Daily news

Klarna Partners with Marqeta to Launch its New Card

Klarna Partners with Marqeta to Launch its New Card
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Klarna, Marqeta
  • Marqeta announced a collaboration with fellow Finovate alum Klarna to power the company’s new payment card.
  • The new card will enable Klarna customers to use the company’s Pay in 4 payment option in physical stores.
  • This week’s partnership builds upon a relationship the two companies have enjoyed since 2018.

A pair of Finovate alums have teamed up to offer a new transparent alternative to traditional credit cards.

Modern card issuing platform Marqeta reported this week that it is working with banking, payments, and ecommerce platform Klarna to power Klarna’s new payment card. The card will bring Klarna’s Pay in 4 service to a physical Visa card, and builds on a payment card partnership between the two companies that extends back to 2018. Marqeta currently enables the creation of one-time cards on Klarna’s app. The new Klarna Card will give customers the same control, convenience, and flexibility when shopping in physical stores that they currently enjoy when using Klarna’s Pay in 4 at the point of sale or via the Klarna app.

“Our U.S. customer base is growing rapidly and we’ve seen tremendous demand for our new Klarna Card offering,” Klarna Chief Commercial Officer David Sykes said. “By expanding our partnership with Marqeta, we’re leveraging their payments expertise to provide our customers with an unmatched user experience that will ultimately help our business grow.”

This latest collaboration comes just months after the two companies expanded their partnership into 13 new European markets. Klarna will leverage Marqeta’s Just-in-Time Funding functionality to gain control over the full transaction flow, and use Marqeta’s technology and 300+ open APIs to deliver customizable experiences and support Klarna’s international expansion.

“Marqeta’s continued partnership with Klarna is a testament to all the payment experiences that our modern card issuing platform can enable,” said Marqeta CEO and founder Jason Gardner. “We’re proud to offer a flexible, scalable card platform that can meet the demands of such a rapidly-growing and innovative company like Klarna.

A Finovate alum since 2012, Klarna now has more than 147 total active customers – 25 million in the U.S. – is active in 45 countries and facilitates two million transactions a day. Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, the company began the year with the launch of a physical payment card in the U.K. and, in March, announced the completion of its acquisition of comparison shopping service company PriceRunner. Sebastian Siemiatkowski is CEO.

Based in Oakland, California, Marqeta made its Finovate debut at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley, in 2016. In the years since, Marqeta has issued more than 500 million cards via its platform and processed more than $110 billion in volume in 2021. In addition to its partnership with Klarna, Marqeta also announced this week that it was joining Mastercard’s Network Enablement Partners Program in the Asia Pacific. The move will enhance Marqeta’s ability to offer its APAC customers a faster path to live issuance.

“As one of Mastercard’s first Network Enablement Partners to be onboarded in the Asia Pacific region, Marqeta is well-equipped to deliver card issuances in record time, and to help their fintech customers scale at speed across multiple geographies,” Mastercard SVP of Digital Customer Solutions APAC Ben Gilbey said.

Photo by Olya Kobruseva

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Sowing the Seeds: Tales from Crypto’s Course Correction

Sowing the Seeds: Tales from Crypto’s Course Correction
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news

Bruised but not broken, the cryptocurrency market has taken more than a few blows as the prices of leading digital assets – from Bitcoin to Ethereum – have declined significantly in recent months. This may have taken some of the steam out of many cryptocurrency ventures. But there is no sign that interest in cryptocurrencies has been lost in any critical way. Here are three headlines from this week’s news that remind us that, despite its recent fortunes, crypto remains a key part of innovation in fintech.

Leading digital asset exchange Binance announced the closure of a $500 million venture fund for investing in Web3 and blockchain-based technologies this week. The fund will be led by the company’s venture capital arm Binance and features the support of a number of global investors including DST Global Partners and Breyer Capital.

“In a Web3 environment, the connection between values, people, and economies, is essential, and if these three elements come together to build an ecosystem, that will accelerate the mass adoption of blockchain technology and crypto,” Binance CEO and founder Changpeng Zhao said.

