Atom bank, the UK’s first app-based bank, has been accredited to the latest iteration of the Recovery Loan Scheme (RLS) by the British Business Bank, and will soon be accepting applications on its award-winning secured lending products.

O-CITY, the automated fare collection provider by BPC, has been accelerating cashless fare collection across Kenya by providing a widely popular service, now digitising payments across over 10,000 Matatu buses. This represents a tenfold increase in Matatu buses using the service since its pilot only a couple of years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic.

South African businesses are at serious risk from rapidly increasing payments fraud – often from within their very own organisations. Ryan Mer, CEO at eftsure Africa,  a Know Your Payee™ (KYP) platform provider says while criminal syndicates behind ransomware and Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks shouldn’t be ignored, it’s important for organisations, irrespective of size, to tighten the internal controls needed to prevent serious fraud.

Embattled BNPL giant Klarna saw its net losses nearly quadruple in the first half of 2022 on higher credit losses, increased employee costs and investment in market expansion.

In a letter to shareholders, CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski says the firm has been "operating in a very different environment" in the first half of 2022 as it faced up to the fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the economic downturn and a "huge shift in investor sentiment".

Pan-African embedded finance Fintech Pezesha has raised a pre-series A investment of $11 Million. The round was a mix of $6 million equity and $5 million debt. The funding round, which was led by Women’s World Banking Capital Partners II (WWBCP II), will see the company significantly scale operations in its core markets and grow into new markets within Sub Sahara Africa.

Bybit, the third largest crypto derivatives exchange in the world by volume, has partnered with Circle Internet Financial, a global digital financial technology firm and the issuer of USD Coin (USDC) and Euro Coin (EUROC) to help accelerate the growth of Bybit as a gateway for retail and institutional USDC-settled products.

The appointment of New York-based retired banker John Horner as Director and Board Chair of Ranqx, is a major coup for the specialist fintech firm who provides banks, credit unions and lenders with real-time data, straight-through credit underwriting, and the intelligence and speed needed to transform the world of small to medium-sized business (SMB) lending.

Fintech start-up iPiD has announced a $3.3M seed funding round by strategic investors Rapyd Ventures, Jungle Ventures, 1982 Ventures, Resolution Ventures, Saison Capital, the XA Network and Wing Vasiksiri. In addition, the company has announced the appointment of Alain Raes, a long-time payments industry expert and former SWIFT executive, to the iPiD management team as Chief Commercial Officer.

As part of its ambitious strategy for instant and frictionless transactions, SWIFT today announces a new capability that uses its global intelligence on past cross-border flows to predict potential problems before new international payments are sent.