Checkout.com, the leading cloud-based payments solutions provider, announces its largest acquisition to date of Estonian software development firm, Icefire. 

Checkout.com has seen the demand for its innovative payment solutions swell to an all-time high, with transaction volume tripling in the past year. The payments company helps global enterprises achieve better performing payments to drive more revenue and deliver better customer experiences through a customizable platform. Customers of the company include some of Europe’s top companies like Klarna, Revolut, Wise 

The acquisition of Icefire and their 110 technology engineers will join Checkout.com’s global technology teams to accelerate the delivery of key products and features. The Tallinn office will become Checkout.com’s second-largest engineering hub, after its headquarters in London, UK. The investment will also serve Checkout.com’s merchants with in-market expertise, to empower Checkout.com’s merchants to scale easily in more global markets and achieve optimal payments performance. Many leading Estonian-based technology businesses are already powered by Checkout.com’s platform, including Wise, Monese and Bolt.

Ott Kaukver, Chief Technology Officer at Checkout.com, said: “Icefire has an outstanding track record of building complex, modular financial systems over the past 18 years. Their proven experience is complementary to what we are building at Checkout.com, to empower the enterprises with better payments.”

The Tallinn-based consultancy has extensive experience developing financial services solutions for both the public and private sectors in its 18-year history. It has worked for brands such as Skype, Swedbank, CoopPank and The Republic of Estonia’s Tax & Customs Board. Most recently, it supported the development of Estonia’s COVID-19 app, HOIA. Icefire's team bring first-hand experience in building complex end-to-end financial solutions that will bolster Checkout.com's growth.

Checkout.com’s growth has accelerated over the past 12 months, as merchants shift their attention to digital commerce. To fuel this product and market growth, Checkout.com has invested heavily in its technology teams, targeting a 60% increase in technology and product employees in 2021.

British Patient Capital comments on the British Business Bank’s Small Business Equity Tracker which reveals the average pre-money valuation of a growth stage private company reached over £100m. At £100.8m in 2020 this is an increase of 92% compared to 2019. In growth stage tech companies, the increase on 2019 levels was more pronounced, rising by 102% to reach £124m.

Ian Connatty, Managing Director, British Patient Capital comments: “According to the British Business Bank’s Small Business Equity Tracker, the average valuation of UK growth stage tech companies raising capital increased by over 100% compared to 2019, demonstrating strong investor confidence in UK tech, and an increased availability of capital to support companies achieve scale while remaining private. This increase has been primarily driven by a small number of large, competitive investment rounds. These are most obviously seen where new unicorn companies have been created.

In our underlying portfolio virtual events platform, Hopin and Cazoo, which is rapidly transforming the UK market for used vehicles both became new unicorns in 2020. More recently Zego became the UK’s first insurtech unicorn in March 2021. In addition to the size and competitiveness of funding rounds, what these companies also have in common is the speed of their growth. Beauhurst estimates that it takes on average seven years for a company to gain unicorn status. In comparison, Hopin gained this after only one year and Cazoo after just two. While these companies are obviously outliers, they are a useful reminder that returns in venture capital aren’t driven by the average but the exceptional.  

As an organisation set-up to both increase the supply of venture growth capital to ambitious UK founders, and deliver a compelling commercial rate of return. These indicators of a strengthening equity market for high-growth UK private tech companies are encouraging."

Commenting on the UK life science investment opportunity Ian Connatty added:

"The global race to develop and deploy vaccines has deservedly shone a bright light on all life sciences. The increased equity investment in high-growth private UK life sciences companies is also based on strong fundamentals. The UK has the largest advanced therapies community in Europe, leading the innovation and development of the gene, tissue and cell based medicinal products at the forefront of new breakthrough treatments of disease and injury.

In our own portfolio we are now invested in five dedicated life science funds. We see strong interest from many of our other fund managers in a broad range of healthtech companies ranging from AI powered drug discovery companies such as Healx to telemedicine providers like Push Doctor and Accurx."

Commenting on the UK deep tech sector Ian Connatty added:

"Deep tech, companies founded on tangible scientific discoveries or meaningful engineering innovation, is now attracting significant investor interest, accounting for 22% of all UK VC deals in 2020. The Small Business Equity Tracker, however, reveals that, together with other R&D intensive companies in sectors such as healthtech and life sciences, these companies receive significantly less funding overall on a GDP-weighted basis compared to their US counterparts. The shortfall is particularly acute in later-stage funding rounds with US rounds 4.5x larger on average by round six.