Binance Labs has supported and incubated more than 100 firms from more than 25 countries since its inception in 2018. With an openness to projects ranging from incubation to early stage venture to late-stage growth, the fund anticipates supporting initiatives “with the potential to build and to lead Web3 across DeFi, NFTs, gaming, Metaverse, social, and more,” Zhao said.

Liminal, a digital asset wallet infrastructure company, announced receiving $4.7 million in seed funding this week. The round was led by Elevation Capital, and featured participation from a sizable number of investors. Among the company’s backers in this round were traditional investors like LD Capital and Nexux Ventures, crypto-based investors like CoinDCX and Hashed, and individual investors including Andreas Antonopoulos and Balaji Srinivasan. Liminal plans to use the capital to support both hiring and product development.

Founded in 2021 by serial entrepreneur Mahin Gupta, Liminal is the first digital wallet architecture to provide the multi-party computation (MPC) and multisignature (MultiSig) that help secure digital assets across different blockchains. A plug-and-play platform, Liminal has processed transactions over $2.5 billion and automated transactions valued at $400 million. The company currently secures approximately $50 million in assets.

“With Liminal, we solve the very real problem of securing and scaling digital assets where users have to use different wallets and infrastructure for different protocols,” Gupta said. “Our three layers provide key management, operational automation, and compliance for enterprises.”

Speaking of seed funding, digital asset startup Cloudwall Capital secured $6.3 million in seed funding this week. The company specializes in risk management in the cryptocurrency space.

The round was led by LocalGlobe and Illuminate Financial. Cloudwall will use the funding to increase the size of its team to 15 members by year’s end. The company will also leverage the new capital to support further development of its digital asset portfolio management platform, Serenity. Cloudwall anticipates being able to launch an early access program by this summer.

“Digital assets underwent explosive growth between 2020 and 2021, with almost five years of growth taking place overnight,” Cloudwall Capital co-founder and CEO Kyle Downey said. “Recent market gyrations have only increased the case for a digital asset platform to manage risk so that institutional investors have the tools and platforms to help manage their portfolios and risks.”

Serenity will combine risk management with research to provide investors with an overview of their assets and potential for volatility. A cloud-based platform, Serenity will enable them to review their portfolio holdings and examine historical data – including blockchain data and data from centralized exchanges. Investors will be able to use Serenity’s statistical and machine learning algorithms to run simulations and stress tests on their portfolios to see how they will react to different market conditions.

“It’s becoming clearer to institutional investors that they should invest in digital assets if they aren’t already, but they don’t have the tools to help them embrace this new market in a way they are used to,” Cloudwall Capital co-founder and COO Jia Yng Wee said. “We’re building Serenity to provide this solution and (to support) the careful growth of this industry.”

Cloudwall Capital was founded in 2021. The company is headquartered in New York City.

Photo by Binyamin Mellish

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TrueLayer and Thunes Team Up for Open Banking

TrueLayer and Thunes Team Up for Open Banking
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Thunes, TransferTo
  • Open banking platform TrueLayer is partnering with cross-border payments company Thunes.
  • Thunes will integrate TrueLayer’s open banking technology into its platform, making open banking available as a payment method.
  • TrueLayer helps 100,000 merchants across the U.K., Europe, and Australia power open banking payments experiences that connect payments, data, and identity.

In the U.K., open banking is the rule, rather than the exception. So today’s partnership between open banking platform TrueLayer and cross-border payments company Thunes is targeting the right geography. Through today’s partnership, the two firms aim to streamline and improve the payment experience of consumers in the U.K. and Europe.

“Open banking payments are gaining momentum not only in the U.K. but also in the rest of Europe, and we really believe that this strong partnership with TrueLayer, a leader in the field, will help to move forward and make this new definition of smart payment a reality for all,” said Thunes Managing Director Christophe Bourbier.

Thunes will integrate TrueLayer’s open banking technology into its platform, making open banking available as a payment method for its 100,000 merchants. TrueLayer’s open banking payment technology bypasses traditional card networks and their associated fees, which helps merchants offer a faster and more cost-effective payments experience that reduces both fraud and chargebacks.

