Brite Payments today announced that it has expanded its product coverage with the launch of open banking-powered instant payments and payouts in Denmark. With full product coverage in Sweden and Finland, the addition of Denmark further strengthens the second-generation fintech’s footprint as it continues its expansion across Europe.

With a population of nearly 6 million, Denmark has a highly-developed financial services sector; online banking penetration in the country reached nearly 95% in 2022, close behind its Nordic neighbours and well ahead of the rest of Europe. Denmark, much like Sweden, also has a well-established electronic personal identification system. These factors contribute to a significant instant bank payments opportunity in the Danish market, although the retail payments landscape today is still largely dominated by cards.

The launch of Brite Instant Payments in Denmark gives merchants and businesses across a wide range of industries and verticals a lower-cost alternative to cards. Brite’s open banking-first approach to account-to-account (A2A) payments also enables 24/7/365 instant payments processing while reducing fraud risks. The company’s ‘Single Sign’ capabilities make it possible for consumers to complete payment up to 40% faster, using top-of-mind information and circumventing the need for account creation or registration.

Brite Instant Payouts enable businesses to disburse payments – whether in the form of refunds, payouts or withdrawals – in real-time. Reliable and timely payouts are proving to be an increasingly important differentiator for businesses operating across diverse sectors, including digital marketplaces, consumer finance, online trading, travel, tickets, insurance and gig work platforms. 

“Denmark is primed for the uptake of instant bank payments, as awareness of the benefits continues to increase amongst merchants,” said Lena Hackelöer, Founder & CEO, Brite Payments. “The market is a logical next step in our expansion and we’re excited to now offer instant payments and instant payouts to merchants and consumers in Denmark as well as our existing merchant base across Europe.”

Brite Payments, which is one of Sweden’s fastest-growing fintechs, recently announced the Brite Instant Payments Network (IPN) – a proprietary network that bridges the gaps in Europe’s fragmented real-time payments landscape and facilitates instant payments and payouts in markets and currencies outside the Eurozone. Brite IPN, in addition to underpinning the company’s offering in Denmark with the instant processing of Danish Krone (DKK), also offers merchant FX upon request, helping to lower operational costs for merchants with settlement in the currency of their choice. 

TransUnion, a global information and insights company and one of the UK’s leading credit reference agencies, has named Kaushik Gopalan as its chief human resources (HR) officer in the UK.

Kaushik will lead TransUnion's HR strategy and colleague initiatives for the UK and Europe, with responsibilities spanning talent acquisition, learning and development, colleague engagement and people operations.

"I’m thrilled to be working with the executive team and all our colleagues here at TransUnion to support our plans for long-term growth by offering colleagues a workplace where they can thrive,” said Kaushik. “A key priority will be to ensure our culture of diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging goes from strength to strength. Additionally, I’m very excited to create new opportunities for colleagues to come together during moments that matter and creating a purposeful workplace in this increasingly hybrid world of work.”

Kaushik brings more than two decades of HR experience to the role. He previously served as the senior director of human resources and international markets at Neustar – a leading identity resolution company, which was acquired by TransUnion in 2021.

Satrajit “Satty” Saha, CEO of TransUnion in the UK, said of the appointment: "With a proven track record of implementing effective HR strategies, Kaushik is a great addition to our leadership team. As we continue to innovate and grow as an organisation, his expertise will be instrumental in shaping a workplace culture that empowers our colleagues to succeed in an environment that’s welcoming and rewarding."

TransUnion has been recognised in The Inclusive Top 50 UK Employers List 2022/2023, as well as being accredited as one of UK’s Best Workplaces™ 2023.

XBTO Global (XBTO), a comprehensive platform for digital assets and tailored investment solutions, has today announced its strategic acquisition of Stablehouse*, subject to regulatory approval. Stablehouse is the secure digital assets custody and trading platform that helps institutions mitigate risk with security, bankruptcy protection and regulatory compliance.

