Zafin, the world’s leading SaaS cloud-native product and pricing platform, has announced the addition of industry expert Al-Noor Ramji to its board of directors. Ramji, who has extensive experience in guiding leading organizations through phases of hyper-growth and digitization, will chair a new Growth Committee, which is mandated to help guide Zafin through its next phase of strategic growth and expansion into new sectors and markets.

“Financial institutions are contending with many headwinds, which is why they’re turning to partners like Zafin to help them become nimble and gain a competitive advantage,” said Al-Noor Ramji. “Zafin’s composable design allows institutions to minimize the risks, costs and time associated with delivering next-generation customer experiences and at pace. Time to market is essential for customer life time value. I see an extraordinary growth opportunity for the company to replicate the success they’ve had in financial services by entering new sectors and industries.”

Ramji most recently was the Group Chief Digital Officer for Prudential PLC, where he was responsible for developing and executing an integrated, long-term digital strategy for all group companies under the Prudential banner. Prior to joining Prudential, Ramji was Chief Strategy Officer of Calypso Technology, Inc., a global software provider of integrated trading and risk applications, which serves the capital markets function within banks and other financial institutions. He has also held various senior leadership roles at Misys PLC, BT Group PLC, Qwest Communications, Dresdner Kleinwort Benson and the Swiss Bank Corporation.

“Al-Noor’s impressive leadership experience of ushering in artificial intelligence (AI)-first strategies across leading global organizations will be invaluable in contributing to Zafin’s future growth plans,” said Al Karim Somji, founder and group CEO of Zafin. “His addition to our board of directors shows our commitment to building a team of industry-leading experts whose knowledge and expertise will benefit Zafin and our customer base as we continue to add new services and scale our business around the world.”

Zafin supports financial institutions that are accelerating their investments in digital transformation. Gartner^® surveyed over 300 banking executives, revealing that investing in digital banking platforms is no guarantee of increased revenue. Zafin’s composable architecture has helped many financial institutions drive revenue growth and expedite product time-to-market while plugging revenue leakage. Financial institutions can easily deploy new capabilities to introduce innovative products with agility and price them based on relationship and risk. Always ensuring fair and transparent outcomes.

Scality announced today that it has achieved a milestone in continuous operations and recovery point objective (RPO) for RING replication in an 80-petabyte data lake deployment for a major US bank. The company engineered a deployment that satisfied the customer’s data lake requirement with a secondary disaster recovery (D/R) site, active/active access and sub-60-second RPO across two data centres separated by over 1,200 miles. With Scality, the bank now has a fully active secondary site that avoids the traditional waste and inefficiencies of an idle (passive) hot-standby solution.

The bank selected Scality’s flagship product, Scality RING, to be the storage system for its 80-petabyte data lake as part of a $100M HPE GreenLake deployment. As with many other regulated organisations, the bank required a secondary D/R site for this data lake to provide continuous uptime and failover in the event of a site outage.

Whereas traditional mirrored solutions would require idle application and infrastructure on the D/R site, RING provides two-site active/active access, which is out of reach for many other storage solutions. This allows applications on both sites to effectively operate equally as primary sites that can read and write data. Scality’s solution provides high-performance bidirectional replication, with observability for replication monitoring to ensure simplified operations.

The RING deployment provides high-performance S3 API access, with peak performance rates to support hundreds of terabytes per day of new data to be written and simultaneously replicated to the other site. RING replication is near-instantaneous even in asynchronous mode. In the event one of the sites suffers an outage or failure, applications will access data seamlessly and without disruption, so the bank can continue normal operations.

Giorgio Regni, CTO, Scality, said: “Financial institutions have to protect themselves from potential data centre failure — and they’re dealing with massive amounts of sensitive data, so this is true operations at scale. Traditional storage systems offer only active/passive replication capabilities, which wastes resources on the secondary site. Scality and HPE GreenLake worked together to help the bank save significant costs and simplify operations through an industry-leading active/active disaster recovery solution.”

Global fraud fighters, SEON has today gone further in their battle to eradicate online fraud by expanding the number of digital platforms analyzed through its industry-leading email and phone API checks to more than 50.

