·       ClearBank is the #1 ranked fastest-growing UK fintech according to Deloitte 

·       Investment will accelerate ClearBank’s international growth and expand its range of product and services   

·       ClearBank’s embedded banking platform is the UK’s largest, with more than 200 financial institutions and fintech customers, 13m bank accounts, and £3bn held in balances 

ClearBank, the largest next-generation clearing and embedded banking platform in the UK, today announced a £175 million equity investment. The round was led by funds advised by Apax Digital, the growth equity arm of Apax, a leading global private equity advisory firm. Existing investors, CFFI UK Ventures (Barbados) Ltd and PPF Financial Holdings BV, also participated.

The first new clearing bank in the UK in over 250 years at launch in 2017, today ClearBank is the only embedded banking platform delivering direct access to all UK bank payment schemes and providing bank accounts at scale - including FSCS deposit protection, with 13 million accounts and £3bn held in balances at the Bank of England. Today ClearBank serves more than 200 financial institutions and fintech customers including Tide, Coinbase, Chip and Oaknorth Bank. This rapid growth was acknowledged by Deloitte’s 2021 Technology Fast 50 awards which ranked ClearBank as the fastest growing fintech company in the UK.   

The investment will accelerate ClearBank’s global ambition to power banking services for both financial institutions and non-financial brands, using its single API cloud-native embedded banking platform. The new investment will accelerate ClearBank’s global expansion, initially to Europe before moving into North America and Asia Pacific.

In addition, ClearBank also plans to expand its range of products and services to include direct API-based access to interbank payment schemes such as SEPA, enhanced multi-currency accounts, and additional FX services. These capabilities will allow ClearBank to support existing customers in scaling internationally and welcome new customers in multiple markets.

As the growth arm of global private equity advisory firm Apax, the Apax Digital team leverages the firm’s deep tech investing expertise, diverse global platform, and specialised operating experts, to enable technology companies to reach their full potential. 

Charles McManus, CEO at ClearBank, said: “ClearBank is the first proven and fully regulated cloud-native clearing bank in the UK for over 250 years. Over the last five years we have demonstrated the success of our business model and through our work with leading financial service providers, helped to both unlock their potential and bring about positive and meaningful change for UK businesses and consumers.”

“Our revenue growth is the proof of the momentum we have been gathering since 2017. It is this proof point and our transformative effect on access to banking services, traditionally a space characterised by high barriers to entry, which has given us the credibility to partner with and deliver seamless and secure embedded banking for award winning financial institutions, powerful fintech disrupters and government bodies alike.”    

“The next challenge is delivering this innovation globally. To achieve this, we needed a strategic partner with the right cultural fit, sector expertise and geographic experience, something we found in Apax Digital.” 

Mark Beith, Partner at Apax Digital, said: “All companies are becoming fintech companies, and ClearBank is providing the clearing and embedded banking infrastructure for them – starting with fintechs themselves. We’ve seen the power of its platform first-hand, and we are excited to partner with Charles and the existing shareholders to take ClearBank global.” 

Niccolo Ferragamo, Principal at Apax Digital, added: “Combining a banking license with a modern, agile and scalable embedded banking infrastructure is hard. Doing it at scale, and while delivering exceptional customer satisfaction, is truly special. ClearBank has been quietly building the clear next generation leader in the UK on all key metrics, and we are thrilled to continue innovating the category together.” 

ClearBank was advised by Herbert Smith Freehills LLP. The investment remains subject to PRA and FCA approval.  

~Will integrate Industry 4.0 solutions, such as IoT and RTLS solutions for production optimization and capacity utilization by manufacturers~

Bizongo, India’s leading full stack B2B trade enablement platform has announced the acquisition of Mumbai based IoT and Real-Time Location Services (RTLS) solutions provider Clean Slate Technologies. Through this acquisition, Bizongo aims to equip more than 100 Indian factories with its IoT powered cloud factory solution by 2023. Clean Slate’s team including Siddharth Desai, Mayank Sharma, and Anubhaw Kumar will join Bizongo.

The tech platform plans to integrate Clean Slate’s asset, goods, and people tracking features and sensors to generate data and insights about the operations of the factory. The IoT powered cloud factory will increase production visibility for MSMEs and their domestic as well as international customers. Bizongo plans to deploy the cloud factory solution at three sites by July 2022.

The recent global microeconomics along with the pandemic has brought a mixed bag of challenges for the manufacturing industry. Supply chain disruptions, increased input costs, travel restriction, and social distancing on assembly lines necessitated manufacturers to adopt innovative technologies at scale.

The acquisition will enable Bizongo to further strengthen its technological infrastructure and provide local manufacturers access to automation and real time data analytics, which is critical for increasing their throughput. The inter-connectivity between machinery will help small and medium manufacturers to limit supply chain disruptions, optimize production, and reduce time and effort in raising invoices and undertaking collections. This in turn will empower manufacturers to boost exports, compete with global competitors and add value differentiation by giving live visibility to customers.

