Bakkt Holdings, Inc., a digital asset platform that unlocks crypto and drives loyalty to create delightful, connected experiences for a broad range of clients, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Apex Crypto, LLC from Apex Fintech Solutions, Inc. This acquisition is expected to significantly bolster Bakkt’s cryptocurrency product offering and expand its footprint into additional client verticals including fintechs, trading app platforms, and neo-banks.

“We found a unique asset in Apex Crypto, which will expand our crypto client base, provide us with faster speed to market for new crypto capabilities and serve as an additional avenue for continued sales to a crypto-savvy audience through Apex Fintech Solutions,” said Gavin Michael, CEO of Bakkt. “With the addition of this complementary business, we believe we are poised to be a crypto provider of choice for financial institutions, fintechs, merchants or loyalty programs that want to offer seamless crypto experiences to their customers. It’s also expected to enable us to unlock more innovative opportunities that appeal to the next generation of consumers such as crypto rewards and NFTs.”

Apex Crypto is a turnkey platform for integrated crypto trading, developed to meet the increasing needs of more than 30 fintech firms and their customers across a rapidly expanding sector. Apex Crypto supports clients with a robust solution for execution, clearing, custody, cost basis and tax services facilitating the delivery of frictionless crypto investing in more than 30 tokens.

Under the terms of the transaction, Bakkt and Apex Fintech Solutions will enter into a commercial agreement that memorializes the continued relationship and provision of Bakkt crypto solutions to Apex’s 220+ clients. As part of the ongoing collaboration, Apex Fintech Solutions will have the opportunity to bring Bakkt’s leading platform solutions to its clients.

“It’s our purpose at Apex to enable frictionless investing for everyone and Bakkt’s team and platform are a tremendous complement to that,” said William Capuzzi, CEO of Apex Fintech Solutions. “We look forward to working together to continue to provide customers a seamless crypto experience and access to an expanded solution set. This is the beginning of an exciting time of growth and innovation for both of our organizations.”

Launched in 2019, Apex Crypto was created to allow investors to transition between trading equities and cryptocurrency by offering efficient account opening and funding solutions. Additionally, the Apex Crypto platform handles the complex regulatory and licensing obligations associated with cryptocurrency investing while allowing its clients to focus on offering a holistic user experience.

Transaction Highlights

- The transaction is expected to deliver revenue diversification and synergies to Bakkt as it scales its offerings

- Bakkt believes that Apex’s Crypto platform will accelerate its product innovation and development, with complementary crypto solutions that will offer our combined partners expanded options and functionality

- Bakkt and Apex Crypto’s joint capabilities are expected to create faster speed to market for more advanced crypto products, including staking, external transfers and NFTs

Transaction Details

Under the terms of the agreement, Bakkt will acquire Apex Crypto for a maximum purchase price of $200 million. Bakkt will initially pay $55 million in cash at the closing of the deal, and up to $45 million in Bakkt stock depending on the achievement of financial targets by the acquired business in the fourth quarter of 2022; up to an additional $100 million in Bakkt stock and seller notes may be paid depending on the achievement of financial targets by the acquired business through 2025.

The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2023 and is subject to required regulatory approvals.

Conference Call Details

Bakkt will host a conference call on Thursday, November 3^rd at 8:00 am ET. The live webcast of Bakkt’s conference call can be accessed at https://investors.bakkt.com along with the accompanying slide presentation. Investors and analysts interested in participating via telephone should pre-register at this link and reference participant access code 69938 approximately ten minutes prior to the start of the call to receive the dial-in information. A replay will be available promptly after the call and can be accessed at 800-770-2030 with participant access code 69938 until December 3^rd.

8 startups from 6 countries from over 100 applications were selected for the inaugural Climate Fintech incubation program across the Nordics & Baltics by F10, the leading innovation ecosystem powering the future of finance.

This group of ambitious entrepreneurs is looking to positively impact the decarbonization of the global economy through Fintech or Insurtech solutions. The cohort includes solutions from empowering individuals to invest more impactful, via industry climate action solutions, to deep-tech data analyses for increased transparency.

The following ventures will join the upcoming program on November 8th in Stockhom, and will have the opportunity to pitch their solutions for the first time during an official side event at Slush conference on November 18th in front of an audience of industry experts, corporates and investors.

