Simpl, India’s leading checkout network, today announced the appointment of Somansh Kumar as Director of Platform Integrations. Through this key appointment, Simpl aims to drive merchant quality and their onboarding experience.

As the Director of Platform Integrations, Mr. Kumar’s responsibilities include leading the integrations’ charter for Simpl’s 20k and growing merchant partners. He will especially drive merchant quality and their onboarding experience with a laser-sharp focus on integration lifecycle management and post-integration support.

Commenting on the appointment, Mr. Nitya Sharma, CEO & Co-Founder – Simpl, said, “Somansh’s deep experience with cross-functional expertise in technology, solutions and consulting is perfect for Simpl’s growth. We are delighted that he has come on board to help us enhance the unique power of Simpl.”

“I am humbled to be a part of a very energetic and competent leadership at Simpl. I believe there is a massive opportunity for Simpl to overhaul business processes and enhance its merchant experience. To optimise business growth, I will be leveraging digital enablers and create distinctive models and modify existing business processes with new-age technologies,” said Somansh Kumar, Director - Platform Integrations - Simpl.

Before joining Simpl, Somansh worked with Kuliza Technologies, HCL Technologies Infrastructure Services Division) and McAfee India. He has cross-functional expertise in various fields including technology, presales, solution architecture, and consulting.

A new venture established by some of the biggest names in fintech has officially launched today at Fintech Week London. The Fintech & Payments Advisory Network (TFPA) offers real-world advice from proven operators and addresses the gap in the market where founders and executives can tap into the experience of people who have held roles like theirs and faced similar challenges around strategy and commercialisation, business expansion, operational improvement, M&A, marketing and talent acquisition. The business has operations in North America and Europe.

This team has worked across the Americas and EMEA leading high-tech financial services and payments businesses ranging in size from fledgling growth businesses to international corporations. Collectively they are responsible for raising hundreds of millions in funding, leading businesses with a few employees to five thousand, spearheading over fifty acquisitions and ten mergers and bringing over $1bn in revenue from new propositions to hundreds of clients. The group has first-hand experience across the card schemes, payment rails, acquirers, and issuers, to the big four management consultancy firms and world-leading retail banks as well as leading start-ups and scale-ups.

The global fintech industry was valued at $7.3 trillion USD in 2021 and is predicted to grow substantially over the next decade as digital transformation makes accessing financial services faster, simpler, cheaper and more inclusive. $91.5 billion was invested in the sector in 2021, representing 20% of all capital invested throughout the world. With huge flows of capital entering the sector and start-ups being founded every day, the need has arisen to leverage the experience of seasoned entrepreneurs, investors, change-makers and top executives who have faced similar challenges. TFPA was formed to deliver this in a structured, growth-focused way.

Before the official launch, the TFPA team successfully delivered handpicked assignments across EMEA and the USA. They now plan to expand, while keeping their key differentiator: advice based on real-world experience from industry professionals.

The TFPA’s partners have significant experience in the finance, technology and payments industry at the highest level:

John De Lavis is a founder of First Direct, served as Head of Group Cards and then as Head of UK payment businesses for HSBC and Chief Product Officer for MasterCard. In the US he was COO of NetSpend and then COO for MetaBank from its development as a major US payments bank. He is a board member, advisor or investor to a number of fintechs.

Roger Bracken has held leadership positions in several international payments technology businesses; NCR, First Data and software with embedded payments scale-up, TSG. He is currently a Special Advisor at Vitruvian Partners, an investment firm, as well as advising several tech scale-up CEOs. He is chair of an early-stage fintech company, WyzePay.

Steve Wright has a long record of sales leadership in payments technology, having worked with companies such as Xerox, ACI, Fujitsu and NCR. Steve has spent the last decade working with payments startups and scale-ups, including Lusis and Alaric.

John Goodale has extensive experience within the global payments and fintech sectors, holding a number of senior sales, consulting and product leadership roles supporting a range of issuer processing, outsourcing and SaaS solutions. He has worked with TSYS, KPMG Consulting, Zwipe AS, Crosscard SA and DMR Consulting.

