DLocal Limited, a technology-first payments platform enabling global enterprise merchants to connect with billions of consumers in emerging markets, today announced that Pedro Arnt has been appointed as co-Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors of the Company, effective immediately, to serve as co-Chief Executive Officer alongside Sebastián Kanovich.

Mr. Arnt has extensive leadership experience in the tech sector and as a public company executive, having spent over 25 years in operations, strategy and finance, including most recently as Chief Financial Officer for the last twelve years at Mercado Libre, one of the largest technology companies with operations in Emerging Markets.

Mr. Arnt and Mr. Kanovich form an exceptional partnership, combining highly complementary leadership and skills sets. Mr. Arnt will contribute his extensive experience in scaling successful high-performance tech-driven organizations. Mr. Kanovich contributes significant commercial, tech and payments expertise, as well as exceptional execution skills. Mr. Kanovich, as a key shareholder of dLocal and co-Chief Executive Officer, together with Mr Arnt, as co-Chief Executive Officer, have a shared commitment to further execute on the huge opportunities ahead for dLocal.

Mr. Kanovich commented “I am delighted to welcome Pedro as co-CEO. We have a huge opportunity ahead and I am confident that Pedro and I will steer dLocal's next chapter as we continue to execute on our plan of delivering long-term value for our merchants, consumers, and partners. As a key shareholder and part of the founding team, I  continue to be committed to the future success of Dlocal.”

Mr. Arnt added “I am honoured and excited to join dLocal as co-CEO. The company’s proven success in placing customers first, serving many of the largest technology companies and enterprises in the world, throughout numerous high-growth emerging markets, presents a truly unique business opportunity. I am confident that combining my expertise, both as an operator, public company executive and board member, in designing, building and scaling organizations, with Sebastian’s and his team’s proven track record of delivering results, will further position dLocal to achieve great things going forward.”

Eduardo Azar, dLocal’s Chairman of the Board of Directors, stated, "We are thrilled to have Pedro joining the team. Sebastian and Pedro possess deep knowledge of technology and payments. They have both had very successful experiences working at high-growth companies in Emerging Markets. Their combined leadership creates a unique opportunity to deliver sustainable, long-term value to our shareholders”

Global compliance technology solutions and services provider Sovos today announced a Collaboration Agreement with professional services firm KPMG in Canada, an extension of Sovos' Strategic Alliance with KPMG in the US, which was established in 2022. 

"This collaboration with Sovos will allow us to deliver even more value to our clients," said David Raistrick, Partner, KPMG in Canada. "Sovos' technology solutions combine with our tax advisory, compliance and implementation services to create a comprehensive tax compliance offering. 

Collaboration with KPMG in Canada will provide Sovos clients with access to a comprehensive suite of tax compliance solutions, including tax determination, reporting and exemption certificate management. Additionally, KPMG in Canada will leverage Sovos' expertise in tax technology and provide their clients with enhanced tax compliance services, including, but not limited to: 

• Automated, accurate and comprehensive content supporting the combination of GST/HST/QST/PST rates and rules applying across Canada as well as VAT coverage across the world.  

• Consolidated data for accurate tax calculation within a single system and leveraging certified adapters for Oracle and other ERP, e-commerce and purchasing systems.

• Lower costs, simplified operations, reduction in negative impacts to cash flow and decreased risk of penalties.

“It’s wonderful to expand our working relationship with KPMG by entering into this collaboration agreement," said Jonathan Eisner, vice president, global alliances and chief channel officer, Sovos. "Our technology solutions combined with the largest provincial tax group and leading implementation services from KPMG in Canada will help provide growing businesses with the confidence they need to navigate the increasingly complex tax landscape that comes with cross-border expansion." 

The collaboration between Sovos and KPMG in Canada is expected to have a positive impact on the tax compliance industry, as businesses seek to navigate increasingly complex and ever-changing regulatory requirements.