Azzera, from Canada, is focused on serving hard-to-decarbonise industries by providing emissions measurement and a user-friendly integrated environmental marketplace.  Their technology calculates emissions directly and supports carbon offset purchases instantly – as a one-stop shop for customers needing readily available climate solutions.

Eljun, from Sweden, has a vision of providing a payment engine with all e-mobility services, within the charging infrastructure that is already developed. They aim to provide a transparent, and secure, financial service for EV charging, for everyone, from any location.

GreenGrowth, from the UK, is on a mission to empower people to invest for a more sustainable world. Via their unique app, people are enabled to invest in a climate-positive way that is transparent, personalised and above all, impactful.

OCO, from Lithuania, offers an automated carbon footprint calculation solution for banks, and their clients. With OCO, banks can track, measure and analyse carbon-intense activity in real-time, fully integrable with EU taxonomy.

SustainSME, from Switzerland, has developed a platform that makes it easy for finance providers to offer sustainability-linked finance to SMEs. Their marketplace creates an ecosystem that supports SME businesses on their sustainability journey.

Spritju, from Sweden, provides a platform service to guarantee the origin of electricity consumed by any device at any time, at any location. By that, Spritju empowers B2B services to meet their customer’s demand for sustainable solutions and transparency.

Weather It Is, from Israel, offers an innovative forecasting technology for insurance risk management. With very accurate forecast modelling, it enables organizations to make weather-intelligent decisions, reducing risks, and maximizing business returns.

Xworks, from the UK, offers a SaaS data platform that enables transparent waste trading, with end-to-end regulatory compliance. This will support businesses in their sustainability work, and at the same time create business opportunities.

During the 6-month intense and hands-on program, the selected startups will receive training, coaching, and mentoring, helping them develop and grow their venture, as well as attract investment opportunities ahead. In addition to the rigorous program, the founders will have ample opportunities to network.

Anders Norlin, Head of F10 Nordics and Baltics, commented:
“The interest for the program from startups has been very high, and the variety of climate fintech solutions presented reinforces the interest for more innovative solutions in the needed transition towards a net zero society. Furthermore, I’m very happy to see the extensive interest, and support, from established climate fintechs, and corporates, to engage in the program.”

Investors and corporate partners wishing to engage with this unique cohort of founders and identify the most exciting climate fintech solutions early in order to invest or collaborate are encouraged to get in touch.

The European banking payment landscape is changing fast with digital wallets predicted to account for one in three online transactions by 2023 and cash transactions continue to decrease with the Nordic countries leading the way. While end-users are changing their payment pattern towards digital solutions, the competitive landscape is also transforming. The traditional banks are challenged by non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs), fintechs, Big Tech players and digital start-up banks.

In response to these challenges, banks are now optimizing their business models to improve margins, and at the same time drive innovation and improve customer service.

A new survey by Tietoevry Banking, among senior decision-makers in more than 65 European banks, reveals that almost half of participants (51.5%) are looking to move at least part of their card operations to Software as a Service (SaaS) in the next two years. Looking out over a three-to-five-year time frame, a further 21.2% of respondents say they will be outsourcing some card operations, meaning that almost three-quarters (72.7%) of those answering say they intend to outsource.

The report also shows that banks will drive innovation and change through SaaS models either partly or the whole payment services value chain in order to achieve greater operational efficiency, better platform functionality and flexibility and expand the capacity to reduce their cost. While banks recognise the benefits of SaaS, their key concern is their ability to set and manage Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with outsourcing providers, as well as their organisation’s capability to adapt its internal processes for outsourcing.

Other findings from Tietoevry’s report include:

• Some 60% of banks surveyed currently outsource part of their processing requirement, with almost 50% outsourcing fraud management and slightly lower proportions opting to outsource parts of their card issuing and merchant management functions.
• When it comes to outsourcing infrastructure, 42,6% of respondents intend to opt for a multi-tenant solution to meet their Software as a Service (SaaS) outsourcing needs over the next year. Single-tenant solutions are the next most popular option at 23,8%.