Roger Van Scoy has held leadership positions spanning four continents at First Data, TSYS and ACI as well as having led a fintech startup. Roger has a keen interest in Customer Success which he led from inception at ACI and has consulted with the likes of The Strawhecker Group.

Adam Wright is an entrepreneur and executive search specialist, who has operated across the globe with a focus on fintech, Payments and Banking.

Angela Yore joins as a NED and is an entrepreneur and Co-Founder of SkyParlour, a fintech-specific PR firm providing services to some of fintech’s fastest-growing organisations.

Gregor Dobbie joins as a NED and is currently the CEO of VocaLink and the Chairman of LoyalZoo. Gregor has a career that spans beyond 20 years, operating in a variety of leadership positions within organisations such as De La Rue, NCR and Mastercard.

Co-founding Partner Roger Bracken says of the new venture; “TFPA brings a unique blend of skills and capabilities to help fintechs grow and scale up. We couldn’t be more excited to work with some of the most dynamic businesses in fintech and leverage our real-world experience and help them perform to the highest levels. We are also bringing our network of senior contacts to the table, which will be ideal for companies looking to collaborate with boardroom executives or engage investors and venture capital."

Today’s news follows the recent announcement of a strategic partnership with The Strawhecker Group (TSG), a globally recognized analytics, intelligence, and consulting firm in the payments industry.

Damen e-Payment - has chosen BKN301 - a fintech company that develops payment services and Banking-as-a-Service functionalities - and Cashflo, BKN301’s exclusive Egyptian partner, to fully digitise its product infrastructure, expand its offering with innovative services and improve the user experience through its technology platform.

The agreement is part of BKN301's international growth strategy, which aims to become the leading open-market and cross-border operator in the Open Banking and digital payments sector, bringing its solutions to international markets with a strong focus on fast-growing markets (Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe), where there is a high demand of digital payments solutions and very little supply, and are characterised by a population with low average age, rapid demographic growth, high mobile penetration and significant literacy in payment-related technologies.

Egypt, with more than 100 million inhabitants, represents one of the emerging markets with the highest growth potential 23% of people are using digital platforms to send and receive their digital payments, due to the insufficient number of POS available to merchants and low uptake of payments by cards.

The BaaS platform developed by BKN301, through its digital wallet and 301XB, a product that enables cross-border transactions, will allow Damen to provide new features & solutions to its customers and facilitate transactions with key Egyptian trading partners in the GCC countries. Through the technology provided by BKN301 Group, and once all regulatory approvals have been obtained, Damen's customers will be able to send money internationally to more than 100 countries (including markets that are more difficult to reach due to the lack of common systems) using over 50 currencies, while having extreme visibility over fees, processing times and transaction monitoring.

In partnership with Cashflo, a Cairo-based fintech company, and Switchover, a Swiss fintech accelerator, BKN301 aims to spread its digital banking solutions throughout the MENA region.

Dr. Tamer El-Hussainy, CEO of Damen Company for Electronic Payments expressed the full support of Damen and its shareholders for this partnership that is offering innovative banking services and empowers customers.

Stiven Muccioli, Founder and CEO of BKN301, comments: "This new agreement confirms the validity of our offer tailored to the needs of markets, such as Egypt, where the low diffusion of digital payment methods among the population offers high development prospects in the near future. We are very happy that a leading operator, Damen has seen in us and in our platform that offers financial and payment services a great opportunity for growth, not only for the company but for the whole country, accelerating the digitization of the payments market in Egypt, still very much tied to the use of cash, especially in remotely connected areas".

Dr. Sami Chaouch, vice-Chairman of Cashflo SAE, comments: “We are very excited to join the talent, knowledge and global reach of our partners. These innovative solutions shall bring to the market powerful, universal, and customized solutions developed by a multicultural team. By integrating complex systems in the most efficient way, we shall provide customers with the best user experience”

Scandinavian multi-asset fintech company Skilling has announced the appointment of former Managing Director of FXview, Daniela Egli, as Group COO to oversee the entirety of Skilling’s operations across new and existing markets, as the firm pushes ahead with its ambitious expansion strategy.

