PrimaryBid, the British fintech platform that connects retail investors with public companies raising capital, has closed a $50m Series B investment round from a leading group of investors. The fundraising follows a period of rapid growth in 2020 during which PrimaryBid helped U.K. retail investors access billions of pounds of corporate fundraisings during the COVID-19 pandemic, including FTSE 100 Compass Group, Ocado, Taylor Wimpey and Segro. Proceeds will be used to build-out the PrimaryBid team and technology platform as the company deepens its links with key intermediaries and expands into international markets.

PrimaryBid attracted global investors in its Series B fundraise including London Stock Exchange Group, Draper Esprit, OMERS Ventures, Fidelity International Strategic Ventures and ABN AMRO Ventures to facilitate expansion into international markets.

PrimaryBid has completed over 41 capital raisings for U.K. listed companies and investment trusts since April 2020, working alongside global investment banks to broaden investor access as companies recapitalised their balance sheets and raised growth capital. Retail investors directly own 13.5% of the U.K. market, while additionally holding approximately £269 billion in cash ISAs, making them an important constituency in any capital raising activity. (sources: ONS, 2018; HMRC, 2020)

Anand Sambasivan, CEO of PrimaryBid, said: "The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the effectiveness of the public markets, with companies recapitalising quickly and efficiently. Our technology has allowed thousands of retail investors to participate on equal terms with institutional investors, unlocking a large and important source of liquidity and long-term share ownership for corporate issuers. The response from Boards and their advisers to our solution has been excellent: they recognise our digital solution for retail inclusion brings together both good governance and best execution.

“We are privileged to welcome a number of leading global investors in our Series B. Our mission is to enhance fairness, inclusivity and transparency in capital markets, and these investors all share that commitment and global ambition. I look forward to working with them as we expand PrimaryBid’s offering to retail investors in new markets, build our team and technology platform, and deepen our integration into the capital raising ecosystem.” 

Charlie Walker, Head of Equity and Fixed Income, Primary Markets at London Stock Exchange plc said: “This investment builds on our collaboration with PrimaryBid and is part of London Stock Exchange Group’s commitment to broadening retail investor access to public equity markets. Through PrimaryBid’s innovative offering, retail investors have been able to access capital raisings on the same terms as institutional investors, supporting the U.K.’s public companies by providing additional capital and liquidity. PrimaryBid has become an important part of the U.K.’s capital raising ecosystem and we look forward to working with them to further enhance retail investor access to capital markets within the U.K. and globally.”

Vinoth Jayakumar, Partner at Draper Espirit said: “Our investment in PrimaryBid aligns with part of our wider investment thesis to democratise retail investors access to public markets as well as modernise market infrastructure software. For us, both our companies are anticipating the direction of travel of the future of finance.”

Tara Reeves, Partner at OMERS Ventures said: “As fintech specialists it’s been impossible to ignore the rise of PrimaryBid in 2020 and its success championing retail investors in the capital markets. PrimaryBid’s technology sits at the intersection of powerful trends in financial services - regulation, digitalisation and democratisation - and OMERS Ventures is delighted to support the team’s mission to put individual investors on equal terms with institutions. PrimaryBid is now well integrated at the highest levels of the U.K.’s capital raising ecosystem, and we look forward to helping the team realize their ambitions internationally.”

Michael Sim, Vice President, Fidelity International Strategic Ventures said: “We are excited to be partnering with PrimaryBid to enhance fairness, inclusivity, and transparency in capital markets. Anand and the team have built unique technology infrastructure that is redefining the way issuers access capital markets; seamlessly connecting everyday retail investors with public companies. As the economy roils from the impact of coronavirus, it is imperative retail investors get a seat at the table as companies recapitalise and the process of economic recovery begins.”

Kevin Chong, Co-Head of Outward VC said: “Since our Series A investment in 2019, Anand and the PrimaryBid team have demonstrated extraordinary execution of their vision to directly connect retail investors with public companies raising capital. The team’s unique combination of capital markets experience, technology vision and entrepreneurial willpower made this possible. With this injection of funding, the company is ideally placed to build out its platform and expand internationally.”

