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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Happy Monday! If you need to step away from the fintech news to finish your income taxes this week, then don’t worry. Finovate’s Fintech Rundown will be here when you get back to make sure you’re informed and updated on the latest in fintech and financial services news.
Digital banking
Zions Bancorporation selectsnCino as its technology platform.
This week’s edition of Finovate Global looks at recent fintech headlines from Spain.
Payments and liquidity solutions company Wannme raises €7M
Wannme, a Madrid-based fintech that specializes in payments and liquidity solutions, announced a €7 million strategic financing from IDC Arena Credit Ventures, a division of IDC Network, with Arena Investors also participating in the funding.
The company will use the financing to continue providing marketplace sellers with instant payment advances. This allows them to secure earnings on a daily basis instead of having to wait more than 14 days, as is typically required by marketplaces. Wannme Founder and CEO Jaime de Villa said that the credit facility will enable the company to “empower more sellers with the liquidity needed to sell more and grow.”
“This partnership marks an important milestone for Wannme as we scale our impact in the marketplace ecosystem in Europe,” de Villa added. “IDC Arena Credit Ventures understood our business model and structured a financing solution aligned with our growth strategy.”
Founded in 2017, Wannme facilitates e-commerce by automating and optimizing payment flows to help solve payments and liquidity issues for online merchants. The company provides merchants with advances of up to 90% of their net sales daily, and also offers an online payment gateway that enables them to accept a wider variety of payment methods, including recurring and automated payments. These methods also include both Apple Pay and Google Pay, which Wannme integrated into its platform in February.
Mortgage platform Wypo partners with financial app Plazo
Wypo, a Spanish mortgagetech platform that helps would-be homeowners locate and sign customized mortgages online, has struck a strategic partnership with financial wellness app Plazo. A division of Spanish fintech ID Finance, Plazo will offer Wypo users access to credit lines of up to €5,000 through its Plazo Credit solution directly from the Plazo app.
“This partnership is a great opportunity to deliver complete and accessible financial solutions to our users,” Wypo CEO Elena Ansótegui said. “At Wypo, we are committed to offering resources that meet real needs. The alliance with Plazo strengthens our focus on continuously improving the customer experience and enables us to go a step further in offering key financing options when users need them most.”
Wypo customers will benefit from digital access to both debit and credit solutions courtesy of the partnership with Plazo. Also included are the ability to participate in an extensive cashback program and access to free, online legal and medical advice through a service called MeetingPros.
“We are delighted to collaborate with Wypo and to provide added value to new homeowners, helping them cover initial expenses for refurbishments or repairs, buy furniture, appliances, home decor items, and more,” Plazo CMO Carlos MartÃn said. “They’ll also benefit from all the additional features offered by Plazo, designed to bring greater financial peace of mind.”
Founded in 2021, Wypo is headquartered in Torrelavega, Cantabria. The mortgagetech’s partnership news comes amid a significant increase in home purchase loans in Spain, reflecting an 11% year-over-year gain. This has been accompanied by a comparable rise average housing prices in the country. Wypo’s partnership with Plazo will help the firm provide additional services to its customers, further differentiating its offering from competitors.
CaixaBank and Salesforce team up to leverage AI to personalize CX in banking
A newly signed agreement between Spain’s CaixaBank and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution provider Salesforce will help “jointly advance artificial intelligence projects for the digital transformation of banking services.” More specifically, CaixaBank will leverage Salesforce technology to enhance its customer relationship channels to improve the customer experience.
This technology includes solutions such as AI-based Agentforce—the integrated AI assistants on the Salesforce platform—as well as Salesforce Data Cloud for data management and analysis. Agentforce enables the deployment of AI agents to offer specialized assistance to CaixaBank employees and customers alike. These agents operate proactively and continuously across apps, chatbots, physical offices, and call centers, processing large amounts of data quickly to optimize decision-making and improve the efficiency of task execution.
By implementing Salesforce Data Cloud, CaixaBank will leverage the cloud data management and analysis technology to manage the transmission of data produced by the institution to ensure it is immediately available for any query. The data will be recorded securely and will allow for real-time consultation.