“These results underline the need for banks to work with trusted, knowledgeable partners with a proven track records as they develop their approaches to outsourcing and migrate more of their card and payments businesses to outsourced service providers. Looking out over the next decade, we expect on-prem, public and private cloud hosting for outsourced payments services to coexist, though we also anticipate public cloud hosting will develop more specialised solutions for the banking and payments markets,” comments Valdis Janovs, Head of Instant and Retail Payment Services at Tietoevry Banking on the findings of this survey.

“We expect Software as a Service (SaaS) arrangements to prevail in the longer term. Banks have a good working knowledge of the risks involved in certain parts of the outsourcing process: however, they are still understandably conservative and our study shows the need for banks to develop confidence, knowledge and good working practices when it comes to outsourcing,” Toms A Jansons, Senior Strategic Product Manager at Tietoevry Banking, adds.

The survey was conducted in collaboration with Payments Cards and Mobile in May and June 2022. Payments Cards and Mobile surveyed more than 65 senior leaders from European banks.

India’s favourite checkout partner Simpl brings a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to Experience Dubai Like Never Before. Visitors to the Zomaland’22 carnival to be held in Pune now stand a chance to win an all-expenses paid trip to Dubai and stay at the Burj Khalifa. Simpl is the preferred payments partner for Zomaland’22 from Zomato powering India’s grandest food and entertainment carnival in Pune on November 5 & 6 at Mahalakshmi Lawns.

“We are thrilled to be the powered-by partner for Zomaland’22 from Zomato. As Zomaland’s preferred payment partner, Simpl lets you book tickets to attend the carnival. What’s more carnival goers stand the chance to win an Experiential Never Before Trip to Dubai via Simpl. Every edition of Zomaland across India will have one winner who gets to travel and experience Dubai with a loved one,” said Nitya Sharma, CEO & Co-Founder, of Simpl.

Carnival goers to the Pune edition of Zomaland ’22 can use Simpl to book tickets to the carnival. To take part in the Experience Dubai Like Never Before Contest, visit the Zomaland Carnival in your city and share your best moments on Instagram. Check into the Simpl Zone kiosk at Zomaland Pune and get more details on how you can win the contest. This year’s Zomaland will be held in seven Indian cities with 350+ food eateries, top-notch entertainment, and fun carnival games. Zomaland will continue its journey across other Indian cities including Mumbai, Ahmedabad, New Delhi, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Kolkata all the way through February 2023.

“We have been Zomato’s checkout partner for a long time now. We share common values: a customer-first approach that is innovation-centric and focused on ensuring a frictionless consumer experience. So, it made sense for us to extend that collaboration and sign up as Zomaland’s preferred partner for this year’s edition,” commented Nitya Sharma on the partnership with Zomaland carnival.

impak Ratings, a leading impact analysis and ratings fintech, acquires 100% of London-based Exerica’s assets to expand its AI capabilities. Exerica’s entire team will be integrated into impak’s production processes along with its proprietary AI data extraction and contextualization software. This will increase production capacity for impak’s high-quality impact assessments, including its entry-level SDG Alignment and SFDR products, now available as Freemium offerings.

This is an important step forward for the company: by integrating Exerica, impak will now benefit from a permanent foothold in the UK, a rapidly expanding market due to a growing demand for sustainable financial products and planned implementation of more stringent ESG reporting regulations.

Building Momentum for Sustainable Finance

The financial sector is undergoing a profound transformation. As key players in the financing of the economy, financial institutions are increasingly taking on environmental and societal challenges, to become strong enablers in this transition.

“The financial world needs to integrate impact analysis based on high-quality data. This is the only path to sustainability. By joining impak, Exerica will be a major contributor to impact analysis as a key data source, with its AI-driven data collection engine. Joining impak is the logical next step for Exerica,” notes Maxim Miller, founder and CEO of Exerica.

