CleverTap, the modern, integrated retention cloud, today announced it has partnered with Unocoin, India's first crypto exchange, to optimize, accelerate their user engagement, and provide a seamless omnichannel customer experience.

Through this collaboration, and by integrating CleverTap's solution into its app, Unocoin is now equipped to better understand user behaviour and has the ability to create segments based on user activity, demographics, and other parameters. Unocoin will also be able to create hyper-personalized campaigns to engage with its audience across multiple channels at the right time with precise communication.

"As a platform that helps individuals with investments into cryptocurrencies, we need to be cognizant of the exact needs of our users. Understanding a customer's behavior on our app becomes vital as this helps us provide a tailored experience. Since awareness and understanding of cryptocurrencies at large is at a nascent stage, delivering precise communication becomes all the more important," said Suhas SK, Senior Vice President - Marketing, Unocoin Technologies Private Limited.

CleverTap enables Unocoin to keep track of app activity, in-app purchases, and returning users. Unocoin will also be able to personalize customer experience using real-time behavioural data with precise predictive recommendations, leading to engagement opportunities based on each user's exact needs.

"We are delighted to partner with Unocoin in their journey to make investing in cryptocurrency easy for all. With CleverTap Retention Cloud, Unocoin will be able to hyper-personalize the experience for every investor.

Today, hyper-personalization is crucial at every point in a customer's journey and is a key enabler to growth. We are confident that with our help, Unocoin will be able to grow and offer its customers exactly what they need," said Vikrant Chowdhary, Chief Growth Officer, CleverTap.

Today, the new investment platform Lightyear announces a $25M Series A equity round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. The company’s seed investors, Mosaic Ventures, Taavet+Sten and Metaplanet also took part in the round alongside a number of new and existing angel investors. 

Joining Lightspeed in this new investment round is the Virgin Group – an organisation that champions driving positive change through new technologies and joins Series A as an investor.  The fresh funding comes at the same time as Lightyear’s expansion into 19 European markets, just nine months after it launched in the UK. 

Lightyear combines multi-currency accounts with unlimited access to global markets so customers can invest freely without hidden fees. The European launch today enables customers from 19 different countries to now access thousands of US and European stocks in addition to Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). Countries part of this first European rollout include Ireland, the Baltics and most of Western Europe such as Spain, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Netherlands and France. 

Lightyear was founded by ex-Wise duo Martin Sokk and Mihkel Aamer to bring a global mindset to the European investment world. Traditionally, if investors in Europe want access to international markets they are hit with transaction and custody fees, but most notably, hidden foreign exchange fees. With their multi-currency accounts, where you can add, hold and invest in different currencies, Lightyear seamlessly bridges the gaps between international markets for customers. 

Since launching to the UK market last year, Lightyear has tripled its stock universe, launched an industry-first social investment feature - Lightyear Profiles - and added a suite of new products and features to bolster its data and education offering, all accessible in the app for free. From professional analyst ratings and price targets to live news feeds without paywalls, Lightyear customers have access to a wealth of information before making an investment decision. 

The new $25 million in funding supports the company’s plans to expand across Europe. Starting with 19 countries in the Eurozone, Lightyear has become the first neobroker to unlock most of Europe in one move, coming just a few months after the initial UK launch last year. With no trading fees, no account fees and no custody fees, Lightyear is entering most European countries as the most competitively priced investment platform on the market with an advanced product suite and slick app experience. As one of the fastest moving brokerages in Europe, Lightyear also has its sights set on non-Euro countries next including places like Sweden, Norway, Romania, Poland and Hungary.

Nicole Quinn, Partner at Lightspeed says: “Having lived and worked on both sides of the pond, I’ve seen first-hand the pain points for Europeans trying to access the financial markets as easily as their counterparts in the US. Lightyear is trying to fix this with a platform that customers not only love and trust, but one that understands the nuances between different regulations, languages, exchanges and cultural investing norms. There is no single neobroker offering products across the continent right now, and the potential is enormous. Martin and Mihkel have assembled an all-star team to achieve this goal, and we couldn’t be more excited to support them all on this journey.”

Martin Sokk, Co-founder and CEO at Lightyear, adds: “Nine months ago, we launched our app in the UK to initial waitlist. Fast forward to now, and we’ve secured a European licence that enables us to launch across the continent and raised one of the largest Series A rounds in 2022. But, our goal remains the same: to give all of Europe access to the world’s markets without hidden fees and to make investing easy for everyone. We’re so excited to welcome Nicole and Lightspeed, alongside the Virgin Group, onto our strong bench of investors that share this vision with us and have such deep experience in growing successful businesses from the very start of their journey.” 