The acquisition of Stablehouse will power the custody offering of XBTO’s platform, and expands the suite of digital asset services that can be offered to institutional investors. This will now include everything from custody and institutional trading, to asset management, and designated market making. Stablehouse was originally incubated by XBTO Group and was funded by several industry-leading venture capital funds in 2019. In addition to being CEO of Stablehouse, Philippe Bekhazi will now assume the role of CEO of XBTO Global.  

“XBTO’s acquisition of Stablehouse represents a significant moment for both companies, in our joint mission to help drive new technologies and services that are key to institutional adoption of digital assets,” commented Philippe Bekhazi, Founder & CEO of XBTO. “In light of the recent turmoil and challenges in the industry, institutions need to trust the underlying security of their digital assets in order to allocate to the asset class with confidence. By acquiring Stablehouse, XBTO is now able to offer a one-stop digital assets platform catered to sophisticated non-US investors and institutions.”

The Stablehouse custody infrastructure incorporates omnibus custody accounts with integrated trading. It also offers segregated vaults where assets are verifiable on the blockchain at all times, and is built upon a warm storage solution where the keys are protected across distributed environments. The platform ensures an end-to-end bankruptcy remote state between custody and trading. 

This suite of solutions enables XBTO to bridge the gap between traditional finance and digital assets and offers large institutions access to its white-label service that integrates custody and trading for a seamless user experience. 

“XBTO’s mission through its regulated subsidiaries is to increase institutional access to digital assets, and develop the digital asset economy which is very much aligned with Stablehouse’s vision. The decision to join forces really was a simple one,” said Michael Chauliac, President and General Manager of Stablehouse. “By working together, we can provide an integrated, comprehensive digital assets platform at a crucial time.”

Both XBTO and Stablehouse are under the oversight of the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA), one of the most advanced and robust regulatory frameworks globally. Since its founding in 2015, XBTO has made regulation fundamental to its comprehensive suite of services. 

The acquisition is subject to the regulatory approval of the Bermuda Monetary Authority under both the Exchange Control Act and Digital Asset Business Act, and applicable ancillary regulations. 

Protegrity, the global leader in data security and privacy, today announced Dante Malagrino has been appointed Chief Product Officer (CPO), and Christian Carnell has been appointed Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Reporting to Protegrity CEO Paul Mountford, Malagrino and Carnell will take on their new executive leadership roles in August to lead Protegrity’s next phase of growth.

“We believe the market opportunity is massive, and that no one is better positioned than Protegrity to meet this moment,” said Paul Mountford, CEO of Protegrity. “With these new leadership appointments, we are bringing to bear the talent and expertise within our company to scale our business and market presence during a period of rapid growth for the data protection industry.”

As Protegrity expands across industries and geographies, the company is evolving its technology and business roadmaps to meet the needs of a dynamic market. Today, enterprises are embracing the potential of advanced AI systems and analytics across multiple cloud environments, which requires an exponential increase in the amount of sensitive data captured, stored, and analysed. Protegrity’s Data Protection Platform allows global enterprises to balance the adoption of nascent technologies to tap into the power of their data to enable innovation and revenue growth with the compliance obligations of a fragmented regulatory landscape that can disrupt cross-border data flows.

A seasoned industry executive, Dante Malagrino will oversee all Protegrity’s technology innovation strategies and product delivery. As CPO, he will lead a global team of technology architects and engineers to deliver the most comprehensive suite of borderless data protection and privacy products.

Malagrino brings to the CPO role a wealth of expertise as a technologist, and deep experience building scalable, customer-centric operational processes in product development, which will be critical for Protegrity as it grows its global customer base, which includes the world's largest banks, retailers, and health insurers. He previously served as Protegrity’s Chief Technology Officer.

“As Protegrity’s new CPO, I’m excited to build on the company’s history of developing truly innovative data security and privacy products,” said Malagrino. “My vision is to lead our global team of technology-futurists to build new capabilities into Protegrity’s Data Protection Platform to meet the evolving needs of our customers in the digital world. We have exciting developments on the horizon that will further differentiate us as the leader in data protection.”

