TerraPay, a global leader in cross-border payments, is pleased to announce a strategic partnership with Banco G&T Continental, a distinguished financial institution in Guatemala. This collaboration marks TerraPay's first direct partnership in Central America and is a significant advancement in the cross-border remittance sector, aimed at providing seamless and innovative solutions for Guatemalans abroad to securely send money to their families back home.

By joining forces with TerraPay, Banco G&T Continental gains access to a robust platform and extensive network that facilitate hassle-free cross-border transfers. Oswaldo Sánchez, Director de Remesas at Banco G&T Continental, expressed his enthusiasm about the collaboration, stating, "This partnership with TerraPay empowers us to facilitate seamless cross-border transfers, allowing Guatemalans abroad to send money to their families in Guatemala conveniently and securely."

With this partnership, Banco G&T Continental can leverage TerraPay's expansive network to enhance the flow of remittances in Guatemala while improving accessibility to financial services. Additionally, this collaboration extends Banco G&T Continental's reach, allowing the financial institution to serve a larger customer base and further strengthen its position in the market.

With TerraPay's cutting-edge technology and Banco G&T Continental's reputation for reliability and trustworthiness, this partnership is poised to revolutionize the cross-border remittance landscape in Guatemala. By offering a seamless and secure solution for sending money across borders, both entities are committed to enhancing financial inclusion and empowering the people of Guatemala with greater access to financial services.

"We are delighted to partner with Banco G&T Continental to drive innovation and efficiency in cross-border remittances," remarked Juan Luis Hernandez, Senior Country Manager - LAC Region at TerraPay. "Together, we aim to provide a superior remittance experience for Guatemalans worldwide, strengthening connections with their loved ones and contributing to the economic development of Guatemala. It is our first direct partnership in the Central America region and demonstrates our goal to achieve a global network."

Through this collaboration, TerraPay and Banco G&T Continental reaffirm their dedication to delivering unparalleled services while driving positive change in the financial landscape of Guatemala.

Bilt Rewards (“Bilt”), the leading loyalty platform specializing in rent and neighborhood rewards, today announced a $200 million equity investment, led by General Catalyst, with significant contributions by Eldridge, alongside existing investors Left Lane Capital, Camber Creek and Prosus Ventures. This catapults the company's valuation to $3.1 billion.

Bilt welcomes Ken Chenault as Chairman of its Board of Directors. Chenault is Chairman and Managing Director of General Catalyst, and the former Chairman and CEO of American Express. Joining him on the Board is Roger Goodell, the Commissioner of the NFL, who takes on the role of Independent Director.

Launched in April 2022, Bilt began as the first platform enabling U.S. consumers to earn valuable rewards on their largest monthly expenditure – rent. The platform enables rewards at any residential rental property in the United States and has accelerated their growth through the creation of the Bilt Rewards Alliance, a partnership with the country's leading residential real estate companies, now encompassing almost four million households, committing to Bilt as their payments and rewards platform.

Members of the Bilt Rewards Alliance include companies such as Greystar, Asset Living, Willow Bridge Property Company, AvalonBay, Equity Residential, Related Companies, GID, Starwood, Cushman & Wakefield, Bozzuto, Camden, Brookfield, GoldOller, Berkshire Residential, ZRS, Invitation Homes, Highmark, Beztak, Nuveen, Trammell Crow, PGIM, The Moinian Group, and more.

"Rental and mortgage payments consume 30% of household income on average in the U.S. Bilt is transforming this market by empowering and rewarding renters and homeowners for their monthly payments and everyday spend with local merchants," said Ken Chenault, Chairman, Bilt Rewards, and Chairman and Managing Director, General Catalyst. "I am excited to work with Ankur and the team to dramatically expand the Bilt ecosystem, offering consumers rewards and benefits in their homes and neighborhoods.”

Over the past year, Bilt has embarked on a strategic expansion through its Neighborhood Rewards program, rewarding members for spending in their local community, including dining, rideshare services, and grocery purchases.

Bilt's financial trajectory continues to grow, with the company's annualized member spend nearing $20 billion and achieving EBITDA profitability in 2023. 

Ranked as the highest value point currency by leading publications including The Points Guy and Bankrate, Bilt Points offer unparalleled flexibility. Members can convert points 1:1 into favorite airline miles and hotel points, use them for everyday shopping on platforms like Amazon, pay rent, or even apply them toward a down payment.

“Bilt is an innovator in the rewards space, empowering the next generation to turn rent and expenses into unforgettable experiences,” said NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. “I am proud to join a board that shares the NFL’s values of hometown loyalty while innovating and delivering for its members.”