R&D intensive companies can accelerate the deployment of innovative, breakthrough technologies that can transform major industries, develop new medicines, support the transition to a net zero economy, and strengthen the UK’s position as a science superpower. Because of their ability to grow rapidly and have a significant economic impact, encouraging the growth of these innovative companies is critical to the UK’s future prosperity.

British Patient Capital will shortly launch Future Fund: Breakthrough a new £375m UK-wide scheme encouraging private investors to co-invest in R&D intensive high-growth, innovative firms."

Commenting on the sources of capital for growth stage tech companies Ian Connatty added:

"While the Small Business Equity Tracker Market examines the trends for UK smaller private companies raising capital, it doesn’t comment on the paucity of UK investors writing big checks for later stage funding rounds in the UK. In 2020, according to a report by Tech Nation, the majority of capital for venture growth funding rounds came from overseas, primarily North America. 

While this is a strong endorsement of the opportunities for investors in UK tech, it does mean that UK savers risk missing out. The UK is the third largest pension market in the world, yet makes the smallest allocation to alternative assets, such as venture capital – 8% versus the average of 26% for large, mature pension countries. A report by the British Business Bank, showed that retirement savings could be increased by 7-12% for a 22-year-old, if their pension scheme made 5% of investments in the UK’s fastest growing and most innovative companies via venture capital funds.

Strengthening the UK market for later stage venture capital isn’t just important for our savers, it helps our companies to also achieve scale and success while remaining anchored in the UK. It also gives our ambitious growth stage founders a go to source of patient capital when global markets may be less buoyant, and the opportunity less obvious. That’s why a key part of our investment strategy is to bring more UK based venture growth funds to market."

Isomer Capital is pleased to announce the first close of “Isomer Capital Opportunities”. The new co-investment fund is backed by British Business Investments, through its Managed Funds Programme, amongst other global institutions. 

The goal of the new opportunities fund is to build on the success of ‘Isomer Capital I’, the firm’s fund-of-funds that invests into early-stage venture capital firms across Europe. Isomer Capital Opportunities will enable the firm to continue early growth investing alongside its VC partners into the UK and Europe’s fastest growing technology companies. 

Isomer Capital Opportunities will provide ongoing support to fast-growing technology scale-ups from within the firm’s early stage portfolio. Isomer’s first hybrid fund of funds gained exposure to companies in 34 countries, generating high and consistent demand for growth capital. 

Isomer Capital Opportunities will co-invest in approximately 20 companies sourced from within the firm’s previous fund-of-funds, Isomer Capital I. 

Chris Wade, Co-Founder and Partner of Isomer Capital, says: “Together with our partner VC funds we continuously monitor the most promising portfolio companies that have rapidly growing revenues and address a market opportunity that could enable a company to become a world class leader. Isomer Capital Opportunities will typically invest in companies that have been in the Isomer portfolio for more than 8 quarters and demonstrate a strong fully-formed management team with a shared vision of building a global company.”

Judith Hartley, CEO of British Business Investments, said: “Isomer Capital is a specialist fund of funds manager, with well-established venture and growth capital investment capabilities. This commitment to Isomer’s co-investment fund is well aligned with the strategic aims of the Managed Funds Programme and will provide a steady stream of capital to innovative growing businesses across the UK.”

The investment from British Business Investments comes from its £500m Managed Funds Programme, which is designed to address the patient capital funding gap in the UK. By targeting a commercial rate of return, the continuing aim of the programme is to demonstrate the attractiveness of longer-term, later-stage venture and growth capital investments for institutional investors. Access to these sources of patient capital will enable ambitious companies to reach their full potential and help make the UK a great place to start-up and scale a business. This investment continues a strong relationship between British Business Investments and Isomer Capital, as it also invested in the €250m Isomer Capital II Fund of funds, through the Managed Funds Programme.

In addition to British Business Investments, Isomer’s funds are backed by foundations, corporations, and family office investors from Europe, Asia and the US. Many seek to access innovation and, in some cases, co-invest alongside Isomer and its partners, a factor instrumental to Isomer and its portfolio companies’ success. 

