Monite, the API-first embedded finance company that helps B2B platforms capitalize on hassle-free finance automation for their clients, has fortified its commitment to become an industry standard by appointing three accomplished FinTech leaders.

Dan Osburn, a VP of product pivotal to Marqeta’s growth from a $20M startup into a $12Bn public company, assumes the role of Chief Product Officer. Joining the executive team is Sophie Haagensen, formerly COO at KodyPay and part of the founding team at Atom Bank, as Chief of Staff. Additionally, Hoang Pham, renowned for building Mollie's growth team and bootstrapping the company from its early stages to a successful series C funding round, has been appointed as Head of Marketing. 

"We are truly honored to have leaders from industry-breaking companies like Marqeta, Atom Bank and Mollie choose Monite as their new workplace. Their decision showcases a remarkable level of trust and validation in our product and mission. With their help, Monite is on its way to becoming an embedded finance category leader. The contributions from Dan, Sophie, and Hoang will drive Monite’s steady growth, foster innovation, and help revolutionize B2B financial workflows alongside our solid tech team”, says Ivan Maryasin, CEO of Monite.

Capitalizing on his expertise from guiding and scaling product teams in businesses that grew from lean startups to large public companies, Dan Osburn is set to enhance the intrinsic value that Monite delivers to its customers through a wide range of FinTech products. With a background in math and engineering, Dan has made significant contributions to the development of pivotal technologies, and his expansive skillset, coupled with a comprehensive understanding of technical, financial, and support-related functions, uniquely positions him as an industry thought leader. Reflecting on Monite's potential, Dan shares, "Monite is set to make waves in an arena that's experiencing rapid growth and is primed for innovative disruption. Our vision centers around offering an expansive and unified suite of financial products to B2B platforms, with a strong emphasis on user experience. At Monite, we're shaping the future landscape of FinTech”.

Sophie Haagensen is an experienced leader who has operated across organisational disciplines in multiple industries as a founder, executive and NED. Drawing on a decade of FinTech experience, Sophie will oversee Monite’s strategy, execution and operations on the way from startup to scaleup. Whether setting direction or implementing systems and structures from scratch, Sophie is a catalyst for growth in tech-first companies. She comments: “The opportunity embedded finance presents is undeniably huge, and Monite is poised to become a leader in this space. I am hugely impressed by the talent and passion of the team, as well as the genuine commitment to building a positive and productive culture — something that, in my experience, sets great companies apart from the competition”.

Hoang Pham, a seasoned marketing pro who has been previously executing Mollie’s growth for more than 6 years, has now joined Monite to establish the company's brand presence and elevate market positioning. He says: “We are at the right place and time in a wave that’s only just beginning, embedding financial solutions into all kinds of platforms. It’s an incredible privilege to be at the forefront and work alongside such a talented team. The product and tech Monite has built so far are really impressive, when all the pieces fall into place, only great things can happen.” Hoang’s initial focus will be on understanding customers’ challenges and needs and translating them to how Monite portrays itself to target new clients.

The appointments of versatile professionals reflect Monite’s commitment to expand its footprint in the EU and UK while also expanding into the US market and beyond. The new company’s executives will be tasked with building a category-leading company, helping B2B customers embed cutting-edge financial services.

Kyckr, the corporate Know-Your-Customer company, has unveiled the latest iteration of its UBO (ultimate beneficial ownership) verification tool, which reduces the time it takes banks and financial institutions to verify new customers by up to 80%, and ultimately helps stop financial crime and money laundering.

In recent years a stream of leaked documents has shown how company structures are routinely obfuscated and misused for financial crime and tax evasion purposes. Since the Panama Papers were published in 2016, leaks have revealed the hidden beneficiaries of almost 800,000 offshore companies, often used for illicit purposes such as laundering the proceeds of financial crime, evading taxes or disguising the true ownership of property. 

Identifying and verifying the ultimate beneficiary of a company is a regulatory requirement and an essential part of the KYC process for financial institutions. It can take a KYC analyst up to 8 hours to uncover the details of every UBO in a complicated ownership structure, with resource costs regularly exceeding $400-500 per customer or supplier onboarded. For a bank with 100,000 entities to verify annually, this could mean UBO verification costs of $40 million per annum or more.

In addition to the costs of manual UBO verification, financially regulated businesses who fail to properly verify their customer and supplier UBOs risk significant regulatory fines. According to data gathered by Kyckr, in 2022 global financial institutions were fined over $3 billion for AML compliance breaches, most of which were due to due diligence failures. 

Kyckr’s latest UBO verification capability automates the process of identifying the UBO and provides accurate verification in seconds, not hours. By combining live, legally-authoritative company data with the latest technology, it extracts, normalises and matches ownership information, automating the analysis and visualisation of corporate ownership structures and calculating ultimate beneficial ownership in real-time. This automation saves regulated businesses significant time, effort, and ultimately money, and allows analysts to focus on higher-value tasks.  

