Virgin Money has announced the appointment of Sarah Wilkinson as Chief Operating Officer. Sarah will join Virgin Money from Thomson Reuters, where she is the Chief Information Officer and Head of TR Labs, Thomson Reuters’ technology research and innovation centres worldwide.

Prior to joining Thomson Reuters, Sarah was CEO of NHS Digital, responsible for systems and data for health and social care nationally, and before that was CIO at The Home Office. In her earlier career, Sarah spent 23 years in financial services during which she held CIO roles at Credit Suisse, UBS, Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers.

Sarah is a member of the Audit, Risk and Compliance Committee of Kings College London and holds advisory positions at ITV, Our Future Health and the Department of Computing at Imperial College.

Sarah was voted No 1 in the UK Tech50 for 2021, Computer Weekly’s annual ranking of the Top 50 Most Influential Leaders in the UK Tech Industry. She was also named one of the Global Top 100 Data Visionaries by HotTopics (2020) and Chief Digital Officer of the year by the CDO Club, the world’s largest community of C-suite digital and data leaders (2017). She was named in the CIO 100, CIO Magazine’s ranking of the most transformative and disruptive CIOs in the UK (2016).

Sarah studied Mathematics at Imperial College and holds an MBA from London Business School.

Sarah Wilkinson said: “Virgin Money’s digital transformation journey is well underway. I’m delighted to join the bank at this exciting time to help deliver its strategic ambition to be the UK’s best digital bank and bring innovative new customer propositions to market to support its growth ambitions.”

David Duffy, Virgin Money CEO said: “Sarah brings leadership expertise in delivering change, innovation and digital customer experience, and has a strong track record of digital transformation. Along with her extensive knowledge of financial services, this will enable us to build on the good progress we’ve made in aligning our customer touchpoints, operations and technology, as we focus on continually improving the services we provide to customers.”

Sarah will join Virgin Money at the start of 2023. Her new role will combine the existing roles of Fraser Ingram, Chief Digital and Innovation Officer, and Fergus Murphy, Chief Customer Experience Officer. Fraser decided to leave Virgin Money earlier this year and will remain in the role until Sarah joins. Fergus has agreed to remain with Virgin Money to support a number of strategic activities.

AstroPay, the online payment solution of choice for millions of users worldwide, has partnered with Huobi Global, one of the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges and digital asset trading platforms, to provide fiat to crypto payment services for Huobi users in Latin America.

Through the partnership, AstroPay will enable Huobi Global users to purchase their crypto assets with fiat money securely and benefit from local and international payment method options available in AstroPay network.

Already one of the biggest payment providers in Latin America since its inception in Brazil in 2009, AstroPay is now available across the globe with millions of registered users and rapidly developing in Asia, Africa and Europe. AstroPay is an easy payment solution for consumers who do not necessarily have access to traditional banking services and who want to purchase online on international sites. Users can pay easily with over 200 payment methods, in their local currency.

By partnering with AstroPay, Huobi Global will open the fiat to crypto payment option in Latin America through AstroPay digital wallet. Users in these countries will then be able to purchase and trade through a variety of payment methods including credit and debit cards, bank transfers and local alternative options, such as Pix in Brazil and SPEI in Mexico.

Lily Zhang, Chief Financial Officer of Huobi Group, said: “Latin America lays claim to a young and vibrant population brimming with enthusiasm for the crypto industry, and we have observed a significant increase in the number of new Huobi Global users from this region. Our collaboration with AstroPay underscores our goal to make the purchase and trading of digital assets a secure, convenient and enjoyable experience for everyone."

Sara Rita, Chief Commercial Officer of AstroPay, said: “AstroPay is well known for providing payment services for companies looking to target the diverse Latin American market. Huobi Global users will be able to purchase and sell their crypto assets in local currencies, which ultimately lead to more trading, higher volume, and greater engagement within the sector.”

StockApps.com reveals that Visa, MasterCard, and American Express combined consume less than 1% of Bitcoin electricity.

