The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Tuesday 12 September 2023
Appointments
Tribe Payments, a UK-based issuer and acquirer processor, expands its senior team with the hire of Andrew Hocking as chief strategy officer as well as Robin Anderson as VP of acquiring product. Anderson is also joined by Violeta Tamašauskienė, who becomes Tribe’s new digital banking product manager.
Bob Wigley, chairman of UK Finance, joins climate risk analytics provider Climate X to help banks anticipate the impacts of climate change and build resilience. He was formerly the chairman of Merrill Lynch for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and was also a member of Court of the Bank of England. For the last three years, Wigley has also been adjunct professor at the University of Queensland.
Xceptor, a data automation platform provider, names Fleur Sohtz as chief marketing officer. She is expected to play a pivotal role in shaping Xceptor’s positioning and branding, as well as driving continued business growth. Fleur’s appointment follows C-level additions to Xceptor’s leadership team, including the appointment of a chief HR officer.
Digital identity company Signicat appoints Michel van den Bogaard as its new chief financial officer. Based in Signicat Rotterdam’s office, van der Bogaard will lead a team of more than 35 people across Europe. In his most recent role, van den Bogaard served as the group CFO of SENTIA.
Viva.com, a European cloud-based neobank, appoints Stijn Cloet as its new general manager for Belgium. Cloet comes to Viva.com from BNP Paribas Group. Cloet has a deep knowledge of the payments, lending, and daily banking sectors.
Entrust, a payments, identities and data company, has named Jordan Avnaim as chief information security officer. Avnaim will help scale and mature Entrust’s information security program for both corporate and commercial portfolios. He previously worked at Capital Group Companies as well as Deloitte & Touche.
Funding and investments
Cleafy, a technology company specialising in proactive fraud prevention for digital banking, has secured €10million in funding led by United Ventures through the fund UV T-Growth. The investment round will support Cleafy’s expansion into new markets and further development of its technology platform.
Swallow, a UK-based financial pricing platform, has raised $1million in a pre-seed funding round co-led by Connect Ventures and Jigsaw VC. The company offers a no-code, software as a service (SaaS) platform for managing, optimising and updating pricing models. The investment enables Swallow to accelerate its product development, customer acquisition and business development.
Amplifi Capital announces the successful launch of a warehouse securitisation of up to £100million in collaboration with NatWest. Amplifi Capital is the fintech disruptor behind the credit union introducer brand My Community Finance. This significant investment marks a pivotal moment for the company, enabling the fast expansion of Reevo Money – its newest brand and own lending platform.
Raylo, the UK-based tech platform on a mission to accelerate the move to a circular economy, announces a significant funding milestone. The company has successfully raised £5.2million in cash and airtime in its latest funding round, led by Macquarie and Channel 4 Ventures. Raylo will also launch a crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube, giving individuals the chance to own a stake in the business.
Partnerships
Payhawk partners with Lune to launch ‘Payhawk Green’, helping companies make more sustainable decisions related to company spending. Lune uses thousands of spend-based emissions factors, with global coverage and country-specific data from more than 45 countries. With Payhawk Green, customers can automatically quantify the CO2 associated with purchases on Payhawk cards.
Cashflows, a platform for merchants to accept payments, announces an extension to its Visa partnership with Cybersource to amplify authorisation rates, support merchant and partner payouts, and enable international payment acceptance. Cashflows can leverage Cybersource’s community of partners and services to scale faster, increase reach and deliver a better customer experience.
Payments firm Ingenico has partnered with AVEM, a French company providing banks, merchants and retailers with payment systems, to equip French Rugby stadiums. AVEM helps distribute and maintain Ingenico’s terminals within the banking and retail sectors.
European provider of digital trade credit solutions Hokodo has partnered with AI powered transaction analytics firm Fuse to enhance its credit offering to businesses in the UK. The partnership empowers businesses to access more personalised credit options by combining Fuse’s credit risk and income verification tools with Hokodo’s B2B lending capabilities.
Digital finance company Zip Co has announced a strategic partnership with Primer, a unified infrastructure for global payments and commerce, to expand and optimise its payments stack, as Zip further accelerates its growth opportunity in the US market.
Company updates
BiB Exchange, a digital asset trading platform, has unveiled its initial launch phase in Singapore, marking a significant milestone in its global expansion strategy and compliance efforts. The Exchange aims to provide the Asian market with a variety of secure, transparent and convenient digital asset trading services.
Fido, the digital risk decisioning platform, has rebranded to Trustfull. After raising more than €6.5million from United Ventures and other investors, Trustfull has strengthened the team with senior management hires from multinational companies such as UniCredit, Experian and Telesign, and has created an international business development hub in Belgrade (Serbia) to support its international growth.
Claire Woffenden
