The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Tuesday sees fintech Phos partner with BORICA, while open banking payment provider Crezco appoints its first chief financial officer.
Job moves
CryptoUK hires Teana Baker-Taylor as a new non-executive director. Baker-Taylor is chief policy officer for the Digital Chamber of Commerce, a US trade association representing the digital asset and blockchain industry. She also formerly worked at Crypto.com and Binance.
Canadian fintech Buckzy Payments Inc has appointed Carlos Garcia as its chief operating officer. Buckzy’s mission is to offer global customers a one-stop financial solution, making international payments faster, more reliable and more cost effective. Most recently, Garcia held the position of chief of payments operations at NanoPay.
Meanwhile, intive, a global digital consulting, design and engineering firm, has named Abhishek Dahiya as chief design officer. Dahiya has ‘been solving design problems’ for startups as well as in large corporations such as the London Stock Exchange Group, NTT Data and Barclays, across a variety of industries including fintech.
CoinFund, a blockchain-focused investment firm, unveils J. Christopher Giancarlo, the former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a strategic advisor. Giancarlo’s recent book CryptoDad: The Fight for the Future of Money depicts his reckoning with the future of the global economy and also puts forward the fight for a digital dollar.
Further appointments
Marcus Hughes joins BitMEX as chief risk officer (CRO). As CRO, he will serve on the executive board, with responsibility for BitMEX’s regulatory affairs, risk, legal and compliance functions. Prior to joining the trading platform, Hughes was managing director of Coinbase’s European business.
Claims guidance platform EvolutionIQ expands leadership team with appointment of Alex Young as its executive vice president of sales. Most recently, Young was executive vice president of business development at Sapiens, where he led tier 1 market development.
B2B open banking payments provider Crezco has appointed Ivelina Delcheva as its first chief financial officer and chief operations officer. Delcheva, who joins from Chip Financial, will lead the London-based startup’s growth agenda. She will also establish KPIs and processes that reflect Crezco’s values and goals.
Funding and investments
Gr4vy, the cloud-native payments orchestration firm, has bagged $15million in Series A extension funding, led by March Capital. Participation also came from Nyca Partners, Activant Capital and Plug and Play Ventures. Gr4vy plans to use the funding toward further global expansion. It will also support its product roadmap for its cloud-native payment orchestration platform.
Arc, the full-service finance platform for SaaS, emerged from stealth today with $161million in total funding. In partnership with Stripe, Arc is building a fintech solution where software founders can borrow, save as well as spend on one digital platform. NFX founder James Currier, who led the fund’s investment in Arc, has also joined its board.
Koia, the alternative investment platform, has secured a $1.4million pre-seed round. Investors included Seedcamp, RTP Global, Portfolio Ventures and a number of angels. The startup is launching with collectibles including watches, wine and Pokémon Cards.
Shield unveils $15million Series A Round to address ‘surging demand’ for its AI-driven communications compliance platform. The round was led by Macquarie Capital and OurCrowd with significant participation also from Mindset Ventures. Shield will use the funding to significantly expand its US presence, while further establishing itself in markets throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia Pacific. The funding will also be used to ramp up development of Shield’s platform.
Spendesk, the 7-in-1 spend management solution for SMBs, has raised €100million as an extension to its Series C round in July 2021. The new investment comes from Tiger Global, with existing investors, including General Atlantic, Eight Roads Ventures, Index Ventures and eFounders. Spendesk plans to heavily invest in growing headcount.
Partnerships
Fintech Soft Space enters into strategic partnership with JCB. Collaboration will expand JCB’s presence in Southeast Asia and act as a bridge for Soft Space to link Japanese consumers with the region. The strategic partnership also aims to harness synergies between the two parties and includes the expansion of JCB’s merchant network, the establishment of card issuing solutions and the provision of customer marketing solutions.
INGOT Brokers, a premium multi-asset brokerage firm, has signed a partnership with fintech firm Acuity Trading and signal provider Signal Centre. Traders at INGOT Brokers now have access to a wealth of unique market insights and trade ideas.
Bitget, a global cryptocurrency exchange, has deployed its Launchpad in conjunction with cryptocurrency wallet BitKeep. Launchpad aims to support the crypto ecosystem by offering access to promising crypto projects. The first project on Launchpad, Contents Shopper Token, is the utility token of a property management and transaction platform.
Meanwhile, Pay360 by Capita partners with Ordo. Ordo’s open banking platform will integrate Pay360’s payment services solution. Pay360 and Ordo are also integrating the ability to attach invoices, bills or reminders to a payment request to further improve and simplify the customer payment process.
Phos, the fintech behind a software-only point of sale system, has partnered with BORICA, a payment provider in Bulgaria. Phos’ technology will be available to Bulgarian banks, allowing them to offer customers the ability to turn any NFC-enabled Android device, such as a smartphone or tablet, into a payments terminal.
More partnerships
Ford Motor Company and Stripe have signed an agreement to scale the automaker’s e-commerce capabilities faster. For Ford and Lincoln dealers offering digital payment services, Stripe’s service is expected to drive new efficiency into processing of e-commerce payments, such as vehicle ordering, reservations and digital and charging services. Rollout of Stripe technology is expected to begin in the second half of 2022, starting in North America.
Tenet Compliance Services (TCS) has introduced a financial vulnerability identification and reporting solution from fintech firm Comentis. The solution enables TCS advisers to identify, support and record vulnerable client activity through a clinically developed assessment process.
There’s also a partnership for Saudi Arabia-based Quara Holding and B.A.M Ticketing, a blockchain-based ticketing technology provider. The new collaboration aims to help event organisers in the Kingdom eliminate ticket fraud and keep track of the tickets sold.
Property group Coldwell Banker partners with Coinweb to spearhead its real-estate tokenisation piloting in Thailand to fully leverage blockchain technology and unlock liquidity. Development has already begun on the platform, with a product release in beta planned for Q3 2022.
Visa announces a partnership with ConsenSys to develop an infrastructure to help central banks and traditional financial institutions build services on top of CBDC networks. Visa’s CBDC Payments Module is designed to provide an on-ramp for CBDC to existing payment networks, so that CBDC networks can easily connect to traditional financial service providers.
Company updates
Canadian fintech Periculum officially launches in Nigeria. Periculum helps its banking and lending customers identify fraud risk, assess creditworthiness as well as analyse existing data. The company has also announced the appointment of Damilola Aluede as managing director.
