Mollie, one of the fastest-growing payment service providers in Europe, today announced the closing of US$800m (665 million Euro) in a Series C funding round, taking the total amount raised by the company to over US$940m (780 million Euro). The round was led by funds managed by Blackstone Growth (BXG), Blackstone’s growth equity investing business, and included EQT Growth, General Atlantic, HMI Capital and Alkeon Capital. TCV who led the Series B investment in September 2020 also participated in the funding round. The funding will fuel Mollie’s international expansion, team scaling and continued investment in product and engineering, helping the firm to realize its vision of becoming the most-loved payment service provider (PSP) in the world.

Launched in 2004, Mollie is one of the largest PSPs in Europe. Today, it serves more than 120,000 monthly active merchants of all sizes across the continent. In 2020, Mollie processed more than 10 billion Euros in transactions and is on track to handle more than 20 billion Euros during 2021. Mollie’s leading products, simple and transparent pricing and excellent customer service, alongside its no lock-in contracts, have driven rapid growth both during the pandemic and the months following relaxation of lockdown restrictions across Europe. Mollie counts Deliveroo, Gymshark, Wickey and Otrium as customers.

The round values Mollie at US$6.5bn (5.4 billion Euro) which, based on CBInsights data, suggests Mollie is now one of the top five most valuable privately-held fintechs in Europe, and one of the top 20 in the world.

“There’s something very special about Mollie. In the three months since I joined the team we’ve achieved so much: making preparations for a full launch in the UK, driving 600% growth in Germany and hiring an impressive set of team members and executives,” said Shane Happach, CEO, Mollie. “Over the past months, Mollie has been receiving a remarkable amount of interest from some of the world’s foremost fintech investors. In bringing on BXG, we believe we have an investor who can help Mollie in our next phase of growth. The involvement of our new group of investors demonstrates confidence in Mollie’s growth, strategy and product set.”

“Mollie is one of Europe’s most exciting high-growth businesses and is at the forefront of enabling next-generation payments for online SMEs across Europe. We are excited to partner with Mollie’s fantastic team and look forward to leveraging Blackstone’s capital, expertise and global network to unlock the company’s next phase of growth,” said Paul Morrissey, who leads European investing for Blackstone Growth. “This investment underlines Blackstone’s confidence in Europe as a place for high-growth companies to thrive.”

Today, Mollie has around 480 employees and plans to hire 300 new team members in the next six-to-nine months. Mollie is evaluating additional countries for expansion both within Europe and beyond. Mollie also plans to continue investing in its technology platform and expanding its product portfolio beyond payments into financial services for SMEs, following the arrival of new Chief Product Officer, Rogier Schoute.

Worldline, the European market leader in payment and transactional services, today announced its collaboration with Cendyn, a leading innovator in CRM, sales, and revenue strategy in the hospitality industry. Thanks to this partnership, hotels can now include secure e-payment solutions in any automated guest communication based on the seamless integration of Cendyn’s CRM, the hotel’s own PMS (property management system) data and Worldline’s e-payment solution.

Through the combination of Worldline’s Saferpay e-payment solution and Cendyn’s CRM engine, payment, processes can be simplified, making e-payments risk free and convenient for hotels and guests alike. Cendyn’s CRM solutions interface with hundreds of PMS systems and can apply smart and automated payment terms, in line with predefined customer segments, booking codes, rates and more.

To compete in today’s digital world, hoteliers need an array of tools, including bespoke technology solutions that meet the needs of guests, coupled with attractive design capabilities. Using the right technology does not only increase digital engagement and generate revenue, but also allows hotels to focus on serving their guests whilst adhering to regulatory requirements.

Chris Lanckbeen, head of Travel & Hospitality at Worldline said: “Our partnership with Cendyn serves both the hospitality industry and hotel guests by simplifying and securing online payments. Cendyn is connected to all major hotel systems, which means all booking data are pre-stored and sent to the guest. To complete the payment, the cardholder just needs to fill in his card details – and the hotelier can process the payment without worrying about regulatory issues.”

