Finovate Global

Finovate Global Sweden: Tap to Pay, Pay by Bank, and Investments in Nordic Fintech

Finovate Global Sweden: Tap to Pay, Pay by Bank, and Investments in Nordic Fintech
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, Klarna, Salt Edge, Wise

This week’s edition of Finovate Global features news from fintechs headquartered in Sweden.

Klarna Brings Tap to Pay to 14 Markets in Europe

Swedish digital bank and payment provider Klarna has introduced Tap to Pay across 14 markets in Europe. The new features bring flexible payments to the brick-and-mortar retail world at scale, and help to transform Klarna’s app into a contactless wallet ready for everyday use.

“Tap to Pay brings us closer to our vision of Klarna being everywhere for everything,” Klarna Chief Product & Design Officer David Fock said. “Now you can set up a flexible payment plan and tap to pay in seconds, all inside the Klarna app. It makes everyday shopping moments significantly smoother for our Klarna customers across Europe, giving them even more flexibility and choice at checkout.”

At a time when 80% of shopping in Europe is still conducted in physical stores, Klarna’s Tap to Pay solution offers consumers the seamless experience of online commerce when shopping at brick and mortar retailers. Tap to Pay is currently live for Klarna customers in Germany, Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Finland, Belgium, Austria, Ireland, Portugal, Norway, Poland, Denmark, and Sweden.

Klarna’s Tap to Pay announcement follows the introduction of the company’s stablecoin, KlarnaUSD, in late November. Klarna is the first bank to launch a stablecoin on Tempo, the new independent blockchain purpose-built for payments, that was started by Stripe and Paradigm. Currently live on Tempo’s testnet, KlarnaUSD is scheduled to launch on Tempo’s mainnet in 2026.

“With 114 million customers and $118 billion in annual GMV, Klarna has the scale to change payments globally: with Klarna’s scale and Tempo’s infrastructure, we can challenge old networks and make payments faster and cheaper for everyone,” Klarna Co-Founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said. “Crypto is finally at a stage where it is fast, low-cost, secure, and built for scale. This is the beginning of Klarna in crypto, and I’m excited to work with Stripe and Tempo to continue to shape the future of payments.”

A Finovate alum since 2012, Klarna is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden.

Tink Brings Pay by Bank Top-Ups to Fidelity International Investors

As Senior Analyst Julie Muhn reported earlier this week, Fidelity International has partnered with Sweden-based open banking platform Tink. The partnership will enable Fidelity to offer account top-ups via Pay by Bank, making it easier for investors to fund their ISAs, SIPPs, cash management, and general investment accounts.

A two-time Finovate Best of Show winner that was acquired by Visa in 2021, Tink enables financial institutions, fintechs, and merchants to leverage financial data to design and create personalized financial management tools, products, and services. With a single API, Tink empowers its customers to access aggregated financial data, use smart financial services, including risk insights and account verification, and build personal financial management tools.

Pay by Bank is one of the fastest-growing use cases for open banking. With analysts anticipating that total open banking users will top 645 million worldwide in 2029—a 3.5x increase from 2025’s 183 million users—options such as Pay by Bank are likely to become increasingly widespread as a modern, secure payment alternative with reduced friction.

“Pay by Bank represents the next evolution of open banking payments, delivering a fast, secure way to pay directly from your bank account,” Tink Head of Payments Ian Morrin said. “As adoption accelerates, we’re thrilled to see leading institutions like Fidelity put open banking at the heart of their payment experiences to make topping up investment accounts more seamless.”

Founded in 2012, Tink is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. The fintech offers 3,000+ connections to the major banks across Europe, processes more than 10 billion transactions a year, and boasts 10,000 developers using its platform. Co-Founder Daniel Kjellén is CEO.

Swedish VC Incore Invest Secures €15 Million Second Closing

Incore Invest, an investment firm based in Stockholm, has raised €15 million in a second closing of its Incore Invest II fund. The fundraising brings the fund’s total capital to €40 million to help SaaS and fintech companies throughout Europe grow.

“Incore Invest’s strategy has always been to back proven tech companies with strong growth potential,” Incore Invest Founder and CEO Nicolai Chamizo said in a statement. “Investors’ continued confidence in Incore Invest is very encouraging and with this second close, the round is fully equipped with capital to back the most promising European technology companies. It allows us to continue identifying and supporting the next generation of category-defining technology companies shaping the future of the industry.”

Incore Invest’s successful fundraising comes at a time when a number of European venture capital firms, especially those that have targeted growth-stage or early-stage technology companies, are raising or closing new funds. For example, four funds alone—Backed VC, Notion Capital, Armilar Venture Partners, and henQ—have raised more than €300 million in capital combined this year.