Based in Cyprus, and reporting directly to Skilling Group CEO Michael Kamerman, Daniela brings over 15 years of experience within the financial services sector to Skilling, including roles in business development, compliance, and executive management, and overseeing significant mergers and acquisitions across Asia and Europe.

Having successfully overseen the operations of reputable brokerages from startup to scale-up stages, Daniela’s experience will be invaluable in Skilling’s international scale-up of operations, as part of Skilling’s objective to unlock global financial markets for all traders.

Daniela’s appointment follows an incredibly impressive year for Skilling in 2021 and a strong first quarter of 2022, including a EUR 10 million fundraising, achieving record account growth while launching a proprietary partnership portal and the Skilling Copy platform. Skilling now offers 900 CFD instruments for clients to trade including 55+ of the most desirable cryptocurrencies such as Polkadot and Dogecoin.

The latest in a suite of industry heavyweight hires for Skilling, Daniela will oversee the operations and advancement of Skilling’s transparent and secure platform, ensuring Skilling continues to offer the best products in the market to its ever-expanding range of traders.

Michael Kamerman, Group CEO of Skilling, comments: “Daniela’s appointment as Group COO exemplifies Skilling’s ambition to solidify our position as a highly credible market-leading broker, able to swiftly adapt our operations to meet the evolving needs of our customers. The current financial landscape requires efficient navigation to capitalise on opportunities, and Daniela’s experience will be instrumental in ensuring we provide the highest level of service to traders as we push ahead with our targeted global expansion.”

Daniela Egli, Group COO of Skilling, comments: “I’m incredibly excited to join Skilling at a particularly important point within its growth journey through expanding into new markets. Throughout my career, I’ve witnessed significant changes within global financial markets, which have increased the demand for agile, credible brokers such as Skilling amongst the trading population. I’m looking forward to leveraging my experience to scale up Skilling’s operations in the most beneficial manner for all customers.”

Pioneering issuer processing powerhouse, Enfuce, has today announced the launch of its proven and disruptive cloud-native Card as a Service (CaaS) platform in the UK, following a period of successful growth and expansion for the Finnish, female-driven fintech.

Having already conquered the thriving Nordic fintech market, with partnerships with banking group OP, Swedish neobank Rocker and Danish expense management platform Pleo, this strategic international expansion, led by Enfuce co-founders and co-CEOs Monika Liikamaa and Denise Johansson, is hot off the heels of the recently secured €45 million in Series C funding from Vitruvian Partners, a global investment firm intent on supporting the most ambitious, high-growth companies.

Enfuce’s UK launch heralds its arrival as a formidable challenger to the current issuer processor status quo, with its cloud-native card issuing platform offering unmatched scalability and enhanced security, with the potential to save money and time that companies would have spent on managing hardware infrastructure. Enfuce supports debit, credit, prepaid, gift, fleet and fuel card programmes in any form – plastic, digital and/or tokenised – for consumer, commercial and B2B applications, along with digital wallets. With its turnkey service model, packaged BIN sponsoring, the fastest onboarding time in the market, and all regulatory compliance is taken care of, Enfuce is a one-stop-shop for companies that want to issue cards to their customers.

Leading Enfuce’s team in the UK is newly-appointed Executive Vice President of Fintech Sales, Peter Baxendale, a payment industry veteran with an exceptional track record of pinpointing and maximising commercial growth opportunities at payment companies Retail Decisions (ReD) now ACI, Elavon and Modulr.

The funding from Vitruvian Partners will continue to drive Enfuce’s European expansion of its complete end-to-end next-generation card issuing and payments processing services. Vitruvian’s portfolio of successful tech disruptors also includes open API issuer Marqeta, the money transfer provider Wise, and cybersecurity specialist Bitdefender.

Commenting on Enfuce’s launch to the UK market, Monika Liikamaa, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Enfuce, says: “We are launching in Europe’s largest and most competitive fintech hotbed because the strengths and scalability of our CaaS offering are exactly what fintechs, banks and non-bank brands are searching for to succeed in their card launches. Enfuce does the heavy lifting of card issuing and processing, empowering businesses to focus on their core operations with the reassurance of a trusted compliant partner helping them in their quests to drive growth and customer loyalty.