From today, Lightyear will be onboarding customers from the following 19 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.

The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank Group on Wednesday 13 July approved a €50 million unfunded risk-sharing facility partnership with Societe Generale to further support trade finance activities across Africa. The facility will contribute to reducing Africa’s trade finance gap by enhancing Societe Generale’s risk-bearing capacity by up to fifty per cent, enabling it to provide increased confirmation limits to local issuing banks on the continent.

The parties will share the default risk on a portfolio of eligible trade transactions originated by African Issuing Banks and indemnified by Societe Generale. Beneficiaries of this facility will be issuing banks in Africa who will benefit from additional support from international banks to grow their trade finance business, as well as small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and domestic firms who rely on these issuing banks to fulfil their trade finance commitments.

Stefan Nalletamby, Director for Financial Sector Development at the African Development Bank, said the partnership with Societe Generale will help support African small businesses and local corporates involved in international trade.

“The facility aligns well with the acute market demand for trade finance in Africa in agriculture, transport, construction, health and manufacturing. It is also consistent with the African Development Bank’s High 5 strategic priorities, specifically Industrialize Africa, Integrate Africa, and Feed Africa. The Bank’s Financial Sector Development Strategy promotes increased access to finance for small businesses and widening and deepening African financial markets,” Nalletamby said. “When fully utilized, the Partnership will support 40 issuing local banks operating in 16 African countries and is forecast to catalyze roughly close to EUR 600 million worth of trade transactions over a 3-year period.”

African Development Bank's Deputy Director General for West Africa, Joseph Ribeiro, said: “We are happy about this partnership with Societe Generale as it offers the flexible use of AfDB Group’s strong AAA-rated risk-bearing capacity to increase access to trade finance on the continent, and more specifically, to support access to finance for small and medium enterprises and local enterprises operating in fragile states.”

Societe Generale’s Global Head of Trade Finance for Commodities, Pierre-Antoine Barreault, added: “With a presence in 19 countries, Societe Generale is a leading international bank in Africa and provides multidimensional support for SMEs and African companies, aiming at contributing in a responsible and sustainable way to the continent’s development. This partnership with AfDB is instrumental for Societe Generale to enhance its capabilities to assist our clients and the local economic actors to source vital food and energy products.”

Coventry-based Unipart Powertrain Applications (UPA) is part of the wider Unipart Manufacturing Group (UMG), a leading Tier 1 supplier of components to the global automotive industry. With just a few hours of finished stock held on-site and delivered on a just-in-time basis, even minor service interruptions can have huge knock-on effects across the entire Unipart supply chain.

Needing to eliminate database latency issues impacting the just-in-time delivery capabilities of its automotive parts division, Unipart Powertrain Applications chose the Nutanix Cloud Platform and AHV hypervisor. A combination able to provide, not only the necessary performance uplift but, at the same time, reduce complexity, simplifying management and making the business as a whole more agile and flexible.

The Unipart team turned to an independent infrastructure specialist and Nutanix partner Softcat, which recommended migration to a Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI). It wasn’t long before a Nutanix Cloud was up and running in the UMG datacentre. Two clusters were installed, the first to support day-to-day production workloads followed later by a second for data replication, load balancing and disaster recovery, along with backup to NAS and long-term archiving offsite. Beyond support for core manufacturing, ERP and database workloads, the ability to install graphics accelerator (GPU) cards in the Nutanix cluster and share them using the AHV hypervisor was seen as another major plus compared to other HCI platforms.

With AHV handling virtualisation, some 80+ VMs needed to be migrated, a process made straightforward using Nutanix Move with the IT team completing the project on schedule and with no major issues or downtime. Moreover, performance has been noticeably improved across the board while the database latency issues have disappeared entirely with measurable effects in terms of productivity.

In the short term, UPA is concentrating on automating day-to-day management tasks and supporting teams responsible for product development. Looking beyond that, the group’s Nutanix investment is expected to play a significant role in enabling rapid diversification away from automotive engineering into other areas such as battery manufacture and other low-carbon technologies requiring flexible production facilities, backed up by an agile and easy-to-manage IT infrastructure.

