Bybit, the third most visited cryptocurrency exchange in the world with more than 7 million users, announced a series of offers for Indian users with unprecedented rewards and bonuses from Aug. 12, 10 AM UTC to Sept. 1, 10 AM UTC.

The campaign in India seeks to improve crypto literacy and offer a frictionless and safe trading experience for traders of all levels. Bybit is poised to be a one-stop crypto destination offering spot, derivatives, staking and earning products and services, complete with an NFT marketplace and advanced tools to automate trading strategies.

New users in India can enrol in three simple steps: learn, practice and share. The first 1,000 traders to sign up will get to share a $10,000 rewards pool and take part in an NFT giveaway. Eligible users are also entitled to up to $420 in bonus through the Bybit referral program.

The learning benefits include tutorials on trading basics and "Bybit 101" videos:
 

• How to Deposit Crypto Directly Into Bybit
• Getting Started With Bybit Copy Trading
• Trade 24/7 With Bybit Grid Bots
• How to Buy Coins on P2P Through Bybit

"We are rolling out this educational and promotional campaign in India in response to the demand from the fast-growing communities in the region. India is a vibrant and unique economy with a rising, digitally savvy middle class looking for innovative solutions to diversify into digital assets and capture the enormous opportunities in the crypto economy," said Ben Zhou, co-founder and CEO of Bybit.

"Crypto offers the opportunity of a lifetime for our generation, and to reap the benefits people need access to technology and knowledge. Choosing a secure and trusted platform is step one," said Zhou. "We are in the business of supporting the delivery of crypto's promise by building the fastest, safest and most reliable platform for all things crypto," he added, referring to Bybit's record of 99.9% uptime and its high-throughput trading engine capable of processing 100,000 transactions per second.

BT today announced Barclaycard Payments as the latest business to join its new partnership network, aimed at helping the UK’s smallest firms to grow.

Barclaycard has signed up to BT’s partnership network, following The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), with the aim of delivering a host of benefits for small firms over the next year. While the offers will change regularly, benefits include:

• Barclaycard business customers to benefit from up to £100 off the upfront cost of their EE business handset
• 2% Cashback for BT business customers who use their Barclaycard business card to pay for any BT or EE Services. That’s on top of any existing Barclaycard cashback rewards, such as 1% cashback on all business spend with the Barclaycard Select Cashback credit card* (Terms and conditions apply)

The new partnership network – specifically designed for micro-businesses with 0-5 employees – aims to deliver a host of extra perks to customers across broadband, mobile, connected devices, and digital marketing, plus other forms of support aimed at helping businesses grow. In addition to the new Barclaycard offers, FSB members can now claim up to £250 towards running their own social media and digital advertising campaigns through BT’s Digital Marketing Hub, This new digital platform allows businesses to quickly create, send and measure digital marketing campaigns across social media platforms, using built in AI tech to drive the best results for their business.

To help its customers create new opportunities and make the running of their business easier, BT is also offering its smallest business customers a 15 per cent discount on FSB membership for 12 months when they join before 30 September.  This will give them access to a wide range of vital support services, including legal and HR advice, financial products and health and wellbeing support.

Chris Sims, BT’s MD for SoHo (Small Office/Home Office unit) said: “We’re delighted to be welcoming Barclaycard as the latest partner to our partnership network, as they support us on our mission to give the UK’s smallest firms the benefits and boosts they need to grow. We want technology, skills and expertise to be as accessible as possible for small businesses, and our partnerships with Barclaycard and FSB will provide our customers with exclusive offers and benefits across broadband, mobile, digital marketing and connected devices over the coming year. We look forward to adding more partners to our partnership network over the coming weeks to offer an even broader range of benefits to our customers.”

Colin O’Flaherty, Head of SME at Barclaycard Payments, said: “As they continue to brace themselves for what is an increasingly difficult trading environment, we want to give the nation’s smallest businesses the boost they may need to help them grow. This is why we’re excited to be partnering with BT, who share in our common mission to support the UK’s small business community, the driving force of our economy.