Speaking on the data, StockApps' specialist, Edith Reads, said. "Most people prefer cashless transactions. Bitcoin and credit cards are both giving that service. But, Credit cards are environmentally conscious since they only use a small amount of electricity."

Businesses that accept credit cards require formal banking ties to settle transactions. The transactions approve payments, not make them. Due to this, there is a clear distinction between a transaction involving digital assets and one involving a credit card.

Traditional Banking System

Traditional banking consumes higher electricity. The use of data centres and the operation of bank branches all rely on power. Besides, the running of digital payments networks comprising card systems and ATMs needs the most electricity in the chain for a conventional banking system.

Card networks include the systems managed on a global scale by financial firms such as Mastercard, Visa, and American Express. Bitcoin has no real-world value. A subset of the population maintains that mining cryptocurrency wastes time and resources.

Bitcoin as a Medium of Exchange

Bitcoin is failing as a medium of exchange. There is a lot of fuss about it, and there are workarounds for sellers like Amazon that will not accept it. After a decade of promises, bitcoin is still not fungible. Moreover, it is heavily devalued in the few transactions where it applies.

Over time, merchants' crypto adoption in the economy may improve, maybe with protections. Stablecoins ensure stable crypto prices by pegging them to real money, i.e., U.S. dollars. Like the old dollar-gold ratio. The full story and statistics can be found here: Visa, Mastercard, and American Express Combined Consume Under 1% Of Bitcoin

Chris Codo has been appointed Senior Relationship Manager at United Fintech, the fintech one-stop-shop for banks, hedge funds and asset managers.

Chris Codo spent the last seven years as Senior Director, CME Group, with a focus on selling to hedge funds. His previous roles include Sales Director at FXall, Sales Director at Barclays Capital, Vice President at Lehman Brothers, and Vice President at Bloomberg LP. 

At United Fintech, based in the London office, Chris Codo will focus on selling to his relationships and managing United Fintech’s largest clients. His extensive experience in enabling hedge funds and asset managers to improve execution, workflow and efficiencies will be invaluable in his new role.

Tom Robinson, Partner and Head of Sales, United Fintech said, “I have known Chris for over 15 years and he is, without doubt, one of the most accomplished salespeople out there. Chris has a proven track record of hitting revenue targets and deepening relationships across his extensive network. We are thrilled to have him join United Fintech in a senior role and look forward to seeing him in action!”

Christian Codo added, “I am truly excited to be joining such a forward-thinking group of individuals. The United Fintech business model reflects the ambition of the company in providing clients with innovative capital markets solutions in an increasing variety of market segments. I am looking forward to leveraging my knowledge and my network to provide asset managers and hedge funds with innovative technology solutions which address some of the pain points they are currently experiencing, helping them to evolve and gain a competitive edge.”

United Fintech acquires and scales innovative fintech companies in the capital markets space, providing banks, hedge funds, asset managers, and brokers with a single point of access to solutions that accelerate their transition to the digital world. United Fintech’s platform includes NetDania, TTMzero, FairXchange and Athena Systems, all with solutions designed to drive automation, save money, and deliver efficiency within capital markets. United Fintech employs over 140 people across six offices: London, New York, Copenhagen, Berlin, Madrid and Craiova.

• Chime is the most influential company in the fintech market in 2022, returning a score of 7.22 out of 10 in our index. The personal finance giant ranks second for funding (£2 billion) and latest valuation (£21.9 billion), behind Stripe and FTX respectively. 

• Between the 50 fintech giants included in the study, an average Fintech score of 4.99 was awarded, with overall funding for the industry leaders standing at $28.9 billion.

• Trading in NFTs increased by 21,000% in 2021, and OpenSea - the world’s largest NFT marketplace - ranks second in the study. They boast the most twitter followers (1.8 million), as well as receiving 2,889,600 Google searches in the last 12 months. 

• The fintech company with the highest valuation is FTX; the Bahamian cryptocurrency firm is the only contender outside the US to feature in the top 10. The company is currently valued at a whopping £28 billion; Over 17 times more than its funding of £1.6 billion.

