Flutterwave, Africa's leading payments technology company, announced the appointment of Marshall Lux, former JP Morgan Chase Chief Risk Officer of all consumer products, BCG and McKinsey Senior Partner, as Senior Advisor. He has extensive experience in model building, stress testing, portfolio management and optimization, line setting and increases, fraud, regulation, cyber, operations risk, and the like.

Marshall brings a breadth of experience from over 30 years in financial services.  At McKinsey, he served financial service clients across a variety of subsectors and led the firm’s Risk, Technology and Private Equity practices.  After McKinsey, he served as Chief Risk Officer for all consumer products globally at JP Morgan Chase including mortgages, credit cards, student loans, auto loans and small business loans. He also helped build McKinsey's Risk Management Practice.

Most recently, Marshall was a Senior Partner at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) where he is currently an active Senior Advisor.  He has worked on risk improvement programs for leading banks in the US and globally. He often sits or chairs the Risk Committees of Boards he sits on.

Marshall will advise across Flutterwave’s businesses, with an emphasis on global risk management, compliance and security-related areas.

Commenting on the new appointment, Olugbenga GB Agboola, CEO and Founder of Flutterwave said:

“We are fortunate to have the opportunity to draw upon Marshall’s decades of world-class experience from companies such as JP Morgan Chase, BCG and McKinsey. Robust risk management and compliance requirements has always been (and continue to be) our highest priority as we scale the business.”

Commenting on his appointment, Marshall Lux said:

“I am thrilled to be advising Flutterwave. They are clearly a winner and an important company in the African payments ecosystem. I look forward to working with the ever-growing team, which is attracting world-class talent.”

Marshall sits on several private equity boards and advises companies ranging from consumer credit, wealth, insurance, and cybersecurity. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Princeton University and received an MBA from Harvard Business School where he was a Baker and Ford Scholar.

Marshall’s appointment follows other additions to Flutterwave’s Executive Team including Oneal Bhambani (Flutterwave CFO and former American Express executive) and Gurbhej Dhillon, (Flutterwave CTO and former Goldman Sachs Managing Director.)

nCino, Inc., a pioneer in cloud banking and digital transformation solutions for the global financial services industry, announced that Kiraboshi Bank, a regional bank based in Tokyo, Japan, is live on the nCino Bank Operating System®. The JPY 6,361.4 billion asset (USD $44-billion*) Bank implemented nCino’s Commercial Banking Solution to enhance its business financing, part of its journey to create a single, cloud-based platform to better serve its business clients. The implementation was successfully led by IBM Japan, due to their in-depth knowledge of the industry and track record of introducing specialized solutions to the region.

The Bank needed a solution that would automate processes, remove manual barriers and improve internal operations. Kiraboshi Bank’s employees arrange many complex deals involving multiple banks and required a single, cloud-based platform to respond to their clients’ diverse challenges. The nCino platform will provide Kiraboshi with key insights to deliver faster responses and streamlined experiences for their banker, enabling them to better serve their customers.

IBM Japan's Yuji Sonku, Senior Partner, Financial Services, IBM Consulting, said, "IBM Japan has been supporting the digital transformation of financial institutions in the banking industry for many years. We are very pleased that we were able to contribute to the successful implementation of the nCino platform at Kiraboshi Bank and look forward to helping more Japanese financial institutions shift their lending operations to the cloud.”

“We’re extremely proud of the work we’ve done alongside IBM Japan,” said Itsuki Nomura, GM of nCino’s Tokyo office. “Supported by nCino’s best-in-class software, Kiraboshi will contribute to the local community by providing comprehensive financial services to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and individual customers in Tokyo. By improving efficiency and strengthening its risk management system through a 360-degree customer and portfolio view, the Bank will be positioned for success for years to come.”

AppTech Payments Corp. (AppTech), an innovative Fintech company powering commerce experiences, today announced its partnership with Chip Financial to support the company’s growing Fintech, digital banking and payments ecosystem. The partnership enhances Chip Financial’s suite of solutions that focus on a tailored customer approach to provide capabilities in Payments-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS).

Chip Financial provides a variety of clients with flexible omni-channel transactions across a full spectrum of brand sectors. The partnership between AppTech and Chip Financial enables further market reach and penetration to extend AppTech’s portfolio of commerce solutions.

“Customers want frictionless experiences and the ability to complete transactions using their preferred method. Our shared commitment to innovation and focus on the customer experience for brands of all types makes the partnership between AppTech and Chip Financial not only an ideal one but a powerful one. We look forward to working together to provide clients transformative payments and banking technologies to meet customers on their terms,” said AppTech President Virgil Llapitan.

James Starr, Vice President of Operations at Chip Financial added, “In today’s climate, building competitive financial products requires more technology than ever before because consumers want to have seamless interactions across mobile and web. Our partnership with AppTech will provide our clients with its innovative forward payments and banking technology that solves their pain points. The partnership roadmap will position us to execute our growth strategies and support our continued expansion.”

