PayMate, the market leader in B2B payments in India, today announced that it has successfully raised a new round of growth capital to accelerate expansion within India and internationally to Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (CEMEA). Investors in this Series D round include Recruit Strategic Partners (Venture capital Arm of Recruit Co. Ltd. Japan), Brand Capital, existing investor Mayfair 101, and Visa. This strategic investment by Visa in PayMate complements the two company’s successful partnership in India and the recent expansion of their relationship in the Central European, Middle East and Africa regions.

PayMate’s award winning, cloud-based platform enables Enterprise and SME businesses to seamlessly automate and digitize their entire procurement to payment cycle (Procure-to-Pay). Features include vendor management, vendor payments (Payables), customer payments (Receivables), invoicing, supply chain financing options, and many more. It helps businesses become more efficient, cut operational costs, gain greater control and transparency, and improve cash flows. Over 35,000 businesses use PayMate and it processes approximately $5B in payments annually.

PayMate has worked closely with Visa and multiple banks in India to enable businesses with digital payments, faster access to credit, and more efficient ways to manage cash flow. In March 2019 PayMate announced its expansion into the Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) region in partnership with Visa. Through this partnership, Visa’s commercial financial institution clients will extend PayMate’s platform to their corporate and small business customers, giving these customers the ability to make faster payments using Visa commercial cards.

Speaking about the fund-raise, Ajay Adiseshann, Founder & CEO, PayMate. adds, “We are very excited to have Visa come onboard as an investor which will help complement our existing commercial partnership with them and help us scale faster by combining capital with Visa’s network. In addition, Recruit holdings from Japan, our existing investor Mayfair101 and Brand Capital’s participation in this round further validates our business model, traction and growth potential”

T R Ramachandran, Group Country Manager, India and South Asia said, “There is an opportunity to bring efficiencies into the B2B payments supply chain via richer data and automated processes. PayMate’s platform makes it possible for businesses to replace time-consuming, expensive manual processes with digital ways to manage their working capital. At Visa, we believe it is critical to partner with local players who are bringing innovation to our global payments network, and our investment in PayMate reflects that.”

Recruit Strategic Partners commented “For SMBs that struggle to access capital not just to grow but to survive, flow of funds becomes the life blood of any supply chain. PayMate is trying to remove the blockages in this flow through its holistic platform that automates the business payment process and provides essential rails to move the funds swiftly and efficiently. We are very excited to join PayMate’s journey to fix B2B Payments in India and beyond.”

James Mawhinney, Managing Director, Mayfair 101 said “PayMate has consistently met and exceeded its growth targets and provides a compelling solution to its clients, which is why we have made this third investment in as many years. PayMate is well placed to build on its success in India to become the default provider of B2B payments in the South Asia & CEMEA regions. Mayfair 101 is delighted to be investing alongside Visa and Recruit which is a credit to PayMate’s management for continually achieving an exceptional rate of growth”

Sam Subramaniam, CEO, Brand Capital further adds, “We have seen a strong potential in the PayMate team and its proprietary platform and truly believe that they are adding great value to customers. Through this investment, we will be reaching new audiences and show them the best ways to make real-time payments and profit from PayMate’s unique capabilities.” PayMate’s award-winning platform is currently being used by more than 35,000 customers processing more than $5B in annualized transaction processing volume run rate. 

Icelandic acquiring bank Borgun hf. – which offers Europe-wide payment processing and issuing services in Iceland – has invested in a new platform from TruNarrative, to help boost the firm’s merchant lifecycle management (MLM) and onboarding processes.

As a member of Visa Europe and Mastercard International, the new platform will enable Borgun to easily adopt new merchants into its payment network, as well as quickly and securely adapt its compliance and risk processes to new markets and products.

In addition, the streamlining and automating of the firm’s current merchant applications will see the solution significantly reduce the time taken to onboard new clients.

Using a combination of customer data and third-party enrichment services, the single-platform solution will also strengthen the bank’s financial crime strategy – across areas such as risk rating, customer due diligence (CDD), enhanced due diligence (EDD), fraud prevention, merchant risk monitoring and offboarding.