Promoted to CFO, Christian Carnell will lead Protegrity’s financial organisation and serve as the strategic thought partner to the company’s executive leadership team on the company’s financial performance, capital structure, and business growth strategies.

With Protegrity since 2021, Carnell brings more than 15 years of financial leadership experience, as well as business intelligence expertise spanning cross-departmental collaboration for achieving business objectives, through scalable efficiency.

"I am thrilled to step into the CFO role and lead Protegrity's financial operations during a period of accelerated growth and innovation," said Carnell. "During my time at Protegrity, I’ve become deeply familiar with our financial goals, growth strategies and culture of excellence. My priority is to ensure we have the financial visibility and discipline to rapidly scale the business globally while continuing to deliver value for our customers."

Bitget, a leading cryptocurrency exchange, is pleased to announce its strategic partnership with Coinpanda, a prominent crypto tax company. 

This collaboration aims to revolutionize how Bitget users manage their cryptocurrency taxes while also expanding their trading possibilities through innovative features.

Cryptocurrency taxation can be a daunting and intricate process, often leaving users bewildered and burdened. By joining forces with Coinpanda, Bitget aims to simplify this complex procedure, providing users with a seamless and comprehensive crypto tax solution. Coinpanda's cutting-edge platform will empower Bitget users to efficiently handle their tax obligations, ensuring compliance with regulations and streamlining their overall tax experience.

"We are thrilled to partner with Coinpanda and provide our users with enhanced convenience and efficiency," said Gracy Chen, Managing Director at Bitget. "Tax compliance is a crucial aspect of the cryptocurrency industry, and our collaboration with Coinpanda underscores our commitment to delivering comprehensive solutions that simplify the crypto trading journey for our users."

In addition to tax management, the partnership with Coinpanda unlocks exciting trading opportunities for Coinpanda users. By integrating innovative trading features, Bitget users will have access to a range of cutting-edge tools and functionalities. These features are designed to enhance the trading experience and enable users to explore new avenues for investment growth.

With the introduction of this partnership, Bitget continues to cement its position as a forward-thinking and user-centric cryptocurrency exchange. By leveraging Coinpanda's expertise in tax management and offering innovative trading features, Bitget ensures its users have the necessary tools to navigate the dynamic crypto landscape with confidence and ease.

Coinpanda, renowned for its expertise in crypto tax solutions, is equally enthusiastic about the partnership. According to Eivind Semb, Founder and CEO at Coinpanda, "We are very excited to join forces with Bitget and provide their users with comprehensive crypto tax solutions. Our advanced tax platform simplifies the intricate process of managing cryptocurrency taxes, ensuring Bitget users can easily meet their tax obligations. By combining our tax expertise with Bitget's innovative trading features, we are shaping the future of cryptocurrency trading and taxation together."

Resilience today announced a $100M equity financing round to accelerate its global expansion and scale the adoption of its holistic cyber risk platform, the Resilience Solution, which launched earlier this year. The Series D round was led by Intact Ventures, an affiliate of Resilience’s primary capacity provider, Intact Insurance’s underwriting companies, with participation by Lightspeed Venture Partners, as well as General Catalyst and Founders Fund.

With global cybercrime set to eclipse $10.5 trillion by 2025, enterprises are finding that the status-quo siloed approach that governs security decision-making today isn’t keeping up. By connecting leaders in finance, risk, and security, the Resilience Solution provides clients with a new way to assess, measure, and manage their cyber risk. Built on the company’s financially-proven AI platform, the Resilience Solution enables policyholders to quantify their cyber risk and prioritize their security program based on a return-on-investment analysis of their controls.

“The increase in ransomware attacks proves that there are longstanding gaps in today’s cybersecurity and cyber insurance practices,” said Vishaal “V8” Hariprasad, CEO and Co-Founder of Resilience. “Instead, enterprises need a way to look at their cyber risk in an integrated, economically efficient, and predictable manner. This funding will accelerate our mission to make this a reality for more companies around the world. I want to thank our team and our broker partners for helping us arrive at this milestone.”