“Open banking is rapidly moving to the mainstream, as more merchants adopt account-to-account payments thanks to their ability to deliver significant cost savings, enhanced security, and speed of settlement when compared to other payment methods,” said TrueLayer Head of Payment Partnerships Mariko Beising. “Thunes has a track record of adopting and optimizing the latest payments options for its customers, so they can focus on running their business. Implementing open banking is the next logical step and we believe that together we can deliver significant value to merchants across Europe through a trusted partner.”

Thunes was founded in 2016 as TransferTo and rebranded to Thunes in 2019. The company offers a cross-border payments and collection network that supports 79 currencies, enables payments to 130 countries, and offers 300 payment acceptance methods. Among the company’s use cases are cross-border payments, business payments, virtual payments, and virtual account issuance. Headquartered in Singapore, Thunes also has offices in London, Paris, Shanghai, New York, Dubai, Nairobi, Arizona, and Barcelona.

TrueLayer helps businesses across the U.K., Europe, and Australia power open banking payments experiences that connect payments, data, and identity to help people spend, save, and transact online. The company was founded in 2016 and is connected to thousands of financial institutions across the U.K. and Europe. Last September, TrueLayer landed a $130 million investment that boosted the company’s total funding to $272 million.

Photo by Alex Andrews

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PwC and Microsoft Tap FintechOS for Digital Banking

PwC and Microsoft Tap FintechOS for Digital Banking
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, FintechOS, Microsoft, PwC
  • Financial services firm PwC and tech giant Microsoft are leveraging digital banking solutions provider FintechOS to create a digital banking solution.
  • The group aims to help banks adapt and modernize their operations to fit into the digital-first era.
  • “This will drive a massive improvement in time-to-value, and the extensibility of digital banking growth and expansion,” said PwC Partner Akhilesh Khera.

In the fintech industry, third party partnerships are king. So it’s not surprising to see the news that financial services firm PwC and tech giant Microsoft are tapping into the expertise of digital banking solutions provider FintechOS.

The trio announced their partnership, which will leverage FintechOS’ expertise, PwC’s digital banking prowess, and Microsoft’s Cloud for Financial Services technology to create a digital banking solution aimed at helping financial institutions adapt and modernize their operations to fit into the digital-first era.

For its part, FintechOS will be crucial in providing banking and investment, customer management, and integration and orchestration services. “We are delighted to be playing a key role in this ground-breaking initiative, as it demonstrates both the market-leading capability of our high-productivity fintech infrastructure and the strength of our relationship with PwC,” said FintechOS VP of Ecosystem Sales at EMEA Todi Pruteanu. “We are excited about the opportunity to work closely with and actively support PwC as this proposition revolutionizes banking across the globe.”

PwC Partner Akhilesh Khera said that the firm selected FintechOS for the company’s high-productivity infrastructure. “This will drive a massive improvement in time-to-value, and the extensibility of digital banking growth and expansion,” explained Khera.

U.K.-based FintechOS was founded in 2017 to help companies quickly launch and manage products and services across lending, savings, insurance, investment, and embedded finance. By helping financial services companies replace their core banking infrastructure operations, FintechOS also helps companies reduce costs, modernize operations, and deploy modern customer journeys that meet today’s standard expectations of great customer experience.

In March of this year, FintechOS launched a pair of accelerators to help financial institutions support their small business clients. Earlier this month, the company unveiled its spring release, which contained a digital retail mortgage and BNPL features. FintechOS demoed Sunglow, a banking super app at FinovateFall 2021. Teo Blidarus is co-founder and CEO.

Photo by Miriam Espacio

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Plaid Teams Up with Truework to Launch Income Verification Solution

Plaid Teams Up with Truework to Launch Income Verification Solution
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Plaid
  • Plaid teamed up with Truework to launch a new income verification solution, Plaid Income.
  • The new offering will make it easier for loan applicants to share income and employment information with lenders.
  • The Truework partnership comes just days after Plaid introduced its Identity Verification and Monitoring solution, as well as its partnership with financial wellness company Current.