With the integrated Worldline payment Saferpay, hotels using Cendyn’s CRM are now free from exposure to PCI-compliance and charge-back risks. Their transactions are processed according to PSD2 regulations, avoiding error prone manual tasks. Likewise, hotels can tailor their payment policies to booking channels and guest characteristics. Hotels and guests alike will benefit from less manual work and potential errors thanks to automated data transfers between Cendyn’s CRM and the payment solution from Worldline.

“We are excited to provide hoteliers with additional value by partnering with Worldline,” said Rodd Herron, VP Partnerships at Cendyn. “The integration of their comprehensive Saferpay platform with our transactional guest communications is a first in the industry. For us, this is another step in further optimizing the guest journey and making CRM as intelligent and simple as possible.”

A click on the payment link embedded into the email confirmation will guide the guest to the Saferpay payment site. After choosing their preferred payment method, guests can enter their payment card data. Saferpay then automatically sends the transaction status to Cendyn’s CRM and confirms the payment to the guest by email. The same mechanism enables hotels to collect credit card information from the guests before their arrival and have this data ready for payment at check-out or as a fall-back in case of no-shows. Using this method of payment, full card holder authentication is guaranteed, allowing hoteliers to fulfil PSD2 regulations and avoid PCI and charge-back risks.

The process secures an end-to end solution for guest communications while maintaining the hotel’s corporate identity across all channels, thus ensuring a smooth customer journey also from a brand perspective.

A free webinar is available for more information. 

• Clear, on-demand, insights to help business owners foresee any financial shortfall
• Access to products to help mitigate payment delays
• Quick and simple access to Tide’s network of credit providers

Tide, the UK’s leading business financial platform^[1] will launch Cashflow Insights this month to help small business owners optimise their cash flow, mitigate delays in payments, improve their credit score and get recommendations for credit products appropriate for their businesses.

Cashflow Insights will help business owners to improve their cash flow by providing quick, easy to digest insights and predictions on how their business is doing and recommending actions to take in advance of any potential shortfalls. The product will also help business owners to access the right kind of products to keep cash flow steady, such as Direct Debits for invoices, as well as credit products that are right for their business - whether they need to grow or stay afloat.

 Cashflow Insights will first be made available to existing Tide members, using their account data to predict what their balance will look like over the next 30 days. The product will then use Open Banking technology to launch to non-Tide members in the coming months. Via Open Banking, Tide will be able, with the business owner’s permission, access transaction history from other financial solutions to provide an accurate prediction. 

The product will have three key aspects:

1. Business health-check - understand the business’s financial position, with a view of all outgoing and incoming payments, as well as seeing the probability of invoices being paid on time.
2. Stay in control of your finances - see predictions for what cash flow will look like over the next 30 days, receive a list of actions that could be taken to get cash flow into a more healthy state.
3. Hassle-free access to financing - see credit products from Tide and our partners that the business is eligible for. Credit checks with Tide and our partners mean the member will only see products they are eligible for to make the application process quick and easy.

Cashflow Insights will initially be free to Tide members and non-members. 

Amit Kahana, VP of Credit Services, Tide said: “We are very excited to introduce Cashflow Insights to the Tide platform, delivering crucial insights about a business, allowing the business owner to understand their financial position on the go, and how to avoid any potential shortfalls. 

“With many small businesses getting back on their feet after a long period of lockdowns it’s important business owners are focussing their efforts in the right direction and not wasting  time on financial admin. Cashflow Insights will help business owners keep track of their finances and doing the leg work in terms of identifying credit solutions right for them.”  

Tide has been building out its network of credit partners, on a mission to provide unparalleled access to debt and equity for small businesses, as set out in ClearBank and Tide’s public commitments for the Alternative Remedies Fund Pool E. 

