Kriya, the B2B payments fintech, today announces that it has secured a new £50 million debt facility from a long-standing debt partner, Viola Credit. This will allow the fintech to power over £1 billion of B2B Payments over the next 24 months.

With this facility, Kriya intends to double down on its PayNow and PayLater embedded credit and payment offerings for B2B retailers and marketplaces. The new funding allows Kriya to power online checkouts and offline orders, offering features like Pay in 30 or 60 days, or split payments over several months. By smoothening the check-out process Kriya can help large merchants attract and retain business customers, powering larger sales baskets and helping end buyers (including sole traders) with their cash flow.

Beyond the ability to scale payment volumes and support more merchants in the UK, the facility will allow Kriya to support exporters who do business in 45 supported markets in multiple different currencies, including GBP, USD, and EUR.

Anil Stocker, CEO at Kriya, commented:

‍“We’re seeing big changes in how forward-looking merchants think about their B2B sales journeys from marketing to and onboarding new types of buyers through new channels, to smoothing the checkout process by offering different payment options and PayLater features that help their buyer’s cashflow.  
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Kriya has delivered in the business payment and credit market for over 12 years, processing billions of payment volumes and striking partnerships with institutions such as Barclays UK and the British Business Bank. Kriya has the technology, product and operational expertise to take advantage of the digitisation of business transactions, while being a stable and scalable partner to mid-market and enterprise merchants.  

This new facility is an exciting validation of how we are now integrating and embedding financial tooling into larger merchants, making financial operations smooth so they can focus on their core business and drive sales growth.”

Ido Vigdor, General Partner at Viola Credit, commented:

“Over the last 12 years Kriya has successfully supported businesses by delivering products like B2B invoice finance, business loans and credit lines. This new evolution of offering embedded B2B Payments to merchants allows them to reach even more small businesses by removing fiction in the purchasing process. We’re happy to continue and deepen our relationship with Kriya with this additional financing capacity as they scale their B2B embedded financing product.”

Incognia, the innovator in location identity solutions, is announcing it has closed $31MM in Series B funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from FJ Labs and existing investors, including Point72 Ventures, Prosus, and Valor Capital. The financing will support Incognia’s continued development of cutting-edge digital identity signals, along with the company’s presence in North America, Europe, and EMEA, as well as its expansion into new verticals, including consumer internet, financial services, and eCommerce.

“This funding from Bessemer is further recognition of our innovative approach, and their support of Incognia is particularly significant given Bessemer's expertise in the fraud prevention industry", said André Ferraz, co-founder and CEO of Incognia. “Bessemer has a strong track record of supporting game-changing SaaS solutions from companies like Twilio, Shopify, Toast, and Auth0, and we’re thrilled to be listed among these trailblazers in tech. This financing will allow us to deepen our product capabilities to stay at the forefront of fraud prevention and meet the growing market demand for a transparent solution capable of solving complex identity challenges.”

Incognia’s cutting-edge technology combines device fingerprinting and exact location intelligence data into one flexible risk signal that can be customized for every stage of the user journey. Since Incognia's last funding in June 2022, the company has achieved remarkable success, including tripling revenue, realizing 200% net revenue retention, and converting 100% of trials. Incognia has delivered six times the return on investment to its clients while saving them millions of dollars per contract on average.

"Incognia is quickly emerging as a market leader addressing fraud across a variety of customer segments, which is critical in today’s environment as fraudsters become increasingly sophisticated thanks to recent GenAI breakthroughs and the global proliferation of real-time payments," said Charles Birnbaum, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. “After years of development, André and the Incognia team have unlocked the power of highly precise location awareness coupled with best-in-class device fingerprinting to generate fraud prevention signals, unlike any other vendor in the market. We've been following the company for some time and are truly impressed by the team’s progress and customer impact, and we look forward to seeing them roll out their fraud prevention solutions globally.”

Incognia’s technology includes device tamper detection with advanced location spoofing prevention, tamper-proof location verification for user identification, and phishing-resistant and frictionless account security. Used individually or in combination, these features drive results, including an 80% reduction in account takeovers, a 51% reduction in fake account creation, and an 84% reduction in new user abandonment.

“While distinguishing between good and bad actors online will always be a challenge, we are focused on helping companies better address it with an identity signal that accurately recognizes users across devices with zero friction,” added Ferraz.

Incognia has a dedicated team across four offices worldwide, including San Jose, CA; New York, NY; São Paulo, Brazil; and Recife, Brazil. The company empowers safe digital experiences for global consumer internet companies in the gig economy, marketplace, and financial services industries by combining unparalleled security, privacy, and convenience.

