Insoore plans to develop AI projects in damage detection, engage new talent and expand globally.

Italian insurtech startup that redesigns document collection and claims management processes, Insoore has raised €5.5 million funding. The round was led by Proximity Capital, with the participation of Lumen Ventures, Azimut Libera Impresa through Azimut Digitech Fund, GELLIFY, and some angel investors.

The funding will go a long way in helping the company develop AI projects in damage detection, engage new talent and expand globally.

Launched by the Rome-headquartered startup Whoosnap, Insoore is offering an alternative claims management model. The platform allows insurance and fleet management companies to digitise and accelerate processes while saving time and costs by providing companies with access to a community of users available to make certified video-photographic documentation.

Enrico Scianaro, CEO, Whoosnap, the company that owns Insoore said: “In just a few years, we have proved that the model can rewrite some rules of the sector.”

Antonio Assereto, founder, Proximity Capital added: “This transaction completes Insoore's consolidation and preparation process, which will lead the company into a new phase where teams and investors will be focused on a strong revenue growth.”

The Spanish startup aims to help e-commerce entrepreneurs scale up rapidly and overcome the current supply chain challenges by providing them with capital

Offering cash-strapped startups an alternative to venture capital, venture debt or bank loans, revenue-based financing startups are gaining traction. While Berlin-based fintech re:cap raised $111.5 million in a seed funding round last year and Capchase raised $80 Million in March, Madrid-based RITMO is adding sheen to the race.

After raising €13.8 million funding in a seed round in July last year, RITMO is back with a bang. The fintech has now closed a $200 million debt funding round led by i80 Group and Avellinia Capital. According to the company, it is one of the largest funding rounds of any e-commerce finance business in Europe and Latin America. This brings the platform’s total funding raised to $225 million in debt and equity funding in its first year of operations. 

The funding will be used to support the company’s rapid growth, ensuring capital is available to fuel the funding of over 2,000 e-commerce clients over the next 18 months in key European and LATAM countries. It will also drive RITMO’s global expansion strategy and plans to launch in new markets through agreements with key players in the payments and e-commerce sectors. 

Founded in 2021 by Raimundo Burguera, Iñaki Mediavilla, Iván Peña and Prageet Sharma, the fintech platform provides working capital financing and an automated Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) payment system for e-commerce businesses to overcome supply chain challenges, ensuring they can better manage cash flow and scale faster.

Through this range of products, its technology is embedded in the day-to-day operations of its clients, offering to finance for growth and enabling merchants to extend payment terms with suppliers.

The Spanish startup has secured agreements with major players in the payments and e-commerce sector, with access to more than 150,000 merchants. In March 2022, it partnered with global fintech and international payments service provider, WorldFirst, to launch a £100 million growth package for fast-growing e-commerce businesses in the UK and Europe.

Raimundo Burguera, CEO and co-founder, RITMO, said: “In less than a year of operations, RITMO has closed one of the largest funding rounds of any e-commerce financing company in continental Europe and LATAM, backed by the renowned i80 Group and Avellinia Capital. With this new funding, we aim to help thousands of e-commerce entrepreneurs scale up rapidly and overcome the current supply chain challenges by providing them with the capital and tools to effectively manage their cash flow cycles.”

Asher Hochberg, managing director, i80 Group, added: “There has been a proliferation of the e-commerce marketplace ecosystem in the last few years. RITMO is on a mission to provide an innovative credit financing solution to e-commerce entrepreneurs opting for non-dilutive growth capital instead of selling their business.”

Christoph Pfundstein, co-founder of Avellinia Capital, concluded: “We are delighted to provide a flexible multi-jurisdiction and multi-currency financing line to RITMO to support their further growth.”

As a reminder of the ongoing RBF race, our ongoing tabulations:

Payment technology firm Mastercard has opened a new European Technology Hub in Dublin, Ireland.

The building allows Mastercard to accommodate more than 2000 people in Dublin by 2025, as the payments technology firm intends to expand its current existing workforce of 975.

The company stated that the new campus indicates its commitment to not only Dublin, but also to Europe as a key region in its global footprint.

Mastercard Operations and Technology president Ed McLaughlin said: “We are thrilled to open the doors to our new European Technology Hub in Dublin, which will serve as an innovation engine for our company across the region and beyond. By increasing our global technology footprint, we can be in closer proximity to our customers and stay at the cutting edge of emerging payment technology in support of all our stakeholders.”

