This week in Fintech: TFT Bi-Weekly News Roundup 21/03

welcome to Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup Tuesday March 21st.

Partnership

ConTe.it Prestiti, a new venture in the credit sector by Admiral Group Italy, has entered into cooperation with think, the European Open Banking Platform. The fintech platform has embedded Tink’s Income Check product in its current offering, to make more accurate price assessments. Tink’s technology will enable ConTe.it Prestiti to roll out and expand its lending offering across Italy.

purple, a remittance and payout aggregator, announces the launch of Mambu’s cloud-based banking platform. Having secured its digital wallet license, Purpl’s new offering will provide Lebanese citizens at home and abroad with seamless ways to transact.

Digital asset investment the company ABO Digital has entered into cooperation with AllianceBlock, a blockchain infrastructure provider that bridges traditional finance and decentralized finance, to offer tokenized structured products for institutions and crypto projects and institutions seeking alternative forms of financing.

OCR Labs working together with Mvine, a UK technology company that delivers the next generation platforms that power the digital economy. This partnership enables Mvine’s digital identity infrastructure to benefit from OCR Labs Global’s digital identity verification services. The move reinforces the respective go-to-market offerings of both OCR Labs Global and Mvine to scale up commercial activity and expand in the UK B2B market.

PERX, a Norwegian P2P crowdlending platform, has entered into a partnership with Neonomy. Through this partnership, PERX can enable open bank payments on its platform through Neonomics’ open bank Checkout solution, to increase the efficiency and security of its payments.

Fiserv, a supplier of payment and financial services technology solutions, has entered into a partnership with Central payment, a bank-as-a-service provider. The collaboration helps fintechs, enterprise companies and payment processors bring financial products and services to market with greater speed and growth potential. It combines Fiserv’s technology stack with Central Payments’ API marketplace.

Financing and investments

Fintech Two has disclosed its €18million Series A, bringing its total capital up to €28million. The round was chaired by Shine Capital and Antlers, with participation also from Sequoia Capital, Day One Ventures, Alumni Ventures, LocalGlobe, The Visionaries Club and Alliance VC. Since launching in Q2 2021, Two has grown 243 percent quarterly and wins 79 percent of competitive sales processes.

Payabli, a payments infrastructure company, has raised $12 million in seed funding. The round was chaired by TTV Capital, Fika Ventures, Bling Capital, Louis Beryl (Rocketplace, Earnest) and Ershad Jamil. The company has earmarked the funds to streamline and improve the implementation process for software companies. It will also invest in continuous innovation, stability and security of its product.

Monite, an API-first embedded finance workflow startup, has secured a combined $10 million in Seed funding to help platforms working with SMBs leverage seamless B2B payment automation for their customers. Monite recently closed $5million in Seed funding in a round led by Third Prime. This investment follows a $5million Seed led by Point72 Ventures early in 2022

Charcoal bar has raised $1.2 million in a seed round led by Ethereal Ventures and La Poste Ventures. Its customer base includes pharmaceutical, media, Web3 and consulting companies such as Pierre Fabre and Argent Wallet. The funds will be used to increase team and R&D efforts, as well as manage several international biodiversity projects and strengthen cooperation with industry leaders.

Meanwhile, Saw, a personal savings firm, has closed a pre-seed funding round, raising $750,000 in capital. The funding was obtained from angel investors and fintech leaders in the MENA region.

Research and insight

45 per cent of investors do not have a good understanding of how their investments are taxed, according to a survey of more than 750 UK investors. Investment platform Shojin also found that 37 percent of investors believe tax efficiency will play a greater role in their investment strategies amid rising inflation and the economic downturn.

Searches for “how to start trading” have increased by 203 percent worldwide since 2004, research from CMC Markets. Searches for “stock tips” have also increased by 204 per cent worldwide in the last five years. ‘How to get into trading’ increased by 178 per cent, while searches for ‘trading tips’ have increased by 195 per cent.

Six out of 10 European businesses say navigating tax complexity is the biggest challenge in payroll processing. This is shown by research from SD Worx, a European supplier of HR and personnel solutions. Fewer than a third of European companies only use cloud technology to manage their payroll. While a tenth of the surveyed companies combine cloud and local software.

Yapily reveals that businesses potentially lose up to £656 million in lost revenue on the last mile. The survey found that 52 per cent of respondents have abandoned at least one online purchase in the last 12 months due to a bad experience at the online checkout. 41 percent of Britons would like to see businesses offer more convenient and easier payment methods at checkout.

The job is moving

IS2, an independent digital trading and distribution platform for the scheme market, appoints Joe Sultana as commercial director. Sultana was most recently director of e-Zee Insurance Solutions. Before that he was COO of Applied Systems Europe. IS2 provides digital solutions for insurers, underwriters, MGAs and brokers.

AI provider Axyon AIhas appointed Massimo Tosato as a member of the advisory committee. Tosato will join Axyon AI’s committee to support the Italian AI fintech with growth and development. The company works closely with AI and the computer science faculty at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia.

Workdaywhich offers enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, has appointed Laurence Leyden as Vice President of the UKI Financial Services Industry (FSI) team. Leyden has held various senior roles in financial institutions including Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds Banking Group.

planixs, a provider of real-time, intraday cash, collateral and liquidity management solutions, has named Nick Jepson as tax manager. He has worked with Planixs to roll out the company’s Realiti® intraday cash and liquidity management solution at UK and European banking firms and has also served as Chief Accounts Officer since 2021.

Jon Lukomnik has joined investor fintech Tumelo as an advisor. He will provide strategic guidance and support as Tumelo pursues its mission to democratize shareholder voting. Lukomnik has previously consulted institutional investors with total assets of USD 1 trillion.

Bristol based provider of invoice finance Optimal economy has appointed David Tugwell as an account manager to support their lead generation and new business teams. He has worked in the customer service and banking industry for 18 years, having been a branch manager for Barclays.

Ezra, the microloan fintech, has unveiled Andrew Goodrich as its chief risk officer. This appointment is an important milestone in Ezra’s expansion strategy to support the economically underserved in emerging economies. He will oversee the data engineering, predictive analytics and credit risk/fraud functions at Ezra.