Ankit Tomar, Co-founder and CTO, Bizongo said, “The government’s Make in India initiative aims to place India on the world map as a manufacturing powerhouse. This makes it imperative for manufacturers to leverage emerging technologies that make their factories more efficient. Cloud factories have a critical role to play here, as they enable a manufacturer to give complete visibility across floor level operations and also the entire value chain. With the acquisition of Clean Slate, we aim to empower and enable manufacturers across India to achieve their potential. As we embark on this new journey, we are excited to welcome the Clean Slate team to the Bizongo family.”

Founded in 2016 by IIT Bombay and SRM Chennai alumni, Mayank Sharma, Siddharth Desai and Anubhaw Kumar, Clean Slate is a Mumbai based bootstrapped start-up. Clean Slate’s proprietary technologies Kreto sensors and inLocate (tracking software engine), have enabled large industrial giants across Automotive, Films and Packaging, Metals and Engineering to securely and efficiently embark on their digital transformation journey.

Siddharth Desai, Co-founder and CEO, Clean Slate said, “We are very excited with the natural synergies and collective vision of Bizongo and Clean Slate. Bizongo shares our mission-driven culture to enable Indian manufacturers with deep-tech digital technologies that are Made in India. Bizongo's emphasis on organizational culture and solving the customers' complex challenges  will help ensure our continued success in an increasingly competitive industry. We’re very grateful to our customers, partners, mentors and most importantly our team in playing a huge role.”

Following its Series-D funding in December 2021, Bizongo announced the launch of India’s first IOT enabled cloud factory for made-to-order goods.

We are delighted to announce that BMLL Technologies has won the “Best Overall Analytics Platform” award at the 2022 Fintech Breakthrough Awards. The award is dedicated to providing recognition for the best products, people, services, technologies and companies focused on Financial Technologies.

BMLL was awarded “Best Overall Analytics Platform” for the expansion of its world-class product offering to include global futures, available as asset class packages. The BMLL Level 3 Futures Data product brings together full-depth order book data for all major futures asset classes in a harmonised format within a scalable compute environment. Level 3 futures data from CME, Eurex and ICE and covers Equity Indices, Fixed Income, Short-term Interest Rates, Commodities, Cryptocurrencies and FX. Clients spend less time gathering, organising and cleaning data and more time deriving predictive insights and backtesting strategies to generate more alpha. 

Futures datasets are huge, complex, and highly interconnected. Gaining meaningful insight from beyond the top of the order book requires significant computational workloads. BMLL's scalable compute environment simplifies working with this immense data set, allowing researchers to quickly and efficiently tackle large-scale research queries. Futures contracts traded on a single venue typically have comparable and connected contracts on other exchanges. The BMLL data warehouse allows quants to analyse full-depth order book data for all major futures asset classes from the CME, Eurex and ICE in a single harmonised format. This opens up the ability to do complex, Level 3 Data analysis at scale across venues and markets. This analysis includes the ability to conduct simulations such as model calibrations and testing of latency curves and market impact to define optimal order size and placement in a fully configurable framework.

Paul Humphrey, CEO of BMLL Technologies, said: “We have established a great track record in Equities and have recently expanded into Futures. We are very excited to be recognised by the FinTech industry for our continued innovation in providing market participants with the data and analytics they need to make sense of market behaviour. What’s more, our scalable compute and data harmonisation capability allows quants to spend less time gathering, organising and cleaning data, and more time deriving predictive insights.”

He added: “All credit goes to our extremely talented team who continue to deliver outstanding products and client services, making our Level 3 Futures data accessible to the wider market.”

PPS, an Edenred company, and the UK and Europe’s market leading payments provider, today announces the appointment of Andrea Keller as Managing Director. 

Andrea Keller is an experienced payment professional, having worked in the industry for more than 20 years at PPS’s parent company, Edenred. He joins PPS from the position of Managing Director for Edenred Pay in Latin America, focusing on payments and fintech solutions.

A passionate executive who delivers business growth in dynamic and fast changing environments where technology and people are key to success, Andrea brings extensive experience in payments and B2B markets.

Commenting on his appointment, Andrea Keller, Managing Director of PPS, said: “PPS is well-known as the UK and Europe’s Payment Partner of Choice, so this is a very exciting move for me. I’m keen to get started helping the business drive scalable growth and continue to be at the forefront of the payments market.”

Gilles Coccoli, Edenred’s Chief Operating Officer responsible for Payment Solutions and New Markets, added: “This appointment marks the start of the next chapter of innovation and growth for PPS. Andrea has a proven track record in delivering business growth across European and international markets, so we are very excited to welcome him to the team. His vast experience will serve PPS’s development ambitions.”

Andrea succeeds Ray Brash who has served the business for 18 years and has been instrumental in growing the company to where it is today.