Among the companies in Incore Invest’s portfolio are several of innovative fintechs including Brite, a Swedish payments platform that leverages open banking to process instant payments; Mynt, a Swedish fintech that simplifies expense management via smart company cards; and Froda, a Swedish fintech and embedded finance company.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Kenyan fintech Jahazii raised $400,000 to provide earned wage access and payroll infrastructure technology for Africa’s informal economy.
  • Wise secured conditional regulatory approval to go live in South Africa.
  • Business AM looked at how Nigeria’s FairMoney Microfinance Bank expanded beyond digital lending into a full-service bank.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Embedded finance infrastructure company YouLend announced a strategic partnership with digital financial management solution Qonto to help the firm enter the German market.
  • Salt Edge teamed up with Romanian financial management platform, Finlayer, to bring open banking to small businesses in the country.
  • Former Polish President Andrzej Duda joined the board of fintech firm ZEN.COM.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Developed in partnership with Mawarid Finance, UAE-based fintech platform Huru launched its microfinance solution, Quick Cash.
  • Egypt’s Money Fellows topped $1.5 billion in transactions.
  • Israel’s Haaretz profiled Matan Bar, CEO of Israel-based fintech Melio.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Financial Times interviewed Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs, on the rise of Indian fintech.
  • The Express Tribune looked at the current state of fintech innovation in Pakistan.
  • India’s Paytm launched a new AI-powered travel app, Paytm Checkin.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Episode Six forged a strategic partnership with Mexico’s Xepelin to launch digital financial products in the country.
  • São Paulo, Brazil-based fintech Cumbuca launched this week to help international companies participate in the Brazilian payments market.
  • Colombian fintech Movii entered the Peruvian market this week.

Asia-Pacific

  • Vietnamese neobank Circle Asia Technologies launched its AI-powered PayLater card, in partnership with Pismo and Visa.
  • South Korea’s NH NongHyup Bank conducted a blockchain-based cross-border payments pilot project.
  • Thunes secured In-Principle Approval (IPA) for a variation on its Major Payment Institution license (MPI) from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Photo by CARTIST on Unsplash

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Finovate Global Ireland: Building Personalized CX in Finance with Jac Dunne of Dimply

Finovate Global Ireland: Building Personalized CX in Finance with Jac Dunne of Dimply
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: CEO Interview, Dimply, Finovate Global

How can banks and other financial institutions offer their customers dynamic, AI-powered experiences that provide better, faster, more personalized solutions and services compared to the generic, static interactions of the past?

In this extended conversation, Finovate Global talks with Jac Dunne, Founder and CEO of Dimply, about what her company is doing to help financial services companies design, deploy, and optimize embedded journeys for their customers.

Dimply offers a no-code solution that enables non-technical teams to transform data into hyper-personalized, embedded journeys in apps, websites, portals, and more. Dimply’s technology combines data orchestration, personalization, and seamless integration to help firms boost engagement, enhance trust, and deliver customer value.

Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, Dimply was founded in 2020. The company made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2024 and subsequently demonstrated its technology before Finovate audiences at FinovateEurope 2025 and FinovateFall 2025.

What problem does Dimply solve and who does it solve it for?

Jac Dunne: Financial institutions hold vast amounts of customer data, but struggle to translate this into experiences people find helpful. The gap is widening. Customers now expect the personalization they experience with consumer apps, but financial services organizations move too slowly to meet these expectations.

The problem sits at the intersection of strategy and execution. Product managers understand what customers need. Designers know how experiences should work. But both depend on engineering teams to make anything real. Simple changes take quarters. Testing ideas means filing tickets. By the time something launches, priorities have shifted.

Dimply gives product practitioners the ability to build and deploy customer experiences without engineering dependencies. Product managers, designers, marketing specialists, and business analysts work directly on the platform to create journeys across web and mobile.  We empower them to launch in weeks instead of quarters. Changes go live in hours, not development cycles.

We solve this for banks, insurers, wealth managers, and pension providers. These are organizations where engineering bottlenecks prevent product teams from acting on what they learn about customers. Where the backlog of journey improvements grows faster than IT resources to address them.

Tell us more about Dimply’s primary customers? How do you reach them?

Dunne: Dimply’s primary customers are financial institutions such as global banks and leading insurers, whose key stakeholders are Product Managers and Digital Transformation teams. These customers are primarily located in the B2B enterprise space and are seeking to solve the pain point of slow, costly digital CX development due to complex legacy IT systems and onerous development cycles. Dimply enables speed to market by letting teams build, manage, personalize, and embed experiences directly into their own infrastructure, or as a stand-alone solution, if required.

Dimply reaches these customers through a direct, B2B enterprise sales model involving direct engagement with C-suite and product leadership, heavy participation in fintech industry events, and building strategic partnerships with core technology providers, consulting and system integration firms who can work with Dimply as a solution during large-scale digital transformation projects.

What in your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge?