Clients get access to best-of-breed payments orchestration and cloud-based acquiring.

Industry leading payment orchestration platform IXOPAY, partners with Silverflow, the global payments technology company. This partnership will allow IXOPAY clients to upgrade their card payments process by switching to cloud based acquiring.

The world of online payments is a new and constantly evolving ecosystem. PSPs, Gateways, risk and fraud engines, APMs (alternative payment methods), are unlikely to be older than 20 years and those that are have been revamped and modernized since inception. But for card payments, which still have the majority share of online payments, the last mile of delivery is processed via platforms that are at least 20 years old. This limits them in terms of the data they can carry, the functionality they can provide, and makes them cumbersome to work with. In many cases, valuable information provided by the card networks is dropped or distilled and acquirers and merchants cannot react to auth/decline/chargeback reason codes and lack an accurate view of scheme/network costs.

Silverflow solves these issues. Through a single API, users can establish or retain an existing commercial agreement with any acquirer without having to connect to that acquirer’s legacy platform. Once the acquirer’s BIN/ICA is loaded onto the Silverflow platform, card processing becomes available to those users as well as full data and cost transparency coupled with simple, fast onboarding and advanced chargeback handling. Scheme updates, mandates, and innovation are deployed at speed on Silverflow’s platform.

IXOPAY clients, such as financially licensed institutions, payment service providers, and ISOs, will benefit from state-of-the-art cloud based acquiring, cascading, and unparalleled risk management functions. From one platform, users benefit from simplified integrations of acquirers, payment service providers, and risk service providers.

Quote: “The partnership with Silverflow is very exciting, by combining our best of breed platform with cloud based card acquiring our clients will have access to the best payments technology providing their merchants with a best in class service.” Said Rene Siegl, Founder and Executive Chairman of IXOPAY

Quote: “IXOPAY is an industry leading payment orchestration platform and we are pleased to be selected as one of their partners as it highlights the strength of our technology. Together we can provide clients and their merchants a world class payments setup.” Added Anne Willem de Vries, Co-Founder and CEO of Silverflow.

Upgrade your payment setup with IXOPAY and Silverflow.

Upflow has raised $15m to revolutionize how B2B companies get paid. The company provides a SaaS solution that enables companies to radically modernize their entire cash-cycle, and effortlessly collect customer payments. Upflow now processes more than $200m worth of invoices a month, for over 1.5m transacting companies.

The funding round includes participation from 9yards Capital and existing investor eFounders. Several industry-leading angel investors also participated, including N26 CoFounder Maximilian Tayenthal; SVP Delivery, Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty of Uber; and Raffael Johnen, Co-Founder & CEO at auxmoney. As part of the transaction, the former co-founder and co-CEO of Westwing, Andrew Nutter will join the board. The company also attended YCombinator in Winter 2020.

Currently, businesses typically use a combination of manual processes and archaic payment methods to get paid.  This often leads to a disjointed system that is reliant on manual interactions and creates high-friction and error-prone processes. This, in turn, can create late payments which remain an acute problem for the economy today.

Upflow seamlessly integrates with finance tools such as QuickBooks, Xero, Netsuite, and Chargebee. The company also partners with payment gateways like Stripe and GoCardless, to provide business teams with a central hub to better manage communication with customers and payments.

Alexandre Louisy, CEO of Upflow, explains the situation as it stands, and the company’s mission

“We are on a mission to revolutionize the way that companies get paid. At Upflow, we provide a solution that adds connectivity and clarity to a company's payment and invoicing stack. Where systems were previously closed and disconnected, Upflow's platform enables smooth and clear processes.

By enabling a company to take control of its entire cash cycle, we want to help eradicate late payments. There is a common misconception that 'late payments' are only a symptom of big companies holding smaller vendors to long payment cycles. Upflow sees it differently: late payments are a tech problem, as B2B payments haven't changed for decades.

In the US, a huge amount of B2B payments are based on paper checks; and in Europe, even the most modern accounting software only generates a pdf invoice. The onus is still on the client to manually input banking details and make the payment. All of these 'high friction' processes contribute to late payments. By rethinking the entire process, we unlock significant working capital, and thus growth, for those companies.”

Founded in 2018, the company now connects a network of over 1.5m companies, and has processed over $1bn in payments since launch. Upflow has begun distributing the solution in the US, and has gained key users such as Lattice, Front, Adikteev.