The newly raised $200 million capital will fuel further expansion of the Bilt Rewards Alliance across multifamily, single-family, and student housing sectors nationwide. A significant portion of the investment will also bolster Bilt’s Neighborhood Rewards program, helping local merchants connect and build loyalty with new and existing residents in their community. Additionally, Bilt plans to venture into mortgage payment rewards.

Ankur Jain, Founder and CEO of Bilt Rewards, remarked, "This capital raise and the addition of industry titans like Ken Chenault and Roger Goodell to our board are a testament to Bilt's innovative vision. We're not just building a loyalty program; we're creating a community-centric ecosystem that benefits everyone from renters to local businesses.”

Airwallex, a leading global payments and financial platform for modern businesses, today announced the expansion of its global leadership team, with three new hires based out of the company’s Americas headquarters in San Francisco. Jason Gottlieb joins as VP, Financial Partnerships, Hugo Buret as Global Head of Strategic Partnerships, and Ankur Goel as Global Head of Revenue Operations. 

Following another year of rapid growth in the Americas – where revenue grew 460 percent and transaction volume leaped up more than 1,000 percent YoY– Airwallex intends to expand hiring in New York and Austin to nurture commercial demand. 

• Gottlieb joins Airwallex to lead the global team responsible for growing and strengthening Airwallex’s collaboration with financial institutions – a foundational component of the company’s global financial infrastructure. Most recently, he oversaw financial partnerships at Stripe and previously managed the payments vertical in Amazon's corporate business development organization. Gottlieb will report to Airwallex CEO and Co-Founder Jack Zhang.  

• Buret joins Airwallex from Stripe, where he led global strategic and product partnerships. Buret will lead Airwallex’s global team tasked with developing and driving relationships that unlock new growth opportunities for Airwallex. Previously, Buret held leadership roles at Flipboard and Google. Buret will also report to Zhang.

• Goel will lead a global team focused on expanding Airwallex’s growth goals and revenue targets around the world. Goel most recently served as head of business operations and strategy at data infrastructure company Confluent, and previously held roles at LinkedIn and McKinsey & Company. Goel will report to Kai Wu, Chief Revenue Officer.

“We kicked off 2024 with continued confidence and a commitment to growing the Airwallex business in the Americas,” said Zhang. “The experience that Jason, Hugo, and Ankur bring in leading high-growth teams will be critical as we advance our vision of empowering businesses of all sizes to grow without borders.”

Airwallex also announced plans to expand its presence with offices in New York and Austin – two important hubs for finance and technology talent. “Despite the challenging macroeconomic environment, we see continued demand for financial tools that make it faster and simpler to operate in a borderless economy,” said Ravi Adusumilli, EGM Americas, at Airwallex. “We finished 2023 with impressive growth in the US, and expect that trend to continue in 2024. We’re deepening our presence in the cities and talent pools that can help us grow our team alongside our rapidly scaling business.”

Stripe, a financial infrastructure platform for businesses, has signed agreements with investors to provide liquidity to current and former Stripe employees through a tender offer at a $65B (€60B) valuation. While the majority of funds for the tender offer are being provided by investors, Stripe will also use a portion of its own capital to repurchase shares to offset dilution from the Company’s employee equity compensation programs.

“We’re pleased to once again offer employees an opportunity for liquidity,” said Steffan Tomlinson, chief financial officer of Stripe. “Our business continues to see strong momentum with the most advanced companies in the world, from newly formed startups to sophisticated enterprises like Alaska Airlines, Best Buy, Lotus Cars, Microsoft, Uber, and Zara who turn to Stripe’s platform to power their financial infrastructure.”

Setting a new standard in payments

“When we first partnered with Stripe in 2010, it was a scrappy payments innovator. More than a decade later, Stripe has evolved beyond payments to set a new standard for financial infrastructure—driving significant revenue growth for its users,” said Roelof Botha, managing partner at Sequoia Capital. “The company’s attention to the most minuscule details delivers outsized results.”

Businesses usually have to fight tooth and nail to increase their revenue by even a few percentage points. Stripe’s optimized checkout suite, launched in 2023, includes more than 100 optimizations, such as pre-built payment UIs and one-click checkout, that drive conversion. Stripe research found that businesses that migrated from an older Stripe integration to the optimized checkout suite saw a 10.5% increase in revenue.

Momentum across Stripe’s product portfolio

“Stripe’s reputation in payments is well known, but its revenue and finance automation suite, with products like Billing and Tax, look from recent accomplishments to be formidable SaaS businesses in their own right,” said Paul Pate of Goldman Sachs Growth Equity.

