In our last edition of The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly
News Roundup for 2020, we take a look at the latest international
fintech stories. Starling Bank adds
Dinghy and SumUp to Marketplace,
while Zilch raises fresh VC funding.

If you would like your news to be included in our bi-weekly news
roundup from January 2021, please email
editor@thefintechtimes.com

Partnerships and Collaborations

Digital insurer Getsafe has hooked up with UK
price comparison site Confused to ‘simplify
insurance’ for those living in the private rented sector.
The companies say UK renters want more flexibility and price
transparency.

PaymentGenes, Databright
and Payments Insiders have partnered in a joint venture

Three Dutch payments companies – PaymentGenes,
DataBright and Payments Insiders – are
combing their skills in a strategic joint venture. They describe it
as a ‘first-of-it’s kind’ servicing approach that will boost
fintechs and payments companies.

Acuity Trading, an alternative data provider of
market insights, is working with data solutions company
Crux Informatics to offer more trading tools and
intelligence. They say the combination of Crux’s
data processing powers with Acuity’s data sets will ’empower
traders to discover individual alpha for competitive
advantage’.

Cross-border payments network Thunes is
collaborating with Singapore insurance provider NTUC
Income. Income will leverage Thunes’ technology to
handle international transactions. In addition, future plans
include enabling digital micro-insurance products to plug
protection gaps.

Meanwhile, mobility solutions firm Comviva has
unveiled a strategic partnership with telecoms group
Ooredoo Kuwait. The pair will deliver machine
learning driven customer value management campaigns. Comviva’s
MobiLytix platform leverages AI and machine learning to drive
incremental revenue for enterprises.

Curve and Plaid join forces

Brazilian stock exchange B3 will use the
Genesis low-code application platform to drive the
digitalisation of Brazil’s financial markets. B3 says the
platform provides the ‘building blocks and agility’ to address
the Brazilian market’s very specific requirements across asset
classes market trading infrastructure.

Meanwhile, banking platform Curve is rolling
out open banking services to UK customers in tandem with
Plaid, the open finance data network. Curve
customers can now connect and see bank balances in their app.

Finally, PrimeiroPay, the international
cross-border online payment service provider, is partnering with
Cybersource – Visa’s payment management
platform. The pair will ‘better enable cross-border merchant
access’ to Latin America’s high-growth markets, including
Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Argentina.

Fintech appointments

Swedish neobank
Northmill Bank has recruited Tobias
Palmborg (right) as its chief technology officer. As well
as scaling up technology and product organisation, Palmborg’s
will also prepare the neobank for continued expansion.

Technology Innovation Institute appoints a slew
of cryptography leaders to the advisory board at the new
Cryptography Research Centre for Abu Dhabi and the
UAE. The hires include Professor Joan Daemen and
Professor Lejla Batina from Radboud University,
Netherlands, as well as Dr Guido Bertoni, CEO of
Security Pattern in Italy. In addition,
Professor Carlos Aguilar from Toulouse University,
Professor Damien
Stehlé from École Normale Supérieure de Lyon
and Tim Güneysu at Ruhr-University Bochum also
join.

Investments and Funding

Cloud-native payment technology provider Form3
has received investment from
Mastercard. Additionally, the pair will create a
partnership to support access to real-time payment infrastructure.
Following Mastercard’s investment, Gregor Dobbie
will join Form3’s strategic advisory board.

Mobile financial platform Lydia has extended
its Series B round, raising an additional $86million. The funding
was led by Accel, the global venture capital firm.
The total funding round now sits at $131million, making it the
largest round ever raised by a French fintech.

API-driven compliance platform Taxdoo has
closed a $21million Series A round of financing led by global
venture capital firm Accel. Visionaries
Club, 20VC and existing investor HTGF
also took part.

Buy now, pay later fintech Zilch has secured an
additional $30million equity funding enabling it to close its pre
Series B in less than three weeks. Investors include Simon
Nixon, the co-founder of
MoneySuperMarket. Zilch has seen customer
registration numbers quadruple over the last six months.

Meanwhile, Salad Technologies, a startup that
harnesses idle compute power from gaming PCs in exchange for
rewards, has raised $3.2million. More than 1,000 years of compute
time has been logged by Salad users so far.

Investment firm Flashpoint Venture Capital has
secured $50million for the first close of its third VC fund. The
firm, which backs startups founded by management teams, has a
target of up to $100million and will be used for around 15
investments at the seed and Series A stages.

GoCardless has revealed a Series F funding
round of $95million led by BainCapital Ventures.
The funding will be used to fuel its continued investment in open
banking as well as challenge the dominance of credit cards in
instant payments.

Announcements

US blockchain payment network Roxe is expanding
into India and Africa with remittance firm
N2Xpress. Following the partnership, Roxe
customers can send remittances ‘much faster, cheaper and more
reliably’ to these new markets.

Global Ventures, the UAE-based venture capital
firm, has partnered with Capria Ventures, a
US-based global investment fund-of-funds. It represents the first
investment Capria has made in the MEA region.

European fintech Bitpanda will plough
€10milliion into a technology and innovation centre in Poland.
The Bitpanda Technology & Innovation Hub will employ 300
highly-talented professionals in order to develop innovative and
challenging projects.

Issuer processor Global Processing Services
(GPS) has been selected to join
Mastercard’s Fintech Express Programme as its
chosen processing partner. Launched in June 2020, GPS is already
embedded into Mastercard’s Fintech Express programme alongside
GPS’ partners which it processes for –
Railsbank and Treezor.

Starling Bank has added SumUp
payment solutions and Dingy the insurance provider
to its Marketplace. It says both service providers have been chosen
to reduce the number of hours SMEs have to spend on admin.

Launches Lunar launches ‘pay
later’ product

New on the scene is Vestrata – a fintech
company providing integrated investment solutions. Launched by a
former JP Morgan leadership team, Vestrata has also completed a
$4million investment round.

While, independent finance house Propel has
launched Propeller –an online asset finance portal for vendors
and equipment providers. The web portal is the result of £1million
investment in new fintech innovation and will power vendor
sales.

Danish-based challenger bank Lunar launches a
pay later credit. It is now possible to split all transactions in
instalments retroactively or postpone an expense up to 30 days in
the Lunar app. The new feature will be available for all users with
a minimum deposit of €270 to their current account every
month.

Barclaycard has unveiled an app-based platform
– Precisionpay Go – in order to let corporate
businesses issue virtual corporate cards for employees’ online
business expenses. Barclaycard Precisionpay Go provides the ability
for a virtual card to be issued just two seconds after being
requested.

Alpian plans to launch as a fully licensed bank
in early 2021 after a collaboration with banking software firm
Temenos. Alpian aims to be the first bank to
target Switzerland’s ‘mass affluent’  – those with
investible assets of between CHF100,000 to CHF1million.

Fintech Openpay, currently operating in the UK
and Australia, is launching in the US. The announcement follows a
record trading day, week and month in November for the ‘buy now,
pay smarter’ company.

MSTS, a global B2B payment provider, has
launched a credit as a service solution for UK’s Discounted
Cleaning Supplies. The technology will allow the UK-based company
to offer trade credit and enable invoicing to their e-commerce
customers while complying with regulations.

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