This Week in Fintech: TFT Bi-Weekly News Roundup 22/11
Welcome to The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Tuesday 22 November! Delve into our selection of the latest updates from around the world.
Partnerships
SeedLegals, the legal automation platform for startup funding, has partnered with JustCarbon to drive its first carbon-neutral investment raise. JustCarbon is a blockchain-based carbon offsetting platform that commoditises carbon dioxide removal from credits derived from nature-based projects and verified to international standards. The platform is seeking to raise up to $5million seed round investment.
Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), the international financial centre in Abu Dhabi, has partnered with Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB), Wio Bank and RAKBANK to facilitate knowledge sharing on latest banking developments and support SMEs with access to key financial services. The agreements will provide businesses with preferential banking services, including unique remittance services.
UBS has partnered with iProov to offer automated identity checks to its key4 by UBS customers. UBS is the first bank in Switzerland to offer this process for account opening in combination with qualified electronic signatures. Prior to partnering with iProov, UBS was using video calls to verify client identity.
ThetaRay, a provider of AI-powered transaction monitoring technology, has teamed up with Zeepay, a Ghanian mobile financial services company. Zeepay has selected ThetaRay’s SONAR SaaS anti-money laundering solution to detect financial crime for its remittance transactions. The agreement also highlights ThetaRay’s expansion in the African payments market.
There’s also a partnership for European open banking player TrueLayer and NAGA, the European social trading platform. TrueLayer’s closed loop payments will provide customers with instant account deposits and support NAGA will customer onboarding.
Fly Now Pay Later, the BNPL provider for the travel industry, has forged a new partnership with Worldline. Fly Now Pay Later has been integrated into Worldine’s TravelHub – a platform, which gives access to over 150 payment methods and currencies, multi-acquiring, tokenisation and a range of fraud services all through a single integration accompanied by a united reporting and settlement channel.
Job moves
Singlife with Aviva has named Dr Allen Kuo as its group deputy chief investment officer. The Singlife Investment Office was established in January 2022 following the formalisation of Singlife with Aviva as a newly merged entity.
Dufrain, a data analytics consultancies, has appointed Alex Meakin as its first ever chief financial officer. He joins Dufrain from Brookson Group, a tech enabled services business. Mark Fowle also recently joined the company as chairman.
Rob Craig has been appointed chief strategy officer at payFURL, an Australian next generation online payment orchestration platform. He previously worked at Westpac, NAB, Bank of New Zealand and National Westminster Bank. He was also chair of AusPayNet (Australian Payments Network) for seven years.
Meanwhile, Paul Burleton has joined fintech Delio as its chief operating officer. The company said Burleton will play an “instrumental role in shaping Delio’s operating model” as it enters its next stage of growth and international expansion.
Tandem Bank has strengthened its executive team with the appointment of two new senior executives. David McCarthy is appointed CFO, following his move from Atom Bank. Meanwhile, Wahid Ali joins from Masthaven as Tandem’s new chief risk officer.
More Fly Now Pay Later news as it appoints Georgios Gionis as chief product officer. He was previously director of product management for American Express. Since it was founded in 2015, Fly Now Pay Later has raised a total of $170million in debt and equity funding.
Funding news
Veax, a decentralised derivative trading protocol on NEAR, raises $1.2million pre-seed. Its backers include Circle Ventures, Proximity Labs, Tacans Labs, Outlier Ventures, Skynet Trading, as well as Qredo. Veax is currently on track to launch its v1 Testnet in early December.
Financial software company NeoXam has raised more than €100million from Eurazeo, which become the group’s majority shareholder. Historical partners (Cathay Capital and BPI) have sold their shares as a result. NeoXam was created in 2014 following a carve-out from Sungard and a series of acquisitions adding complementary solution.
Fintech ZSuite Tech has finalised an $11million Series A funding round. This round was completed by the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) and BankTech Ventures, LP (BTV). ZSuite will use the capital to scale operations as well as product development to meet the ‘growing market demand for advanced, digital cash and treasury management tools’.