This week in Fintech: TFT Bi-Weekly News Roundup 11/10

IN Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup Tuesday sees a partnership for Railsr and SurePaywhile Airwallex bag an additional $100 million in funding.

Financing

Fintech MarketFinance has secured a credit facility of £30 million from viola, the Israeli technology investment group. The deal enables MarketFinance to provide credit worth up to £240m per year to UK-based businesses. MarketFinance has made over £45m available to more than 2,000 buyers via embedded finance.

Airwallex has closed its Series E expansion, while maintaining its $5.5 billion valuation. The fintech platform’s latest $100 million funding will fuel the company’s growth plans. The Melbourne-founded company accelerated its international expansion in 2021, expanding its reach across Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.

Company updates

International payment service provider ECOMMPAY is celebrating its 10th anniversary. The fintech company has grown exponentially from less than one million transactions per year in 2012 to two million transactions. ECOMMPAY’s customers now span industries from online shopping, to e-learning, video games and many more.

LCX, a Liechtenstein blockchain company, has relaunched its cryptocurrency exchange. Originally launched in 2018, the LCX Exchange Revamp is another milestone in LCX’s growth plan that establishes the foundational framework, including its new backbone infrastructure, scalable account wallets and updated user interface.

OakNorth Bank has bought 50 percent of the shares in the lender ASK Partners. ASK will continue to operate as a fully independent entity with its team based in its Harley Street offices. It follows OakNorth’s first acquisition in December of its cash flow forecasting business Liquid.

Investigations

Payment company Outsider has studied data on all reported incidents of fraud to Transaction fraud – UK National Fraud and Cybercrime Reporting Centre. Action Fraud receives a fraud report every 85 seconds and reported losses totaled over £3 billion during the year. Online shopping is the most used attack vector, with more than 72,000 reports. Those aged 60 to 79 and over 80 lost more than twice as much money per fraud case as 20 to 39-year-olds.

Partnership

Ripple has joined with Lemonway, a Paris-based payment provider for online marketplaces. The new partnership sees Lemonway using RippleNet’s ODL, which leverages XRP for crypto-enabled payments, to improve its treasury payment processes. Ripple has also announced a partnership with Swedish money transfer provider Xbaht. It sees Xbaht offering instant and cost-effective retail transfers via liquidity on demand, backed by Tranglothe cross-border payment center based in Singapore.

Alpha has merged with ITDS, the business and IT consultancy company, for the delivery of the Alfa Systems software platform. By working together, ITDS and Alfa will enable capital finance providers to seamlessly implement Alfa’s cloud-based technology platform.

Meanwhile, NatWest has entered into cooperation with StepChange, the UK debt organisation, to offer its SME customers an independent debt advice service. The bank has also donated £2m to the charity to fund a dedicated team supporting business customers struggling with their finances.

Indian Finance Corporation IIFL Finance has entered into cooperation with Credgenics, a provider of SaaS-based collections
and technology solutions for debt resolution. It will implement Credgenics’ end-to-end debt collection technology platform.

the German bank and kyndryl, the supplier of IT infrastructure services, has extended its supplier contract agreement. Kyndryl will continue to operate Deutsche Bank’s continental European core banking business and mission-critical IT infrastructures while supporting the bank’s technology transformation. Kyndryl will also support the bank’s cloud migration strategy as part of the wider effort to adopt public cloud services.

railsr, the built-in financial experience platform, has chosen SurePay as its UK Faster Payments (UKFP) Confirmation of Payee (CoP) provider to help its customers combat fraud and misdirected payments in the UK. Railsr partnered with SurePay and Railsr customer ANNA Money to get its new Confirmation of Payee service implemented and live within four weeks.

More partnerships

Equifax and PrinceSix has facilitated an open banking solution for KCOM, the Yorkshire-based broadband provider, to make the UK’s first ISP to accept applications for a social tariff online. Social tariffs allow eligible low-income households to access cheaper deals from their service providers.

There is also a partnership for World line and India’s NPCI International Payments (NIPL) to expand the acceptance of Indian means of payment across Europe. As part of the partnership, Worldline enables merchants’ points of sale to accept payments from UPI, an instant real-time payment system, as well as RuPay, NPCI’s proprietary card payment network solution.

Wortha B2B cross-border payment company, has joined forces with ForexPeople to provide secure, fast and seamless global payments to South African businesses. Verto chose ForexPeople because of its ‘deep expertise as a leading forex broker with a reputation for high ethical standards’. The partnership also ensures that Verto is fully compliant with all local regulatory requirements.

In the meantime, provider of AI-based solutions Pelican has expanded a collaboration with Santander Consumer Bank Austria. Pelican’s PaaS solution allows SCBA to retain and extend the life of its existing core systems without making a significant new investment.

Resistant AI, AI financial crime prevention firm, and ComplyAdvantage, the financial crime risk data company, is launching an AI transaction monitoring solution to combat fraud and money laundering. The solution detects previously unknown behavior patterns and identifies new risks faster.

Appointments

Payment orchestration company CellPoint Digital strengthens the management team with new hires. Tom Randklev joins as global product manager after eight years at Global Payments. Greg Worch has been appointed as the new global revenue manager. While Melanie Siewert has been appointed global head of marketing, brand and design. Kevin Weber joins as global head of product and payment strategy together with new global head of business alignment, Marc Moskowitz. Finally,Zoe Wheelertakes over as global leader for culture and team.

Cornerstone FS plcthe cloud-based provider of international payments, has appointed Simon Bullock and John Burns as independent non-executive directors. Cornerstone says they bring significant and complementary experience and expertise that will be invaluable in leading the growth. The appointments also strengthen the board’s independence and governance structures.

SmartSearchThe AML software company, has appointed Zowie Lees-Howell as vice president of corporate sales. She joins from Equifax where she most recently served as sales director. Lees-Howell is responsible for the firm’s continued expansion into markets including banking, financial services, crypto, utilities and telecommunications.

More job moves

Wise PlatformWise’s infrastructure offering for banks and non-banks has expanded its senior management team. Folley Ogundele takes over as sales director. While To Wirth joins from the open banking platform TrueLayer, and will work on the side Steve Naudéhead of Wise Platform, as product director.

Meanwhile, digital banking Tandem announces the appointment of three key relationship managers to its mortgage department. Mark Shelper, David Venn and Gordon Rae Join Tandem’s Mortgage division this month to accelerate and strengthen the company’s mission to build the UK’s greener digital bank.

Fintech MonetaGo has revealed its co-founder and CEO Jesse Chenard will move to the role of executive chairman. Meanwhile, Neil Schoenhardt, currently president, becomes CEO. Shonhard joined MonetaGo as MD Asia Pacific in June 2020 before becoming the company’s president in August 2021.

Launcher

SmartStream launches AI-enabled account control solution to meet ISO 20022. TLM Aurora Advanced Account Control enables clients to manage large, verified data sets not only for reconciliation purposes but for downstream systems.

BNPL supplier Hokodo has launched a new plug-in for multinational e-commerce platform Shopify. This integration will enable B2B sellers with a Shopify online store to offer instant credit terms to their corporate and individual buyers, while getting paid in advance and remaining protected from the risk of non-payment and fraud.