Published

02:00 am

Ceviant, the UK-based fintech platform offering transformative cash management solutions for emerging market businesses, today announces it has launched in its first emerging market, Nigeria, as it goes live with its website: https://www.ceviant.co.uk/.

Ceviant is a financial technology company that delivers a broad range of treasury and trade solutions to a large and diversified client base, including corporates and multinationals, SMEs, importers, and exporters.

The company acts as a B2B SaaS (Software as a Service) platform that simplifies liquidity management for corporates. It has developed a proprietary cloud-based treasury management software that enables businesses to aggregate all their banking payments in one place.

Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and largest economy, with a GDP of USD 441.5 billion in 2021 according to Statista. In the last few years, there has been a surge of investment in Nigerian fintech which has birthed multiple African fintech Unicorns. Beyond Nigeria, Ceviant plans to launch across the Continent and the UAE.

The newly designed website displays the company’s suite of products and services including treasury management, cash visibility, and digitising trade finance. The website will ensure information is easily accessible to key stakeholders. Furthermore, Ceviant is developing the most direct API connectivity to banks in emerging markets which will allow clients to connect with business services and capabilities outside of traditional banking channels.

The company is FCA regulated in the UK and has also received Approval In Principle licences in Nigeria. It has also been awarded ISO accreditation and recently been accepted to join the SWIFT partner programme to create real value for customers while streamlining its multi-banking transactions to improve efficiency. Ceviant has also secured four new banking partners in Nigeria and plans to further expand its partner network across Africa and the UAE. The company’s go-to-market strategy includes SMEs, large corporates, and intermediaries to these businesses, such as the leading accountancy firms.

Commenting on the announcement, the founder of Ceviant, Idris Alubankudi Saliu, said:
“Corporates of all sizes have many challenges, including being able to manage their cash and access working capital and trade finance solutions to support their operations. We’re a new but key player in the market, aiming to solve the complexity around the way African companies traditionally manage their banking solutions by providing our integrated services in one place. We simplify processes and facilitate financial inclusion, with compliance and security at the heart of everything we do. This is a large and generally untapped market for our products and services, and we are extremely excited for customers to interact with our newly functional website. We look forward to the future and creating value for our stakeholders.”

04:00 am

Utimaco, a leading global provider of IT security solutions, has released a new whitepaper, ‘Circles of Trust: How the UK Public Perceives Digital Risk’ that uncovers how internet users in the UK, and their counterparts in Germany and Spain, perceive safety in the digital ecosystem.

The report finds a central paradox at the heart of an increasingly online society: the majority of people are very enthusiastic about digital services but also deeply concerned about their safety when using them. This presents a problem for digital service providers, whether they are in the public or private sector, and especially for governments like the UK’s, which aim to increase efficiency and inclusion through transitioning more services online.

One of the key findings is that 70% of surveyed respondents, representing internet users from across the UK, either worry a lot or a little about their security when using digital services. Only 10% don’t worry at all. This is despite only 15% of respondents answering that they had been harmed in some way by identity theft, data loss or fraud. This distrust increases as respondents aged, and there were significant differences between the answers of respondents from different parts of the country. 22% of respondents from London answered that they ‘worry a lot’ about their security, compared to 11% in the East of England. There were also disparities between respondents with different educational backgrounds, with people with the most and least educational attainment perceiving the greatest risk.

Similar stories emerged when respondents were asked about digital healthcare and government services. 63% of respondents said that given the choice they would use digital services to access healthcare when possible, and 46% consider the information that they send to their healthcare provider to be secure, a far higher level of confidence than most people had in digital security in general. This is likely to be explainable by the high level of public trust in the NHS as an institution rather than specific knowledge of its security. This seems to be the case with responses to questions of trust in other parts of the public sector, which are significantly lower.

“We are extremely pleased to be able to show our current and future customers how the cybersecurity solutions that they are putting in place are perceived by the general public,” says Ansgar Steden, Chief Revenue Officer at Utimaco. "The next-generation security solutions that Utimaco provides are only part of the puzzle: bulletproof security is only effective when it is perceived to be so by users, so as the report identifies, companies need to be able to combine security with communicating with users about how they are keeping them safe."

02:00 am

Accounting software provider BUNNI connects their users to up-to-date transaction information through Nordigen’s open banking platform.

BUNNI is a Dutch startup, founded in 2019, with a mission to make bookkeeping simple and addictively fun. Their users are freelancers and small business owners, mainly those with a creative background.