SEON’s unique platform is a modern fraud prevention solution perfectly suited for a digital generation. The company’s system leverages phone and email information, enabling businesses to have a comprehensive 360° view of potential customers. By analyzing the digital footprints of customers, SEON is able to quickly identify the tell-tale signs of fraud, which include throwaway email addresses and temporary phone numbers that are lacking any discernible history of activity.

By enlarging its digital and social footprint checks, SEON is providing users with unrivalled insights into who their customers are. Thanks to the update, the company’s innovative solution is now able to check email and phone addresses across more than 50 platforms, with new additions including Adobe, Disney+, Netflix, Patreon and Quora.

With this ability, fraud managers can enhance fraud prevention strategies and gain additional, real-time insights that allow them to make more accurate risk decisions. Importantly, the new update includes the ability to analyse social and digital platforms common within certain regions, giving businesses more local data touchpoints when dealing with international operations. Despite already being one of the leaders in this field, SEON plans to further expand this offering in the coming months.

To this end, the latest expansion forms part of a broader series of product enhancements, which SEON will be announced in the near future. The company is already making use of its record-breaking $94m USD Series B funding round to go further for its customers and enacting its core business mission to democratize the battle against online fraud by providing businesses of all sizes with affordable, accessible, and effective fraud prevention solutions.

Speaking on the new update, Amanda Lieu, Director Brand, Product Marketing & Growth commented: “At SEON, we strive to continually improve our product offering to benefit our customers and to help tackle online fraud. As we all know, online fraud is becoming more sophisticated, but fraudsters still lack the resources to create multiple digital profiles replete with significant posting history. Ultimately, it’s not economical for them to do this and as such, our system helps to mitigate the risk of fraud significantly.

“It’s important to note that our email and phone API checks were already industry-leading, but as a business we’re committed to never resting on our laurels, which means a constant drive towards improvement wherever it can be achieved. It’s in this spirit that we’re already working towards a further expansion across these platforms, as well as a comprehensive series of additional product updates for the remainder of 2022.”

As the go-to fraud prevention company of choice for some of the most exciting fintechs and online businesses, including Revolut, Sorare and mollie, SEON’s solution can be considered the ‘gold standard in fraud prevention tools. Those interested in seeing the company’s system in action are advised to visit its website and try out its powerful lookup tool for free, which quickly lists social and digital accounts associated with a phone number or email address.

AstroPay, the online payment solution of choice for over six million users in the world, has inked a new sponsorship deal with English Premier League team Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club, also known as Wolves.

The latest agreement with Wolves marks the second year of their partnership and indicates AstroPay’s continued interest to expand into the wider European market. The prestigious deal includes the exclusive designations for AstroPay as the principal partner of Wolves and Wolves Women for the 2022/23 campaign.

The deal will also see AstroPay’s branding and logo featured on the front of the match shirts and will be prominently displayed on the shirts worn by the esports teams. Wolves’ home stadium Molineux will display AstroPay’s logo on four static TV facing pitch side advertising boards positioned along the side of the playing field. 20 pitch-facing advertising boards will also be displaying the business’ branding, positioned in front of the Billy Wright Stand.

The club will also feature AstroPay’s logo on their print assets including official publications, as well as across the website and social media channels.

AstroPay will also have the opportunity to shoot a few videos and photos with players from the men's, women's, and esports teams. The partnership will continue to boost AstroPay’s brand and company profile, further strengthening its foothold in the UK.

Mikael Lijtenstein, CEO of AstroPay, said: “We have built a great relationship with the club over the year and are pleased to be very much part of the Wolves family, one of the most successful clubs in domestic English history with 13 major trophy wins.”

“They are a perfect fit for AstroPay and the partnership further solidifies our growth strategy, particularly in terms of increasing our visibility in wider European market. We look forward to continuing to work together, hopefully for many seasons to come.”

Commenting on the partnership deal, Russell Jones, Wolves general manager for the marketing and commercial growth, said: “We are delighted to announce this new partnership with AstroPay, who are a multi-award winning company, specialising in providing payment solutions in over 150 countries.

“As a forward thinking and fast-growing brand, we know AstroPay have enjoyed the exposure and reach that the Premier League brings. This is their first move into principal front of shirt sponsorship, and it gives me immense pride that they have chosen Wolves.

