The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Thursday brings you the latest fintech news from around the world. Today, we see funding success for fintech in3, while OpenPayd unveils a new head of payments infrastructure.
Job appointments
EIS, a core and digital platform provider for insurers, has unveiled Rory Yates as head of strategy for EMEA. As its second key senior hire in six months, Yates will help grow operations as well as focus on ESG. Yates most recently founded digitalpoverty.co.uk and also led the formation of the E-Alliance at COP26.
MetaVerse Green Exchange (MVGX) , a digital green exchange licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, has appointed Eddie Hui as its new chief operating officer. Hui leads crypto-related initiatives with the aim of creating a bridge between traditional finance and the digital asset world. MVGX also plans to launch a mobile app by next month.
Meanwhile, TotallyMoney has appointed Henry Pearce as head of data. Joining from Tandem Bank, Pearce will help develop and roll-out upcoming features, including personalised updates and tips to help improve credit eligibility. TotallyMoney reports substantial growth in the last year, growing its workforce by over 20 per cent.
Fintech challenger Allica Bank has promoted Ravneet Shah to chief technical officer. She joined Allica in January 2020 as lead integration engineer, following Allica’s application for a banking licence. Allica also recently acquired AIB’s £0.6billion SME lending portfolio and plans to launch a Business Rewards Account later this year.
Additional job moves
James Anderson has joined the board of fintech Dwolla. Anderson previously served as the executive vice president of commercial and B2B solutions at Mastercard where he was responsible for its products and programmes targeted at business users. He will help Dwolla navigate the challenges of driving market disrupting product launches.
Fintech firm AccessFintech appoints Fabrice Carrier as head of derivatives product line. Carrier has previously held several senior management roles at J.P. Morgan. AccessFintech has recently expanded into the derivatives space following the rollout of settlements, pre matching, regulation, loans and payments confirmations.
E-commerce growth platform Wayflyer hires Rebecca Weizenecker as head of US sales. She joins from invoice payment fintech Now. Weizenecker also spent several years as head of direct sales at Kabbage. She is tasked with growing the breadth and capabilities of the sales function to reach more e-commerce businesses across the US.
OpenPayd, the global payments and banking-as-a-service platform, appoints Barry O’Sullivan as head of payments infrastructure. O’Sullivan is responsible for enhancing OpenPayd’s product offering, adding new payment capabilities that enable the business to reach its ambitious growth targets.
Mergers and acquisitions
Blockdaemon, a blockchain infrastructure company, has acquired cryptocurrency API company Gem. The acquisition follows Blockdaemon’s recent Series C of $207million. As a result, Blockdaemon will immediately generate transaction-based revenue, a key strategic business model for the firm going forward.
CircleCI, a unicorn-valued platform, has snapped up Ponicode Ponicode, the AI-powered testing platform. They say combining Ponicode’s testing capabilities with CircleCI’s continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform will be transformative for software engineering teams as tasks continue to ‘shift left’ a growing trend enabling increased software quality and velocity.
Funding and investments
mmob, a UK embedded finance network, has bagged a £5million seed round. The investment was raised from a group of angel investors including high net worth individuals and senior banking executives. mmob will use the investment to advance the development of its technology platform, enter new markets including Malaysia, and further its leadership position within embedded finance.
in3, a Dutch buy now, pay later fintech firm enjoys a $11.1million funding round from Finch Capital. In addition, in3 is launchging free BNPL services for consumers, starting in the Netherlands, through a partnership with global digital payments company Worldline.
Fintech platform Money View has raised $75million in its series D funding from Tiger Global, Winter Capital, EvolvenceIndia, Accel as well as other investors. The company is now valued at $625million. The fresh funding will be used as growth capital to scale the core credit business. It will also help grow the team, and expand its product portfolio.
Meanwhile, digital platform CoFi has secured $7million in seed funding. The round, led by Blackhorn Ventures, Metaprop and Tenacity, will help CoFi process billions of dollars in active loan requests nationwide. With the new funding, CoFi will also ‘help builders address the country’s housing supply crisis’.
Brazilian fintech Noh raises $3million seed funding. The round was led by Kindred Ventures with contributions also from Positive Ventures, Biz Stone and Future Positive. Noh’s first product, an app that functions as a shared digital wallet, will launch in mid-March. Noh’s ultimate goal is to become the country’s main payment method.
Additional funding news
Gridline has enjoys a $9million funding round following the launch of its digital platform for alternative investments last month. This capital will help the company accelerate growth by scaling investment, sales and marketing teams to double headcount over the next 12 months.
Atlan has closed its $50million Series B round led by Insight Partners, Salesforce Ventures and Sequoia Capital India. Several founders in the data space participated in the round including Taylor Brown and Ajeet Singh. The latest investment follows eight months after a $16million Series A. It plans to use this funding to expand its current team across all functions and accelerate its go-to market strategy.
