This Thursday’s The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup looks at the latest fintech updates from around the world.
Job moves
SaaS RegTech provider PassFort has hired former chief commercial officer at ComplyAdvantage, Ray Ryan, and Valitors former CMO and Managing Director, UK and Ireland Dr Christine Bailey as chief revenue officer and chief marketing officer respectively. They have joined the company to strengthen its sales and marketing functions.
Mark Skehill has been appointed enterprise sales manager – UK and Western Europe at ECOMMPAY as part of the companies continued growth. Skehill spent two years as UK merchant development manager at Klarna
Elsewhere, Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc. announced the appointment of Ian Strudwick as general manager and head of Asia-Pacific. Bringing 23 years of experience to the role, his appointment comes as part of Broadridge’s strategy to capitalise on opportunities the firm sees for strong business growth in the post-pandemic recovery.
European neobroker BUX has secured two new additions to its leadership team to further accelerate its international expansion. Mark Lamers RC, former managing director financial institutions group advisory at ABN Amro, will be taking over as CFO, and former vice president of people at Catawiki, Erin Stewart, will be the new head of people and culture.
Ohpen has appointed Xandea Niehe as chief people and culture officer, overseeing all people and culture related matters, including managing the successful integration of Ohpen and Davinci, following Davinci’s acquisition last year.
Partnerships
Delaget has partnered with DailyPay to help them gain an advantage in the QSR industry and maintain successful operations. The partnership also provides DailyPay with single API access, opening the door to opportunities with over 100,000 QSR locations in multiple brands.
Swedish esports organisation Ninjas in Pyjamas and cryptocurrency infrastructure company Mercuryo have partnered for BLAST Premier Spring Finals to onboard the esports community to the future of finance. “Esports and fintech have a lot in common; passion, problem-solving, and the ability to think several steps ahead. In gaming, this set of skills can secure victory. In the financial industry, they help drive innovation,” said Petr Kozyakov, CEO at Mercuryo.
Fluent Money Group has announced its partnership with NerdWallet for for secured loans, mortgages and equity release in the UK marketplace, supporting the aggregator with building its brand and market share.
Meanwhile, Banking as a Service solutions provider, Bankable, European licensed digital bank Aion Bank and cloud native financial services platform Vodeno have announced a 10 year multilayered partnership for all European Markets and the UK. The alliance will target EU and non-EU banks wishing to build a strong multi-currency offering.
Investment app HeyTrade teams up with Veriff, a global identity verification provider. By integrating Veriff, HeyTrade clients can validate the authenticity of their identity by photographing their government-iisued ID and a selfie, which Veriff will check for and match, taking less than 5 minutes to create and account and begin trading.
Skrill, has announced a multi-country collaboration with Wix, with the Skrill payment gateway no integrated with Wix to provided millions of business owners the ability to accept payments within hours of connecting. The payment gateway allows businesses to accept payments in over 40 currencies.
Elsewhere in payments, emerchantpay has partnered with cryptocurrency exchange platform, Bittrex Global, to enable customers to purchase digital assets instantly using debit and credit cards, in a faster and more seamless experience.
Funding rounds and investments
Dutch AI company Sentinels has raised £4.9million in a seed funding round led by INKEF Capital. The startup has raised a total of £7.3million to date, using the funding to further grow the product and expand its operations into the UK and beyond Europe.
Glint, a gold-based payments system. has announced a new simultaneous crowdfunding round in the UK and US through Seedrs and Republic respectively. The crowdfunding round aims to raise £2million to fund key strategic hires, growth marketing, further product innovation and the development of new revenue steams by facilitating fold to be purchased with bitcoin.
Latin American Open finance API platform Belvo, has raised a $43million Series A funding round with participation from new prominent gloval investors such as Future Positive and Kibo Ventures. This is the largest ever Series A funding round for a fintech company recorded in LAtin America, showing that open finance represents an opportunity to transform the regions financial sector.
Meanwhile, WealthOS has reased $800,000 in seed funding to support the development of a UK-focused cloud-native core wealth management platform capable of supporting an end-to-end wealth proposition.
Canadian remittances and payments start-up WorkerAppz has raised $1.5million itn its pre-seed round, and is now poised to raise $10million for expansion. The seed funding will enable the companies expansion plan into the “direct-to-consumer” business in the UK, Europe and the Middle East, as well as other emerging economies.
Tajir, a Lahore-based B2B E-Commerce marketplace, has raised $17million in a series A round, led by Kleiner Perkins. The company plans to use the funds to expand to Karachi, one of Pakistans largest cities.
Announcements and Launches
Carrousel Digital, and its partner Marbeuf Conseil et Recherche, has announced the launch of Moneytak, a system that enables the transmission of funds and/or documents between two electronic objects without requiring connection to a server at the time of the transaction. The ability to function off network could “revolutionise” the field of electronic payments.
UK based money app Ziglu has launched a new investment product, Sterling Boost for customers looking for a better return on their savings accounts and who are willing to invest to achieve it. Offering an interest rate of 5% APY, the product accepts balances of between £1 and £10,000 and offers instant penalty-free access to funds.
Yoyo has launched its bank card linked loyalty scheme, automatically applying relevant retail loyalty to customers via bank card payments. This allows customers to have a one-tap payment experience while still being rewarded as they shop.
A fintech provider of working capital solutions, Taulia, has announced it is expanding its global footprint and growing its presence in Asia. With an established presence in China and Singapore, this growth follows a $60 million strategic investment.
The AEFI (Spanish Association of Fintech and Insurtech) has launched the “Fintech for Everyone” initiative, designed to enhance knowledge of the Fintech and insurtech ecosystem.
Elsewhere, Linktree has announced the launch of their Passion Fund partnership with Square. The Passion Fund will award creators, business owners, activists or “anyone with a big dream” with an investment and the tools to help turn their passion into a career.
Alibaba Cloud and BMW Startup Garage China, have announced the opening of the Join Innovation Base in Shanghai, China. The Base will harness the respective strengths and resources from both BMW and Alibaba to empower Chinese tech startups for scaling up their innovations.
Global fintech Quint Group is set to join Bruntwood SciTech’s growing tech community at Glasshouse, Alderly Park. The community features over 500 science and tech businesses across the UK, and includes access to business support and community programmes that help firms find talent, collaborate and enter new markets.
Finally, Bit2Me, a Spanish cryptocurrency platform, has just launched Bit2Me Trade, the first high-frequency crypto trading platform developed by the exchange. The too is aimed at investors and traders interested in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Other News
NBK’s Group Digital Office won the award of Best Financial Innovation Lab in Kuwait for 2021 in the annual survey conducted by the international Global Finance magazine. NBK is the first bank in Kuwait to receive this award, which comes in recognition of the successful initiatives launched by the bank as part of its digital transformation roadmap.