“Their progressive attitude and ambitious growth plans have seen them win significant market share in both Asia and Latin America – two areas where Wolves has developed a strong following but also harbours extensive growth ambitions for 2022/23.

“We have already started working with our colleagues at AstroPay to align our marketing plans. The first step will be unveiling the AstroPay logo on our men’s and women’s first team shirts for season 2022/23. We can also confirm that AstroPay will adorn the full range of replica shirts (adults and juniors), when available in-store and online.”

Today, enterprise B2B payments leader Treasury Intelligence Solutions (TIS) announced the successful arrangement of a new debt facility with Kreos Capital that will provide up to €50 million in financing. Kreos Capital, the leading growth debt provider in Europe, facilitated the deal to provide TIS with additional funding to execute a variety of strategic initiatives involving new product innovations, potential acquisitions, and continued geographic expansion. 

The debt financing, closed in early May, gives TIS access to an attractive pool of liquidity that will be deployed to sustain their continued expansion plans and comes on top of $40 million in equity financing raised previously. The decision was approved unanimously by TIS' Board and institutional shareholders. 

According to Erik Masing, CEO of TIS, "Working with Kreos creates the ideal conditions for pursuing the company's aggressive business objectives. The funding comes at the perfect time for TIS as we look to expand our geographic footprint, push into new verticals, and extend core platform capabilities. We look forward to working with Kreos on executing our strategy." 

TIS CFO Bastienne Foeller echoed Erik's sentiments, commenting, "Approval of this loan facility by TIS' board and financial sponsors reflects a high level of confidence in the strength of our business, the capabilities of our team, and our overall strategy. With Kreos as our financing partner, TIS will have the ability to swiftly execute our strategic initiatives while having the flexibility to respond to new opportunities as they arise."  

For Kreos Capital, TIS represents both an early investment from Kreos' seventh investment fund, and an ideal business partner to support with financing due to their consistent track record of growth. Highlighting TIS' solid track record and prospects for future success, Sean Dunne, General Partner of Kreos Capital, added, "TIS is an industry leader in enterprise B2B payments, cash management, and fraud prevention solutions and continues to gain widespread market traction. We look forward to working with the management team to achieve their growth objectives." 

Pleo, the workplace spend management platform, has launched its latest OOH campaign across London.

Manifested as a series of irreverent static designs, the campaign brings to life the frustrating but all too familiar ways in which traditional forms of expense management get in the way of a good working life. From ‘tedious admin’ and ‘expense reports’ to ‘awkward conversations’ and ‘working late’, the creative concepts invite Londoners to ‘Pleo it’ instead.

Targeted at both those who submit receipts and those who process them, Pleo’s campaign blends hand-drawn, playful illustrations with humorous copy, and was devised and produced by its in-house studio team.

Comprising nine different design iterations split across 21 different formats, the creative will be seen at tube stations, train stations and on buses across London throughout June. Pleo has also taken out large format sites near major roads throughout the capital. 

The campaign marks the brand’s first major OOH campaign since it achieved fintech quadruple unicorn status.

Julia Beasley, Global Brand Manager at Pleo, said:

“After a whirlwind few months, we’re delighted to see our latest campaign go live. It’s been a massive team effort, and we’re really pleased with the end results.

“There can be a bit of a tendency in fintech to ‘make the card the star’. So for this campaign, we wanted to create something different and truly delve into the problems we are helping to solve and do so in our own unique way.

“All of the creative is grounded in insights from our users - the pain points they used to face, and the positive impact Pleo has on their working lives.

“We also wanted to speak to people who expense receipts, and those who have to process them. This nuance in the audience, as well as contending with various formats and their implications for how we engage people, has made this creative journey all the more rewarding.”

James Keating, Pleo Chief Marketing Officer, said: 

“It’s always exciting to see an OOH campaign go live, but given this one has been created entirely by our in-house team, it feels extra special.

“Everyone involved has done themselves proud, and it's a testament to the talents of our team across a number of disciplines, including data & insights, copywriting, design and even hand-drawing!

“Having only recently joined the Pleo team, it’s a privilege to be launching such an accomplished project as my first campaign in the business, and it gives me real anticipation for what we can achieve next.”