BUNNI makes administration easy for freelancers and small business owners with functions that cover timesheet management, trip registration, invoice and quotation creation, as well as bookkeeping. They offer direct links to all banks in the Netherlands, providing a thorough insight into cash flows.

Their inclusive user-friendly service and mobile application empower self-employed professionals to effectively manage all their accounting and administrative needs in one place. Giving individuals the freedom to choose how they work. Through Nordigen, BUNNI now provides their users with direct access to their bank account transaction information on their platform.

“BUNNI was not founded because we love numbers. In fact, we hate bookkeeping. It's a necessary evil with disastrous consequences if you make a mess of it. But amazing insights if you keep up with it. That's why we are thrilled to be teaming up with Nordigen. Our users can now automatically add their bank transactions to their administration. Securely and at no extra cost,” says Sjors Ferwerda, co-founder of BUNNI.

Nordigen is a freemium open banking provider that allows third parties to securely connect to consented financial data through regulated APIs. The Nordigen integration allows BUNNI to further simplify their users' bookkeeping by importing transaction data directly and securely into their platform.

“We are excited by our partnership with BUNNI; they provide an accessible and innovative accounting solution to small businesses, the self-employed, and the freelance workforce. The integration with Nordigen allows users of BUNNI to focus on what they are best at, leaving bookkeeping in safe hands,” notes Rolands Mesters, co-founder and CEO of Nordigen.

06:00 am

tell.money, the fintech solution that delivers innovative and rapidly deployable open banking services for banks and other account providers, has partnered with Toqio, the fintech SaaS platform that enables organizations to build and launch fintech propositions.

Addressing Toqio’s PSD2 (Payment Service Directive Two) requirement to ensure that consumers and SMEs using the services of its clients have access to payments and account information through open banking channels, tell.money has integrated its technology into the Toqio platform.

The legislation under PSD2 is designed to enable consumer access through third-party involvement within an improved customer authentication environment.

The majority of Toqio’s clients need to comply with PSD2 by having a Dedicated Interface, meaning that they are required to have compliant systems to enable ‘Trusted Third Party’ onboarding, consent management, support, and regulatory reporting, and publishing of real-time performance web statistics. tell.money takes care of all the PSD2 API-related activities.

For Toqio clients, having these capabilities pre-built into the Toqio platform removes development costs and complexities as well as accelerates the time to launch.

David Monty, Founder and CEO of tell.money, commented, “In conjunction with tell.money, Toqio has impressive growth plans, and we are delighted to be working with them in making the proposition for their clients as seamless as possible as far as their PSD2 obligations are concerned.”

Mike Galvin, Co-Founder and CCO, of Toqio added, “Embedding the tell.gateway capabilities into the Toqio marketplace is an important step for us. The obligations set out in PSD2 are frequently a friction point for our clients and taking away this area of concern for them gives Toqio a clear market advantage.”

05:00 am

Plenitude, the Financial Crime, Risk and Compliance specialists today launched Plenitude ClientSight, a comprehensive, cloud-based Client Risk Rating (CRR) solution.

CRR is a key control for all Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulated firms which forms part of an effective risk-based approach. CRR determines the level of Know Your Customer (KYC) and Client Due Diligence (CDD) that needs to be performed, and the level and frequency of ongoing monitoring activities across the client lifecycle. The implications of a weak or non-compliant CRR methodology are visible in the significant enforcement actions against financial institutions taken by regulators globally over recent years. The consequences of getting it wrong can also directly impact a firm’s bottom line if clients are assigned an unnecessarily higher risk rating that may present additional CDD/KYC and ongoing monitoring requirements with associated costs.

To address this industry challenge, Plenitude has developed ClientSight with a comprehensive CRR methodology that meets the regulatory requirements of key global markets and provides full coverage across a wide spectrum of risk themes including Money Laundering; Terrorist Financing; Sanctions Violations; Proliferation Financing, Bribery & Corruption and Tax Evasion.

Through ClientSight, financial institutions, FinTechs and professional services firms are able to assess the inherent financial crime risk of both individuals and entities with key risk indicators, and sources monitored and updated as part of the subscription service, to ensure ongoing compliance. The inbuilt Sanctions and PEP screening module which is optional also enables the screening of clients and their Ultimate Beneficial Owners and Legal Representatives based on up-to-date international sanctions and PEP lists.

The launch follows the deployment of ClientSight to HLB, with member firms from Europe, the Middle East, Africa and South America already using the solution.