BT’s partnership network for the UK’s smallest firms will expand over the coming weeks and months. The scheme will see BT forging mutually beneficial partnerships with a number of like-minded organisations across a range of sectors, including retail, hospitality, banking, finance and membership bodies, to bring value-added benefits to its smallest customers.

The launch of the new partnership network forms part of BT’s recently announced Enterprise Customer Charter. The new Charter is made up of a range of new initiatives from BT aimed at boosting the growth of UK businesses and the public sector and includes a pledge around delivering standout customer experiences.

To find out more about how BT is driving and supporting UK business growth through partnerships visit here or call 0800 012 1245.

Geraint Rogers has joined Identity Service providers Credas as their new Chief Strategy Officer having previously been the Product Director for Identity, Fraud and Financial Crime at Equifax UK.

In his new role, Geraint will help Credas achieve its growth and expansion plans by identifying new opportunities and helping to enhance its existing proposition.

Geraint has almost 30 years of experience in product development working across banking and risk/compliance including senior strategy roles at LexisNexis Risk Solutions and Experian.

In this newly created role, Geraint will join Credas’ executive board alongside CEO Tim Barnett and CTO Kevin Smith.

CEO, Tim Barnett commented:
“Geraint will join a superbly talented team and help blend effective Identity and Compliance tooling with meaningful user experiences. The adoption of IDV technology and digital identities are rapidly expanding and Geraint will help Credas stay at the forefront of the market.”

Geraint Rogers added:
“It’s a real pleasure to have joined the excellent team at Credas as Chief Strategy Officer. I am proud to be able to contribute to the next steps in the team’s journey.
There is so much opportunity for Credas to make a difference, driving innovative and agile solutions to market; expanding the value to new sectors; ensuring that end-user experiences remain focal to outcomes as the pace of digital change accelerates.”

Visa today announced that Visa tap to pay will officially arrive on GO Transit, and has launched on the UP Express, making it easier to travel on transit by offering riders a contactless payment option with their Visa credit card or payment-enabled device (e.g. smartphone or smartwatch).

ANZ Bank New Zealand Ltd (ANZ New Zealand) has selected financial technology leader FIS^® to modernize its core banking capabilities.

ANZ New Zealand will be the first bank outside the U.S.to utilize FIS’ Modern Banking Platform, which is deployed on Microsoft Azure. FIS’ Modern Banking Platform enables convenient, frictionless digital banking services through a cloud-native architecture. The platform is a highly secure core banking solution that uses extensive measures to protect data and features the latest advancements in cloud security, monitoring and resiliency from Azure.

Ninety-one per cent of financial institutions are using cloud services today or planning to soon according to the Cloud Security Alliance. Yet traditional brick and mortar banks have been slower to move the core of their operations, core banking capabilities, into the cloud.

Cloud-enabled, componentized, open and highly secure – FIS Modern Banking Platform is designed with API-first functionality that puts financial institutions in control of their customer experiences. The solution’s plug-and-play components enable institutions to build the retail and commercial capabilities needed today with the speed needed to innovate into the future.

“Banks need modern systems to meet growing expectations for personalized products and services, and strengthen the customer experience,” said Andrew Beatty, Head of Enterprise Banking at FIS. “Cloud-based systems have quickly moved from a competitive advantage to the baseline of what makes a successful bank. Cloud-based core banking will enable banks to increase their speed to market and become more agile. We believe ANZ New Zealand is just the beginning of a huge industry trend to drive digital transformation through the cloud.”

“Upgrading our core banking technology into a cloud-based platform means we can continue to deliver reliable, efficient and secure services for our customers,” said Mike Bullock, Chief Information Officer at ANZ New Zealand. “Our current core banking system is very robust and up-to-date but, like most platforms used by banks around the world, it is based on technology developed decades ago. This work sits within our current five-year investment plan and will allow us to be more innovative in how we deliver banking services.”