Founded in Copenhagen in 2015, Pleo achieved unicorn status last year following the completion of its Series C raise, which took the company to a valuation of $4.7bn.

Europe’s largest Fintech conference will bring together the world’s most successful Fintech representatives and investors. This time they will be joined by a large team from Lithuania. For the first time, “Money 20/20” will mobilise and co-present our country’s Fintech community − start-ups, associations, and institutions.

At the event and expo in Amsterdam, under the name “LITHUANIA” will be presented Invest Lithuania, ROCKIT, Go Vilnius, Fintech Hub LT, EMBank, Fininbox, Ondato and Velmie. Also, more than 100 representatives from 25 Lithuanian Fintech companies will also travel to attend the conference.

“Money 20/20” is supported by Fintech industry players such as Mastercard, Stripe, and Goldman Sachs, who participate as well. During the conference, among such giants as the heads of JP Morgan, IBM, VISA, Kraken, and Google, Simonas Krėpšta, a Member of the Board of the Bank of Lithuania, and Liudas Kanapienis, CEO of Ondato, a company specialising in AML solutions, will also give presentations.

According to the representatives of the Lithuanian delegation, such a stand is being set up at “Money 20/20” for the first time, as only individual companies or institutions used to travel there. This shows the strength of the Fintech community and the increased desire to be seen and, of course, to attract more investment to Lithuania. 

“Fintech remains a top priority for Lithuania, attracting investments and new companies to the country. Our goal as one of the largest Fintech centres in the Baltics is to help such investments come to Lithuania, to show the maturity and cooperation of the Fintech ecosystem,” says Lina Žemaitytė-Kirkman, Head of Rockit – Home of Fintech and Sustainable Innovation.

Elijus Čivilis, General Manager of Invest Lithuania, also draws attention to the maturity of the Lithuanian Fintech ecosystem that is so attractive to international companies.

“The dynamic and energetic talents of Lithuania and the favourable regulatory framework allow us to go hand in hand with the best European and global tech players. This is also confirmed by the success stories of many fast-growing companies here,” says Mr. Čivilis.

Vaiva Amulė, Head of Fintech HUB LT, claims that the financial services created by Fintech companies in our country are highly valued around the world: “It’s easy to see – at ‘Money 20/20’ every year the companies representing Lithuania receive a lot of attention from international investors and potential partners. To go even higher, successful cooperation not only between Fintech companies but also between the different public authorities overseeing this area must continue. Our Fintech market is united, and this is Lithuania’s strength, one that we should not lose. Communality allows us to adapt quickly and flexibly to market changes that are currently very dynamic.”

According to Inga Romanovskienė, General Manager of Go Vilnius, 2021 was the best year to date for attracting capital to our start-ups. In 2022, we already saw one big exit and our second official unicorn, Nord Security. 

“We pay a lot of attention to make sure everyone in Vilnius can reach their full potential and those that aren’t here already can move in quickly using services such as the one International House Vilnius provides. As new start-ups arrive every month and our own start-ups continue to grow and succeed, the whole district in Vilnius is being shaped into a start-up space,” says Ms. Romanovskienė.

“Money20/20” was founded in 2012 by Payments and Fintech veterans from Google, TSYS and Citi. They broke the stereotypes anchored in snoozefest business conferences and designed an unparalleled experience built for the industry, by the industry. It is one of the most important expos that brings together investors, renowned speakers, innovators, and initiators of the financial technology revolution.

On June 7 over 7000+ people will join our 300+ speakers who will stand tall on our 6 stages that will charter the uncharted in Fintech and shape the future of the industry for years to come in Europe and beyond.

Today, Checkout.com unveils its stable coin settlement solution, leveraging Fireblocks' new crypto payment technology. This offers merchants the flexibility of 24/7 settlement including weekends and holidays — increasing access to cash flow and significantly reducing operational complexity. Checkout.com is the first PSP to have access to Fireblocks' crypto payouts technology. With this access, Checkout.com is also the first to successfully deploy automatic fiat to stablecoin conversion for their merchants as they receive and process funds from customers.

To date, Checkout.com has facilitated settlement of over $300 million using USDC, a fully collateralized and redeemable USD-pegged stablecoin, via its private stablecoins settlement beta program. During the beta, Checkout.com successfully tested, refined and optimized ways for customers' online fiat transactions to be paid to merchants through USDC.