Craig Anderson, Partner at Pentech said: “Equity capital markets infrastructure has traditionally been dominated by an institutional focus and not geared for retail investors, which has unfairly restricted consumer access to the primary equity markets. We first invested in PrimaryBid in 2019 to enable the company to address this problem by using technology to democratise the equity capital markets to provide a new asset class to retail investors. Since then, PrimaryBid has grown rapidly and we are delighted to continue supporting the company through participation in the Series B investment round.”

China's leading one-stop cross-border financial services and risk management company XTransfer announced that it has completed a Series C1 round of financing. The latest round was led by Telstra Ventures, together with MindWorks Ventures and existing investors.  

Bill Deng, founder and chief executive of XTransfer said the funds will be used to further expand its global financial network, strengthen its data capabilities, improve its anti-money laundering (AML) and risk control capacity and deliver better services to customers. This funding round will also fuel their organizational upgrade to attract more high-caliber talents globally. 

Founded in May 2017, XTransfer is headquartered in Shanghai and has offices in Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Japan, Australia and Singapore.  

Through collaboration with top-tier international banks and financial institutions, it has established a multi-currency unified financial settlement network and a data-driven, automated, internet-enabled and intelligent AML infrastructure catering to small and medium-sized enterprises. XTransfer employs technology to connect major global financial institutions and SMEs, providing the latter with a unified global financial network and access to cross-border financial services on par with multinational corporations. These services include, among others, local collection and payment, FX exchange, reporting of income in countries with non-convertible currencies, and wealth management. 

Bill Deng noted that global trade is becoming increasingly fragmented with SMEs forming the bulk of cross-border trade underserved.  

"After 25 years of growth, the B2C real-time payment sector has seen a host of titans such as PayPal, Square, Stripe and Alipay," says Deng. "We believe the vast opportunity lies in the B2B digital payment." 

"We've noticed that SMEs exhibited a great deal of resilience and vitality in the face of crises and we believe firmly in the mission and vision to serve SMEs. In the area of containing risks inherent in cross-border capital flows for SMEs, we experienced firsthand the enormous challenges therein: For one thing, serving SME traders carries a huge risk as their transactions are rather low in value and high in frequency. For another, risk management is difficult and costly. The lack of risk awareness and internal control procedures is prevalent among SMEs. They dealt in a complex array of goods, transacting with different partners from diverse geographic locations. What's more, the B2B industry lacks a comprehensive, standard and structured source of data, which we enjoy as a core competence as one of reasons why we can offer a smooth customer journey on our platform." 

Chris Pu, General Partner and Head of China at Telstra Ventures, said XTransfer's team uniquely possess a global perspective and a wealth of expertise. The AML system they created has stood up to scrutiny over the past few years and has proved comprehensive, efficient and intelligent. The team's efforts have won trust and support from regulators, financial partners, clients and other stakeholders. 

"We believe that their continued efforts and the trust network that has evolved over a long period of time will provide SMEs doing business globally with the most convenient form of payment and other financial experience," says Pu. "Going forward, it will unleash tremendous value." 

In post-coronavirus global trade, the shift toward e-commerce has picked up speed among B2B cross-border trade. The digital payment network, AML and risk management system offered by XTransfer is most in demand by SME traders. 

David Chang, General Partner of MindWorks Ventures, says he expects XTransfer to leverage its technology platform and comprehensive data sets to roll out more products that solve the pain points for SMEs, so as to enhance their operational efficiency in all respects and sharpen their competitive edge across the world. 

Scality announces that for the fifth consecutive year it has been recognised by Gartner, Inc. as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage¹.  

Through its unique integrated scale-out file and object storage, Scality RING increases agility and reduces risk for customers by allowing them to manage a mix of legacy and new cloud-native applications on a single platform with unbounded growth. 