Based in Valencia, CaixaBank is the leading financial group in the Spanish market. With a digital customer base of nearly 12 million, the company provides banking, insurance, and investment services. CaixaBank’s partnership with Salesforce is part of the firm’s overall digital transformation strategy, which has enabled the institution to earn recognition as the Best Bank in Western Europe and Best Bank in Spain in 2024 by Global Finance.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Central and Eastern Europe
Munich-based, AI-powered anti-money laundering and fraud prevention firm, Hawk, raised $56 million in new funding.
Nets, a division of European payment technology company Nexi Group, teamed up with Latvian financial institution, BluOr Bank.
Turkish embedded finance company Sipay secured $78 million in funding at a valuation of $875 million.
Money transfer company CurrencyFair has teamed up with open banking SaaS platform tell.money.
The integration of tell.money’s open banking technology will make CurrencyFair’s money transfer service more seamless, transparent, and compliant.
Ireland-based CurrencyFair won Best of Show in its appearance at FinovateAsia 2012 in Singapore.
Dublin, Ireland-based cross-border money transfer company CurrencyFair has partnered with tell.money to support its open banking integration. By integrating tell.money’s open banking technology, CurrencyFair anticipates making its secure and cost-effective money transfer service that much more seamless, compliant, and transparent.
“At CurrencyFair, we are committed to providing customers with the fastest and most secure money transfers possible,” CurrencyFair CEO Jan Lorenc said. “Integrating tell.money’s open banking solutions helps us improve payment efficiency while ensuring compliance with evolving financial regulations.”
In a world in which many people sending money across borders still experience high costs, CurrencyFair helps its customers—expats, overseas homeowners, and small businesses—access the real exchange rate. With an average margin rate of 0.53%—and a small €3 fee—CurrencyFair enables customers to avoid spreads that can be as large as 5% and international transfer fees that can reach €25 on every payment.
Using CurrencyFair is straightforward. Customers simply set up their transaction with the amount and type of currency to be exchanged, provide recipient details, choose a deposit method, and transfer money into their account. CurrencyFair will then exchange the funds at rates that can be up to 8x cheaper than rates offered by banks. Whether individuals are seeking to transfer money overseas, buy overseas property, receive an overseas pension, or pay overseas tuition, CurrencyFair offers competitive FX rates, low-cost global transfers, and dedicated customer support.
“CurrencyFair is a leader in cross-border payments, and we’re pleased to support them in delivering a more seamless and secure experience for their customers worldwide,” tell.money CEO David Monty said.
Founded in 2020 and headquartered in London, tell.money provides an open banking SaaS platform, an ecosystem that account providers can join in order to bring open banking solutions to their customers in a compliant way. The company’s solutions include tell.gateway, its dedicated interface APIs; tell.confirm, which meets businesses’ confirmation of payee needs; tell.heartbeat, which provides constant monitoring of APIs; and tell.life, which includes a suite of money management tools to help customers better manage their financial lives.
CurrencyFair made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2012 and won Best of Show later that year for its live demo at FinovateAsia in Singapore. In 2021, the company merged with Assembly Payments, a fintech based in Australia with a presence in Singapore, India, the Philippines, and the US. While CurrencyFair continues to serve consumers and small businesses, the joint venture between the company and Assembly Payments—called Zai—provides integrated financial services such as payments, FX, fraud management, and reconciliation, to mid-market and enterprise-level businesses.
CurrencyFair’s partnership announcement comes one month after the company announced that Jan Lorenc would serve as the company’s new divisional CEO. Lorenc comes to CurrencyFair having worked as SVP and Global Head of Digital Assets Group at Nuvei and as Managing Director and Head of Geo Expansion Affairs for BANXA.
With spring in full swing, we’ve got another doubleheader in our Streamly Snapshot series in store for you this week.
To start, we talked with Philip Froom, Founder and CEO at PayIP, about navigating the complexity of payment networks. Froom discussed how PayIP leverages advanced technologies such as AI and machine learning to uncover hidden value for banks and fintechs around the world.
“Banks and fintechs around the world pay a lot of money, billions of dollars to the payment networks—the payment networks being Visa, Mastercard, American Express, UnionPay. Our clients pay fortunes and the money and the billing from the payment networks back to the banks is extremely complicated. There’s thousands of different billing line items from fixed fees to variable fees, tiered fees, daily, weekly, annual fees.”
Headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, PayIP specializes in payment network (Visa and Mastercard) billing recovery and optimization. The company leverages decades of card and data expertise to simplify complex card network invoices and reporting, and identifies recoveries for bank finance and card payment teams.
Next, we talked with Jurgen Vandenbroucke, Managing Director at everyoneINVESTED, KBC, about the value of decision science and how it can be effectively applied to financial services. We also discussed the Great Wealth transfer, and the challenges faced by financial services companies when it comes to serving a new generation of investors.
“Decision science is a broad field. I think a more popular term is perhaps choice architecture in the sense of putting into models (people’s) decision-making process as much as possible in order to anticipate their behavior … For example, trying to optimize the small screen of a smartphone in order to present data in such a way that it triggers desired behavior or discourages undesired behavior.”
Brussels-based everyoneINVESTED helps financial institutions increase their investor conversions, fortify their customer base, and put behavioral finance to work to help them have more of their clients invest in their solutions. A wealthtech spin-off of KBC, everyoneINVESTED was named to FinTech Global’s WealthTech100 for the fifth consecutive year.
Philippines-based Security Bank has announced a new collaboration with Entrust.
The partnership will help the financial institution enhance its electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC) and digital onboarding processes.
Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Entrust is a veteran of Finovate’s developer conferences in 2015 and 2016.
Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) innovator Entrust has entered into a new collaboration with leading Philippines-based financial institution Security Bank. Security Bank has turned to Entrust to help it improve its electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC) process as part of the institution’s digital transformation goals.
“Security Bank is transforming digital banking in the Philippines, and we’re proud to support their vision with advanced identity verification that makes onboarding both more secure and convenient,” said Entrust Regional VP of Sales, APAC, Harvinder Singh. “Our solution helps Security Bank deliver the experience their customers expect, while maintaining the highest standards of security and fraud prevention.”
Established in 1951, Security Bank has deployed Entrust’s Onfido Studio platform. The technology combines robust security features with advanced fraud detection capabilities including as deepfake detection. The institution will also be able to leverage the platform’s flexibility to build customized onboarding workflows while staying compliant with local regulations. The bank has already pointed to measurable results, including an increase in the number of customer onboarding completions, as well as reduced onboarding times.
The bank’s partnership with Entrust comes as the digital banking market in the Philippines is expected to experience significant expansion. Research from Statista points to a projected compound annual growth rate of 31% through 2029. At this pace, the digital banking market is expected to reach a market volume of $2.16 billion. To this end, Security Bank is bringing innovation and modernization to both its eKYC process and its overall digital onboarding journey.
“By leveraging Entrust’s advanced identity verification technology, we’re not only enhancing the security and accessibility of our banking services but also ensuring that every customer interaction—digital or in-person—is convenient and reliable,” Security Bank SVP and Division Head Juan Mestas explained. “Looking ahead, we plan to expand these capabilities across other services to give customers the best experience possible.”
Entrust is a veteran of Finovate’s developer conferences, having participated in both FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2015 and FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016. In the years since, the company has grown into an identity and access management platform provider that has issued more than 20 billion payment cards since inception, and protects more than 100 million workforce and consumer identities. The firm was named a Challenger in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Access Management and a Leader for Identity Verification.
Entrust came out of the gates strongly in 2025. In January, the company launched its Artista RS4 Instant Issuance System to enhance card issuance and security. Also in January, the company streamlined its Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) with the launch of PKI Hub, which provides visibility, management, and automation for cryptographic assets. Entrust also unveiled its AI-powered facial biometric authentication capability for its Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) platform in the first month of the year.
April is Financial Literacy Month. And while we are all getting an intensive course in trade policy these days, a few hours spent shoring up financial literacy (including how to handle market downturns!) is always time well spent.
With this in mind, today we showcase Finovate alums in recent years that have made financial literacy a key part of their mission when it comes to building new fintech solutions.
To learn more about Finovate alums innovating in the area of financial literacy before 2023, check out our previous Financial Literacy content, including Best of Show winners that are innovating in this space!
AI-powered anti-money laundering (AML) company Hawk has raised $56 million in Series C funding.
The investment will fuel product innovation for the Munich, Germany-based fintech, as well as power the company’s expansion plans.
Hawk made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022 in San Francisco. The company was founded in 2018.
