Аsia
UGRO Capital Limited announces its equity capital raise
The Paypers, Posted April 12, 2023
India-based fintech startup UGRO Capital Limited has announced its second equity capital raise, as subject to customary closing conditions.
The announcement represents one of the steps that UGRO Capital has taken to enter into a definitive investment agreement with IFU, an independent Denmark-based government-owned fund offering risk capital to companies, businesses, and enterprises during the process of developing countries and emerging markets in the Danish Development Finance Institution. Additionally, IFU also focuses on contributing to the realisation and development of the SDGs by designing improved opportunities for individuals that live in low and middle-income countries.
The growth capital that comes from the funding round will be used for onward leading, which is set to assist the MSME segment and take the credit to the last mile.
#Fintech
Life Insurance: FWD Group Makes Investment in Gibraltar BSN Enabling a Full-Service Offering in Malaysia
Crowdfund Insider, Posted April 11, 2023
FWD Group Holdings Limited recently completed its majority investment, with other investors, in Gibraltar BSN Life Berhad, “marking its entry into the Malaysian life insurance market.”
The transaction was originally “announced on 20 February 2023.”
As a result, FWD Group can now “provide a full-service offering in Malaysia, which it first entered in March 2019, spanning both life insurance and family takaful products.”
Last month, FWD Group announced it has “refiled the Form A1 Main Board listing application with The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited (HKEx).”
A copy of the Application Proof will be available on the HKEx’s website.
As clarified in the update, the securities referred to herein “may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration under the Securities Act or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act and applicable state securities laws.”
In February 2023, FWD Group announced updates and additional information, “including full year 2022 results for FWD Group, within announcements made today to the Hong Kong Exchange (HKEx) in relation to their respective listed notes and perpetual securities.”
#Fintech
Credit Technology Fintech Linedata Expands Managed Services Offerings in APAC for Buy Side Firms
Crowdfund Insider, Posted April 12, 2023
Linedata (Euronext Paris: LIN), a global provider of asset management and credit technology data and services, announced today the expansion of its services capabilities and offerings in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.
Linedata has extended its APAC offerings “to include new industry segments namely private equity, private credit, specialized and structured credit, as well as allocators and aggregators.”
Sally Crane, Managing Director at Linedata Asia, said:
“Since the beginning of our journey in Asia, we’ve continuously worked to grow and enhance our range of technology solutions and services. Over the last couple of years we have experienced a changing business environment as well as ongoing economic factors, and in turn we have seen a transformation in business needs and a growing interest in outsourcing.”
Leveraging its extensive experience in offering front, middle and back-office services to asset managers in the US and Europe for over a decade, Linedata reportedly “brings expanded suite of digital transformation led outsourcing solutions to its APAC clients involving investment and portfolio analytics, advisory and custom software development, and infrastructure management services, including cybersecurity.”
#Fintech
Digital Banking: Malaysia’s Maybank Enhances Security with Add-on Feature
Crowdfund Insider, Posted April 12, 2023
Maybank’s Kill Switch solution is now introducing a new security add-on, in addition to the Maybank2u access’ deactivation feature launched in late January this year.
The new security add-on via Maybank2u (M2U) web and the MAE app “will allow customers to swiftly and conveniently temporarily block the usage of their credit and charge cards should they suspect a compromise on their cards.”
The new security add-on is “part of Maybank’s ongoing efforts to further enhance its online banking security and strong commitment to combat online scams by empowering its customers to take immediate control of their credit and charge cards and ensure that their funds are safe and protected.”
Prior to this new feature, Maybank had “enabled customers the option to freeze their MAE card and to also temporarily deactivate their Maybank2u access.”
To further strengthen online banking security & create a more secure digital platform for its customers, Maybank’s Secure2u has “been the only authorization method for online transactions (FPX) for all amounts since 5th April 2023.”
#Digital Banking
Europe
Deutsche Börse leads €8 million investment in Next Gate Tech
Finextra, Posted April 13, 2023
The corporate venture capital unit of Deutsche Börse has led an €8 million investment round in Next Gate Tech, a supplier of data management software to the funds industry.
The investment follows the German exchange group’s acquisition last year of Luxembourg-based fund data manager Kneip, which already has a complementary commercial relationship with Next Gate Tech.
Based in Luxembourg and London, Next Gate Tech’s platform ingests datasets from multiple sources to create a harmonized golden copy and generates various calculations to oversee delegates, analyse investments behaviors, compare performance and generate risk based metrics.
