The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Thursday 17 August 2023 serves up the latest fintech appointments, partnerships and funding successes.
Partnerships
Global carbon ratings agency BeZero Carbon is partnering with two research institutes, the Dresden University of Technology (TU-Dresden) and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), on a European Space Agency funded project to quantify carbon losses and emissions from wildfires.
Trading and investing platform eToro is collaborating with analysis firm Reflexivity Research to produce content about the world of bitcoin and cryptoassets. The content partnership – ‘BTC etc’ – comprises a weekly overview of the crypto market, highlighting the key trends and movements, as well as a monthly podcast.
NewDay has extended its partnership with Cogo by enabling customers to track the carbon footprint of their Aqua card purchases through the Aqua app .The feature gives Aqua customers an estimate of how their spending impacts their individual carbon footprint. The addition of carbon tracking to Aqua follows the successful launch of the technology with NewDay’s digital credit card Bip in November last year.
Endava, a provider of digital transformation, agile development and intelligent automation services, has established a new working relationship with startup AcceptPayments.com, which will bring a new online comparison marketplace to payments and revolutionise the way businesses find their payment service providers (PSPs).
Neptune Networks, the fixed income network for disseminating real-time axe data, adds Geneva-based bank Lombard Odier to its buy-side community. Lombard Odier will consume Neptune axes across rates, investment grade, high yield and emerging markets bonds. The data can be utilised by trading and advisory users.
More partnerships
Cebuana Lhuillier Bank, a rural bank in the Philippines, has selected Temenos to modernise its core banking platform. With Temenos, Cebuana Lhuillier Bank aims to expand its product offerings and grow to more than 11 million customers over five years. The solution will be implemented by Temenos’ delivery partner, Orion Innovation.#
There’s also a partnership for Air Canada and travel app Hopper that gives the airline’s customers more freedom and flexibility to change travel plans when booking on aircanada.com. Travelers can now add Hopper’s Cancel for Any Reason to eligible non-refundable fare types booked on the Air Canada website.
Meanwhile, ChargeAfter, the embedded lending platform for point-of-sale financing, is partnering with Wells Fargo Retail Services. Merchants that use ChargeAfter’s platform to provide point-of-sale financing will now be able to offer their consumers Wells Fargo’s private label credit programmes.
The British Insurance Brokers’ Association (BIBA) has launched a new member facility with FullCircl, the customer lifecycle Intelligence platform, that provides insurance brokers with company information and insights for businesses in the UK and Ireland. SmartBroker brings together super-connected and enriched data and insight on companies and the officers inside them using FullCircl’s proprietary graph technology.
Colt Technology Services (Colt), the digital infrastructure company, has a new partnership with AsiaNext. The partnership sees AsiaNext benefit from a suite of Colt’s secure, digital infrastructure solutions, including Multicast Market Data in the Cloud and PrizmNet, to facilitate high frequency trading of a variety of digital securities and crypto derivatives trading.
Funding and investments
Communion, a new savings app on a mission to help people ‘build a financial buffer against the world and fix their relationship with money’, has raised £2.5million. The pre-seed funding round was led by Target Global. Investors Erin Lantz, Greg Marsh, Max Rofagha have also participated in the round, along with Uncommon Creative Studio as creative partners.
Klar, the Mexico City-based digital financial services platform, has bagged $100million credit facility from Victory Park Capital. The financial support from VPC supports Klar as it expands product offers that provide Mexicans with enhanced access to reliable, simple and transparent credit cards.
ZetaChain, the layer-one blockchain that brings universal interoperability to crypto, has closed a $27million equity funding round. Blockchain.com, Human Capital, VY Capital, Sky9 Capital, Jane Street Capital, VistaLabs, CMT Digital, Foundation Capital, Lingfeng Capital, GSR, Kudasai and Krust were among the investors. ZetaChain’s aims to develop an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible layer-1 blockchain.
Appointments
Superscript, an insurtech and fintech scaleup, has appointed Tim Joslyn as chief technology and operations officer. The hire follows the firm’s successful Series B investment raise in January. Joslyn was previously co-founder and CTO of Pollinate, a data-driven fintech. Alongside Joslyn, Chris Barclays also joins the team as chief commercial officer.
10x Banking, the cloud-native SaaS core bank operating system, has named Okan Ozaltin as its new chief product officer. Prior to joining 10x, Ozaltin held leadership positions at compabies including Signifyd, Fiserv and J.P. Morgan Chase. Ozaltin will play a pivotal role in shaping 10x’s product vision and strategy.
Finboot has appointed former chief innovation officer at Stahl, John Fletcher, as a member of its advisory board. Finboot’s blockchain platform and ecosystem, MARCO, keeps a digital record of product information such as the raw materials used in its creation as well as any certifications.
Fintech Sightline has unveiled an executive leadership shakeup. Omer Sattar transitions from co-CEO to CEO and now also leads payments innovation. Meanwhile, Mike McManus is named president, customer innovation. Tom Sears also transitions from chief operating officer to strategic advisor to the CEO. Jonathan Michaels moves from SVP, strategic development and government affairs, to advisory firm Michaels Strategies. Finally, chief of staff Felicia Gassen takes on the additional role of chief administrative officer.
Company updates
Aleph, an enabler of digital advertising connecting 22,000 advertisers in 130 primarily emerging countries with digital tech platforms such as TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), Snap, Spotify, Uber, Meta, Microsoft, Twitch and Google, has launched a global cross-border payments and credit underwriting unit, Aleph Payments.
Currencycloud has announced a nearly 70 per cent customer growth rate since obtaining its Australian Financial Services (AFS) licence to operate in Australia in June 2022. Its customer base has increased from 18 to 34 organisations across Australia, New Zealand and the wider Oceania region. Currencycloud has also appointed two new hires in the Sydney area with experience in FX markets and cross-border payments.