Currently, Tide has the following credit partners, with many more to come:

1.  iwoca
2. Liberis
3. Clearbanc (rebranded as Clearco)
4. Uncapped
5. Barclays
6. Start Up Loans (British Business Bank subsidiary)
7. Hokodo
8. GoCardless
9. Ultimate Finance
10. Bibby Financial Services
11. MarketFinance

Oliver Prill, Tide CEO said: “Cashflow Insights is a key product in Tide’s evolution from a business banking provider to an all-encompassing business financial platform, helping small business owners to manage all of their financial admin in one place.

“We are particularly excited by the way Open Banking will enable Tide to offer this product to non-Tide members as well as our existing members. This will be one of the first examples of Tide using Open Banking technology to access information from other financial institutions to provide a valuable service to business owners without a Tide account.”

Decimal Technologies, one of India’s leading FinTech firms, announced the appointment of Manish Sharma as the Chief Business Officer for Saarathi, its AI-based one-of-a-kind lending marketplace, specializing in digital transformation of loan files. Manish will be spearheading the expansion of Saarathi, along with optimising the customer experience for the company’s flagship offering.

With over two decades of experience under his belt, Manish has held several leadership positions at global companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Blackberry, Genentech and Honda, in strategy, sales and business development and supply chain management. In his last role at Microsoft, he was the Senior Director, Consumer Channel Sales for South East Asia, Korea and India, managing a business of roughly a $200M revenue spread over 8 countries. Manish led a team that focused on delivering strong revenue growth, digital transformation, move to cloud and subscriptions to set up a foundation for an uninterrupted business momentum.

Prior to Microsoft, Manish was Head, Strategy and Business Development at Apple where he managed several functions and was part of India leadership team that drove multifold growth in Apple India business. Manish also comes with strong channel sales experience from his stint as the National Sales Head at Apple for iPhone and Modern trade sales and as Operations Director at Blackberry.

Speaking on Manish Sharma’s appointment, Lalit Mehta, Co-founder and CEO, Decimal Technologies, said, “I am delighted to have Manish Sharma join us as the Chief Business Officer for Saarathi at Decimal Technologies. His vast experience and knowledge of channel partner strategy, innovation and customer demand management will be valuable in developing and expanding Saarathi to serve the BFSI needs of the Indian customer. Saarathi addresses some of the most prominent issues in risk assessment, fraud detection and credit accessibility, and we are glad to have Manish lead it to make greater strides.” 

Manish Sharma said, “I am glad to be a part of Decimal Technologies, a fintech committed to the digital transformation of India’s BFSI needs by taking the pulse of the customer. By leveraging emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Cloud, Decimal is poised to play a pivotal role in this sector with well thought out strategies to leverage the strength of the platform/products (Vahana and Saarathi), by partnering with channels in this digital transformation journey and enabling deep integration with banks and NBFCs. I intend to leverage my knowledge and vast experience to build strategies that benefit all the stakeholders at the company, along with bringing in new innovations, solutions and avenues to grow Saarathi.”

Launched in 2020, Saarathi aims to bridge the credit gap in India by digitizing the end-to-end loan journey and seamlessly matching the customer with the lender without any manual intervention. Manish will further expand Saarathi’s reach through his expertise of working with the partner ecosystem and accelerate its adoption to make the offline channel of loan disbursement efficient and transparent.

Manish Sharma is an engineering graduate from BITS Pilani and he completed his MBA from Pennsylvania State University in 2002.

• Temenos Infinity powers rapid time-to-market for new digital banking experiences, starting from a brand new mobile app for Retail and SME customers
• New app enables Credem to greatly improve its customer experience and achieve a first-class omnichannel experience

Temenos, the banking software company, today announced that Credito Emiliano S.p.A. (Credem), one of the top 10 banks in Italy, has gone live with a new mobile app, based on cloud-native Temenos Infinity, to accelerate its digital banking strategy. Temenos Infinity, running on the public cloud, will make it quicker and easier for Credem to develop frictionless, personalized, and secure digital banking services that will help it attract new customers and drive long-term customer loyalty.

