This Tuesday’s The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup delivers fintech stories from around the world. Ledger launches enterprise solutions division for institutions, while upSWOT secures $4.3million in seed funding.
Job moves
Hedwige Nuyens, MD of the International Banking Federation, has joined Vesttoo‘s advisory board. The Israeli insurance firm says it will benefit from Nuyens’ experience in finance and banking as it expands its insurance-linked asset classes as uncorrelated, stable income investments.
Data technology firm Tactile Mobility has appointed Shahar Bin-Nun as CEO. Bin-Nun joins after six years as CEO of HumanEyes Technologies. Tactile Mobility also recently announced two new products – UX/UI mapping capabilities and tire tread depth measurement.
Wave Financial Group, a regulated digital asset investment manager, is on a hiring spree with four new additions. Justin Chuh is now senior trader at Wave, Heidi Pease is head of investment products, while Samuel Eisner joins as an analyst. Finally, Lana Anderson is its new operation assistant.
Meanwhile, financial transaction lifecycle management firm SmartStream Technologies has appointed Neil Sheppard as global head of business development for TLM corporate actions services. He will focus on expanding the firm’s presence in the asset servicing sector, as well as accelerating growth strategy.
Further appointments
Trovata, which automates cash workflows, has unveiled Scott Harrington as its CFO. Trovata recently announced a $20million Series A funding round, as well as the launch of its Enterprise Treasury Cloud. Harrington joins to help ‘grow and scale the business’.
Sandstone Technology has appointed Katherine Dziaman as chief financial and operating officer. She replaces Pow-Chuan Lee, who recently left the organisation. Dziaman, previously group CFO for Tonic Health Media, has plans for ‘scaling up this great business’.
Yasmin Lalanu is FinTech Innovation Lab’s new co-head, responsible for managing the lab’s 12-week accelerator programme. It provides early- and growth-stage enterprise tech companies access to 44 top financial institutions to help them develop products and business strategies.
Finally, data provider Macrobond has appointed John Leffler as vice president for the Americas to expand the business in Canada, the US and South America. In addition, Chris Seaman joins as regional managing director in the UK to oversee business in the UK, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and MENA.
Partnerships
Digital payments brand Skrill is marching on together with Leeds United as an official partner of the club. Skrill will also offer a live payments option on the Premier League side’s international online store. In addition, Skrill will work closely with the Yorkshire club to produce a range of exclusive content campaigns to provide fans with additional player access and entertainment.
Nest Bank in Poland has chosen Fiserv to provide debit and credit card programmes, including traditional and online card issuing and fraud monitoring. Nest Bank becomes one of the first banks in Poland to offer online card issuing.
Paysafe has expanded its partnership with PointsBet, the global sportsbook operator. PointsBet allows Michigan-based customers to deposit funds using credit and debit cards, processed through Paysafe’s payment network, as well as ACH bank transfer via checking and savings accounts.
Plaid has forged a partnership with Codat to improve ‘SME lending’ in the UK. They say that 57 per cent of all SME credit applications are either abandoned because they are too hard, or rejected. Firms can now access bank data from Plaid and accounting, POS and commerce from Codat to ‘quickly gain access to capital’.
More collaborations
Payroll technology provider Symatrix has partnered with fintech Wagestream in order to strengthen its financial wellbeing offering to customers. Symatrix will integrate Wagestream’s solution into its existing cloud payroll packages. Wagestream’s solution provides workers with a percentage access to their earned wages.
Fulham Football Club has kicked off an official partnership with global currency account provider Sokin. During the three-year partnership, Sokin will create content featuring the London club’s first team players, as well as B2B testimonials and case studies.
There’s a new partnership between AIKON and Coincover that aims to bring a ‘new level of security to the cryptocurrency industry’. The pairing will develop ORE Vault, which includes cryptocurrency theft cover, an insurance-backed guarantee underwritten by Lloyd’s of London.