Nutanix, a leader in hybrid multicloud computing, today announced the Nutanix Carbon and Power Estimator, a new tool to help organisations understand how different factors can influence their environmental footprint by estimating annual power and emissions for various Nutanix solutions using Nutanix Validated Designs. Nutanix software and solutions can help organisations meet power and carbon goals by optimising IT infrastructure through reduced footprint, on-demand resource scaling, and fast and easy workload movement between on-prem and cloud options.

According to the 5th Annual Enterprise Cloud Index, for 92% of IT decision-makers, sustainability is more important today than it was a year ago — a development driven by an increasing number of pending and imposed regulations globally that add to the heightened interest in this space. As sustainability comes into view for many enterprises, they seek strategies to reduce their environmental impact. One of the first facets of the business that leaders evaluate when looking to minimise environmental impact is IT, where changes in equipment or practices have the potential to make significant impacts when it comes to energy consumption and emissions.

The Nutanix Carbon and Power Estimator provides users with a report that helps illustrate how infrastructure choices can impact an environmental footprint with regard to power and emissions, with insights for developing more sustainable IT strategies. Based on user inputs regarding workloads, the efficiency of the data centre, and location, an organisation can conceptualise how IT choices can help them meet their sustainability goals.

“Understanding what drives carbon and power consumption is an important first step for many enterprises looking to advance on their sustainability journey,” said Sammy Zoghlami, SVP EMEA at Nutanix. “The Nutanix Carbon and Power Estimator can help enterprises take initiative by educating organisations on factors that can influence their environmental impact.”

The Nutanix Carbon and Power Estimator enables organisations to: 

• Estimate the effects of different factors on power and emissions for Nutanix solutions. As an example, with the Nutanix Carbon and Power Estimator, a user could see that if an organisation deploys Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure for a general virtualisation use case with 300 virtual machines (VMs) in a U.K. data centre with a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 2.0, it would generate an estimated 68 metric tons of carbon dioxide (MTCO2) annually. If, on the other hand, the organisation was able to find a way to bring the data centre’s PUE down to 1.5, this change would reduce the emissions estimate by 17 MTCO2 to 51 MTCO2.

• Account for geography, which can also play a major factor in sustainability. The Nutanix Carbon and Power Estimator demonstrates the impact of moving workloads to geographies that leverage low-carbon sources for energy generation compared to fossil fuels, which have a higher carbon intensity. For example, if the same general virtualisation use case described above, with the reduced PUE of 1.5, were moved to a data centre in Sweden, then the estimated carbon emissions would drop from 51 MTCO2 to just two MTCO2. This is because Sweden leverages a relatively high share of low-carbon energy sources to power its grids. The Nutanix Carbon and Power Estimator makes clear that migrating workloads can be a viable part of an organisation's sustainability strategy. 

• Compare power consumption of Nutanix’s hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) and 3-Tier (SAN-based) infrastructure. After using the Estimator, users can download a report that highlights how eliminating proprietary SAN components can help reduce power consumption. Based on a third-party reviewed methodology, Nutanix HCI demonstrated significant power savings compared to 3-Tier solution with the ability to run a similar workload.

Because every customer configuration is unique, the Nutanix Carbon and Power Estimator provides typical estimates that are generalised to help customers develop sustainability strategies rather than to provide exact usage figures. 

Simon Sowerby, Technical Services Coordinator, City of Unley shared: “Our previous three-tier system consisted of about ten racks of compute equipment, and we have been able to reduce that to a quarter rack. Our power expenses have come down about 70%, which is working out to tens of thousands of dollars - and 24,000kg of CO2 emissions - saved per year.” For more details, read the case study here.

Explore the Nutanix Carbon and Power Estimator here.

“This global partnership with Mastercard highlights the measurable impact Riskified makes on merchant revenues and profitability,” said Kevin Sprake, Vice President, Global Channel Partnerships at Riskified. “We're excited to work with Mastercard to empower merchants to continue investing in ecommerce to drive growth across the globe, and particularly in emerging markets where merchants have higher exposures to fraud and abuse.”