Mastercard chief innovation officer Ken Moore said: “Our strength truly is our people and in Dublin we have built a dynamic culture that attracts talent from across the world. With new state-of-of the-art facilities and our flexible workstyle approach we want more passionate technologists to join us and continue shaping the digital commerce of tomorrow.”

The new campus-style workplace was built with priority placed on the environment, wellbeing and neurodiversity.

Mastercard is working to achieve sustainability certifications WELL and LEED.

Mastercard began its operations in Dublin in 2008 with 36 staff.

Recruitment for several roles at the company’s Dublin base is underway.

Fidel API, a global financial infrastructure platform, announced it had raised $65 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from existing investors NYCA Partners, QED Investors and more. It brings Fidel API’s total funding to $88 million since inception.

Fidel API enables developers to create programmable experiences that enhance the value of using and accepting payment cards. Its platform provides identity, data, and payments products that allow developers to capture consent permissions and securely connect payment cards to a service or application. With this infrastructure, developers can create highly contextualised and event-driven user experiences at the point of purchase. Start-ups through global enterprises, including Google, Royal Bank of Canada and British Airways, are leveraging Fidel API’s tools to power a range of solutions, including digital receipts, omnichannel attribution, loyalty and rewards, expense management and personal finance management.

Fidel API’s Series B financing will allow the company to continue to scale its workforce and product offerings. The company plans to double its global headcount more to meet growing demand, emphasising Engineering, Sales and Product hires. The added capital will also accelerate investments into existing products and newer product capabilities across identity verification, consent management, and payments.

Dev Subrata, Chief Executive Officer of Fidel API, said: “Today, thousands of developers are using the Fidel API platform to build real-time, event-driven experiences that deliver utility to consumers and businesses around the world. This financing round will help us meet the ever-increasing demand for developer tools that enable programmable money experiences. Above all, it’s a testament to where the industry is headed. We are fortunate to be at the heart of this transformation, providing a unique set of developer tools that is accelerating the future of programmable money.”

Merritt Hummer, Partner at Bain Capital Ventures, said: “Fidel API is driving the next wave of financial innovation. We have been exceptionally impressed by Dev, his team and their mission to enable the future of payment experiences through their infrastructure. Fidel API is poised to become a dominant player in the space as it continues to scale its platform and offerings. We are proud to support the company on this exciting growth trajectory.”

Since launching in 2018, Fidel API has experienced tremendous growth, more than doubling the size of its workforce over the past twelve months and entering markets across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East. Fidel API is currently powering services for millions of cardholders and hundreds of thousands of merchants around the world. 

AstroPay, the online payment solution of choice for over five million users in the world, has strengthened its digital payment offering in Brazil by delivering the smoothest user journey via the local payment method Pix.

AstroPay has enabled payments via Pix since it was launched in October 2020 amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Created and managed by the Central Bank of Brazil, Pix’s payments volume already makes up more than 80% of debit and credit card transactions in Brazil.

AstroPay will be offering two direct ways to pay with Pix to provide faster, streamlined, and convenient payments for both merchants and users. This includes the Pix native view and Software Developer Kit (SDK) for merchants. The Pix native view directs the user to AstroPay’s checkout straight from the merchant’s site, while the Pix QR code will be shown directly, avoiding users from being redirected to Pix’s site. This option is available to all merchants and has already improved their sales conversion rate by 7% to 15%. The new flow is available to all merchants that have AstroPay’s solution integrated via SDK, which will bring the Pix QR to the merchant’s cashier.

Mikael Lijtenstein, CEO of AstroPay, said: “As an agile fintech company, we strive to provide our users and merchants with the best payment experience and constantly invest in technology to adapt to their needs. This new capability will help merchants to better connect with their users who prefer to pay with Pix, which has revolutionised the payments industry in Brazil. By utilising AstroPay wallet, users will experience quicker and frictionless payment journey with a payment method of their choice.”

With this new capability, AstroPay continues to bolster its position as a leading digital payment solution provider in Brazil with more than 200 merchants and 1.5 million users in that market alone.

The open banking instant account to account payment solution is set to handle 20% of Mr Q’s annual customer transactions using open banking rails

Contis, Europe's leading Banking-as-a-Service provider, and Ecospend, the leading UK provider of Open Banking technology has teamed up with online gaming website MrQ.com to deliver a full open banking, closed loop instant account to account payment and withdrawal solution. This will provide MrQ.com customers an alternative deposit method as well as instant withdrawals using a closed loop faster payments solution.