Compass Plus Technologies has picked up two awards in the Global Banking & Finance Awards 2022. The awards have been running since 2011 and aim to recognise businesses driving innovation, and progressive and inspirational changes within the global financial sector.

The first accolade received by Compass Plus Technologies was for Best Banking Technology Overhaul Project in recognition of its recent achievements with the Central Bank of Mongolia. With over 30 years of experience in payments technology innovation, Compass Plus Technologies was appointed to migrate the Central Bank of Mongolia’s (also known as the Bank of Mongolia) entire payments infrastructure to Compass Plus solutions.

As this was a national-scale project, the bank needed a scalable, reliable and trusted solution that could service large volumes of transactions, as well as a vendor that could provide the support it required. The bank chose to migrate its existing payments infrastructure to an in-house processing centre built on Compass Plus Technologies solutions, due to the company’s outstanding reputation in Mongolia - with 80% of the country’s banks currently running on Compass Plus Technologies software.

The second accolade was handed to Compass Plus Technologies in the Best Banking Transformation Partner category. The judges recognised Compass Plus Technologies for the reputation it has gained as being one of the preferred banking transformation partners for various financial institutions in Cambodia, including Chip Mong Bank, Prasac and MOHANOKOR Microfinance Institution, enabling them to expand their range of products and services to better meet the needs of their customers.

Sergey Putenikhin, VP & Eastern Joint Regional Directorate Managing Director at Compass Plus Technologies said: “We are honoured to achieve two such notable awards for our work with financial institutions in Asia Pacific (APAC). The payments market in the region is one of the fastest growing in the world and we are delighted to have contributed to various projects that have driven innovation across APAC. Our solutions ensure that the needs of our partners in Mongolia and Cambodia are met both now and in the future, allowing them to deliver better products, services and experiences to their customers.”

Argyle, the leading employment data platform, today announced its partnership with Protection-as-a-Service provider DigiSure. Through this partnership, Argyle and DigiSure enable vehicle rental and subscription platforms to screen new customers with one turnkey solution that takes advantage of the availability of historical employment data to lower risk, and onboarding cost and offer a better service for their customers.

“Our partnership with DigiSure aligns with Argyle’s vision to provide all workers, including gig economy workers, with equitable access to financial services,” said Shmulik Fishman, CEO and founder of Argyle. “The insurance space has historically lacked a streamlined process for assessing gig drivers based on their driving history, due to the ad hoc nature of gig work and its existence outside of the W-2 worker paradigm. This partnership will enable them to rent vehicles and access the insurance products they need to earn income and advocate for themselves.”

Argyle and DigiSure are now able to provide user-permissioned employment records in real-time along with a streamlined process for assessing insurance risk, using factors like driving history, trip count and ratings. The software collaboration enables vehicle rental and subscription platforms to screen new customers with one simple solution. On platforms that work with both Argyle and DigiSure, users are able to share their personal information, which is then used as the first step in screening and compliance checks before allowing renters onto the platform.

DigiSure’s comprehensive screening process for onboarding new customers is pre-integrated with most traditional and non-traditional data vendors to screen for identity, fraud, credit and insurance risk, and to underwrite embedded insurance for mobility and sharing platforms. DigiSure gives platforms the ability to balance credit risk, potential fraud, and transaction risk with growth and other business metrics, delivering the solution through one integrated workflow. By adding in up to 140 data points available through Argyle, platforms are now able to screen users with the most robust solution on the market.

“DigiSure and Argyle share a commitment to ensuring that gig drivers have access to the broadest set of vehicle services possible,” said Alex Linde, Head of Product at DigiSure. “By leveraging the gig driver data provided to us by Argyle, we can augment traditional screening data sources to enable drivers with a strong driving history to receive better risk scores and insurance rates, fostering increased access to platforms and insurance products that many drivers would otherwise be denied. Renters who don’t have a robust history on Argyle will then go through DigiSure’s standard screening process, giving platforms a complete solution to seamlessly screen every type of user.”

Argyle and DigiSure’s partnership will address the critical issue of gig and contract workers being denied access to necessary financial services. In a survey conducted earlier this year, Argyle found that almost half (49%) of gig and contract workers were denied access to financial services they felt able to afford, on the basis of their low or limited credit score. Argyle and DigiSure’s partnership will allow insurance decisions to be made based on concrete, real-time data, addressing gig workers’ lack of access to financial services and paving the way for more equitable insurance industry.