Hawk , a company offering AI-powered anti-money laundering (AML), screening, and fraud prevention solutions, has secured $56 million in Series C funding. The fintech, which made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022, will use the capital to help Tier 1 banks leverage AI to fight financial crime. The investment adds to the more than $134 million the company has already raised.
“Every financial institution that wants to reduce compliance workloads and increase the accuracy of risk detection should be using AI to achieve those goals,” Hawk CEO Tobias Schweiger said. “The results are compelling—we’ve been able to increase alert accuracy to almost 90% in some cases, while significantly cutting false positives. We’re also uncovering twice as many previously undetected cases of ‘novel’ criminal activity.”
Hawk’s funding round was led by One Peak, which joined existing investors Macquarie Capital, Rabobank, BlackFin Capital Partners, Sands Capital, DN Capital, Picus, and Coalition.
Hawk’s technology empowers banks to move beyond traditional, rules-based anti-money laundering and fraud fighting methods that often produce a sizable number of false positives that require human review and intervention. This drives up the cost of fighting financial crime. Further, fraudsters are increasingly adept at circumventing and subverting rules-based AML and fraud detection strategies. To address this, Hawk puts AI-powered technology to work increasing the fraud detection accuracy to find more crime while keeping false positives low.
“AI is in our DNA at Hawk,” Schweiger said. “Our mission is to provide financial institutions with the technology, the expertise and the support that they need to realize the transformative impact that machine learning and generative AI can have across their anti-financial crime operations.”
With more than 80 customers around the world, Hawk boasts partners ranging from large Tier 1 banks to mid-market financial institutions and fintechs. Hawk’s latest investment will help bring continued product innovation to these firms, as well as support the company’s expansion plans.
Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Munich, Germany, Hawk made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022 in San Francisco. At the conference, the company demonstrated its AI Surveillance Suite, which uses a combination of AI and traditional rules to identify anomalous behavior in real-time.
Hawk began this year with the launch of its Anti-Money Laundering AI Overlay, which enables banks to reduce false positives and detect novel crime without having to swap out the current AML systems. The solution, according to Hawk Chief Product Officer Wolfgang Berner, is “delivering prediction accuracy in excess of 85% (and) reducing false positives to less than 15%.” Berner underscored that the overlay achieved all of this via AI optimization “rather than a total system overhaul.”
In February, the company appointed Ben Pannier as Chief Technology Officer. Pannier comes to Hawk having held leadership positions at firms including Tide, Zalando, and PayU. That same month, Hawk was named to the Chartis 2025 Financial Crime and Compliance 50 for its real-time transaction monitoring technology.
Netherlands-based software platform company Topicus launched Akkuro, its composable banking platform.
The new offering combines multiple Topicus Finance solutions with capabilities from fellow Finovate Five Degrees, which Topicus acquired in 2023.
Topicus most recently demonstrated its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateEurope 2023.
Software platform developer Topicus unveiled its latest solution this week. The company launchedAkkuro, its composable banking platform, which leverages a wide variety of capabilities to enable banks and fintechs to build and deploy new financial solutions quickly, with greater flexibility and control.
Akkuro combines the functionality of multiple Topicus finance solutions with the deep capabilities of fellow Finovate alum Five Degrees, which Topicus acquired in 2023. The new offering consolidates Five Degrees’Matrix CRM and Neo Core Banking products with Topicus finance solutions such as Fyndoo Lending to provide end-to-end financial experiences, as Topicus Finance CEO Clint van Haalen underscored in a statement.
“Akkuro allows us to orchestrate the entire banking lifecycle, from investments and core banking to CRM for banks and lending,” van Haalen said. “We’re merging decades of banking expertise with a relentless drive for innovation, delivering a unified platform that empowers financial institutions to build scalable, intuitive, and future-ready solutions.”
One of the biggest trends in digital transformation, composable banking gives financial institutions a way to create and deliver financial products and services faster, and with greater flexibility. Via embedded technologies, APIs, and third-party partnerships, the modularity of composable banking enables financial institutions to respond more quickly not only to new innovations and shifting customer preferences but also to changing regulatory guidelines and mandates.