Enfuce’s vision is clear - to educate every fintech, bank or brand, from challenger to goliath, to move to cloud-based embedded finance platforms by 2025 and drive the digital transformation of the UK and Europe for the benefit of businesses and consumers.”

Denise Johansson, Co-Founder, Co-CEO of Enfuce, adds: “The time is right for Enfuce to transform the UK payment market even further. Smart digital finance and embedded payments are triggering urgent demand for corporate digitisation, and Enfuce is ideally placed to bring our game-changing capabilities, like packaged EMI licensing, BIN sponsoring, programme management, card management and processing, to more companies across Europe. 

We have already disrupted the Nordic payment landscape by eliminating the need to rely on legacy processing systems that slow down operational efficiencies and lack the flexibility to integrate new payment services. Enfuce is making a bold statement with our expansion into the UK – we are the one-stop-shop for companies that want to issue cards to their customers, both in the UK and for UK entities to expand into the European Economic Area (EEA).”  

Established in 2016 in Finland, and already the trusted number one issuer processor for more than 30 partners, including energy company St1, small business finance provider Qred, and neobank indó, Enfuce is the only issuer processor that can launch CaaS for businesses in just eight weeks, an unrivalled onboarding timeframe compared to other providers that typically take up to six months to get partners up and running with embedded payments. Key applications for Enfuce’s services include expense management, neobanks, fuel cards, loyalty programmes, as well as corporate and consumer lending. 

Enfuce offers a fast and cost-effective alternative to existing issuer processing platforms with a stable platform that has the flexibility to quickly scale services and modules as and when needed. Enfuce’s CaaS ensures banks, fintechs, financial institutions and non-bank brands can become and remain fully PSD2-compliant, with programme management, data reporting and analytics, BIN sponsorship, card issuing, and effortless regulatory KYC/AML and payment scheme compliance all taken care of. With these unmatched levels of speed, flexibility and end-to-end programme management, clients can launch card payment services for customers with quicker time-to-market, give third-party service providers access to digital accounts, and give customers and end-users even more choice in payment methods.

With the environment, social and corporate governance (ESG) initiatives a key growth priority for organisations, Enfuce’s My Carbon Action, its transaction-based carbon footprint calculator, is an innovative tool that unites brands and consumers in the fight against climate change. Enfuce clients can offer My Carbon Action to climate-conscious customers, helping them to make responsible and sustainable purchasing decisions to reduce their carbon footprints. Pioneering and timely services like these highlight how Enfuce continually pushes frontiers to be the embedded finance partner of choice for several leading global companies and inspires customer loyalty in brands.

Commenting on the potential for Enfuce to transform issuer processing, Jussi Wuoristo, Partner at Vitruvian Partners, says: “Enfuce is a truly innovative issuer processor with a bold vision to empower companies to offer card payments to customers. Enfuce’s unique product offering, and the high calibre of its international team, have propelled it to the forefront of cloud-native issuer processing.”

Under the inspirational leadership of Monika and Denise, who are both payment pioneers in their own right, Enfuce’s cloud-native services and a strong focus on carbon-conscious products are perfectly aligned with the ESG demands of organisations everywhere. Evidence of how Enfuce is making a dynamic impact on the issuer processing market came in June 2022, when Enfuce and Pleo won the ‘Best Corporate Cards Initiative’ at the PayTech Awards.

Stanhope Financial Group, an EU (Dublin) based global fintech company that provides businesses with a full suite of banking services, has hired Andrew H Brown as the company’s new Chief Risk and Compliance Officer, following a $10m series A funding round.

Brown has decades-long experience in cross-border financial services, most recently supporting platform entities to restructure group activity to balance effective risk and compliance management with supporting business growth objectives and accessing the new opportunities afforded by financial technology.

Stanhope Financial Group has seen significant growth across its business divisions since it began operations in October 2021.

SH Payments division, an EU authorised Electronic Money Institution, offers businesses banking services to efficiently send and receive money globally, including FX, multi-currency accounts, and innovative payments solutions.

SH Capital, authorised by the DIFC, Dubai, allows institutions and family offices to gain access to premium global investment products across all capital markets.