In order to make it possible for companies from all over the world to connect with Latin America to do business, Bitso —the leading financial services company powered by crypto in Latin America, with more than 1,500 institutional clients globally— announced today that it is expanding its offer of business solutions with the launch of International Payments, its new suite of products for that market.

International payments are the engine that enables cross-border trade and investment and play a key role in the global economy, accounting for more than 16% of total transaction volume, according to a report from the consultancy firm McKinsey, which opens the possibility of connecting the countries of the region with developed economies and contributes to improving the standard of living with a positive impact on local markets.

“With this launch, we seek to boost the local economies of our region, by facilitating operations between countries and opening trade corridors that increase the development and prosperity of Latin America. We want to continue promoting the growth of the more than 1,500 companies that already trust Bitso's institutional services today, and we seek to attract new institutions from the region and the world to do business in Latin America and export their services globally. This is an important step towards our mission of making crypto useful, and places Latin America at the forefront of crypto-based financial services," Santiago Alvarado, SVP of Institutional Products at Bitso, said.

This new set of products will allow companies to send and receive payments in crypto, stablecoins and local currencies in the countries where Bitso operates, make payments in real time, from any country in the world, quickly and at more competitive costs than the traditional options, all through APIs.
 
The various integrations and alliances made by Bitso, as well as the use of stablecoins and the main currencies in the world will allow its institutional clients to move money in the region, send or collect payments with clients and suppliers quickly, safely and 24/7, ensuring more efficient cross-border transactions.

TrueLayer, Europe’s largest open banking payments network, has appointed Michael Brown as Head of E-commerce to lead the company’s push into the vertical as more firms look to adopt open banking payments.

Before joining TrueLayer, Michael was Director of UK Enterprise Sales at PayPal where he led the company’s growth strategy across retail, grocery, iGaming and travel, reporting to UK and EMEA management teams.

He joined PayPal in 2011 as Head of Digital Goods, working across a broad portfolio of merchants including  Sony, Steam, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft and was part of PayPal’s prestigious global Emerging Leaders Programme. Prior to this, he worked in strategic partnership and business development roles at Nokia for four years.

TrueLayer has recently announced a partnership with UK retailer Topps Tiles, which has over 300 physical stores across the UK, as well as a strong online and mobile offering. This builds on partnerships in ecommerce including with online car retailer Cazoo, and last year’s launch of a plugin enabling WooCommerce merchants to instantly add open banking payments to their checkout.

TrueLayer recently published new research, the Payments Experience Playbook, illustrating how poor payments experiences are costing merchants, with 87% of consumers expressing frustration with payments and 56% of merchants reporting that they are dealing with a drop in conversion due to strong customer authentication (SCA) implementation.

Michael Brown, Head of E-commerce at TrueLayer, said: “Open banking payments have the potential to transform customer experience in e-commerce, addressing the headaches that merchants have faced for decades in using legacy systems and outdated card infrastructure. 

“We are seeing increasing adoption of open banking by merchants and consumers alike and I am incredibly excited about the opportunity for TrueLayer in e-commerce, as Europe’s leading open banking payments network.”

Commenting, TrueLayer Co-Founder and CEO Francesco Simoneschi said:

“Mike has a solid track record in driving growth across verticals and in building and leading high-performing teams. We are really happy to welcome him to TrueLayer as we continue to accelerate adoption of open banking payments in e-commerce and retail.”

Vegapay, a digital lending and card management platform, has successfully secured $1.1m in a pre-seed funding round.

This round saw participation from a consortium of investors, including Eximius Ventures, DSP HMK, Capri Global, Upsparks Capital, MGA Ventures, Climber Capital, and individuals such as Arun Venkatachalam from Murugappa Group and Pratekk Agarwaal, a General Partner at GrowthCap Ventures.

