Formance, a French fintech startup that provides organisations with a "low-code" template for tracking payment flows in real time, has secured $3,1 million from Hoxton Ventures, Frst, Y Combinator, and a number of business angels. 

Fomance, which was founded in 2021 by Clément Salaün and Anne-Sybille Pradelles, provides pre-built, fully-customizable use-case templates for the tracking of financial flows between pay-ins and payouts. 

The package, which includes an open source modelling language and ledger as well as a library of pre-built use cases, is aimed to assist developing firms in tracking rising quantities of cash flows and adapting to take advantage of emerging business opportunities. 

The company also provides finance and operational teams with subscription-based real-time transaction tracking solutions that enable the reconciliation of incoming and outgoing payments and the discovery of transaction-related issues. 

The company is now testing its package with an unnamed fintech company, and intends to utilise the funds to pursue a number of pipeline possibilities among SMEs and marketplace enterprises.

SME Bank, the bank making life simpler for small- and medium-sized enterprises, has partnered with next-generation payment infrastructure provider kevin. to create an easy-access one-stop-shop for e-commerce business owners seeking a range of online payment capabilities for customers, with payments into a single business account, combined with collateral-free growth financing. 

Until today, merchants needed to turn to multiple providers to assemble these core requirements, resulting in lost time and unnecessarily complex administration. The combined offering from SME Bank and kevin. simplifies life for SME owners. It creates a single point of entry for payment infrastructure enabling account-to-account payments all across the Baltics, as well as revenue-based financing based on e-retailers’ expenses and profit. 

The payment collection options on offer include an open banking-based Payment Initiation Service (PIS) enabling instant, cost-effective and end-user-friendly collections from the majority of consumers with an account at a bank in the European Economic Area (EEA). Free open banking plugins from major e-commerce providers, including WooCommerce, Prestashop, Opencart, and Magento, make integration simple and extremely fast — all with zero customized IT development. 

In addition, AI-driven revenue-based financing decisions are available in under 24 hours and include collateral-free loans without personal guarantees. To help promote growth, the amount of financing available grows proportionally to the applicant’s business demand.

Mantvydas Štareika, CEO at SME Bank, comments: “SME Bank exists to make life easier for SME owners and we use technology, where it makes sense, to achieve that. By partnering with fintech kevin. and its open banking integrations we are combining many things that SME owners need into a single platform: fast payments significantly reduced transaction costs and ultra-fast, AI-guided finance decisions. Our partnership will save owners time, help them grow faster, and reduce costs.”

Tadas Tamošiūnas, co-founder and CEO at kevin., says: “We are delighted that SME Bank opted for our innovative and robust payment infrastructure to enable their clients to make the most out of Open Banking. Here at kevin., we are committed to driving the future of payments and are always thrilled when partners such as SME Bank join us on this mission.” 

Sky News reports that the British AI-based personal finance chatbot Cleo has been valued at $500 million thanks to a $80 million fundraising round. 

Sofina, a tech investor, participated in the financing, which occurred around 18 months after a $44 million funding round, according to Sky. 

Cleo, a 2016 London-based startup, interacts with users' bank accounts and analyses their spending patterns and transaction histories using artificial intelligence to assist with money management. 

With its conversational approach exemplified by "roast mode," the brand has acquired a large following among Generation Z. The vast majority of its users are located in the United States. 

According to Sky, the increased investment would be utilised to raise Cleo's employment from approximately 140 to 220.

UK Digital Bank Kroo is delighted to announce they have been granted their full banking licence by the Bank of England. Kroo is only one of 2 banks to have been granted a Banking Licence with a personal current account since August 2016. Kroo launched its prepaid offering using state-of-the-art tech to ensure a fully mobile experience in February 2019 and has built a customer base of 23,000. In the coming months, Kroo will offer its existing customers the opportunity to migrate to Kroo’s new personal current account for free.

Kroo completed a wide range of prerequisites in order to obtain its licence including:

• Demonstrating robustness of its processes and systems 

• Compliance and risk management capabilities

• A viable business model 

• Fit and proper directors and managers 

• Adequate financial resources

Kroo is now a fully licensed UK bank and will offer its customers an FSCS-protected personal current account once it launches in the coming months. Over the past number of years, a large number of Fintechs have launched, however, very few have been granted banking licences by the Bank of England. 