Topicus made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2014 in London. The company most recently appeared on the Finovate stage at FinovateEurope 2023, where it demonstrated its Fyndoo lending platform. Topicus acquired Five Degrees later that year. The company began 2025 by taking a stake in another Finovate alum, Asseco Poland, acquiring a 9.99% position in the IT solutions provider.
Topicus is headquartered in Deventer, the Netherlands.
The news that both eToro and Klarna have put a temporary hold on their separate IPO plans tells you all you need to know about the level of concern over the new Trump Administration trade and tariff policy. Regardless of the next twists and turns in the stock market, Finovate’s Fintech Rundown will be here all week with the latest in fintech news and updates.
Payments
Bluefinboosts security, flexibility with addition of network tokenization to its ShieldConex Tokenization-as-a-Service and Orchestration platforms.
Indian payment orchestration platform Juspayraises $60 million in Series D funding.
Airwallexenables business to receive and hold funds in Israeli Shekels (ILS) via its Global Accounts and multi-currency wallet.
This week’s edition of Finovate Global looks at recent fintech developments in Canada.
Float Unveils Float FX to Help Canadian Businesses Save on Currency Conversion Costs
Toronto, Ontario-based business finance platform Floatunveiled a new solution for Canadian businesses this week. The new offering, Float FX, will enable Canadian companies to instantly convert funds at rates as much as 90% lower than with traditional banks. Float noted that the solution is part of the company’s broader goal to help support businesses that do business in the US as they navigate volatility in both currency markets and US trade policy.
“With the Canadian dollar under pressure and potential trade disruptions looming, we designed Float FX to give Canadian businesses an advantage when operating across the border,” Rob Khazzam, Co-Founder and CEO of Float, said. “Combined with offering high-yield interest on CAD and USD balances, Float provides material opportunities for companies to save on costs and protect margins—at a time when every dollar counts.”
Even before recent trade tensions with the US, businesses in Canada were facing significant challenges when it came to currency exchange. According to a recent survey—The Financial Outlook of SMBs in 2025—Float learned that more than half of the Canadian businesses queried said that they struggled to deal with high fees and poor exchange rates. In their report, Float pointed to legacy banking infrastructure and inefficient processes as the culprit, noting that many companies continued to patronize financial institutions that required time-consuming in-person visits and manual reviews, or long settlement times. This leaves businesses with exposure to fluctuations in potentially volatile exchange rates, as well as increasing their vulnerability to hidden fees.
Float FX will offer fees of 0.25% all-in, a figure that is up to 90% lower than that offered by Canadian banks. Companies will also benefit from seamless, built-in currency conversion within the Float platform, enabling them to convert, hold, and spend USD in a single location.
With more than 4,000 Canadian companies as customers, Float offers a business finance platform that helps businesses spend, save, and scale. Founded in 2019, the company provides corporate cards, automated expense management, next-day billpay, high-yield accounts, and more.
Float began the year securing $70 million CAD in Series B financing in a round led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives. OMERS Ventures, FJ Labs, Garage Capital, and Teralys also participated in the investment. The funding brought the company’s total funding to more than $120 million CAD in the past year. Float has used the capital to expand its product offerings and recruit talent.
Banco Santander, Kraken Secure Key Canadian Approvals to Fuel Expansion
Canadian regulators are in a “yes” mood of late when it comes to helping fintechs expand operations in the country. This week we learned that Banco Santander has secured a Canadian banking license as part of the financial institution’s effort to grow its footprint in the Americas. Also this week, crypto exchange Kraken reported that it had obtained a Restricted Dealer registration from the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC).
First up, Banco Santander. The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), Canada’s banking regulator, authorized Banco Santander’s Santander Consumer Bank to begin operations in March. Banco Santander has been active in the Canadian market since acquiring car financing company Carfinco Financial Group in 2014. The firm applied for a Schedule II banking license in 2019, which allows subsidiaries of foreign banks to offer financial services including deposits, lending, wealth management, and credit cards. Santander Consumer Bank was incorporated as a federally regulated financial institution in 2024 by Canada’s Minister of Finance, with OSFI approval being the final step.
Second, cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has secured a Restricted Dealer registration in Canada that will enable the firm to better serve its customers in the country. As part of the announcement, the exchange announced that it would offer free Interac e-Transfer deposits to all of its Canadian clients.