Specialising in lending technology, Vegapay has engineered a system allowing both regulated entities and fintechs to further their issuance of cards and enhance lending penetration across India. The platform’s chief aim is to establish a micro-service-driven card and lending issuance stack. This innovation will empower issuers to effortlessly integrate and roll out lending products tailored to the distinct needs of various consumer segments.

With these new funds, Vegapay has set its sights on refining their technology to simplify frontline adoption for both institutions and non-institutions. This technological evolution is geared towards drastically reducing the time required for banks and fintech firms to launch new financial offerings.

Vegapay CEO Gaurav Mittal highlighted the company’s aspirations, saying, “The banks and the fintech players take months to launch new financial products like credit cards and lending offerings. However, we can help them reduce the time taken to bring products to the market by 90%. This would enable our partners to launch their products in just one week. Our mission is to assist our partners in achieving the $1.5 trillion AUM by providing customised digital lending solutions at an unprecedented speed.”

Complementing their lending solutions, Vegapay aims to develop an omni-channel lending solution to offer a broad range of products, including co-lending, secured credit, and unsecured credit. Elaborating on the market dynamics, Pearl Agarwal, founder and managing director of Eximius Ventures, said, “As per an RBI report, 65% of the credit card penetration is present in tier I cities. However, the penetration in Tier II and III cities has been significantly lower. To service this growing audience, Vegapay has devised an ingenious plan.”

Founded in October 2022, Vegapay is the brainchild of seasoned fintech professionals and banking stalwarts such as Gaurav Mittal (Ex-Zeta), Himanshu Agrawal (Ex-Amazon), Puneet Sharma (Ex- BharatPe), and Abhinav Garg (Ex-Podeum).

Canadian financial technology start-up Finofo has emerged with a vision to streamline the often complex world of foreign exchange (FX).

Today, the company, co-founded by Charles Maranda, Prateek Sodhi, and Malav Shah, has announced a groundbreaking platform that aims to provide businesses with a more transparent, efficient, and cost-effective method for handling cross-border transactions.

The company has secured an impressive $1.25m in pre-seed funding, with Motivate Venture Capital leading the round, according to a report from TechCrunch. Notably, other participants include SaaS Venture Capital, Sweet Spot Capital, and Desjardins, a major player in the Canadian financial arena.

Delving deeper into Finofo’s offerings, their platform serves as a bridge for businesses to effortlessly manage multi-currency accounts, easing the process of sending and receiving money on a global scale. Beyond mere currency conversion, the company stands out with its automation feature for accounts payables. Such capabilities are aimed at replacing the traditional “black box” nature of the FX world, which has left many businesses in the dark.

Finofo’s fresh injection of funds is earmarked to further enhance its platform, aiming to introduce a proprietary algorithm. This new feature will enable the company to offer financial planning advice, by analysing clients’ financial data. By assessing accounting details, such as invoices and budgeting spreadsheets, Finofo hopes to guide businesses in determining the best times and methods for currency conversions.

In a discussion about the company’s direction, Finofo CFO Charles Maranda explained that the goal of the financial planning product is to help businesses understand the risk from currency fluctuation and manage it effectively. “This stands in stark contrast to traditional financial institutions that rely on a one-size-fits-all approach and aggressive sales tactics.”

The company’s ambitions don’t stop there. Maranda emphasises a vision wherein Finofo evolves into a comprehensive “super app” for business financial operations, creating a seamless environment for planning, strategising, and executing financial decisions.

It’s noteworthy to mention that Finofo, despite being founded by first-time entrepreneurs, has already attracted attention from prominent investment firms. While they narrowly missed an investment from a16z due to being “too early-stage”, the founders’ tenacity led to introductions to other investors who expressed keen interest.