Commenting on the new overseas partnership, TruNarrative’s CEO John Lord said: “We are delighted Borgun chose TruNarrative to provide its MLM system.

“With an objective to scale through safe automation, Borgun is a fantastic fit for TruNarrative, and we look forward to working with the team to make this a successful project.”

Following a competitive tendering process, the European payments firm identified TruNarrative’s FinTech services as the best fit for the business.

Borgun’s CEO, Sæmundur Sæmundsson, added: “Borgun hf. is constantly looking for new ways to make its services more efficient, while also ensuring the security of its payment processing.

“Our use of TruNarrative’s platform for onboarding and MLM enables us to do exactly that, in addition to making sure that these key elements are in place in order to secure rapid business growth for our clients – which has always been Borgun’s main goal.”

Borgun will be able to make immediate changes to its strategy within the platform, meaning the firm won’t have to adapt its processes to the tech provider – instead the technology will mould to the company’s needs.

The platform is also compatible with many existing third-party integrations and has the facility to quickly add new services.

Interbit is pleased to announce progress with the CitizenOS Project (“the Venture”) which plans to bring smart technologies to cities worldwide. Interbit’s multi-blockchain architecture will provide the ability to handle the huge amount of data that will be generated and is expected to serve as the software platform upon which the CitizenOS Project will provide new infrastructure and the latest Interbit of Things (IoT) technology solutions to cities and state groups.

The Venture is currently in ongoing discussions with a number of other groups and cities in Asia, Europe and the United States and has signed its first customer by entering into a letter of intent with Tomo Spaces, owner of the River Market, located in New Westminster, British Colombia, Canada. The collaboration with Tomo Spaces will take the form of a pilot that involving data analysis and the latest sensor technology. Launch of this project is subject to more definitive documentation between the Venture and Tomo, which the parties are currently working towards.

Mark Shieh, Director of Tomo, said:

“Our team is excited to work with CitizenOS. These new tools will enable us to see in depth how people use River Market as a community hub. This new way of understanding social interactions will help us cultivate more vibrant places.”

Chal Davidson, Venture Manager for Xinova, said:

“As we develop the technical solutions that will deploy the CitizenOS Project at large scale, it is important to demonstrate value and operating principles in a more managed smaller environment first. Partnering with Tomo in respect to its River Market will be a wonderful opportunity for us. River Market is a microcosm of a city and provides a controlled environment for our technology as we learn to help cities understand how communities develop and make better decisions with their citizens.”

Scott Maxwell, COO of Interbit, added:

“Projects, such as the one proposed with Tomo, will allow the Company to receive the feedback and performance metrics it requires to advance its development of the Interbit platform.”

Consumer spend via digital wallets across Europe and North America will increase by 40% this year to nearly $790 billion, according to a new study from Juniper Research. It argued that the largest growth in 2019 would come from instore payments, with mobile contactless payments more than doubling across these regions.

The study, Digital Wallets: Service Provider Analysis, Market Opportunities & Forecasts 2019-2024, found that while eRetail spend through wallets would remain the largest contributor to consumer spend, continued migration from cash would see a surge in wallet use at POS. It argued that this was particularly the case amongst younger demographics and in the US, where a third of iPhones are now used for contactless payments.

For more insights, download our complimentary whitepaper, ‘Will Wallets Trump Cards & Cash?’.

Banking, Merchant Partnerships Essential

The report highlighted the importance of digital wallet providers establishing partnerships with leading banks to maximise reach amongst consumers. Juniper Research’s analysis found that Apple far outstripped its rivals; achieving the largest addressable share of banking consumers in 7 of the 10 national markets assessed.

In the online space, the study found that wallets, including Apple Pay, Amazon Pay and Visa Checkout, had also significantly expanded their availability at merchant sites, although all lagged well behind PayPal in this regard.

