Digital bank Chase has today introduced a refer-a-friend offer, rewarding existing customers with £20 when they successfully refer family and friends to open a Chase current account.

New customers who have been referred to Chase, and deposited a minimum of £20 into their account within 30 days, will also receive £20.

Customers will be able to retrieve their unique referral link from within the Chase app to share with family and friends. With many customers already making the most of Chase’s everyday rewards programme, the new initiative will help customers to easily share and recommend the Chase account.

Deborah Keay, Chief Marketing Officer of Chase in the UK, said: “The new refer-a-friend offer is just a small token from us to reward our customers and make it easy for them to share and recommend the Chase experience to their family and friends. With our new refer-a-friend offer and the recent launch of the Chase Saver, customers banking with Chase can enjoy one of the most competitive current accounts on the market".

This new addition is the latest in a number of features from Chase aimed at offering a rewarding banking experience to customers. Chase most recently launched a new savings option with a competitive interest rate of 1.5% AER*, alongside 1% cashback on everyday debit card spending and 5% AER interest on small change roundups.

Customers can open a current account in minutes via the simple and intuitive app and for any questions, customers can connect to a customer support specialist, with just a few taps in the Chase app – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

CellPoint Digital a leading global provider of digital commerce and payment solutions, is one of 11 startups that has been accepted into Plug and Play Tech Centre’s Travel accelerator program.

Plug and Play is an innovation platform that connects start-ups, corporations, venture capital firms, universities and government agencies. Since 2006, it has been accelerating start-ups by matching them with corporate clients and investing in them. The dedicated Plug and Play Fintech program launched in 2014.

As of 2021, Plug and Play has 70+ corporate partners, has made more than a hundred investments, and accelerated 600 start-ups. Last year, it accelerated over 2,500 companies and invested in 210.

The 2022 program will run over the next three months, during which time CellPoint Digital will be fully immersed in Plug and Play's global network of over 40,000 startups, 500 industry-leading corporate partners, and hundreds of venture capital firms and investors.

Melanie Siewert, Chief Marketing Officer, Global Head of Marketing, Brand and Design at CellPoint Digital said: “We are thrilled to be part of this forward-thinking, collaborative community. Plug and Play fast-tracks the innovation strategy of the world's largest financial institutions and by joining Plug and Play we will gain access to a vast network of start-ups which will further help us keep up with the latest industry trends.”

CellPoint Digital is now embarking on a range of networking events, mentoring sessions, dealflows, and will have the opportunity to evaluate the potential for pilots, POCs, investment, and other collaborations with the Plug and Play network.

Saeed Amidi, Founder and CEO of Plug and Play, said: “We believe technology has the power to make the world a better place and invest our time and resources into the entrepreneurs making a real impact. In past years, we've had many success stories come out of our programs, and I look forward to welcoming CellPoint Digital into this year’s program.”

Graduation for all of Plug and Play's Silicon Valley start-up batches will take place during Plug and Play's invite-only June Summit 2022, June 14-16.

For more details, visit https://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/

Nets, part of the leading European PayTech Nexi Group, has acquired full ownership of German-based orderbird, a leading provider of integrated POS-software solutions in the hospitality sector in Europe. Nets was a long-standing partner and shareholder in orderbird through its German-based digital payment provider Concardis. The current transaction follows Nets increasing its stake in orderbird in late 2021 and completing this full acquisition further strengthens its merchant services proposition in the hospitality vertical in a region where it already leads through Nets / Concardis merchant services. The orderbird brand will remain and the company will continue to operate as a separate business unit within Nexi. 

orderbird offers intuitive SaaS solutions and complementary services for independent restaurateurs and neighbourhood businesses in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France. Its integrated software solutions help hospitality merchants operate their businesses more efficiently by streamlining their dockets and mobile ordering processes while encompassing reservations and menu management, data insights into all business metrics and financially compliant data exports and digital payment capabilities – all on a cloud-native infrastructure. 

Robert Hoffman, CEO Nets Merchant Services and Concardis, said: “Together with orderbird, we underline our commitment to the integrated software market while further enhancing our propositions to hospitality clients. Our goal is to ensure European businesses benefit from the rapid digitisation of payments via solutions like orderbird’s vertically-focused SaaS platform, which enhances the customer experience while enabling merchants to run their business more efficiently. We’re proud to welcome orderbird fully into the Nexi family as it continues to raise the bar in meeting the evolving needs of restaurants and neighbourhood businesses across Europe.”  