Dunne: Financial services used to move faster before the weight of legacy systems, compliance layers, and endless IT queues—teams turned customer insights into action quickly. Product people built experiences. That speed has been lost.

We spent many years both working inside and collaborating with these organizations: major insurers, pension providers, and banks. Our founding team observed brilliant product managers drafting requirement documents rather than building journeys. Designers handed off static mock-ups only after understanding the complete flow. Business analysts documented processes they should have managed end-to-end.

This pattern repeated everywhere. Teams had data showing where customers struggled. They knew which experiences would succeed. They understood what needed to change. Then they filed tickets, waited for sprints, and competed with other priorities. By the time anything launched, the market had already moved.

This gap between knowing and doing frustrated everyone. Not because people lacked skill or the ideas were wrong, but because the tools forced the wrong workflow. Technical teams became bottlenecks for non-technical problems. Simple changes took quarters, and testing ideas required development resources.

Frustrated with this reality, we decided to build something better. Something that would give product practitioners the same level of autonomy that software engineers have. What started as a journey flow builder has evolved into a complete financial experience platform (FXP). Teams describe what they want, and the system builds it. AI handles the technical complexity. Product managers own outcomes without engineering dependencies.

We don’t think of Dimply as a better tool. We think of it as a better way to build financial service experiences. One where the people closest to customers have the power to act on what they learn.

We care deeply about the quality of our work. Every feature ships purpose-built for financial services. Our background gave us conviction about the problem. Our experience gave us clarity about the solution. Financial services deserve tools built for modern customers’ expectations.

What role do enabling technologies like AI play in helping you empower teams to build compelling, dynamic experiences for customers?

Dunne: AI accelerates two parts of the experience creation process:

First, building journeys. Teams describe what they want in natural language, and the AI generates working experiences. A product manager explains the flow of a pension calculator in plain English. The AI produces the complete journey with conditional logic, branching paths, and data integrations. No templates, no technical knowledge required.  AI has reduced the amount of technical expertise and training needed for Dimply Hub for product owners and designers to use it. Teams test ideas in minutes instead of weeks.

The AI learns from every journey built in the system. Results improve as more experiences are created. Complex workflows with conditions, loops, and parallel paths emerge from conversational descriptions. This means product practitioners spend time refining customer outcomes rather than wrestling with tools.

Second, personalizing experiences. AI nodes can sit inside customer journeys and adapt what people see based on their circumstances. These nodes generate facts in real time, which can be used to tailor the experience.

The combination removes friction; business teams build faster, and customers receive experiences tailored to their financial situation and behavior. AI handles the technical complexity while product practitioners focus on outcomes.

Can you talk more about the connection between of AI and delivering greater personalization?

The demand for personalization and customer engagement solutions is paramount, and Dimply is perfectly positioned to cater to that. Our personalization extends far beyond basic demographic segmentation or transaction categorization. We are developing what we call intelligent, behavioral personalization that takes into account not just what customers have, but how they behave, their financial goals, and their emotional connection with money, all in real-time.

Our AI continuously learns and adapts in real-time. If someone’s financial situation changes, our AI detects these shifts and modifies the experience to suit their new circumstances.

The outcome is that we can iterate and deliver new insights, content, and tools specifically tailored to each customer’s situation and goals. This transforms generic financial services into personally relevant experiences that encourage genuine engagement and promote financial well-being.

At Finovate Fall, Dimply demoed its Dimply Hub. Can you tell us a little about the solution and how the demo was received at the conference?

Dunne: What we demoed was our AI Builder in planning mode.  This allowed us to describe a journey in conversational language and watch the platform construct the experience. The demo showed someone requesting a protection journey for high-net-worth clients, with all the logic and recommendations. The AI generates the complete flow with all the business logic intact. 

After the demo, we got great engagement with high-ambition banks, particularly around how they can change their current workflows using Dimply.

Can you tell us about a particularly interesting deployment or feature of your technology?

Dunne: AIB Life reaches 3.2 million customers through embedded journeys in their AIB retail mobile banking app. The deployment demonstrates how the platform works at scale within existing digital channels.

The fact engine sits on top of AIB Life’s core systems, stitching together data from policy administration, CRM, and transaction history. This creates real-time customer profiles without moving sensitive data. When someone logs into the app, the platform knows their complete financial picture and serves a personalized experience accordingly. Journeys adapt dynamically. Life events trigger recalibration.

Dimply has racked up number of awards and recognitions from impressive forums, including Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50. What are these organizations seeing and liking about Dimply?

Dunne: They appreciate how we embody innovation, efficiency, and customer-centricity through our award-winning platform, particularly our speed-to-market and our ability to support any type of financial data and deliver truly personalized customer experiences, enabling us to support all areas of financial services.