Steve Lamb, COO at Kyckr, said:

“Our customers include five of the top 10 global banks and two of the top five payments companies. In discovery with customers, we found that the UBO verification process was one of their major pain points. Without access to live, accurate data, unwrapping the ownership structure of a company takes hours for an analyst to complete and ultimately costs banks millions every year.

At Kyckr, we’re passionate about using technology and live data from the world’s legally-authoritative sources to help companies stop money laundering. When you stop money laundering, you also stop human trafficking, the drug- and illegal wildlife trades—even terrorism. All these criminal activities rely on money laundered through legitimate companies and financial institutions. With Kyckr’s UBO Verification solution, we’re making the job of financial criminals much, much harder.”

Example ownership structures requiring verification 

Complex structure with a single UBO 

For more information on UBO Verification including why it’s important, how to do it and what challenges and red flags to look for, Kyckr has put together a comprehensive guide, which can be download here: https://go.kyckr.com/l/855523/2023-07-24/h8zbb 

Leading cash-flow management platform, Settle, has recently secured an impressive $145m credit facility.

The hefty investment comes from Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank, and significantly boosts Settle’s potential to support high-growth e-commerce, consumer brands, and small businesses.

Settle has strategically positioned itself as a cash-flow management platform dedicated to e-commerce and consumer brands with challenging inventory and cash conversion cycles. The platform centralises key operations, including vendor payments, payment status tracking, invoice management, and application for flexible financing solutions. Currently, hundreds of consumer brands, such as Branch, Starface, and Lalo, rely on Settle to manage their cash-flow and secure their inventory needs with Settle Working Capital.

The new financing will be utilised to expand the firm’s customer base and further develop its suite of lending products for larger e-commerce and consumer brands. The credit facility will support business owners’ needs by providing the tools necessary to adapt to changing market conditions. Amidst the inherent volatility of the capital markets, the secured funding gives Settle the power to assist growing brands in changing their business trajectories.

Alek Koenig, CEO and founder of Settle, emphasised the importance of managing cash-flow for small businesses, stating, “Approximately 80 percent of small businesses fail because of cash-flow issues.” He further elaborated on Settle’s mission, “From day one, we have been laser focused on helping e-commerce and consumer brands meet their inventory demands by giving them the tools and support to manage cash-flow and obtain access to financing. The need for additional capital provided by Silicon Valley Bank is a testament to continued demand from our customers and our commitment to support them.”

Brian Foley, head of warehouse lending and FinTech relationship management at Silicon Valley Bank, praised Settle’s innovative model and leadership. He said, “Settle has quickly become a leading cash-flow management solution for hundreds of high-growth e-commerce and consumer brands worldwide. SVB is excited to support Settle’s continued growth as they provide vital working capital solutions to small businesses.”

Settle, as a crucial part of the FinTech sector, helps small consumer businesses by alleviating cash flow management worries. Its all-in-one platform is designed to help e-commerce brands enhance their cash flow as they scale and plan for the future.

Ennabl, a leading Insurtech data analytics platform, is proud to announce the successful completion of its Series A funding, which has raised $8M.  This funding will accelerate the company's growth and expand its market reach.‍

The Series A round was led by Brewer Lane Ventures, with participation from Altai Ventures and private investors.  The company will use the funds to invest in product development, expand the company's sales and marketing efforts, and grow its team.

"Ennabl's mission is to provide cutting-edge solutions for insurance brokers and agencies to help them grow their book of business and simplify their existing processes," said Kabir Syed, CEO of Ennabl. "We're thrilled to have Brewer Lane Ventures and our other investors on board as we continue to grow our platform and help brokers achieve their goals."

Ennabl's SaaS platform helps insurance brokerages and agencies to harness data to drive top-line growth.  Ennabl's machine learning algorithms provide actionable intelligence for brokers to increase their commissions, find new customers, grow their book of business, and manage carrier strategy by extracting, cleaning, and enriching data from all of the broker's systems and processes.

Ennabl has experienced rapid growth since its founding in 2021, with a customer base that includes a number of the world's largest insurance brokers. The company has also partnered with several leading technology and service providers, including Reagan Consulting, NeuralMetrics, HazardHub, and Fenris Digital, to provide actionable external data that allows brokers to accelerate their top-line growth.

We're excited to partner with Ennabl as they continue to drive innovation in the insurance technology space," said Chris Downer, Partner at Brewer Lane Ventures. "Their platform is revolutionizing the way insurance brokers leverage data, and we see tremendous promise in Ennabl's ability to further impact the market."