Metronome has raised over $43m in Series B funding, led by NEA with participation from both a16z and General Catalyst. Also, Metronome welcomes Hilarie Koplow-McAdams, former President of New Relic and Salesforce and an experienced public company board member. This funding round brings to over $78m raised to date.

Established in 2019, Metronome was born out of a clear need within the SaaS industry. The founders, leveraging their vast experience from previous startups and notable companies like Dropbox, recognized the challenges companies faced with their billing systems. Metronome’s mission is to offer a seamless path to world-class billing without the extensive effort typically required, freeing up resources and allowing companies to focus on their core products.

The capital infusion is set to accelerate Metronome’s growth trajectory significantly. Despite holding most of its Series A funds, the company decided to secure additional capital to fuel its ambitious roadmap for 2024.

The planned enhancements are comprehensive and aimed at simplifying the user experience. These include upgrades to data pipeline integrations, streamlining data management, revamping core data models to automate complex billing workflows, and expanding support for critical financial operations like reconciliation and revenue recognition. This strategic investment in the company’s infrastructure and services underscores Metronome’s commitment to its customers, ensuring they receive top-notch services with minimal engineering overhead.

Metronome’s services have already garnered attention and trust within the industry. The company boasts a client list featuring some of the fastest-growing SaaS companies, such as Databricks, OpenAI, Anthropic, and NVIDIA. This trust from industry leaders reflects the efficacy and reliability of Metronome’s billing system.

PayRetailers, the leading payment processor in Latin America, is pleased to announce its participation at ICE London 2024. The event, PayRetailers’ first of the year, will take place from February 6th to 8th at ExCeL London. Located at booth N8-450, the company plans to address strategies for a more efficient payment experience to optimize operations and drive expansion in the Latin American gaming industry, which is expected to reach annual revenues of $4.4 trillion by 2026.

ICE is a key event in the gaming industry, bringing together businesses and professionals from various sectors. Among them, PayRetailers stands out as a strategic ally for companies looking to strengthen their localized payment strategy, leveraging its experience in emerging markets to ensure processing challenges are met with an efficient, secure, and personalized solution. 

Those attending the event can access a unique promotion: visiting booth N8-450, new merchants can get 2 months of free processing by integrating PayRetailers.

Jonathan Vintner, Global Head of Sales, says, “We look forward to sharing our latest developments and upcoming product features, which will be a game-changer for merchants, along with our ambitious plans for expanding into new territories like Africa. Our presence at ICE is a chance for businesses to discover how we transform challenges into opportunities, maximizing growth potential and unlocking new possibilities in the Latin American market.” 

For more details on this promotion and to discover how PayRetailers is transforming payments in the online gaming industry, we invite you to connect with the team during the event. They will be available to answer all your questions, provide valuable information, and present unique opportunities.

Emirates NBD, a leading banking group in the MENAT (Middle East, North Africa, and Türkiye) region, announced a strategic partnership with Silent Eight, a technology company that offers an advanced AI and machine learning platform to identify and prevent financial crime.

The partnership is in line with Emirates NBD’s vision to be the most innovative bank for its customers, people, and communities, and follows a successful Proof of Value (PoV) engagement that demonstrated Silent Eight's ability to automate the alert screening investigation process and improve the efficiency, accuracy, and auditability of the bank's compliance operations.

In collaboration with Emirates NBD’s FinTech Partnership and Engagement Team, the PoV was involved in testing Silent Eight's solution on alerts generated by the bank's screening system.  The solution uses natural language processing and machine learning to replicate human reasoning and decision-making based on historical alert data and continuous learning. The solution was able to solve close to a third of the alerts in the scope of the PoV, explain the resolutions with clear narratives, and close the alerts with zero error rates.

Based on the successful results of the PoV, Emirates NBD has decided to deploy the Silent Eight solution to reduce reliance on human investigators, lowering operational costs, and enhance the customer experience by minimizing the delays and requests for information caused by false positive alerts.

Following significant innovation in digital banking, wealth management, remittances and payments, Emirates NBD is further championing digital operational transformation by incorporating AI technology into its robust compliance program. The move strengthens Emirates NBD’s commitment to align with the UAE’s increased focus on the supervision and enforcement of anti-money laundering, counter-terrorism financing, and targeted financial sanctions regimes.

Abdulla Qassem, Group Chief Operating Officer at Emirates NBD, said: “We are thrilled to join forces with Silent Eight to improve our operational efficiencies and foster innovation. As a regional banking leader, Emirates NBD is setting a new standard of excellence in providing a safe and secure banking experience for our customers. This collaboration is a testament to Emirates NBD’s commitment to embracing cutting-edge technologies and pushing boundaries to deliver agility and optimise productivity.”