The orderbird management team will continue in their current roles and its CEO, Mark Schoen, is looking forward to stronger relations becoming part of the Nets / Nexi Group and the potential prospects for the company:  

“Making neighbourhood businesses more successful is what orderbird is all about. Our customers are thriving because they can access the same benefits of digitisation as their larger competitors. We share Nets / Nexi’s belief in delivering leading-edge solutions to customers in today’s rapidly evolving environment and look forward to broadening our business presence together in Europe.” 

"We are very pleased to have Nets / Nexi Group as a partner on our side," added Jakob Schreyer, founder and Chief Strategy Officer of orderbird. "Especially in view of the accelerating trend towards seamless vertical payment and banking software solutions, this is a landmark deal. With this partnership, it was particularly important to us that we could maintain orderbird's total focus on enhancing our leading propositions and meeting the needs of our customers. This will allow us to concentrate on our next goal: expanding our vertical software payment capabilities more broadly and establishing orderbird as a force to be reckoned with in the payment services sector."  

Following the transaction through Nets, Nexi will own 100 percent of Orderbird with an aggregate cash out of ca. EUR 100 million including also previous share purchases. 

Ingenico, a Worldline brand, and Inspire Payments today announce a new partnership, equipping the Verastar Group’s company with Ingenico’s market leading ‘Move’ and ‘Desk’ payment terminals. The deal will mean Ingenico is now the primary supplier of terminals to Inspire Payments, empowering the payments provider to grow its merchant estate and offer tailored payment solutions to the UK’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The new agreement will enable Inspire Payments to deliver countertop and mobile solutions to meet the diverse needs of their customers with Ingenico’s Move and Desk payment terminals. It’s Move series offers a wireless solution that is easy for merchants to transport, offering a faster transaction flow by accepting any payment method, speeding up the payment process. Ingenico’s static offering, Desk, delivers an enhanced user experience and robust devices that can support the most demanding use cases thanks to its central payment acceptance solution.

One of the UK’s largest independent sales organizations (ISOs), Inspire Payments serves thousands of SMEs throughout the country, providing payment processing and tailored solutions to ensure their businesses run smoothly with simple and cost-effective payment solutions. Its consultants spend dedicated time with merchants to understand their individual requirements for payments.

Through the partnership, Inspire Payment’s customers will get the best out of their payment terminal, further enhanced with Ingenico’s wrap around services, including UK based helpdesk support and repairs.

Martin Doherty, Head of Terminals, Solutions and Services for Northern Europe at Ingenico, commented: "Ingenico is delighted to commence this partnership with Inspire Payments, and we look forward to supporting their continued growth by providing advice and the latest in payments innovation. Our terminals will provide their merchants with the quality, stability and support they need to deliver seamless payments."

Jonathan Bowl, Interim Managing Director at Inspire Payments, said: "Inspire Payments takes pride in the personal service we provide to our merchant base through our dedicated sales team. Now, working in partnership with Ingenico, our customers will not only benefit from their technology, but also a suite of essential services to ensure the best payment experience.”

For more information, visit: https://www.ingenico.com

FintechOS, the global leader in high-productivity fintech infrastructure offering to the banking, insurance and retail industries, has today launched new features that allow traditional institutions to create, customise and roll-out their own Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) product as well as additional embedded lending solutions.  

With experience helping banks and lenders build digital lending products, including a number of pioneering embedded finance projects in Europe, FintechOS is well placed to empower established financial brands to step outside the box of traditional payments and credit product definitions, and tap into the booming BNPL market. 

As there are many parameters in constructing BNPL offers that are localized for a particular market and personalized to target customer segments, banks and lenders value a high degree of control and configuration in order to differentiate their offerings versus competitors. Achieving success in this area will require a new-generation technology stack which doesn’t box innovators into traditional personal loan or overdraft constraints. 

FintechOS’ open and low-code approach means that teams at institutions can build and edit BNPL and embedded lending products, customer journeys, and business automation logic in a single orchestration across its lean full stack digital financial innovation platform. And they can do this without relying a on complex code or buying new and expensive technology.  

