This week in Fintech: TFT Bi-Weekly News Roundup 20/04

welcome to Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup Thursday, April 20.

Partnership

Flutter wave has partnered with Nigerian courier service SHIiP. The collaboration aims to improve deliveries to Flutterwave stores SMEs and large-scale merchants across the African continent. Flutterwave sellers can choose from over 80 domestic and international couriers including DHL, FedEx, UPS, Flocargo, Shippo and Flo Express to transport items, resulting in cheaper delivery rates.

CAT financial products, a Swiss provider of securities and investment services for structured products, has transformed its processing efficiency from front to back office by implementing the international multi-asset post-trade processing solution from fintech Broadridge Financial Solutions.

Santander Bank is teaming up with a global financial technology company DailyPay. It will offer an on-demand salary benefit for its US commercial banking customers. Through DailyPay, Santander’s Commercial Banking customers can give employees instant access to their salary as they earn it.

4-Xtra Technologies, a deep-tech spin-out from Leeds University, has delivered its SaaS, AI-based extreme event forecasting and Synthetic Data Generation Engine to Leeds Building Society. The relationship follows a successful three-month Proof of Concept, when 4-Xtra demonstrated that it could provide the missing data to a level that would satisfy the community’s requirements.

Additional partnerships

Trust Payments has signed a strategic agreement with Discover the global network which will increase acceptance for Discover, Diners Club International and network alliance cardholders across the UK, EU and US. Through the partnership, Trust Payments’ merchants gain access to over 305 million Discover Global Network cardholders worldwide.

Fintech Payoneer has collaborated with Zoho to offer innovative payment solutions to businesses using Zoho Books, the cloud accounting platform, with plans to expand to other parts of Zoho’s product offering. The collaboration will benefit SMEs and freelancers working globally in India, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the Philippines.

Infosys Finacle, portion of EdgeVerve Systemsa wholly owned subsidiary of Infosys, and Mongolian Bank XacBank has transformed the banking technology landscape with Finacle Digital Banking Solution Suite. The Finacle package now runs both private and corporate banking in XacBank, and enables a robust digital foundation for the bank to achieve its growth strategy.

The job is moving

Marie Walker join Raidiam, the data sharing ecosystem. She joins from Open Future World. Walker will strengthen the Raidiam team as well as increase efforts to promote open data thought leadership to global regulators, consortia and enterprises.

ClearBank has appointed Spiros Theodossiou as product manager. He previously served as CPO on the cloud accounting platform DEXT. Before this, he was SVP for product management at WorldPay. Theodossiou will lead the bank’s global product strategy, create and implement the product’s roadmap.

Q over has appointed its first customer manager, Ed Ackerman. He will lead Qover’s customer success, care and claims teams, as well as develop customer-centric strategies that improve the overall customer experience. His goal is also to empower Qover’s partners to achieve lasting value for customers through built-in insurance orchestration.

Pleo announces two new appointments to its senior management team – Raymond Huner and Dean Eggleton. Hüner takes on the role of SVP Head of Regions while Eggleton becomes Head of RevOps. Hüner and Eggleton join Pleo’s senior leadership team at a time of high growth and will play leading roles in the company’s 2023 plans.

Irish has created a new CEO in the UK with Simon New across the role of commercial manager. This follows the appointment of the CEO of Iress Marcus Price in 2022. The company also plans to reinvest in its core software to improve value for customers, while launching a new Innovations division to expand capacity in future growth areas.

Robin Morris-Weston has joined digital financial crime platform Themis, as chief of staff. Morris-Weston has been given responsibility for Themis’ scale-up mission. Themis aims to reduce the global consequences of financial crime through a powerful combination of innovation, insight and intelligence.

Financing and investments

Unchained announces a $60million Series B funding round led by Valor Equity Partners. The first closing included participation from existing investors NYDIG, Trammell Venture Partners, Ecliptic Capital, and Highland Capital Partners. Series B builds further momentum following a $15 million funding round led by Tue31 which was completed last fall.

Binance Labs, the venture capital arm and accelerator of Binance, has committed an investment in the seed funding round to GOMBLE, a blockchain-based casual game developer. GOMBLE will use the funds to develop and release its first mobile game, RumbyStarsand continue to expand its gaming platform using a game-as-a-service (GaaS) model.

Company updates

The London Institute of Banking & Finance (LIBF) has launched a fintech glossary. The resource is designed to provide a reference for finance professionals, students, as well as anyone with an interest in fintech, helping them navigate what are often complex terms and jargon.

BIAN, the independent non-profit, has unveiled 25 new members to its organisation. It brings the total number of members to 84. New members include leading financial services and technology organizations Lloyds Banking Group, Axis Bank, KPMG, McKinsey & Company, Standard Bank as well as The Thai Bank Association.

ThinkMarkets, the global e-commerce provider, has expanded further across the Asia-Pacific region with the launch of its services in New Zealand. It offers CFDs (contracts for difference) on forex, indices, commodities, shares, cryptocurrencies and more to New Zealand residents.