“We believe that Scality’s five-time Leadership position in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage is exactly how our customers see us,” said Jerome Lecat, Scality’s CEO. “IT leaders we’ve talked to value RING for its stability, scalability, flexibility, performance and quality of support. Our native support for file and object brings tremendous savings to organisations that want to break data silos. We continue to innovate to bring even more value to our customers, with new capabilities such as RING Scale-Out File System (SOFS) and object storage support of all-flash servers, and a 1 Tbps throughput achievement of SOFS in Azure cloud.” 

Scality customers leverage key capabilities in the RING including:

• Scale-out capacity and performance to eliminate data silos 
• Geographically distributed storage to ensure data-availability 
• Hardware independence to gain freedom of choice in deployment and avoid lock-in 

Customers expect ongoing innovation to simplify the challenges of storing, protecting and managing vast amounts of data in a hybrid and multi-cloud world. Scality’s major product initiatives over the past year include:

• Introduction of Scality NAS Archiver, a one-stop solution for NAS data assessment, offload and archiving to Scality RING to uncover and capitalise on new economies for data centres 
• Introduction of all-flash solutions for high-performance applications in backup, medical imaging, content delivery, AI/ML and more 
• Securing data against ransomware with S3 Object Lock support as demonstrated by Veeam Ready Object with Immutability qualification 
• Enabling hybrid-cloud solutions for business continuity and resilience (cloud DR) 
• Deep integration with AWS S3 and Azure Blob cloud storage 
• High-speed and distributed data management for big data analytics applications, including Weka, Splunk, Cloudera, Apache SPARK, Vertica, Elastic and more 

Based on customer feedback, Scality’s consecutive five-time placement in the Leaders quadrant validates that the RING’s superior capabilities in real-world deployments bring direct value to IT professionals.  

Scality customers have provided extensive real-world feedback on Gartner Peer Insights, documenting their personal experience with RING across numerous industries and use cases. 

Download a complimentary copy of the full Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage here. Read more about how Scality leads with customers by our side here. 

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1. Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage” by Julia Palmer, Jerry Rozeman, Robert Preston, Chandra Mukhyala, Jeff Vogel. Document ID: G00463710, October 15, 2020.

Checkprint, part of the TALL Group of Companies, the UK leader in the provision of secure printed and electronic payment solutions, has signed a contract renewal with Metro Bank for cheque services. The decade-long partnership, which goes back to 2010 when Metro Bank was the first new high street bank to open its doors in the UK for over 100 years, has been extended for a further  six years.

The contract enables Metro Bank to continue to instantly issue chequebooks to all new account holders, within minutes of them entering the store. Metro Bank is one of the only providers of instantly issued chequebooks on the high street and will look to Checkprint to continue to provide replenishment books for both personal and business customers, from the firm’s fully accredited site in Hinckley, Leicestershire.

Martin Ruda, Managing Director of Checkprint, said: “It’s a tremendously positive partnership and Metro Bank are a great team to work with. The dynamic between both companies is interactive on both sides, as we both adopt more strategic positions in our markets. Metro Bank is constantly looking to evolve, and likewise, we’re always focussed on innovation and bringing new products and services to market.” 

Tamsin Byrne, Metro Bank’s Director of Distribution Delivery, said: “The contract renewal is testament to the trusted and successful relationship between Metro Bank and Checkprint. Metro Bank’s commitment to providing a stand-out customer experience is underpinned with a number of key deliverables, including the ability to instantly issue chequebooks to all new account holders if they would like one. Since 2010, Checkprint has worked with Metro Bank to help us provide this and other innovative services to our customers. It’s an exciting time for both companies, who have immense respect for each other’s expertise and processes, and long may that continue.”

Sokin has announced it will be partnering with Transact Payments Limited (TPL) as it prepares for the roll-out of its UK and European fixed-price subscription-based payments service.

Transact Payments will provide flexible European BIN sponsorship and modular payment, debit and prepaid services as part of the Sokin global service.  Through its multiple partners, Sokin offers currency exchange in 150 countries with Sokin wallets and cards in 200 countries, covering 35 different currencies.