AppTech’s technology is rooted in a strong portfolio of patents covering many areas, including mobile-to-mobile payments. The company recently increased its portfolio to 17 total patents extending into geolocation technologies focused on the delivery, purchase and request of products and services.

"Identifying the right partner opportunities that deliver innovative solutions to our clients is key,” said Jamison Welsh, Head of Strategy at Chip Financial. “We have been hard at work with our qualified client network to provide them with disruptive digital banking technologies and have found that in our partnership with AppTech."

Fime’s Card Personalization Validation tool has been updated to meet the latest requirements defined by major international and domestic payment schemes. PersevalPro Issuer, can now be used to test payment cards and contactless devices in line with additional personalization, biometric, cryptographic and security features. It enables issuers and personalization bureaus to launch innovative and interoperable products quickly and efficiently while adhering to evolving payment specifications.

The use of the tool during product development can optimize the certification process. This helps to avoid the high costs and delays associated with failure to meet the necessary requirements. It also provides flexibility by allowing users to customize the testing environment to meet the needs of their ecosystem. Alongside a smooth and automated test process, customers can also benefit from Fime’s extensive end-to-end expertise.

Stéphanie El Rhomri, VP Services at Fime comments: “Banks, card manufacturers and personalization bureaus must ensure that cards not only meet payment scheme requirements but also avoid personalization issues that impact user experience. PersevalPro Issuer goes beyond ensuring that your product meets the standards defined by global and local payment schemes. Its Quality Control module helps to build confidence that it will perform as intended. Our customers can leverage our 15 years of expertise and a worldwide team of experts to effectively use PersevalPro Issuer to improve Quality Assurance and streamline the compliance process.”

Fime works closely with global and national payment schemes to ensure its card personalization validation test tool and certification modules meet the latest specifications and are kept up to date.

Napier, provider of leading anti-financial crime compliance solutions, has announced that the financial services firm SS&C Europe will be upgrading its offering with Napier’s AI-enhanced financial crime risk management platform, Napier Continuum, which includes Client Screening and Transaction Monitoring tools. SS&C Europe is the UK’s largest fund administrator.

Napier Continuum enables large-scale customer screening and re-screening capabilities and has been designed to scale alongside increasing compliance obligations as the business grows, making it the natural choice for SS&C.

SS&C Europe will now benefit from increased visibility over transactions moving through its systems, gaining access to detailed intelligence data to manage workflows more efficiently. Napier’s flexible and scalable platform will allow SS&C to adapt easily to any future business requirements.

Greg Watson, CEO at Napier, said: “We’re incredibly excited to be working with SS&C to provide them with a robust, agile anti-money laundering compliance system. Our solutions are engineered to empower compliance teams to make fully informed and data-driven decisions, minimising false positives and false negatives. It’s great to see another industry leader implementing our solutions and we look forward to working together.”

Global Processing Services (“GPS”), a leading global payments technology platform, today announced it is partnering with Featurespace, the world’s leading provider of adaptive behavioural analytics for fraud detection and risk management, to create a market-leading issuer processing fraud mitigation solution.

GPS will incorporate Featurespace’s industry-leading ARIC™ Risk Hub into its suite of fraud and risk management services globally. ARIC Risk Hub will further strengthen GPS’ fraud technology by improving fraud detection rates by over 70%, reducing false positives by 80%, and addressing fraudulent activity in real-time.

GPS Fraud Advantage, powered by Featurespace, will be enhanced with the expansion of GPS’ Fraud Prevention Team, enabling its customers to fully monitor, action and manage fraud alerts throughout the payments process.  GPS Fraud Advantage powered by Featurespace is expected to be available by mid-2023 with the phase one roll-out starting earlier in 2023.

“The sophistication and scale of payments fraud continue to evolve at a rapid pace making it one of the biggest risks in the payments industry today,” said Kevin Schultz, Chief Executive Officer, GPS. “Minimising payment fraud is a strategic priority for both GPS and our customers worldwide who put the protection of their cardholders’ accounts first.”

Schultz added: “This partnership with Featurespace is the first of many enhancements to our issuer payments capabilities that GPS will be announcing in the coming months. Our commitment to our customers is to provide a comprehensive range of industry-leading payments services in a secure and reliable fashion to allow them to deliver on their business objectives.”

Featurespace’s ARIC Risk Hub is an industry-leading real-time fraud prevention tool chosen by many of the world’s leading cards and payments businesses to enable them to successfully guard against evolving fraud challenges and drive higher approval rates, whilst minimising false positive alerts. Using a combination of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), ARIC Risk Hub learns and adapts from each cardholders’ historical transactions to generate risk scores, alerts and actions on potentially fraudulent transactions.