“This investment by our parent company Deutsche Börse Group cements our partnership with Next Gate Tech,” says Enrique Sacau, CEO of Kneip, who is joining the Board of Next Gate Tech following the investment of Deutsche Börse Group. “The logic of it is to add more value to our clients on the back of delivering both exceptionally high-quality data and bigger coverage of their value chain.”
#Fintech
Puulse unveils financial services platform for freelancers
Finextra, Posted April 13, 2023
A new app for freelancers, called Puulse, has launched in the UK and Europe, providing free advance payments for gig workers experiencing a productivity lull.
Capable of working in conjunction with any freelance platform, app-based Puulse enables gig workers to access the money owed to them at a time that suits them. Users download the app, signup, and change their IBAN on the Puulse app.
Then, once a job has been completed, workers have access to their earnings instantly while Puulse follows up with the freelancer’s client.
In addition, freelancer “experiencing a difficult month” can withdraw advance payments with no interest or late fees, covering the deficit when they are earning again.
#Fintech
UK payments startup Ryft wins FCA licence
Altfi, Posted April 11, 2023
Ryft, a UK startup hoping to emulate the success of Stripe, has received an FCA licence following its £1.2 million seed raise in September.
Ryft’s platform processes marketplace payments and then automatically diverts funds to merchants and sub-merchants the next working day. The API-based package handles everything from accepting online payments, verifying and onboarding merchants, to splitting up the payments however a business wants.
Billing itself as “Stripe Connect without the high fees and lengthy payout wait times”, the authorisation of the licence opens up opportunities for Ryft to become a regulated payment facilitator with some of the world’s biggest acquirers.
The business was borne out of the previous experience of founders Sadra Hosseini and Alex Mackenzie, who built and sold a mobile ordering marketplace app for pubs and bars, and spotted a gap in the market for microtransactions and fast payouts.
#Fintech
SocGen and Lemonway join forces to service corporate B2B marketplaces
Finextra, Posted April 11, 2023
Societe Generale has signed a deal with Lemonway to deliver payment services to large corporates launching B2B marketplaces in Western Europe.
The partnership marries Lemonway’s expertise in managing compliant third-party payments services with Societe Generale services in large account cash management.
Leomonway’s modular package handles payment and other strategic services such as customer verification and payment account opening, reconciliation of flows for beneficiaries and performance monitoring.
Alexandre Maymat, head of global transaction and payment services at Societe Generale, says: “This partnership enables us to support our clients in their digital transformation, offering ever more complete and innovative payment services, in line with the specific needs of large corporates for their B2B marketplaces. It illustrates Societe Generale’s long-standing cooperative approach with fintech companies to provide innovative solutions for our clients.”
#Payments
Volksbanks and Raiffeisenbanks introduce products on Raisin’s Weltsparen platform
The Paypers, Posted April 13, 2023
Two Volks- and Raiffeisenbanks have announced offering products via the Weltsparen platform.
Customers of cooperative institutes have already previously been able to use the offers of the Weltsparen platform. Now, for the first time, two Volks- and Raiffeisenbanks are offering their own products on the fintech Raisin’s platform, as the company has announced. In addition to the Volksbank Raiffeisenbank Regensburg-Schwandorf, the Volksbank Rhein-Ruhr is also involved. Both offer a fixed-term deposit for one year with the current interest rate is 2.25%.
In times of rising refinancing costs, the cooperative banks can thus diversify their sources of financing at reasonable costs. According to a Raisin representative, in times of rising refinancing costs, the cooperative banks can now diversify their sources of financing at a reasonable cost. As stated by a representative of the Volksbank Raiffeisenbank Regensburg-Schwandorf, this was also one of the main reasons for the bank.
#Fintech
USA
Mastercard unveils international payments tool
IBS Intelligence, Posted April 12, 2023
Mastercard has launched a tool that helps financial institutions set up international payments for their customers – including consumers and SMEs – in more than 60 currencies to over 100 markets.
Mastercard Cross-Border Services Express promises a simple integration that helps deliver cross-border payments to places covering 90% of the world’s population.
Mastercard is working with Fable FinTech and Payall Payment Systems on the service, offering users flexibility in how they pay by delivering funds to bank accounts, mobile wallets, cards, and cash payout locations.
#Mastercard
US Fintech Startups Accounted for Over 65% of Funds Raised in the Sector Globally: Report
Crowdfund Insider, Posted April 12, 2023
Tracxn, a global SaaS-based market intelligence platform, has released its Geo Quarterly FinTech US Report – 2023.
The report, based on Tracxn’s extensive database, “provides insights into the US FinTech space.”
The US is “home to more than 30,000 FinTech startups, making it the largest startup ecosystem globally in the FinTech space.” The total funds “raised in Q1 2023 by the US FinTech startups accounted for more than 65% of the funds raised in the FinTech space globally.”