Personal financial management tool Teenit has tapped into Nordigen’s freemium platform in order to obtain open banking data to generate accurate insights and perform detailed analysis.

Teenit is a unique financial tool that was created to educate teenagers on money management, increase their financial literacy and enable them to keep track of their finances and create budgets. They aim to assist children in developing healthy habits in a cashless society and help them build up their knowledge to prevent financial issues in adulthood. 

The age-appropriate application benefits from data insights, videos, and interactive quizzes to successfully engage teens in learning about their financial habits and how to prepare them for potential challenges ahead. The application also includes specially designed educational modules and timely notifications to ensure that the users remain continuously engaged and rewarded for their educational efforts.

“When we thought about Teenit, we didn’t want to become just yet another financial instrument. We wanted to serve education to young customers, no matter what bank they choose. The integration with Nordigen enables us to fulfil our purpose easily. With parents’ authorisation, we are able to connect directly to young customer bank accounts anywhere in Europe, visualise for them their money flows in a teenager-friendly manner and analyse them to further personalise the offered educational content,” explains Tatiana Pastukhova, CEO of Teenit.

The integration with Nordigen allows the software to securely connect to customers’ bank accounts to source accurate transactional data and balances in real-time. 

"We are thrilled about this partnership. Financial literacy and education is incredibly important for all demographics, and starting to build a foundation of knowledge from a young age will be very beneficial for Teenit’s user base. Open banking goes hand-in-hand with personal financial management tools as access to customer information enables PFMs to stay up-to-date with their suggestions and analytics," says Rolands Mesters, co-founder and CEO of Nordigen.

Today, Mollie, one of the fastest growing financial services providers in Europe, announced it has been selected by Vonage, a global cloud communications leader, as a strategic payment provider for Vonage’s Jumper.ai product across Europe. 

Jumper.ai is Vonage’s end-to-end conversational commerce solution. It enables brands of all sizes to create messaging-first customer buying experiences across popular messaging, social and web platforms. Together with Mollie, the platform will help businesses to engage customers and drive sales.

With more consumers preferring to shop online and the social commerce industry expected to triple by 2025, conversational commerce has become a growth engine for modern business. It is instrumental to delivering a differentiated, proactive and real-time customer experience. 

“Vonage’s Conversational Commerce solution, Jumper.ai, enables businesses to meet new and existing customer needs now and well into the future, with embedded commerce capabilities to simplify the way they serve, connect with, and sell to their own customers from anywhere, on any channel,” said Yash Kotak, Sr. Director Product Management at Vonage and Founder of Jumper.ai. “Vonage is excited to partner with Mollie to provide businesses throughout Europe with this ability to engage customers in their preferred channels, turning conversations into engagements into sales, all while offering a best-in-class payment solution.”   

Customer support agents can easily sell and upsell products or services during a conversation started by a customer. Through in-chat payments, agents can take payments mid-conversation. They are also able to re-engage with potential shoppers after cart abandonment, notify them of a restock, refund them for damaged items, or allow them to pay a deposit for an in-person order. As a result, users can monetise the micro-moments and build connections with their customers through one-to-one conversations, with the whole payments process being absolutely effortless.

Mollie’s integration with Vonage means businesses can guide customers to the products they love via multichannel chats, such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Together, Vonage and Mollie will help businesses drive sales and power up chat conversations with Mollie’s best-in-class payment solutions to create a seamless buying experience for customers. Payments requests can also be shared with customers directly via chat to redirect them to the payment page. 

“We’re delighted to be selected as a strategic payment provider for Vonage’s Jumper.ai solution and to grow our presence in the conversational commerce space,” said Michaela Weber, Vice President of Partnerships at Mollie. “Conversational commerce offers huge potential to engage with customers more directly and drive sales. We look forward to working with Vonage to help retailers differentiate themselves and bring their shoppers the best end-to-end user experience possible.”