Stripe expanded its revenue and finance automation suite in 2023 to let businesses more easily manage the entire revenue life cycle. With Stripe, users can accelerate revenue growth and handle everything from accrual accounting to automatic tax collection and subscription billing. Stripe Billing now powers more than 200,000 users, including media companies like The Atlantic and Forbes and technology companies like Atlassian and Slack. Stripe Tax automates sales tax across 50 US states and 50 countries and simplifies tax compliance for businesses like Duolingo, Retool, and Roblox.

FullCircl, a UK-based SaaS platform that removes the regulatory and verification roadblocks to drive revenue growth, is excited to announce the launch of its first white label orchestration platform through W2 by FullCircl to help regulated businesses onboard more customers and meet regulatory requirements.

• Instant access to 20+ global identity verification suppliers within one platform
• Expanded product proposition and additional revenue stream generation
• Industry-leading customer compliance and enhanced tracking capabilities
• Fully embedded solution that integrates seamlessly into existing digital customer journeys.

Speaking about the launch Lynsey Hoxha, Head of Channel partnerships at W2 by FullCircl, commented: “We’re excited to bring our white label experience to market. As a result of legacy technology, too many organisations still treat identity verification and fraud prevention as siloed processes which has a huge impact on the quality of onboarding processes. We believe in simplifying processes - our white label platform takes the headache out of dealing with multiple suppliers, eliminates the technical and cost implications that too often impact transformation, and ensures the best possible onboarding experience for users and customers alike.”

Coverdash, the fastest-growing startup and SMB-focused-insurtech, today announced $13.5M in Series A funding. This financing comes within one calendar year of Coverdash’s oversubscribed Seed round, bringing the company’s total funding to $16M to date. The Series A round was led by Nyca Partners, joining existing investors including Bling Capital, AXIS Digital Ventures, Tokio Marine Future Fund, Expansion VC, Cameron Ventures and others. The latest financing will be used to further expand Coverdash’s embedded partner network, grow its internal team and broaden its insurance carrier panel.

Founded in 2022, Coverdash offers a full suite of commercial insurance products for all startups and SMBs across the U.S., allowing them to purchase business insurance within seconds from the places they trust most. Coverdash's embedded technology enables partners from any industry to easily offer insurance to existing customers with a single line of code. The technology packages the necessary operational, compliance and financial elements to allow partners to deliver highly configurable insurance solutions within their own front-end environments. Within its first year of operations, Coverdash has surpassed its competitors by securing over 100 embedded distribution partnerships.

A staggering 75% of businesses in the U.S. are severely underinsured and 43% of small businesses are completely uninsured, exposing them to financial and legal risks. Coverdash is stepping in to better serve startups and SMBs in a landscape where major insurance providers have de-emphasized the importance of coverage for these businesses. Coverdash’s primary products are general liability, business owners policy, workers compensation, directors and officers liability, cyber insurance and professional liability. As the leading embedded insurance agency, Coverdash has the largest panel of trusted insurance carrier relationships, enabling customers to save 30-40% on business insurance costs.

“We’re not just making insurance accessible and straightforward for business owners nationwide, we’re acting as their virtual risk management arm,” said Ralph Betesh, Co-Founder and CEO of Coverdash. “Coverdash goes beyond coverage – we offer startups and SMBs the support they need, especially in today's challenging landscape when navigating the complexities of insurance has never been more vital. Coverdash is dedicated to empowering both our partners and our customers with these capabilities."

Coverdash’s growing embedded partner network includes various providers who serve or transact with businesses including leading payroll providers, POS providers, banks, lenders and vertical SaaS platforms. By integrating Coverdash's single line of code, these partners can swiftly offer business insurance through their own platforms to their existing customers within 24-48 hours. Moreover, Coverdash leverages its proprietary embedded playbook to enhance in-platform user engagement by mapping company milestones with insurance purchase triggers. This ensures that embedded partners can continuously support their customers' evolving businesses by offering the right insurance product exactly when it's needed, thereby eliminating any gaps in coverage. Alongside helping partners create ancillary revenue, Coverdash also boosts customer retention rates, thereby increasing partners' overall customer lifetime value (LTV) by offering insurance as a supplementary product.

"Coverdash's embedded model drives best-in-class unit economics, rejecting reliance on paid acquisition strategies, creating tremendous organic growth and momentum," said Stephanie Khoo, Partner at Nyca. "Giving SMB service providers – payroll, payments, lending, website creation, HR, etc – the ability to offer their customers seamless access to business insurance allows them to deepen their client relationships while adding a heretofore untapped revenue stream."