Enterprise data company, TIBCO, has launched TIBCO Cloud™ EBX®, a Master Data Management (MDM) Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution. TIBCO Cloud EBX enables users to manage corporate data from anywhere, including master data, reference data, and metadata. As a SaaS offering, EBX now delivers self-service access of cloud-native MDM capabilities to customers for faster, smarter implementation. The solution is part of TIBCO Cloud™ Passport, a new consumption-based pricing plan, which enables flexible FinOps (financial operations) and access to all TIBCO SaaS capabilities under a single model. This allows companies to quickly scale their MDM needs without operational complexity.

Now part of the TIBCO Connected Intelligence Cloud, EBX shares a single point of access to TIBCO’s innovative suite of products, accelerating the customer data management journey. This includes award-winning iPaaS capabilities for data integration, along with robust analytics that empower all users to extract key insights from any data across all domains. These services offer TIBCO Cloud EBX users centralised user management, regional availability, scalability, and robust security services from an ISO 27001-certified platform. 

“The growing number of enterprise applications hosted in the cloud has opened the data flood gates, and organisations are struggling to keep up with managing data. There is also a clear need for better data management and compliance across environments, especially data in the cloud,” said Mark Palmer, senior vice president, engineering, TIBCO. “TIBCO Cloud EBX offers our customers a holistic and trusted view of all of their data, delivering an MDM SaaS solution with embedded access to industry-leading visual analytics, data science workbench, and model operationalisation capabilities through TIBCO Cloud.”

A centrepiece of TIBCO’s Agile Data Fabric blueprint, TIBCO Cloud EBX is a one-stop shop for managing data, delivered in an agile, low-code/no-code platform that speeds time-to-market and accelerates business outcomes, while managing risk and compliance. Core features now delivered as-a-service in TIBCO Cloud EBX include

• Agility Through Model-Driven Design: Implementing an agile, model-driven process for data management enables organisations to start small and adapt over time. Active data governance helps users securely manage and track updates to their data via guided workflow, while robust data lifecycle management allows users to easily manage past, present, and future versions of master data. 

• Ability to Manage Every Data Domain: TIBCO Cloud EBX delivers a cloud-native, multi-domain MDM solution across master, reference, and metadata in a single offering. Robust hierarchy management includes all types of hierarchies and any number of alternate hierarchies, which helps provide a critical and holistic understanding of data relationships. Smart match-and-merge functionality makes it easier than ever to configure match rules, create enhanced golden data records, simplify data stewardship, and preserve data lineage. Lastly, advanced search and query supports easy-to-use search capabilities for all users across their data, using a powerful built-in query language.

• Fast Integration and Access to All Data: Enhancements enable organisations to effortlessly import or export bulk data and support integration patterns with APIs for REST and SOAP. Finally, businesses can accelerate time-to-value by unlocking distributed on-premises, cloud, and hybrid cloud data, no matter where it resides, and delivering that data to wherever it's needed.

TIBCO Cloud EBX offers an increased level of governance and compliance, democratising data across the enterprise and unleashing the power of collaboration. MDM-as-a-service scales as the business grows and delivers the most holistic multi-domain data management capabilities businesses need to make faster, smarter decisions. 

“TIBCO Cloud EBX offers new, more flexible options to deploy our data anywhere and everywhere,” said Jean-Marc Viallatte, vice president, supply chain group, Arkema. “We expect to leverage this new as-a-service offering to deploy our data fabric throughout the world with more flexible cloud operations and the ability to scale our usage up and down more easily. Implementing data management as-a-service helps us better control our costs and get more people involved in working with shared data.”

UK-based Saltare, the Early Payment FinTech, has appointed its second commercial manager to grow its customer base with a primary focus on enrolling larger corporations with extensive and diverse supply chains.

Chris Wilson, a former small business owner and leadership coach, joins Saltare after owning and running several businesses over the course of his career. Chris will bring valuable first-hand experience in managing business cash flow to the Saltare team, ensuring that customers feel supported by a team they can relate to.

This includes a comprehensive understanding of the challenges SMEs face when dealing with larger customers, ensuring Saltare’s tools can help larger corporations understand the benefits paying early can bring to their supply chains.

“Running a business is hard,” he explains. “It’s a 24/7 job and when you’re anxious about when money will arrive in your account it affects everything, from your sleep to how effectively you can manage your business strategy. Saltare’s mission to bring cash flow certainty will have a significant effect on how larger businesses work with smaller suppliers.