Sokin international money transfers and payments are accessed through a single monthly fee which cuts out hidden and repeat costs saving customers on average 20% against existing payment solutions.  Sokin’s technology makes the process easy, from the onboarding of customers to instant payments, all in its secure peer-to-peer mobile app.

Vroon Modgill, CEO at Sokin, commented: “TPL understands that the world of payments is changing, and consumers want simple, secure and value for money options.  This makes TPL the perfect partner for Sokin as we launch our payment services across the UK and Europe.  The support and expertise they bring will be essential as we offer a transparent, low cost, way of making international transfers.”

Noel Smith at TPL, says: “We are extremely pleased to be partnering with Sokin. The combination of TPL’s experience and Sokin’s innovative approach, will mean this is a partnership that will pay off for both businesses and consumers, by offering a fixed and low-cost international money transfer service.”  

For more information please go to www.sokin.net.

Netacea, a provider of bot management solutions, announces that ClearScore, the UK’s leading free credit score and credit marketplace, has selected Netacea’s bot management solution to protect against credential stuffing attacks and account takeovers.

Netacea’s Intent Analytics™ engine can quickly and accurately distinguish bots from humans, which allows ClearScore to give genuine users access and stop malicious bots. The partnership sees ClearScore advance its online security from web application firewalls, rate limiting, and similar techniques to a more sophisticated machine learning-based solution that can quickly evolve to protect against the current threat landscape of bots.

ClearScore provides its users with simple access to their credit score and report for free and provides financial product recommendations tailored to their credit report. Its ClearScore Protect product also provides “dark web monitoring” that can check if passwords and usernames have been stolen and are being traded online. It is exactly this sort of trading that Netacea helps protect ClearScore from—bots use credentials stolen in data breaches to gain access to accounts elsewhere. These attacks can then be used to commit further fraud or subvert existing accounts—for example applying for a loan in someone else’s name.

ClearScore found that keeping ahead of this fraud was proving increasingly difficult using standard techniques. For example, more sophisticated bots can avoid rate limiting measures by keeping just below thresholds, and while traffic from certain countries is more likely to be malicious, limiting IP addresses can keep genuine users out. In the last four weeks, Netacea has reduced traffic to login pages by 14% by mitigating bot traffic. In addition, the internal ClearScore security team, previously required to carry out late night manual blocking of suspicious traffic to minimise threats, is now free to tackle other concerns.

Klaus Thorup, Chief Technology Officer, ClearScore, commented: “At ClearScore, we deal with highly sensitive credit report data every minute of every day. In the wrong hands, this data has the potential to have a negative impact on our users’ personal finances, so we go to great lengths to ensure their data is safe with us. Though our security systems are extremely robust, it’s critical that we protect against user credentials that have been stolen from elsewhere on the Internet being used for account takeover. As a fast-growing business, it’s critical that we maintain our users’ trust to continue our growth.

“Solutions such as rate limiting and blacklisting IP addresses are only of limited use and can prevent genuine users from gaining access. Working with Netacea means we can stay one step ahead of criminals even as they change how they operate—and we can focus on giving our users the best possible service.”

Andy Still, Netacea’s Chief Technology Officer, commented: “Credential stuffing and account takeover attacks are a worry for any business, but especially for those who are dealing with sensitive information on behalf of their users. Working with ClearScore means working with a business that is dedicated to delivering its innovative services in a way that keeps its users safe.”

Nets Group, a leading European payment provider, today announced the acquisition of CCV Schweiz SA, a subsidiary of CCV Group based in the Netherlands. The acquisition is a further step in Nets Group’s European growth and expansion strategy, focused on bringing advanced payments solutions to regions with high growth potential driven by the ongoing shift to digital payments.

The renowned Swiss payment infrastructure provider CCV Schweiz SA brings 30 years of experience in card terminals and associated services, as well as cash register integration, loyalty, and shopping card systems to Nets Group. CCV Schweiz SA will be integrated with Concardis Schweiz AG, which is part of Nets Group. As soon as the integration is organisationally completed in the coming months, the two companies will operate under the Nets brand.

