The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Thursday 22 February 2024 brings you the latest updates from the global fintech industry.
Partnerships
Spendesk, the spend management platform, has launched it latest integration with more than 40 HR platforms, including industry giants such as PayFit, Personio, HiBob and Deel. With this latest integration, Spendesk streamlines user management by enabling users to be synchronised automatically from the HR platform.
Kani Payments, the global data reconciliation and reporting platform, announces a strategic partnership with issuer processing and core banking platform Pismo. The new partnership with Pismo means that Kani’s SaaS platform will now be available to Pismo’s global client base, including large banks, marketplaces and fintechs.
Fintech platform Adyen and Billie, the B2B payments company, joined forces to let Adyen’s customers enable B2B buy now, pay later payments services. By partnering up with Billie, Adyen helps merchants and their business customers tackle everyday hurdles in B2B commerce. This includes managing cash flow for buyers and sellers, eliminating payment defaults and fraud risks, and simplifying dunning and collection processes.
Söderberg & Partners has added a portfolio performance reporting tool by Morpheus Wealth to its tool set. The WealthSweet Performance Analysis tool is the first microservice in the Portfolio reporting framework. It will give advisers the ability to undertake both time-weighted and money-weighted performance across a range of time periods and accounts through a user-friendly interface.
WealthOS, the Barclays-backed wealthtech is selected by Quai Digital to become its new strategic technology partner. Quai, a provider of B2B wealth management white label outsourcing services, will utilise WealthOS’s composable software to integrate with its own proprietary platform to drive further growth by offering new scalable, feature-rich, digital financial capability to its clients.
Appointments
R3, the enterprise distributed ledger technology (DLT) and services firm, has appointed Bob Wigley, to its board as a non-executive director. Wigley, who has chaired UK Finance for the last six years, joins R3 after leading the UK Finance digital tokenisation taskforce.
Lantern, a private markets data platform and technology provider, has appointed Charlie Markham as its first chief technology officer to scale Lantern’s technological capabilities and help drive the next phase of the firm’s growth. Most recently he served as CTO at financial planning and reporting software firm Metapraxis.
Zumo, the B2B digital assets infrastructure that prioritises sustainability, has named Jason Tucker-Feltham as the company’s new head of sales. Tucker-Feltham is an experienced crypto sales, business development and capital introduction professional. Prior to joining Zumo, he worked in business development and European sales at Celsius, covering some of the largest institutional clients in the crypto space.
Molo Finance, the UK’s first fully digital mortgage lender, appoints Matthew Kimber as its CEO. Kimber, who joined Molo in November 2023 as chief operating officer, has more than 20 years in banking and finance. His most recent role was managing director of CHL Mortgages for intermediaries.
Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) has appointed Lucy Thomas as corporate affairs director. This is a new role for HL and Lucy will join the executive leadership team. She is currently director of corporate and regulatory affairs at global consultancy TalkTalk. She also held senior roles at Edelman and at the BBC.
Richard Hebdon has also joined Hargreaves Lansdown to lead its digital function. He joins from RELX, the global information services provider, where he is currently chief technical officer for a division of LexisNexis. At HL, he is responsible for the ongoing digital transformation strategy.
More appointments
Harry Weber-Brown is joining Smarter Contracts, the builders behind consent management and data privacy tech, Pulse, in a new role for the business, commercial director. Weber-Brown, previous CEO of TISA UK, is joining the fintech business to form the commercial function within the business.
BNY Mellon, the global financial services company, has appointed Julie Gerdeman as global head of data and analytics to lead its software and data management business. Gerdeman joins from Everstream Analytics. She has also held executive leadership roles at SAP Ariba, J.P. Morgan and American Express.
Stax, a payment technology provider, has welcomed Mark Sundt, as chief technology officer. In the new role, Sundt will accelerate the delivery of new products, features, and functionality that unlock and drive increased value for Stax customers and partners. Sundt succeeds Chris Staymates, who will return to his role as Stax’s chief innovation officer.
Funding and investments
Penfold, the digital pensions provider, has launched its latest crowdfunding round, following a period of significant growth. The early access launch is now open and individuals can register for this via Penfold’s crowdfunding page, with the round opening to the general public on 27 February. Penfold’s last crowdfund in 2022 sold out just hours after going live.
Product and service updates
UNIPaaS, the payfac-as-a-service provider empowering SaaS companies and marketplaces to deliver their own branded embedded payment solutions for businesses on their platforms, has launched an intelligent payment assistant solution, AI Assist. This solution leverages AI technology to enhance the ease and efficiency with which businesses get paid.
Colt Technology Services, the digital infrastructure company, has expanded its Internet On Demand service to 10 new countries – the US, Canada, Australia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia – with increased bandwidth available at up to 10Gbps. Colt has expanded the service – available now in a total of 27 countries across Europe, Asia and North America – to meet rising demand from businesses needing flexibility and automation across their digital infrastructure.