“Our technology and the results our customers achieve are recognised as industry-leading by those committed to fighting fraud and financial crime,” said Martina King, Chief Executive Officer, Featurespace. "Through this partnership, GPS will be able to provide an enhanced level of customer experience and increased security assurances, enabling their clients to focus on continued innovation and growth.”

OKX, the world’s second-largest crypto exchange by trading volume, has launched a number of activations in coordination with the launch of the Aptos Mainnet. Aptos is a layer 1 project that aims to develop a safe, scalable, and upgradeable Web3 Infrastructure

OKX Wallet is one of the first multi-chain wallets to integrate the Aptos Network and its broader ecosystem. Users can now view and transfer Aptos tokens using the OKX Wallet Mobile App, and soon do the same on the OKX Wallet web extension. Users can also look forward to trading on Aptos network via OKX’s multi-chain DEX in the coming weeks. OKX DEX provides users with the best prices and supports 10+ chains, allowing cross-chain swap of any tokens within a highly secure environment.

OKX has also listed APT on its spot trading markets as of October 18. APT is Aptos’s native token for network fees, validator staking and governance. APT withdrawals on OKX will open at 10:00 am UTC on October 19.

OKX Blockdream Ventures has also allocated funds to invest in projects on the Aptos blockchain. OKX Blockdream Ventures will invest 10 million USD from its 100 million USD fund to provide services and resources for high-quality projects in the Aptos ecosystem.

Finally, OKX is launching a special promotion just for Aptos users. In addition to a $15,000 prize pool, participants will be offered the chance to share in a gas airdrop prize, participate in a trade-to-win contest and invite their friends to share in an extra $5,000 prize.

LPA, the financial markets software and advisory firm, today announced that it had appointed Matthias Schulz as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to oversee the development of LPA’s technology stack and support clients along their digital transformation journeys.

Matthias joins LPA with a wealth of experience, ranging from ITERGO to Solera, Ingenico and ING. Having led large technology teams and transformational projects, Matthias will lead all of LPA’s engineering efforts going forward, creating synergies between different product teams and positioning the company as an innovative business that is accelerating the transformation of financial markets through next-generation technology.

Commenting on his appointment, Matthias said: “This is an exciting time for the financial services sector. The speed of change and innovation is unprecedented, and many firms struggle to keep up without the adequate support of a technology partner. From regulatory compliance to workflow automation technology, LPA has proved to be a trusted and valuable partner to the industry for over 20 years. I look forward to working together with a brilliant team of engineers to help clients navigate the latest wave of market volatility.”

“As we continue to expand our global footprint, we recognise the need to build easily scalable and high-performing software solutions. Our technology is second to none in the industry and with Matthias’ addition to the team, we will ensure LPA remains a global leader in the years to come. His experience and skills match perfectly with our newly released mantra of Defy, Deploy, Run.” commented Stefan Lucht, Founder of LPA.

CB Insights named Mambu, a leading SaaS cloud banking platform, to its fifth-annual Fintech 250 list for the third year in a row. The list recognizes the 250 most promising private fintech companies in the world. Mambu was recognized in the core banking and infrastructure category. 

"For financial institutions to stay resilient today, they need to provide innovative, personalized experiences for their customers. As they do so, it is vital to partner with a solutions provider that offers the robust technology and flexible platform they need to deliver modern financial experiences," said Robin Smith, Regional Vice President, North America, Mambu. “The recognition from CB Insights is a result of our team’s hard work to build a cloud banking platform that the world’s most successful financial brands rely on.”

Launched in 2011, Mambu fast-tracks the design and build of nearly any type of financial offering for banks of all sizes, lenders, fintechs, retailers, telcos and more. Mambu experienced tremendous growth over the past five years, attaining unicorn status in 2021 and adding multiple new partners to its existing ecosystem of more than 200 consultants, system integrators and technology partners.

Mambu’s unique composable approach means that independent components, systems and connectors can be assembled in any configuration to meet business needs and end-user demands. With its API-enabled solution and customer-centric approach, Mambu continuously reiterates and re-configures to keep up with changing customer and market demands in more than 65 countries.

"This year's Fintech 250 winners are shaping the future of financial services, from payments and banking to investing and insurance," said Brian Lee, SVP of CB Insights' Intelligence Unit. "Representing more than 30 countries, these companies are creating safer and more efficient payment methods and transforming how traditional banking, insurance and investment products are delivered. Together, they not only make financial services more convenient for users but also make them available to more people, especially traditionally underserved populations around the globe."

Utilizing the CB Insights platform, the research team selected these 250 winners from a pool of over 12,500 private companies, including applicants and nominees. They were chosen based on factors including R&D activity, proprietary Mosaic scores, market potential, business relationships, investor profile, news sentiment analysis, competitive landscape, team strength, and tech novelty. The research team also reviewed over 2,000 of analyst briefings submitted by applicants.