“At FintechOS we believe all banks and lenders should be leaning into the BNPL trend as a way of bringing in new generation customers, generating new sources of non-interest revenue via merchant fees, and diversifying the value proposition of their digital current accounts and payment wallets. However, many institutions are limited by their technology stack and the lack of control afforded to their digital teams,” said Marcio Spinola, Chief Product Officer at FintechOS. “Our BNPL proposition addresses this problem by allowing traditional providers to create and iterate their own natively embeddable products and journeys. Rather than waiting for internal tech teams or external vendors, we are putting power into the hands of internal digital makers for the first time.”  

BNPL and embedded lending propositions created with FintechOS technology can be integrated into existing business administration systems or administered via fully configurable customer and staff portals. This ensures that the institution can run the complete lifecycle of BNPL lending and servicing in a highly tailored model, while also benefiting from the scalability and performance of the underlying cloud-native SaaS-based technology stack. 

Today, Griffin – a UK Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) fintech – announces the completion of an important step in its application for a banking licence. Griffin has submitted its application to the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).  

“This is a major milestone  for the company and a direct result of the team’s hard work and thoughtful approach to building a sound internal structure, strong business model, and reliable technology platform,” John Weguelin, Griffin Chair. “I and the Board are thrilled to support the team on its journey to seeking authorisation to become a bank.”  

Griffin’s BaaS platform is designed to provide fintechs of all sizes with a one-stop shop for bringing their products to market, including access to all the UK's payment rails, bank accounts, debit cards, an integrated ledger, and customer onboarding automation. 

The process for applying for a banking licence requires companies like Griffin to demonstrate that they meet key regulatory requirements and expectations, including effective governance arrangements, a viable and sustainable business model, adequate capital and liquidity and safe and secure infrastructure and operations. Few firms seeking authorisation reach this stage: only 28% of companies that held initial meetings with the regulators reached the application submission stage between 2013 and September 2019, according to the PRA and the FCA.  

The road to becoming the de facto banking platform for fintech innovation  

Modern consumers demand digital-first finance, creating a massive opportunity with the embedded finance market likely to reach $7.2tn by 2030, according to a report by Informa. However, the process for building and launching financial services software is still long, expensive and built on outdated technology. Today, fintechs are forced to integrate disparate platforms across multiple partners with long onboarding times - stifling innovation and prolonging time to market.  

“From the beginning, we’ve known that a full-stack approach delivers more value to customers.” said David Jarvis, CEO and co-founder of Griffin. “Our platform brings historically siloed infrastructure components that all share a data model into a single platform, allowing fintechs to launch quickly without compromising on compliance or operational resilience. We’re incredibly proud to have reached this milestone in our journey to become a bank that our customers can build on.”  

Enabling embedded finance with a developer-friendly, self-service approach 

“Today, banks are not well equipped to support the seamless and contextual experience consumers have come to expect,” Tom Mendoza, EQT Ventures partner and investment advisor, said. “There is currently a gap in the market for a developer-led, full-stack approach to technology and banking. Griffin represents the future when it comes to powering the next generation of fintech and embedded finance.” 

The company aims to bring state-of-the-art software, radical pricing transparency, and an API-first approach to the UK financial services sector. Additionally, Griffin’s BaaS platform will provide the power of SaaS technology and modern developer tools to the next generation of UK fintechs.   

“Griffin’s platform enables fintechs to focus on what they do best—creating innovative products and experiences—not managing back-end infrastructure and compliance processes” Amy Kirk, independent non-executive director at Griffin and current board member of Monzo and FCMB UK said. “Submitting this application brings the company one step closer to actualising its ambitious vision.” 

Bitfount, the federated analytics and machine learning platform, today announced that it has raised a $5M seed round as it continues to accelerate its product development and expand its engineering and design teams with key hires. The round, led by Ahren and Speedinvest, reflects the growing global demand for machine learning and analytics in every industry, alongside increased public and regulatory awareness of data privacy concerns, and the rise of the data-centric AI movement.

Bitfount was founded by Blaise Thomson and Naaman Tammuz. Thomson’s previous company, VocalIQ, was acquired by Apple where he subsequently served as Chief Architect for Siri Understanding, and Tammuz was previously CPTO for B2B business insights platform DueDil. The Bitfount platform makes it possible for data scientists, researchers, business analysts and data custodians to share, access and collaborate on datasets without disclosing any of the sensitive, underlying data.