This banking licence means that Kroo:

• Can offer depositors protection via the Financial Services Compensation Scheme for up to £85,000

• Can provide its customers with overdrafts, loans and savings products

• Follows stringent banking regulations and  very high-security standards

Kroo was founded in 2016 when two creative minds came together with a vision to change the relationship people have with money for good. Kroo has been built to positively impact its customers, their communities and the environment. They have engaged in a tree planting scheme with a mission to plant one million trees and have a board-level social conscious committee. In the future, Kroo plans to contribute 5% of its sustainable profits to the social causes its customer community care about most. 

Following the announcement, Kroo CEO Andrea De Gottardo, said “We are delighted to announce that Kroo has received its full UK banking licence. This represents a key milestone in our mission to create a bank that truly connects people financially, enables them to be financially better off and plays its part in making a positive impact on the world. The bar to be granted a UK banking licence is exceptionally high and I am incredibly proud of the team and our work in achieving this. This is one of the elements that will set us apart from most of our competitors in the FinTech industry, alongside our commitment to deliver innovative features and champion values our customers can identify with.”

More than seven out of ten (71%) of executives working for buy-side financial services firms across the UK, US and Asia say their organisation uses more than five ESG data sources. The average number of sources used by these businesses is 9.3, with the US using the most (9.7) and Asia with the least at 8.9.

These findings are among the highlights of new research commissioned by Alveo, a leading provider of cloud-based market data management services, polling executives working for buy-side financial services firms in the UK, US and Asia. In terms of ESG data set types, organisations across all three regions are using multiple types, but are utilising ESG ratings provided by third parties most. In all, just under three-quarters (74%) of respondents said that their organisations were using these ratings.

The most common response in all three regions is to have between 6-10 ESG data sources, with corporate disclosures being the least common data source cited. External ratings is the most common, with far more use of sentiment data in the US when compared to the UK or Asia.

57% of firms overall are currently using third-party expert opinions on factual information such as carbon emissions, but Asia respondents have more frequently centralized ESG data management with 68% of respondents in Asia stating there is a dedicated and separate ESG team in place that owns this data, compared to 52% in the US and 46% in the UK.

What is clear is that firms need to cast a wide net to get the ESG data they require including external ratings, expert opinions and sentiment data to supplement corporate disclosures.

“Asset management firms are looking to materially ramp up their ESG data management to fast-track the supply of consistent, aggregated ESG content to different stakeholders. Firms are looking to make use of the latest technologies for ESG data analysis but material issues in data quality can hamper the effectiveness of these. Drawing on the services of an expert solutions provider and adopting Data-as-a-Service models may prove to be the best route to address these,” said Mark Hepsworth CEO at Alveo.

Azentio Software (“Azentio”), a Singapore-headquartered technology firm owned by funds advised by Apax Partners, today announced that Banque Populaire de Mauritanie (BPM), one of the largest financial institutions (FIs) in Mauritania, has gone live with the R14.5 version of iMAL, Azentio’s Core Banking Platform, to meet the multiple technology requirements imperative for its planned business growth.

iMAL is the industry-leading digital Islamic core banking platform, and the first and only suite certified by the Accounting & Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI). Its new version will provide BPM with the ability to quickly respond to the changing market conditions and regulations, along with the efficiency to align with its future business plans.

The go-live makes BPM the first bank to use the R14.5 version in Mauritania. But most importantly, the solution is expected to help meet BPM’s objective to offer the local market a broad range of interest-free products and services with faster time-to-market to deliver value to their customers, especially those firmly committed to Sharia and ethical values.

The bank has been running on iMAL since it began operations in 2012. Lately, the bank decided to upgrade to the latest release to meet its digital transformation’s vision to ensure better performance and scalability and fulfill its customers’ expectations of improved experiences across multiple channels.

