Nomanini, the pioneering fintech platform for the informal retail ecosystem, has today announced a $4m funding round led by Standard Bank, Africa’s largest bank, and completed by Goodwell Investments, an Amsterdam-based investment firm focused on fintech and financial inclusion. 

CitiConnect®, Citi's API connectivity platform has reached a new milestone, with more than 157 million API calls processed since its launch in November 2016. The APIs for Treasury Services, accessed through CitiConnect®, allow clients to seamlessly access a growing number of Citi solutions directly into their treasury workstations or enterprise resource platforms (ERP). Of the total API calls, the majority were from companies located in the Asia Pacific and European regions, reflecting the rapid growth of instant payments schemes in these areas.

To the general public, Metro Bank might look as though it is thriving. It’s just been announced that it’s topped a survey of British customers for overall service quality, and came joint top with First Direct as a bank customers would recommend to family and friends. It has just opened a new store (they intentionally don’t call them branches) in Birmingham and next month will see their 69th and 70th stores open in Solihull and Merry Hill. The Merry Hill store will even be a drive-thru so customers don’t have to leave their car. 

SEBA Crypto AG (SEBA) announced it has successfully obtained a banking and securities dealer licence* from the Swiss regulator FINMA. This represents a milestone for the entire digital asset market ecosystem, as a new secure and integrated access point to the crypto world is now available. The 2018 founded start-up, led by CEO Guido Bühler, has successfully built a licenced and supervised bank within 17 months. The official go-live is expected to take place in early October 2019. The already announced cooperation between Julius Baer and SEBA will enter into force at this time.

Aschheim (Munich). Wirecard, the global innovation leader for digital financial technology, and emonvia, which was founded as a joint venture by one of Germany's largest energy providers, N-Ergie AG, are cooperating in the field of e-mobility. Together the companies are launching charge@work, a secure and sustainable all-in-one charging solution for company car parks. More than 60,000 corporate customers and public utilities throughout Germany use the energy services of N-Ergie, which recently recorded annual sales of EUR 2.8 billion.

The key role and responsibility of financial regulators is to identify and correct market deficiencies that have an adverse effect on investors and end-clients. For this reason, regulators are especially sensitive to corporate conduct that is intended to solicit investments from the public and enrich the corporation's bank account. A good example is the reaction of many financial regulators around the world to the public sale of digital tokens ("ICOs") during the second half of 2017 and 2018. 

Banking & Payment Federation Ireland (BPFI) is today alerting consumers to prepare for changes in how they access and use their online and mobile banking services with the rollout of PSD2 (the second Payment Services Directive). PSD2 is a new European law coming into full force on September 14th. The upcoming changes aims to provide better protection for consumers and businesses by enhancing security for online banking and thereby reducing fraud.

Meniga welcomes Arpit Kaushik as Meniga’s new Chief Operating Officer. Based out of Meniga’s London office, Arpit will be responsible for engineering, professional services, infrastructure services, global sales, and operations.

For the past decade, Arpit has been building and developing high-performance teams within the technology sector in senior roles including Digital General Manager, Banking & Capital Markets at DXC Technology, General Manager and Global Client Partner at Wipro, and Sales Director at Oracle.

Onfido announce today that leading UK FinTechs Monese, Seedrs, Curve and  B-Social are joining with us in the FCA regulatory sandbox test, alongside tech partners Evernym and Deloitte, to demonstrate that there’s a better, safer and more secure way to make identity verification work for both customers and businesses. 

A recent study found that 4.4% of the UK population were gig economy workers between 2017 and 2018. This explains the emergence of so many gig economy platforms, eager to serve a consumer’s every need. But not all gig economy platforms that are launched succeed.