“We’re honoured to be a part of ANZ New Zealand’s cloud journey, together with FIS, to help modernize their core banking infrastructure,” said Bill Borden, Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Financial Services at Microsoft. “Running on Microsoft Azure, FIS Modern Banking Platform delivers a flexible, data-driven solution to deepen customer relationships and roll out new products more quickly, while managing risk effectively.”

ANZ New Zealand’s current Systematics core banking technology is also supplied by FIS.

Maven 11 has launched a Permissioned Pool, together with Maple Finance. The initial pool size is $ 40 million in USD Coin (USDC) with an attractive risk-adjusted return to investors. Initial participants for the new pool are Flow Traders, Wintermute and Auros.

The pool will issue loans to a diversified set of borrowers the Maven 11 team already has a commercial history and track record. These borrowers are all premier low-latency trading firms in digital assets with market-neutral strategies that already have a strong and established track record of borrowing from existing Maven 11 pools on Maple Finance. Flow Traders, a leading global market maker, will participate for the first time. 

Michael Lie, Head of Digital Asset Trading at Flow Traders says: “This new pool, created by Maven 11, is an exciting opportunity for Flow Traders to expand its footprint within DeFi. At Flow Traders, our focus is to work with partners who are actively contributing to the development of the Digital Asset space and this new pool is another highlight of how Maven 11 is innovating in this space. We are looking forward to further building our partnership with them.” 

The funds in the Permissioned Pool have been provided by institutional investors, including crypto-investment platforms Midas and AQRU and Qredo, the digital asset self-custody solution.  

All investors (as well as borrowers) will be whitelisted and need to comply with Maple Finance’s KYC/AML policy. 

Balder Bomans, Chief Investment Officer at Maven 11 adds: “Our journey with Maple as an on-chain credit marketplace started with a strong belief of transparency in capital markets. The last few months have further underwritten our bull case of transparent on-chain credit markets. Institutional investors have been noticing the innovation and efficiency Maple brings and we are very proud to launch this new pool with a respected institution such as Flow Traders.”

The capital on Maple Finance’s platform sits in Lending Pools, each managed by a Pool Delegate. As a Pool Delegate, Maven 11 forms the link between investors and companies, tasked with assessing the creditworthiness of borrowers and determining the terms of the investment, such as collateralization ratio and interest rates. In addition to the newly launched permissioned/KYC pool in USDC, Maven 11 also manages two permissionless pools that are open to all investors: one denominated in USDC and another in wETH.

TeamApt has just completed a financing round and brought on board one of the world’s largest fintech specialists, QED Investors.

With almost $5 billion in assets under management, QED is a premier VC in the fintech space. They have invested in 27 unicorns over more than 180 portfolio companies across 14 countries. 

TeamApt is its first investment in Africa. TeamApt operates Nigeria’s largest business payments and banking platform, with more than 400,000 businesses onboarded and processing $100 billion annualized run-rate transaction value. Its all-in-one business solution aims to digitize Africa's economy and is laying the foundation that will provide Nigeria's 41 million SMBs with digital payments acceptance channels, access to working capital and business expansion loans, and business management tools such as expense management (business payments cards), accounting and book-keeping solutions to manage its operations. The business has grown by more than 300% annually since launching in 2015 and is now targeting its first wave of international expansion in Africa in the coming months.  

“With this financing round, TeamApt is widening our credit offerings,” said TeamApt CEO Tosin Eniolorunda.

“QED’s investment proves TeamApt’s opportunity for exponential growth as a world-class financial institution at the forefront of Africa’s economic revolution. As core fintech operators, QED is bringing the fintech expertise we need to scale in Nigeria and as we plan to expand our offering across Africa. With QED’s operator expertise and TeamApt’s excellent management team, TeamApt will continue digitising Africa’s economy, enabling growth, inclusion and access to financial services. In September 2021, QED announced it had closed a substantially oversubscribed $1.05 billion fund, including $550 million in QED Fund VII for early-stage investments and $500 million in a new Growth Fund. QED first announced it was entering Africa in February 2022, hiring Gbenga Ajayi and Chidinma Iwueke to lead its investments on the continent".