Classic gaming brand Atari has forged a strategic partnership agreement with digital assets e-commerce firm Bondly. Collaboration will initially focus on collections of dedicated NFTs covering gaming and music. Digital collectibles will be up for grabs using Atari ($ATRI) and Bondly ($BONDLY) native cryptocurrencies, as well as and major cryptocurrencies.
Finally, Tesco Bank has joined forces with insurance comparison websites Quotezone.co.uk and CompareNI.com. The new digital partnership rewards consumers who purchase one of Tesco Bank’s car insurance products through the websites with a discount on their premium.
Funding and investments
DIEM, a UK-based circular economy-oriented fintech startup, has secured a seed investment round of $5.5million. The financing will boost DIEM’s acceleration plans in expanding its consumer base both in UK and the pan-European region. The investment round was led by Fasanara Capital and supported by Chris Adelsbach, founder of Outrun Ventures.
Lumio, the personal money manager, has raised £1.15million in seed round funding. Angel investors included Matteo Berlucchi, William Frewen, Richard Fearn and Ben Lundie as well as 1,287 crowd investors. Funds will be used to ‘accelerate product intelligence and personalisation’ as well as ‘scale Lumio internationally’.
Meanwhile, STOKR raises €3.9million in total investments from iFinex Inc, Borderless Capital, Utopia Genesis Foundation and G1 Ventures. The digital marketplace for alternative assets has plans to scale up its investment platform to meet growing demand for EU-compliant security token offerings.
Exabel closes $9million seed round to accelerate new data partnerships and launches alternative data insights product. Its fourth seed investment round from investor AWC (formerly Awilhelmsen Capital Holdings), brings its total capital raised to more than $21million.
Lendo, the Saudi Arabia-based shari’ah compliant lending marketplace, has raised $7.2million. The Series A funding round was led by Derayah Ventures, with participation from Seedra, Shorooq Partners, 500 Startups and Impact46.
More investments
Meanwhile, fintech platform upSWOT has achieved a $4.3million seed round. The company, which connects, collects and normalises data from more than 120 business software tools, intends to expands it US footprint. Common Ocean Ventures led the seed round with participation from CFV Ventures, ICBA, First Southern National Bank, as well as SpeedUp Venture Group.
Genesis has closed a $45million Series B funding round led by Accel. GV, Salesforce Ventures and existing investors Citi, Illuminate Financial and Tribeca Venture Partners also took part. It plans to scale up sales, marketing and engineering, international expansion and further develop the platform’s functionality.
Finally, IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and the IFC Financial Institutions Growth Fund, are helping to increase access to digital payment solutions for SMEs in Africa through an investment in South Africa-based fintech group Adumo. Adumo, South Africa’s largest independent payment provider, has a presence in 13 African countries.
Launches
Epos Now, the payments technology company, has launched its cloud point of sale solution in Nigeria. Its first entry into the African market follows a year of expansions into Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, Spain and Latin America.
Meanwhile, ADQ in Abu Dhabi has developed DisruptAD to consolidate the entity’s venture capital efforts under a unified platform. DisruptAD’s activities will include investments in startups and venture capital funds, as well as the creation of new incubators and accelerators to support Abu Dhabi’s evolution as a global startup destination.
Announcements
Proceed Group, specialists in SAP data and document management, has opened an office in Denmark. Nick Parkin, CEO at Proceed Group, describes the Nordics as ‘a particularly important region for us, as we’ve seen a significant level of interest for our products and services here’.
Ledger has announced the formation of Ledger Enterprise Solutions, a new business unit dedicated to bringing digital asset custody and security solutions to the institutional world. Ledger Enterprise Solutions will be led by vice president of business solutions Jean-Michel Pailhon. Its mission is to ‘enable the digital assets industry to become a multi-trillion dollar industry’.
“Ledger Enterprise Solutions represents our company’s investment in the future of broad-scale financial adoption of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets by enterprise-class businesses.”