Our platform is proven, live, and deployed within major financial institutions, driving measurable strategic impact in the real world. Our journey illustrates not just where we’ve been but where we’re headed; towards a future where financial services are more accessible, engaging, and secure for everyone, everywhere.

Ireland is one of those countries that seems to produce a disproportionately high amount of fintech innovation for its small population. Do you agree?  

Dunne: Yes, the talent, technical agility, regulatory maturity, and global reach from its open borders are why, in my opinion, Ireland is considered a world leader in producing scalable, enterprise-grade fintech.

Ireland’s fintech sector punches above its weight because it combines a large, mature financial services sector with a world-class founder, technology, and talent ecosystem, together with the unique geopolitical advantage of being the EU’s English-speaking gateway. This, coupled with a landscape of strong investment partners to support innovation and growth, significantly contributes to the vast fintech innovation here in Ireland.

What accounts for that success?

Dunne: Ireland’s strategic geography and EU membership, combined with an English-speaking, common law legal system, simplify international scaling and business operations.

We offer an attractive tax and business environment alongside a mature financial services industry that supports new fintechs to build on existing infrastructure. Bolstering this foundation is the availability of a skilled workforce, the co-location of major technology players, and proactive investment and support for innovation and R&D from state agencies

The ecosystem benefits from a strong mix of experienced startups and multinationals, access to global capital, and regulatory openness to innovation, fostering a culture where firms are built to focus globally rather than just domestically.

What is the fintech scene like in Ireland right now?

Dunne: The fintech sector in Ireland is currently dynamic, resilient, and expanding, establishing the country as a key international fintech hub. Over the past five years, the sector has attracted significant investment, and despite the global slowdown in fintech investment, Ireland—in 2024, according to KPMG Ireland—experienced over 290% growth in investment compared to the previous year, continuing to demonstrate growth and resilience.

What can we look forward to seeing from Dimply in the months to come?

Dunne: Our near-term strategic focus is twofold: Product-Led Growth (PLG) and the rapid advancement of our AI capabilities. We are implementing the PLG model to ensure our technology is easily accessible and immediately beneficial, effectively putting the platform into the hands of as many people as possible. Importantly, we are also intensifying our investment in AI, using cutting-edge machine learning to deepen personalization, improve predictive insights, and automate complex financial journeys.

This combined approach—maximizing distribution through PLG and delivering unparalleled intelligence through AI—is central to our mission: to enable demonstrably better, more confident financial decisions for every user.

Photo by Gregory DALLEAU on Unsplash

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Finovate Global Egypt: Investing in Digital Payments, Innovation, and Future Tech Talent

Finovate Global Egypt: Investing in Digital Payments, Innovation, and Future Tech Talent
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

This week’s edition of Finovate Global features the latest fintech news from Egypt.

Fawry and Wadi Degla Partner to Offer Integrated Digital Payments

A strategic partnership between leading Egyptian fintech Fawry and real estate development company Wadi Degla Developments will bring integrated digital payment solutions to Wadi Degla customers. Wadi Degla will leverage Fawry’s online payment gateway and POS network, simplifying and accelerating payment processes, to enhance the customer experience and help drive digitization in the real estate sector.

The alliance fortifies Fawry’s status as a trusted technology partner for the country’s real estate developers and underscores Wadi Degla’s determination to increase operational efficiency and boost customer satisfaction. The partnership will also feature new value-added solutions including the Fawry Business Corporate Card and digital loyalty programs.

“This partnership marks a key milestone in our mission to drive digital transformation across Egypt’s vital real estate sector,” Fawry Chief Business Officer Heba El Awady said. “At Fawry, we aim to empower developers to provide modern, integrated payment services that cater to the growing demand for digitization. We continuously strive to develop innovative solutions tailored to the evolving needs of various sectors, and our collaboration with Wadi Degla Developments is a prime example of constructive partnerships between technology and real estate, enhancing operational efficiency and creating tangible value for customers.”

Headquartered in Cairo, Egypt, and founded in 2008, Fawry offers a digital transformation and fintech platform that delivers more than 1,186 financial services to consumers and businesses. With more than 29 million customers across Egypt, Fawry is the country’s largest payment network, processing more than three million operations a day. Ashraf Sabry is founder and CEO.

Egypt’s DisrupTech Ventures Makes Second Non-Egyptian Investment

Our last look at fintech in Egypt highlighted the launch of a new $31.5 million fund from HSBC Egypt that is dedicated to supporting small and medium-sized businesses in the fintech sector. Today, there’s another Egypt-based fund making fintech headlines: Egypt’s DisrupTech Ventures, which just made its second investment outside of Egypt and its first for a Moroccan fintech with its funding of Chari.