“We’re thrilled to lead Resilience’s financing round and to work together to build the cyber risk platform of the future,” said Justin Smith-Lorenzetti, Intact Ventures. “We’re eager to continue pairing the innovative cybersecurity solutions and expertise of Resilience with the insurance expertise of Intact Insurance’s underwriting companies as Resilience’s primary capacity provider.”

“Having worked closely with Raj (Shah), V8, and the Resilience team, we are pleased to invest again in their cyber solutions. Partnering with Resilience brings deep security expertise to our customers in an everchanging cyber environment. We look forward to helping them grow their innovative approach to help clients become cyber resilient,” shared T. Michael Miller, CEO, Global Specialty Lines, Intact Financial Corporation.

“Securing a digital world at enterprise scale requires fundamental behaviour change,” said Arif Janmohamed, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, which first invested in Resilience during its Series A round. “We have been long-term believers in the Resilience team because they set out to fill this critical gap from day one. We are incredibly excited to see them executing on this vision over the past several years and we look forward to how they’ll help the market tackle cyber risk in the future.”

In 2022, 100% of clients of Resilience’s cyber risk management solution avoided ransomware extortion with 67% incurring lower losses than the total insurance base. This success led to a loss ratio that was three times lower than the 2022 industry average. Resilience has raised over $225M in prior funding and serves primary and excess clients in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and the Nordics.

Keeping in line with its promise of making ‘Zindagi Set’ and making one billion Indians financially empowered, fintech platform OneCode today announces its rebranding to ZET. 

Founded in 2019 by Manish Shara and Yash Desai, ZET, as OneCode is now known, aims to bridge the gap between financial products and their potential customers in Tier 2, 3, 4 cities of India through a digitised network of sales and financial agents. 

Ever since the launch, ZET has built a network of 1.5 million financial agents across Tier 2,3,4 cities of India to provide hand-holding support to end-customers and help them meet their need of critical financial services. Through its phygital network of sales & financial agents, free training, customer management and pay-out incentives, ZET has been successful in removing the dependency on direct selling agents (DSAs), and bringing transparency in processes.

Commenting on the re-branding, Manish, Co-Founder and CEO, ZET, said, “We have been on a consistent path of growth, expansion and evolution since 2019.  What we realised early on, was the importance of making our brand resonate with our mission. As an extension of that, we are excited to launch our new brand identity- ZET, meaning Zindagi Set!”

Elaborating on the mission, Manish added, “The platform will cater to the requirements of ‘new-to-credit’ (NTC) customers who face a lot of challenges getting credit and other financial services without any credit score. ZET agents help to disburse products of banks and other financial institutions like loans, savings accounts, buy-now-pay-later, and unsecured credit cards in un-served and under-served areas.” 

In its rebranded avatar, ZET will solve the twin challenge of bridging the gaps in financial knowledge of users and helping them build a credit score. The company has also launched a new website and a web application to mark the brand refresh.

ZET’s customer profiling backed by a robust in-house data team, has led to a focussed targeting of users, thereby increasing efficiency and higher payouts. From March to December 2020, when many bank agents lost their jobs owing to the Covid pandemic, ZET’s remote earning offering helped over 35,000 individuals get back on their feet, adding stability in their lives. 

ZET has solved the problem of access to financial services to the end users in the remotest corners of India. Today, ZET is present in more than 15000 pincodes of India. With over 55 leading partner brands such as SBI, HDFC, Axis Bank and others, ZET has led to a 4X increase in the monthly income of its agents. 

ZET has raised USD 18 million to date and is backed by investors including Sequoia India’s Surge, Nexus, General Catalyst and Waterbridge Ventures, as well as leading angels Kunal Shah, Harshil Mathur, Vidit Aatrey, Lalit Keshre and others.