To find out more about PPS, visit: https://www.pps.edenred.com/

After introducing its first three launches in Malaysia, India, and Indonesia, the international Forex broker OctaFX now makes its iOS OctaFX Trading App available on the Singaporean App Store—starting from March. The same goes for its Nigeria and Pakistan equivalents. These regional launches will be followed by a full app release for all service regions in 2022.The global Forex broker OctaFX recently dropped its iOS OctaFX Trading App to one more ––Singapore. Over the past six months, the fintech company has already introduced its iOS app in Malaysia, India, and Indonesia. Simultaneously with Singapore, the new app has appeared in Nigeria and Pakistan.

The app’s present interface version is available in English, Malay, and Chinese. Singaporean users can download the app, create an account, manage their investments, and engage directly with OctaFX Customer Support. The service offers the ‘Virtual Accounts’ payment option, allowing deposits and withdrawals through Singapore’s most popular local banks. OctaFX is already planning to expand the payment options in its new app.

Although OctaFX is an international Forex broker, they pay great attention to localisation, including curating client communications in the local languages. That way, the fintech company never loses touch or authenticity with its diverse and multicultural trading community.

The iOS OctaFX Trading App has been downloaded across all available service regions nearly 300,000 times and has been rated in the overwhelming majority with an impressive five stars score.

The OctaFX Press Service commented on the app release: ‘Our developer team put colossal labour into the iOS app launch. We will soon be able to provide users with an essentially personal ‘office’, so to say—a seamless trading ecosystem where they can manage their accounts, investments, and finances. This process also gives us the chance to enrich aspects of our app and highlight the main idea––allowing our clients to trade on our own trading platform, which will offer better trading conditions and broader trading functionality than most’.

Here is a quick overview of the iOS OctaFX Trading App’s current features:
Trading on MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5

• Creating and managing trading accounts
• Depositing and withdrawing funds
• Users can easily track their operation history
• Users can reach Customer Support 24/7 via live chat in their local language.

The quiet launch of the iOS OctaFX Trading App in Singapore went ahead in March. Singaporean clients can now download the trading app on the App Store.

Funding round led by ‘Nclude by Global Ventures’ – the new Fintech fund launched to accelerate Egypt’s Financial Innovation 

Lucky, Egypt’s leading app for credit products, offers and cashback rewards, announces its completion of a $25 million fund raise. 

The funding round, which is Egypt’s largest Fintech Series A round so far, was led by Nclude by Global Ventures – the new Fintech fund recently announced by its lead investors Banque Misr, National Bank of Egypt and Banque du Caire – Egypt’s largest national banks – and Global Ventures, a leading MEA focused venture capital firm. 

Major investment also came from PayU, the Prosus-owned Fintech firm specialising in emerging markets; Endeavor Catalyst, Venture Souq, Oman Technology Fund, Arzan capital and Disruptech Ventures, who join existing investors and significant shareholder Lorax Capital Partners.

Proceeds will be used to increase market leadership and build out Lucky’s credit capabilities - as customers become more educated and experienced using credit.

Founded in Egypt in 2018 by Momtaz Moussa and Ayman Essawy, Lucky has grown rapidly since inception and has the largest merchant network in Egypt. The Company’s mission is to revolutionize how MENA’s population shops, pays and saves. Lucky brings seamless financial flexibility and increased spending power to MENA, where many consumers have not traditionally had access to credit. 

Lucky has over eight million active users and connects them to a growing range of easy-to-use credit products, discounts and cashback rewards, which can be used in person and virtually with tens of thousands of local and global brands. The company has seen 250% year-on-year growth in gross merchandise value, with great feedback, including an App Store award from Apple for best apps in Egypt. It also recently expanded into Morocco and is exploring further regional expansion.

Momtaz Moussa, co-founder of Lucky, said:

“We are delighted to complete this $25 million fund raise. The MENA region’s huge unbanked, young population and cash-dominated economy is a significant market opportunity for us. With the backing of such esteemed investors, we are perfectly positioned to build on our momentum, cement our position as market leader and expand our current offering.”

Ayman Essawy, co-founder of Lucky, said:

“We are honoured to be Nclude by Global Ventures’ first investment, in what is a momentous strategic development for Egypt. We look forward to continuing our rapid growth, increasing our eight million-strong active user base, and building out our credit capabilities with the support and guidance of our investors.”

Eslam Darwish, General Partner of the Nclude FinTech Fund, commented: 

“We are delighted to have led Lucky’s latest funding round. Nclude by Global Ventures is focused on accelerating Fintech Innovation and driving Financial Inclusion via partnerships with the leading Fintech and fintech enabled companies. 

“Lucky fits that descriptor perfectly and is a prime example of Egyptian fintech innovation that delivers a differentiated and scalable customer experience. Momtaz and Ayman’s vision really resonated with us and we are excited to support them on their mission.”