Partnerships 

Nium and FINCI announce partnership to strengthen payment services internationally

Fintech company FINCI announced a partnership with global payments and cards issuance leader Nium, that will leverage Nium’s competitive FX rates and extensive pay-out network in strategic markets across the APAC and EMEA regions. The collaboration will enable real-time payments to new markets and improve services to existing regions for FINCI’s individual and business customers.  

FINCI has a unique vision for how to bring a range of useful services and technologies together into one environment to better the financial lives of its customers. Through partnerships with companies like Nium, FINCI hopes to expand services to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The company’s aim is to help businesses in industries like shipping, IT, aircraft management, logistics, trading, and construction to achieve a faster, cheaper, and more efficient payments ecosystem. 

IXOPAY partners with FintecSystems

The industry-leading payment orchestration platform, IXOPAY, has partnered with FinTecSystems, leading open banking, and data analytics platform. The strategic partnership will see IXOPAY and FinTecSystems offering clients a smart payment solution that provides high-risk merchants with independence, flexibility, and security backed by data-driven automation. IXOPAY’s intuitive architecture gives merchants complete control of their payment stack. As a best-of-breed payment orchestration platform, users benefit from simplified integration of acquirers, payment service providers, and risk service providers, as well as centralized reconciliation and settlement services. 

ACI Worldwide and COMO Global partner to help eCommerce businesses grow revenues

ACI Worldwide, a leading global provider of real-time digital payment software, announced a partnership with global payments service provider (PSP) COMO Global S.A. to support the company’s ambitious expansion plans into new markets. COMO Global will utilize ACI Secure eCommerce to enhance its payments gateway COMO World, offering its merchant customers instant access to hundreds of local and cross-border acquirers, as well as a new card, digital and mobile payment methods.

SumUp and PrestaShop partner to empower businesses selling online

Global financial technology company SumUp and PrestaShop - the leading e-commerce platform in Europe and Latin America - announce a partnership that will give hundreds of thousands of merchants on the PrestaShop platform access to SumUp’s extensive product suite of tailor-made business tools thanks to PrestaShop’s SumUp Payment Module. As a key partner in the digitalisation of commerce, PrestaShop aims to become the reference commerce platform for the growth of businesses. With nearly 300,000 sites already using its software across the globe, PrestaShop is the leading open-source ecommerce solution in Europe and Latin America. Partnering with SumUp in Europe, PrestaShop will pursue its mission of empowering European SMEs and allowing merchants to easily deploy their business on a larger scale.

Modulr and Ripple announce strategic partnership to enable seamless payments into the UK and Europe

Leading payments platform Modulr, announced a partnership with Ripple, the leader in enterprise blockchain and crypto solutions, to enable seamless payments into the UK and Europe. Trust Payments, the global unified payments group, is the first customer to go live and begin benefiting from the partnership. Together, the two leading FinTechs will make it easier than ever for businesses, like Trust Payments, to run real-time payments internationally powered by Ripple’s financial technology, RippleNet. With Modulr’s technology, global businesses have an alternative to legacy correspondent banking and can now make payments into the UK and Europe faster, more reliable, and cost-effective.

CUBE and LogicGate partner for a comprehensive regulatory compliance solution

Leading RegTech provider, CUBE, announced today a partnership with LogicGate®, a provider of transformative governance, risk, and compliance solutions. With this partnership, customers will have a comprehensive regulatory compliance solution that will help mitigate risk and cut down on regulatory costs. 

The partnership will also transform manual processes for customers by introducing automated global regulatory intelligence, allowing compliance departments and business managers to shift away from reactive efforts, and focus on proactive regulatory risk management. This solution allows for faster implementations, greater efficiency, and real-time updates and alerts, making manual data gathering and mapping exercises a thing of the past.

