Welcome to The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Thursday 11 May.
Appointments
Validus, a Southeast Asia SME business account and financing platform, names Anshul Johri as group chief technology officer. Prior to joining Validus, Johri spent six years as head of engineering at Indonesian unicorn Traveloka. Validus also recently secured its first tranche of funds in a Series C1 round.
Wealth Dynamix has welcomed Steve D’Souza as sales manager to lead and further develop the business in the UK, USA, Middle East, South Africa and Scandinavia. He previously worked for the company as well as Fenergo, FNZ, Odyssey, Iress and Babel Systems.
Icon Solutions, a provider of solutions and technology services for payments transformation, appoints Donal Fleming as chief technology officer. He previously held CTO roles at fintech firm Credit Benchmark and payments organisation Modulr.
Simon Black, CEO of digital payments infrastructure provider of PRO, is to step down from his position on 31 December 2023. He has led the company for almost nine years. The announcement follows the completion of the integration of Alpha Fintech, acquired in March 2022; as well as the appointment of Lázaro Campos as chairman. PRO has now commenced the search for its next CEO.
Settlement service RTGS.global has strengthened its executive leadership team with the appointment of Jarrad Hubble as its permanent CEO and the appointment of Marcus Treacher as executive chair. Hubble’s appointment as CEO follows a short period as interim CEO since taking over the reins from Dave Sissens in February. Sissens remains as an advisor to the company.
Ashraf Piranie has joined Redwood Bank as chief financial officer, bringing with him more than 25 years of financial services experience. He has held previous roles at Alliance and Leicester, Islamic Bank of Britain, Nottingham Building Society and West Bromwich Building Society.
More job news
European Depositary Bank, the Luxembourg-headquartered provider of banking, depositary and custody solutions, adds Holger Barth to its board as global head of banking depositary. In this newly created role, Barth will manage and oversee the depositary bank function for assets across regulated jurisdictions including Luxembourg, Ireland, UK and Malta.
Regtech Global Screening Services (GSS) announces Stephen Gilderdale as senior advisor to the business. He joins in a part-time role advising the team on designing, building and scaling the GSS platform. He previously held roles at SWIFT, where he served as chief operating officer and, more recently, chief product officer.
OTPless, the SaaS identity management platform, adds three key executives to its leadership team. Anubhav Mathur is named CTO, Pawan Pathak as chief product officer and Sahil Chawla as chief sales officer. OTPless has also raised seed funding from a number of marquee investors.
The Payments Association appoints b.yond digital CEO Neil Harris as chair of its advisory board, with Nathalie Oestmann, COO of Outlier Ventures, taking on the role of vice chair. Harris succeeds Marion King, who held the position for two years. The Payments Association (previously the Emerging Payments Association) is a community for all companies in payments.
PayU, the online payment service provider, appoints Shiri Schneider as chief technology officer of its global payment organisation. She has over 18 years of experience in technology and management; specialising in big data, SaaS Cloud platforms and on-premises solutions. Schneider will focus on cementing PayU’s culture of innovation and professionalism and prioritise maintaining PayU’s customer-first mindset.
Partnerships
Wealth advisor Accuro has selected fintech provider Objectway as its partner to implement a new private client wealth management platform for its advisory and discretionary business. The partnership with Objectway will also help Accuro to accelerate its multi-custodian, real-time, straight-trough-processing of orders.
Tuum, the core banking platform, has joined the Amazon Web Services (AWS) partner network, following the successful completion of the AWS Foundational Technical Review and achieving AWS Qualified Software Certification. The partnership will significantly speed up the deployment of Tuum’s core banking platform and services for its customers, while also increasing flexibility and scalability.
Murex announces that Boubyan Bank, a Kuwait-based Islamic financial institution, is implementing MX.3 for Islamic Finance for its Sharia-compliant treasury activity using MXGO. The implementation enables Boubyan to increase product offerings and pursue a robust growth strategy.
BR-DGE, the payment orchestration provider, has announced a partnership with American Express to enhance the open banking capabilities for merchants. The collaboration enhances the merchant and consumer experience of payments by offering a secure and frictionless open banking payment solution.
Temenos’s core banking solutions are now available as software-as-a-service further to Temenos’ integration of its application on Amazon Web Services. With this, Temenos offers more choice to its clients as the Temenos Banking Cloud becomes one of the industry’s most comprehensive SaaS solutions covering the broadest range of regional and governance requirements, data standards and certifications.
Finastra has forged a managed services partnership agreement with Luxoft to support Finastra’s Kondor customers in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region with their cloud transformation journeys. The strategic partnership expands the companies’ long-standing relationship, which has been in place since 2006.
Company updates
London-based fintech Lanistar has opened two new offices in Dubai and Sao Paulo. Direct access to audiences in Brazil and the Middle East, two of the biggest proprietors of fintech and alternative financial technology, puts the fintech in prime industry territories.
United Fintech becomes majority owner of TTMzero. By acquiring a further 26 per cent stake in TTMzero, Danish-British United Fintech has reached the 51 per cent tipping point to gain majority ownership of the Berlin-based regtech. It is one of five acquisitions made during United Fintech’s two-and-a-half-year lifespan.
Xapo Bank, a fully licensed private bank that combines traditional banking with access to Bitcoin and stablecoins, has become the first bank in the world to integrate Tether (USDT Tether) payment rails. The bank is now enabling members to leverage the world’s most widely adopted stablecoin for payments as an alternative to time consuming and costly SWIFT rails.
Funding and investments
Firmbase has emerged from stealth, announcing $12million in funding for its financial planning and analysis (FP&A) platform. The round was led by S Capital VC with participation also from Meron Capital. Firmbase uses generative AI to simplify financial data, increasing engagement among budget owners, who play a critical role in the planning process.
In its first ever offer to external investors, data platform Filament raises £2.85million. The deal was originated and led by Wealth Club through the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS). One of Filament’s clients is Astorg, an international fund management and private equity company with over €20billion AUM.
Credit card and financial technology company Petal has raised $35million in new funding. It has also spun off its B2B-focused data infrastructure and analytics subsidiary, Prism Data. Valar Ventures led this new investment, joined by Story Ventures, Core Innovation Capital and RiverPark Ventures. This new investment will be split between Petal and Prism Data.
