This week in Fintech: TFT Bi-Weekly News Roundup 11/05

welcome to Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup Thursday, May 11.

Appointments

Validusa Southeast Asia SME business account and funding platform, name Anshul Johri as CEO for technology. Prior to joining Validus, Johri spent six years as head of engineering at Indonesian unicorn Traveloka. Validus also recently secured its first tranche of funding in a Series C1 round.

Fortune Dynamix have welcomed Steve D’Souza as sales manager to lead and further develop the business in Great Britain, the USA, the Middle East, South Africa and Scandinavia. He has previously worked for the company as well Fenergo, FNZ, Odyssey, Iress and Babel systems.

icon solutions, a provider of solutions and technology services for payment transformation, appoints Donal Fleming as Chief Technology Officer. He has previously held CTO roles in the fintech company Credit reference and payment organization Module no.

Simon Blackmanaging director of provider of digital payment infrastructure PRO, will resign from his position on 31 December 2023. He has led the company for almost nine years. The announcement follows the completion of the integration of Alpha Fintech, acquired in March 2022; as well as appointment of Lázaro Campos as chairman of the board. PRO has now started the search for its next managing director.

Settlement service RTGS.global has strengthened its management team with the appointment of Jarrad Hubble as permanent managing director and appointment of Marcus Treacher as chairman of the board. Hubble’s appointment as CEO follows a short stint as interim CEO since he took over the reins Dave Sissens in February. Sissens remains as an advisor to the company.

Ashraf Piranie have joined Redwood Bank as CFO, and brings with him more than 25 years of experience from financial services. He has had previous roles in Alliance and Leicester, Islamic Bank of Britain, Nottingham Building Society and West Bromwich Building Society.

More job news

European Depositary Bank, the Luxembourg-headquartered provider of banking, custody and custody solutions, adds Holger Barth to the board as global head of bank custody. In this newly created role, Barth will manage and oversee the custodian function for assets across regulated jurisdictions, including Luxembourg, Ireland, the UK and Malta.

Regtech Global Screening Services (GSS) announces Stephen Gilderdale as a senior advisor for the business. He participates in a part-time role advising the team on the design, build and scaling of the GSS platform. He has previously had roles on FAST, where he served as chief operating officer and recently head of product.

OTPless, The SaaS identity management platform is adding three key executives to its leadership team. Anubhav Mathur has been appointed CTO, Pawan Pathak as product manager and Sahil Chawla as sales manager. OTPless has also raised seed funding from a number of marquee investors.

Payment Association appoints b.yond digital CEO Neil Harris as head of its advisory board, with Nathalie Oestmann, COO i Outlier Ventures, takes on the role of Deputy Chairman. Harris succeeds Marion King, who held the position for two years. The Payments Association (formerly the Emerging Payments Association) is a community for all businesses within payments.

PayU, the provider of online payment services, appoints Shiri Schneider as chief technology officer for its global payments organization. She has over 18 years of experience in technology and management; specializes in big data, SaaS Cloud platforms and local solutions. Schneider will focus on cementing PayU’s culture of innovation and professionalism and prioritize maintaining PayU’s customer-first mindset.

Partnership

Wealth advisor Accuro has chosen a fintech supplier Object road as its partner to implement a new wealth management platform for private clients for its advisory and discretionary business. The cooperation with Objectway will also help Accuro accelerate its multi-depot, real-time, straight-trough order processing.

Tum, the core banking platform, has joined Amazon Web Services (AWS) partner network, after successfully completing the AWS Foundational Technical Review and achieving the AWS Qualified Software Certification. The partnership will speed up the rollout of Tuum’s core banking platform and services for customers, while increasing flexibility and scalability.

Murex announce it Boubyan Bank, a Kuwait-based Islamic finance institution, is implementing MX.3 for Islamic Finance for its Sharia-compliant finance business using MXGO. The implementation enables Boubyan to increase its product offering and follow a robust growth strategy.

BR-DGE, the payment orchestration provider, has announced a collaboration with American Express to improve the opportunities for open banking services for merchants. The collaboration improves the merchants’ and consumers’ experience of payments by offering a secure and frictionless open bank payment solution.

Temenos’its core banking solutions are now available as software-as-a-service following Temenos’ integration of the application on Amazon Web Services. With this, Temenos offers more choices to its customers as Temenos Banking Cloud becomes one of the industry’s most comprehensive SaaS solutions covering the widest range of regional and governance requirements, data standards and certifications.

Finastra has entered into a managed services partnership agreement with Luxoft to support Finastra’s Kondor customers in Europe, Middle East and Africa with their cloud transformation journeys. The strategic partnership extends the companies’ long-standing relationship, which has been in place since 2006.

Company updates

London-based fintech Lanista has opened two new offices in Dubai and Sao Paulo. Direct access to audiences in Brazil and the Middle East, two of the largest owners of fintech and alternative financial technology, places fintech in prime industrial territories.

United Fintech becomes the majority owner of TTM null. By purchasing an additional 26 percent stake in TTMzero, Danish-British United Fintech has reached the 51 percent tipping point to gain majority ownership in the Berlin-based regtech. It is one of five acquisitions made during United Fintech’s two and a half year lifespan.

Xapo Bank, a fully licensed private bank that combines traditional banking with access to Bitcoin and stablecoins, has become the first bank in the world to integrate Tether (USDT Tether) payment rails. The bank now enables members to utilize the world’s most widely used stablecoin for payments as an alternative to time-consuming and costly SWIFT rails.

Financing and investments

Company base has emerged from stealth, announcing $12 million in funding for its financial planning and analytics (FP&A) platform. The round was chaired by S Capital VC with participation also from Meron capital. Firmbase uses generative AI to simplify financial data and increase engagement among budget owners, who play a critical role in the planning process.

In its first ever offering to outside investors, data platform Filament raising £2.85m. The agreement was created and managed by Fortune club through the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS). One of Filament’s customers is Astorgan international fund management and private equity company with over €20 billion AUM.

Credit card and financial technology company Petals has raised $35 million in new funding. It has also spun off its B2B-focused data infrastructure and analytics subsidiary, Prism data. Valar Ventures led this new investment, along with Story Ventures, Core Innovation Capital and RiverPark Ventures. This new investment will be split between Petal and Prism Data.