Founded by Ismael Belkhayat and Sophia Alj and backed by Y Combinator, Chari offers a fintech platform that transforms thousands of small neighborhood shops into access points for digital payments and other financial services. Chari’s payment institution license enables the company to empower small businesses to serve as financial hubs for their communities. Chari brings digitization to Morocco’s informal economy, helping businesses quickly access working capital, and embedding financial services including insurance and payment options into merchants’ daily operations. Launched in 2020, the company has onboarded more than 20,000 retailers to its platform.

“Our investment in Chari is a milestone for DisrupTech,” Managing Partner at DisrupTech Ventures Mohamed Okasha said. “Chari is redefining how financial services are delivered at the grassroots level. By empowering small shops to act as financial gateways, Chari is creating the foundation for a new, inclusive fintech infrastructure in Morocco. This is exactly the kind of transformative model we seek to support across Africa.”

The amount of the investment was not disclosed. The funding is part of Chari’s Series A extension round, which included raising $12 million and featured leadership from SPE Capital and Orange Ventures. Along with its investment, DisrupTech Ventures will also join Chari’s board of directors.

DisrupTech Ventures is headquartered in Cairo, Egypt. Founded in 2021, the company is the country’s leading fintech venture capital firm with an emphasis on early stage fintech and fintech-enabled startups.

Egypt’s Students Top Arab Fintech Talent Competition

The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE)’s FinYology initiative introduced the third edition of its FinTech Got Talent 2025 competition this year. In partnership with the Federation of Egyptian Banks (FEB) and the Egyptian Banking Institute (EBI), the fintech talent competition seeks to identify and support fintech innovation among university students.

This year’s competition was won by ESLSCA University for its mobile app, Tapay, that transforms an ordinary smartphone into a contactless payment terminal. Taking second place was the team from the British University in Egypt (BUE), which offered a financial literacy app called Money Adventure, that leverages gamification to help children learn about the importance of learning how to manage their money. Coming in third was the team from Cairo University, which presented AgriDawar, a digital platform that uses e-payment technology and e-wallets to connect farmers to buyers of agricultural surplus residues.

All three teams represented Egypt at the Arab FinTech Challenge 2025 last month, with the ESLSCA University and BUE teams again taking first and second, respectively, topping teams from universities from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Morocco.

FinTech Got Talent was initially launched in 2024 as part of the FinYology initiative. This effort is designed to integrate academic learning with hands-on fintech applications. FinYology includes more than 30 Egyptian universities, has supported more than 900 student-led projects, and featured the participation of 19,000 students. Eighteen partner banks have also provided continuing backing to the FinYology initiative.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Brazilian fintech Kanastra secured $30 million in Series B funding for its capital markets infrastructure and services offering.
  • Binance launched QR code payments in Argentina.
  • Brazil’s central bank announced new capital and compliance rules for fintechs.

Asia-Pacific

  • Japan’s JCB International partnered with Agoda to enhance digital travel payments throughout Asia.
  • Hong Kong’s ZA Bank launched its StockBack x ZA Card, the first Visa card in Hong Kong to offer shares of stock as a purchase reward.
  • ISH acquired Sydney, Australia-based spend management software company ProSpend.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Financial services platform Mukuru teamed up with AI-powered banking technology provider JUMO to launch new fast loan solution.
  • UAE-based fintech Optasia raised $345 million in its IPO on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in South Africa.
  • Kenya’s mobile money market reached 91% penetration this year according to the Communications Authority of Kenya, a jump from 77% penetration last year.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Hamburg, Germany-based fintech Atrya locked in €1.5 million in funding for its stablecoin payment network.
  • Estonian fintech Creem raised €1.8 million in pre-seed funding for its “programmable finance layer” the helps startups manage payments, taxes, compliance, and more.
  • Embedded financing platform YouLend and business management platform Tide take their partnership to the German market.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Photo by David McEachan

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Finovate Global Canada: Wealthsimple’s $10 Billion Valuation and a Look at Investment Trends

Finovate Global Canada: Wealthsimple’s $10 Billion Valuation and a Look at Investment Trends
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Coinbase, Finovate Global, Nubank, Salt Edge, Tink

This week’s edition of Finovate Global features recent fintech news from Canada.

Wealthsimple secures $750 million at valuation of $10 billion

Canadian fintech Wealthsimple has raised CAD $750 million at a post-money valuation of CAD $10 billion. The funding round includes both a CAD $550 million primary offering and a secondary offering of up to CAD $200 million. Dragoneer Investment Group and GIC led the round, which also featured participation from new investor Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) as well as existing investors Power Corporation of Canada, IGM Financial Inc. ICONIQ, Greylock, and Meritech.

“This raise reflects deep confidence from new and returning investors in our mission and our role as a defining Canadian company,” Wealthsimple Co-Founder and CEO Michael Katchen said. “We were intentional in choosing partners committed to the long-term future of Wealthsimple. These are well-respected, global leaders with a proven track record (of) scaling category leaders, and who believe in our vision for the future of financial services.”