Victor Matafonov, Group Chief Compliance Officer at Emirates NBD, said: "We are delighted to partner with Silent Eight, a leading innovator in the field of AI-driven compliance solutions. This partnership aligns with our vision of becoming a digital leader in the region and our commitment to adopting world-class technologies that enhance our risk management capabilities and operational efficiency. We are confident that Silent Eight’s IRIS module will bring significant value to our compliance function and enable us to deliver faster and better service to our customers."

Martin Markiewicz, Chief Executive Officer at Silent Eight, said: “We are honored to work with Emirates NBD, one of the most progressive and forward-thinking banks in the MENAT region.”

Ben Rayner, Senior Vice President at Silent Eight, said: " We are delighted to be working with Emirates NBD, and are impressed by their dedication to excellence and innovation in compliance and their willingness to embrace AI as a strategic enabler. We look forward to supporting them in their journey of transforming their alert screening process and achieving their compliance goals."

The collaboration between Emirates NBD and Silent Eight solidifies Emirates NBD’s commitment to safe banking through innovative and transformative advancements within the financial industry. In 2023, Emirates NBD leveraged the power of generative AI to drive significant advancements in software development, collaboration, and customer engagement.

As fraudsters increasingly exploit technology to try to thwart banks and their customers, Mastercard is adopting generative AI techniques to enhance the protections that keep consumers – and the entire payments network – safe.

Mastercard’s world-leading Decision Intelligence (DI) - a real-time decisioning solution - already helps banks score and safely approve 143 billion transactions a year. New generative AI technology will scan an unprecedented one trillion data points to predict whether a transaction is likely to be genuine or not, building Mastercard’s existing ability to analyze account, purchase, merchant, and device information in real-time.

The next-generation technology, Decision Intelligence Pro, works by assessing the relationships between multiple entities surrounding a transaction to determine its risk. In less than 50 milliseconds, this technology improves the overall DI score, sharpening the data provided to banks. Initial modeling shows  AI enhancements boost fraud detection rates on average by 20% and as high as 300% in some instances.

“With generative AI we are transforming the speed and accuracy of our anti-fraud solutions, deflecting the efforts of criminals, and protecting banks and their customers. Supercharging our algorithm will improve our ability to anticipate the next potential fraudulent event, instilling trust into every interaction,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of Cyber and Intelligence at Mastercard.

The enhancement of DI will further improve banks’ abilities to protect cardholders from fraudulent transactions and mitigate what are known as known as false positives: legitimate transactions that are incorrectly flagged as fraudulent ones.

“The precision of the solution – achieved by scanning potential points of sale in real time - has been shown in our own analysis to not only increase accuracy, but also reduce the number of false positives by more than 85%,” said Bhalla.

DI Pro will be available from later this year.

Abrigo, a leading provider of financial crime prevention and risk management solutions for U.S. financial institutions, today announced the launch of Abrigo Fraud Detection, a new platform that combines AI-powered inspection and check image analysis with a smart, configurable fraud decision engine. Abrigo’s innovative hybrid approach protects banks and credit unions from crippling financial losses by increasing the accuracy of fraud detection, uncovering threats missed by traditional tools and manual reviews, and automating fraud department workflows.

In a pilot program with a Southeastern U.S. bank, Abrigo Fraud Detection correctly identified 93% of the bank’s total fraudulent check value, equating to more than $330,000 in potential fraud loss avoidance.

“Banks and credit unions of every size need transformational tools to fight financial crime amid radically powerful, pervasive, and diverse new threats,” said Jay Blandford, CEO of Abrigo. “Abrigo Fraud Detection offers our 2,400 existing customers, and new customers, enhanced fraud detection accuracy and efficiency. Our mission is to help financial institutions and their communities thrive, and our new platform does that by detecting sophisticated fraud patterns fast and combating financial crimes that cost millions and impact reputation.”

With check fraud soaring, banks need intelligent tech

Despite the increasing popularity of digital payment channels, checks are still the most common form of B2B payment — with 81% of businesses still paying other firms with paper checks. At the same time, check fraud is increasing dramatically. According to fraud strategists, check fraud is projected to soar to $24 billion in 2024. And FinCEN reported that Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) filings for check fraud in 2022 exceeded 680,000, nearly doubling the number of filings the previous year.

“The battle against check fraud is a race against evolving criminal tactics,” said Datos Insights strategic advisor Becki LaPorte. “Fraudsters use this to their advantage and wield sophisticated tools. It is imperative for community financial institutions to adopt innovative technology solutions that protect customer funds without impacting the customer experience.”

