The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Thursday brings you the latest fintech news from around the world. This includes funding successes, job moves and partnerships.
Partnerships
UK fintech payments provider Caxton has teamed up with banking-as-a-service provider OpenPayd to ‘offer customers a simplified payments experience’. OpenPayd’s embedded finance infrastructure was integrated into Caxton’s platform in just two weeks. The partnership enables Caxton to issue IBANs unique to each of its consumer and corporate clients.
Green Dot Corporation is partnering with data network Plaid to bring secure open finance solutions to GO2bank customers. GO2bank is Green Dot’s flagship digital bank. The partnership leverages Plaid’s innovative open finance API solution Plaid Exchange, which helps companies quickly and securely facilitate data connectivity on behalf of their customers.
Fintech firm Level helps workforce employer CXC Global provide its EMEA-based contractors with on-demand access to earned wages. Level offers a range of products across its platform including on-demand access to earned wages, salary-linked savings and budgeting tools powered by open banking.
Meanwhile, Co-op Insurance’s new pet insurance is now available to purchase at Quotezone.co.uk. The pet insurance product is delivered by partner Markerstudy Broking, which provides end-to-end administration. Co-op Insurance’s new pet insurance provides cover for pets over eight weeks old, as well as access to unlimited video consultations with qualified vets.
Currencycloud has joined forces with Moov, a US-based payment developer platform. Moov accepts, stores, and disburses money domestically, while Currencycloud moves money internationally as well as handling currency exchange. Currencycloud and Moov are already collaborating on several joint customer deals.
Hargreaves Lansdown, an investment platform for private investors, has selected Bottomline PTX to support its ‘cloud-first’ payments strategy. Hargreaves Lansdown will use PTX to receive funds from its clients and distribute funds to them.
More collaborations
Flutterwave has partnered with the Afritickets ticketing platform to process payments for all events across the continent. Event organisers also get additional exposure from Flutterwave events page when they register their events on Afritickets. Flutterwave has an infrastructure reach in 34 African countries, including Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa.
Payment orchestration platform IXOPAY has joined forces with Hawk AI Germany. Together, IXOPAY and Hawk AI will help fintechs, banks and payment companies increase their businesses offering while strengthening their anti-money laundering capabilities.
IRIS Software Group partners with UNIPaaS to bring the power of embedded finance to SMEs. IRIS will be able to provide its customers with embedded finance solutions so they can add financial services alongside their core software products.
LMAX Group, an operator of institutional exchanges for crypto currency trading, has partnered with SIX to launch cash-settled, centrally cleared crypto-asset futures. It will initially include centrally cleared USD settled Bitcoin and Ethereum futures, trading 23 hours, five days a week.
Meanwhile, IDnow, a European provider for identity proofing, has partnered with international criminal police organisation Interpol. The 12-month collaboration will see IDnow experts deliver a series of training programmes to local law enforcement and immigration departments, starting in Abu Dhabi later this month.
Finally, MeteorWrite has announced a strategic partnership with data insight specialist Synectics Solutions to deliver specialist motor underwriting. The newly launched business provides ‘beyond-the-norm motor products and scheme arrangements that require underwriting expertise’.
Company updates
Communications consultancy Citigate Dewe Rogerson (CDR) has unveiled a fintech & digital asset division advising clients across the UK, Europe and North America. The division is led by Angus Campbell, who joined the consultancy in September. CDR has also joined trade association CryptoUK.
Axle Payments, a payments automation platform for freight and logistics, unveils Axle Wallet, a new carrier payments solution. With Axle Wallet, freight brokerages and shippers can use their own capital to pay their carriers. Axle has also announced Jamie Waldinger as vice president of revenue and Heather Beckstead as head of people.
Payment service provider Mollie has launched its newest product Connect for Platforms. Designed for online SaaS and marketplace platforms, it is the most efficient and easiest way for companies of all sizes to integrate payments, onboard customers and accept and route payments. It also offers dedicated local, multilingual support – vital to Mollie’s customers operating throughout Europe.
Job moves
ImpactGuru.com, India’s healthcare financing platform, has appointed Amit Rana as senior vice president for talent acquisition. Amit joins ImpactGuru.com from Fino Payments Bank. ImpactGuru is focused on expanding its team to over 1500 full-time employees in the coming 18 months.
Napier, a provider of anti-financial crime compliance solutions, has named Graham Hogan as head of sales EMEA, while Sebastian Vedel will lead efforts in the Nordic and Baltic regions. Napier also recently appointed Kevin O’Neill as chief revenue officer and Will Monk as chief product officer.
David Exposito joins TrueLayer, the open banking platform, as VP of EU sales. He will manage commercial operations and development, including the company’s European country managers. TrueLayer also recently expanded its open banking platform for data, verification and account-to-account payments with connectivity to banks in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Portugal.
Bitstamp, the cryptocurrency exchange, has appointed James Greenwood as the company’s chief technology officer. He replaces David Osojnik, who has stepped up to Bitstamp’s advisory board. Greenwood will help scale and deliver the next generation of DeFi products, while maintaining Bitstamp’s position of providing stable, regulated, crypto services.
Meanwhile, mortgage technology provider Twenty7Tec has appointed Tony Prestedge to its board as a non-executive director. Prestedge will support Twenty7Tec in group strategy, operations and oversight. Prior to his most recent role as Deputy CEO at Santander, Mr Prestedge spent 12 years at Nationwide.
Business as a service platform Blatform adds Selina Bieber to its advisory board as an independent advisor. Bieber is also the general manager for GoDaddy in the MENA region. She will bring critical go-to-market experience to the Blatform business to support initial platform launches as well as broader international growth.
Mergers and acquisitions
Apex Group, the global financial services provider, has expanded its digital assets capabilities with the acquisition of a majority stake in Fund Admin Chain, a distributed ledger-based network. FAC is designed to connect fund investors, fund managers and their service providers in a digital distributed ecosystem.
Private equity firm Advent International has acquired a minority stake in Medius, a provider of source to pay solutions. The common goal is to accelerate the development of Medius’ core technology, including leveraging AI and ML to deepen its automation capabilities. Also to further the company’s vision of a touchless invoicing process.
Euronet Worldwide, a fintech solutions and payments provider, has completed the purchase of the merchant acquiring business of Piraeus Bank in Greece. The acquisition also includes a separately negotiated agreement for a long-term strategic partnership with the Bank for collaborative product distribution, processing and customer referrals.
Funding and investments
Sokowatch, an African B2B e-commerce company, has closed a $125million Series B round in full equity. The investment was co-led by Tiger Global, Avenir Growth, as well as new investor VNV Global. In addition to its current markets in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, the company is expanding to Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal. It is also rebranding to Wasoko, which is Swahili for ‘people of the market’.
Payrails, an operating system for payments, has raised $6.4million in seed funding to launch its next-generation financial operations platform. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz. With the funds raised, the team is launching Payrails OS to help enterprises manage payments and build financial services for customers across the globe.
Contingent Contingent has successfully completed an $8.2million funding round. The round was led by Octopus Ventures with participation also from Connect Ventures. It takes the company’s total funding to date to $11million. The platform is used by companies including Monzo, Seagate, Huel, Barratt Developments plc, and HM Government.
The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has unveiled the $30million Matching Fund, co-investing alongside investors globally, matching investments raised from a lead investor up to $500,000. The Fund is for early-stage companies interested in building on the Stellar blockchain, and provides a new opportunity for early-stage companies to augment their existing fundraising efforts.