Credem has already launched a fully renewed new mobile app developed in just nine months using Temenos Infinity. The new app offers a basic set of features for personal customers and, thanks to the speed granted by Temenos Infinity, will be enriched with new features in a continuous improvement approach. A small business version will follow in a few months. It includes features that make it easy and convenient to move money, view transactions, check and manage cards, including the re-charge of pre-paid cards and phone tops ups, and initiate instant chat with customer support agents or view the locations of nearest ATMs.

In a highly competitive Italy market, Credem's new app with its advanced customer interface and user experience will help to enhance the bank's digital reputation and give it an edge to compete with larger banks and ultimately grow market share.

Temenos Infinity allows Credem to create intuitive and highly engaging digital experiences using a low-code development platform. This simplifies the process, saving time and cost. It also means Credem can reimagine how to engage with its customers in a whole new way through digital and physical channels, creating a consistent and seamless experience.

Temenos Infinity provides a portal for bank staff to manage and assist account holders in their banking journeys. It collects everything the banker needs to know about their account holder in a convenient web-based interface, with data matching that the account holder sees from their own mobile or online interface. Banks using Temenos Infinity saw customer engagement increase by up to 300 percent on their apps in 2020, with the fastest-growing segment being among baby boomers and Gen Xers.

Fabio Caliceti, Head of Digital Channels, Credito Emiliano, commented: "With Temenos, we have been able to quickly develop a mobile banking experience to compete with the very best in Italy. Temenos Infinity gives us the platform we need to efficiently build and manage exceptional digital banking experiences that keep pace with changing customer needs. It is strategic to our digital growth plans and enables us to future-proof our customer relationships."

David Macdonald, President of Europe, Temenos, said: "Digital innovation in banking is thriving in Italy, and it's an important market for Temenos where we have a strong and growing presence. So we are delighted Credem has selected our digital banking platform to accelerate its digital strategy. Credem has shown how Temenos Infinity can deliver outstanding digital mobile experiences in a very short timeframe. Customer expectations are constantly evolving, but with the continuous innovation and deployment capabilities of the platform, Credem will always be one step ahead of the competition."

Credem is running Temenos Infinity on the public cloud with Amazon Web Services to achieve hyperscaler efficiency, security, and resilience for its digital banking services. Temenos Infinity is cloud-native and cloud-agnostic and also available as a SaaS offering on The Temenos Banking Cloud.

Temenos Infinity drives customer acquisition and digital banking engagement with its advanced analytics, enabling financial institutions to increase digital revenues 5x and cut customer onboarding time by 75%. Financial institutions that use Temenos Infinity report a 20% higher Net Promoter Score.

Temenos Infinity is used by over 650 banks worldwide and recognized as a Market Leader in Omdia's Digital Banking Platform Report and a Leader in Digital Banking Engagement by Forrester.

Following the successful launch of its mobile app, Credem plans to further leverage Temenos Infinity to enhance the customer experience for internet banking later in 2021.

ComplyAdvantage, a global leader in AI-driven financial crime risk data and detection technology, today announced that the company has added Know Your Business (KYB) data to create the industry’s first unified and most comprehensive data graph of individuals and business entities.  KYB is the process to verify the identity and understand the risk of a business customer either before or during their on-boarding to a service.

With the addition of KYB data, ComplyAdvantage now has a knowledge graph that includes over 400 million companies and related directors covering 200 + countries and territories that has been derived from over 20,000 active data sources. This puts the reg tech innovator in the unique position of having the only AI-enabled solution that can truly contextualize relationships between individuals and business entities to uncover hidden financial crime risks with the greatest of accuracy. 