As they look to the future, Finofo is setting its sights on the Canadian market, partnering with local banks and registering with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC). With a commitment to exceptional customer service and education, Finofo hopes to rapidly gain the trust of businesses, ensuring that they have a reliable partner in their cross-border financial endeavours.

BitGo, the “leading regulated custodian in over 50 countries” and responsible for processing “20% of all on-chain Bitcoin transactions by value”, has announced today a considerable achievement. The company successfully raised $100m in their Series C financing round.

The new capital comes from strategic investors outside of BitGo’s existing network and pushes the company’s valuation to an impressive $1.75bn. With this fresh influx of funds, BitGo is poised to make strategic acquisitions, further strengthening their offering of secure and regulated custody, wallet, and infrastructure solutions across the globe.

BitGo’s services, which encompass the most secure and scalable wallet solutions for the digital asset economy, are evidently in high demand. In 2023 alone, the company witnessed a 60% increase in newly acquired clients and a staggering 40x growth in staked assets. Their offerings have gained trust from Fortune 100 clients like Nike, leading Bitcoin businesses such as Swan, and new-age Web3 projects including Mysten.

Furthermore, the company aims to utilise the new funding to “provide institutions, brands, coin foundations, and others with secure and seamless participation in the digital asset ecosystem.” BitGo’s announcement today follows its recent unveiling of the Go Network, a service that facilitates institutions in trading and settling both digital assets and fiat currencies around the clock from secure custody.

BitGo CEO Mike Belshe shared his optimism, “Not only are we seeing growing demand for regulated custody solutions in the US, but we’re also seeing the demand on a global scale. We are very pleased to announce our $100m Series C for the purpose of meeting this growing need.”

On a historical note, BitGo has been at the forefront of the FinTech industry since its inception in 2013. Over the years, the company has introduced numerous innovative solutions and has managed to secure backing from prominent investment firms including Goldman Sachs, Craft Ventures, and Galaxy Digital Ventures.

HSBC announced today the launch of ETF Platform Solutions – its new end-to-end platform for providing asset servicing solutions to ETF issuers globally.

Under a single offering, ETF issuers will have access to HSBC’s Markets & Securities Services capabilities, such as: ETF order management, PCF (portfolio composition file) production and custom ETF NAV (net asset value) attribution analysis; AP (authorised participant) services including ETF seeding and HSBC’s ETF fair value algorithms; swap provision and dedicated execution services under FX4ETFs; and HSBC FX Overlay Services.

As part of the roll-out of ETF Platform Solutions, HSBC has also partnered with Calastone to provide a next-generation ETF Order Management system.

Using Calastone’s cloud-based Distributed Market Infrastructure, the new ETF Order Management system will deliver real-time processing and monitoring capabilities to ETF issuers throughout the ETF creation and redemption life cycle. From order placement through to settlement, HSBC’s digital data integration interfaces will deliver live analytics to ETF issuers and authorised participants as order executions are completed.

HSBC’s Securities Services business – one of the leading administrators and custodians to the ETF industry in Europe and Asia – will be deploying the new ETF Order Management system across its global ETF client base, including issuers domiciled in Ireland, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia.

Fiona Horsewill, Global Head of Securities Services, HSBC, said: “ETF Platform Solutions is tailored for ETF issuers using the full breadth of HSBC’s Securities Services capabilities. The scale and connectivity of our platform will cover the entire ETF ecosystem, so ETF issuers and authorised participants can benefit from improved operational and infrastructure efficiency in processing large volumes of ETF orders across our global footprint.”

Brian Godins, Chief Commercial Officer, Calastone, said: “We’re pleased to be partnering with HSBC to provide the underlying technology for their new ETF Order Management system. Designed specifically for the ETF industry and powered by our Distributed Market Infrastructure, Calastone ETF Servicing is a scalable solution that enables HSBC to seamlessly support the growing ETF industry, while the enhanced market connectivity we offer brings improved timeliness and transparency to ETF fund managers and their authorised participants.”