Shinkansen, a burgeoning FinTech start-up hailing from Chile, has recently celebrated the successful closure of a seed investment round.

The young company is known for its revolutionary approach to speedy financial transactions, reflecting the swift movement of Japan’s Shinkansen train network which inspired its name.

A considerable $3m was raised in this funding round, which was spearheaded by Mexico’s eminent venture capital firm, ALLVP, according to a report from Tech Gist Africa. Notably, the round also saw contributions from Salkantay, Chileventures, and Pedro Pineda, the co-founder of Fintual and a Sequoia Scout, who all threw their financial support behind Shinkansen.

The company, named after the famous Japanese high-speed railway system, has carved a niche in the FinTech sector by focusing on expediting money transfers and transactions. Its innovative application programming interface (API) integration system is a game-changer for the Latin American market, which has often grappled with the challenges of country-specific integrations.

The raised funding is set to underpin Shinkansen’s growth ambitions, with a particular focus on expanding its presence across Latin America, including markets such as Mexico and Peru. This move aims to streamline money movement in these fragmented markets, boosting efficiency and bypassing regulatory roadblocks.

An additional standout feature of Shinkansen is its adept use of artificial intelligence to automate operations, allowing for seamless integration of its APIs with banks in Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and soon, Peru. Further underlining its innovativeness, Shinkansen operates a “regulator-friendly” model that ensures security and traceability by not directly handling money flow.

The company’s early clientele list boasts notable names like Xepelin, Buk, and Buda, alongside stockbrokers, insurance companies, and retail chains. Its technical prowess and emphasis on AI have been commended by investors, marking Shinkansen as part of a new generation of companies that give priority to AI from the outset.

ALLVP partner said, “We have had successful investments in Chilean teams before and we see promising similarities with the Shinkansen team. Their focus on user experience and regulatory compliance aligns with our own values, leading us to support their growth in the region.”

Silvr, an innovative neo-lender focused on serving small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), has achieved significant strides in the past few years since its inception in 2020.

The company has underwritten its 100th loan within its first year and deployed €100m towards SMEs by its second year, earning its place as the fastest-growing neo-lender in continental Europe. Now, in celebration of its third anniversary, Silvr has revealed a groundbreaking milestone; the signing of a new securitised facility of up to €200m with Citi and Channel.

The raised funds are intended to accelerate Silvr’s growth and expand its lending capacity. Silvr’s Chief Capital Officer, Benjamin Soussan, stated his excitement about the concluded transaction, which he described as a resilient source of debt capital that the company has been nurturing since its early days.

Silvr’s mission is centred around providing SMEs with accessible and timely funding, helping them scale in a challenging European market. The company uses real-time data-scoring algorithms to approve loan applications within hours, effectively enabling quick, easy and reliable financing. Silvr’s innovative model aims to bridge the growing funding gap for SMEs, a problem underscored by the European Central Bank’s recent survey that predicts a 2.7% contraction in corporate lending in 2023.

With the newly raised €200m, Silvr plans to offer up to €200m worth of new loans, potentially aiding thousands of businesses in securing funds within 48 hours. This strategy aims to tackle the significant issue of limited funding access, as indicated by European SMEs’ average rating of their current funding access being a mere 4.2 out of 10.

Nima Karimi, co-founder and CEO of Silvr, shared the company’s expansion aspirations. Although Silvr currently originates loans for SMEs registered in France and Germany, their infrastructure has always been established with a pan-European expansion in mind. Following the newly signed securitised facility, the company will explore further expansion possibilities.

Clair, a mission-driven fintech company, today announced it raised $175 million in funding to launch the first free, consumer-friendly, on-demand pay solution as a consumer lending program backed by an FDIC-insured bank. The new program provides for a participation amount of up to $150 million, which allows front-line workers to take wage advances from Pathward. Through the partnership, consumers get access to Pathward established FDIC-insured Clair Spending and Savings Accounts, among other financial services. The funding includes an additional $25 million in equity in a round led by Thrive Capital. Upfront Ventures and Kairos also participated in the equity round, bringing Clair’s total venture capital funding to $45 million. As part of the deal, Michael Presser, Investing Partner at Kairos, has been appointed as a board observer. 

On the heels of 10x revenue growth over the past year, Clair will use the new funding to expand its team and accelerate adoption, especially among the 76 million hourly workers who represent 56% of the U.S. workforce. Through integrations with platforms like TCP Software’s Humanity Scheduling, When I Work, Gusto Embedded and 7shifts, Clair is already helping more than 50,000 workers get paid as soon as they finish their shifts, instead of waiting weeks for a paycheck – with zero fees. Clair’s award-winning mobile banking app enables mainly millennial and Gen Z customers to avoid paying $15 million a year in overdraft fees, and using payday lenders that can charge more than 600% APR. 

Small and large businesses have embraced this solution amid the front-line worker shortage, with 4 million more job openings than people to fill them, as they’re seeking unique benefits to attract and keep employees. Companies using Clair to provide earned wage advances to employees include EverView, Viking Ranges, and SanStone Health & Rehabilitation, along with franchisees of DoubleTree by Hilton, Sheraton Hotels & Resorts, and GNC. This is a strong tool that may give employers an edge in attracting and retaining talent despite the worker shortage.