Digital investment platform Mnaara has completed a US$500,000 pre-seed round funded by investors from the UK, US, Middle East and Singapore.

The round will enable Mnaara to grow its team and continue developing its Shariah-compliant investment solutions catering to the globally underserved mass-affluent market.

Mnaara is the world’s first investment platform offering equitable access to Shariah-compliant global private markets funds through a complete digital experience. The funds follow strict Shariah screening guidelines which limit and control what are considered non-ethical activities in Islamic finance, such as gambling, tobacco, alcohol, and arms, in addition to generating income from interest. Financial guidelines are also followed with respect to using excessive leverage and financial derivatives.

Saad Adada, founder and CEO of Mnaara, said: “This is a very exciting time for our business. We are creating a gateway that allows our clients to invest in top performing funds without compromising their values. Our platform democratises access to private markets that were previously only available to the select few, via a seamless digital journey accessible from anywhere in the world.

“Our investment approach ensures that all investments are made in accordance with Islamic finance principles and guidelines. We’re on a mission to enable a community of Shariah-conscious investors by connecting them with the best investment opportunities globally.

“Currently, those who want to diversify their investments, while maintaining a Shariah-compliant portfolio, have extremely limited options. We feel it is important that private markets are open to all, which is why we have created Mnaara.”

Mr Adada, has more than 20 years’ experience in investment banking and management roles with a focus on Islamic finance and Shariah-compliant investing.  He has held a number of high-profile roles within major financial institutions in the Middle East, including Islamic banks and multi-billion US dollar family offices.

However, Mr Adada has chosen London as the base for Mnaara, as it makes it accessible to Shariah-conscious investors in the UK who are significantly underserved. It is also the ideal location to create a product with excellent digital reach for global Shariah-compliant investors wherever they come from.

Paymentology, the leading global issuer-processor, today announces its partnership with DolarApp, the Mexican startup which provides digital dollar accounts to consumers across Latin America. 

Established in 2021, DolarApp has emerged as a pioneering force in Latin America by introducing its USD-denominated credit card. The card grants consumers the ability to send and receive transfers from multiple countries, dollarise their financial transactions with digital dollars and pay with an international card issued by Mastercard in any currency at the best rates - both when they travel and everyday expenses. DolarApp is the first provider in Mexico to offer this service with no foreign exchange (FX) fees and transparent market rates, opening doors for millions of Mexican travelers to spend freely and economically, at the best rates with full transparency.

Paymentology plays a vital role in providing DolarApp with a fast and scalable card payment program, along with first-class tokenization and security services. The services enabled through Paymentology encompasses virtual & physical Mastercard card processing, 3DSecure technology, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. 

As a result of this partnership, DolarApp is proudly the pioneering organization in Mexico, offering the convenience of both Google Pay and Apple Pay to its customers. This collaboration has revolutionised payment options, ensuring a seamless and secure experience for users in the country, and when travelling, while providing a reliable platform that supports DolarApp’s growth and expansion plans. 

Alvaro Correa, Co-Founder & COO at DolarApp commented: "We are delighted to collaborate with Paymentology as our strategic partner for card issuing and processing in Mexico. Their exceptional expertise and track record in the industry, coupled with their ability to provide tailor-made and agile payment solutions, perfectly align with DolarApp’s vision and requirements. Together, we are committed to launching new and exciting next-generation features that will continue to elevate our customer’s experience, as we continue to grow across Latin America.”

Alejandro Del Rio, Regional Director for Latam at Paymentology, added: “At Paymentology, we take great pride in being at the forefront of innovation, and that’s why we are thrilled to collaborate with DolarApp, a real trailblazer in the financial landscape. As the first international account experience in Mexico, DolarApp has set a new standard of excellence, offering users the best in the market with an incredibly competitive rate outperforming by more than 1% to some of the most established global players in the region. Our partnership is rooted in a shared commitment to empowering people and making a tangible impact on their financial lives, we look forward to making a lasting difference to people across Mexico and beyond.”