US FinTech startups “raised a total of $8.8 billion in Q1 2023, which is 25% lower than Q1 2022 and a 173% rise from Q4 2022.” This is primarily “due to a sharp jump of 414% in late-stage funding from $1.4 billion in Q4 of 2022 to $7.2 billion in Q1 2023, and an increase of 10% compared to Q1 of 2022.”
The majority of the funding in this stage was “raised by digital payments company Stripe, which alone raised $6.5 billion in a Series I round in January 2023.”
Early-stage funding was “the most impacted, decreasing 70% this quarter when compared with Q1 2022, and falling 7% from Q4 2022.” This sector “witnessed seed-stage investments worth $294 million in Q1 2023, 56% lower than the amount raised in Q1 2022, and 26% lower than the corresponding quarter last year.”
#Report
Plaid announces integration with Monzo
The Paypers, Posted April 13, 2023
Plaid has announced an integration in the US with Monzo, meaning that customers can now connect their Monzo account to over 8,000 fintech apps.
Customers may now safely monitor and transfer funds from their accounts to other financial institutions from within the Monzo app. Users of Monzo in the UK can already do this.
Plaid integrated Monzo via its Core Exchange platform. Core Exchange is a free service that allows any institution to join to the Plaid data network through secure API access.
Plaid is now expanding its services to include real-time bank transactions. Businesses may now rapidly release loan payments, insurance payouts, or wages thanks to the improved service. Plaid’s Transfer service assists businesses in transferring payments between bank accounts. The offering currently makes use of the real-time payments (RTP) network, a five-year-old money-transfer technology operated by a consortium of leading US banks that enables rapid bank transactions.
Monzo clients may now link their accounts to hundreds of popular financial applications and services. This collaboration is an important step toward offering Plaid’s consumers more financial power.
#Monzo
Visa launches interoperable payments with PayPal and Venmo
Altfi, Posted April 12, 2023
Visa is now partnering with financial services and payments companies to simplify the payments process for users.
The new interoperable peer-to-peer (P2P) payment offering allows customers to transfer money to other people across different payment services — that means someone will be able to send money on Venmo to someone receiving it through Western Union.
The latest buzzword on the fintech scene, interoperability sees the myriad of different systems and applications communicate with each other behind the scenes to remove friction for the user.
In this case, Visa is helping people pay and get paid more easily.
There are a number of big players in the payments space in the US, such as Venmo, PayPal and Cash App, all of which ease the payments process, but crucuailly only if you’re using the same service.
Even between Venmo and PayPal, both of which are owned by PayPal, users cannot currently make a direct payment.
#Visa
LatAm
Digital Banking: Brazil’s Nubank Introduces Campaign to Highlight Security Options in its Fintech App
Crowdfund Insider, Posted April 10, 2023
Nubank, one of the world’s largest digital financial services platforms, launched the campaign” “Those who have Nubank have more security and less concerns.”
The action aims “to highlight the company’s security features, high technology, and data protection tools offered to more than 70 million customers in Brazil.”
The campaign reportedly “features a 30-second video about Nubank’s Protection Pack, a set of exclusive defenses that offer an extra layer of protection for users’ accounts and transactions.”
The Protection Pack is “composed of a series of tools; among the main ones are Modo Rua, an unprecedented tool in the market that allows customers to determine a maximum total amount for transactions when they are outside of their homes; the Scam Alert, which warns the user when they are about to make a transaction to a potentially suspicious account; and the Smart Defenses, a protection system that is built from artificial intelligence models and understands how each customer behaves, recognizing habits and patterns – when a pattern is broken, it can block the operation.”
#Nubank
Global Fintech Paysend Expands Bank Account Transfer Capabilities to Latin America
Crowdfund Insider, Posted April 10, 2023
Paysend, the card-to-card pioneer and international payments platform, is solidifying its money transfer services to Latin America by “enabling U.S. customers to send money to Latin America quickly, securely and for a low fee through transfers to bank accounts.”
Since launching transfers to bank accounts in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica and Mexico in 2022, U.S. customers will now be able “to transfer money to friends and loved ones bank accounts in Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile and Argentina.”
Jairo Riveros at Paysend, said:
“At Paysend, we understand that remittances play an important role for our customers in supporting their loved ones. Given the current macroeconomic conditions, transferring funds play an even more important role, because it’s being used to cover necessities like food and housing. By offering card-to-card, card-to-bank or card-to-digital wallet transfers, we’re making it easier, and more affordable, for our U.S. customers to send money back home when their loved ones need it the most.”
#Paysend