One of the fastest-growing fintech players in the country, PayMe, has come up with a renewed brand outlook to bolster its primary commitment to bringing financial happiness to the masses. In the pursuit to become the preferred choice of financial services in the country, PayMe has renamed its brand name “PayMe India” to just “PayMe” – the name that made the brand create recognition in the market. The company will also be using the new brand name ‘PayMe’ for its further communications and other official purposes. PayMe has also re-designed the company’s logo, icon and brand colours to reach out to the larger market segment.

“PayMe has been dedicated to providing high-quality, moderate-priced and transparent financial products which can be availed by everyone in society. Our vision is to become a globally acknowledged FinTech brand by spreading ‘financial happiness’ utilizing the latest financial technologies,” mentioned co-founder and CEO of PayMe Mahesh Shukla.

The re-designed logo of PayMe is a graphic comprised of the wordmark (logotype) and figurative mark (symbol). An exclusion zone around the logo has been created to protect its integrity and make sure the logo is easy to read. PayMe has also revamped its official app icon, which is a smaller representation of the brand for the browser and for the mobile interfaces.

The colours used in the logo and the icon of PayMe are Blue Zodiac, which refers to trust, promise and sincerity and Blaze Orange, which refers to freedom, optimism, creativity and enthusiasm. In the words of Mahesh Shukla, “The colours signify trust and commitment towards providing the best financial services always.”

“PayMe has been closely associated with some basic principles like transparency with no hidden charges, easy break-up, a clear ratio of interest, friendly services, instant loan disbursal processes, personalized care and overall being a partner for life,” said Mahesh Shukla.

Web3 Investco AG, a private equity firm based in the Crypto Valley of Zug, Switzerland, focused on investments in targeted segments of the blockchain technology, payment services and software industries, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement to buy 100 per cent of the voting shares of Blocktrade SA, a company limited by shares with its registered office in Luxembourg. With this transaction, the seller of Blocktrade – Elite Club Foundation – is continuing to implement its strategic goals and is thus leaving the fintech sector completely.
 
Behind the new shareholder of Blocktrade are none other than Web 3.0 industry professionals Ralf Glabischnig, Hubertus Thonhauser, Bernhard Koch and the current CEO of Blocktrade SA, Christian Niedermüller.
 
Ralf Glabischnig is a serial entrepreneur and investor, who has been heavily involved in building the so-called Crypto Valley supported by the ventures of the Inacta Group. He is actively building a worldwide blockchain ecosystem, starting in Switzerland and expanding to the Middle East, the Crypto Oasis.
 
Hubertus Thonhauser is a seasoned venture capital investor with a sector focus on fintech, Web3 and the gaming industry. He was co-founder of Babil Games, the leading mobile games provider in the MENA region, acquired by Stillfront Group in 2016. Hubertus has previously served as CEO of Casinos Austria International in Switzerland and was Chairman of the Tezos Foundation. Today is Partner in Ghaf Capital, a leading Web3 focused venture capital firm in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
 
Bernhard Koch has over 20 years of experience in IT and financial services and worked across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Hong Kong. Since 2015, Koch has invested in and started several products, agencies and blockchain projects. Besides many others, he is the CEO and founder of Cryptix Group, a Web3 venture builder located in the Crypto Valley in Switzerland.
 
Christian Niedermüller was appointed CEO of Blocktrade in February of 2022. Having held senior positions at various international financial institutions and private equity firms, including Cerberus, HCOB and other European banks, Christian is as well a seasoned fintech investor and manager and has been in the digital asset industry already for more than seven years. He is a regular pre-seed/seed investor in the crypto industry with his co-founded Venture Capital firm SMAPE Capital, he is as well a co-founder of DAIC Capital and also co-founded the DAAA (Digital Asset Association Austria), where he is still a board member.  
 
Blocktrade is a digital asset marketplace that makes investing in cryptocurrencies easy. Headquartered in Luxembourg, with VASP (Virtual Asset Service Provider) registrations in Estonia and in Italy, the company operates and develops the go-to crypto investment platform for all things around gamification, social gaming and networking, enabling, simplifying and diversifying the entry into the crypto world for people with all levels of knowledge from beginners to seasoned crypto professionals. Blocktrade is launching its new interface, Blocktrade 2.0, which will offer users zero trading fees on most tokens, plus additional assets, new payment options and live chat support.
 

