The Tech Finance Daily Bi-Weekly News Roundup takes a look at the latest fintech stories from around the world on Thursday 16 January 2025.
Partnerships
Avenir, a UK AI-driven financial reporting company, has partnered with lang cat to support financial advice firms with more efficient reporting. The partnership combines Avenir’s platform with insights and analytics from lang cat’s Analyser platform to automate data and streamline reporting. The new integrated solution is available now.
CEC Bank, the third largest bank in Romania, has selected Temenos to modernise its retail and corporate core banking systems. The state-owned bank is migrating from legacy systems to Temenos’ core banking platform including solutions for payments and data analytics. This transformation will enable CEC Bank to drive faster time to market, operational efficiency and business agility.
Columbia Insurance Group (CIG), a mutual insurance company specialising in property and casualty insurance for SMBs, has selected One Inc, a digital payments platform provider for the insurance industry, for its inbound and outbound payments solution. By integrating One Inc’s PremiumPay, CIG will have the tools to power personalised branding and manage multi-channel communication preferences.
Bamboo, a provider of cross-border payment solutions, has forged a partnership with Tiendamia, an e-commerce platform in Latin America. This collaboration is set to address key challenges faced by Tiendamia in Argentina, enabling the company to offer more competitive pricing and a seamless shopping experience to its customers.
Knowit collaborates with Backbase to enhance digital banking services in the Nordics. The partnership combines Knowit’s Nordic market prowess with Backbase’s Engagement Banking Platform. This enables the speedy implementation of digital banking solutions that meet local market requirements and regulations. Financial institutions in the Nordics also gain access to Backbase’s fintech ecosystem and banking apps.
More partnerships
Nuvei Corporation, the Canadian fintech company, has partnered with Outpayce from Amadeus, as its latest payments service provider to be integrated into Outpayce’s Xchange Payment Platform (XPP). Travel businesses leveraging Outpayce’s XPP can now access Nuvei’s suite of payment capabilities, enhancing their ability to process transactions efficiently and securely across geographies.
Atos, a digital transformation company, was chosen by Banco Mercantil to support its cloud adoption journey through the Google Cloud. The agreement, a five-year term between the bank and Google Cloud, involves an investment of millions of Brazilian reais to migrate all of the bank’s data centre servers to the cloud. The project was divided into phases according to the appropriate strategy for each type of workload, aiming to modernise the bank’s operations and optimize its entire technological infrastructure.
FreedomPay, has unveiled a strategic alliance with Mastercard to provide businesses worldwide with a global payment gateway solution. Utilising FreedomPay’s established presence in North America, Europe, and Latin America, and Mastercard’s global network, businesses around the world will have more options for connecting to payment systems and processing transactions.
Industry movers
JN Bank UK appoints Chris Waring as CEO, as the bank accelerates its growth strategy. This appointment follows a recent £20million investment from Step One Money UK Limited (SOMU), which will drive the bank’s innovation and support its market expansion. Waring joined JN Bank UK in early 2023 as chief commercial officer and prior to this developed Honeycomb Finance.
Universal Investment Group (UI), a fund services platform, appoints Jeremy Albrecht as its new CEO for Luxembourg. In this role, Jeremy will be responsible for heading UI’s Luxembourg platform, which consists of both UI Luxembourg and third party ManCo in Luxembourg, and fund administrator UI efa. He will oversee total assets under administration of approximately €400billion across UI’s Luxembourg platform.
7IM has appointed Tom Glossop as head of Microsoft Platform as it accelerates its digital transformation journey. The business’s major expansion of its transformation team forms part of a multimillion-pound and multi-year investment into its proprietary platform. Glossop previously served as power platform lead at PwC.
PayRetailers, a payment processor for Latin America and Africa with plans to expand into Europe, appoints Natalie McGowan as the new VP of acquiring and EU payment partners. She has previously held senior roles at payment service providers such as ClickandBuy, Skrill and the Paysafe Group. McGown has relationships with merchant acquirers, alternative payment methods, and financial institutions.
Allfunds, a B2B wealthtech platform for the funds industry with €1.5trillion in assets under administration, offering fully integrated solutions for both fund houses and distributors, announces Sebastian Henrichs as senior advisor to accelerate growth in Germany and Austria. Previously serving as CEO of FNZ in Germany and Fondsdepot Bank, Henrichs also has experience with banking regulators in Germany and Europe.
Funding and investments
Workwize, a platform for global IT hardware asset management, has closed $13million in Series A funding led by Klass Capital, with continued support from early-stage investors Peak and Graduate Entrepreneur Fund. This investment will fast-track Workwize’s integration of AI-driven automation for the IT equipment lifecycle – from procurement and deployment to retrieval and disposal.
Komainu, a regulated digital asset services provider and custodian, backed by Laser Digital, a Nomura company, has raised $75 million in strategic investment from Blockstream Capital Partners. The funding enables Komainu to accelerate its international strategic growth plans while adopting and integrating technologies developed by Blockstream Corporation Inc.
BeZero Carbon, the global carbon ratings agency, announces a $32million Series C led by GenZero, with additional funding from the Japan Airlines and Translink Innovation Fund. The new funds will be used to invest in expanding BeZero’s ratings coverage of domestic and sovereign compliance markets, as well as CORSIA.