“This acquisition will help us to broaden our presence across the Swiss value chain and, as a one-stop-shop, offer our customers value-added services beyond standard payment handling,” says Robert Hoffmann, CEO of Concardis and Nets Merchant Services. “The CCV Group is an important and trusted partner for us in the DACH region. Joining forces will take our partnership to the next level, enabling us to support merchants across Switzerland, Germany, and Austria with a strong and competitive alternative offer, and helping to further develop Nets’ pan-European footprint in high growth regions.”

Attractive region

“Strong growth rates in cashless payments, as well as a general openness to innovation and digitisation, make Switzerland an attractive location, which is why we are investing heavily here,” says Hoffmann. “We are already a well-known payment provider in Switzerland, so far mainly focusing on merchant acquiring. CCV brings with it highly efficient and innovative technological hardware solutions, complementing our existing services for Swiss merchants.”

“We have been working together successfully in Switzerland for many years, to serve the interests of local merchants. We see a great opportunity in joining forces – both from the customer perspective and for our employees,” says Enny van de Velden, Chair of the Board, CCO at CCV Group B.V.

“Going forward, our merchant customers will have one single point of contact serving them across the board, supported by our staff, who are extensively experienced in all matters relating to payment. Our employees will become part of a pan-European full-service payment provider that offers new development opportunities,” adds van de Velden.

Joint know-how for powerful solutions

“Nets is already a leading provider in the Nordics, the DACH region and Poland when it comes to digital payments and services,” says Hoffmann. “We will combine this know-how with the experience of our partners and employees across central Europe to provide small businesses, pioneering start-ups and internationally established players with innovative and powerful solutions for local and international payments.”

In recent years, Nets Group has significantly expanded its European presence, having participated in six major strategic transactions since 2017 to provide greater exposure to high-growth regions and capture the continuing shift towards digital payments. Nets Group has built a solid platform across Poland with a strong focus on e-commerce, through the acquisition of Dotpay/eCard, a strategic alliance with Przelewy-24 and the acquisition of leading Polish merchant acquirer, Polskie ePłatności (PeP). These acquisitions followed the major merger with the Concardis Payment Group in 2019, building Nets Group’s presence in the DACH region, and the greater strategic focus on Merchant and Issuer Services with the €2.85bn sale of the Group’s account-to-account business to Mastercard. With this expansion Nets Group has significantly increased its exposure to high growth regions and as well to eCommerce, with the latter now comprising approximately 40% of Merchant Services revenue.

CCV Schweiz SA has a portfolio of around 34,000 payment terminals and employs around 90 people at three locations in Switzerland.

The acquisition is expected to be completed in the coming weeks.

The Emerging Payments Association (EPA), which promotes collaboration and innovation across payments, launches its inaugural virtual fintech trade mission to Asia, connecting key industry players from across the payments value chain, including regulators, banks, fintechs and other service providers.

Taking place from 23rd October – 3rd November, the virtual fintech trade mission provides an important gateway into the lucrative Asian payments market, whilst promoting the UK and London as a global hub for FinTech and PayTech expertise.

Across the 10 days of the summit, the EPA will , as well as host keynote presentations, panel discussions and in-depth fintech clinics on topics including the rise of virtual banking and challenger bank adoption, Open Banking, navigating regulation, and digital identity. Through one of the EPA’s six stakeholder groups, Project International Trade, and in collaboration with EPA Asia, the EPA is aiming to encourage the growth and development of its 130 member-strong global community.

Tony Craddock, Director General of the Emerging Payments Association, commented: “As payments evolve and develop on a global scale, we want to help our members build and expand their businesses through new markets and verticals. The APAC region provides a pivotal prospect for this and we are thrilled to provide such an innovative virtual opportunity for some of the leading businesses across UK payments and fintech.”