Launches 

Chile’s data-driven lender Mento launches on Mambu to improve financial inclusion

Mento, a Chilean digital lender providing credit, payments, and other financial services, has gone live on Mambu’s SaaS cloud banking platform, extending loans via cloud technology to overlooked segments of the population. Mento caters to underserved portions of society, often deemed as unprofitable by incumbent banks due to market and regulatory constraints. The lender differentiates itself in the bustling fintech space by taking a new approach to collecting and analyzing data when extending credit, focusing more on individual cases, history, and other personal information to complement or even stand in place of historical salary figures.

Ideal launches the first-ever crypto analytics API using Pyth Network market data

Ideal, the decision intelligence firm, announced it has launched the first-ever crypto analytics API using Pyth Network’s real-time on-chain market data. Ideal’s Impact API empowers crypto trading firms with institutional-grade analytics and total transparency on their transaction costs and profitability. Ideal’s decision intelligence solutions turn data analytics into clear actions for success, providing traders in crypto and traditional finance markets with performance insights that help them better understand their true execution costs and optimize their trading decisions. With the release of Impact API, Ideal is bringing an essential feature of healthy markets — transaction transparency — to crypto, a market where costs and spreads are often opaque today.

AstroPay launches cryptocurrency offering 

AstroPay, the online payment solution of choice of over five million users in the world has launched its cryptocurrency offering, giving those who want to explore the world of digital assets the option to buy and sell cryptocurrencies on its app and web app. The offering is cost-effective as users can trade cryptocurrencies without paying any purchase, trading, transfer, or maintenance fees. The digital wallet supports Bitcoins, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoins and Cardano, which can be acquired in local currency or American dollars.

Paya announces launch of PayaGov

Paya, a leading integrated payments and commerce solution provider, announced the launch of PayaGov, the company’s solutions and domain experts serving government agencies, municipalities, and service providers. The launch is a key milestone in the strategic alignment of Paya’s market-leading government and municipality franchises and reinforces Paya’s commitment to, and position in, this key vertical.

PayDashboard launches a new pay calculator to help users assess the impact of tax increases due to the new Health & Social Care Levy

Customers of the PayDashboard platform, a leading provider of digital payslips and pay guidance, will be able to access a new calculator designed to support employees to understand the new Health & Social Care Levy (HSCL) and how it will impact them. The latest workplace tax will take effect from 6 April 2022, seeing a 1.25% increase in National Insurance Contributions (NICs) for employees and for employers. In addition, HMRC has requested employers to include a message on payslips from April 2022 to explain this to employees. This is the first-ever time bosses in the UK are being asked to communicate tax changes to their employees directly and it will be essential that they are proactively engaging their workforce to help them understand the financial impact on their final pay.

JudoPay launches Shodan to shake up the tech landscape and enable rapid innovation

Judopay, the leading mobile payments provider, announces the launch of a next-generation technology platform, Shodan. Built with cloud-native architecture, the platform has allowed Judopay to forge ahead in the market and further enables innovations such as Judopay’s payment orchestration. This will allow for peerless performance and reliability, whatever the volume, time of day, or wherever the location.

The new platform allows for scalable, robust, and consistent software delivery, focusing on maximizing merchants’ business agility. These traits are essential for merchants as they continually look to adopt solutions that not only perform but enable rapid scale and innovation. Legacy players with dated tech stacks are struggling to keep up with these market advances, and just 1% of Financial Institutions have the entirety of their IT or payments systems in the cloud. With its latest offering, Judopay is working to support the industry in growing this figure.

Merger & Acquisition

Dutch provider of B2B BNPL solutions will become part of the Banking Circle ecosystem

Biller, an AI-driven Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) company focused on business invoices, is set to join the Banking Circle ecosystem of financial services and applications. After closing of the acquisition, Biller will operate as an independent sister company in the Banking Circle ecosystem. The new generation of B2B buyers expects a fast and flexible payment experience, similar to that of a consumer when purchasing online. Every barrier in the process is one too many. Currently, it’s often only possible to buy on the invoice after a lengthy credit check, a process that can take many days.