“This achievement marks the culmination of a rigorous pre-registration undertaking (PRU) process, during which Kraken consistently enhanced its governance, security, and compliance protocols to meet the highest industry standards,” the Kraken blog stated this week. “As a result, our Canadian clients now benefit from a solid regulatory foundation, ensuring access to some of the most innovative and secure crypto products in the local ecosystem under the supervision of the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC).”
In addition to securing its restricted dealer registration, Kraken also announced the appointment of Cynthia Del Pozo as the company’s new Canadian General Manager. With nearly 15 years of experience in corporate development, operations, and fintech consulting, Del Pozo will guide an operation that has grown significantly in recent years, including surpassing $2 billion CAD in combined client assets under custody and a doubling of both team size and the number of monthly transacting users during the PRU process.
“Canada is at a turning point for crypto adoption, with a growing number of investors and institutions recognizing digital assets as a vital part of the financial future,” Del Pozo said in a statement. “The Restricted Dealer registration is a testament to the high bar Kraken has always set for consumer protection, client service, and robust security.”
Founded in 2011, Kraken enables more than 10 million traders and investors to buy and sell more than 200 digital assets and six different national currencies including USD, GBP, EUR, CAD, CHF, and AUD on its platform. David Ripley and Arjun Sethi are co-CEOs.
Meet Finovate’s Newest Canadian Alums!
Over the past year, Finovate has been proud to host a handful of innovative fintechs headquartered in Canada. Below is a look at four firms, all Canada-based, that have demonstrated their fintech innovations live on the Finovate stage of late.
PromoComply – Montreal, Quebec – FEU 2025: Offers technology that automates compliance for financial promotions, reducing legal risks, and enhancing transparency for consumers in real time.
TRIYO – Toronto, Ontario – FS 2024: Offers a work intelligence platform that integrates with existing systems, processes, and workflows to bring visibility to high-value processes across financial services.
Brim Financial – Toronto, Ontario – FF2024: Works with financial institutions, fintechs, and brands to enable them to offer their customers an end-to-end credit card and payments platform.
ZayZoon – Calgary, Alberta – FF2024: Offers an embedded Earned Wage Access (EWA) solution to enable small and mid-sized businesses to offer EWA directly from their own platforms.
Next month at FinovateSpring, we’re happy to introduce our audience to one more Canadian fintech, Cinareo Solutions (Toronto). For more about our upcoming FinovateSpring conference, visit our FinovateSpring hub today!
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Money movement innovator Wise Platform has partnered with UK-based digital bank Zempler Bank.
The partnership will enable Zempler Bank to launch a new Outbound International Payments service that will allow its customers to make international payments in both USD and EUR.
Wise has 16 million individual and business users around the world. The London-based company made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2013.
Wise Platform has partnered with UK-based digital bank Zempler Bank, which helps small businesses, startups, entrepreneurs, and individual customers do business globally. Courtesy of the partnership, Zempler Bank will launch a new Outbound International Payments service that will empower more than 500,000 Zempler customers to send payments internationally in both USD and EUR directly within the Zempler app.
The integration will give Zempler customers fast, secure international payments when sending money to USD accounts in the US and when sending funds to EUR accounts inside the SEPA region. The integration will also provide transparent pricing and no hidden fees; Wise relies on the mid-market exchange rate without mark-up. Lastly, all transactions are handled within the Zempler app—though a desktop-based online banking version of the technology is expected to be available soon.
“We know that the launch of Outbound International Payments will be a popular benefit for many of our customers, particularly the ambitious small businesses looking to develop relationships with overseas suppliers and partners,” Zempler Bank CEO Rich Wagner said.
The partnership comes as small businesses face significant barriers to global expansion. One of the challenges is the complexity and cost of cross-border banking. Based on a survey commissioned by Wise from international research firm Edgar, Dunn & Company (EDC), small businesses in the UK sent more than £485 billion overseas last year, with the amount expected to grow to nearly £530 billion in 2025. Yet, at the same time, small businesses are expected to lose more than £5 billion in hidden fees this year alone.
“We understand that even the smallest businesses might want or need to work internationally, whether that’s importing a key product or component or outsourcing a task to an overseas expert,” Wagner added. “Many of our business customers are already using Wise, so it was a natural choice to partner with them to integrate that familiar functionality within our own simple-to-use banking app.”
