Welcome to The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Thursday – delve in for the latest fintech news.
Job appointments
Fintech PPRO has appointed Lázaro Campos as its first independent chairman in efforts to strengthen its board and governance. Campos takes over from Tim van Delden, who served as chairman through the last stage of PPRO’s rise. Van Delden is now vice chairman.
Amana Capital, an online trading firm in MENA, has unveiled two new appointments to its product leadership team. Matt Carstens is the new director of product experience while Justin Biebel is director of product implementation. Amana has also recently announced the launch of its waiting list for its upcoming app.
MANGOPAY, the European payment solutions provider, has hired Luke Trayfoot as chief revenue officer. In this newly created position, he will help MANGOPAY accelerate its international expansion as well as improve revenue streams. Previously, Trayfoot was at Hyperwallet.
Fintech business HUB Group has appointed Rob Hudson into the new role chief commercial officer. He joins HUB Group after spending over seven years at abrdn. He will will spearhead the expansion of its propositions.
Tradefeedr, the FX data analytics platform, has named Christian Gressel has been appointed to its client advisory group. Gressel joins other members including Tim Cartledge, Richard Turner, Jeremy Smart, Ian O’Flaherty and Michal Marcek. Gressel said he is “looking forward to helping them further develop and refine their product offering”.
More job moves
Wio Bank PJSC, the integrated digital banking platform, has appointed His Excellency Salem Al Nuaimi as chairman and Jayesh Patel as CEO. Wio also recently received a key licensing approval by the Central Bank of the UAE.
Finally, NTT DATA UK has named Dave Brooks as its new head of insurance. Brooks will lead NTT DATA UK’s insurance business practice, focusing on strengthening the organisation’s growing influence in the UK. Most recently, he was the European business leader for the insurance practice at Genpact.
Wealthtech platform provider Nucoro has appointed Steve Hoy as its head of partnerships. He is responsible for Nucoro’s partnerships strategy and initiatives, and for building and scaling relationships with channel partners, technology partners and system integrators.
Finally, open banking firm Volt has named Katie Hulbert-Powell as chief people officer. She will focus on building the business for scalability, ensuring processes are aligned with the company’s growth trajectory, and expanding the ‘People & Culture’ team.
Mergers and acquisitions
Checkout.com to acquire ubble. The acquisition of ubble will enable Checkout.com to expand its current suite of financial products that allows fintechs and e-commerce merchants to accept and send payments. The deal is expected to close later this year pending regulatory approval.
Funding and investments
CoverGo, the enterprise no-code SAAS insurance platform, has secured $15million in Series A funding. The round was led by SemperVirens VC with participation also from SixThirty, Tribeca Early Stage Partners and Fresco Capital. The new funding will help accelerate adoption of CoverGo by insurance companies globally.
FUEL, the ‘Shopify for NFTs’, has secured investment from rappers CRO and Bausa, as well as the latter’s record label Two Sides. The news follows FUEL’s €1.5million pre-seed financing round in March 2022 to develop its platform.
Turtlemint, India’s largest insurance advisor focused insurtech platform, has announced a $120million Series E fundraise led by Amansa Capital and Jungle Ventures. The round also saw participation from new investors Vitruvian Partners and Marshall Wace. It intends to use the fresh funds to expand in new geographies, scale its leadership team and strengthen its product stack.
Cachet, the platform worker-focused insurance services marketplace, has raised €5.5million from Truffle Capital with Uniqa Ventures and Icebreaker.vc also participating. The funding will be used to expand its services to gig workers across Europe and the UK.
Finally, Aiven has raised $212million in its Series D funding round, its third round in 14 months. The company is now at a pre-money valuation of $3billion up from $2billion in October last year. The round was led by Eurazeo, and joined by funds and accounts managed by BlackRock as well as existing investors IVP, Atomico, Earlybird, World Innovation Lab and Salesforce Ventures.
Partnerships
Moneyhub, the open data and payments platform, has joined forces with financial analytics pioneer Envizage to deliver an open banking-powered financial planning application. The Happiness Navigator helps consumers identify and manage risks to their future financial plans and aspirations. It is powered by Moneyhub’s open banking data and Envizage’s simulation capabilities.
Ingenico, a Worldline brand, and Inspire Payments has unveiled a new partnership. The deal will mean Ingenico is now the primary supplier of terminals to Inspire Payments, empowering the payments provider to grow its merchant estate and offer tailored payment solutions to UK SMEs.
SurePay, the confirmation of payee provider, has partnered with Buckaroo, a payment service provider for businesses, to offer its Confirmation of Payee solution to their customers in the Netherlands.
Meanwhile, B4B Payments has unveiled a partnership with Swedish fintech startup Juni. Juni has selected B4B Payments to support the launch of its
virtual Mastercard prepaid card.
Monoova, the B2B payments solutions provider, and open banking firm TrueLayer are partnering to harness financial and identity insights using Australia’s Consumer Data Right (CDR) for smarter, faster, data-enabled payments in the Australian market.
