The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Tuesday 10 January 2023 brings you news of funding successes and fintech partnerships.
Job moves
Securrency, a developer of blockchain-based financial and regulatory technology, names Nadine Chakar as CEO. Most recently, Chakar served as executive VP and head of State Street Digital. She has also served as a member of the Securrency board since 2021. Dan Doney, Securrency’s founder and former CEO, now serves as its chief technology officer.
Built Technologies, a real estate fintech provider in the US, adds Bora Chung and Matt Marenghi as company advisors. Their expertise will help Built drive innovation and value for its customers as the company scales and expands the services on its platform.
Belasko, a fund, private wealth and corporate services business, appoints Edward Green as CEO. Current CEO, Paul Lawrence, takes on a newly created position of group managing director. Belasko employs more than 100 professionals across Guernsey, Jersey, UK and Luxembourg.
Burges Salmon has boosted its banking and finance practice with the appointment of structured finance lawyer James Barrett as a director. He joins following a career with Allen & Overy. Burges Salmon handles complex financing transactions for clients on both a UK and cross-jurisdictional basis.
The Nottingham Building Society has named Anthony Murphy as its new CFO. Murphy is set to join the Society in March, moving from digital challenger bank Tandem. The Nottingham also recently signed a partnership agreement of up to £600million with fintech mortgage lender Generation Home.
BMLL, a data provider, has appointed Rob Laible as head of Americas with plans to open a New York area-based office. The appointment supports BMLL’s strategic growth plans as well as increasing client demand for Level 3 data and analytics globally. BMLL also recently bagged $26million in a fundraise led by Nasdaq Ventures to fuel product development, the acquisition of new data sets and its geographic expansion.
Funding
KreditBee, a personal loan and online credit platform in India, has extended its Series D round. It has raised an additional $100million in primary funding from Advent International. The additional capital raised will be deployed towards scaling the existing business and diversifying its product offering by venturing into digitally enabled financial products.
YFM completes £5million investment in AutomatePro. The funding will help the cloud based intelligent test automation and DevOps software provider, build on its presence in the US and continue to invest in product innovation. YFM invests between £2million and £10million into businesses with strong growth potential located across the UK.
US-based conversational AI company NLX has raised $4.6million in Series Seed II funding despite the tough market for tech companies and startups. The latest round of capital will continue fueling NLX’s marketplace expansion and product optimisation. The round was led by IAG Capital Partners with participation also from JetBlue Ventures and Flying Fish Ventures.
Partnerships
Continuum, a Web3 community thinktank, has forged a strategic partnership with Plato Data Intelligence, a NYC-based data platform. The partnership is focused at extending both companies’ active Web3 communities via increased brand awareness, engagement and vertical data intelligence using Plato’s content distribution and syndication network.
NorthOne has joined The Clearing House’s real-time paments network in partnership with The Bancorp Bank. NorthOne can help businesses receive payments instantly 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It also serves as a platform for innovation letting NorthOne deliver new products and services to customers.
Meanwhile, authID partners with Tax Status, a provider of official tax data and IRS account monitoring. Tax Status has implemented authID’s Human Factor Authentication services (HFA) to help its enterprise partners in wealth management, lending, accounting, and other financial service providers protect highly sensitive tax data.
London-based technology brand Nothing partners with Sharaf DG. Nothing will expand its presence in the MENA region as a result of the collaboration. Nothing Phone scooped the most Innovative Smartphone Design in TIME‘s Best Inventions of 2022.
Broadridge will use Glue42, a software provider that delivers integrated desktop experiences to financial institutions globally, to deliver a seamless trading experience. This move brings clients of Broadridge and Glue42 an integrated framework across products, creating a single workspace for banks and broker-dealers.
More partnerships
SmartCrowd, a DFSA regulated real estate crowdfunding platform, joins forces with GEMS Rewards, a loyalty programme from private education provider, GEMS Education, to increase financial literacy and improve investment habits among UAE families.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Israeli-based Automat-IT have struck a multi-year agreement to support startups and digitally native companies in Europe and Israel. Automat-IT collaborates with AWS to accelerate cloud adoption.
Meanwhile, EKA Solutions Inc, a provider of a cloud-based integrated freight management platform, collaborates with Redkik, to deliver transaction based insurtech solutions to EKA freight carrier, broker, and shipper SMBs.
Acquisitions
Rami Cassis has announced the expansion of portfolio company IT provider Parseq. Parseq has acquired The TALL Group, a UK secure print and payment solutions firm, and has integrated with Column Software Solutions, an India-based IT and business process management firm. Parseq has now grown its presence to more than 520 staff based in 12 offices across the UK, Bulgaria, and India.
Nuvei, the Canadian fintech, is to acquire Paya Holdings, a provider of integrated payment and commerce solutions in the US. The acquisition is an all-cash transaction at $9.75 per share for total consideration of approximately $1.3billion. Nuvei says the deal accelerates its integrated payment strategy and diversifies the business into key high-growth non-cyclical verticals. It also enhances the execution of its growth plan.