J.P. Morgan to acquire a stake in Viva Wallet

J.P. Morgan announced that it has entered into an agreement with Viva Wallet Holdings Software Development S.A. (Viva Wallet), a leading European cloud-based payments fintech company, and its existing shareholders to acquire an ownership stake of approximately 49 percent, subject to regulatory approvals. The financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded in 2000, Viva Wallet is headquartered in Athens, Greece, and focuses on serving SMBs in 23 countries. The company built a proprietary, cloud-based payments platform that is able to offer a broad array of value-added services to merchants including tap-to-device technology, merchant cash advance, bill pay, expense management, virtual debit card issuance, cash disbursement, gift cards, and loyalty.

Jack Dorsey's Block completes $29 billion acquisition of Afterpay

Block, Inc. and Afterpay Limited today announced the successful completion of the Scheme of Arrangement under which Block has acquired all of the issued shares in Afterpay. This transaction aims to enable Block to better deliver compelling financial products and services that expand access to more consumers and help drive incremental revenue for sellers of all sizes.

"We’re excited to welcome the Afterpay team to Block and are eager to get to work," said Jack Dorsey, Block co-founder, and CEO. "Together, we’ll deliver even better products and services for sellers and consumers while staying true to our shared purpose of making the financial system more fair and accessible to everyone."

Job Moves

TrueLayer expands into Sweden appointing Karl Hagner as country manager

TrueLayer, Europe’s leading open banking platform, announces its expansion into Sweden with the appointment of former Adyen executive Karl Hagner as its Country Manager. A highly experienced commercial manager, with a focus on payments in ecommerce, Stockholm-based Karl will define and manage commercial strategy in the country, alongside TrueLayer’s Chief Revenue Officer Max Emilson. TrueLayer’s expansion to Sweden comes as demand for the firm’s open banking platform, comprising payments, payouts and access to financial data, continues to grow. Karl will lead the company’s expansion in Sweden, with a focus on scaling commercial operations and supporting existing TrueLayer clients to expand into the country.

Objectway appoints Karl im Brahm as CEO for the Dach region and group banking practice leader

Objectway, a global top 100 wealth, banking & asset management software provider, has announced the appointment of Karl im Brahm as Chief Executive Officer of Die Software Objectway Group. Karl joins Objectway’s management team to develop and execute the group expansion strategy in the DACH region and in the core banking market in Europe. Karl im Brahm brings more than 28 years of experience in the banking sector with significant expertise in leading digital transformation. Karl will lead the Die Software Objectway Group entity as the  Group continues its expansion in the German-speaking private banking and wealth management markets, as part of its long-term growth strategy for the region. Moreover, he will lead the  Banking Practice at the group level.  

Nubank appoints former Tink UK Head Rafa Plantier

Digital bank Nubank has hired Rafa Plantier from Open Banking platform Tink as head of the strategy and business development. Plantier confirmed that he will continue to be based in London in his new role at Brazil’s Nubank. In a LinkedIn post, Plantier wrote: “I’m thrilled to be joining Nubank as head of the strategy and business development – leading an incredibly talented group of people spread across all of its business units and supporting its long-term growth ambitions.”

BNPL player Kueski appoints Krishna Venkatraman chief data officer

Kueski, one of the largest buy now, pay later (BNPL) and online consumer lenders in Latin America, today announced the appointment of Krishna Venkatraman as the company's chief data officer. In this capacity, Venkatraman will focus on amplifying the scope of Kueski’s data capabilities, from credit risk to other aspects like engagement, personalization and retention.

Venkatraman sees expanding access to Kueski’s financial products as the number one priority in his new role, which will be driven by even faster, more reliable credit-decisioning and risk models. Another equally important focus will be to create customer delight and develop products that feel intuitive to use without imposing additional tax burdens on the consumer. Lastly, he wants to transform Kueski into a learning machine and implement a data culture that enables the entire team to participate and effectively use data-based insights in their day-to-day work.