“I am proud to bring Africa to QED and QED to Africa,” said QED Investors Partner and Head of Africa Gbenga Ajayi.

“I could not think of a better way to enter the continent than with our investment in TeamApt. Tosin and his team have steadily built an impressive payment and distribution network across Nigeria over the past five years. Their strong and positive unit economics, coupled with a deep customer focus, will enable them to continue to build out an even more expansive network. Enabling a growing digital form of payments for merchants and consumers in Nigeria is exciting, but being able to deepen the financial capability of these merchants, providing them with the everyday tools and credit they need to run their businesses, will be profoundly impactful.”

Nigeria is home to one of Africa’s largest, entrepreneur-led economies with ~40% of the population owning their own business. The country is at the forefront of the wide-scale adoption of digital payments across the continent with over $800 billion in digital transactions annualized for the first four months of 2022.

FT Partners served as a financial and strategic advisor to TeamApt in the financing round, highlighting FT Partners' track record in the payments space across emerging markets.

Open Banking Expo, the largest global community of Open Banking and Open Finance executives driving the biggest digital transformation in the financial services sector, is back with its flagship event in Europe, and this year it will be in person.

Adam Cox, co-founder of Open Banking Expo, said: “PSD2 and Open Banking have continued to accelerate, reshaping the European financial services ecosystem and paving the way for PSD3 and Open Finance. So, Open Banking Expo Europe returns to bring together those leading the Open Banking, Open Finance and Open Payments revolution to shine a light on the work of innovators, regulators and policymakers across the European ecosystem.”

Set against a volatile geopolitical and regulatory backdrop, this year’s event will provide a platform to review progress, share the most exciting developments, analyse current regional trends, and discuss predictions for 2023 and beyond.

With Token as its headline partner, the Expo will cover a number of key themes and pressing topics, such as what an interoperable Open Finance framework might look like now that a common API standard is potentially in sight, and how innovation is forging a new path for payments experiences like no other.

Todd Clyde, CEO of Token, said: “As open banking fundamentally changes the payments landscape, all eyes of the global payments community are on Europe, which is now recognised as a pioneer in embracing Open Banking and API-centric models. On the back of this, we expect to see Open Banking payments exceed $87 billion in the next five years in Europe. As both European regulation and innovation continue to push account-to-account (A2A) payments into the mainstream this year, I am pleased to announce that Token.io is the Headline Partner of the 2022 Open Banking Expo Europe. This September, we look forward to reuniting in Amsterdam to drive new conversations and opportunities around A2A payments and the future of Open Banking and Open Finance in Europe.”

The topics of digital and sustainable finance will also be at the forefront of the rich, uniquely Europe-focused agenda, with an exceptional speaker line-up to match it, including:

· Marina Moretti, Assistant Director, Financial Supervision and Regulation, IMF – opening keynote

· Patrick De Neef, Chief Innovation Officer, De Nederlandsche Bank – closing keynote

· Ruta Merkeviciute, Head of Digital Finance Unit, EBA

· Christian Schäfer, Product Management Head Payments, Deutsche Bank

· Gijs Boudewijn, Deputy General Manager, Dutch Payments Association & Chair, Payments Systems Committee, European Banking Federation

· Joris Hensen, Initiator and Co-Lead Deutsche Bank API Program, Deutsche Bank

· Ghela Boskovich, Head of Europe, FDATA

· Teunis Brosens, ING DMI Digital Forum

· Katharina Berner, Product Owner API Strategy, Open Banking & Digital Ecosystems, Commerzbank