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Wealthsimple offers a suite of low-cost financial solutions to help Canadians build wealth. The company’s platform features self-directed investing, managed portfolios, digital asset investing, tax filing, advisor services, and more in a single, integrated experience. Wealthsimple serves three million Canadians and has $100 billion in assets under administration.

“Few companies have achieved what Wealthsimple has in the last few years,” Dragoneer Investment Group Partner Christian Jensen said. “The Wealthsimple team has built an expansive financial platform that millions of Canadians trust. They’re not just participating in Canada’s financial services industry; they’re redefining it.”

Earlier this year, Wealthsimple unveiled a waitlist for its first credit card, which topped 300,000 Canadians in the first six months. The company’s fundraising news follows a profitable 2024 and current profitability in 2025, as well. The capital infusion will help Wealthsimple accelerate its product roadmap in investing, spending, and credit, as well as support the company’s efforts to expand its platform.

Fintech investment slows in H1 ahead of potential rebound in H2

Speaking of investment and Canadian fintech, KPMG’s Canada Fintech Investment Report is a great way to get up to speed on the investment trends that are supporting fintech innovation in Canada. The report was published in August, and focuses on investment trends from the first half of 2025.

While the report indicates that Canadian fintech investment fell significantly compared to international trends, the report authors suggest that the first half of 2025 represented a normalization in the wake of record high levels of investment in 2024. Areas of investor interest include AI, especially agentic AI, and digital assets, which represent a continuation of trends from 2024. A more positive regulatory tone toward cryptocurrencies—especially stablecoins—in the US has been credited for this rebound in interest in digital assets. The report also noted some interest in quantum computing among insurers.

“Last year was exceptionally strong for fintech investment, thanks to two major take-private deals,” Dubie Cunningham, a Partner in KPMG in Canada’s Banking and Capital Markets Practice, explained. “Since then, investment activity has dropped to more stable levels. In fact, when you consider the economic shifts such as tariffs affecting global trade, investment in the first half was quite robust compared to historical levels. There’s still a lot of dry powder ready to be deployed by investors, but they are demonstrating more selective behavior than in previous years. They’re looking for quality companies and we’re seeing longer tails for maturing mid-to-large stage private equity deals.”

Read the full report.

Coming to Canada: Atlanta’s Rainforest and Lebanon’s Whish Money

This week reminds us of how attractive Canada is to a growing number of fintechs around the world. Rainforest, a embedded payments company based in Atlanta, Georgia, announced recently that it is looking to expand to Canada. The company, founded in 2022, secured $29 million in funding in September, taking its total capital raised to $57.5 million. The idea of expanding to Canada, as Rainforest Founder and CEO Joshua Silver explained to Global Atlanta, represents more than a regional expansion for the company itself. The move would also help Rainforest’s platform client expand their offerings in a new market.

Rainforest specializes in payments partnerships with software providers that target businesses in underserved industry sectors. These software providers themselves are an underserved segment of the industry—processing $50 million to $2 billion in annual payments. Rainforest offers an embedded payments solution that enables software platforms to provide a robust payments experience for their end merchants without having to register as a payment facilitator with card networks.

Hailing from even farther away than the Peach State where Rainforest resides is Whish Money. Headquartered in Beirut, Lebanon, and regulated by the country’s central bank, Whish Money announced this week that it had secured financial services licenses in Canada. The regulatory approvals are the first for the company outside of the MENA region, and is part of a global expansion that includes entering markets in the US, the UK, the EU, and Australia.

“Securing our Canadian license is a monumental step that validates our compliant, customer-focused model and sets the foundation for our international expansion,” Whish Money board chairman Toufic Koussa said. “This move is about more than just entering a new market; it’s about strategically connecting high-diaspora communities with reliable financial infrastructure, beginning with North America. We are committed to building a regulated, transparent global ecosystem that truly serves our users.”

Whish Money offers a range of digital financial services including payroll, fund transfers, and billpay. Founded in 2019, the company’s e-wallet, money remittance, and e-distribution platform has a user base of more than 1.5 million. The company’s global expansion is being supported by partnerships with companies such as Visa, Mastercard, Ria, and Terrapay.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Pakistan-based fintech startup ZAR raised $13 million for its technology that enables consumer to convert cash into stablecoins.
  • Indian fintech infrastructure company Falcon announced a partnership with technology consulting firm Tech Mahindra.
  • Alipay+ and HUMO, Uzebekistan’s national payment system, teamed up to facilitate cross-border payments.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Blockchain infrastructure and cryptocurrency provider Binance unveiled QR code payments in Argentina
  • Kueski and dLocal team up to bring Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services to merchants in Mexico.
  • Nubank and OpenAI partnered to launch ChatGPR Go in Brazil to give individuals greater access to ChatGPT’s advanced capabilties at a lower cost.