Meanwhile, social payments through wallets will grow strongly both this year and beyond; a trend expected to be accelerated in 2020 by the emergence of Facebook’s Calibra wallet and its attendant Libra cryptocurrency.

Wearable-Pay ‘Niche Offering at Best’

However, the study was less optimistic about prospects for Wearable-Pay wallets; arguing that their limited addressable bases and functional constraints meant they would struggle against converged wallets - providing an extensive portfolio of online and offline payment offerings.

According to Juniper Research Analyst Nick Maynard, “Wearable-Pay solutions are still completely dependent on the smartphone and are ultimately limited to a single use case. They are thus likely to remain, at best, a niche offering.”

Caplin, the specialist provider of desktop and mobile e-trading technology, today announced the addition of cryptocurrencies to its range of technology components for multi-asset trading. 

Using its financial markets domain expertise and multi-asset User Experience (UX), Caplin added a new asset class and further enhanced its platform in response to client requests for a professional and robust crypto trading experience. The platform combines features demanded by institutional traders such as volume ladders, watchlists, and Request For Quote or Request For Stream. Crypto trading is live with one client, significantly improving its customer offering, whilst delivering increased efficiency and scalability, and ultimately enabling market share growth.

Caplin's focus on agile methodology provided the flexibility during development to change elements of functionality, reflecting rapid changes in crypto-market conditions. The platform utilises modern mobile multi-factor authentication, and monitors the market, proving real-time charts and notifications.

Caplin now supports the trading of FX, Equities, Futures, Fixed Income, Precious Metals, and most recently almost 35 crypto-assets. Its technology platform has been designed with the flexibility for banks and venues to add new assets to the system as required.

“Institutional crypto trading is a new and constantly evolving market, with market leaders focused on providing cutting-edge and user-friendly platforms. However, clients are also anxious about the way the market will develop, and have asked for a platform that mimics elements of FX trading whilst capturing ‘crypto-specific’ features,” said John Ashworth, CEO of Caplin. “Our clients demand speed and flexibility in product development, which is possible because we combine agile processes with advanced technology and many years of financial markets experience. This allows us to accommodate specific client needs while remaining flexible, even in new markets.”

He added, “Our technology platform is built to be easily adaptable to accommodate different assets.  This resulted in crypto trading being added in only 90 days.”

Bruce Lowthers, P20 Chairman, comments: “After three enjoyable years as Chairman, I will be standing down from this role at the close of this year’s P20 Conference. I’m delighted that John Hutton will succeed me as Chairman and look forward to continuing to participate as he drives forward the P20 mission of creating a stronger, more robust and inclusive global financial ecosystem.”

Newgen Software Inc., a global provider of solutions managing content, processes, and communication, today announced that Union Bank and Trust (UBT) is implementing Newgen Intelligent Business Process Management (BPM) platform for enterprise-wide automation of its banking processes. With this implementation, UBT is looking to replace numerous disparate systems and automate manual processes in favor of a single platform that can be utilized across all areas of the bank resulting in enhanced operational efficiencies and improved customer interactions.

With a constantly growing customer base, UBT required a platform that addressed their need to automate myriad processes and eliminate the remaining paper-based workflows. In addition, UBT required a solution that allowed them to achieve process efficiencies through low-code process modeling. With Newgen, UBT found a cost-effective, customizable and intelligent BPM platform. One of the core factors driving this partnership is Newgen’s Configurable Unified (BPM and ECM) Platform with Deep Domain solution accelerators on Digital Account Opening, Commercial and Consumer Lending, Customer Services Request Management and Internal Banking back-office processes, this would enable UBT with quick go-to-market strategy for automating customer-facing and employee-centric processes.

“Our vision is to continually improve our customer experience by reducing waste, complexity, error, and confusion in our internal operations,” said Drew Brown, Chief Information Officer, Union Bank & Trust. “Newgen has extensive experience and expertise in the banking industry globally, which they have brought to bear in our time working with them. We were attracted by their solid product suite that enables us to internally build and customize a variety of processes, and their leverageable library of more than 50 different pre-defined banking processes across retail, commercial and wealth management. We are confident that their dedicated team will add value and recommend process improvements based on industry best practices, and we look forward to a long-term association with them,” he added.