“Where traditionally the legal process behind sharing raw data between parties can take months or even years, Bitfount’s secure network instead allows algorithms to travel to datasets rather than the other way around, which means there needn’t be any disclosure of sensitive information. This new paradigm unlocks opportunities for both analysis and machine learning that were previously impossible - either because they required sharing of sensitive raw data, or because the contractual agreements were prohibitively complex.” explains Thomson.

Bitfount’s product utilises a zero-trust security model and a novel message-based architecture that makes it much easier and faster for IT teams to deploy than other federated solutions. They operate a hybrid open-source/SaaS model, with a developer-friendly, extensible SDK backed by a powerful web-based platform. The platform provides a suite of functionality including a catalogue for dataset discovery, flexible and granular role-based access controls, full audit history, support for custom models, algorithms and data sources, and cryptographic tools such as differential privacy and secure multi-party computation (SMPC) for additional privacy guarantees.

Bitfount is seeing demand across multiple industries, however the company is initially focused on applications in healthcare, where typical data collaborations can currently take years to negotiate and finalise. Example problems being tackled include transforming patient identification for clinical trials (86% of which fail to meet their recruitment targets), digital biomarker development (projected to be a $10Bn market by 2027), drug development, AI/ML model evaluation for regulatory and benchmarking purposes, improving data diversity and representation for better healthcare outcomes, and many others.

The company already has contracts with pharmaceutical companies, research institutions, hospitals and major financial services firms, and is currently accepting waitlist sign-ups for its public Beta launch. It also recently announced that Matt Seigel, who led the team behind Apple’s federated learning platform which is deployed on hundreds of millions of iOS devices globally, has joined as the company’s Head of Engineering.

Alice Newcombe-Ellis, Founding and General Partner of Ahren, said “Access to data is increasingly vital for businesses, but in today’s world requires zero trust approaches to data governance. Bitfount enables user-based access control with a product that cuts through the complexity of data collaboration, to help ensure organisations stay ahead from a security, regulatory and commercial perspective. We are proud to be supporting this proven team.”

Rick Hao, Partner at Speedinvest, adds “Bitfount is strategically placed to create an ecosystem in which dataset owners can safely be analysed by external users. It is democratising the technology to fully unlock the power of data, and we are certain that many different industries will look to adopt their best-in-class product.” 

SurePay, the leading Confirmation of Payee provider, has today announced that it has partnered with Buckaroo, an established payment service provider for businesses, to offer its Confirmation of Payee solution to their customers in the Netherlands.

Confirmation of Payee is a way to give consumers, banks and companies greater assurance that their payments are being routed to the intended recipient and are not being accidentally or deliberately misdirected. As digital technology has become the essential building block of the global financial infrastructure, organisations now expect providers to keep pace with the demand for fast, safe and low friction payments.

Buckaroo chose to partner with SurePay due to its best-in-class Confirmation of Payee solution, to check and track payments and commensurate with the changing nature of the threat of fraud. SurePay has a proven track record of implementing the technology quickly and without disruption with other leading financial institutions across Europe.

SurePay’s innovative, real-time name-checking solution gives Buckaroo greater assurance that the direct debit or credit transfer payments they’re processing are going to the intended recipient, drastically improving the ease of use and security of online payments for businesses using their services.

David-Jan Janse, CEO and Co-Founder of SurePay, said: “More than 150 companies are already making their payment processes safer and more efficient with the IBAN-Name Check. This makes online onboarding of new customers smoother, ensuring that you are collecting from and paying to the right recipient.”

He continued: “The partnership with Buckaroo will allow us to reach even more consumers, expanding our crucial tool in the fight against fraud. Our ultimate goal is to become ingrained in the payment journey and joining forces with Buckaroo and protecting their customers in the Netherlands is helping us to do just that.”

Lars Smit, Head of Marketing at Buckaroo, said: "As a leading payment service provider, we always strive to offer the best, fastest and easier payment methods to our customers. And, most importantly, the safest. That’s why we partnered with SurePay. SurePay’s Confirmation of Payee solution combats the many challenges stemming from unsuccessful or incorrect direct debit transactions. We’re pleased to offer our customers the greater protections that SurePay provides and look forward to a long partnership ahead.”

