Welcome to The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Tuesday 7 November 2023.
Funding and investments
New wealthtech platform Prosper has raised a £3.2million angel round, with investors including founders of Monzo, Capital One, World First, Tandem, Azimo, Embark, Comply Advantage, and Connect, MMC and Portfolio Ventures. Prosper has invited the crowdfunding community to join in, offering Crowdcube investors lifetime zero-fees on investments during the launch period, in addition to equity ownership.
Insly, the low/no-code software platform for insurers, has bagged £1.5million in venture debt funding from Hambro Perks, a venture debt provider. The funding provides Insly with the resources to scale up its products and marketing as well as accelerate growth. Insly serves over 1,000 brokers, MGAs, and insurers, with over 15,000 users, and over €0.5billion gross premiums transacted on the platform.
Refurbed closes $57million Series C investment round led by Evli Growth Partners and C4 Ventures, with participation also from All Iron Venture and Speedinvest. With this investment, refurbed will continue to drive its mission to becoming a leading platform for sustainable products and services to empower consumers to purchase refurbished technology in an accessible, risk-free and sustainable manner.
Italian fintech Qomodo has raised €34.5million in a seed funding round led by Fasanara Capital. Qomodo is introducing a suite of smart payment solutions to physical retailers, including a BNPL formula for essential yet often unexpected expenses. Local and global venture capital firms joined the round including Exor Ventures, Proximity Capital, Ithaca Investment and Lumen Ventures.
Fintech Axyon AI has won two grants. One funding is from ELISE, a network of artificial intelligence research hubs working in cooperation with ELLIS (the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems. Axyon AI was also selected as a winner of the Research and Experimental Development Projects grant, awarded to local enterprises by the Emilia-Romagna Region.
Appointments
Volt, the global real-time payments platform, has welcomed Matt Henderson, former CEO of Stripe Europe, as well as ex-Google and ex-Amazon, as a special advisor to its board. Henderson also currently serves as an advisor and portfolio non-executive director at Apollo Global Management, Inc., a global alternative investment manager. Volt is currently preparing for global expansion.
Stanchion Payments, a global provider of payment technology, appoints Shaun Hulley as director of global sales engineering. Hulley previously worked at PayPal as senior director of its issuance and tokenisation platforms. Stanchion was founded in South Africa in 2001 but has also expanded its services and solutions with offices in Australia, the UK, the UAE and the US.
Fintech DKK Partners has appointed Clifford Mettle as executive chairman of Ghana to help bolster their West African service offering and support plans to provide the entire Africa region with innovative and fast payment solutions. Mettle has enjoyed stints with Ghana International Bank, London and Citibank, NY. The appointment follows DKK’s expansion into the African market, opening its Ghana operation last year.
Tradeteq, a private debt and trade finance marketplace, names Doris Yeung as chief financial officer. The appointment follows a recent Series A plus funding round of £12.5million. She will help execute Tradeteq’s expansion plans, both in European and North American markets.
More appointments
B2B digital payments company Shieldpay has appointed Diji Adu as chief technology officer. Adu, formerly director of technology at Shieldpay, brings over 20 years of leadership and software development experience to his new role. Prior to joining Shieldpay, Adu led projects and managed teams at BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and most recently HSBC, where he built digital banking solutions.
Digital payment platform Mswipe Technologies has strengthened its executive team. Nayantara Bhargava, formerly in charge of banking and partnerships, has been elevated to the role of chief business officer. Saikiran Amin has the role of chief human resource officer, Harita Desai Jani is chief marketing officer, Rohit Agarwal, the current CFO, leads the customer support department and Rishikesh Pillai has transitioned into the role of CEO of Wecollect.
Travelex, the foreign exchange brand, has appointed a global retail director, Jackie Uhi, who joins from HSBC, to be responsible for driving strategy, delivery, expansion and innovation across the company’s retail portfolio. Uhi’s appointment comes as Travelex continues to both expand both its global retail footprint and transform its retail product offering of both cash and card solutions.
Global intelligence and cybersecurity consultancy S-RM has unveiled Kendall Reid as a director in the company’s growing ESG division. In her new role, Reid will join S-RM’s ESG advisory team, providing both strategic and managerial support with an aim to expand the company’s ESG offerings into new verticals and assist existing clients with risk management.
Partnerships
Finfra, the lending infrastructure provider that operates in Indonesia together with its licensed peer-to-peer lending affiliate Danabijak, has forged a new partnership with Xendit that will bring automated collections of revenue-based financing to businesses across Indonesia. The partnership will bring a new collections automation structure to the mass market in Indonesia, and Finfra, through its affiliate Danabijak, will be the first to roll it out to customers.
Openpay, a fintech firm based in Denmark, has partnered with Yapily, the international open banking API provider, to facilitate seamless cross-border, peer-to-peer money transfers. Initially available to account holders in Denmark, the service is set to roll out to Sweden, Norway, the UK and Germany later this year. Currently, the app integrates with 23 banks, such as Danske Bank, Nykredit, as well as Jyske Bank.
Mangopay, a platform-specific payment infrastructure provider, has teamed up with Aria, a provider of deferred payment infrastructure for B2B marketplaces and platforms. The collaboration aims to empower B2B marketplaces and transactional software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies with robust tools to manage their payments and credit efficiently.
Insurtech Lumera has extended its partnership with Nordnet, the Nordic digital savings and investment bank. Building on its present implementation of Lumera’s policy administration platform, Nordnet now enters the market for insurance savings in Finland, introducing an all-digital, low-fee product offering for the Finnish Savings and Investment Policy (SIP) account.
