Welcome to The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Thursday 20 April.
Partnerships
Flutterwave has partnered with Nigerian courier service SHiiP. The collaboration aims to improve deliveries for Flutterwave store SMEs and large-scale merchants across the African continent. Flutterwave merchants can select from over 80 domestic and international couriers including DHL, FedEx, UPS, Flocargo, Shippo, and Flo Express for the transportation of goods, resulting in cheaper delivery rates.
CAT Financial Products, a Swiss provider of securities and investment services for structured products, has transformed its front to back office processing efficiency by implementing the international multi-asset post-trade processing solution from fintech Broadridge Financial Solutions.
Santander Bank is teaming up with global financial technology company DailyPay. It will offer an on-demand pay benefit for its commercial banking clients in the US. Through DailyPay, Santander’s Commercial Banking clients can provide employees immediate access to their pay as they earn it.
4-Xtra Technologies, a Leeds University deep tech spin-out, has provided its SaaS, AI-based Extreme Event Forecasting and Synthetic Data Generation Engine to Leeds Building Society. The relationship follows a successful three-month Proof of Concept, when 4-Xtra demonstrated it could provide the missing data to a level that would satisfy the Society’s requirements.
Additional partnerships
Trust Payments has signed a strategic agreement with the Discover Global Network that will increase acceptance for Discover, Diners Club International and network alliance cardholders across the UK, EU & US. Through the partnership, Trust Payments’ merchants gain access to over 305 million Discover Global Network Cardholders around the globe.
Fintech Payoneer has collaborated with Zoho to provide innovative payment solutions to businesses using Zoho Books, the cloud accounting platform, with plans to expand to other parts of the Zoho product offering. The collaboration will benefit small and medium-sized businesses and freelancers working globally in India, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and the Philippines.
Infosys Finacle, part of EdgeVerve Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Infosys, and Mongolian bank XacBank has transformed he bank’s technology landscape with Finacle Digital Banking Solution Suite. The Finacle suite now powers both the retail and corporate banking operations at XacBank, enabling a robust digital foundation for the bank to achieve its growth strategy.
Job moves
Marie Walker joins Raidiam, the data sharing ecosystem. She joins from Open Future World. Walker will bolster the Raidiam team as well as enhance its efforts to promote open data thought leadership to global regulators, consortiums and enterprises.
ClearBank has appointed Spiros Theodossiou as chief product officer. He previously served as CPO at cloud accounting platform DEXT. Before this, he was SVP of product management at WorldPay. Theodossiou will lead the bank’s global product strategy, creating and executing its product roadmap.
Qover has appointed its first chief customer officer, Ed Ackerman. He will lead Qover’s customer success, care, and claims teams, as well as develop customer-centric strategies that enhance the overall customer experience. His goal is also to empower Qover’s partners to achieve lasting value for customers through embedded insurance orchestration.
Pleo announces two new appointments to its senior leadership team – Raymond Hüner and Dean Eggleton. Hüner takes on the role of SVP head of regions while Eggleton joins as head of RevOps. Hüner and Eggleton join Pleo’s senior leadership team at a time of high growth and will play leading roles in the company’s 2023 plans.
Iress has created a new UK CEO role with Simon New stepping across from the role of chief commercial officer. It follows the appointment of Iress group CEO Marcus Price in 2022. The company also plans to reinvest in its core software to improve value for clients, while launching a new Innovations division to expand capabilities in future growth areas.
Robin Morris-Weston has joined digital financial crime platform Themis, as its chief of staff. Morris-Weston has been brought on with responsibility for Themis’ scale up mission. Themis aims to reduce the global impacts of financial crime through a powerful combination of innovation, insight and intelligence.
Funding and investments
Unchained announces a $60million Series B funding round led by Valor Equity Partners. The initial close included participation from existing investors NYDIG, Trammell Venture Partners, Ecliptic Capital, and Highland Capital Partners. The Series B builds further momentum following a $15million financing led by Ten31 that was completed last fall.
Binance Labs, the venture capital arm and accelerator of Binance, has committed an investment in the seed funding round of GOMBLE, a blockchain-based casual game developer. GOMBLE will use the funds to develop and release its first mobile game, RumbyStars, and continue to expand its gaming platform using a game-as-a-service (GaaS) model.
Company updates
The London Institute of Banking & Finance (LIBF) has launched a fintech glossary. The resource is designed to provide a reference for finance professionals, students, as well as anyone with an interest in fintech, and help them navigate what are often complex terms and jargon.
BIAN, the independent not-for-profit, has unveiled 24 new members to its organisation. It brings the total number of members to 84. New members include leading financial services and technology organisations Lloyds Banking Group, Axis Bank, KPMG, McKinsey & Company, Standard Bank as well as The Thai Bank Association.
ThinkMarkets, the global online trading provider, has expanded further across the Asia-Pacific region with the launch of its services in New Zealand. It offers CFDs (contracts for difference) on forex, indices, commodities, equities, cryptocurrencies and more to New Zealand residents.
