The Fintech Times News Roundup
Fintech Industry Roundups Trending

This Week in Fintech: TFT Bi-Weekly News Roundup 02/06

The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Thursday sees Marqeta join Mastercard partner programme in APAC, while Visa partners with Fundbox.

Funding news

Mobile identity pioneer Incognia has raised $15.5million in Series A funding led by Point72 Ventures Home. Funding will be used to support global expansion to counter billions of dollars in identity fraud losses. Within 18 months of launching in the US, Incognia is now protecting more than 200 million mobile users in over 20 countries.

Liminal, a wallet operations infrastructure, has raised $4.7million in its seed funding round led by Elevation Capital. The round also saw participation from investors LD Capital, Woodstock, Nexus Ventures and crypto ventures CoinDCX, Hashed, Cadenza Ventures, Vauld, Better Capital and Sparrow Capital. It will use the funds to invest in hiring and product development.

HyperPay, a Saudi Arabian payments services provider, has raised SAR138million in a new funding round. The round was led by Mastercard with investments also from Amwal Capital Partners and AB Ventures. The funding will support HyperPay’s regional expansion efforts as it widens its market to Egypt, Qatar and Oman. It will also drive future hires.

Fabric Ventures, the Web3 venture contributor, has closed a $140million venture fund. This is twice the original target and more than $30million above the original hard cap. Fabric Growth provides capital to support innovative web3 founders in their expansion and scaling, doubling down on initial venture investments.

Funding roundup

Partnerships

Investment platform Streetbeat has partnered with Sperax, a collateralised DeFi product that provides a 11 per cent yield, paid weekly. Sperax’s auto-yield USDs stablecoin enables investors on the Streetbeat platform to benefit from passive income without technical or financial expertise.

Cashfree Payments, a payments and API banking solutions company, has partnered with National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to provide tokenisation solutions on RuPay cards for its merchants. With this partnership, Cashfree Payments becomes a certified and compliant payment tokenisation service provider across key card networks like RuPay, Mastercard, and Visa.

Visa partners with Fundbox to enable new payment capabilities for small businesses. The collaboration strengthens payment offerings for embedded working capital platform. The first step in this collaboration is the launch of the Fundbox Flex Visa Debit Card, issued by Pathward, which helps small business customers better manage their cash outflows.

Financing platform Nav Technologies has partnered with Marcus by Goldman Sachs to offer small business owners ‘financially smart lines of credit’. Marcus by Goldman Sachs says it is working with Nav to address a growing need to offer small business owners more transparency in their financing options.

partnerships roundup

Job moves

Reltime has appointed Peter Michel Heilmann as its interim CEO. Meanwhile, founder and inventor Frode van der Laak will continue as Reltime’s CTO. Reltime is a decentralised financial (DeFi) ecosystem. Under Heilmann, Reltime will look to forge new partnerships and globally scale the company.

Jill Docherty
Jill Docherty joins GPS

Global Processing Services (GPS), the payment technology platform, has appointed Jill Docherty as director, global partnerships. Prior to GPS, she spent 15 years at Mastercard and Visa. Docherty will help o help accelerate GPS’s growth plans as it expands into new markets around the world and builds out its global partner ecosystem.

Fintech MOCA, a provider of mobile-first digital accounts, has added Shawn Sinner as president and chief revenue officer. Sinner is a former Visa payment executive. He will oversee all aspects of marketing, sales, and business development and be integral to MOCA’s strategy.

Mashreq Bank has named Rajeev Chalisgaonkar as its new head of business banking and digital bank NEOBiz. He will closely work with other business segments to capitalise on growth opportunities as well as help drive a strong value proposition through cross sell and strategic partnerships.

Meanwhile, Northern Trust unveils John Turney as global head of front office solutions while Marisa Kurk is named head of Global Foreign Exchange (GFX). Northern Trust provides asset servicing, fund administration and middle office solutions to institutional asset managers and asset owners around the globe.

CLS, a financial market infrastructure, has unveiled a new chair and five new board members. Gottfried Leibbrandt succeeds Ken Harvey as chair, who has retired after 10 years. The new directors are Brian Gallagher (JPMorgan Chase), Federica Mazzucato (UBS Investment Bank), Hari Moorthy (Goldman Sachs), Paolo Muzzarelli (Credit Suisse) as well as Oliver Stuart (Morgan Stanley).

job hires

Mergers and acquisitions

Dalberg, a social impact advisory group, has acquired Ravel, a Singapore-based company which designs and runs corporate innovation programs. They say the new offering will help investments in innovation be more socially impactful. Dalberg aims to incorporate Ravel’s innovation capabilities and networks into its global advisory, sector, and regional expertise.

Nexi has entered into a long‐term strategic partnership with BPER Banca and Banco di Sardegna. It will transfer BPER and Banco di Sardegna’s merchant acquiring and POS management businesses to Nexi. At the same time, Nexi will buy the full ownership in Numera from Banco di Sardegna.

Company updates

Digital insurer Getsafe is launching three new products in Austria. Austria is now the third market for Getsafe after Germany and the UK. Customers in Austria benefit from an end-to-end digital insurance experience, allowing them to change their coverage in real-time.

Global cryptocurrency-based fintech services group SG Veteris has opened a new office in Vilnius, Lithuania. It is also now authorised to provide exchange services for cryptocurrency against fiat currency, as well as being a cryptocurrency wallet service provider, allowing users in Lithuania to access its Bitpace and Koinal products.

Marqeta, the card issuing platform, is now part of the first cohort of companies to join Mastercard’s Network Enablement Partner (NEP) programme in the Asia Pacific region. As a NEP, Marqeta is able to offer its customers throughout the APAC region live issuance on a faster timeline. The NEP programme also provides Marqeta with access to Mastercard’s core infrastructure.

Author

  • Claire is an experienced editor and writer with 25 years of experience in the publishing industry. As a tech journalist, Claire has covered every subject possible over the years, from the launch of broadband and next generation mobile networks to the arrival of the metaverse and Web3.

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