Asia is the largest market for digital payments, has high levels of investment, greater relaxation of regulation, and a young demographic with an increased appetite for emerging and mobile technologies. The APAC region itself accounts for almost three-quarters of global payment transactions, and with higher revenues associated with electronic transactions compared to cash, this represents a huge opportunity for the EPA’s membership base.

Shaun Puckrin, Chief Product Officer of Global Processing Services (GPS), added: “The EPA Virtual Fintech Trade Mission to Asia provides a fantastic opportunity for companies looking to be at the forefront of fintech and payments in the region. The event allows them to keep a finger on the pulse of important developments and changes in consumer behaviour and payments technology post-COVID, as well as help identify emerging opportunities moving into 2021.”

To deliver the event, the virtual fintech trade mission is backed by U.K. based sponsors Global Processing Services (GPS) and Trust Payments, as well as 10 in-region partners across Singapore, Sydney and Hong Kong, including: British Chamber of Commerce Singapore, Vistra, EPA Asia, Fintech Association of HK, InvestHK, KPMG, Grant Thornton, PaymentsNZ, and the Australian Payments Network.

The EPA virtual fintech trade mission to Asia brochure can be viewed here: https://www.emergingpayments.org/portfolio/project-international-trade/ or for more information, contact the EPA at: info@emergingpayments.org.

• With lockdown restrictions increasing across the UK a new report reveals that 1 in 5 small business believe they will not survive¹
• Fasthosts has detailed some tips to help those SMEs with an online presence thrive during this volatile period

Businesses are set to face their hardest winter ever this year as lockdown restrictions continue to take effect across the UK.

The three-tier system, recently imposed by the UK government, can see towns and cities shut up shop with less than a week’s notice, putting millions of SMEs at risk.

A new report by Simply Business¹ reveals that a staggering 1 in 5 SMEs believe they will not survive a second lockdown, with many now moving away from the High Street and focussing their efforts online.

In July 2020, research from Growth Intelligence showed that during the first stages of lockdown more than 85,000 businesses launched online stores² as business owners looked to continue trading.

To support SMEs who are looking to move online Fasthosts has detailed tips on how to make sure your business not only survives, but thrives online:

How to make your business thrive online during lockdown:

1. Use a website builder

Your website is your ‘shop front’ and needs to impress any potential customers who may land on your site.

Without a website, your business may be seen to lack legitimacy in the eyes of a customer, while a poor quality one could reflect badly on your business.

Luckily there are many website-building tools available, allowing you to build a professional website without needing developer knowledge.

2. Cloud storage and computing

The ‘cloud’ simply means that you can store and access data over the internet rather than keeping it on your computer or hard drive.

By immersing yourself and your business in the ‘cloud’ you will be able to back up data helping with recovery during any potential data loss as well as having increased security.

Working in the cloud can also improve accessibility. Staff working at home or remotely will be able to have access to most, if not all, the data and tools they need to do their jobs.

3. Have you considered VPS hosting?

VPS (virtual private server) hosting is a cost effective way to help businesses scale up their online activity.

While shared hosting means that your website will share its server resources with others, VPS hosting is like having your own server, but in the cloud.

An advantage to VPS hosting is its scalability. A small business may find it hard to predict the amount of traffic its website might receive which can be an issue if its customer base quickly expands. Unlike a shared server, a VPS can quickly increase its capacity and help the website scale up its operations with minimum fuss.

4. Transfer your domain registration

A domain registrar is the company who helped you purchase and set up your website domain name.

The challenge for many small businesses however is that many registrars sign you up on a low fee, only to increase the prices over time.

Many registrars may offer you a fantastic low price to switch – just remember to check how much it will cost in a few years' time. Transferring to a new registrar is actually very simple, and most importantly free!

Full information can be seen at https://www.fasthosts.co.uk/blog/pandemic-tips-supercharge-your-small-business-during-lockdown/.

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1. https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/one-five-small-businesses-would-18888776
2. https://internetretailing.net/covid-19/covid-19/85000-businesses-launch-online-shops-as-b2c-and-b2b-ecommerce-surge-in-lockdown-21639