With this new round of funding, Upflow will invest in developing their product, with an ambitious roadmap on integrations, payments, and financial services. It will also expand its distribution capabilities in the US by setting up a new office in New York.

David Fisher, Managing Partner at 9Yards Capital says: “Through our repeated investments in the fintech space, we believe that B2B payments are going to be transformed in the next decade. The opportunity in front of Upflow is incredible, and we've been impressed by their product-led approach to a well-known, but unsolved issue.  They're very well positioned to help transform the payment processes that have been broken for some time, and we look forward to playing our part in their journey."

Barnaby Malet, Upflow co-founder and CTPO says: "We’re craftspeople that believe finance teams should benefit from simple, high-quality experiences that are on-par with the leading consumer apps. We have a pragmatic, fact-based approach, and we want everything about the company to be state-of-the-art: our HR policies, our processes, and our stack. We look forward to continually raising the standard for finance teams across the globe."

Earlier this month, The Bank of Thailand contracted with a firm they tasked with developing a proof-of-concept for a Thai CBDC, settling on development costs of 10 million baht. This announcement comes as other countries are busy planning for their own financial futures. Recently, Ghana announced that the country is approaching the pilot testing phase for its own CBDC, while the president of El Salvador announced that he aimed to make Bitcoin an official currency for his Central American nation.

“While the Bahamas may have beaten them to it, it really was China that set off this race to develop and launch a CBDC. China is the first major power to launch a beta test of their technology, and their testing is extended and expansive. Now, countries across the globe see that digital currencies backed by central banks are the future of finance. There’s no longer a question of if it is going to happen. The question is now when will it happen, and who will be the first to launch in a way that encourages major sections of the populace to participate,” proposed Richard Gardner, CEO of Modulus, a US-based developer of ultra-high-performance trading and surveillance technology that powers global equities, derivatives, and digital asset exchanges.

“Thailand is looking around the table. They see their regional neighbor to the north closing in on implementation, and they realize that it’s time to move the football. And, developing a proof-of-concept is the first step. Once development is complete and the technological infrastructure is ready, they’ll have to beta test it. From there, they’ll need to go back and fix any design flaws. From beginning to end, this is going to take years. But, adopting the technology early will pay dividends in the future,” opined Gardner.
Modulus is known throughout the financial technology segment as a leader in the development of ultra-high frequency trading systems and blockchain technologies. Over the past twenty years, the company has built technology for the world’s most notable exchanges, with a client list which includes NASA, NASDAQ, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Barclays, Siemens, Shell, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Cornell University, and the University of Chicago.

“We’re already beginning to see banks and other multinational corporations come to us and start to prepare their own infrastructure for the eventual move towards CBDCs. There’s a great deal of technological infrastructure that needs to be in place. It isn’t just building an app,” noted Gardner. “Countries, financial exchanges, payment processors, banks, and large corporations --- they are all going to see a massive change in the way that the populace interacts with money. The time to prepare for those changes is now.”

ION, the largest global provider of trading, analytics, treasury, and risk management solutions for capital markets, commodities, and treasury management, today announced that ION Markets' ION Fixed Income has been named Best Trading Solution for Fixed Income by TradingTech Insight (TTI) Awards USA. This award is ION Fixed Income's second such win for the year, having been named Best Trading Solution for Fixed Income by TTI Awards Europe in February 2021. 

TTI USA recognizes excellence in trading solutions and services for rapidly evolving capital markets. The awarding process takes into account a company’s prowess in capital markets as well as the product’s relevance to the TTI community. This award is presented to the marketplace's finest performers.

Andrew Delaney, President and Chief Content Officer of the A-Team Group, which hosts the TTI Awards, said: "Many congratulations to ION Markets for winning Best Trading Solution for Fixed Income Markets in our prestigious TradingTech Insight Awards USA 2021. It's a real vote of confidence from across our readership of 30,000 senior technology officers and trading technology specialists, who selected ION Markets as the clear winner in a very competitive field."

Accepting the award, Edoardo Pacenti, Head of Trading Tools for Fixed Income at ION Markets said: "It is very gratifying for the team to receive this award. It’s a testimony to our continuous efforts to deliver solutions that can keep up with a rapidly changing environment. We are dedicated to our clients, helping them to automate their critical trading workflows, so that their businesses can thrive.” 

