swiss digital private bank Alpian has come together with Visa as its principal member, allowing the company to issue its metal debit card in Switzerland. 

The pairing of a metal debit card with a multi-currency current account (CHF, EUR, GBP and USD) and real-time foreign exchange capabilities with no handling fees gives each Alpian client a cost-effective means to facilitate their everyday banking needs both within Switzerland and abroad.

Ute König-Stemmler, Head of Business Development Central Europe, Visa
Ute König-Stemmler, head of business development central Europe, Visa

As a member of the Visa network, Alpian’s debit card is accepted in over 200 countries and regions and at more than 100 million merchant locations worldwide.

Ute König-Stemmler, head of business development central Europe, Visa, said: “We are very happy to welcome Alpian as a principal member at Visa, underlining the maturity of its business.

“As part of our fintech commitment, we give Alpian access to our worldwide Visa network so that they can further expand its business and offer its customers an innovative payment experience.”

The official initiation of the partnership follows the granting of a full Swiss banking license from FINMA and the successful completion of a Series B+ financing round of CHF19million. Both milestones have enabled Alpian to launch its services to select members of its waitlist, with a launch to the general public of Switzerland planned before the end of 2022.

Maps.me partners with Monavate to provide prepaid cards linked to digital wallets, powered by Mastercard

 The digital wallet Maps.me is to offer a Mastercard-backed prepaid card offering through its new partnership with the payment solutions provider Monavate.

Today’s consumers are more digital and borderless than ever and are proving to be increasingly open to using financial products that are integrated with apps that they trust.

This partnership will allow Maps.me’s 60 million users to make payments wherever Mastercard is accepted.

“This product extension means Maps.me users will be able to enjoy cashback, discounts, and other rewards when travelling, anywhere Mastercard is accepted,” said Maps.me co-founder Alex Grebnev.

“By integrating payments into an app that users already know and love, Maps.me is bringing the benefits of embedded finance to its millions of users in the form of lower costs and greater convenience. And with over a million people already on the waiting list, the demand for this is clear.”

In addition to Mastercard prepaid cards, registered Maps.me wallet iPhone users will be able to pay for goods and services globally through Apple Pay.

The Apple Pay functionality was made available on the iOS version of Maps.me last month, with activation codes being sent to users who request them in-app.

Author

  • Tyler is a fintech journalist with specific interests in online banking and emerging AI technologies. He began his career writing with a plethora of national and international publications.

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