Welcome to The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Tuesday 17 May.
Job appointments
KPMG UK has appointed Peter Harmston as a partner and Ian Taylor as a director within the firm’s financial services practice in order to strengthen its offering to clients in the disruptive technology space. Harmston will lead the development of the firm’s payments practice while Taylor will lead the firm’s crypto and digital assets team.
Zumo, the Edinburgh-based crypto wallet and payments platform, has appointed Jonathan Sepulchre as head of growth. Prior to joining Zumo, he worked in a senior growth role at Money Dashboard. He will ensure that customers’ voices help inform growth initiatives, such as international expansion and new products.
Meanwhile, Veriff – the global identity verification provider – hires Caroline Mogford as chief marketing officer. She will focus on driving Veriff’s demand generation, product marketing and brand awareness. Most recently, Mogford was senior vice president of marketing at Qualtrics.
Asset management firm FinaMaze has appointed Harriet Yorston as senior business development manager. She will focus on fintech and the next generation of investment.
BCB Group, a provider of business accounts and trading services for the digital asset economy, appoints Natasha Powell as chief compliance officer. She is responsible for managing the company’s global compliance and financial crime prevention governance framework.
OCR Labs, the digital ID verification provider, has appointed a new sales director EMEA. Adam Desmond joins the team, following the company’s $30million Series B raised in February. OCR Labs achieved a 500 per cent increase in new clients in 2021. Desmond will grow a dedicated sales team across EMEA in the coming years.
Finally, Temenos AG names Roman Bartik as president Americas to accelerate and scale expansion in the region. He will be responsible for all day-to-day operations, strategy and profitability in North and South America. Bartik joins from SingleStore.
Funding and investments
Thought Machine, the cloud native banking technology company, has closed its series D funding round. The round was led by Temasek with participation also from Intesa Sanpaolo and Morgan Stanley. Thought Machine is now valued at $2.7billion. It will use the funding to invest in its technology as well as drive its global expansion plans.
Sudozi, a financial software innovator, has closed a $4.3million seed round led by Pear VC. It will use the seed funding to grow its team, enhance its solution offering and rapidly expand its market reach. The company also plans to add more capabilities to its platform.
Fintech and blockchain firm Oasis Pro has completed an oversubscribed $27+million Series A financing round. The financing included existing investor UDHC as well as Blizzard the Avalanche Fund. The financing will bolster its senior management team as well as expand global business development. It also plans to scale the technology platform globally through new revenue streams and additional blockchain technologies
Meanwhile, fintech and travel platform Katanox has raised $ 5.7million. The funding will be used to drive international expansion and finance further development of the platform. In addition to its raise, Katanox has announced Rob Torres on as non-executive director.
Altro, the no-cost credit building app formerly known as Perch, has bagged $18million in Series A funding. The round was led by Pendulum, with participation also from Jay-Z’s Marcy Ventures, Citi Ventures, Black Capital Fund and Concrete Rose Fund. The new funds will build its credit and financial literacy programme.
More funding news
Open banking payments platform Token.io has raised $40million in a Series C funding round co-led by Cota Capital and TempoCap. Additional participation came from Element Ventures, MissionOG and PostFinance. It will use the capital to continue driving the shift from traditional payment methods like cards and wallets to open banking-enabled account-to-account payments.
Challenger bank Recognise Bank has raised £8.7million in new capital following a round announced by the City of London Group (CoLG), the Bank’s parent company. CoLG has so far raised almost £65million in investment during its mission creating a new business bank for UK SMEs. The new capital will be used to support continued business lending, as well as the creation of a new team to further accelerate the Bank’s digital innovation.
Product launches
Temenos has unveiled Temenos CEO Navigator, a customer value benchmarking and advisory service that gives banking executives insights on how to optimise their technology investments. After analysing 100-plus banks, the Temenos CEO Navigator reveals that top performing banks using Temenos open platform for composable banking have achieved industry-leading cost-income ratios and high returns on equity.
Acquisitions and expansions
Nets, part of Nexi Group, has acquired full ownership of German-based orderbird, a provider of integrated POS-software solutions in the hospitality sector in Europe. The aim of this partnership is to strengthen orderbird’s offering of integrated payment services to customers in the hospitality industry. It will also accelerate orderbird’s international growth.
Socotra, the insurance platform, has announced the acquisition of software startup Avolanta. As part of the acquisition, the Avolanta team will join Socotra and Avolanta’s technology will become Socotra Unified Portal.
iLOQ, a provider of digital access management solutions, is expanding to the US. Founded in Finland in 2003, iLOQ currently has sales offices in nine countries in Europe, the Middle East and Canada, as well as a global partner network. Joni Lampinen is also named general manager iLOQ USA.