The open banking solution will dramatically enhance user experience, with members able to link bank accounts directly with their MrQ accounts through a streamlined but stringent verification process. This also greatly reduces the level of fraud risk, as customers are required to access and verify a bank account, rather than just provide payment card details. Due to the increased speed of the payments, the offering will also provide MrQ with a real time view of its own settlement accounts.

The innovative API-led solution is deployed on real-time payment rails and offers a welcome alternative to the card-based payment systems currently used by many gaming organisations, which operates on more expensive card payment rails. Payment rails are used by organisations to facilitate payments between businesses and consumers, each rail consists of a different technological architecture with varying fees and processing times.

Andy Lyons, MD Head of banking solutions at Contis, comments: “The successful roll-out of our first open banking account to account payment closed loop payment solution with Ecospend is demonstrative of the powerful partnership we have established as we grow our proposition together. We are seeing leading players in the gaming market looking to adopt such open banking solutions to give customers a better experience, an enhanced level of fraud protection and reduce costs through the use of real-time payment rails.”

The solution is expected to handle around 20% of MrQ customer transactions annually and is already being used by 3% of transactions after being live for just one week.

Savvas Fellas, at Lindar Media, the creators of Mr Q added: “Open banking as new and evolving technology solution offers to enhance so much about how we spend online. Our integration with Ecospend and Contis is just the start of many things to come. In a couple of years this technology will form part of the core our business across many different areas.”

James Hickman, COO at Ecospend concluded: “MrQ bingo is a perfect fit for Ecospend and Contis’s closed loop payments. With our account-to-account payment solution MrQ players can move their money in and out of their accounts in real time, all while MrQ bypasses costly card network fees.

“The partnership Ecospend and Contis has developed with MrQ represents the vast opportunity this alternative payment has, and we’re delighted our product can help improve the efficiency of MrQ’s online payments whilst saving them money at the same time. We’re delighted MrQ shares the same innovative outlook as we do, and we’re excited to use this cutting-edge technology to keep driving their product forward."

New partnership between Finaro and Payrexx will open up the global marketplace for Swiss merchants and consumers by enabling acceptance of Samsung Pay with global reac

Latest partnership illustrates how Finaro is the go-to payments partner for ambitious businesses that want to compete on the global stage

Finaro, global cross-border payment provider and fully licensed bank empowering international commerce through brilliantly simple payments, has today announced a dynamic new partnership with Payrexx, the Swiss-based all-in-one cloud-based payment solution provider, to launch Samsung Pay for merchants in Switzerland.

This ground-breaking move makes Finaro and Payrexx the largest companies to offer Samsung Pay in Switzerland, demonstrating the increasing importance of mobile commerce accessibility and cross-border ecommerce.

Finaro will act as acquirer for Samsung Pay transactions conducted through Payrexx’s merchants in Switzerland, showing how Finaro’s market-defining payments expertise and pioneering suite of services are making it the go-to payments partner for brands and payment facilitators across Europe.

The news of this partnership is a welcome step forward for Swiss merchants who, thanks to Finaro and Payrexx, will be able to secure a more global reach, create value added services and have access to personalized support.

Globally, the use of mobile devices to make payments is on the rise, and is set to grow from $1.97 trillion in 2021 to a staggering $11.83 trillion by 2028. This momentum is being fueled by the widening accessibility of alternative payment methods like Samsung Pay. The use of mobile payments has risen strongly in Switzerland in recent years, with alternative payment methods already used by 12% of Swiss consumers in 2021.

In the 2021 dossier by Statista, Mobile Commerce in Switzerland, the majority of respondents strongly agree that payment apps will make everyday life easier for buyers online and offline and in 2025 will be used at least monthly by one-quarter of consumers. Mobile payments specifically are registering robust growth in Switzerland, with mobile apps having grown in ownership from 11% in 2017 to 48% in 2020, according to the Swiss National Bank.

Samsung Pay will empower Swiss merchants to serve more international shoppers who will be able to make purchases through Samsung Pay. Also, Swiss consumers can now use Samsung Pay to make more purchases internationally, as local mobile payment services like Twint are not accepted outside of Switzerland.

