Welcome to The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Tuesday 08 August 2023.
Partnerships
Yonder, the all-in-one platform to automate health insurance and retirement benefits for growing teams, today announced it is working with Smart Pension, UK workplace pension provider, to enable companies and their UK-based employees to easily administer and enrol in a workplace pension.
Tabit, B2B BNPL solution provider powered by Merchant Growth, and Jifiti, a multinational embedded lending company, announced their partnership to serve B2B merchants in the Canadian market.
LongHashX, a Web3 accelerators with the strong network in Asia, is continuing its longstanding partnership with Protocol Labs, the creator of Filecoin and IPFS, to launch the Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) Genesis Accelerator. The 12-week program, aims to accelerate the growth of 25-30 projects leveraging the power of data programmability now enabled in the Filecoin network through FVM.
Additional partnerships
Paymentology, a global issuer-processor, has partnered with DolarApp, the Mexican start-up which provides digital dollar accounts to consumers across Latin America.
Protean eGov Technologies Limited, a regtech company, has joined forces with PayNearby, Indian branchless banking and digital network, to make credit services more accessible and affordable for Indians across the country.
Industry updates
SumUp have announced a new, $100million credit facility from Victory Park Capital to launch and accelerate its merchant cash advance product.
Equisoft, the global digital solutions and pensions technology ISP provider and supplier, announced a Gallagher Company, has adopted Pension Fusion as its selected ISP to support its own clients in the move to the Pensions Dashboard.
The payabl. Group, a European paytech, announced that it has secured an Electronic Money Institution authorisation (EMI licence) in the UK. This marks a pivotal moment for the payabl. Group as it continues its rapid growth trajectory.
The Saudi Esports Academy celebrated the first batch of graduates from its Master’s degree and Diploma programs, with the achievements of more than 300 students recognised in a graduation ceremony held at Boulevard Riyadh City.
Credas Technologies, identity verification checks provider, has announced the launch of its brand new AML/IDV platform, bringing three years of innovative development and millions of pounds of investment to estate and letting agents across the UK to aid in their war against money laundering.
Funding rounds and investments
Kore, the regtech Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform that enables large financial institutions to fast track regulatory compliance has raised just under £2.4million from Wealth Club members under the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) in a heavily oversubscribed round.
Digital investment platform Mnaara has completed a $500,000 pre-seed round funded by investors from the UK, US, Middle East and Singapore. The round will enable Mnaara to grow its team and continue developing its Shariah-compliant investment solutions catering to the globally underserved mass-affluent market.
Resilience announced a $100million equity financing round to accelerate its global expansion and scale the adoption of its holistic cyber risk platform, the Resilience Solution, which launched earlier this year.
Mergers and acquisitions
Unicard LTD, a provider of smart ticketing and payment solutions to the public and commercial transport sector, announced its acquisition of smart ticketing specialists Ecebs from Visa, in a market transaction that will enable Unicard to offer a more comprehensive range of solutions in the UK, and abroad.
XBTO Global, a comprehensive platform for digital assets and tailored investment solutions, announced its strategic acquisition of secure digital assets custody and trading platform, Stablehouse, subject to regulatory approval. The acquisition will power the custody offering of XBTO’s platform, and expands the suite of digital asset services that can be offered to institutional investors.
Appointments
Business payments company, FLEETCOR Technologies, Inc. have announced the appointment of Gerald Throop to its board of directors. Throop is the third new director appointed this year as part of FLEETCOR’s Board refreshment initiative.
Mortgage and housing expert, Jackie Bennett OBE joins Climate X, the climate risk analytics platform, as advisor to help Britain’s financial institutions prepare for climate change.
MPOWER Financing, a mission-driven fintech firm and provider of non-cosigned loans to students from around the world, announced that Anand Cavale has joined as chief growth officer to support their next phase of growth.
Nick Tsui has been appointed crypto trader and options specialist at AltTab Capital, the international cryptocurrency and digital assets hedge fund company. His appointment will strengthen and expand its portfolio management team.
Utimaco, a global provider of IT security solutions, has announced Cindy Provin has joined Utimaco as the company’s new Chief Sales and Strategy Officer for its Telecom Solutions business.