In addition, Checkout.com's integration with Fireblocks marks the crypto technology provider's expansion into the payments space following the acquisition of First Digital earlier this year. Fireblocks' new crypto payment technology is only available to select PSPs with additional payment capabilities and tools for business to be unveiled later this year. Checkout.com is among the early PSP partners to deploy this new technology.

"At Fireblocks, we believe that every business will become a digital assets business with the advent of Web3," said Ran Goldi, Vice President of Payments at Fireblocks. "Traditionally, merchant payouts are limited to 9-5 on weekdays excluding public holidays and are further delayed through batch processing over several business days. Checkout.com's weekend settlement means that merchants are no longer restricted by arbitrary settlement times. With our in-house team's deep knowledge and expertise in digital asset payments, Fireblocks looks forward to our continued collaboration with Checkout.com to bring even more game-changing solutions to the payments space."

Transak Head of Expansion & Partnerships, Joe Start, said, "Weekend settlement helps to free liquidity constraints we have historically faced as a developer integration making decentralised applications accessible. This enables us to process more payments and we are delighted to have worked with Checkout.com on such a significant step forward for the payments industry as a whole."

At the start, Checkout.com's stablecoin settlement supports USDC with plans to expand to a wider range of assets over time. The company's pilot project already includes several crypto exchanges and tech-forward merchants and is actively expanding—with FTX at the forefront of this work.

Adam Jacobs, Head of Payments from FTX said, "Working with Checkout to pioneer stablecoin settlement has been an exciting development for our business and for the entire Web3 space. We're especially excited to see more businesses using crypto natively aligning with our mission to expand the digital currency ecosystem and bring in more institutional crypto holders."

"Stablecoins started as a fiat-denominated asset used by crypto traders to easily move in and out of more volatile crypto assets," explained Jess Houlgrave, Head of Crypto Strategy at Checkout.com. "but we believe they will also play a fundamental role in improving the underlying payment landscape— the fact that we're the first full-stack payments provider to successfully pilot an end-to-end solution with weekend merchant-side settlement capability is testament to our commitment to crypto3. We're investing heavily to ensure we can fulfil our mission to enable businesses and their communities to thrive in the digital economy - which we believe includes Web3 and as we see the market reaction, we hope to see more merchants, both crypto native and non-crypto native adopt this."

Today's announcement comes on the heels of Checkout.com publishing its Demystifying Crypto report, which found finance leaders surveyed showing a significant appetite to hold stablecoins on their balance sheets. Almost 40% of those surveyed said they would like to use decentralised finance for treasury management and settle payments in stablecoins.

Zimpler, a leading fintech company born in Sweden, revealed its new brand identity today. The rebrand aims to get the company closer to their customers and prepare itself for further geographical and product expansion. 

Zimpler sports a new visual identity, including a new logo, typography, and fresh, expressive colours. In addition to the visual elements, the brand is focused on sharpening the company’s purpose, personality and values. Zimpler has worked closely with Bold, a leading Nordic branding and design agency, to develop and shape the new brand concept.

The rebranding announcement follows a period of rapid growth – 2021 was the company’s best performing year to date. In 2021, Zimpler’s transaction volumes grew by a massive 176%, and net revenue increased 134% fueled by entry into new verticals and markets. In addition to the high-volume growth, the employee count increased by almost 200% compared to just a year ago.

With the rebrand launch, Zimpler aims to build brand loyalty and recognition among end-users of its products. Zimpler, an account-to-account payment provider, smack in the middle of B2B and B2C fintech providers, wants to challenge the conventional wisdom that says they should speak only to businesses like potential merchants, ignoring end-users.

Arjun Shah, Chief Marketing Officer of Zimpler, said: “It is a common misconception that companies with a B2B product do not need to have a dialogue with end-users. These days customers demand more from financial services, and fintech businesses need to constantly evolve to fit their needs. We believe that even as an A2A provider we need to be closer to our customers, whether they are our merchants or end-users. It's critical to drive affinity, awareness, relatability and value-driven relationships with our audiences that go beyond the utility of the product.