“I was very impressed with Newgen’s ability to digest all the information we provided and with their ability to make suggestions on how to improve some of our pain points. I also received overwhelmingly positive feedback from all our entire team about Newgen’s prototype-based methodology, these sessions generated a lot of enthusiasm about the future. Everyone is very excited about the Newgen partnership” said Julie Traynowicz, Vice President of Trust Operations and Wealth Management, Union Bank & Trust. ”

“Newgen BPM platform offers many advanced capabilities including process insights, digital sensing, robotic process automation, and machine learning to further add intelligence to bank’s processes. We are committed to delivering such innovative technologies to UBT to help them expedite their digital transformation journey. We are glad that UBT has chosen us for this strategic initiative,” said Diwakar Nigam, CEO, Newgen Software.

Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, WGroup is an IT executive management consultancy focused on delivering IT strategy, cost optimization, and operational improvement advisory services to IT leaders in large enterprises across North America.

The Company's experience spans multiple verticals such as Healthcare and Insurance, Media & Entertainment, Global Manufacturing, Retail and Financial Services.

WGroup team is comprised of approximately 100 team members, including 50+ permanent employees.

For its last calendar year (ended December 31, 2018), WGroup recorded consolidated revenue of $26.1m (approximately €23.3m), up 16%, and an adjusted EBITDA margin of circa 15%.

A new and ambitious growth chapter in the US, in line with Wavestone 2021 strategic plan

This acquisition accelerates the international development of Wavestone, in particular in the US, in line with Wavestone's 2021 Strategic Plan. After the merger, Wavestone's business in the US will represent an annual revenue of circa $35m.

"The US is a bellwether market in the consulting industry" commented Pascal Imbert, Wavestone's CEO. "We were impressed by WGroup's leadership team and its ability to consistently expand its client base. We are eager to start working with WGroup's team and thrive together seizing new opportunities in the US".

"After laying a 15-year foundation of persistent organic growth delivering world-class executive IT advisory to some of the best clients in the world, we've reached an inflection point" said Jeffrey Vail, CEO of WGroup. "We are an ambitious team with our sights set on achieving market-leadership in the US market. To do so, we need to deliver more service lines, greater breadth of expertise, around-the-globe capability, and overall, enhance our value to clients. Merging with Wavestone gives us this opportunity – today".

Terms of the operation

The transaction takes the form of a 100% acquisition of WGroup by Wavestone.

WGroup's leadership team is fully committed to the merger. Jeff Vail, its CEO, joins Wavestone's executive committee and is to take the lead of Wavestone's business in the US after the post-merger integration program.

The acquisition has been paid in cash and funded through an existing credit line negotiated with Wavestone's banks.

WGroup will be consolidated in Wavestone's accounts as of August 1, 2019.

BIMsmith®, the leading building product research platform, and AVAIL™, a leading digital content management platform for building professionals, today announced a new partnership to develop new integrations for users of both platforms. 

The partnership, announced at Digital Built Week North America in Seattle, WA, involves new integrations between BIMsmith and AVAIL that will facilitate easier transition between the two platforms that are each used in separate phases of the design process. AVAIL users will benefit from direct access within the AVAIL interface to manufacturer BIM content and technical documents found on BIMsmith. BIMsmith users will likewise find the BIMsmith platform equipped with new functionality to allow them to more easily save and share BIM content to their AVAIL accounts.

“BIMsmith and AVAIL are natural partners,” said Randall Stevens, CEO of AVAIL. “Each platform occupies adjacent portions of the design lifecycle, so building a bridge between the two of them only adds value to both the platforms and the users.”

“AVAIL and BIMsmith both operate with the same principles of efficiency and time savings,” said Benjamin Glunz, CEO of BIMsmith. “By forming direct connections between both platforms, this partnership will enable designers to save even more time and effort in their daily workflow.”