Income and employment verification company Truework has partnered with Plaid to help the firm launch its new Plaid Income product. Plaid Income will bring greater accuracy, security, and speed to the loan application process. Prospective borrowers will be able to share income and employment data digitally and instantly with their approved lenders. Plaid Income will provide faster approvals for loan applicants while giving lenders greater confidence that they are lending the right amounts, to the right people, at the most appropriate interest rate.

“We built Plaid Income to provide a more inclusive credit system for all,” Plaid Head of Revenue Paul Williamson explained. “Partners like Truework share our consumer-first vision to empower them with control of their own financial data. Combined with their digital approach to income verification, we’re excited that Plaid Payroll is now integrated into the Truework platforms.”

A Finovate alum since 2014, Plaid introduced itself to Finovate audiences as part of our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley. In the years since, the San Francisco, California-based fintech has grown into a major force in the democratization of financial services, partnering with more than 6,000 fintechs – from Venmo to SoFi – as well as many of the world’s largest banks. The company’s network reaches 12,000 financial institutions in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Europe.

Most recently, in addition to its partnership with Truework, Plaid introduced a new verification and compliance solution, Plaid Identity Verification and Monitor, that helps reduce fraud and boost conversion rates. Launched earlier this month, the new offering features a complete verification, AML, and KYC compliance solution that serves multiple use cases including account opening and funding, trading, and lending. Also this month, U.S.-based financial wellness platform Current announced Plaid as its first partner. Current offers a platform API that helps fintechs to build embedded financial solutions.

“Our new platform API gives open banking partners the capability to embed our core banking technology,” Current CTO Trevor Marshall said. “With Plaid, our members can access experiences that can help improve their financial lives with control and security.”

Photo by Pixabay

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National Australia Bank to Launch BNPL Tool

National Australia Bank to Launch BNPL Tool
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • National Australia Bank is launching its own BNPL tool called NAB Now Pay Later.
  • The bank’s BNPL offering will not charge late fees, interest, or account fees.
  • NAB expects to have a leg up on third party tools because, as NAB Group Executive Personal Banking Rachel Slade explained, “We know their banking and credit history and we’re assessing them based on our existing banking relationship.”

National Australia Bank is making its way into the buy now, pay later (BNPL) game. The bank announced this week that its customers can pre-register to use its BNPL tool, which is called NAB Now Pay Later.

NAB’s BNPL offering will enable customers to split online and in-person purchases of up to $1,000 into four payments. The bank will not charge late fees, interest, or account fees for the service.

NAB Group Executive Personal Banking Rachel Slade described NAB Now Pay Later as “safer” than competing third-party tools. “These are already our customers,” she explained. “We know their banking and credit history and we’re assessing them based on our existing banking relationship.”

From the consumer perspective, one of the biggest benefits of using a BNPL tool from their own bank is that the credit decisioning process is instant. “In the time it takes for a customer to go from the fitting room to the register, we’ve assessed their application, undertaken a credit check and opened an account with a virtual card so they’re ready to purchase,” said Slade.

Customers can pre-register today for NAB Now Pay Later, which is expected to launch in July.

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

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Yapily Helps Make BNPL Checkout Easy for Small Businesses

Yapily Helps Make BNPL Checkout Easy for Small Businesses
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • Open banking expert Yapily and B2B BNPL player Two have paired up.
  • Norway-based Two will leverage Yapily data, eliminating the need for businesses to fill out forms when paying with BNPL.
  • “With Yapily and open banking, we can provide a safer, cheaper, and easier financial bridge for businesses that are ready to move forward,” said Two Head of Product Deane Barton.

Yapily, a fintech that seeks to help businesses enhance their offering by embedding open banking into their products and services, announced its newest plan to help small businesses succeed.

The U.K.-based company is joining forces with Norwegian BNPL player Two to fuel data for Two’s B2B BNPL tool. “We’re working with Two to ease the cash flow burden for SMEs by offering alternative ways to access credit with BNPL and open banking,” Yapily said in a blog post.

Small businesses making online purchases can use Two at checkout to pay 14 to 90 days after they make their purchase. To make the process easy on the business client, Two leverages Yapily data to retrieve the buyer’s account information, including their name and date of birth, to verify their identity and approve the purchase. Not only does it take place in real time, but the data integration also eliminates the need for businesses to fill out multiple forms.

