Fintech
This Week in Fintech: TFT’s bi-weekly news roundup 5/16
Welcome to The times of fintech Bi-weekly news roundup Thursday 16 May 2024, with the latest updates from around the world.
Financing and investments
London-based climate fintech ok closed a $2.5 million funding round led by Fuel-related initiatives and supported by Sorven Partners, Mishcon de Reya and existing investors. It will use the investment to bring industry-leading experts to support international expansion and product development. ekko enables banks, fintechs and payment service providers to integrate the positive impact of the planet into their products.
Proptech from the United Arab Emirates Keyper announces pre-Series A capital raise of $4 million in equity. This round was led by BECO Capital AND Middle East Venture Partner (MEVP), with the participation also of existing investors Vivium Holding, Jabbar Group AND Signature Developers. Keyper will invest the new funds in digitizing the rental experience in the UAE and scaling up its rent now, pay later solution.
Irish AI startup Numra, formerly known as Autonifai, has raised €1.5 million in funding to bring its AI financial assistant “Mary” to market. The investment was led by the Irish VC firm Elkstone. Numra plans to use the new funding to accelerate customer acquisition in the United States and to further invest in product development.
BSeed, The first Brazilian investment house specializing in early-stage B2B SaaS startups, presented its third fund, Seed 3, for a total of $30 million. With the new fund, backed mainly by family offices, the VC aims to continue investing in startups at the beginning of their journey in Brazil and Latin America.
Partnerships and collaborations
Public Joint-Stock Commercial Bank of Vietnam (PVcomBank), one of the largest banks in Vietnam, launched PVConnect with Temenos Digital on Amazon Web Services (AWS). With Temenos’ cloud-native digital banking platform, PVcombank designed, built and launched its mobile app, upgrading the mobile banking experience for one million customers.
Forecast, an Abu Dhabi-based big data analytics company powered by generative artificial intelligence, has entered into a strategic collaboration with Intel. The partnership aims to accelerate applied AI projects and develop cutting-edge AI solutions in the Middle East. Intel and Presight will jointly drive the development of AI products, including Smart Cities, through research and development initiatives, focusing on leveraging open source tools.
Soft spacethe fintech service provider, has entered into a partnership Sumitomo Mitsui Card Company Limited, GMO financial portal AND SMBC GMO PAYMENT to enable Tap to Pay on iPhone for the “stera tap” iOS app, which allows merchants to accept contactless payments on their iPhone. Contactless payments are expanding in Japan, with an acceptance rate among small and medium-sized businesses, known as SMEs, of around 60%.
Tassat, the private blockchain-based B2B real-time settlement platform, has announced a partnership with Digital glass tower, a fintech that facilitates B2B cross-border remittances. The partnership will equip Glasstower with Tassat’s blockchain-based technology stack for its multinational enterprise users. Through Tassat’s private blockchain, Glasstower provides instant and secure digital cross-border payments.
CorServ, with which it collaborated, providing banks and fintechs with payment programs Avidbank launch an advantageous credit card program for its business customers. The solution offers Avidbank business customers benefits including choice of credit card products, self-service interfaces for managing their cards, customizable reports, virtual cards, spend controls and expense reporting.
Further partnerships
THE Hashgraph Association, the Swiss-based organization has signed a strategic partnership with the Qatar Financial Center launch a Digital Assets Venture Studio, a platform to support local Qatari and international portfolio companies in developing regulatory compliant decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions and digital assets built on the Hedera Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) network.
Two French providers of e-invoicing solutions, Esker SA AND Sovos, have interconnected their platforms representing an important step towards becoming government-registered partner dematerialization platforms. The French e-invoicing reform sees four million companies forced to accept national electronic invoices, and the largest 6,000 are obliged to issue and report their transactions electronically from September 2026.
Earnixa global provider of AI-driven SaaS pricing and rating solutions for financial services, and Examination, a global digital insurance and systems integration consulting firm, have entered into a strategic partnership to provide property and casualty insurers with greater operational and analytical flexibility to accelerate product pricing and rating innovation . This partnership combines technology and solution consulting expertise.
Nym paper, a financial solutions provider integrated into MENAP, has signed a strategic partnership with Dellsons Associates, a banking consultancy, to drive innovation in the fintech landscape and empower businesses in the Middle East and Pakistan. The strategic alliance will create synergy between NymCard’s technology and Dellsons’ regional expertise and industry connections in the financial and banking sectors.
BUT
CUBE acquires global regulatory intelligence activities from Thomson Reuters. The acquisition represents an important step forward in CUBE’s growth plans. CUBE’s current global customer base will expand to a total of approximately 1,000 customers across banking, insurance, wealth and investment management, payments and adjacent regulated industries. CUBE’s global employees will also reach 600.
Appointments
SAP I agree, the integrated travel, expense and invoice management brand has announced two leadership changes in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Gabriele Indrieri will move from MD for SAP Concur EMEA to the role of chief revenue officer. Furthermore, he also mentioned SAP Concur João Carvalho as MD in Southern Europe (Spain, Portugal, Greece and Turkey), Middle East and Africa.
Digital bank Tandem appointment Suavek Zajac as head of technology. Zajac has previously worked at companies including Grand Parade, William Hill, Mora AND Railsr. He will lead the development of Tandem’s digital offering, leading a team of engineers to build scalable systems to support Tandem’s green mission of making it easier for people to choose a greener lifestyle.
Yuno, names the global payments orchestration platform Juan Felipe Cadena as the new strategic account director. Prior to joining Yuno, Juan Felipe served as CEO and CCO at CargoFly, where he assisted cargo airlines to optimize their revenues and expand into new markets, and held leadership roles at Viva Air and LATAM airlines.
Bank payment company GoCardless he named Jolawn Victor as head of growth. Victor previously held management and leadership roles at PepsiCo, Headspace and, more recently Intuition. In his new role at GoCardless, Victor will lead the global “Growth Group,” managing a team primarily responsible for SMB customer acquisition, incremental revenue growth as well as branding, marketing and communications.
Carmola, named the automotive finance fintech Federico de Benoist as director of capital markets. This strategic addition to the team marks a significant step in Carmoola’s mission to bring simplicity, control and value to even more car buyers. His career to date includes notable roles in German bankculminating as managing director – head of asset finance.
Other appointments
Paynetica, an embedded finance provider, he named Amit Sharma as head of UK operations. Sharma previously worked at EML Payments, Prepaid Financial Services and Prepay Solutions. At Paynetics, Sharma is responsible for improving business efficiency, increasing customer satisfaction and realizing solutions through innovation, communication and collaboration.
Pan-European payment service provider Lemon announced two appointments within its finance and technology divisions to strengthen its management committee. Celine Bayer AND Nicolas Vigier assume the roles of technical director and financial director respectively.
Insurtech bolt he named Nga Phan as product manager. Phan is responsible for leading Bolt’s product development in support of the company’s long-term growth plans. Phan has previously worked in Salesforce, ServiceNow AND Risk management solutionsas well as Bain & Company.
ARK Investing in European issuer of thematic ETFs, he named Paolo Spells as sales director for Northern Europe. The spells were previously a ABOUT 5000, where he was responsible for ETF sales in the UK. Previously, Paul was a sales director at Partner of Orpheus and business development manager at LGBTR Capital.
Fenergoprovider of digital solutions for customer insight, transaction tracking and customer lifecycle management, has strengthened its presence in the EMEA region with the appointment of Ruth Ormsby as MD of EMEA. Joins Fenergo from sales force, where he served as senior vice president of all sectors in the UK and Ireland.