Making its Finovate debut in 2013 as TransferWise, the company rebranded to Wise ten years later. Today, the UK-based firm offers an account that individuals and businesses can use to hold more than 50 different currencies, transfer funds between countries, and spend money overseas. Co-founded by Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus and launched in 2011, Wise currently boasts 16 million users around the world. The company processes £9 billion in cross-border transactions every month, saving consumers £1.5 billion a year.
Wise’s partnership news comes as the company announces the opening of a new, larger office in Singapore. The new office comes as Wise notes that its Singapore team has doubled since 2022. Additionally, Wise’s local customer base in the region grew by 30% last financial year.
“Singapore is a cornerstone of our operations in Asia Pacific, and this new office is a key milestone in strengthening our regional presence,” Shrawan Saraogi, Singapore CEO and APAC Head of Expansion at Wise, said. “It reflects our continued investment in the country’s fintech ecosystem and our mission to provide the best way to move and manage money globally.”
SumUp announced the launch of a wide range of new products and solutions at its annual event this week.
The new offerings include a proprietary Tap to Pay on Android solution, an upgraded Business Account, as well as enhancements to its point of sale solution.
London-based SumUp won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2013.
Ecommerce and payments platform SumUp took the occasion of its annual Beacon event to announce the launch of a range of new products designed to address a variety of merchant pain points. These solutions include an in-house Tap to Pay solution for Android, and a number of new features to its platform designed to help merchants of all sizes improve cash flow, efficiency, and customer engagement as they scale.
“Each of the products we launched demonstrates how the SumUp product ecosystem has grown to cover the critical needs of businesses at each stage of operations, from micro businesses to established ones with complex operations and many employees,” SumUp Chief Product Officer Anna Kuriakose said. “We believe that SumUp’s integrated ecosystem—which brings together the different aspects of running a business—is incomparable in the value it delivers to our customers.”
SumUp’s Tap to Pay on Android enables merchants to accept contactless payments directly from the thousands of phone brands and models that are not iPhones. The size and variety of the Android market, relative to iOS, has given Android a larger market share in EU countries in particular. SumUp’s proprietary Tap to Pay solution will provide a faster, more streamlined, and more reliable experience for merchants and consumers who have opted for Android. Further, SumUp’s solution features enhanced card detection, PIN entry to boost security at checkout, and delivers higher transaction success rates thanks to SumUp’s payment infrastructure and the absence of upfront costs.
Tap to Pay is currently active in Europe and Brazil. The company plans to introduce the technology in Chile, Colombia, Peru, the US, and Australia “soon.”
SumUp also unveiled a handful of new tools for merchants. These include enhancements to its SumUp Business Account. With SumUp’s new Business Account Plus, merchants will benefit from new features for multiple balances, as well as the ability to issue and track several cards and bulk transfers. The new Plus accounts are slated to go live across core markets later this month.
Additionally, SumUp introduced an upgrade to its Point of Sale solution called POS Plus. Designed with retailers such as restaurants and beauty salons in mind, POS Plus offers features such as PIN-based employee profiles, one-tap promotions, kitchen order management, and the ability to flag out-of-stock items. POS Plus is expected to be introduced to select EU markets in April.
Along with these new solutions, SumUp also announced the release of its new Solo Lite card reader, a new Kitchen Display System (KDS) to help streamline restaurant operations, and more.
Founded in 2012, SumUp won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2013 in London. In the years since then, the UK-based fintech has become the partner of more than four million merchants in 36 markets around the world. With 3,000+ employees in 20 offices globally, SumUp offers payment acceptance solutions, tools to help merchants better manage and save money, and innovative technologies to enhance order management and sales. Co-Founder Daniel Klein is SumUp’s CEO.
Most recently, SumUp announced a partnership with FreedomPay to provide retail and hospitality businesses with a payment system with offline capabilities—including for remote merchants. The system will also feature the ability to access a payment processing service from a single provider, regardless of location.
“At SumUp, we are dedicated to empowering merchants with payment solutions that are as straightforward as they are secure,” SumUp Commercial Lead Joey Oliver explained. “With FreedomPay as our partner, we’re advancing our commitment to making top-tier payment technology accessible and effective for every business.”