Clair also announced the launch of Clair for Employers, a set of free, holistic financial wellness benefits for employees of businesses that are not on Clair’s partner platforms. Offering an on-demand pay benefit usually means human resources teams must commit significant time and resources to implement and manage it, but Clair for Employers integrates seamlessly with companies’ payroll providers for free. The integration does not require ongoing maintenance and is fully compliant. Employees of companies using Clair for Employers also can access additional features in their Clair Spending Account, including 3% cash back on gas and groceries purchased on their Clair Debit Mastercard®. 

“Front-line workers are astonishingly underserved, as big banks don’t see them as profit drivers and aren’t building the solutions they need,” said Nico Simko, Co-founder and CEO of Clair. “This lack of support is unfair when half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and don’t have $500 in savings for an emergency, so timely pay is crucial for them to keep up with their bills. We’re grateful to join forces with investors, partners and employers who believe in our mission of enabling people to responsibly customize their pay cycles to their needs.”

“We share common values with Clair, and our partnership has exponential power to increase financial access for more Americans regardless of the economic cycle,” said Pathward President Anthony Sharett. “Through our Banking as a Service solutions and strong risk and compliance framework, we’re proud to be their bank partner, supporting their issuing and lending needs to meet the evolving demands of their growing business.” 

“Clair's product has enabled both workers and employers to adapt in a uniquely challenging labor and economic environment,” said Kareem Zaki, Partner at Thrive Capital and Clair board member. “In addition to their exponential growth this past year, we've been pleased to see that Clair has consistently prioritized compliance and delivering tangible value to their customers.”

Clair was founded in 2019, inspired by Simko’s experience as an Argentinian-Swiss immigrant working an hourly job in the U.S. Beyond on-demand pay, every Clair customer can access additional digital banking services, including a Spending Account; a high-yield savings account; and a Clair Debit Mastercard issued by Pathward with free withdrawals at 40,000 in-network ATMs, through a strategic partnership with Mastercard. The top-rated Clair mobile app is available on iOS and Android.

Employers who want to offer Clair as an employee benefit can learn more and see a demo at getclair.com/employer. Employees of companies using Clair’s workforce management platform partners can sign up at getclair.com/employee. 

Teatro Arcimboldi Milan (TAM), has signed a strategic partnership with Nexi, Europe’s leading PayTech, which will see the largest Italian theatre become the first cashless theatre in the country.

Teatro Arcimboldi Milan is known as a place of excellence for live entertainment. It opened in 2002 as host of the famous Teatro alla Scala and is now renowned for the extraordinary use of technology and multimedia in its productions. Establishing itself as a symbol of progress and digitalisation, TAM has chosen to embrace a completely cashless model.

From September 2023, tickets for theatrical performances will exclusively be payable digitally. This will subsequently be extended to all of TAM’s service partners: the Il Sole 24Ore bookshop, the Finger's restaurant and the Dal Milanese restaurant. This is all enabled by Nexi, which is providing the technological infrastructure and payment devices.

The agreement between TAM and Nexi was highlighted today during the presentation of the 2023/2024 Theatre Season. TAM and Nexi underlined how the collaboration responds to citizens’ desires to access advanced services that focus on safety, transparency and speed.

“Our goal is to support the public administration, businesses and merchants with innovative services capable of making the shopping experience easier,” said Erika Fattori, Brand and Communication Director of Nexi Group. “Increasingly, physical channels are integrating with online channels. We enable this through digital payments that guarantee the whole community benefits in terms of speed, safety and convenience. The agreement with TAM allows us to support the theatre as transforms its business”.

For Nexi, this agreement represents a further step in the digitalisation process within Italy, as digital payments assume growing importance, accompanying a modern cultural transformation.

RTGS.global, the Financial Market Infrastructure (FMI) revolutionising cross-border settlements, has signed landmark pilot agreements with two innovative banks as momentum builds in emerging markets for its cutting-edge settlement service.

MDO Humo in Tajikistan and Credo Bank in Georgia are the progressive institutions that will run pilots with RTGS.global, signalling a commitment to improving cross-border payments and settlements in the region. Through RTGS.global’s network, banks will realise significant liquidity benefits and streamline traditionally cumbersome cross-border settlement processes.

RTGS.global’s solution is generating considerable interest among rapidly-developing markets across Central Asia, as well as in the wider Asia, Middle East and Africa regions. Meanwhile, the innovative FMI has attracted interest from the industry’s largest multinational banks, which have formed a global Banks Working Group with RTGS.global to collaborate in leveraging its network and expertise to advance cross-border payments and enhance the global banking ecosystem. Launched in the Spring, the Banks Working Group already comprises more than a dozen market-leading banks from across the Americas, EMEA and APAC region.

“These fantastic new partnerships highlight the demand for innovative solutions to the historic and emerging challenges associated with payments and liquidity management”, said Marcus Treacher, Executive Chair at RTGS.global. 