“One of my first objectives will be working with some of the UK’s biggest companies and helping them understand why early payments can improve relationships within wider supply chains.”

Having worked in a range of industries including sales and lead generation, Chris previously specialised in helping businesses of all sizes engage with their customer base and wide supply chains helping them procure, support, and develop leads.

Ant Persse, CEO of Saltare said Chris’ expertise will support its mission to help businesses better engage with their supply chains: “Chris has incredible knowledge as to what it takes to run a small business and more importantly how big business can interact with smaller businesses to encourage stronger partnerships.”

“We’re delighted to have Chris join our team and help us introduce Saltare to a wider network of businesses to help boost supply chain relations and encourage early payments.”

Quartr, the app that gives anyone, regardless of their investment expertise and network, access to critical company information and earnings calls, has raised a $2.6M extended seed round, taking its total seed round to $7.1M. 

The round was led by existing investors The Öhman Group, with participation from Flat Capital (the investment firm of Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski) and Centripetal Capital, in addition to existing investors Michael Batnick, Josh Brown, and Barry Ritholtz. Quartr joins renowned names like Klarna, Discord, Budbee, and Getir on Flat Capital’s investment portfolio. 

Employing a team of 42 people, Quartr will use the funding to scale its development team and additional products, including a B2C app and a B2B desktop solution, as it continues to grow globally.

Used by both investors and companies, the Quartr app is available for free on iOS and Android and has over 2,500,000 played events from over 5,500 companies in 19 markets. Users can access company information - such as earnings calls, investor presentations, PDFs of the transcripts, and earnings reports - from the likes of Apple, Meta, Spotify, Moderna, as well as all other publicly listed companies. Rather than the traditional method of dialling in live to discover company information, all data can now be found within a few clicks.

With more than 300,000 downloads in over 160 countries in its first year, Quartr is a primary digital source of investment information that enables investors to make smarter decisions. Quartr recently launched a “Search For Anything'' feature, where all company transcripts worldwide on the platform are included in the same search engine, timestamped to audio so users can scroll to key moments.

The funding comes as Quartr rolls out its latest feature; Insights, which uses data from S&P Global to provide valuable but often inaccessible company data, including analyst estimates and financials.

For Investors - A Hub for All Investment Information 

Investors use company events like earnings calls to gain insights into potential investments, but accessing relevant information has traditionally been time-consuming, expensive, and analogue, with some companies not even offering recordings of live calls. 

Analysts and experts already use Quartr’s app at prestigious financial institutions including BlackRock, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Carnegie, EQT, Fidelity, Credit Suisse, Kinnevik, HSBC, Goldman Sachs, UBS, and JP Morgan.

For Companies - Investor Relations Strategy and Insights

Quartr enables publicly listed companies to distribute information globally and reach a wider audience while delivering insights and data. With Quartr’s productivity tools, companies can stay up to date with the entire global financial market searchable. By solving the most pressing problems and owning the distribution scale, Quartr will be the new home of investor communication.

Partnering with companies like US vaccine pioneer Moderna, Swedish mobile gaming giant LeoVegas and German unicorn Westwing, Quartr’s recently launched Embedded Player allows companies to include their presentations on websites, articles, and blog posts. 

“By being able to access any company call, document, or other data points within a few seconds, we are seeing a considerable proportion of institutional investors signing up on Quartr as their new go-to-place on mobile. And owning the scale of distribution will make Quartr the new home of company communication, with millions of investors researching companies every day”, comments Sami Osman, Quartr CEO and Co-founder.

“We are proud to introduce the participation of several high-profile investors who all started as Quartr users. Although the consumer value proposition is somewhat proven by attracting more than 300,000 users in our first year - many IR managers and consultants are now seeing what we’re building for companies and want to invest.”

“With product leading our growth, this capital will almost exclusively go towards recruitment of tech talent to serve the problems our customers are experiencing. With so many trillions of dollars circulating in the financial industry, it’s fascinating to see how far left behind the user experience of some existing tools still are.”

Johan Malm, CEO at The Öhman Group, adds: “Quartr is revolutionizing the investment process at both ends, reshaping the communications and decision-making of both companies and investors. The company is providing a truly unique service to the investment world, and it's been exciting to be a part of it. We have been so impressed with their growth and leadership so far and are delighted to continue our journey with them.”