Commerzbank is the first German bank to have completed a blockchain-based Letter of Credit (LC) transaction for its client, Ascentex Exim LLP, a Singapore-based textile trader, on Contour, a digital trade finance platform. The LC was issued for a shipment of rubber threads from Thailand to Krungthai Bank. Contour’s decentralised platform resulted in significant time and cost savings within this process.

In another first for Commerzbank, the Bank’s China branch also completed a blockchain-enabled LC transaction. Commerzbank acted as the issuing bank for Nanjing Iron and Steel Company, which imported raw materials from Hong Kong’s Jinteng International Co. The LC was advised by Hang Seng Bank.

With these live transactions, Commerzbank has reached a key landmark in the Bank’s commitment to digital transformation. Brigitte Réthier, Divisional Board Member for Institutional Clients & Transaction Banking Sales at Commerzbank, said: “This milestone reinforces our commitment to driving digital innovation and delivering value-added solutions to our clients. By leveraging the power of advanced technology, we aim to enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and provide greater accessibility to trade finance, ultimately enabling businesses to thrive in today’s rapidly evolving global marketplace.”

Contour’s digital trade finance platform harnesses the power of blockchain technology to streamline and enhance the efficiency of LC transactions. Leveraging blockchain technology and advanced data analytics, the platform offers a secure, transparent, and seamless ecosystem for managing trade finance processes.

The digital solution transforms internal workflows and the relationships between importers, exporters, banks, and all stakeholders in between, which represents a significant step forward in the digital transformation of Commerzbank’s trade finance operations and reinforces the Bank’s commitment to innovation.

Simpl, India's foremost Checkout Network, today announced the introduction of its innovative Checkout offering, Simpl Pay After Delivery (SPAD) to enhance trust and convenience for millions of customers across the country. With this capability, consumers can choose Simpl Pay After Delivery at the time of checkout which triggers payment only upon successful delivery of the shipment. This helps assuage consumers’ concerns of money getting blocked on account of an unsuccessful delivery, thereby helping them build trust on merchants and enhance user experience.

SPAD is built upon Simpl’s revolutionary 1-tap pay which offers near-zero transaction failures and helps reduce returns and Cash-on Delivery (CoD) orders for merchants. It will help build trust for consumers by enabling a transaction after delivery of shipment, thereby emulating the same CoD process and bringing enhanced convenience. This will also not require any action from the customer at the time of delivery. With consumers opting for SPAD, it will play a pivotal role in reducing CoD orders for merchants which accounts for a majority of the orders placed and witnesses nearly a fifth of all returns, making it a major pain point for merchants. Currently, CoD accounts for nearly 60% of all online transactions in India mainly due to lack of trust on merchants and this becomes significantly high for emerging merchants.

Simpl, which is the preferred partner for over 26,000 merchants and million of users across the country, has emerged as a marker of trust over the last 8 years, helping merchants connect effectively with consumers. Simpl’s PAD is solving a major problem statement of the industry and has already been adopted by large enterprise and D2C merchants across fashion, pharma and electronics categories to offer an enhanced experience to their consumers. As more customers experience the convenience of SPAD, merchants are also expected to witness better customer loyalty and repeat purchases. SPAD is part of Simpl’s rapidly growing suite of artificial intelligence-led offerings catered to empower merchants and bring greater convenience to consumers across the country.

Commenting on the development, Puneet Singh, Chief Technology Officer at  Simpl said, “As an ecosystem-focused organisation, we are committed to solving pain points for both ends of the spectrum - consumers and merchants alike. Simpl’s Pay After Delivery is built upon years of our experience in understanding their nuanced pain points and will help bring enhanced user experience, build trust and reduce Cash-on-Delivery for merchants, thereby bringing business efficiencies”.

In the evolving world of e-commerce, customer expectations are rising continually, and they are demanding a seamless experience across the value chain. Here, the checkout stage becomes important to innovatively bring quick and convenient payment offerings to millions of consumers while helping merchants streamline their operations and reduce costs incurred during the returns.

Simpl over the last several years has developed and strengthened its state-of-the-art artificial intelligence-powered technology platform which powers consumers’ checkout journey seamlessly and helps merchants improve their conversions while reducing returns and CoD. The company’s 1-tap pay and state-of-the-art Checkout Network have made a significant impact in the lives of consumers and merchants and SPAD is further expanding Simpl’s bouquet of offerings.

The NEAR Foundation today announced a new partnership with Blumer, a social platform that combines the functionality of popular social networks with blockchain. The partnership is expected to bring about a new era of social media, where users are rewarded for their active participation.

