In The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Tuesday sees a partnership for Railsr and SurePay, while Airwallex bags additional $100million funding.
Funding
Fintech MarketFinance has secured a £30million credit facility from Viola, the Israeli technology investment group. The agreement enables MarketFinance to provide credit worth up to £240million per year to UK-based businesses. MarketFinance has made over £45million available to more than 2,000 buyers via embedded financing.
Airwallex has closed its Series E extension, while maintaining its $5.5billion valuation. The fintech platform’s latest $100million funding will fuel the company’s growth plans. The Melbourne-founded company accelerated its international expansion in 2021, extending its reach across Europe, North America and Asia Pacific.
Company updates
International payment service provider ECOMMPAY is celebrating its 10 year anniversary. The fintech company has grown exponentially from less than one million transactions per year in 2012 to two million transactions. ECOMMPAYs clients now span industries from online retail, to e-learning, video gaming and many more.
LCX, a Liechtenstein blockchain company, has relaunched its crypto currency exchange. Originally launched in 2018, the LCX Exchange Revamp is another milestone in LCX’s growth roadmap establishing the foundational framework including its new backbone infrastructure, scalable account wallets and updated user interface.
OakNorth Bank has purchased 50 per cent of shares in lender ASK Partners. ASK will continue to operate as a fully independent entity with its team remaining in its offices on Harley Street. It follows OakNorth’s first acquisition in December of cash flow forecasting business Fluidly.
Research
Payment firm Outseer has studied data of all the reported incidents of fraud to Action Fraud – the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime. Action Fraud receives a fraud report every 85 seconds and reported losses totalled over £3billion over the year. Online shopping is the most used attack vector, with more than 72,000 reports. Those aged 60 to 79 and 80-plus lost more than twice the amount of money per fraud case as 20 to 39-year-olds.
Partnerships
Ripple has joined forces with Lemonway, a Paris-based payment provider for online marketplaces. The new partnership sees Lemonway using RippleNet’s ODL, which leverages XRP for crypto-enabled payments, to enhance its treasury payments processes. Ripple has also announced a partnership with Swedish money transfer provider Xbaht. It sees Xbaht offering instant and cost-effective retail remittances via on-demand liquidity, supported by Tranglo, the cross-border payment hub based in Singapore.
Alfa has teamed up with ITDS, the business and IT consultancy, for the delivery of the Alfa Systems software platform. Working together, ITDS and Alfa will enable asset finance providers to implement Alfa’s cloud-native technology platform seamlessly.
Meanwhile, NatWest has partnered with StepChange, the UK debt charity, to offer its SME customers an independent debt advice service. The bank has also donated £2million to the charity to fund a dedicated team which supports business customers struggling with their finances.
Indian financial firm IIFL Finance has partnered with Credgenics, a provider of SaaS-based collections
and debt resolution technology solutions. It will implement Credgenics’ end-to-end debt collections technology platform.
Deutsche Bank and Kyndryl, the IT infrastructure services provider, have extended their vendor contract agreement. Kyndryl will continue to run Deutsche Bank’s Continental European core banking and mission critical IT infrastructures while supporting the bank’s technology transformation. Kyndryl will also support the bank’s cloud migration strategy as part of its broader effort to adopt public cloud services.
Railsr, the embedded finance experience platform, has selected SurePay as its UK Faster Payments (UKFP) Confirmation of Payee (CoP) vendor to help its customers combat fraud and misdirected payments in the UK. Railsr collaborated with SurePay and Railsr customer ANNA Money to get its new Confirmation of Payee service implemented and live within a rapid four weeks.
More partnerships
Equifax and PrinSix have facilitated an open banking solution for KCOM, the Yorkshire-based broadband provider, to create the UK’s first ISP accepting applications for a social tariff online. Social tariffs give eligible low-income households the ability to access cheaper deals from their service providers.
There’s also a partnership for Worldline and India’s NPCI International Payments (NIPL) to expand the acceptance of Indian payment means across Europe. As part of the partnership, Worldline allows merchants’ point-of-sale systems to accept payments from UPI, an instant real-time payment system, as well as RuPay, NPCI’s proprietary card payment network solution.
Verto, a B2B cross-border payments firm, has teamed up with ForexPeople to bring secure, fast and seamless global payments to South African businesses. Verto plumped for ForexPeople because of its ‘deep expertise as a leading foreign exchange intermediary with a reputation for high ethical standards’. The partnership also ensures that Verto is fully compliant with all local regulatory requirements.
Meanwhile, AI-based-solutions provider Pelican has extended a partnership with Santander Consumer Bank Austria. Pelican’s PaaS solution allows SCBA to retain and extend the life of its existing core systems without making a significant new investment.
Resistant AI, the AI financial crime prevention firm, and ComplyAdvantage, the financial crime risk data company, launch an AI transaction monitoring solution to combat fraud and money laundering. The solution detects previously unknown patterns of behaviour and identifies new risks faster.
Appointments
Payment orchestration firm CellPoint Digital strengthens leadership team with new appointments. Tom Randklev joins as global head of product following eight years at Global Payments. Greg Worch is named new global head of revenue. While Melanie Siewert is named global head of marketing, brand and design. Kevin Weber joins as global head of product and payment strategy alongside new global head of business alignment, Marc Moskowitz. Finally,Zoe Wheelerjoins as global head of culture & team.
Cornerstone FS plc, the cloud-based provider of international payment, has appointed Simon Bullock and John Burns as independent non-executive directors. Cornerstone says they bring significant and complementary experience and expertise that will be invaluable in guiding its growth. The appointments also enhance its board’s independence and governance structures.
SmartSearch, the AML software firm, has appointed Zowie Lees-Howell as vice president of enterprise sales. She joins from Equifax where she most recently served as sales director. Lees-Howell is responsible for the firm’s continued expansion into markets including banking, financial services, crypto, utilities and telco.
More job moves
Wise Platform, Wise’s infrastructure offering for banks and non-banks, has expanded its senior leadership team. Folley Ogundele joins as VP of sales. While Till Wirth joins from open banking platform TrueLayer, and will work alongside Steve Naudé, head of Wise Platform, as product director.
Meanwhile, digital bank Tandem announces the appointment of three key relationship managers to its mortgage division. Mark Shelper, David Venn and Gordon Rae join Tandem’s Mortgage division this month to accelerate and amplify the company’s mission to build the UK’s greener digital bank.
Fintech MonetaGo has revealed its co-founder and CEO Jesse Chenard will transition to the role of executive chairman. Meanwhile, Neil Shonhard, currently president, becomes CEO. Shonhard joined MonetaGo as MD Asia Pacific in June 2020 before becoming company president in August 2021.
Launches
SmartStream launches AI-enabled account control solution to meet ISO 20022. TLM Aurora Advanced Account Control enables clients to manage large, verified data sets, not only for reconciliation purposes, but for downstream systems.
BNPL provider Hokodo has launched a new plug-in for multinational e-commerce platform Shopify. This integration will enable B2B merchants with a Shopify webstore to offer instant credit terms to their limited company and sole trader buyers, while getting paid up front and remaining protected from the risk of non-payment and fraud.