Meanwhile, Stax, an all-in-one payments platform, has secured funding of $245million. Led by sibling co-founders Suneera Madhani and Sal Rehmetullah, Stax celebrates this significant milestone at a time when less than three per cent of venture capital goes to minorities and less than one per cent of venture capital goes to businesses with women of color CEOs.
Swedish insurtech Insurely secures €19million in Series A Funding Round. The company will use the funds to scale the business into new markets in Europe. The funding round was led by Insight Partners with participation also from Alfvén & Didrikson. The company had previously raised €3million.
Finally, Nordic challenger Lunar has raised an additional €70million in Series D-2 funding and launched a new Nordic crypto platform. It brings the Series D total to €280million. Existing investors participated in the funding round, following a Series D led by Heartland alongside Kinnevik, Tencent and IDC Ventures.
Partnerships
Zipmex, Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing digital assets platform, is expanding its ecosystem with NFTs and metaverse activation through the latest strategic partnership with Polygon Studios, the NFT and gaming arm of the Polygon blockchain.
B2B alternative finance provider Growth Lending has partnered with Currencycloud. The partnership enables Growth Lending to automate its payments through Currencycloud’s API. Clients will enjoy rapid access to funds, greater flexibility and access to leading FX solutions.
Global AI-powered credit decision platform provider Scienaptic AI is helping Forest Area Federal Credit Union. The Union selects Scienaptic’s platform for AI-based credit underwriting to enable deeper automation of lending and more approvals.
FOO, the B2B SaaS solution provider, has partnered with NymCard, MENA’s only BaaS provider, to provide an out-of-the-box digital payment solutions for innovators in MENA. FOO’s Multi-Lingual Converged Wallet Platform combines with NymCard’s fast-track card issuing platform to help innovators create unique business proposition through card programmes.
Meanwhile, Marqeta, the card issuing platform, has teamed up with Citi Commercial Cards. Citi has selected Marqeta’s tokenisation-as-a-service capabilities to facilitate the provisioning of cards into mobile wallets. Marqeta’s functionality will integrate with Citi’s existing systems and enable Citi’s global cardholder base to provision corporate plastic cards as well as virtual cards into mobile wallets.
More industry collaborations
Railsbank has forged a partnership with Sodexo Engage, the UK employee engagement firm. The global embedded finance experience platform is now the BIN sponsor for the Sodexo Engage Spree Card programme. Following the partnership, Sodexo Engage can continue to ‘provide a smooth and secure end-to-end payment process to all of its card holders’.
Payments platform Paysafe has appointed J.P. Morgan as its core banking provider. The global financial services firm’s work for Paysafe will be led from its payments business, which combines cash management, payment solutions and merchant services for corporate clients, financial institutions as well as governments.
Digital lending platform Oakbrook is piloting Experian’s Work Report tool, a feature of Experian’s Affordability Passport, to enhance its loan application process. Using the Work Report feature, customer’s applying for a loan with Oakbrook will be able to give consent to share their employment information in a single digital exchange.
Fraugster, a payment intelligence company, has partnered with e-mobility innovator elvah to provide a managed service risk solution. This collaboration lets elvah access compliance, chargeback protection, risk management solutions and credit scoring through one AI platform and integration. Fraugster will support elvah to detect friendly fraud, identity theft, and abuse by enriching AI data for accurate, real-time decisions.
Wizz Financial, a fintech specialising in cross-border payments, is collaborating with NPCI International Payments Ltd to create a live digital payment platform. It leverages various platforms developed by NPCI, using open-source technologies.
Launches
New fintech Atlantic Money, the international money transfer app, has launched promising to save customers £100s every year. Co-founders Neeraj Baid and Patrick Kavanagh were early employees of trading platform Robinhood. Atlantic Money offers live mid-market currency rate and a flat fixed-fee of £3 for transfers up to £1,000,000.
Hummingbird has launched the Investigation Canvas for compliance professionals following a recent $30million Series B raise and partnership with Chainalysis. Investigation Canvas is a redesigned workspace for compliance and risk professionals to reimagine investigations work. It lets companies bring in multiple external data sources to provide users with a more holistic picture of crime and fraud.
Meanwhile, fintech Bud has announced its Australian launch after receiving accreditation from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to provide open banking services. Bud has worked with ANZ in New Zealand on providing more automated affordability checks for the last year.
Finally, Likvidi, a sustainable finance company, announces the launch of its carbon trading platform and carbon credits. The ‘Liquid Carbon Credit’ (LCO2) is a tokenised carbon credit designed to be traded at high liquidity on Likvidi’s own platform and on other blockchain-based exchanges and platforms.
