Welcome to The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Thursday 24 November!
Partnerships
Volt, a gateway for open banking payments in Europe, the UK and Brazil, has teamed up with European cryptocurrency exchange platform Kriptomat. Together they enable Kriptomat customers throughout Europe to make real-time account-to-account payments to buy, sell and exchange cryptocurrencies.
Moneycorp, the global foreign exchange, has implemented an API and distribution agreement with BankClarity. Clients will be able to access live market rates, aggregated from 14 Moneycorp partner banks. This will enhance banking technology provider BankClarity’s existing suite of banking and FX partners.
Klarna Kosma, Klarna’s financial technology platform for banks, fintechs and innovative retailers, has announced a partnership with Moss, the European fintech. The partnership enables Moss to help SMEs save time and money whilst removing accounting errors, control their spend, and gain real-time visibility over what is spent and where.
ABA Bank has become the first bank in Cambodia to launch instant card issuance kiosks using Compass Plus Technologies solutions. This new service enables the issuance of international debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, and UnionPay) and local Cambodia Shared Switch (CSS) cards via self-service kiosks, ensuring the bank’s customers receive debit cards on the spot in under two minutes.
DeltaPay, an emerging fintech headquartered in Kenya, has selected Provenir’s AI-Powered Data and Risk Decisioning Platform to power its buy now, pay later offering. By leveraging alternative data, including behavioral data, DeltaPay provides more consumers with access to affordable and flexible credit.
There’s also a partnership for peaq and Ocean Protocol. The partnership seeks to add another layer of value-generation to the operations of autonomous vehicles, robots and devices through leveraging the data they accumulate. Through the partnership, Ocean and peaq will make it possible for connected and autonomous vehicles, robots and devices to share and monetise their data in a fully decentralised manner.
Company updates
Revolut, the financial super-app, has reported a rise in the ‘silver saver’. Revolut says its customers over the age of 45 are depositing 64 per cent more into their Savings Vaults than its customers who are 45 years or younger. The new data comes as Revolut increased the interest rate up to 2.25 per cent on its Savings Vault in GBP and up to 2.75 per cent in USD.
Wise has launched its first eco card. The environmental impact of the card has been significantly reduced by using Polylactic acid, a sustainable plastic substitute. Wise’s design also significantly reduces the amount of ink used, resulting in the card’s plain white design and small ‘fast-flag’ logo.
Open banking platform Tink has launched Balance Check, a key feature enabling Tink customers to verify account balances. Using real-time account data, Balance Check gives businesses the ability to verify how much a user has in their bank account in a matter of seconds, for example at pre-purchase to check whether there are sufficient funds, or post purchase to check for sufficient funds prior to a monthly direct debit collection.
ClearBank is celebrating after it reached profitability. ClearBank Ltd. has generated £45.4million in revenue YTD and from October has reached monthly profitability in the UK. The fintech bank has nearly tripled its 2022 YTD revenue compared to the same period last year. And FY2021 was also the second consecutive year that ClearBank’s revenue grew by over 100 per cent.
Funding and investment
Coutts, the private banking arm of NatWest Group, and BGF, the UK and Ireland’s most active growth capital investor, have now raised over £80million through the UK Enterprise Fund (UKEF). This provides the bank’s client base with access to investment opportunities in privately-owned scaleup and early-stage businesses, as part of BGF’s nationwide platform.
UK fintech Atoa Payments has secured a $2.2million pre-seed funding round. Led by Leo Capital and Passion Capital, the round also included Moon Capital Ventures. Atoa Payments is on a mission to slash 70 per cent of the fees that Visa and Mastercard charge businesses for accepting card payments.
Hardbacon, a personal finance application used by more than 40,000 Canadians, has bagged $819,000 in funding through the FrontFundr equity crowdfunding portal. The latest equity crowdfunding round brings Hardbacon’s total financing to more than $3.3million since its founding. The funding is expected to fuel company growth, as well as Hardbacon’s mission to be the go-to tool for personal finances.
Ramani, the African software company, has closed a $32million series A round of equity & debt. The round was led by Flexcap Ventures and the founder/CEO of Infoscout, Jared Schreiber. With this new capital funding, Ramani will scale its network of micro-distribution centres and also launch a new micro-credit offering for select MDCs.
Job moves
CAFU, the MENA region’s first on-demand car service, has appointed a new advisory board. Members include James Babb, Cenk Serdar as well as Fares Akkad. In addition, CAFU is aiming to add 60 new employees. The company has also launched insurance services for customers on the CAFU mobile application.
Insurtech wefox has appointed Laura Eschricht as chief marketing officer. Eschricht has previously worked at e-commerce retailer Zalando and global beauty brands amika and Moroccanoil. Earlier this year, wefox closed a series D round of $400million giving the company a post-money valuation of $4.5billion.
Digital identity company OneID has appointed Marion King to its board as a non-executive director. She has previously held senior roles in NatWest, Mastercard, VocaLink and Reuters. King was also previously CEO of VocaLink.
Global brokerage firm Squared Financial appoints Andreas Lazarou as its new chief commercial officer. The firm is also in the process of revamping its website and updating its mobile trading apps. Lazarou will spearhead business development and marketing.
Meanwhile, private wealth and corporate services firm Praxis has appointed business development specialist Dominic de Mariveles as commercial director to spearhead the Group’s ambition to be a leader in the provision of high-quality administration services to its international client base.
The Bank of London has appointed Phil Knight as group chief technology officer and group chief information security officer. He will oversee Group technology, information technology operations and information security, globally.