“With Yapily and open banking, we can provide a safer, cheaper, and easier financial bridge for businesses that are ready to move forward,” said Two Head of Product Deane Barton. “The intersection between BNPL and open banking is an exciting place to be. Together, we are shaping the future of financial services as we know it.”

The small business BNPL technology serves as an alternative to a working capital loan for the business client. The tool also has the potential to benefit the merchant. According to Two, e-commerce platforms that offer Two as a payment method can see up to a 60% increase in average order value and a 20% rise in the percentage of site visitors that make a purchase.

Yapily has raised $18.4 million since it was founded in 2017. The company enables its clients to access data in 15 countries across Europe, and at more than 180 financial institutions. Stefano Vaccino is founder and CEO.

Through today’s partnership, Yapily’s open banking capabilities will initially be rolled out to Two customers across the U.K., with more European markets to follow. Two has raised $3 million since it was founded in 2020.

Photo by Garrhet Sampson on Unsplash

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Finovate Best of Show Winner Chimney Inks Partnerships with a Pair of U.S. Banks

Finovate Best of Show Winner Chimney Inks Partnerships with a Pair of U.S. Banks
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Chimney, Daily news, Signal Intent
  • Chimney announced partnerships with two banks, Farmers & Merchants Bank and Northwest Bank, that will deploy Chimney’s embeddable financial tools to boost customer engagement.
  • Formerly known as Signal Intent, Chimney won Best of Show at FinovateSpring in 2021.
  • Courtesy of this week’s agreements, Chimney now boasts a total of 15 bank partnerships.

In a bid to boost customer engagement, Farmers & Merchants Bank and Northwest Bank have teamed up with Chimney and will deploy the New York-based company’s financial calculators to help their customers make better decisions about their financial futures.

“In the last two years, we’ve seen greater investments into digital experiences that put customers first,” Chimney co-founder and CEO Matthew Covi said. “Consumers no longer want to be pushed products and services; they want experiences that add value to their everyday life and improve their financial health.”

Previously known as Signal Intent – and winning a Best of Show award in its Finovate debut a year ago at the all-digital edition of FinovateSpring 2021 – Chimney offers embeddable modern financial calculators that can be launched quickly and require no coding to set up and deploy. Chimney has developed more than 35 financial calculator templates, covering a variety of financial categories. Whether a business is looking for tools to better engage homebuyers, automobile shoppers, or simply consumers looking to improve their investment portfolios or savings and budgeting habits, Chimney provides organization with the kind of embedded turnkey digital experiences that help turn website visitors into customers.

“F&M Bank has grown slowly and safely since 1907, earning its reputation as ‘California’s Strongest,'” F&M Bank CEO and board chairman Daniel K. Walker said. “We have supported the communities we call home for more than 100 years, and we aim to continue that. By working with Chimney, we will build deeper relationships with customers by transforming and personalizing their banking experience with the help of meaningful data. We believe this will be incredibly valuable to our customers.”

F&M Bank serves customers in South California and has more than $11 billion in assets. Iowa-based Northwest Bank has 70,000 customers and $2.3 billion in assets.

Chimney began 2022 with a pre-seed investment from the ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator and a seed investment from Anil D. Aggarwal, founder and chairman of Fintech Meetup, as well as Fin Venture Capital and Converge. The company rebranded as Chimney in February, in a shift that Covi said reflected a commitment to move beyond “providing outstanding products and services” and toward “delivering not just the products consumers want, but the experiences they expect.”

Photo by Pixabay

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Stripe Unveils App Marketplace

Stripe Unveils App Marketplace
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, DocuSign
  • Stripe is launching the Stripe App Marketplace.
  • The company’s business customers will be able to browse the new digital store to find and integrate third party apps into their own operations.
  • Businesses will be able to develop and launch their own custom apps within their own company.

Ecommerce technology company Stripe launched an offering that will help businesses tap the technology from third parties to enhance their own offerings. The new launch, the Stripe App Marketplace, is a digital store where businesses can browse popular third-party tools.

Integrating third party tools into their own solution enables businesses to customize Stripe. Adding multiple operations under their Stripe account also enables businesses to automatically share contextual information across apps.

