This week in Fintech: TFT Bi-Weekly News Roundup 08/12
Welcome to Thursday’s edition of Fintech Times Bi-weekly news summary
The job is moving
The reward gatea global employee engagement company, has welcomed Nick Burns as the new CEO. Burns joins the company from Arthur J. Gallagher & Co, where he served as Managing Director of Gallagher’s UK Employee Benefits Consulting Division. Burns has also previously served as CEO of PIFC Group, Bluefin Corporate Consulting and Capita Employee Solutions.
The Honorary Board of Directors has unveiled two new members of the management team. Technology and foreign policy expert Nilmini Rubin takes over as chief of staff and head of global policy. While Betsabe Botaitis takes over as finance manager. The appointments follow the further decentralization of Hedera earlier this year, where the product, engineering and marketing departments of Hedera spun off into Swirls Labs.
PayU, the provider of online payment services, has appointed Dear Ben Zvi as data controller. Before joining PayU, she served as VP for data at Perion, a global technology company in the digital advertising ecosystem. Ben Zvi will further strengthen PayU’s data capabilities to deliver even more detailed insight to PayU’s merchant customers globally.
Fintech Zai appoints Jose Barroso as its new general manager for ANZ. Barroso has been promoted to the role, having previously held the position of Sales Director ANZ at Zai. He brings over a decade of sales and management experience to the role, and has previously held positions in Australia Post and Catch group.
More deals
GIG Gulf, a MENA insurance provider, names Caroline Bertrand as HR Manager. Already the company’s head of marketing, digital and customer experience, Caroline Bertrand’s appointment to her additional role is strategically aimed at connecting GIG Gulf’s employee experience with the delivery of an outstanding customer experience. She will also focus on implementing inclusive career development strategies and nurturing a diverse regional workforce.
Trading platform Lightspeed Commerce has appointed Kady Srinivasan as its Chief Marketing Officer. Srinivasan joins Lightspeed from Klaviyo, a SaaS marketing automation technology provider, where she served as SVP, Global Marketing Manager.
The consultancy company Fimatix for digital technology services is strengthening its team with capital markets and banking industry expert David Beatts. David joins to increase the support available to clients looking for advisory and delivery services for both business and digital transformation.
Mergers and acquisitions
investcorp, the alternative investment company, has agreed to buy Marble Point, a US-based CLO manager. Upon completion of the transaction, Marble Point will be combined with Investcorp Credit Management. The combined platform will manage $2 billion in assets and is ranked among the top 15 CLO managers globally by AUM.
Access PaySuitea department of The access group Accesshas confirmed the acquisition of Pay 360. The agreement will strengthen Access PaySuite’s payment processing capabilities by adding card payments and Payment Facilitation (PayFac) to its existing payment solutions.
ClearCourse, a group of technology brands that offer integrated software and payment solutions, announces the acquisition of Sales tire. The company will form part of ClearCourse’s Retail Division and expands the latter’s established and growing footprint in the e-commerce area.
Financing and investments
drag, a continuous automation platform for security and compliance, raises $200 million in Series C funding led by ICONIQ Growth and GGV Capital. The latest funding round doubles Drata’s valuation to $2 billion since its Series B in November 2021. Alkeon Capital also made a significant investment in this round.
Meanwhile, syncfy, an open finance platform in Latin America, secures $10 million in seed funding. The investment round was led by Point72 Ventures and includes investments from JAM Fund, Ausum Ventures, Avalancha Ventures, FJ Labs, MANTIS Venture Capital and XBTO Bumblebee Ventures. Notable angel investors are also included Tether co-founderr Brock Pierce and Hartmut Neven.
OneOrder, the MENA-based fintech-enabled restaurant management platform, has closed a $3million Seed round. Lead by Includethis round also sees follow-on investments from MENA early stage VC, A15. New in the round is Delivery Hero Ventures, whose managing partner Brendon Blacker also on the OneOrder board. It will use the latest capital injection to strengthen its internal operations and technology talent and scale its sales force. In addition, the platform will deploy additional capital to scale its offline presence.
Earn alliance, a gaming community platform, has closed a $4.75million seed raise to connect game developers with real fans and players worldwide. The alpha version of Earn Alliance’s platform will be launched on 15 December. This round was chaired by CoinFund and Fabric Ventures with the participation also of Blockchain Coinvestors, Animoca Brands, Stake Capital and Athena Ventures.
Partnership
hub71, Abu Dhabi’s global technology ecosystem, and TMohammed Bin Salman Foundation (MiSK Foundation) has partnered to facilitate international market access for startups and technology companies between Abu Dhabi and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The partnership will benefit founders seeking a soft landing in Saudi Arabia or Abu Dhabi’s tech ecosystem.
Identity Marketing Firm SheerID has joined with Worldpay from FIS. The strategic partnership will help merchants on the Worldpay platform offer segmented discounts and offers to consumer environments such as students, the military, teachers, healthcare professionals, first responders, seniors, young adults and newcomers.
OKQ8 working together with Enfus around card issuing modernization. OKQ8’s closed-loop fuel card offering will be transformed into Visa-branded open-loop cards, thanks to Enfuce’s unified and agile back-end solution. Enfuce’s rigorous standards and flexible platform, including FIN-FSA approval and PCI DSS Level One compliance, ensure that OKQ8 has a scalable issuance solution out of the box.
BNY Mellon and Baton systems has announced a new partnership to integrate Baton’s Core-Collateral™ solution into BNY Mellon’s security for administration platform. This integration will enable mutual clients to optimize portfolio allocations and accelerate the mobilization of cash and securities across both outstanding and cleared margin commitments globally.
More partnerships
Swedish fintech companies Froda and Treed join forces to provide merchants with better growth financing. The partnership will be launched in Sweden and the UK, with ambitions to expand across Europe. Treyd will now be the first partner to join Froda’s new solution Embedded financing, an API-based loan engine that uses smart algorithms for credit scoring.
Currencycloud has partnered with South Korea-based global payment and payment providers SentBe to improve the regional reach of the payment service and offer its Korean consumers and businesses a more streamlined, customized experience when sending money internationally.
Orange Bank have deployed real-time sanctions screening with SAS and Neterium. SAS and Neterium collaborated to align Neterium’s cloud-based real-time ‘watchlist-screening-as-a-service’ with SAS Visual Investigator. The combination provides Orange Bank with automated entity and transaction screening against major government and global watch lists as well as Politically Exposed Persons (PEP) lists.
Airwallex working together with Agoda, a global digital travel platform, to make travel planning easier for Hong Kong SMBs and startups. Airwallex Hong Kong customers can enjoy exclusive discounts on accommodation bookings using Airwallex Borderless Cards.
