The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Thursday includes the latest job moves, partnerships, funding successes and more.
Job moves
Georgina Whalley has joined Tandem in the newly created senior role of chief impact and marketing officer. She joins Tandem having held senior roles at global consumer fintech Openpay for the past three years, most recently as interim UK CEO. She will lead the strategy and delivery of the bank’s fairer and greener agenda, including driving ESG activities.
Marketplace payment engine Paycast, the second venture of UK based fintech group SPG, has appointed Christian Elson as its head of partnerships. Elson will be responsible for Paycast’s partnerships strategy, and building and maintaining the integral relationships with key global players.
Meanwhile, intelligent hedging platform Bound has unveiled its first chief financial officer – Marita Cavalcanti. Cavalcanti was previously CFO at property technology firm Proportunity, where she will remain a board adviser. London-based Bound also revealed its trading volumes jump by 339 per cent in Q1 2022.
Payoneer, the commerce tech company, appoints John Caplan co-CEO and director alongside current CEO Scott Galit. Galit and Caplan will lead the firm as co-CEOs during a transition period through the end of 2023, when Caplan will take the helm as CEO and Galit will continue in a strategic role.
Cloud8, the digital employee benefits platform provider, has appointed Lorraine Porter as associate non-executive director to join its leadership team. Porter’s appointment follows Cloud8 recently securing £750,000 of venture capital investment in its second round of funding.
More job moves
Xceptor, the no-code software platform for data automation, has named Josh Monroe as chief revenue officer. While Ludovic Blanquet is named chief strategy and transformation officer. Blanquet will be based in Xceptor’s London headquarters and Monroe in the New York office.
Mashreq Bank has hired Corey Thompson as the new executive VP and head of digital for its Retail Banking Group. Thompson will manage and execute Mashreq’s digital strategy for the RBG, including its Personal Banking, Mashreq Gold, Private Banking, SMEs, Islamic and Emirati segments.
Meanwhile, Australian fintech Adatree names Sarah Day as its new head of aliances and partner success. She is responsible for the overall growth of the company, customer success and facilitating current and future partnerships at Adatree as it continues to expand with new hires and services.
Wealth Club, a UK broker for wealthy and sophisticated clients, appoints Charlie Huggins as head of equities. Huggins is responsible for the roll out of a discretionary share portfolio service, which is due to launch at the end of 2022. He joins from Hargreaves Lansdown where he worked for over 10 years.
Finally, Finboot is expanding its customer facing team with the appointment of Ricardo de Alfonso, a former SEAT executive. He joins Finboot to help further accelerate Finboot’s MARCO platform’s ‘time to value’ for its enterprise customers. The hire also follows Paris Dufrayer as chief revenue officer and Padman Ramankutty has joined its board.
Funding and investments
Coinmarketpedia, the decentralised crypto and blockchain educational platform based in Dubai, has secured a pre-seed fundraising round of $2million. The funds will be aimed at continuously enhancing features, allowing for investments in ecosystem partnerships, onboarding new industry experts, as well as facilitating the development of its platform globally.
Climate tech startup Allinfra raises $6million in series A funding round led by Nomura. The investment will enable the enterprise software developer to scale up its product offering and expand its reach across sectors and regions. The newly secured funding will be used to scale up product development and sales resources for its sustainability data management software.
WSO2, a digital transformation technology firm, has completed its Series E funding round with the addition of RedStart Labs. The move brings the total growth capital raised to $93million. Info Edge joins lead investor Goldman Sachs, which completed the first tranche of the Series E in November 2021.
Previse has closed the first phase of its Series B financing. The UK-based fintech has raised $18million of new capital to expand the availability of its innovative ‘data-driven’ working capital finance solutions, designed for SMEs. The round was led by Tencent.
Meanwhile, Stable, dubbed the ‘home of hedging’ for the $5trillion agricultural commodity industry, has closed a $60million Series B investment. The round is led by Acrew with investors Greycroft, Notion Capital, Syngenta and Continental Grain Company also participating in the round. Acrew’s Vishal Lugani will also join Stable’s board of directors.