With the R14.5 version, BPM gets a new multi-threading solution at different levels, delivering high volume processing capabilities with a profound level of parallel processing of records; an advanced solution burden-free, regardless of multiple connected channels or heavy processes; and the implementation of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)/web services to maximize agility, interoperability, and scalability of the system. With this step, the bank has progressed to SOA, facilitating the integration of channels and third-party systems, while getting the benefits of an advanced customization engine that will facilitate faster time-to-market of new products.

Limam Ebnou, CEO of BPM, commented, “Our bank has been using iMAL since we began operations in 2012, primarily because it is the only software built from the ground up in compliance with the Sharia law. Aware of the digital transformation challenges and the solution’s new advanced positioning in the sector, we are certain of taking our partnership with Azentio to even higher levels of success and innovations in Islamic financial services.”

Tony Kinnear, CEO of Azentio, said, “After being a strategic partner of Banque Populaire de Mauritanie for over a decade, we are helping them today to launch trendsetting products and improve their customer service. We are excited to take this relationship further with the go-live of iMAL R14.5. iMAL’s latest version comes with a number of market-driven innovative features which fit perfectly with the core principles and moral values of Islamic banking.”

UK fintech company Paysend is using airfocus to create and share product roadmaps across the company, providing greater transparency around priorities and enabling it to deliver better products to its seven million customers.

Next-generation global payment ecosystem Paysend works with businesses and consumers alike, helping them to send money to more than 150 countries worldwide. The product team focuses on delivering the features and functionality that will provide the most value for customers.

Although hugely successful, Paysend faced a lack of transparency and collaboration among its product teams as to what they should focus on in order to enhance the customer experience. Without that, the leadership team then lacked confidence it was doing the right thing for customers, as Ben Chisell, Chief Product Officer, Paysend, explains:

“We were struggling to deliver new functionality as quickly as we wanted, but using airfocus to create and share product roadmaps has meant that the entire organization is clear on priorities for products and features. airfocus gives us that single view of what to focus on, offering understanding and full transparency, which allows us to ship the right features faster and provide more impact for our customers.”

As a fully remote company with more than 600 employees in 20+ countries, a modern product management tool is vital for Paysend to keep delivering innovative and valuable products and features, such as its recent launches to help customers improve their financial health - Credit Builder and Pay Later, which are part of the Paysend Grow product suite.

Using airfocus’ roadmap functionality means that Paysend product teams can meet virtually once a week and run through the latest board with everything currently being built by the engineering team, explored by the design team, and thought through and defined by the product team. Having done so, the Paysend product team can then understand what issues it has in each area and go and help where it is most needed.

“Unquestionably, the main benefit we've seen from airfocus has been the improved transparency and clarity about what's being worked on for our products,” continued Ben Chisell, Paysend. “But it also comes with powerful tools that allow us to ask specific questions to our customers and use their feedback to support the decisions that we're making.

“Some product management platforms dictate how you should use them, but because airfocus is fully customizable and modular, we can use it in the ways that best suit our specific needs. Another thing we have noticed is the increase in the impact that we've had on the objectives and key results that we set at the start of each quarter. Product OKRs are important to us and give us the direction and clarity we need.”

airfocus is the world’s first fully customisable, flexible, and modular product management platform and is used by organizations worldwide, including Flowe, eBay, and Shopify.

“We know that not every company has the same requirements from a product management platform, so we’ve made airfocus fully modular, scalable, and customizable so that users can use only the features that will make a difference to them,” said Malte Scholz, CEO, airfocus. “A fintech leader such as Paysend is fully committed to delivering the best products and features for its customers, and for them to have chosen airfocus to support this shows the value our modular approach can bring."

CellPoint Digital, a global leader in payment orchestration, today announces it has received CarbonNeutral® company certification from Climate Impact Partners as part of its ongoing commitment to environmental improvement and sustainability.

Climate Impact Partners, formed through a 2021 merger by ClimateCare and Natural Capital Partners, is the world’s leading partner for companies taking climate action. It works with high-profile businesses, governments and NGOs to deliver credible solutions for climate impact.

The certification verifies that CellPoint Digital is carbon neutral in accordance with The CarbonNeutral Protocol, a leading and independent source on greenhouse gas accounting, and the GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance, the world's most widely used greenhouse gas accounting standards. The certification also confirms adherence to the International Carbon Reduction and Offset Alliance (ICROA) standards.