Commenting on the launch of ClientSight, Marco Donzelli, CEO of HLB International, said: ‘’Plenitude has been an affinity partner of HLB since 2019. Multiple HLB member firms use Plenitude ClientSight and value the firm as an industry thought leader.”

Dr. Antonio Ghaleb, HLB International, Qatar, said: “Plenitude and its professional team have offered us an effective and efficient tool to perform a risk assessment for our existing and potential clients. Using ClientSight enables our compliance team to comply with the rules and regulations and meet the AML requirements in Qatar. On top of that, screening individuals and companies are the main advantages that allow our Money Laundering Reporting Officer to assess the natural and legal person's profile, to identify if they are linked or exposed to any international sanctions.”

Asad Choudhary, Plenitude Partner, commented: "We are delighted to announce the launch of ClientSight which we believe will help firms address the challenges associated with developing and maintaining a regulatory compliant and effective CRR methodology and solution. ClientSight builds on our existing suite of cloud-based RegTech products with full integration with Compass, our country risk rating solution. “

Pedro Arevalo, Plenitude Senior Executive and ClientSight Product Owner added: ClientSight also significantly reduces the costs associated with the development and maintenance of an inhouse solution and access can be enabled immediately through the web portal or API to feed existing systems. We are already seeing strong demand for the product and look forward to deploying it across multiple sectors.”

04:00 am

Identitii Limited is pleased to announce it has signed a five-year SLA with the Australian arm of the Dutch-led multinational banking and financial services group, Rabobank. Rabobank Australia will use Identitii’s cloud-hosted reporting platform, to help further automate IFTI reporting to AUSTRAC.

Commenting on the agreement, John Rayment, CEO of Identitii said:

“I am thrilled to announce that we have signed a five-year licence agreement with Rabobank Australia. Rabobank is a great example of a financial services organisation deploying increased automation for IFTI reporting to AUSTRAC. I’d like to welcome Rabobank to the growing Identitii family and look forward to working closely with their team.

“We continue to see strong interest in our cloud platform in Australia and other global markets, as AUSTRAC and other regulators around the world push reporting entities to ensure AML/CTF processes meet stringent standards. This growing macro trend, together with other drivers including the global adoption of ISO 20022, put Identitii in a prime position to capitalise on perhaps the largest program of technology change the industry has ever seen.

“The global financial services industry exercises considerable caution when adopting new technology, with significant momentum building over time once solutions are proven. Our new SaaS platform is breaking new ground in an industry where companies, customers and regulators are all looking for greater transparency.”

The five-year SLA consists of an annual recurring licence fee of $0.1M and an initial $80k payment for professional service fees for onboarding and customisation. Either party may terminate the agreement for any reason with 12 months' written notice. Rabobank also has an automatic right of renewal for a further 12-month period at the end of the initial term.

08:00 am

Today, Berlin-based infrastructure fintech Upvest announced the closing of a $42 million Series B financing round - one of the largest German fintech funding rounds in 2022. Bessemer Venture Partners is leading the Series B with Earlybird and ABN AMRO Ventures doubling down as previous investors and participating in Notion Capital, Partech, 10x Group, Speedinvest and Maximilian Tayenthal (N26). The raised capital will be used to advance Upvest’s Investment-API, lay the ground for the internationalization, and gradually expand Upvest’s team. Since it's Series A, Upvest is backed by the venture capital firms Earlybird, HV Capital, Notion Capital, ABN AMRO Ventures, Speedinvest and Partech, as well as the fintech founders Maximilian Tayenthal (N26) and Felix Haas (IDnow).

Upvest’s product offering is fully up and running in the market and enables fintech to offer their end customers products in the field of capital market investments, from ETFs and stocks to crypto assets. Upvest built the first end-to-end cloud-native core banking system for investments and is one of the few financial institutions in Europe owning all BaFin licenses for securities and crypto brokerage, and custody. Designed as a plug-and-play solution with fully-fledged process automation at its core, Upvest’s API and core banking system help Neobanks- and brokers, as well as established banking players, to significantly save on the cost side since they do not need to develop their brokerage and custody infrastructure from scratch. Additionally, they also save costs as Upvest’s platform is fully automated and thus cheaper to operate. The flexibility and openness of Upvest’s Investment-API give fintech maximum freedom to individually program the API tailored to their needs, help to reduce onboarding time for new customers and make investing possible instantly.

