While our COVID-19 pandemic fears are starting to fade, their impacts are still being felt, especially in the pockets of many South Africans. When lockdown restrictions put a huge strain on businesses and countless jobs were lost, consumers turned to their credit cards to keep up with monthly expenses, resulting in worrying levels of indebtedness.

Today, Square launches its first integration with Clearpay in the UK, providing “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) functionality to sellers across online and in-person commerce.

Northern Trust has named Benjamin Bobroff as the new global head of its Digital Solutions Consulting team within its Asset Servicing business development division and made three senior appointments supporting the continued strategic focus and investment in digital innovation.

Prytek, a multinational technology group with a focus on building and investing in technologies and delivering managed services, announces that it has appointed Noga Knaz as its CEO of Prytek Ventures to provide the Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) arm with more management attention and concentrate on early-stage fintech startups.

The Fintech industry is often admired for its unmatched level of growth. Fintechs are behind the rapid product development that has transformed the finance industry and the way consumers manage and understand their money.

However, for an industry that is so progressive and forward-thinking, there’s still a large imbalance in gender diversity from entry-level and junior roles all the way through to senior management and C-suite.

Micro-investing platform Wombat has closed its Series A funding round, raising more than £4m to support its ambitious growth plans, forthcoming product launches and international expansion.

The round was led by long-time backer Fuel Ventures, which first invested in the business in 2020. A four-week crowdfund also gave Wombat users and broader community access to the round and closed 300% over target, contributing to a total raise of £4.2m.

As more money moves online, people need simple, easy ways to bring their money into the digital financial ecosystem. We’re investing in expanding Plaid’s network reach to new geographies and more people across the world to better support the ecosystem.

Growing the payment partner ecosystem

DPO Group (DPO) co-founder and CEO Eran Feinstein has announced his retirement after helping to build the company from scratch to become one of Africa’s leading payment providers. Last year, Feinstein, alongside co-founder Offer Gat, successfully managed DPO’s sale to Network International, a globally renowned enabler of digital commerce across the Middle East and Africa.

Deutsche Payment today announces its collaboration with Token, the leading Open Banking enabler for Europe's payments industry, and the subsequent launch of PayThisWay powered by Deutsche Payment: a solution for account-to-account payments and Open Banking that enables fast, smooth, cost-efficient, and secure direct payments between accounts.

London-based global fintech Unlimint, has today announced the launch of its Banking as a Service (BaaS) product,