“In the never-ending war on financial crime, AML and sanctions executives recognize the increasing imperative of enriched data to greater agility, effectiveness, and efficiency,” asserts Chuck Subrt, a senior analyst at Aite Group. “The COVID-19 pandemic has only amplified the need for and reliance on superior data. Through elevated risk-relevant intelligence on individuals and businesses, organizations can build more holistic understandings of parties enabling them to optimize financial crime detection, investigation, and due diligence and achieve faster and more informed decision-making.”

According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, it’s estimated that each year governments lose at least $500 billion from profit-shifting enterprises; $7 trillion in private wealth hidden in haven countries, with 10% of world GDP held offshore; Money laundering of around $1.6 trillion per year, or 2.7% of global GDP. The opacity of beneficial ownership and business control has stymied global regulators and compliance teams alike in their abilities to find, mitigate or prevent financial crimes from happening. 

The reality is that the traditional methods of assessing beneficial ownership using siloed data sources and human analysts are no longer equipped to quickly uncover unforeseen financial crime risks associated with corporate structures obscured by shell companies and tax havens.   But now, by unifying risk datasets and linking information , ComplyAdvantage ComplyData™ offers global compliance teams a comprehensive hyperscale, AI-enabled solution that uncovers hidden threats and associated risks due to connections between suspect entities such as individuals and corporations.

“Our vision has always been to take on and neutralize the risk of money laundering and all other global financial crimes by building the first global, connected database of people and companies powering world-leading financial crime detection tools,” said Charles Delingpole, Founder and CEO of ComplyAdvantage.  “Now, with our new KYB data integration we are seeing this vision fulfilled, allowing us to expand our global reach, depth of coverage and the ability to significantly increase the accuracy of our real-time, risk-focused insights.” 

Already the preferred choice of some of the world’s largest banks, enterprises and high-growth fintechs, ComplyAdvantage uses machine learning and natural language processing to help regulated organizations manage their risk obligations and prevent financial crime. The company’s proprietary database is derived from millions of data points that provide dynamic, real-time insights across sanctions, watchlists, politically exposed persons, and negative news. This reduces dependence on manual review processes and legacy databases by up to 80% and improves how companies screen and monitor clients and transactions.

A new report from Juniper Research has found that digital cross-border remittances will grow from $295 billion in 2021 to $428 billion in 2025, with digital transactions returning to pre-pandemic values by 2022. It found that the digital remittance market has been largely resilient to the global pandemic; forecasting continued growth for digital remittance revenue over the next 5 years.
The new research, Digital Money Transfer & Remittances: Vendor Strategies, Opportunities and Market Forecasts 2021-2025 Market Research, predicts that this growth will drive competition in the market, as incumbents and new entrants seek to grow market share. In response, the report urges remittance providers to implement adaptable business models that provide fast and affordable services.

For more insights, download the free whitepaper: Digital Money Transfer & Remittances: The Instant Payment Transformation Whitepaper Download

The Battle to Leverage a Growing User Base

The research predicts that the uplift in digital remittance use driven by the pandemic will be sustained through permanent changes to user behaviour. This is supported by the reported growth in digital revenue from major remittance players in 2020, despite overall revenue declines.

Additionally, it anticipates that the active user base for digital remittances will increase by 66%; reaching 95 million by 2025, from 57 million in 2021. With the rise in adoption of digital payments, traditional players will continue to invest heavily in digital offerings, with many digitally native players continuing to adopt aggressive pricing strategies or promotional discounts on remittance services.

Stakeholders Must Act Now to Remain Competitive

The study found that the cross-border remittance market has become increasingly crowded and it will become crucial for players to differentiate themselves and add value to their service propositions.

Research author Susannah Hampton explained: ‘Growth in acquisitions and partnerships will be inevitable, as competition in the remittance market intensifies. Players must act quickly to differentiate themselves. Forging synergistic partnerships will allow them to seize new business opportunities by securing a broader reach and will offer them the best chance to achieve top-line growth and profitability.’