“At Zimpler, we think that payments are for everyone. That’s why our new visual language is the expression of diverse and creative personalities. The typeface is distinctive, our palette is vibrant, multi-coloured and inclusive. We believe in the power of transformation, the potential of progress and the impact of dynamism. We celebrate unique identities, thoughts, and dreams. Our new identity mirrors our unruly strength, the instant and real-time responsive behaviour is at the heart of our product. I am beyond excited to be leading Zimpler’s future marketing activities with the new brand by our side. It is just the beginning. The best is yet to come!”

Johan Strand, CEO of Zimpler, says: “Zimpler has grown exponentially in the last two years, and we are actively working on further expansions, both when it comes to products and new market segments. Our new brand identity puts us in a great position, especially as we're about to venture outside Europe for the first time and open Zimpler’s first office in Latin America."

CybSafe, the cybersecurity software company using behavioural science and data science to transform security awareness and human cyber risk management, announced it has closed a $28 million Series B funding round, taking its total funding to $40M.  

The round was led by Evolution Equity Partners, with participation from Emerald Development Managers and existing investors IQ Capital and Hannover Digital Investments (HDI) GmbH.

The investment is a result of CybSafe’s continued innovation and pioneering approach to managing human cybersecurity risk. Since its Series A, CybSafe has experienced significant customer growth, adding key enterprise accounts to its impressive roster of customers, now including Credit Suisse, Barclays Bank, HSBC, FNZ Group and Moody’s. Additionally, CybSafe has also been on a mission to bolster its team. Its new Chief Marketing Officer, Munyaradzi Hoto recently joined the team to drive growth and international expansion. 

It also follows CybSafe’s recognition as a global market leader by independent market analysis firm, Forrester. According to the Forrester Wave Report, CybSafe is disrupting with its data-driven approach to managing human risk and is recognised as having “pioneered a new approach to SA&T (security awareness and training) that uses data and metrics to change behaviour and instil a security culture”. 

80% of data breaches in 2021 were caused by human error according to CybSafe’s ICO analysis. Companies need to tackle behaviour to develop a security-first culture. Yet, most security teams still can’t quickly assess the impact their security controls have on user behaviour or the associated cyber risk.   

CybSafe will use the Series B investment to further its mission to support its customers in changing human behaviour and lowering cybersecurity risk with behavioural and data science, ultimately preventing security incidents. In addition, to accelerate its product development, it will expand its team, across all roles including cybersecurity specialists, behavioural scientists, data scientists, and software engineers. It will also focus on go-to-market activities expanding into new geographies, including the US market. 

Oz Alashe MBE, former UK Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel and the CEO and founder of CybSafe, said: “Cybersecurity has always been a challenge. Keeping pace today is more complex than before. And not keeping pace has more severe consequences. This has not gone unnoticed. Cybersecurity is a top priority across many management boards, with businesses spending more time and money. Yet, recent research from CybSafe and the National Cyber Security Alliance found that 1 in 3 people have been victims of a cyber breach. Furthermore, 1 in 5 have been victims more than once. For too long, cybersecurity training has forgotten people, lacked any scientific basis, and provided no data to evidence its effectiveness. We are here to revolutionise this by helping businesses reduce risk by positively influencing behaviours in a way that can be measured.” 

Karthik Subramanian, Partner at Evolution Equity Partners, said, "We invest in founders with disruptive cybersecurity offerings that are reimagining how businesses approach the increasing depth and breadth of cyber threats. CybSafe’s disruptive approach tackles a complex problem with a simple solution. They design their products with the user in mind, ensuring they are tackling the cause rather than simply treating the symptoms of cyber risk. CybSafe goes far beyond traditional compliance-driven approaches to security awareness, and instead focuses on delivering a genuine reduction in human cyber risk."   

Hastings Direct is one of many financial organisations that has adopted CybSafe into their practices. Simon Legg, Chief Information Security Officer at Hastings Direct said, “We chose CybSafe because we believe it provides us a way to approach the human side of cyber risk beyond traditional, compliance-based, mandatory information security training. Amongst other things we wanted great insight and visibility into user attitudes and security behaviours and we appreciate CybSafe’s use of data and a scientific framework to deliver effective support to our colleagues. This new investment round is fantastic news, and I look forward to seeing how CybSafe further develops the platform."