While Coverdash digitizes the insurance process, it is not just a digital sales funnel. The company retains the human touch with real agents actively involved in the service offering, ensuring a personalized, white-glove experience. By combining innovation, industry expertise and a commitment to transparency, Coverdash is poised to become the go-to insurance agency for startups and SMBs (from pre-formation all the way to Series D+).

Sasha Skoryk, Director of Product and Banking at Clear Junction, commented: “The UKCBC is the ideal forum to drive the sector forward and inform regulations that protect consumers and businesses. We are looking forward to contributing our expertise, experience and insights to the council and working with it to advance the UK crypto sector.” 

Simon Jennings, Executive Director at UKCBC, added: “Clear Junction’s decision to join the UKCBC is a testament to our mission of advancing the UK’s cryptoasset and Web3 sectors through collaboration, education, and advocacy. We’re thrilled to welcome them aboard as their expertise and commitment to fostering an innovative ecosystem will undoubtedly enrich our efforts in shaping clear and effective regulations – ultimately benefiting consumers and businesses alike.”

Currencycloud, the experts simplifying business in a multi-currency world, has partnered with UK-based Fintech, TangoPay to further enhance its existing remittance service for its UK-based expat customers by adding real-time competitive foreign exchange (FX) rates and additional localized payment options. 

The partnership with Currencycloud allows TangoPay to access an extensive range of services that enable them to tailor payment services to customers’ needs. The improved operational efficiencies that Currencycloud’s APIs bring enables TangoPay to offer its customers significant improvements in several key areas when making remittance payments globally, including a significant reduction in average transaction time, lower transaction fees, real-time exchange rates and a wider range of payment options.  

Said Basir Sangerwal, CEO and Founder of TangoPay, commented: “Currencycloud is an excellent fit for TangoPay. Before our integration we relied on traditional foreign exchange methods, which were effective but limited our scalability and the range of payment options we could offer. These limitations made it harder to meet the evolving needs of our global customer base. We have rapidly integrated with Currencycloud, using their APIs to add new features and services for our clients who now benefit from a more extensive and tailored service, while we are fulfilling our mission of being a true catalyst for financial inclusion.” 

Said Aleks Stefanovski, Chief Strategy Officer at Currencycloud, “Since their launch, TangoPay has focused relentlessly on financial inclusion, making it easy for UK’s expat community to make payments to friends, family and businesses globally. By choosing to integrate with Currencycloud, TangoPay have made that inclusion even more of a reality by offering competitive real-time FX and fast transactions, which bring clarity, value and speed to global remittances. We are delighted to be part of their vision and mission.”  

ClearBank, the enabler of secure accounts, real-time clearing and embedded banking for financial institutions, today announced that Emma Hagan has been appointed CEO of ClearBank UK, and will take up the role following regulatory approval.

Hagan brings a wealth of banking experience to the role, having worked in the industry for over 15 years. She is currently Chief Risk and Compliance Officer at ClearBank, and previously served as Chief Risk Officer for EMEA at Silicon Valley Bank and in various roles at Lloyds Bank and HBOS.

In the newly established role, Hagan will be responsible for overseeing all aspects of ClearBank’s operations in the UK and further strengthening the bank’s position in the UK market. The bank serves blue chip clients such as Chip, Tide, Raisin and Wealthify, and has maintained profitability since 2022. In H1 2023 the bank reported 144% revenue growth, 80% uplift in deposits and a 40% increase in payment volumes.

“Appointing Emma as UK CEO is a critical step in positioning the bank for international expansion and meeting our growth ambitions in the UK and beyond,” said Shonaid Jemmett-Page, Chair of the UK Board at ClearBank. “Emma has been integral to ClearBank’s success since she joined the business in 2020, and she has demonstrated her exceptional leadership and dedication to the business in that time.”

“It’s with great pleasure that we welcome Emma as our UK CEO. Emma brings with her a wealth of experience and deep knowledge about our business and the space we operate in, having already contributed immensely to our success in her role as CRCO,” said Charles McManus, CEO at ClearBank. “We’re incredibly excited to see her lead our UK business to new heights.”

“ClearBank continues to go from strength to strength, buoyed by our unique combination of fully licensed banking services, next generation technology platform, and innovative business model,” said Emma Hagan, incoming CEO of ClearBank UK. “It has been a privilege to be part of ClearBank’s impressive journey, and I’m excited to lead our UK team and build on its significant successes to date.”

Hagan’s appointment as UK CEO is a vital component of ClearBank’s organisational changes to support international growth plans. The structural shift will support an international model for the bank, as it moves towards realising its expansion plans across Europe, North America, and other markets.