Andrew H Brown, Chief Risk and Compliance Officer, Stanhope Financial Group said:

“I’m excited to be joining a fast-growing and ambitious company that is bringing innovative new products to market. Stanhope is already setting the agenda with its suite of services from payments expertise to capital and wealth management offerings, and I look forward to working with Kevin and the team to continue this expansion.”

Kevin von Neuschatz, Group CEO of Stanhope Financial Group, said:

“We are delighted to welcome Andrew to the Stanhope team, he brings with him decades of extensive experience overseeing risk and compliance for a number of prestigious organisations and will be a huge asset as we continue our expansion.”

GTreasury, a treasury and risk management platform provider, today announced the launch of ClearConnect. Featuring more than 80 API calls in a dozen key categories, ClearConnect offers the most robust connectivity suite available to treasury teams and the office of the CFO. The solution provides immediate access to the comprehensive data required for confident and actionable treasury insights and ensures the fidelity and security of that data through purpose-built connections bolstered by GTreasury’s support.

While “API” is becoming a buzzword often associated with data connectivity solutions, the terms are not synonymous. API connections are only as powerful as the underlying workflows that support them. Activating an out-of-the-box API is not an instant panacea for an organization’s data needs. Without the right underlying workflows, APIs not attuned to a business’s specific requirements will drop or fail to capture all the data sets necessary to power effective analytics and data lakes. Given the complexity of treasury and risk management, those missing insights can result in significant consequences for treasury teams and CFOs.

ClearConnect provides both the powerful underlying workflows and the multifaceted purpose-built API-enabled connectivity to ensure that data capture is consistently done correctly and thoroughly providing all the analytics an organization needs from a particular connection. The solution creates certainty, security, and seamless connections by integrating all data from business systems and financial institutions and can combine connection types for uniquely complete data sets and data fidelity.

Specifically, ClearConnect creates value for treasury teams and the office of the CFO by delivering:
 

• Secure connectivity across the financial value chain
• Extensions to corporate treasury workflows
• Access to specialist solutions within the integrated platform
• Lower bank fee costs through seamless connectivity
• Access to multiple innovative FinTech products and services

ClearConnect’s market-leading API catalogue features over 80 API calls, augmented by host-to-host connectivity wherever needed to bolster capabilities. The solution enables robust functionality across a dozen categories, including payment approval rules, payment workflows, payments and templates, balances and transactions, general ledgers, deal management, bank accounts, bank account management, legal entities, forecasts, operators, and data extracts.

ClearConnect’s flexible connectivity architecture uses best-in-class API-enabled connections to ensure fidelity and continuity of customers’ most vital data. Connectivity into Swift, Fides, and others provides a single source of truth and visibility into an organization’s cash and financial risk and delivers transparent workflows for payments, bank file monitoring, and more.

GTreasury’s always-expanding partnerships with leading global financial institutions and market data partners ensure seamless bank and ERP connectivity, domestic and international transactions, and access to market insights. As client needs change, GTreasury’s active collaborations with product partners further ensure the creation and delivery of modernized products and services, securing ClearConnect’s place as a market-leading solution always aligned with customers’ current data requirements.

From risk management capabilities powered by Moody’s Analytics and KYOS, to market data provided by Refinitiv and Fenics MD, to banking, ERP, investments, and payments partners, ClearConnect now enables customers to wield the full power of the GTreasury ecosystem even more easily and completely.

“ClearConnect doesn’t just offer a significantly greater breadth of connectivity options than anything else available, it also underwrites those capabilities with foundational workflows for data integrity and ease of use,” said Pete Srejovic, Chief Technology Officer at GTreasury. “Investing in API technology only to realize that you are dropping crucial data is a nightmare that has come true for many CFOs and treasury teams. With today’s launch of ClearConnect, we’re proud to offer not only the largest and most powerful API connectivity solution on the market but one that customers can entrust to deliver absolute data integrity along with the comprehensive and future-proof solutions of the GTreasury ecosystem.”

Penfold, the digital pensions platform, today announces the launch of its latest crowdfunding round, following significant growth of the business and the launch of its workplace pension platform in late 2021. Individuals can register now for early access on 25^th July 2022 via Penfold’s crowdfunding page, with the round opening to the general public on 26^th July 2022.  

