There’s funding success for Oxbury and YAP in today’s The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup. While Cushon, Moneybox and Tarabut Gateway reveal new hires.
Job moves
Workplace pension and savings fintech Cushon has named Rachel Beagles as its new non-executive director. She will also chair Cushon’s audit and risk committee. Cushon also has ‘several exciting partnership opportunities’ planned over the next year to build on its recent growth.
Mena’s largest open banking platform Tarabut Gateway has announced key senior appointments. Nino Ocampo joins as chief product officer while Adnan Erriade is named chief commercial officer. It follows Tarabut Gateway’s four new, key banking partnerships in KSA with Riyad Bank, Saudi British Bank (SABB), Alinma Bank and Banque Saudi Fransi (BSF).
Sentinels, an intelligent transaction monitoring platform, has appointed Adrian Jenkins as chief commercial officer (CCO). The move will support the company’s expansion in the UK. He has previously held senior positions at Oracle, Arkose Labs, Vindicia and Amdocs.
The Bank of London has named Tam Holmes as its co-president & group chief product officer. He is also a member of the Group’s executive management committee. Holmes is responsible for oversight of customer and product vision, strategy and innovation. Prior to The Bank of London, he spent five years at 10X Bank.
More job moves
Caroline Murphree has joined Moneybox, the digital wealth manager, as managing director of investing retirement and savings. Murphree joins from Wealthsimple, where she was most recently CEO for Europe. She joins recent hire, Cecilia Mourain, MD, on the Moneybox executive team.
Appian Capital Advisory, the investment advisor to funds that invest solely in mining-related companies, appoints Peter Nicholson as senior advisor, head Australia and Asia. In addition to overseeing portfolio companies, he will execute portfolio investments and exits across Australia and Asia.
Mobile payments platform TPay Mobile has appointed Gaston Aussems as its new CEO. Meanwhile, founder and current CEO Sahar Salama will move into a group chairwoman position. Aussems was replaced as CEO of Mollie by Shane Happach in 2020.
Cushion, a bill pay company, has added Shariq Rizvi to its board as an independent director. He will serve as an advisor and thought partner across Cushion’s various functions including business and product strategy, fundraising, hiring and leadership.
Fintech MODIFI hires Luke Tuttle as its first general manager for trade management services, while Wenlong Huang is named general manager for China. Tuttle joins from Klarna, while Huang moves from Tencent. In May, Matthias Hendrichs also joined the company from Apple as chief commercial officer, followed by Francois Vachon as chief financial officer from Mastercard Payment Services.
Partnerships
Singlife with Aviva has unveiled a cross-industry collaboration, A Better Odyssey, to help startups and SMEs in Singapore to digitalise and scale their operations. A Better Odyssey brings together digital solutions partners, including Google and GrabForBusiness, as well as fintechs such as, Razer Fintech, ShopBack PayLater, Debia, Exabytes, Pand.ai, Quickdesk, Sleek and Volopay. These partners will work focus on empowering emerging businesses through innovative digitalisation and productivity solutions.
Knight Frank partners with Currensea to let employees donate to charity with new branded debit card. The property consultancy is offering its 2,220 UK employees a company branded, money-saving debit card which allows them to make charitable donations. It is Currensea’s first corporate partnership.
Nexi and Alpha Bank have joined forces to create Nexi Payments Greece to transform merchant solutions in Greece. The joint venture is designed to encourage the uptake of digital payment services in the country. Nexi says over the next five years it will invest more than €100million in Greece as well as hire 100 people to work on the new open platforms.
More partnerships
Meanwhile, computer brand ASUS has teamed up with payments platform 2C2P in Singapore. By integrating 2C2P’s omnichannel payment solution to the newly revamped ASUS Store, ASUS can offer customers frictionless payments using cards, PayNow QR and Instalment Payment Plan (IPP) while simultaneously
connecting its digital store to its fulfilment partners.
EasyPark has partnered with UnionPay International card network. UnionPay cardholders can now manage their parking and electric car charging by binding their UnionPay card directly in the EasyPark app across Europe. There are also plans to extend the cooperation to the UK, Australia and the US.
Swiss fintech radicant is partnering with augmented intelligence firm Squirro to provide its customers with more transparency into sustainable asset classes. radiant is using Squirro’s platform to extract insights from its unstructured data and provide customers with deeper insights into potential sustainable investments.
Funding
Oxbury Bank has completed an additional funding round to invest in the development of its Oxbury Earth core banking platform. The agtech bank has raised a further £20million in equity from investors, including Frontier Agriculture and Hutchinsons Group. Hambro Perks and Grosvenor Food & AgTech also took part.
Xelix, the ‘world’s first accounts payable control centre’, has completed a Series A investment round, raising $5milion. Led by Fintop Capital, the fundraise also incldued participation from existing investors Passion Capital and Localglobe.
UAE digital banking app YAP raises $41million to expand into new markets. The fintech platform has received regulatory approval in Pakistan and Ghana with plans to launch in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The funding round was led by Saudi Arabia-based investment company Aljazira Capital.
Fintech BKN301 has raised €15million with Series A funding, shortly after closing a first seed round a few months ago. It brings the company to a valuation of €63million. The raised capital will further the development of the open banking platform’s technological infrastructure.
Zeed, an investment platform that uses short-form video to empower Gen-Z investors in Europe, has secured £205,000 in pre-seed funding led by SFC Capital. The funding will be used to continue building the Zeed product, expanding the team and producing exclusive content.
Qatar-based fintech platform Karty has bagged $1.2million in a pre-seed round from Visa, Qatar Development Bank (QDB), Qatar Foundation and Qatar-based angel investors. The fintech app is supported by Qatar Fintech Hub (QFTH) as well as the Qatar Financial Center (QFC).
Company updates
Digital bank Zand secured a banking licence from the Central Bank of the UAE to become Zand Bank PJSC, a fully licenced bank. The announcement comes following the recent formation of Zand’s board of directors. Zand services include a range of products designed to enhance the digital experience of corporate banking.
