The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Thursday sees a new CTO for Yapily and a partnership for Salv and Juni.
Appointments
Noam Oren has joined Yapily as its new CTO. He joins after 13 years at Payoneer. His appointment follows Yapily’s recent agreement to acquire leading German open banking platform finAPI and several new strategic partnerships with OpenPayd, Two and Yonder.
Flutterwave appoints Oneal Bhambani as chief financial officer. He joins from American Express where he was VP, chief financial officer and head of capital markets of its fintech Kabbage. Flutterwave recently completed its $250million in Series D funding, valuing the company at more than $3billion.
Taulia appoints Danielle Weinblatt as chief product officer. She will oversee its product organisation and execute its product vision, strategy, and development roadmap. Weinblatt will aslo focus on expanding product suites to new geographic markets.
LHV UK, the banking services provider, has appointed Sally Veitch to its board of directors as an independent non-executive director. She will also chair its audit committee and sit on the risk committee and the remuneration committee. Veitch also currently chairs the audit committee of Tipton & Coseley Building Society and advises the board of bank Perenna.
Meanwhile, Bosonic, a decentralised financial market infrastructure business, has named Yvo van Amerongen as its client solutions director. He will support collaboration between the custodians and the institutional clients such as hedge funds, family offices, private banks and brokers.
Finally, B2B payments platform Melio hires Yoav Schwartzberg as vice president of product. Schwartzberg will lead all customer-facing product lines, including Melio’s accounts payable and receivable and B2B payments platform. He joins Melio following a decade on Google’s product team.
Partnerships
Qonto, the European business finance solution, has unveiled a partnership with cryptobank Coinhouse. The pairing will enable SMEs and freelancers to invest in crypto assets. Coinhouse clients that are opening an account at Qonto will benefit from a special offer, while Qonto clients will be able to take advantage of Qonto Coinhouse Plan for free for one year.
Currencycloud has teamed up with Swiss-based Velanis AG to launch Swinto, a financial app that offers free instant money transfers to Swiss-based Kosovars. The partnership will also allow Swinto to increase its currency offerings as it expands to other regions in Western Europe and the Western Balkans, including Albania.
Regtech Salv has entered into a partnership with Swedish fintech Juni. Together, the two companies aim to raise the bar for adaptive risk mitigation in the finance sector. Salv adds additional security to Juni’s platform through its monitoring platform and screening engine.
Meanwhile, United Trust Bank (UTB) has chosen leading software specialist Alfa to transform the Bank’s asset finance operations. It provides an integrated digital solution improving broker service and supporting UTB’s ambitious growth plans.
Finally, Likvidi, a sustainable finance company, has made a strategic investment in and partnered with Albo Climate, to create Veriforest, a new registry for forest-based projects. By combining blockchain with Albo’s satellite and AI capabilities, Veriforest can accurately monitor the carbon sequestration/production of forestland which will make carbon credits more tangible than ever before.
Funding and investments
Fintech Mast raises £1.2million to accelerate buildout of its cloud-native mortgage origination platform. The round is led by Antler VC, with additional investors including founders of Booking.com, Monzo and ThirdFort. It said the funding will enable it to accelerate its product roadmap and engineering velocity considerably.
Meanwhile, payments firm TripleA has secured S$4million in funding led by Razer’s corporate ventures arm, zVentures. It follows its recent announcement that Binance selected it as its global cryptocurrency gateway. TripleA also received a licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) last November.
Berlin-based fintech Upvest secures $42million in Series B financing led by Bessemer Venture Partners. The raised capital will advance Upvest’s investment-API, as well as expand its team. Upvest has also recently secured licences from the German financial regulator BaFin for securities and crypto brokerage and custody.
Digital banking fintech Narmi has raised another $35million in its Series B funding. The company previously raised $20.4million last year in its series A funding. With this new funding, Narmi also has plans to accelerate the reach of its business digital banking platform.
Irish startup Webio, a conversational AI firm, is also celebrating funding success. It has announced a series A funding round led by Finch Capital. Webio will use the new funds to deepen its capabilities in conversational AI and additional digital offerings.
Qatari fintech startup CWallet has closed its pre-series A investment round at $875,000. The funds will be primarily used for product development, system integrations with strategic local and international partners, release of new features as well as maintaining regulatory compliance and enhancing cybersecurity.
Company updates
3S Money has revealed it has no gender pay gap as it reaches 100 employees. The fintech has a 1:1 male to female ratio of employees, with two fifths of the board and over half (57 per cent) of its department heads female. 3S Money also says it has maintained strict salary benchmarking and consistency to ensure they are competitive and aligned for all employees.
Mastercard has certified NymCard, a plug-and-play banking-as-a-service (BaaS) provider, as a Principal Mastercard Issuer in the UAE. The milestone announcement marks the first time a fintech in the UAE is licensed to issue cards by Mastercard. Through the licence, NymCard will empower digital partners, enabling them to go live in as little as a few weeks.
Africa Data Centres, part of the Cassava Technologies Group is building a second data centre in Cape Town, South Africa. The new 20MW facility will cover 15,000m2 in eight data halls and is situated on the northern periphery of Cape Town city centre.
Launches and deals
Global fintech MODIFI has launched a new free shipment tracking tool on its trade platform. Global businesses can sign in to the platform and start tracking their shipments. MODIFI’s advanced shipment tracking tool is designed to empower exporters and importers to improve cross-border logistics and excel at trade planning.
Fintech Zai is offering new and existing customers signing up to its PayTo solution will pay nothing for the first 12 months. PayTo is a new service delivered via Australia’s New Payments Platform (NPP) allowing businesses to initiate requests for real-time payments from their customers’ bank accounts. Zai says it is the first company in Australia to waive fees for creating PayTo agreements.
Meanwhile, Choco Up has launched Choco Payment. Powered by Stripe, Choco Payment is an integrated payment solution that provides revenue-based financing of up to $10million to businesses with recurring revenues in verticals such as e-commerce and software-as-a-service (SaaS).
Coinmotion, the Finland-based cryptocurrency service provider, has launched a Coinmotion Prepaid Debit Card to use cryptocurrencies for everyday spending. It says it is the first Nordic service provider to launch a debit card for utilising fiat money converted from cryptocurrencies.
