The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Tuesday brings news of a new hire at FinTech Australia as well as record growth for Zuto.
Job appointments
FinTech Australia has appointed Rachel Hopping as its first head of strategic partnerships. She joins the team from share trading and superannuation fintech Superhero. The new role will primarily engage with FinTech Australia’s 400 corporate partners, including Visa, Mastercard and AWS.
Boost.ai hires Jerry Haywood as chief executive officer. He joins the conversational artificial intelligence company from LivePerson. Haywood succeeds founder and current CEO Lars Ropeid Selsås, who desires to devote more time to product development and innovation.
Pleo names Meri Williams as its new chief technology officer. Williams’ appointment follows that of Abigail Slater who joined from American Express to become head of operations in the UK&I. Williams joins Pleo’s senior leadership team, after previously working at AI-driven rare disease treatment discovery company Healx.
Fintech Paytrix appoints David Sola as chief financial Officer. David has previously served as managing director at multinational financial services firms UBS, Softbank Europe and Houlihan Lokey. The appointment comes shortly after Paytrix raised £5million in pre-seed funding.
Heath Davies has joined tech provider TrustQuay as non-executive chairman. In his new role, Heath will chair the board and work with CEO Keith Hale to drive forward the company’s growth plan. He has previously held CEO roles at Exclaimer, Clearswift, Alterian and Sword Group.
Budapest-based fintech solution provider Sprintform adds to its leadership team with the appointment of Francis Hardy as business development lead. Hardy joins after almost seven years at Wizz Air where he was responsible for digital powered operations. The company also recently hired Szabina Szekeres as talent growth lead.
Partnerships
Travel tech company Sabre Corporation and fintech Conferma Pay have forged a partnership with Mastercard to accelerate the use of virtual cards for business-to-business travel payments. It builds on Sabre’s August 2022 acquisition of Conferma Pay. The new partnership with Mastercard will help Conferma Pay to build enhanced digital capabilities in virtual cards. As part of the agreement, Mastercard has agreed to make a minority investment in Conferma Pay.
Global travel technology leader Amadeus has teamed up with global insurtech MGA Pattern Insurance to provide seamless insurance options. The latest collaboration helps travel agents introduce insurance proposals from Pattern through the Amadeus Selling Platform.
Fundipedia and Kore Labs (Kore) have entered a strategic partnership to integrate Fundipedia’s enterprise fund data management solution with Kore’s product governance and end-to-end digital lifecycle management platform. Connecting the two platforms enables investment managers to manage product design, creation, reviews, and changes efficiently and effectively.
Red Badger, the digital product transformation consultancy for blue-chips, has partnered with Adyen, the global fintech platform. The partnership allows Red Badger to weave end-to-end payment capability into its digital product offering. It will also further facilitate a joint mission to transform blue-chips into true digital product organisations.
There’s also a partnership for Kneip, a fund-level data management and regulatory reporting company, and Next Gate Tech, a fintech specialised in portfolio-level data management and analytics. The commercial partnership brings together both companies’ expertise in fund data management.
Additional partnerships
FINOM, a mobile-first financial management platform for SMEs and freelancers, has continued its European expansion with a launch into the Netherlands. The company also recently launched into the UK. FINOM has activated a e-money licence in the Netherlands to focus on delivering the best in-class onboarding and customer services.
The Freedom Bank of Virginia has launched a new digital invoicing solution for business clients powered by Autobooks. The partnership allow Freedom’s small business clients to leverage invoicing and payments options seamlessly integrated and available within the Bank’s online and mobile banking platform.
Seedstars officially launches Seedstars Capital, its investment platform for emerging venture capital fund managers with the support of xMultiplied, a Swiss based investment holding company. Seedstars expects to drive over $500million of new funding into emerging and diverse managers, who will create more than 10,000 new jobs and generate over $20billion of additional GDP across emerging markets in the next 10 years.
Napier, the financial crime compliance company, has announced that its end-to-end financial crime risk management platform, Napier Continuum, is available to the Japanese market through a new partnership with Japanese firm GRCS.
Funding and investment
FrankieOne, a global API platform for identity verification and fraud detection, has raised an additional $15.55million in a Series A+ round. It brings its total Series A funding to $30.3million. FrankieOne connects banking, fintech, crypto and gaming companies to hundreds of data sources across 48 markets. New strategic investors include Binance Labs and Kraken Ventures.
Kiln, the staking technology provider, has closed a €17million financing round to expand its staking infrastructure product range. Investors including Illuminate Financial, Consensys, GSR, Kraken Ventures, Leadblock Partners, Sparkle Ventures and XBTO took part.
Regional insurtech Igloo has secured an additional $27 million in funding, raising the company’s Series B to over $46million. Igloo’s Series B+ was led by global impact investor BlueOrchard’s InsuResilence Investment Fund II, which is supporting firms that drive affordability of and accessibility to climate insurance.
Company updates
African data analytics company Periculum launches Utambuzi in Kenya. Utambuzi, which means ‘insights’ or ‘diagnosis’ in Swahili, is a personal finance management product that leverages machine learning to track income and expenses. Insights on financial behaviour also helps users better align their expenses with their financial goals.
Car finance marketplace Zuto is celebrating record growth and financial performance. October 2022 saw the Manchester-based fintech celebrate 40 per cent year on year revenue growth. It also saw an uplift in market share of seven per cent in the 12 months to September 2022, with the amount of customers driving cars financed through Zuto up by 14 per cent.
Trive has launched its next generation multi-asset investment platform, serving investors across Europe. The initial line up of products comprise US stocks and ETF investment opportunities without commission. Investors can use features including quick trade menus, advanced charting, price alerts and an integrated economic calendar.
Regtech Clausematch has rejoined the UK’s Investment Association. Returning in front of IA partners allows Clausematch to spotlight its SaaS technology to help those organisations operate safely and bring compliant products to the market. Clausematch became the IA’s first fintech member in 2018.