Welcome to The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Thursday 26 October 2023, bringing you the latest updates from across the world.
Appointments
Medius, a provider of AP automation and wider spend management solutions, appoints Emma Brown as chief financial officer. She joins Medius from consumer intelligence accelerator platform Talkwalker, where she acted as the group chief financial and operating officer and retains a board position. Brown will be responsible for guiding Medius through its ambitious plan to double turnover by 2025.
Reward has named Jamie Samaha as its new CEO. This strategic move aims to guide the company through a new chapter of global growth and expansion. Gavin Dein moves to founder and deputy chairman role to support international and corporate development. Reward’s cloud-based API platform integrates content, advertising, and commerce.
Saudi Arabian fintech HALA has welcomed Saleem Arshad as its chief technology officer. Arshad will help drive HALA’s global expansion efforts, focusing on the UK and European markets. Under his stewardship, HALA aims to strengthen its infrastructure and technology capabilities, ensuring it remains at the forefront of industry trends and customer expectations.
VizyPay, a payment processing fintech serving small businesses welcomes Nick Maas as chief financial officer as well as Doug Drees as lead generation expert. Following a year of growth – surpassing $5billion in total payments processed, the new hires strengthen the fintech’s team and presence in rural America.
More hires
Marko Jagustin joins Finery Markets as a strategic advisor to the board, as part of an ongoing effort to strengthen the company’s senior leadership team. He most recently held a senior role as the head of liquidity provision at Exness, where he was responsible for establishing and launching the company’s B2B division.
Binance, the blockchain ecosystem and cryptocurrency exchange, appoints Kyrylo Khomiakov as regional head for both the CEE and Central Asia regions. Khomiakov will steer teams across these markets to enhance the delivery of Binance’s products and services, placing a particular emphasis on company growth, education initiatives, fiat channels development, and optimising the user experience in these key markets.
Partnerships
IDVerse, the digital ID verification company, has partnered with Conga, the revenue lifecycle management solutions provider, to accelerate client onboarding, strengthen security and streamline workflows for businesses. IDVerse says the partnership amplifies its customer impact by offering “a single point of access for everything customers want to do online, across all devices, anywhere in the world”.
Komainu, a regulated digital asset custody service provider, has partnered with Blockdaemon, an institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure company, to further bolster its staking offering. This partnership offers Komainu client’s access to a broader range of institutional-grade staking infrastructure.
Magnati, a payments company in the MENA region, is partnering with Alipay+, a provider of global cross-border digital payment solutions. This collaborative effort promises to deliver an integrated, seamless and secure payments processing experience that will benefit both merchants and the vast number of consumers behind Alipay+ partner wallets in the region.
Africa and Gulf Bank (AGB), a bank in Sudan, has selected Temenos to modernise its digital and core banking capabilities. The Temenos solution, hosted on the cloud, enablea AGB to provide innovative products faster to retail and corporate customers in Sudan and around the world.
More partnerships
Lyfeguard, a digital platform for life planning, has partnered with Moneyhub to deliver a 360-degree, real-time view of personal and financial information. The partnership leverages Moneyhub’s expertise in open finance, covering banks, loans, mortgages, and more, to automate information entry on the Lyfeguard platform. For individual users, this means a full view of their life and financial situation in an instant.
Payment service provider exactly. has revealed a new integration with Google Pay – allowing merchants to provide a simpler, safer payment journey for customers. The new partnership enables exactly. merchants to increase customer reach and reduce cart abandonment rates by improving merchant checkout conversions.
Ripple forges a new partnership with Uphold, the global Web3 financial platform. The partnership will see Uphold provide Ripple with enhanced crypto liquidity capabilities to underpin and enhance its cross-border payments infrastructure.
Bankjoy has teamed up with Fraud.net, the end-to-end fraud management solution specifically built for digital enterprises and fintechs globally. Through the partnership, Bankjoy will offer new real-time fraud prevention technology designed to help financial institutions combat fraud and keep account holders secure throughout the digital banking experience.
Company updates
Revolut, the financial super app with over 35 million customers globally, is recognised as a ‘Great Place to Work’. Following participation in a certified study, based on the strength of its employee experience, Revolut has been recognised as a Great Place to Work in eight countries around the world, including the UK, India, Poland, Lithuania, Romania, Hungary, Spain and Portugal.
Synechron, Inc., a global digital transformation consulting firm focused on the financial services and big technology organisations, has launched a RiskTech.AI Accelerators programme. It offers a suite of five solutions that strategically integrate cutting-edge AI or GenAI tools to enable Synechron’s clients to identify, understand, address and mitigate critical modern business risks rapidly and efficiently.
CoverForce, an independent insurance platform, has officially emerged from stealth mode, unveiling a suite of products made specifically for agency networks, wholesalers, and software companies. The insurtech’s early success, which has seen more than 3,500 users onboarded across the country since May 2023, stems from its initial $5milliion seed funding round in January 2022, led by Nyca Partners.
Funding rounds
Global digital currency payment institution Triple-A celebrates a $10million Series A funding round. Leading the round are repeat investors Peak XV Partners (formerly known as Sequoia India & South East Asia), along with the strategic backing of Shorooq Partners, one of MENA’s leading technology investors. The company’s mission is to build a more efficient global payment ecosystem by bridging the gap between traditional finance and blockchain backed payments.
YouTrip, a Southeast Asian multi-currency digital payments platform, has raised $50million in its latest Series B fundraising round, led by new investor and global venture capital firm Lightspeed. This brings YouTrip’s total funds raised to date to over $100milion since inception. The new capital will be used to further propel the company’s growth trajectory by investing in more technologies, including AI, to deepen product and innovation capabilities.