The complex certification process involves accurately calculating a carbon footprint and setting targeted goals to reduce it to zero. This includes internally reducing carbon emissions through improving efficiency and offsetting remaining emissions through verified external emission reduction support.

Zoe Wheeler, Global Head of Culture and Team at CellPoint Digital, said: “We are incredibly proud to have achieved carbon neutral status well ahead of the 2030 net-zero challenge set by the UN’s Race to Zero campaign.

“For us, this certification represents reaching a crucial goal. But, it is also the first step in a long journey as we continue to work tirelessly toward our carbon-neutral, renewable energy and net-zero goals.”

CEO of CellPoint Digital, Kristian Gjerding, added: “By teaming up with Climate Impact Partners and achieving our CarbonNeutral® certification, we have committed to being climate leaders in the fintech space. We are honoured to contribute to its goal of working with the world’s leading corporates to reduce 1 billion tonnes of CO2 by 2030, transform the global economy, improve health and livelihoods, and restore our planet.

“We are excited to present our community of employees with a portfolio of projects that will drive forward our environmental and social sustainability strategies. We know that the climate crisis represents an enormous challenge for society, and we are ambitious to deliver the greatest impact possible.”

The announcement comes as the fintech sector realises its potential for climate action. A March 2022 report identified the emergence of a green fintech subsector in the UK and Europe. Studies have shown that fintech development helps economies transition to low carbon by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, with a new ecosystem where fintechs are harnessing technologies to drive change. One survey found that just under three-quarters of banking CEOs believe their future growth will be largely determined by their ability to navigate the shift to low carbon and clean technology economy. With their access to innovation, fintechs can underpin this growth.

Award-winning accounting software developer iplicit has unveiled a new City-level board to target a multi-billion pound opportunity in the UK and international mid-market segments.

Lyndon Stickley has been named Chief Executive Officer. Previously a non-executive director at iplicit, he has played a critical role in identifying the company’s growth potential and defining its scale-up strategy for the UK, North America and other English-speaking territories.

Mr Stickley has a long and highly successful track record of launching, growing and selling innovative technology companies across a wide range of sectors. The past 30 years have seen his involvement in building six other businesses that have each been acquired, the largest deal being over £100 million. He has also had significant experience in scaling up a technology business in America, having lived there for three years while at the helm of one of his investments.

London-based iplicit has secured the City expertise of Antony Ebel as Chairman. A qualified accountant and lawyer, Mr Ebel is the former Chairman of AIM-listed specialist alternative asset manager Gresham House plc. He has also been the architect behind the launch, growth and successful disposal of a multitude of businesses, spanning his 50-year career.

New Director of Engineering, Mike Eggington is the former Head of Engineering at AXA UK. He grew a 20-strong team of SaaS developers to a headcount of more than 600 – making him, in Mr Stickley’s words, “the gold standard of expertise in SaaS scale-ups”.

Rob Steele brings his technical and business planning skills to the role of Chief Financial Officer at iplicit, following four years as CEO at the company. Mr Steele was also co-founder of Bournemouth-based Exchequer Software Ltd. As the driving force that secured Exchequer’s position in the UK market, with several thousand customers installed by 2005, he was instrumental in the negotiation and conclusion of the sale of the Exchequer to IRIS. 

Ed Gairdner will join iplicit on 4 July 2022 as Chief Operating Officer, following a COO role at Telet Research Ltd, a 5G/4G mobile operator. He was also a ‘Chief of Staff’ Project Manager for leading UK entrepreneur James Caan, then one of the investors in the BBC’s Dragons’ Den. Mr Gairdner – like iplicit’s new CEO – has experience in taking software companies to the US market.

These five critical appointments will enable iplicit founder and Chief Technology Officer Ian Andrews and his team to focus on developing further innovations for the true cloud accounting software as it is rolled out to tens of thousands of mid-market organisations across the commercial, and nonprofit and education sectors globally.

As next-generation accounting software, iplicit is fast gaining favour for its rapid speed of implementation, its enhanced levels of reporting and a seamless migration path from users’ existing platforms. Having won ‘Best UK ERP’ award for the last two years running, it is currently considered best in class for 115,000 UK SMEs and nonprofits in the under-served mid-market.