Asia-Pacific

  • Remittance provider Viamericas partnered with Dong Phuong Money Transfer to expand access to remittance services throughout Vietnam.
  • Japanese fintech JPYC launched the country’s first yen-denominated stablecoin.
  • Malaysian fintech Instapay earned a spot on CB Insights’ Global Fintech 100.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • South African fintech SME Snapshot launched updated version of its business management dashboard.
  • Nigeria’s Flutterwave partnered with Polygon to launch a stablecoin payment network across 34 African countries.
  • Kenya’s Choice Bank teamed up with Safaricom to power cross-border money transfers.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Coinbase and Tink teamed up to bring Pay by Bank crypto payments to customers in Germany.
  • Lithuanian regtech IDenfy partnered with Australian remittance service provider J Forex Money Transfer.
  • Finlayer and Salt Edge annnounced a partnership to bring open banking to small and medium-sized businesses in Romania.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Saudi Arabian Buy Now Pay Later firm Tabby boosted its valuation to more than $4.5 billion in the wake of a secondary share sale.
  • Israel-based Viola Credit closed its third credit fund at $2 billion, topping its original target of $1.5 billion.
  • Lebanon-based fintech Whish Money secured financial services licenses in Canada.

Photo by Harrison Haines

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Finovate Global Mexico: Plata Doubles Valuation; Revolut, SumUp Announce Expansion; and More!

Finovate Global Mexico: Plata Doubles Valuation; Revolut, SumUp Announce Expansion; and More!
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

This week’s edition of Finovate Global examines recent fintech news from Mexico.

Earlier this month, ResearchAndMarkets.com published its Mexico Embedded Finance Databook Report for 2025. The 230-page report noted that the embedded finance market in Mexico is expected to reach more than $18 billion this year and top $22 billion by the end of 2030. Among the key takeaways from the report is the increasing traction of embedded credit products such as Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), and the growth of embedded payments in mobility, food delivery, and social commerce driven by growing smartphone use and government support for digital, real-time payments options. Embedded finance solutions such as lending are enabling non-fintech businesses in Mexico to leverage APIs and BaaS to expand their offerings, the report notes. This is helping bring more financial services to underserved communities in the country. It is also creating greater competition for companies in both the lending and payments spaces.

Mexican Fintech Plata Double Valuation on Latest $250 Million Fundraise

Mexican digital financial platform Plata has secured $250 million in new equity funding. The round, which includes both a primary equity raise and a secondary equity transaction, was led by Kora and featured participation from Moore Strategic Ventures, Audio Ventures, Spice Expeditions, Hedosophia, as well as several US and European family offices. The funding builds on an earlier investment by Televisa-Univision and boosts Plata’s valuation to $3.1 billion.

“The growth we have achieved in such a short time demonstrates a clear strategy and a shared conviction: build a strong institution from its foundations,” Plata CEO and Co-Founder Neri Tollardo said. “This transaction reflects investors’ confidence, the strength of our technological model, and the talent we have assembled. We set out to create a digital bank built on innovation, operational excellence, compliance, and efficiency—and today, we are seeing the results of that effort.”

Plata received its banking license in December 2024 and is waiting for authorization to begin banking operations. The company boasts its own technological and operational infrastructure, including a core banking system that enables a fully digital, branchless model with automated risk management and 24/7 personalized customer service. Over the past 30 months, Plata has topped the two million mark in terms of active credit customers, making it one of the fastest-growing digital financial platforms in Latin America. The company’s Plata Card gives users two months to pay without interest and up to 15% of cash back in real money.

“We believe Plata represents the new standard for digital banking in emerging markets,” Kora Co-Founder Nitin Saigal said. “In a very short time, the company has demonstrated impressive execution, combining technological innovation with a clear vision for financial inclusion. We are excited to continue strengthening our partnership and to support Plata in this new phase of growth.”

Revolut obtains Mexican banking license; SumUp goes live

This week we learned that two Finovate alums—Revolut and SumUp—are actively exploring opportunities in Mexico. Revolut announced this week that it has received final regulatory approval to initiate banking operations in Mexico. The authorization came from the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV), with approval of the Bank of Mexico. Now a Multiple Banking Institution in Mexico, Revolut is the first independent digital bank to directly apply for and complete the full licensing and approval process in the country.

“We are exceptionally proud of our team and the bank we have built here in Mexico,” Revolut Bank S.A., Institución de Banca Múltiple CEO Juan Miguel Guerra said. “We are very grateful to the authorities for this vote of confidence and their commitment to fostering competition in the industry, and we are confident that our offering will benefit millions of people across the country.”

Revolut is a digital banking and financial services platform that offers a wide range of solutions, including multi-currency accounts with real-time exchange rates; stock, cryptocurrency, commodity, and ETF investing and trading; as well as business accounts, corporate cards, and expense management tools. Founded in 2015, Revolut serves as a financial services “super app” for more than 65 million customers around the world.