"Blocktrade will highly benefit from the vast industry knowledge and extensive network of its new shareholder and the people behind it and I am really looking forward to shaping the way of Blocktrade together with the new shareholders" says Christian Niedermüller, CEO of Blocktrade and as well board member of its new shareholder Web3 Investco AG. After having worked for Blocktrade over the past months, Christian Niedermüller helped to build out the team and initiated a strategy change from Blocktrade, which first integration step will be revealed soon.

Going forward, the partnership between Web3 Investco AG and Blocktrade will help the management team at Blocktrade to focus on continuing to invest into the growth of the exchange platform through further development of industry-leading products, improving payment methods and pursuing crucial features like staking and other new asset classes such as tokenized shares and connected mini-games.  
 

"Once acquired the necessary licenses, we plan to list many new assets and asset classes followed by their communities and will pivot into the area of gaming, skill/social gaming and everything around network effects in the next half year" says Christian Niedermüller.

Railsr, the leading global embedded finance experiences platform, is partnering with Maslife to launch a finance app that combines financial health and mental well-being, supported by Mastercard and Checkout.com.
 
The Maslife-solution is based on documented research that mental and physical well-being has a huge impact on financial health. Maslife is combining leading payment and banking features with an ingenious mix of gamification and artificial intelligence to inspire users to make simple changes to their daily routines that lead to long-term positive results.
 
The Maslife app combines a full suite of high-tech mobile bank functionalities with integrated budgeting tools and places a strong emphasis on fitness, with exercise trackers, yoga tutorials and meditation workshops specifically devised to keep users moving and motivated. Maslife is also launching Apple Pay/Google Wallet functionality, supported by Mastercard.
 

Kash Amini, founder and CEO of Maslife, said: “The team and I are amazed by the overwhelming support and positive reaction to Maslife. No other app on the market does what ours can, with Maslife’s unique approach to improving people’s lives by taking care of their finances while simultaneously supporting their health and mental well-being. Our journey is just starting. In the near future, we will offer a wide range of modern payment services including a crypto (digital asset) wallet. This allows users to buy, sell and hold crypto, addressing the increasing demand for hybrid traditional and crypto payment services.” Maslife is currently building a B2B platform to offer businesses and their employees tailored well-being features and branded debit-card, this will roll out in Q1 2023.
 

The Maslife app launched the Beta version in May 2020 and quickly attracted over 6,500 active participants. It has a current waitlist of some 28,000 users. The full UK launch is planned for 12th September 2022, with a European roll-out into Germany, France and Italy during the second quarter of 2022 currently valuing the company at around £22m.
 
Built into the Maslife-app are:
 
 • Conscious spending tools, multi-currency accounts, debit cards, currency exchange, transfers, and a range of crypto wallets;
 • Step tracker, distance recorder, calorie counter, guided meditation and yoga programmes;
 • Exclusive rewards for in-app achievements, cashback, retail discounts and more.
 
Railsr, a Mastercard Fintech Express Partner, provides Maslife with a number of services via its leading global embedded finance experiences platform. These include card issuing and processing services, Banking-as-a-Service and licensing, enabling Maslife to provide virtual and physical cards, and dedicated accounts, to its users.
 

Louisa Murray, Global Head of Key Customers and Channel Partners at Railsr, said: “We are pleased to be partnering with Maslife in this exciting project. It is the kind of initiative that we look for in a partnership, and we are looking forward to providing the support and services they need for the company to grow and thrive.”
 
Kash Amini, founder and CEO of Maslife added: “We partnered with Railsr because they have a strong industry track record and have a number of successful organisations in their portfolio, and we are thrilled to have them support us in our venture.”
 

Railsr is headquartered in London and has offices in Singapore, the US, Australia, Lithuania, Germany, the Philippines, Vietnam and Sri Lanka.