"We appreciate our investors' commitment, particularly in light of the current market environment. We see this together with the demand of leading international fintech for our solution as a confirmation of our unique positioning and market offering", says Martin Kassing, founder and CEO of Upvest. "Together with our investors who bring strength to the table in terms of industry expertise as well as internationalization strategies, we are now ready to open up a new chapter for our company. With Upvest, we want to establish Investment-as-a-Service as a new category and become the technical backbone for all fintech, banks and asset managers that want to offer their end customers safe, affordable and simple access to the capital and crypto market. Since our recent go-live, our API is fully up and running - offering investment products across Europe has never been easier."

"Upvest is ideally positioned with a market-leading product in one of the most exciting and underserved areas of fintech infrastructure. Just one of Upvest’s USPs: the Investment-API can be easily connected to existing backends and can be immediately deployed, enabling businesses to build great investment experiences for their end-users – seamless, secure and across international borders", says Charles Birnbaum, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. "With Upvest, both fintech providers and legacy players can set full focus on their core business by developing new investment use cases for their end customers while at the same time exploring new growth opportunities for their own business - a game-changer in the European market. We are looking forward to supporting Martin and the entire Upvest team on their ambitious growth journey."

With Upvest’s Investment-API, any company that wants to offer investment products has access to endless growth possibilities due to a variety of use cases ranging from crypto trading to fractional investing. Most recently, Upvest entered into new partnerships with renowned banking players: For safekeeping the assets of Upvest’s B2B clients, Upvest could win BNP Securities Services as Europe’s largest custodian. In the area of payment rails and transaction banking, Upvest announced its cooperation with the Dutch banking group ABN AMRO, one of the leading banking groups in Europe.

04:00 am

Visa, the global leader in digital payments, today released a whitepaper in partnership with payments processor Worldline India on the growth of contactless payments adoption in India. The whitepaper, ‘India taps into a Contactless Future’, analyses India’s journey with digital payments infrastructure and contactless payments, highlighting the rapidly growing adoption across regions and sectors.

Contactless payments saw a tremendous surge in recent years, their contribution to total face-to-face (F2F) transactions growing by more than 6x - from <2.5% in December 2018 to 16% in December 2021. This mode of less-touch payments in stores ensured consumer safety, a necessity since the pandemic. Additionally, the adoption of EMV chip cards has been pivotal for the growth of contactless payments, aided by supportive regulations that increased the contactless limit in India to Rs. 5,000 in 2021. The cohesive experience of contactless payments, with their inherent convenience, speed, and enhanced security features are a major reason for rapid adoption by consumers, merchants, issuers, and payment processors.

Key highlights from the contactless payments’ whitepaper:

Highest adoption of contactless payments was observed in sectors like Quick Service Restaurants, pharmacies, food, grocery, etc., which accelerated with the impact of the pandemic
According to Worldline India, while 25% of all transactions at supermarkets were contactless in January 2020, these transactions rose to 31% by January 2022
The user footprint across India also stepped up with metro cities leading the way
In 2020 and 2021, Delhi NCR, Karnataka, Gujarat, and Telangana had the highest proportion of contactless transactions and penetration, across both debit and credit cards
Worldline India Digital Payments Report 2021 has shown that while cards contribute to 26% of all digital transactions, they generate 53% of the value of all digital commerce

Commenting on the whitepaper findings, Ramakrishnan Gopalan, Vice President, Head of Products and Solutions, for India and South Asia, Visa said “The rapid adoption of contactless payments in the past few years is testament to the rise in acceptance of safer and faster forms of cashless payments across consumer segments. We have observed that the key drivers of contactless growth – availability, convenience, utility, and security – will continue to aid adoption at scale as contactless cards become ubiquitous. We are confident that it is a sustainable payment solution for seamless face-to-face transactions and will help greatly in reaching the goal of a less-cash society.”

At the launch, Sunil Rongala, Senior Vice President, Strategy, Innovation and Analytics, Worldline India said, “As contactless payment methods have shifted from a choice to a necessity in recent times, backed with multiplying volumes of transactions in the last three years, we see immense potential in contactless further helping digitize the merchant ecosystem. Coupled with the increasing merchant acceptance of contactless cards we are seeing not only in metro cities but in non-metro cities as well, we anticipate contactless payments to be a key driver of digital payments in the future.”

Through the pandemic, contactless payments recovered faster than other forms of face-to-face payment due to greater consumer ease and safety. Wider adoption of contactless payments will be an essential component in building smarter payments infrastructure and smarter cities. Contactless payments also result in repeat purchases and customer stickiness, and financial inclusion through cards, a familiar instrument to most consumers today.