Welcome to Thursday’s edition of The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup
Job moves
Reward Gateway, a global employee engagement company, has welcomed Nick Burns as its new CEO. Burns joins the company from Arthur J. Gallagher & Co, where he served as CEO of Gallagher’s UK Employee Benefits Consulting Division. Burns has also previously served as CEO of PIFC Group, Bluefin Corporate Consulting and Capita Employee Solutions.
The Hedera Governing Council has unveiled two new members of the executive team. Tech and foreign policy expert Nilmini Rubin joins as chief of staff and head of global policy. While Betsabe Botaitis joins as chief financial officer. The appointments follow the further decentralisation of Hedera earlier this year, in which the product, engineering, and marketing departments of Hedera spun off into Swirlds Labs.
PayU, the online payment service provider, has appointed Keren Ben Zvi as head of data. Prior to joining PayU she served as VP of data at Perion, a global technology firm in the digital advertising ecosystem. Ben Zvi will further bolster PayU’s data capabilities to deliver even more detailed insights to PayU’s merchant customers globally.
Fintech Zai appoints Jose Barroso as its new general manager for ANZ. Barroso has been promoted into the role, previously holding the position of sales director ANZ at Zai. He brings over a decade of sales and management experience to the role, previously holding positions at Australia Post and Catch Group.
More appointments
GIG Gulf, a MENA insurance provider, names Caroline Bertrand as chief HR officer. Already serving as the company’s chief marketing, digital and customer experience officer, Caroline Bertrand’s appointment to her added role is strategically geared towards connecting GIG Gulf’s employee experience with the delivery of an outstanding customer experience. She will also focus on implementing inclusive career development strategies and nurturing a diverse regional workforce.
Commerce platform Lightspeed Commerce has appointed Kady Srinivasan as its chief marketing officer. Srinivasan joins Lightspeed from Klaviyo, a SaaS marketing automation technology provider, where she served as SVP, global head of marketing.
Digital technology services consultancy Fimatix strengthens its team with capital markets and banking industry expert David Beatts. David joins to increase the support available to customers looking for both business and digital transformation advisory and delivery services.
Mergers and acquisitions
Investcorp, the alternative investment firm, has agreed to acquire Marble Point, a US-based CLO manager. Upon closing of the transaction, Marble Point will be combined with Investcorp Credit Management. The combined platform will manage $2 billion in assets and rank among the top 15 CLO managers globally by AUM.
Access PaySuite, a division of The Access Group Access, has confirmed the acquisition of Pay360. The deal will strengthen Access PaySuite’s payments processing capabilities by adding card payments and Payment Facilitation (PayFac) to its existing payments solutions.
ClearCourse, a group of technology brands providing integrated software and payments solutions, announces the acquisition of Sellerdeck. The company will form part of ClearCourse’s Retail Division and expands the latter’s established and growing footprint in the e-commerce space.
Funding and investments
Drata, a continuous security and compliance automation platform, bags $200million in Series C funding co-led by ICONIQ Growth and GGV Capital. The latest round of funding doubles Drata’s valuation to $2billion since its Series B in November 2021. Alkeon Capital also made a significant investment in this round.
Meanwhile, Syncfy, an open finance platform in Latin America, secures $10million in Seed funding. The investment round was led by Point72 Ventures and includes investments from JAM Fund, Ausum Ventures, Avalancha Ventures, FJ Labs, MANTIS Venture Capital and XBTO Humla Ventures. Notable angel investors also included Tether co-founder Brock Pierce and Hartmut Neven.
OneOrder, the MENA-based fintech-enabled restaurant management platform, has closed a $3million Seed round. Led by Nclude, this round also sees follow-on investment from MENA early-stage VC, A15. New to the round is Delivery Hero Ventures, whose managing partner Brendon Blacker also joins the OneOrder board. It will use the latest capital injection to bolster its in-house operations and tech talent and scale its sales force. In addition, the platform will deploy additional capital into scaling its offline presence.
Earn Alliance, a game community platform, has closed a $4.75million seed raise to connect game developers with genuine fans and gamers across the globe. The alpha version of Earn Alliance’s platform is set to launch on 15 December. This round was co-led by CoinFund and Fabric Ventures with participation also by Blockchain Coinvestors, Animoca Brands, Stake Capital and Athena Ventures.
Partnerships
Hub71, Abu Dhabi’s global tech ecosystem, and The Mohammed Bin Salman Foundation (MiSK Foundation) have partnered to ease international market access for startups and technology companies between Abu Dhabi and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The partnership will benefit founders seeking a soft-landing into the Saudi Arabia or Abu Dhabi technology ecosystem.
Identity marketing firm SheerID has joined forces with Worldpay from FIS. The strategic partnership will help merchants on the Worldpay platform provide segmented discounts and offers to consumer communities such as students, the military, teachers, healthcare workers, first responders, seniors, young adults and new movers.
OKQ8 partners with Enfuce around card issuing modernisation. OKQ8’s closed-loop fuel card offerings will be transformed into open-loop Visa-branded cards, thanks to Enfuce’s unified and agile back-end solution. Enfuce’s stringent standards and flexible platform, including FIN-FSA approval and PCI DSS Level One compliance, ensure OKQ8 has a scalable issuing solution out of the box.
BNY Mellon and Baton Systems have announced a new collaboration to integrate Baton’s Core-Collateral™solution into BNY Mellon’s collateral management platform. This integration will enable mutual clients to optimise portfolio allocations and accelerate the mobilisation of cash and securities collateral across both uncleared and cleared margin obligations globally.
More partnerships
Swedish fintech companies Froda and Treyd join forces to provide merchants better growth financing. The partnership will launch in Sweden and the UK, with the ambition to expand across Europe. Treyd now becomes the first partner to join Froda’s new solution Embedded financing, an API-based loan engine which uses smart credit-scoring algorithms.
Currencycloud has partnered with South Korea-based global remittance and payment provider SentBe to improve the regional reach of its payments service and offer its Korean consumers and businesses a more streamlined, customised experience when sending money internationally.
Orange Bank has deployed real-time sanctions screening with SAS and Neterium. SAS and Neterium collaborated to align Neterium’s cloud-native real-time ‘watchlist screening-as-a-service’ with SAS Visual Investigator. The combination gives Orange Bank automated entity and transaction screening against major government and global watchlists as well as politically exposed persons (PEP) lists.
Airwallex is partnering with Agoda, a global digital travel platform, to make travel planning easier for Hong Kong SMEs and startups. Airwallex Hong Kong customers can enjoy exclusive discounts on accommodation bookings using their Airwallex Borderless Cards.