As Mailchimp Chief Product and Design Officer Jon Fasoli explained, “Let’s say, for example, a business owner wants to automate a targeted message when a customer makes a purchase, sending them a specific discount offer to encourage repeat purchases. The Mailchimp app automatically syncs this customer’s information between Stripe and Mailchimp, streamlining their operations and saving them time.”

Mailchimp is one of more than 50 app providers that are launching in the Stripe App Marketplace. Others include DocuSign, Dropbox, Intercom, Mailchimp, Ramp, and Xero. Stripe plans to add apps from more third party providers in the future.

The marketplace isn’t just limited to third party providers. Businesses can enlist their own developers to create custom apps within the Stripe App Marketplace to use within their company.

​​”With Stripe Apps, businesses can customize Stripe with their SaaS tools to best serve their customers,” said Stripe Apps Head of Product Bowen Pan. “We’re excited for this new chapter and can’t wait to see the ingenuity of all the apps that developers will build in the months and years ahead.”

Photo by Bruno Kelzer on Unsplash

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Marqeta Inks Partnership with Embedded Finance Platform Alviere

Marqeta Inks Partnership with Embedded Finance Platform Alviere
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Daily news, Marqeta

Modern card issuing platform Marqeta has come a long way since its Finovate debut in 2016. Back then, Marqeta was a six-year-old company, presenting the world’s first fully-documented, open API issuer processor platform, and emphasizing the company’s commitment to producing payments solutions that were “developer-friendly.” In fact, it was at Finovate’s developer conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley in 2016 that Marqeta led a presentation “Democratizing Issuer Payment Processing with Just-In-Time (JIT) Funding.”

In the years since then, the Oakland, California-based fintech has forged partnerships with fellow Finovate alum Token (2017); with CashFlows, Visa, and Mambu (2019), with Mastercard, Afterpay, and Uber (2020) and, last year, with companies including Bill.com, Coinbase, and Square. The company also has raised more than $530 million in funding, and launched as a public company a year ago, trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker MQ.

Most recently, Marqeta returned to the fintech headlines with news of its partnership with Alviere. An embedded finance platform, Alviere is currently in the process of expanding across Europe, where it plans to operate as an Electronic Money Institution and Principal Member Card Issuer in the region. By partnering with Marqeta, Alviere will be able to issue branded cards to customers in the European Economic Area (EEA) and the U.K.

“Access to financial services is continuing to evolve, and consumers are constantly opening up to new ways of moving, storing, spending and saving money,” Alviere co-founder and CEO Yuval Brisker said. “For brands in Europe, and around the world, providing financial services means uncovering vast untapped opportunities. Embedding financial products under their existing business, products, and to their existing customer base, has quickly emerged as an important strategy for growth and customer retention.”

Marqeta’s platform supports issuance of both physical and virtual payment cards, as well as tokenization, card management, and fulfillment. Processing and settlement are also included, along with authentication and 3DS (3-D secure authentication), just-in-time (JIT) funding, and dynamic spend controls. Marqeta’s reliance on open APIs and webhooks enables institutions to create customizable card experiences, and seamless interaction with other applications, while providing visibility and transparency via notifications and card monitoring.

Alviere hopes to take advantage of what Simon Torrance forecasts to be a $7.2 trillion global opportunity in embedded finance by 2030. To empower non-financial brands with the ability to offer financial products and solutions to their customers, Alviere offers a suite of solutions including branded bank accounts and cards, global payments, payment processing, as well as crypto wallets and exchanges. The New York-based company’s partnership news with Marqeta arrives in the wake of Alviere receiving an investment of $70 million and the appointment of its first Chief Financial Officer.

“Financial services open up a new avenue of consumer engagement for brands and allow them to deepen the consumer experience massively,” Marqeta Chief Operating Officer Vidya Peters said. “We’re excited that Alviere will be able to allow its brand customers to build in new payments experiences using our platform.”