 “Whilst 100% automated ESG solutions suffer from the GiGo effect – garbage in, garbage out –  the addition of Exerica’s AI expertise to the impak team is fundamental to the scale-up of our augmented intelligence process.We will maintain our competitive advantage, which is to offer our clients contextualized impact data for them to make better financial decisions.” concludes Paul Allard, co-founder and CEO of impak Ratings.

impak, a unique player in the market

Launched in 2019 and based in Montreal, Paris, and now London, impak Ratings aims to be the leading European impact analysis and ratings agency. The start-up has already signed more than twenty clients thanks to its innovative methodology. The company provides financial institutions with high-quality impact analysis, based on the most rigorous and universally-accepted industry standards, allowing transparency, comparability, and data contextualization. By assessing how companies mitigate their negative impacts and how they create positive effects in relation to the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals, impak Ratings goes beyond the traditional analysis of ESG issues. This is a result of its double materiality approach, which consists of studying the impact of a company and the environment on one another. This approach is now recognized as being instrumental in catalyzing the financial sector to transformour economies, which explains impak's current collaboration with major players in the market, such as Societe Generale.

We are delighted to announce that Appital won The Trade News’ Award for Fintech of the Year’ during the 2022 Leaders in Trading Event, held on 02 November 2022. The award recognises the pioneers shaking up the way the industry operates, creating new pathways and developing best-in-class, cutting-edge technology solutions. 

Appital stood out for the launch of  Appital Turquoise BookBuilder™ in the summer of 2022, which is the first buyside to buyside bookbuilding platform to give institutional investors the opportunity to proactively source liquidity. Appital Turquoise BookbBuilder™ brings a historically highly manual and opaque process into an automated, electronic platform. The European trading team of the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, Norges Bank Investment Management, successfully originated and executed the first trade, showcasing that Appital established and tested a new buyside workflow, fully connected to the market infrastructure.

Mark Badyra, CEO of Appital, said: “We are absolutely thrilled to have won recognition in the industry for our bookbuilding platform. This is a great endorsement to all the work we carried out with many of our industry partners to launch Appital Turquoise BookBuilder™, essentially creating a new workflow for the buyside community to access hard-to-find liquidity”.

“I am very proud of our team who have worked tirelessly to deliver on our mission to bring innovation and transparency to equity markets.”

Appital enables buyside firms to gain control over the entire bookbuilding process. Asset managers benefit from liquidity discovery and price formation opportunities for illiquid equity positions, as well as the ability to execute large volumes on the regulated Turquoise MTF, often in multiple days’ ADV, with minimal market impact or risk of price erosion.

The award comes after a year of developing successful partnerships and building the necessary technology infrastructure to bring Appital’s vision to life, to introduce innovation and automation to a traditionally opaque and relationship-driven bookbuilding process.

Over the last year, Appital has integrated with EMS providers FlexTrade, FactSet and TS Imagine, and executing brokers Instinet and  Bernstein. In anticipation of the bookbuilding platform’s launch, Appital also secured an additional £1.7 million investment from Frontline Ventures.

OneDegree, the first Asia-headquartered insurer to provide coverage for digital assets, today announces that it has entered into a strategic partnership with METACO, the market-leading provider of digital asset custody orchestration technology. The partnership sees OneDegree provide its pioneering digital wallet insurance product OneInfinity to financial institutions that leverage METACO’s flagship digital asset custody orchestration platform Harmonize™.

METACO enables traditional banks of any size to enter the fast-growing digital asset market. OneInfinity provides peace of mind to these banks and their customers. The combination of bank and insurance offerings will be a driving force to take digital assets to the mainstream market. A recent survey found nearly 40 per cent of banking industry respondents from around the world stated that they may begin providing crypto-asset services to their retail customers in 2022.

Backed by institutional investors such as SC Ventures by Standard Chartered, METACO has established itself as a market-leading digital asset technology provider to Tier 1 banks and regulated financial institutions globally, trusted by flagship custodians such as Citi, BNP Paribas, BBVA, and the Union Bank of the Philippines. 

Harmonize enables institutional clients to securely store, trade, issue and settle digital assets, including cryptocurrencies and digital securities, with Tier 1 bank-grade security and compliance standards.

OneDegree will work closely with METACO to tailor tech-enabled digital asset wallet insurance coverage and risk management solutions for its clients in Hong Kong and the broader Asia Pacific region. Leveraging OneDegree’s expertise in crypto insurance and cybersecurity, the partnership is expected to bring best-in-class safekeeping standards to the digital asset ecosystem. Accelerated insurance coverage backed by distinguished cybersecurity expertise and risk management capabilities will create a superior commercial value proposition, uniquely available to those institutions that custody digital assets using METACO’s technology.