PPRO, the leading provider of digital payments infrastructure, has appointed Lázaro Campos as its first Independent Chairman of the Board in efforts to strengthen its board and governance in the next phase of the company’s growth trajectory. Campos takes over from Tim van Delden, representative and Managing Partner of PPRO shareholder HPE Growth, who served as Chairman of the Board through the last stage of PPRO’s rise. Van Delden is now Vice Chairman of the Board. Campos was officially appointed Chairman on 25 April.

A payments infrastructure expert, Campos spent nearly 25 years at SWIFT, the world’s leading provider of secure financial messaging services, where he held numerous positions before serving as CEO.  His experience of leading and guiding large organisations will be invaluable to PPRO as the company scales up. A seasoned, non-executive director, Campos also holds board positions at Starling Bank, payments platform Payoneer, is an independent member of the Bank of England’s RTGS/CHAPS Board and Chairman of open banking platform DirectID.

“Lázaro is a highly respected and inspiring industry leader, bringing with him extensive, global payments infrastructure experience from leading SWIFT. His track record in global payments will be key in preparing us for the next stage in our evolution. I’m thrilled to have him steering the PPRO board as our first Independent Chairman and look forward to working with him,” said Simon Black, CEO of PPRO.

“Through holding numerous board positions, Lázaro also has deep knowledge of how to improve and optimise a board and make executive teams more effective. This complements his payments expertise and will help guide PPRO’s ambition to scale as the leading provider of digital payments infrastructure,” added van Delden.

Lázaro Campos commented on his new post: “Adding an Independent Chairman demonstrates that PPRO is serious about good governance and best practices, and I am excited to be contributing to the growth of such a pioneer in the digital payments infrastructure space. PPRO is perfectly positioned to solve cross-border complexity, increase access to the payment methods consumers need - wherever they are - and enable payment service providers, enterprises, fintechs and banks to expand to more markets and boost revenue.”

AppZen’s AI-powered spend auditing will natively integrate with Cytric Expense delivering new efficiencies for corporations and business travel agencies.

Typically, companies only audit up to 10% of their employees’ expenses, due to the vast number of work hours auditing expenses takes.  With this in mind, the value of an AI-powered platform allowing for 100% automation of expenses quickly becomes clear.

Amadeus has partnered with AppZen, to offer Cytric Expense customers a seamless expense-auditing experience. This unique value-add feature in Cytric, will streamline the expense auditing process in real-time, minimizing lost spend, non-compliance, and potential risk factors in the expense reporting and reimbursement process.

AppZen’s patented purpose-built Finance AI platform will integrate with Cytric Expense - Amadeus’ existing expense automation system used by companies and business travel agencies globally - to create a unique and first to market end-to-end ‘Smart Audit’ solution.

100 expenses can take up to 12 hours to be audited by even the most competent human auditor, but due to the AI technology, with Smart Audit, this time can be reduced to 19 seconds. Smart Audit will free up finance staff time to re-focus their efforts on more strategic areas. Smart Audit audits 100% of spend in real-time, meaning the system can identify misuse and or detect risks prior to reimbursement, after which is difficult to recover the money.

“Our AI-powered auditing platform enables companies to audit every single expense,” says Anant Kale, CEO and co-founder of, AppZen. “100% of your expense reports are audited, including every line on the expense receipts and then auto-approved prior to payment.  This solution will highlight detected issues, saving time, resources, and money for a company. It’s a win-win on all counts.”

Smart Audit is expected to simplify as well as optimize the functions of procurement and finance teams given the automation and ease of use with same-day audit turn arounds. By supporting work from anywhere, it will help overcome the challenges of dispersed workforces cause by the pandemic, while improving the   implementation of business processes.

“Our vision is to empower companies with the tools to ensure the best experience for their employees, whilst also increasing their efficiency and satisfaction by making the most out of their day-to-day expense tool.  The best part about AppZen is the ease with which it integrates into Cytric Expense.  We’re delighted to be working with the experts in AI expense auditing and look forward to bringing this native solution to market.” adds Lydie Charpin, Vice President, Customer Solutions, Amadeus Cytric Solutions.