The partnership announcement is the latest step in the successful execution of Finaro’s ambitious growth plans, as it looks to make complex payments brilliantly simple as the world becomes increasingly digital. Finaro was recently acquired by Shift4, a company that is headed by Jared Isaacman, for $575 million in a move for both companies to be better positioned to provide merchants with the best-in-class global multi-dimensional payment solution.

The acquisition was hot on the heels of numerous landmark moments for Finaro, following its rebranding from Credorax at the end of 2021 to better embody its values as a payment provider and merchant partner, its recent senior appointments to support its expansion into new markets and its achievement of handling over $10 billion in total processed volume for over 5,000 merchants so far.

Achiya Fried, CCO of Finaro, comments: “Finaro’s partnership with Payrexx sets the stage for Swiss merchants to broaden their appeal at home and globally through the acceptance of alternative payment methods such as Samsung Pay.

“At Finaro, our mission is to open up the unlimited possibilities available through digital payments, and enable everyone to take part in global commerce, untethered by geography or technology. Launching Samsung Pay in Switzerland is the perfect illustration of how Finaro is going above and beyond for merchants and their customers.”

Samsung Pay allows consumers to turn their Samsung Galaxy smartphone or smartwatch into a digital wallet, carrying credit, debit and loyalty cards to use almost everywhere contactless payments are accepted. Samsung Pay can be used for in-store payments (at virtually any terminal where contactless cards are accepted), within participating websites and in-app purchases within supported apps. With each transaction covered by the consumer’s bank fraud protection policy, and authenticated by fingerprint or PIN number, Samsung Pay is a safe and secure way for Swiss consumers to pay.

Ivan Schmid, Founder and CEO at Payrexx, adds: “The future of payment is mobile. In Switzerland, there is a huge variety of regional and international payment methods. With the introduction of Samsung Pay, we are consistently continuing our Swiss Collecting Payment strategy and enabling all organizations in Switzerland to accept Samsung Pay, PostFinance, WIRPay, Mastercard, Visa, GeckoCard and bob invoice with just one Payrexx account and one API interface. We value the partnership with Finaro very much, as we can count on a highly digitalized acquirer as a payment facilitator.”

David Jofre Tejada, Vice President Business Development and Sales, at Finaro, comments: “The partnership comes at an incredibly exciting time for Finaro, and demonstrates our ongoing commitment to building strong customer and partner relationships, as well as continually investing in product innovation. We’re excited to see how this partnership will develop and drive merchant growth in Switzerland in the coming years and we are thrilled to be partnering with Payrexx and facilitating their growth plans in this arena as well.”

IRIS Software Group (IRIS), a leading global software provider of accountancy, payroll, human resources and education business solutions, is today announcing the appointment of Alan Hartwell as Group Chief Technology Officer. A seasoned technology executive, Hartwell will be responsible for evolving IRIS’ cloud software offering and further developing its product engineering capabilities to support its increasingly international expansion.

Hartwell brings over 25 years' senior level experience supporting and leading the acquisition, consolidation and integration of products and technologies. His mission is to accelerate IRIS’ success and focus on the next stage of flexible, integrated cloud software innovation that enhances IRIS’ product suite to retain competitive advantage.

Throughout his career, Alan has focused on building global, high-performance software delivery teams, as well as designing and building architectures and technologies to deliver market leading solutions and supercharge customer retention.

Hartwell previously served as Chief Technology Officer, Chief Operations Officer and Software Director at Capita. Prior to Capita, he was Chief Technology Officer at XUBER, now part of DXC Inc. and has held multiple senior technology development and implementation, consulting and marketing roles at companies including Oracle and Exela Technologies.

Elona Mortimer-Zhika, CEO of IRIS Software Group says, “Alan brings a wealth of experience in integrating and consolidating products, technologies, architectures and software systems for essential industries like education and accountancy.”

“As we expand our global footprint, it is vital that we have the right leadership in place to support our vision to empower professionals to thrive doing the work they love and are valued for with cloud software. Hartwell will be integral as IRIS continues to bring together leading modern technology and deep sector knowledge. This will be fundamental to help accountants, finance and HR teams solve today’s challenges supporting their teams and businesses during economic recovery.”

Alan Hartwell, Group Chief Technology Officer, IRIS Software Group, adds, “Having worked in this area for many years, I’m passionate about the incredible opportunity and benefits cloud software and services can bring to a company. And IRIS is excelling in this area. We are dedicated to helping those in work and education automate critical business processes and give professionals the time to do what they are valued for. I am excited to be part of a company with such drive, passion and enthusiasm.”