These users have outgrown their existing software, but recognise that the entry-level accounting applications are not sufficiently comprehensive for their finance workflow needs, and the larger, incumbent cloud-based offerings are prohibitively expensive and overly complex.

So they are trapped in what Mr Stickley describes as the “void” between entry-level offerings such as Xero or Quickbooks and larger systems such as NetSuite or Dynamics.

North America offers even greater opportunities for iplicit with an analogous but five times larger void between entry-level QuickBooks and the likes of NetSuite, Dynamics and Intacct.

Targeting 10,000 customers onboarded over the next five to seven years in the UK alone, iplicit is looking at an opportunity forecast at £100 million in annual recurring revenues.  “That’s a £1 billion business in the UK – and a multi-billion pound opportunity when you factor in North America and the rest of the world,” said Mr Stickley.

“This is why we’ve added such ‘heavy-hitters’ to our board. We needed a very experienced team in place as early as possible to capitalise swiftly on this enormous opportunity, and to manage what promises to be a very steep growth curve. We are not constrained by opportunity in any way whatsoever. The issue for us is ensuring we’re able to recruit the right level of talent to be able to expand the teams rapidly,” Mr Stickley concluded.

Launched as a product in January 2019, iplicit now has customers in 52 countries and already has more than 5,000 users on its platform on a daily basis. The software integrates with other cloud applications, using its public API to break down data silos. It provides users with real-time reporting capabilities across individual entities and multi-legal entity groups, automated data migration and rapid implementation.

In February 2022, iplicit was voted AccountingWEB’s best Enterprise Accounting/ERP 2021 (beating six other finalists into runner-up position). In 2021, iplicit was named Accounting Excellence Mid-Market & Enterprise Accounting Software of the Year 2020.

Currently, with 38 employees and 18 open positions, iplicit has three offices in London EC1, Bournemouth and Dublin. 

Singletrack, the capital markets client engagement and analytics expert, today announced a significant capital growth investment from Accel-KKR, a leading technology-focused private equity firm. The investment will enable Singletrack to accelerate expansion plans into global markets and execute on strategic M&A. Founded in 2009, Singletrack is an engagement, research management and analytics platform purpose-built by industry professionals for capital markets, helping clients on both the sell and buy sides maximise revenue, efficiency and profitability. 

“Our success within the space can be measured in several ways: from our client base, which includes top-performing independent investment banks, to our 29-country global footprint and our expanded product offerings which serve both buy and sell sides,” says Stuart Berwick, co-founder and CEO of Singletrack. “As the capital markets grow in opportunity and complexity, we are poised for aggressive market expansion. This investment from Accel-KKR is a great catalyst for Singletrack and our mission.”

Singletrack’s heritage is rooted in capital markets. Founders Stuart Berwick and Paul Dyson have decades of experience driving innovation at global investment banks. They developed Singletrack in 2009 as a radical new approach to capital markets CRM. Singletrack’s sell-side platform leverages assets and information for sales and trading, research, events and corporate finance, using an array of advanced tools including AI and machine learning to surface deep client behaviour insights and inform client strategy. On the buy-side, the company offers a vendor relationship platform that seamlessly captures interactions of all types with brokers and other research providers, handles voting, manages contracts and more. The resultant data informs research acquisition strategies, vendor management, and allocation of research finance. 

“Singletrack recognised early on the potential in combining on-demand technology and advanced analytics for a purpose-built CRM solution for capital markets. Seasoned leaders like Paul and Stuart draw on deep experience within the global investment banking industry and their informed approach has differentiated the company, propelling Singletrack to the forefront of financial CRM tools and positioning it to capitalise on a fragmented marketplace. We are excited to partner with Singletrack as they grow,” says Phil Cunningham, Managing Director at Accel-KKR and Lead for the firm’s Emerging Buyout Partners fund.

Singletrack was recently named among “The Most Influential Technology Firms of 2022” by Harrington Starr. Singletrack is used by some of the most successful institutional brokers, independent investment banks and research providers on four continents. Customers include D. A. Davidson, Liberum, Peel Hunt,  and Seaport Global Securities.