“The ION Fixed Income solution offers access to a large set of venues, process automation, and first-class performance, enabling our clients to focus on growing their business. With the emergence of new technology trends around data analytics and AI, we continue to empower our clients with innovative solutions and simplify their trading applications ecosystem. We are excited to continue working with our clients on several initiatives, pioneering innovation in the industry."

TTI Awards conducts the voting online and this year ION Markets earned the highest industry votes in the USA and Europe. Voting included input from the TTI Advisory board, consisting of experts for their customer and prospect community.

Global risk analytics consultancy, 4most, has announced the provision of its USA CECL Economics Service to BancorpSouth Bank amidst the ongoing pandemic. The partnership sees 4most supporting the Bank through the pandemic recovery period while gauging new risks, as part of its range of credit risk initiatives.

The pandemic has caused volatility and uncertainty for many lenders and as the economy recovers 4most will provide invaluable insight and economic forecasting for the Bank’s CECL models and stress testing efforts. To better understand the changeable risk environment BancorpSouth has been working closely with 4most to undertake a tailored analysis of key risk drivers including, the labor market, wages and prices, household finances, financial variables and residential and commercial property prices.

While rapid short-term growth is a certainty, it is important to appreciate what might go wrong. With this in mind, 4most has developed an ‘overheating’ scenario for the Bank in which pre-crisis levels of output are regained in Q2, but a resurgence of inflation then depresses real incomes. During this unprecedented period of easy money and loose fiscal policy, this could be a catalyst for a reassessment of the value of riskier assets, such as property and equities, which could in turn, lead to another recession as we head into 2022.

Keith Church, Head of Economics at 4most explained: “BancorpSouth, like all Banks, is keen to understand the current risk environment and how that might change over the coming months as we emerge from the crisis. Our team are providing both reasoning and narrative to support forecasts so that the bank can fully understand the immediate and emerging economic environment and be in a stronger position to assess threats and maximise opportunities.”

Speaking about the partnership, Ty Lambert, CRO at BancorpSouth added: “We’re delighted to be continuing our partnership with 4most. The team’s expertise and guidance in interpreting the economic downturn and recovery prospects during these challenging times, have been and are, of enormous value to BancorpSouth.”

TransferMate Global Payments, the world’s leading provider of payments  infrastructure as a service, today announced a new collaboration to introduce its simple cross-border payment experience to sellers and buyers of Alibaba.com, a leading ecommerce platform for global  wholesale trade. Customers of Alibaba.com can use TransferMate’s award-winning platform to receive  and make payments, benefitting from preferential FX rates, quick transaction times and no wire transfer  fees. TransferMate customers will also be able to access global markets when selling on Alibaba.com,  broadening their reach to a wider international customer base.  

TransferMate is solving some traditional payment headaches that plague the global ecommerce space.  Businesses that sell globally online deal with buyers all over the world who want to pay in their local  currency. Using TransferMate’s platform, ecommerce companies can invoice their customers with a  secure link, enabling the customer to easily pay in their home currency and allowing the seller to quickly  receive the full amount the same day/next day, incurring no incoming bank transfer fees.  

This cross-border solution from TransferMate improves the cash flow of the billing business, which might  normally wait days for a payment. TransferMate’s unique global network of payment licences around the  world allows transfers to take place at a faster pace, while also bypassing the traditional correspondent  banking system where transfer fees are often taken out of the payment amount and billers receive funds  that fall short of the full invoiced amount. 

“We are thrilled to offer our payments solution to users of one of the largest platforms for global trade,  eradicating traditional cross-border payment challenges for these businesses,” said Sinead Fitzmaurice,  CEO of TransferMate Global Payments – a subsidiary of Clune Technology Group. “TransferMate was  founded to make international payments easier for businesses that wanted to transact globally, and we  could not agree more with Alibaba.com’s mission to make it easier to do business anywhere. Together,  we are bringing cutting-edge solutions to companies of all sizes, allowing businesses to expand their global  reach.” 

Companies buying on Alibaba.com can also take advantage of the TransferMate service, using  TransferMate’s online platform to make a payment for their orders. The quick transaction time and  eliminated fees leads to happier suppliers, who receive payments in full and on time. 

For more information, visit TransferMate.com/alibaba.