Photo by Maureen

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Irish Fintech TransferMate Secures Unicorn Status with $70 Million Investment

Irish Fintech TransferMate Secures Unicorn Status with $70 Million Investment
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • TransferMate is fintech’s latest unicorn, having secured $70 million in funding this week and earning a valuation of more than $1 billion.
  • TransferMate’s platform enables businesses and individuals to make cross-border payments in more than 201 countries and more than 140 currencies.
  • Headquartered in Ireland, TransferMate was founded in 2010.

With a new investment of $70 million, Ireland-based, cross-border B2B payments company TransferMate has become the country’s latest fintech unicorn.

The funding round featured the participation of U.K. pension fund giant Railpen. This week’s funding brings TransferMate’s total capital raised to $130 million and gives the company a valuation of more than $1 billion.

“By combining our technology and our global license network, we empower software providers, banks, and fintechs to deliver payments dramatically faster and cheaper than the traditional SWIFT system,” TransferMate co-founder and Executive Chairman Terry Clune said. “We will use this investment to continue to recruit senior financial talent who can help broaden our customer base.”

A global B2B payments infrastructure-as-a-service company, TransferMate specializes in streamlining, digitizing, and automating the manual operations required in order to facilitate the payments process. Used by banks, software companies, and fintechs alike, TransferMate’s embedded payments technology enables businesses to grow globally and pay locally. The company’s world-class compliance program, powered by a sizable portfolio of payment licences, features embedded security tools to defend against fraud and money laundering, and provides predictive risk assessments and real-time response solutions.

“Our commitment to deliver real-time transparency and speed when businesses are conducting cross border payments has resulted in TransferMate becoming the global B2B payment infrastructure of choice for the world’s leading procure-to-pay and spend management platforms,” TransferMate CEO and co-founder Sinead Fitzmaurice said. “This investment will allow us to accelerate our mission to drive innovation as businesses seek to digitize their B2B payments within the core software that they use to conduct their day-to-day activities.”

Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Kilkenny, Ireland TransferMate is a subsidiary of Clune Technology Group. Last fall, the company announced a partnership with ComplyAdvantage, a specialist in customer onboarding and transaction screening and monitoring.

Photo by Lukas Kloeppel

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Temenos Serves Up ESG Investing-as-a-Service

Temenos Serves Up ESG Investing-as-a-Service
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Temenos
  • Banking technology provider Temenos is launching ESG Investing-as-a-service.
  • The tool will help banks and wealth managers offer a digital experience that allows end customers to build an investment portfolio that reflects their values.
  • The move comes amid a time of major growth for ESG investing, which is expected to exceed $53 trillion by 2025.

ESG investing has been on the rise for the past couple of years. According to Bloomberg, money held in sustainable mutual funds and ESG-focused ETFs rose by 53% in 2021 to reach $2.7 trillion and ESG assets are on track to exceed $53 trillion by 2025. Banking software provider Temenos has taken note of this and is launching a new tool to help banks and wealth managers compete in the new environment.

Temenos’ ESG Investing-as-a-service, which can be run in the cloud or on-premise, combines Temenos’ market data management and digital capabilities such as filtering, scoring, and modeling techniques with external data feeds. The company generates easy-to-understand ratings to evaluate hundreds of ESG factors such as carbon footprint, water usage, diversity and gender equality, and executive compensation.

“At Temenos, our purpose is to power a world of banking that creates opportunities for everyone,” said Temenos Product Director of Wealth Alexandre Duret. “With the new ESG Investing service, we will help private banks and wealth managers to become compliant, and their customers invest with a purpose. Available as a service on our open platform for composable banking, it provides a fast track for our banking clients to launch innovative ESG investment products underpinned by robust, compliant processes, including new MiFID rules applicable in the EU from August 2022.”

Banks and wealth managers can leverage the tool to create ESG compliant products, with a lower cost of development. Ultimately, they can offer a digital experience that allows end customers to choose investments that they feel good about and build a portfolio that reflects their values.

Temenos serves 3,000+ banking and financial institutions worldwide representing 1.2 billion end customers. The Switzerland-based company has embedded sustainability practices into its own operations with ESG governance, reporting, and measurable targets. The Carbon Disclosure Project awarded Temenos an A- rating along with platinum recognition.

Photo by Monstera

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