Blumer is the first Web3  social network created and developed in Colombia. It is a social platform that recognises and rewards active user participation by distributing 18% of its advertising revenue to its users. This is a major breakthrough in the world of social media, where users are often left uncompensated for their contributions. With Blumer, users can monetize their time by consuming advertisements, selling NFTs and making crypto transactions. By integrating blockchain technology, Blumer also provides its users with a higher level of privacy and security, 

Blumer's platform aims to address limited privacy and lack of compensation for users. Furthermore, by offering compensation to its users, Blumer encourages more active participation on the platform. The platform's commercial growth focus is derived from businesses undertaking digital marketing.

Blumer's differentiator is the compensation for their users for the time spent on the network, monetising that time for the user in a crypto wallet to collect, pay and send tokens. There is also access to an integrated NFT marketplace for users to enjoy.  As a digital company, Blumer will integrate content and free trials of their marketing platform as tools for commercial growth and also help to advance the adoption of Web3 in Latin America. Cryptocurrencies are the future of payment in the world,  but their adoption in Latin America is very low, due to lack of knowledge and understanding about cryptocurrencies, and poor usability within the real market.  Through its free crypto education platform - ZVerso, Blumer addresses these issues head-on, giving users the information they need to confidently engage, monetise and have fun within the Web3 ecosystem. 

Welcoming the partnership, Marieke Flament, CEO of the NEAR Foundation, said: 

“This partnership is a significant step towards creating a fair and transparent social media ecosystem. By combining the benefits of blockchain technology with social media, we are set to revolutionize how we interact on social platforms. We believe that this partnership will unlock new opportunities for users to monetise their time and content while also promoting greater privacy and security. We are excited to work with Blumer on a decentralized social network that truly puts users first.”

Ernesto Ruiz, CEO of Blumer, said: 

“At Blumer, we believe in creating a social network for everyone. Our platform is designed to be a space where users can express themselves, connect with friends, and learn about the crypto world. We’re committed to creating a platform that is fun, engaging, and rewarding for everyone involved. With NEAR's support, we are confident that we can achieve this vision and create a social network fit to thrive in tomorrow’s landscape.”

Last year, Latin America and the Caribbean boasted an online population exceeding 543.39 million individuals, making it the fifth-largest global market for social media in the world. With over 306.76 million users exclusively in South America, this region is a thriving hub for social media engagement.

A new report from FX and payments provider, Neo, has found that SMEs still rely heavily on traditional banks and struggle with the cost and speed of cross-border payments as a result. The report entitled ‘Growing pains: the escalating cross-border payment challenges for SMEs’, highlights that traditional banking partners are failing to meet SMEs’ cross-border payments needs. 

Nearly four-fifths (78%) of SMEs rely on traditional banks for cross-border payments. Their biggest pain point was unfair pricing which over half of SMEs (55%) stated they struggle with. This was followed by speed of execution (45%) and reporting transactions (42%). For the majority of SMEs (72%), it takes 2-5 days for funds to appear on their suppliers’ bank statements with the average being 2.81 days.

It revealed a similar theme when it comes to managing foreign exchange (FX). Over four-fifths (83%), use traditional banking to manage FX and the three main point points were again unfair pricing (48%), speed of execution (45%) and reporting transactions (34%). 

The research also highlighted that SMEs are exploring new alternatives which help tackle these issues. The vast majority (92%) stated they have had conversations about virtual account solutions, while 65% are utilising non-banking payment solutions such as payment service providers (PSPs), money services businesses (MSB) and electronic money institutions (EMI).

Other notable findings include:

Diversifying bank partners – 75% of SMEs are considering diversifying their bank pool in the coming months following the banking crisis, while 6% have already done so. 

Fund safeguarding measures – 50% of SMEs said they always enquire into the name and/or credit rating of the safeguarding partner, while 47% said they sometimes enquire.

Importance of FX – 72% of SMEs said that FX had been a critical matter so far this year, while 25% said it was a relatively important matter.

Dealing with currency volatility – 95% of SMEs are taking the threat of negative currency impacts on their bottom lines seriously and have an FX risk management policy, while 84% have an in-house FX expert.

Other cross-border payment pain points – SMEs also struggle with a lack of automation (29%), reconciliation of flows for receivers (27%) and a lack of support from experts (25%).

Laurent Descout, CEO and Co-Founder of Neo, comments: “While cross-border payments have improved for consumers, standards in the B2B market have largely remained the same. Payments are still slow, fees are hidden and tracking is largely non-existent for many SMEs

“While most CFOs and treasurers continue with traditional banking partners, the research shows that they are looking into other options such as non-banking payment solutions and virtual accounts. Traditional banks simply can’t compete with the faster, easier, and more secure service that fintechs provide, and many SMEs are beginning to rethink their traditional banking partnerships as a result. 

“The research has highlighted that SMEs are also looking for solutions to tackle increasingly volatile currency markets. It’s really positive to see that the vast majority of SMEs have FX risk management policies in place, it’s vital they continue to monitor its effectiveness as currency markets move very quickly.”