This Week in Fintech: TFT Bi-Weekly News Roundup 23/05

Welcome to The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Thursday 23 May 2024, bringing you the latest updates from across the world.

Partnerships

Privat 3 Money (P3) is enhancing its established partnership with ClearBank, a cloud-based clearing bank. In collaboration with ClearBank, Privat 3 Money introduces a multi-currency account, supporting transactions in EUR, USD, CHD, and CAD, all under a single IBAN. This simplifies national and international transactions, eliminating the need for multiple accounts and reducing foreign exchange complexities.

Zopa Bank has entered the UK’s renewable energy market, making its suite of regulated BNPL and retail finance products available to Octopus Energy customers across the UK. The deal sees Zopa finance the purchase and installation of Octopus solar panels for the energy giant’s millions of UK customers, spread out in up to 84 installments over seven years.

UnaFinancial, an international fintech group of companies, has signed a partnership agreement with JSCB Microcreditbank (MKBANK), a commercial bank in Uzbekistan to establish a microfinance organization in the country. The partnership will combine UnaFinancial’s expertise in developing fintech solutions and Microcreditbank’s strong position in the local market.

ZainCash, a subsidiary of March Holding and a payment service provider in Iraq, has gone live with Temenos core banking and payments to power the growth and innovation of its digital payment services. ZainCash will use Temenos’ technology architecture with open APIs, to launch a range of new services, including instant lending, and provide customised products for specific groups, such as families and students.

Finastra, a provider of financial software applications and marketplaces, has teamed up with LGT to roll out instant payment services in Austria and Liechtenstein, with other markets to follow. LGT will implement Finastra’s payment hub using a model bank implementation approach, to accelerate its readiness to meet the EU instant payments regulatory timeline.

Partnerships

Fintech Sandbox, a nonprofit organisation aiding the fintech industry by providing free access to data to startups, has welcomed Kaleidoscope as a new data partner. Kaleidoscope provides API access to a range of pre-defined and searchable securities datasets that have been extracted and aggregated from registered US and Canadian filings, including public companies, investment companies, funds, investment advisors, and US insiders.

CREALOGIX and Tuum, a next-generation core banking provider, today announced a strategic partnership aimed at shaking up the banking and financing landscape in the GCC region.  Customers will benefit from a comprehensive suite of services including accounts, cards, payments, cash financing, microfinancing and car financing solutions.

Appointments

Mangopay, a modular payment infrastructure provider for platforms, has strengthened its team in the UK and Ireland with the appointment of Jonathan Greenland as a new sales director. Greenland joins from Airwallex where he established its UK enterprise sales function. Before that, Greenland worked in enterprise sales for GoCardless, where he built global customer solutions.

AI (BlueFlame), the generative AI platform for alternative investment managers, appoints Ed Chu as chief technology officer. Chu will drive the company’s technology strategy, direction and ongoing innovation and will oversee the engineering teams. Chu join from Kepos Capital, L.P., a quantitative-focused hedge fund.

The FTMO Group has announced the preparation of its own brokerage division of the company with Michael
Kamerman taking the role of CEO. Prior to his post at FTMO, Kamerman served as Group CEO of Skilling, a high-growth Scandinavian CFD brokerage. The co-founders of FTMO, Otakar Suffner and Marek Vasicek remain in their posts as CEO and CTO of the FTMO Group.

Kani Payments, the global data reconciliation and reporting platform, has added two new hires to its senior management team. Carol Connolly joins as head of finance and HR, while Roger Binks joins as chief commercial officer. Kani has reconciled more than €24billion in processed payments volume for startups and scale-ups across the fintech spectrum, including Sodexo, Transact Payments, Osper, IDT, Moorwand and Paysafe.

Bitget, the cryptocurrency exchange and Web 3 company, has named Gracy Chen as its new CEO, succeeding Sandra Lou, who leaves the platform to pursue her own business goals. In June 2022, Chen joined Bitget as its first MD, leading Bitget’s growth strategies as the platform accelerates its global expansion plan.

More appointments

WealthKernel, a provider of digital investing infrastructure, appoints James Dingwall as its new strategic regulatory adviser. He is the founder and former CEO of Thistle Group, a regulatory consultancy in the financial services industry. Dingwell will focus on developing and implementing strategic plans to ensure smooth interactions between WealthKernel’s Appointed Representative clients and the regulatory authorities.

Encompass Corporation has appointed Nynke Postma, the founder and ex-CEO of Blacksmith KYC, to its leadership team. As head of business development for Asia and the Middle East, based in Singapore, Postma will work to maximise the potential and value customers experience through Encompass’ CDI product propositions. Her appointment follows Encompass’ acquisitions of Blacksmith KYC and CoorpID.

WineFi, the fintech platform for fine wine investment, has named Oliver Thorpe as its operations director. Thorpe, who previously led operations at Sequoia-backed start-up Nomio, previously worked alongside WineFi’s Callum Woodcock. WineFi has experienced revenue growth of more than 800 per cent since the start of 2024.