As a modern pensions provider, Penfold is on a mission to disrupt the industry and provide savers with a next-generation platform that delivers a better user experience and gets people saving more for retirement.  

Since its inception, Penfold’s customer base has grown to more than 25,000 savers with over £90m of assets and the business has successfully quadrupled its customers’ savings since its last crowdfund last year, which sold out in 24 hours. 

This round of crowdfunding, which is aiming to raise £5m, is being opened to expand the pension provider’s workplace pension division, which has signed more than 150 businesses since its launch nine months ago including some of the UK’s biggest scale-ups such as Cuvva, Elvie and Attest.  

Chris Eastwood, Co-Founder at Penfold, comments: 

“Our mission is to give people a modern way of accessing and saving into their pension and challenge the outdated practices that have been holding onto for far too long in this industry. More and more savers want a pension that they can easily use and understand, as demonstrated by our growth over the last year.  

“We have launched this latest round of crowdfunding to continue this growth, particularly for our workplace pension platform as we aim to provide greater control for pension savers while improving efficiency and reducing costs for businesses. Our last crowdfunding round was a huge success and it’s fantastic to have a community of engaged investors who support our goal to get people saving more so they can have the retirement they deserve.” 

Wealth Dynamix today announces Banco Sabadell, Miami Branch and Wealth Dynamix, have extended their working partnership for a further five years, heralding a decade-long commitment to the delivery of end-to-end client lifecycle management for HNW and UHNW individuals.

This extended partnership is a move that cements Wealth Dynamix as a core technology provider within Banco Sabadell, Miami Branch’s technology infrastructure. 

Banco Sabadell, Miami Branch centres its banking activity in two areas of specialisation that encompass a wide offer of products and services: Private Banking and Corporate Banking and has used WDX1 from Wealth Dynamix already for five years to manage client lifecycle management for its HNW and UHNW clients in the US.

Wealth Dynamix product WDX1 is a secure, scalable, and fully digital Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution. It fully supports Banco Sabadell, Miami Branch’s goals by delivering a digital end-to-end experience for client engagement, client on-boarding and CRM that enhances the productivity of relationship managers as well as operations and compliance specialists.

WDX1 enables digital engagement with end clients to ensure the Bank cements its reputation as a provider of best-in-class account processing and client service from prospecting, to onboarding and ongoing management ensuring a seamless, efficient, and compliant journey, for both clients and advisers.

Gary Linieres, CEO and Co-founder OF Wealth Dynamix said: “We are absolutely delighted that Banco Sabadell, Miami Branch have re-signed with Wealth Dynamix for a further five years after an original five-year contract with us. As such, we will be working for over a decade together. This underscores their commitment to Wealth Dynamix and further endorses the power of our WDX1 solution and its benefits within their business."

“We hugely appreciate this commitment as it demonstrates Banco Sabadell, Miami Branch’s commitment to us, the benefits we bring, our collaborative way of working and our ability to keep pace with the demands of a modern private banking business.  In addition, the demands of their customers, by bringing a digital-first solution with proven efficiency and support in growth”.

Carlos Fernandez at Banco Sabadell, Miami Branch said: “We have been working with Wealth Dynamix for the last five years and they have proven to be an effective partner for the Bank. The integration of WDX1 facilitates our delivery of adaptable and personalised experiences for our clients reflecting their individual requirements and investment strategies. We look forward to our continued working relationship with Wealth Dynamix”.

Founded in 2012 by wealth management technology experts Gary Linieres and Brent Randall, Wealth Dynamix are the first wealth management technology firm to revolutionise the Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) processes with innovative applications of data modelling. Wealth Dynamix digitises the entire client lifecycle for private banks and wealth managers, from client acquisition and onboarding through to ongoing relationship management and client servicing. Wealth Dynamix identifies opportunities for boosting operating efficiencies and growing revenue, whilst enabling a significantly higher degree of client insight and due diligence.

Wealth Dynamix operates globally with offices in the UK, France, Switzerland, Singapore, United States of America, Lithuania and Vietnam.