Whitepaper Download: https://www.juniperresearch.com/whitepapers/digital-money-transfer-remittances-the-instant    

Digital Money Transfer & Remittances Market Research: https://www.juniperresearch.com/fintech-payments/digital-money-transfer-research

Market research firm Corinium today released a new report, The Intersection of Data Privacy and Cybersecurity, which examines how data privacy, governance, and security leaders are empowering cyber-secure digital transformations within their organizations. Research uncovered that the vast majority of participants (94%) ranked data privacy compliance as a top priority for their organization. Yet nearly half (45%) aren't concerned about regulatory fines and penalties despite a growing number of regulations and data breaches. Instead, their motivations are focused more on building trust with their customers and partners. The study of 125 data privacy, governance and security leaders was conducted throughout April and May and sponsored by Okera, the Universal Data Authorization company. 

Among the key findings, respondents ranked ensuring data security at a fine-grained level as the top benefit of centralizing data authorization and control. Fine-grained access control provides data owners the ability to dynamically hide, mask, or tokenize data to prevent inappropriate access to confidential, personally identifiable, or regulated data. Further, two-thirds of organizations (64%) report taking a zero-trust, least privilege approach to secure data access all or most of the time.

“It has never been more important for all business leaders to understand the relationship between their organization’s privacy and cybersecurity programs, how the two overlap, where the challenges are, and how they can build upon one another to protect customers, employees, partners and the organization’s brand,” said Nick Halsey, Okera CEO. “It’s clear that as the market continues to grow, more sophisticated organizations will transition to a centralized platform for data authorization and control to ensure access to sensitive data at the fine-grained level, particularly if they want to retain the trust of their customers and partners.”

Reflecting market maturity, the study found that organizations are taking a strategic approach to complying with multiple data privacy laws with nearly half (49%) automating and standardizing enforcement compared to just 6% that are focused on only one privacy regulation. Nearly three-quarters of organizations (72%) have moved at least half of their data to the cloud, and an impressive 70% of leaders stated they’re very or extremely confident they know where all of their data is. 

“You take a reputational risk when you fall out of regulatory compliance. If you lose customer trust, you can’t simply pay a fine to fix it,” said Raj Badhwar, SVP and Global CISO, Voya Financial, a participant in the study.

Another participant in the study, Rick Doten, VP, Information Security & CISO at Carolina Complete Health, commented, “We need to know where our data is, what it is, which applications access it, and who uses those applications. Then, we need to be able to tag it and control it. Data governance is the answer.”

Additional Highlights

• Zero Trust isn’t easy – While 64% of businesses see taking a zero-trust, least privilege approach to data security as a guiding principle, many companies still struggle to centralize their data management capabilities, which is the only way to ensure fine-grained access control over all sensitive data.

• Better regulatory compliance is the leading driver of data privacy investments – The top three drivers of investments into the secure access of confidential, personal, and regulated data are better regulatory compliance (54%), improved business efficiency (50%), and managing costs (44%). 

• Most effective business case – To secure budgets for data privacy and security initiatives, CPOs and CISOs should focus on the most significant risks affecting business operations.

The full report can be downloaded here. 

Okera is participating in the  Data & Analytics Live US  conference taking place this week  from June 22-24. Connect with the team during the event to dig into the report findings and discuss how the Okera Dynamic Access Platform can minimize data security risks.

After a decade of being at the core of the financial services industry, having thousands of conversations with the brightest minds on our stages, hosting hundreds of workshops, and getting in the trenches with leaders solving real-world challenges, for the first time in our history, Money20/20 is proud to release our expert predictions in a thorough report about where our industry is headed over the next five years.

We are on the cusp of a new wave, Fintech 2.0, where fintech becomes intrinsically more connected to the economy. The prior wave of financial technology primarily focused on the digital distribution of existing products and services. Now, we're eagerly watching to see how the industry will shift its activity and enable digitally-native financial services to be fundamentally reimagined from the core out. 

Are you ready for what’s next?