Enhanced check fraud detection through Abrigo-Mitek strategic partnership

In November 2023, Abrigo announced a strategic partnership with Mitek, a global leader in mobile deposit and fraud prevention. Abrigo Fraud Detection leverages Mitek’s Check Fraud Defender, a nationwide consortium of check fraud data, powerful AI and ML image analysis, and Abrigo’s configurable fraud decision engine — including step-up authentication capabilities to pinpoint a higher rate of altered items, forgeries, and fraudulent checks. Tailored to each institution’s needs, the Abrigo platform automates processes and streamlines workflows to increase efficiency and prioritize higher-risk activities.

“Our approach blends AI and rules-based detection, ensuring our customers are equipped with transparency and a robust and adaptable fraud prevention system, safeguarding their assets and maintaining customer trust in an increasingly digital world,” said Abrigo CTO Ravi Nemalikanti. “Abrigo Fraud Detection stands out by offering a highly configurable yet user-friendly interface, allowing financial institutions to tailor fraud detection to their specific needs.”

Learn more about Abrigo Fraud Detection

Abrigo Fraud Detection has launched today with check fraud detection, and capabilities will expand to detect fraud across additional transaction types, including wire and FedNow, throughout 2024.

Repay Holdings Corporation a leading provider of vertically-integrated payment solutions, today announced a new technology integration with Lexop, a self-service software for credit unions, financial institutions, and other financing companies that optimizes the repayment journey for past-due consumers. The REPAY integration with the Lexop collections management software enables their clients to collect late payments more efficiently, receive real-time payment updates, increase engagement, and minimize loan servicing costs.

Lexop clients can now offer members an integrated self-service portal, empowered by REPAY’s embedded payments technology, to make payments more easily at members’ convenience. Additionally, credit unions and financial institutions can accept debit cards, as well as automated clearing house (ACH), payments via text, mobile, and IVR. REPAY’s embedded payments engine seamlessly sends payment data back to Lexop in real-time, streamlining reconciliation and accounting operations.

“Collecting late payments can be a stressful and challenging operation for both credit unions and their members, especially when members cannot make payments though their preferred channel,” said Jake Moore, EVP, Consumer Payments, REPAY. “REPAY’s integration with Lexop helps to alleviate that burden by offering multiple payment options, making remittance convenient for members and payment updates instantaneous for their financial institutions.”

“Lexop is proud to empower credit unions with flexible payment options and further improve the efficiency of accounting functions through our integration with REPAY,” said Amir Tajkarimi, CEO and Co-Founder of Lexop. “We prioritize credit union members’ well-being during the collection process and are confident that the new capabilities enabled by REPAY will enhance our customers’ ability to build strong connections with their members through convenient payment methods.”

Wirex, a leading Web3 money app, is excited to introduce exclusive early access to WPay, a decentralized payment network, utilizing the capabilities of the award-winning Wirex platform.

WPay solves problems related to intermediaries, custody risks, and slow, expensive settlements. With WPay, users can enjoy a smoother and more secure payment experience, marking a significant advancement in simplifying financial interactions.

Targeting decentralized applications, non-custodial wallets, and DAOs, WPay provides a transformative solution in the digital finance landscape.

Key value propositions of WPay:

• Self-Custody: Gain direct control over assets with the WPay Card, mitigating counterparty risk.
• Digital Asset Flexibility: Easily manage digital assets, lending, and borrowing.
• Uncompromised Security: Enjoy the highest security standards for peace of mind.
• Instant Spending: Utilise crypto as simply as cash, accepted by over 50 million merchants in more than 200 countries.

With the WPay self-custodial debit card, users can spend their digital assets in the traditional economy through the WPay network. Accepted by over 50 million merchants in more than 200 countries, the card enables users to have direct control over their assets, ensuring no counterparty risk.

Pavel Matveev, CEO and Co-founder of Wirex, comments, "WPay revolutionises digital asset use in daily life, seamlessly merging them with traditional transactions. Bridging the gap between digital assets and everyday transactions has been challenging. WPay represents a significant advancement, allowing individuals to use digital assets for everyday purchases and services. This ushers in a new era of practical cryptocurrency use beyond mere investment."

How it works:

• Sign Up and Set Up

Register with WPay and set up your unique Spending Account Abstraction (AA), integrating it with your Externally Owned Account (EOA) wallet. 

• Gain Full Control

​Enjoy complete self-custody of your funds, ensuring security and freedom from third-party custody. 

• Customise and Secure

Personalise your spending limits and preferences. Transactions are authorized based on your balance and limits, prioritizing security. 

• Seamless Financial Operations

Experience efficient transaction settlement in fiat currency with card schemes, streamlined for smooth financial management