“What we are seeing in countries such as Georgia and Tajikistan is a recognition that they can provide a far superior experience for customers by offering efficient and seamless services based around frictionless cross-border payments and settlements.”

CEO Jarrad Hubble added: “We knew 2023 would be a pivotal year for our business as we achieve the next phase of our growth. Our ability to serve both established and emerging markets demonstrates a genuine commitment to fixing issues across the global financial system.”

As it continues to expand into new regions and engage central banks and commercial banks, RTGS.global has recently made several strategic new hires and is on course for further growth this year.

We are delighted to announce that BMLL Technologies has won the “Best Quant Investment Research / Data” award at the European Markets Choice Awards 2023. The award recognises excellence in institutional trading and technology, including buy-side traders, sell-side execution desks, exchanges and trading platforms, incumbent technology providers, and emerging fintech firms. 

BMLL was awarded “Best Quant Investment Research / Data'' for BMLL Vantage, which was launched in October 2022. BMLL Vantage is the highly intuitive, no-code data and analytics visualisation tool that makes quant insight available to a broader user base while freeing quants’ time to focus on deeper research.

Market participants face increasing data-driven problems but there is a real lack of quant resources across the industry. BMLL Vantage brings data science and quant analytics capabilities to all market participants. They can now derive meaningful insights by accessing, analysing and querying the most granular Level 3 order book data without having to code; creating analytics visualisations from full-depth order book data; collaborating and sharing insights with clients and teams for faster decision making. 

Use cases for BMLL Vantage include venue comparison to analyse different markets; smart order routing and trading mechanisms to understand where orders are likely to get filled; liquidity provision to understand what is addressable liquidity; and closing auction visualisations.

With a few clicks, users can look at daily, monthly or annually aggregated data sets and correlations between them; compare how stocks performed on different markets; and sort and explore the data via simple and easy-to-use dashboards without requiring a quant analyst, data science or cloud computing resource.

Paul Humphrey, CEO of BMLL Technologies, said: “We are very excited to win the Markets Choice award specifically for providing quants and researchers with the most granular Level 3 Data, the BMLL Vantage and compute environment to carry our market microstructure research across equities and futures. 

We are proud of our long-standing history of working with leading industry quants, from systematic hedge funds to banks and brokers, and world-class academic institutions who use BMLL to ensure that they spend less time gathering, formatting and cleaning data, and more time deriving valuable insights.”

BMLL gives banks, brokers, asset managers, hedge funds, global exchange groups, academic institutions and regulators immediate and flexible access to the most granular Level 3, T+1 order book data as well as advanced pre and post-trade analytics on a global scale.

Printemps, the French luxury department store, announced today the integration of Alipay+, a suite of global cross-border digital payment and marketing solutions, to offer Asian consumers a convenient and seamless checkout experience with their home e-wallets. 

Through a simple integration, Kakao Pay and AlipayHK are now accepted at Printemps Paris, enabling Korean and Hong Kong shoppers to make payments using their most familiar payment app.

Besides Alipay, Kakao Pay and AlipayHK, Alipay+ also supports other partner e-wallets, including GCash (the Philippines), Touch ‘n Go eWallet (Malaysia), and TrueMoney (Thailand).

Printemps is among the first batch of major high-end retailers in France to leverage Alipay+ solutions for a smooth payment journey for consumers from Far East. For instance, Asian e-wallet users would experience a more transparent and real-time in-app display of their payments in both euro and their home currency.

ViewTrade, the force that powers fintech, and Finequities, an innovative social trading technology firm, today announced that Finequities has chosen ViewTrade as the technology partner for its AI-powered social trading platform. Finequities will use ViewTrade's cutting-edge trading solutions to help investors put their investment decisions into action.

Launched in June 2023 as a trading platform that allows investors to trade in combination with community-derived sentiment, Finequities leverages artificial intelligence to connect investors and create a collaborative environment where they can learn from more experienced traders and replicate their strategies. The platform currently provides access to all listed US equities and ETFs and supports several cryptocurrencies, all with no monthly fees, no minimum account deposit, and with zero-commission trading.

“ViewTrade is the perfect technology provider to bring our trading ideas to life,” said Finequities CEO Santiago Andrade. “Early on we discovered that ViewTrade shared our commitment to help users trade with innovative technology and powerful solutions, and we have been further gratified to see how ViewTrade continues to support clients beyond the signup phase, acting as a true partner in implementing solutions as ViewTrade provides industry-leading technology and services.”

“The whole world is talking about potential applications for AI, and Finequities is innovating in this area of technology with a goal of delivering users an efficient and effective platform with an integrated community of members,” said Barry Bernstein, ViewTrade COO, Head of Business Development and Managing Director – Technology Services. “We enjoy working alongside the Finequities team, bringing together the vision and technology that will continue to innovate for years to come.”

ViewTrade provides technology, support and brokerage services that enable clients to quickly launch or enhance a retail investing experience with leading-edge solutions. ViewTrade is dedicated to delivering business-to-business-to-customer services to new and established financial services providers, embedded fintechs and other firms pursuing digital transformation around the world.