Richard Swainston, Business Development Director APAC at METACO, said,

“Institutional adoption of digital assets is seeing exponential rates of growth, both globally and in the Asia Pacific. METACO Harmonize was built with the highest market-rated security standards at its core, and we are proud to see OneInfinity validating its architecture and principles by offering its flagship digital asset wallet insurance product to METACO’s clients. OneInfinity is a pioneer in its field, and its unique service complements METACO’s solution, strengthening its end-to-end value proposition for digital asset custodians.”

Helen Ye, Chief Commercial Officer of OneDegree, added,

“We are delighted to engage METACO in a strategic relationship. Given the evolving nature of the digital asset economy, organizations large or small often struggle to manage the emerging risks in their core businesses. A practical approach to mitigate emerging risks is to identify all the perils and create a robust framework that monitors and leverages insurance. This is exactly where OneInfinity’s tech-enabled insurance solutions can add value both to our clients as well as their end users.”

• 04.11.2022 -- 09:20 am

Rapid Finance, a market leader in helping small businesses find sustainable and customized financing solutions through a fast and simple application process, has been named by Fintech Futures as a 2022 Banking Tech Award finalist in the “COVID-19 Response by Technology Services & Software Providers” category, which recognizes “innovative financial technology services and software providers that helped restore a volatile banking landscape through the depths of the pandemic.”

“The pandemic was incredibly hard on main street businesses – restaurants, bars, barber shops, nail salons and many other small business industries were closed completely with no incoming revenue to survive,” said Will Tumulty, CEO, Rapid Finance. “When we were approached by the Small Business Administration with an emergency request to deliver a loan origination system capable of handling the onslaught of applications from small businesses across the country, I knew we had to quickly develop and deploy a solution to help keep these businesses afloat.”

Rapid Finance was instrumental in the execution of the COVID-19 EIDL Programs, successfully supporting more than 21 million loan applications; nearly 2 million loan increases; 15 million grant applications; and processing more than 10 million loans and grants totalling more than $400 billion. The solution accepted nearly 700,000 applications in the first 24 hours alone and by the end of the first week, had 4.5 million applications in queue. The first approved loans were funded just three weeks after Rapid Finance’s initial conversation with the SBA, and during the weeks that followed, peak processing reached 380,000 grant approvals and nearly 150,000 loan approvals per day (resulting in almost $8 billion in daily funding).

The finance sector is investing wisely in cyber security tools and technologies despite allocating less than a third (32%) of their IT budget to security, according to new research from UK cyber security services firm, Bridewell.

The research, which surveyed UK cyber security decision-makers in the communications, utilities, finance, government and transport and aviation sectors, reveals that finance organisations are spending a lower proportion of IT budget on cyber security than other sectors across the UK’s critical national infrastructure (CNI). However, over three-quarters (76%) say that their organisation’s security budget has increased in the last 12 months, with investment expected to rise by a further 22% over the next year.

Despite trailing behind other sectors in the allocation of IT budget to cyber security, the finance sector is showing the greatest maturity in its threat detection capabilities. Respondents in finance say that it takes an average of only 13 days to detect a cyber attack on the organisation – a significantly shorter length of time than in communications (28 days), government (37 days), utilities (39 days) and transport and aviation (51 days). This suggests that finance organisations have greater levels of speed and visibility across systems to minimise the damage caused by a cyber breach.

Furthermore, two-thirds (66%) of finance organisations have either already implemented managed detection and response (MDR) or have an implementation in progress, a higher percentage than in any other sector. 57% have implemented or are implementing extended detection and response (XDR) to enable detection and response capabilities across network, web and email, cloud, endpoint and most crucially, identity. 

Martin Riley, Director of Managed Security Services at Bridewell, comments: “The results make for encouraging reading, especially as the finance sector continues to undergo major digital and infrastructure transformation. The sector has long been a particularly lucrative target for cybercriminals, so it’s of critical importance that cyber security budgets are spent maturing processes and technologies that give organisations the speed and visibility needed to detect escalating cyber threats. However, the finance sector should not get complacent, as detection is only one aspect of security – response and recovery are just as important.”