· Alexander Stevens, CEO, Greenomy

· Emma Kisby, CEO, CoGo

· Ana Climente, Head of Open Banking, Spain, BBVA

· Xiaochen Zhang, Principal Manager, AWS

· Laura Mian, Open Banking innovation driver, ING Wholesale Banking

· Hetal Popat, Open Banking Director, HSBC

· Javier Oprejas Saldaña, Head, Banking Services EMEA & the Americas, Global Delivery Centre, IATA

· Todd Clyde, CEO, Token

· Arturo Gonzales Mac Dowell, European Retail Payments Board; European Payments Council Board Member, Tink

· Hubert Rachwalski, CEO, Nethone

· Lana Tahirli Abdullayeva, Founder, Chez Fintech

· Samantha Seaton, CEO, Moneyhub

The Expo was launched in 2019 in person but had to move online in 2020 and 2021. This year’s event will take place in Amsterdam on 29-30 September, with tickets now available to be secured at https://www.openbankingexpo.com/europe/europe-registration/.

Open API card issuing and processing platform Marqeta is on the hunt for a CEO after founder Jason Gardner decided to make the move to executive chairman.

Gardner founded Marqeta in 2010, building it into a multi-billion dollar outfit disrupting the multi-trillion dollar card issuing market before taking the firm public last year.

A hunt is now underway for his replacement.

On a conference call discussing the company's second-quarter results, Gardner said: "I have led Marqeta from zero to one, and soon it will be time to pass the baton to the best person to lead it from one to infinity."

In his new role, he will concentrate on "the three areas I can contribute the most: our people, our products, and our customers".

Marqeta recorded quarterly net revenue of $187 million, a 53% rise on Q2 2021, with gross profit of $78%, a 66% year-on-year rise. GAAP net loss was $45 million, and adjusted Ebitda loss was $10 million.

Despite this, the firm has not been immune to the latest market turmoil afflicting tech stocks. Over the past nine months, Marqeta has suffered a near-two-thirds drop in its share price from its market peak of $17 billion, to stand at just $6 billion.

Says Gardner: "Marqeta’s platform continues to enable customers across many different verticals to build products on the cutting edge of payments, and serve as an accelerator for their growth.

"Our second quarter results are testament to that breadth and depth, as we again launched new products and bought on major new customers globally."

Motive Partners ("Motive"), a specialist private equity firm focused on growth equity and buyout investments in software and information services companies that serve the financial services industry ("financial technology"), has received the necessary regulatory approvals and completed the sale of Global Shares to J.P. Morgan. Motive invested in Global Shares in August 2018, acquiring a ~40% stake in the business.

Global Shares, having grown to nearly $200 billion in assets under administration across over 800,000 corporate employee participants, will now enter its next phase of growth under new ownership, as part of J.P. Morgan. As reported at the time of signing the

acquisition, J.P. Morgan will seek to integrate Global Shares into its Asset & Wealth Management line of business, remaining headquartered in Clonakilty, Ireland. As part of the closing, Motive Industry Partner Andy Stewart will step down as Executive Chairman and Motive Partner Neil Cochrane will step down from the Board of Directors.

Andy Stewart, Industry Partner at Motive Partners and former Executive Chairman of Global Shares, commented:

“We are delighted with the growth and expansion of Global Shares, and the impact this business has had for its clients in recent years. I believe this to be a great example of Ireland’s exceptional financial technology talent and environment, and we’re grateful to Tim and the whole Global Shares team for their partnership. It has been a privilege to work with them and we look forward to the many future successes that lie ahead for the Global Shares team as part of J.P. Morgan”.

Paschal Donohoe, Minister for Finance for Ireland, commented:

“I welcome the completion of the acquisition of Global Shares by J.P. Morgan. This is a stellar example of the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, through its investment in Motive, helping to develop and grow an Irish business to secure this investment from a global player such as J.P. Morgan. I also welcome the fact that the company will retain its headquarters in Clonakilty during the next phase of its growth agenda, thereby providing future employment in financial technology in the region”.