Finally, Kapaga, the UK-based cross-border payment platform for SMEs, has secured a £1.5millon funding round led by Target Global. Participation also came from investors Chris Adelsbach, Andreas Mihalovits and Mark Ransford. Kapaga will also be expanding its operations across the EU this summer.
Partnerships
UK-based micro-investment platform Wombat has partnered with Currencycloud to launch its new, free, Instant Investing account. By partnering with Currencycloud and integrating its APIs directly into their app, Wombat is able to offer its customers instant access to popular US stocks and shares by executing instant buy and sell orders with unlimited commission-free trading and low FX rates.
TrueLayer, the European banking platform, has unveiled a collaboration with digital bank Zopa, which has gone live with account-to-account payments for its Smart Saver savings account. TrueLayer says it plans to build on the collaboration with Zopa in the coming months.
Paysafe, a payments platform, has expanded its partnership with the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation. A new OLG.ca affiliate programme is powered by the affiliate software of Income Access, Paysafe’s marketing technology and services provider, which is also managing the programme.
Meanwhile, allpay has forged a partnership with Payzone. It has added an additional 12,500 stores across the UK where customers can now pay their bills using cash. The payment company already offered cash
collection via both Post Office and PayPoint networks.
More partnerships
Alviere, the embedded finance platform, has teamed up with Marqeta, the card issuing platform. With Alviere’s expansion across Europe, Marqeta will provide key services to enable the delivery of advanced financial services to customers across Europe and the UK. Alviere will be operating as an Electronic Money Institution and Principal Member Card Issuer across the region.
Cognito has been appointed by PPRO, the digital payments infrastructure provider, to further expand the brand’s profile across the European financial technology market. PPRO is leveraging Cognito’s European offices to develop a strategic, communications campaign to position PPRO as the digital payments partner of choice.
Meanwhile, Mambu, the SaaS cloud banking platform, has been chosen by Kennek, a SaaS lending solution company that supports alternative lenders and credit investors. The partnership aims to help Kennek launch its innovative ‘lender-in-a-box’ offering. A recent Mambu report shows 92 per cent of SMEs globally would consider switching lenders if a competitor offered a better or improved offering.
Company updates
FOO, a B2B fintech solutions provider in the MENA region, has started to expand to provide fintech solutions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. After setting up offices in Riyadh as a foreign investment company, FOO will focus on providing solutions for digital bank, central bank digital currency based on blockchain, virtual card issuance and tokenisation and merchant acceptance platforms, all enabled using our EKYC solutions.
PayFuture, the AI-technology payment gateway, has announced triple digit growth since its launch in 2020. It has expanded expanded its reach with more than 50 employees spread across the world, including UK, Dubai and the Philippines.
Cryptocurrency fintech firm Bitfrost has secured a virtual assets service provider (VASP) with the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission (GFSC). Now, Bitfrost can provide clients with access to fiat-to-crypto, crypto-to-fiat and crypto-to-crypto OTC transactions worldwide.
Acquisitions
Insurtech Lumera has entered an agreement to acquire insurech firm Ai-London. The rationale for Lumera’s acquisition of Ai-London is twofold: it will support the strategic objectives for expanding into new markets and brings substantial additions to Lumera’s technology portfolio.
Software-as-a-service (SaaS) payments infrastructure platform Paddle has snapped up subscription metrics firm ProfitWell for $200million in cash and equity. Paddle will integrate ProfitWell’s financial metrics, as well as its pricing and retention software. Following the deal, subscription businesses can plug into Paddle and have their taxes, payments, billing, reporting, retention, and pricing all done for them.
Product launches
Meanwhile, Wirex, a crypto payments company, is expanding the suite of top-up methods on their non-custodial wallet for Indian customers. The addition of this payment option to purchase crypto will make the digital economy more accessible for more than one billion people in India.
Stripe, the financial infrastructure platform for businesses, has released Stripe Apps and the Stripe App Marketplace. Stripe Apps brings an array of tools together, providing a one-stop shop for managing operations with Stripe and its partners.
Revolut Business, the super app with more than 500,000 business customers worldwide, is launching ‘Spend Management’ in the UK, the US and EEA. Spend Management is a new suite of solutions to help CFOs and controllers manage their teams’ spending. The tools are available on both mobile and web for all Revolut Business customers.
