Investors in Assetz Capital have collectively earned £100 million to date in total gross interest.

Founded in the wake of the financial crisis in 2013, the marketplace lender has amassed a community of over 37,000 investors to its platform, ranging from banks and institutional lenders to businesses and retail investors.

It’s been a record year for Assetz Capital, which has seen almost £100m invested into its Innovative Finance ISA (IFISA) wrapped accounts. The marketplace lender is also poised to celebrate £1 billion lent to UK businesses to date.

Global technology consultancy DataArt has announced a successful partnership with METRO Markets, the online B2B marketplace with ambitions to become the biggest in Europe. METRO Markets is a subsidiary of German multinational wholesale company and food specialist Metro AG.

DataArt partnered with METRO Markets, Metro AG’s technology-driven e-commerce venture, to provide a next generation e-commerce ERP system. The solution is highly scalable and automated - from electronic contract management, intelligent pricing and order routing to efficient accounts payable processes.

Coinbase is partnering with crypto-powered charity organisation DustAid to enable Christmas donations to three different causes.

SIX has acquired a stake in token securities issuer daura as it prepares for the live launch next year of its digital asset exchange SDX.

2019 has been quite a year: we had the implementation of PSD2, Brexit uncertainty, increased sanctions brought on by the changes in US foreign policy and Facebook was fined a record-breaking penalty of 5 billion dollars by the Federal Trade Commission (TFC) for violating consumers’ privacy rights.

Gary E. Barnett, CEO of Semafone, the leading provider of data security and compliance solutions for the payment industry, has released his top six 2020 predictions for the cybersecurity and payment industries.

Nordea has entered into an agreement with Société Générale to acquire all shares in SG Finans AS (“SG Finans”) and intends to combine the business with Nordea’s pan-Nordic finance company, Nordea Finance. SG Finans is a Norwegian domiciled subsidiary of Société Générale and provides equipment finance and factoring solutions. SG Finans has 360 employees and operates in Norway, Denmark and Sweden.

 Adyen (AMS: ADYEN), the global payments platform of choice for many of the world’s leading companies, announced today that it has entered into an agreement to make Adyen’s payments platform available to McDonald’s markets globally, beginning with the U.K. early next year.

Financial IT had an interview with Gary E. Barnett, the CEO of Semafone about the company and trends in telecommunications industry 

Financial IT: Could you please tell us more about Semafone and your background?