Stripe, which builds economic infrastructure for the internet, has signed agreements for a Series I fundraise of more than $6.5 billion (€6.15 billion) at a $50B (€47B) valuation. Primary investors include existing Stripe shareholders—Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, MSD Partners, and Thrive Capital—as well as new investors including GIC, Goldman Sachs Asset and Wealth Management, and Temasek.

Apex Group Ltd. (“Apex Group” or “The Group”), a global financial services provider, today announces its appointment by NewVest’s inaugural Private Equity 50 Index Fund (“PE 50”).

Ecospend, the leading payments platform in the UK, recently acquired by Trustly, outlines the potential of Open Banking payments to close the VAT tax gap which stands at £10 billion, or 6.9% of the VAT receipts received by the government, for the financial year 2021-22.

Torstone Technology, a leading SaaS platform for post-trade securities and derivatives processing, today announces that Sam Farrell has joined the firm as Head of North America. Based in Toronto, Sam will have oversight of all the US and Canadian operations for Torstone. Sam will continue to expand Torstone’s footprint in North America, further establishing the business as a key provider within the US and Canadian markets.

Adyen, the global financial technology platform of choice for leading businesses, announces that it has further advanced its digital authentication solution, with ongoing pilots realizing a conversion uplift of up to 7%. Engineered to optimize authorization and therefore end revenue, the company’s expanded capabilities include Delegated Authentication, Data-Only, and Trusted Beneficiaries functionalities.

Surecomp® today announced that it is partnering with Contour, one of the global digital trade finance networks, as part of a collaborative vision to drive the digital transformation of trade finance across financial institutions.  
 
Surecomp has over 35 years of expertise digitising trade finance processes and its integration with Contour’s decentralised network of banks and corporates will provide users with a fully integrated end-to-end trade service solution.

NextGen IT company Trifork and modular core banking technology provider Tuum have entered into a partnership to provide a bespoke card and financing platform to the Danish financial institution Sparxpres, part of Spar Nord. The agreement covers the creation of the platform and five years of subsequent development and operational support.

GoCardless, a global leader in bank payment solutions, has integrated with Zapier, the leader in no-code automation, to help businesses save time and energy when managing their payments.

Cashflows, the platform that makes it easy for merchants to accept payments, today announces the appointment of Philip Harding as Account Development Director.

The role of observability is changing. Traditionally, it has been viewed as a way to help DevOps teams tackle the challenges they experience in complex, highly distributed, cloud-native environments. In this context, observability has evolved from application performance monitoring to solving broader challenges across application monitoring, testing, and management in these environments. Consequently, there needs to be a wider definition that applies to this wider set of challenges: Unified Observability.