Welcome to The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Thursday 19 May.
Company updates and launches
Alternative finance fintech Accelerated Payments has advanced €750million worth of invoice financing to SMEs across the UK, Europe and North America. The firm has also recently appointed Neil McMillan as head of North America and Steve Conrad as VP of business development for North America.
Fintech phos has achieved CPoC accreditation from the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC). The accreditation ensures that all merchants using phos’ software POS system will have their payment account data protected.
Meanwhile, Bitso – a cryptocurrency platform in Latin America – is launching in Colombia. The expansion strategy is designed to boost the use of cryptocurrencies in countries across Latin America with high adoption rates. In 2019, Bitso received a distributed ledger technology licence, granted by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission.
Digital insurer Getsafe has launched its new buildings insurance in the UK. The company also reveals it just hit the 50,000 customer mark in the UK. Also delivering a new offering is digital insurance provider Marshmallow. Its new product Marshmallow Van covers van owners who use their vehicle for social purposes, domestic use and commuting.
Fireblocks, the digital asset and crypto technology provider, has launched a Web3 Engine with a suite of tools for developers to build DeFi, GameFi and NFT products and services. The engine lets developers build dApps on top of Fireblocks’ tech stack or securely access the full range of existing web3 applications.
Meanwhile, CoinMENA has become the first regional digital assets exchange to offer its services in Qatar. This means that users across the Gulf state can now easily and safely invest in cryptocurrencies for the first time.
Partnerships and collaborations
Fintech ForwardAI has unveiled a partnership with Fifo Capital, a provider of business finance solutions in Australia. Through the partnership, Fifo Capital will be enhancing its business loan underwriting process using accounting, financial and cash-flow forecasting data provided by ForwardAI’s technology.
ThinCats, an alternative finance provider, has selected Mambu SaaS cloud banking platform to scale quickly and expand its SME lending offering. The platform provides a parameter-based product allowing ThinCats to service existing business and develop new products at pace.
Zeeves, a Telegram based Zilliqa wallet and activity tool, is partnering with Striga to offer a crypto-friendly, Zilliqa (ZIL) centric neobanking platform: Zeeves Neobank. New functionalities will include funding a debit card with EUR and Zilliqa (ZIL) to enable online and offline payments.
Meanwhile, stc pay, the Middle Eastern digital wallet, is live on Temenos open platform for composable banking. Temenos’ cloud-native platform has supported stc pay to scale efficiently to more than eight million accounts.
Qantas teams up with financial services partner Zip. Qantas US customers can now book domestic and international flights on qantas.com using buy now, pay later provider Zip. They can also earn Qantas Points.
Appointments
Conpend, a provider of technology-assisted document checking software for trade finance processes, is bolstering its senior team’s existing banking credentials. René Klose joins as vice president while Arne Wolfgramm is now project manager.
Meanwhile, Zafin has appointed Dave Revell as its new chair. Most recently, Revell was executive vice president and global chief information officer for CIBC. Revell has also been a Zafin board member since 2019.
Embedded finance experience platform Railsbank has appointed two senior leaders in order to support growth and expertise in the sports industry. Former England Rugby captain Will Carling OBE has an advisory role within Railsbank’s partnerships team. While former Formula 1 board advisor Jon Hall is named a senior advisor. In addition, Railsbank co-founder and CEO Nigel Verdon is set to become a mentor to the England rugby team.
KoinWorks, a fintech platform in Indonesia, has added key names to join its management board. Grace
Hong is named chief marketing officer, while Jonathan Bryan is chief platform officer. Aditya Chintawar is added as chief product officer while Ethan Zhang is chief strategy officer. Finally, Rachel Sugeha is unveiled a senior VP of wealth.
Funding and investments
Circit, the audit confirmations and open banking platform, has completed a €6.5million Series A funding round. The investment is co-led by Aquiline Technology Growth as well as MiddleGame Ventures. It will use the funds to continue expanding its offering to users on all sides of the platform.
Modulr, an embedded payments platform, has raised $108million in Series C funding. The round was led by General Atlantic. It also included significant participation from existing investors Blenheim Chalcot, Frog Capital, Highland Europe and PayPal Ventures. The funding will enable Modulr to accelerate its vision to become a payments infrastructure leader across the UK and Europe.
Fintech MarketFinance has announced a debt raise from Deutsche Bank which it will use to part fund up to £100million of lending to UK SMEs. It also revealed it is expanding its lending capacity to include under-served SMEs, such as sole traders and partnerships.