Meanwhile, payments platform SumUp announced its official launch in Mexico this week. The company has introduced its SumUp Go card reader to the Mexican market, enabling merchants to accept payments anytime, anywhere, with no monthly fixed costs. The card reader is compatible with all major credit and debit cards and features both exceptional battery life and unlimited 4G cellular connectivity due to its built-in SIM.

“Expanding into Mexico marks a pivotal step in SumUp’s strategic growth across Latin America,” SumUp North America CEO Andrew Helms said. “We see remarkable potential in the region and recognize a strong demand for accessible, user-friendly payment solutions that streamline business operations. At SumUp, our mission is to simplify business for our merchants and we’re delighted to bring this commitment to Mexico.”

Founded in 2012, SumUp counts more than four million merchants in 37 markets as users of its payment processing solutions and business management tools. These include mobile card readers and point-of-sale (POS) systems, as well as solutions for sales tracking and inventory management, customer loyalty programs, and financial reporting and analytics.

Revolut has been a Finovate alum since its debut at FinovateEurope 2015. SumUp won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2013. Both companies are headquartered in London.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Oman’s BankDhofar launched its new braille debit card.
  • The Cooperative Bank of Oromia, a regional bank based in Ethiopia, partnered with digital transformation company JMR Infotech to go live with Oracle Financial Services Crime and Compliance Studio.
  • Saudi National Bank subsidiary Samba Bank unveiled its new fraud detection system powered by BPC’s SmartVista Fraud Management.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Mongolian fintech AND Global raised $21.4 million in Series B funding in a round led by the International Finance Corporation and AEON Financial Service.
  • Karandaaz Pakistan and Walee Financial Services forged a strategic partnership to launch Pakistan’s first Shariah-compliant, digital asset financing solution for female entrepreneurs.
  • Did India ban discussion of cryptocurrencies at the world’s largest fintech conference in Mumbai?

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Mexican digital financial platform Plata doubled its valuation to $3.1 billion upon securing a $250 million Series B funding round.
  • Uruguay-based cross-border payments platform dLocal teamed up with Alchemy Pay to streamline crypto-to-fiat payments throughout Latin America.
  • Payments platform SumUp announced its launch in Mexico this week.

Asia-Pacific

  • Three of Japan’s largest banks—MUFG Bank, Sumitomo Mitsuio Banking Corp, and Mizuho Bank—announced plans to collaborate on the launch of a unified stablemcoin.
  • Tracxn’s recently released Southeast Asia FinTech Report noted that fintech startups in the region raised $839 million in the first nine months of 2025, a decline from previous years.
  • Fintech innovation in Pyongyang? A look at the growth in popularity of e-payments in North Korea.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • African all-in-one financial platform Moniepoint secured more than $200 million in Series C funding.
  • Sanlam teamed up with TymeBank to build a co-branded fintech super app for consumers in South Africa.
  • Capitec Bank partnered with accounting software company Stub to provide South African small and micro-sized businesses with direct access to their transactional data.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • German fintech Aifinyo AG announced that it was converting its balance sheet to bitcoin, becoming the first German firm to adopt a full bitcoin treasury model.
  • SoftPOS solutions company MineSec inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU with Turkish digital payments company Paymore.
  • Latvian fintech Eleving Group raised €275 million ($319.5 million) via a public bond issue.

Photo by Pyro Jenka on Unsplash

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Finovate Global India: Inclusion, Digital Asset Innovation, and a Salute to Our Indian Alums

Finovate Global India: Inclusion, Digital Asset Innovation, and a Salute to Our Indian Alums
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, Ripple, Wise

This week’s edition of Finovate Global looks at recent fintech headlines from India.

RBI pushes financial inclusion; launches digital currency sandbox

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Sanjay Malhotra used the occasion of the 6th Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai to encourage technologies to emphasize financial inclusion as well as better trust and efficiency as they help build the future of the country’s financial ecosystem. Fintech will be able to participate by joining the sandbox directly or via their partner banks.

Malhotra credited Indian fintech for a range of innovations that have been the envy around the world. “India’s world-class digital public infrastructure, as symbolized by systems such as UPI, Aadhaar, and DigiLocker, has not only enhanced efficiency and service delivery, but also ensured that millions of Indians enjoy easy access to a wide range of financial services.”

UPI is India’s real-time payment system that enables instant fund transfer between bank accounts via mobile apps. UPI can be used with just a mobile number or Virtual Payment Address (VPA) and has enabled everything from peer-to-peer transfers to merchant payments. UPI processes more than 700 million transactions a day.

Aadhaar is the name of a biometric digital identity system that gives all residents a unique 12-digit identification. Aadhaar is the basis for digital KYC (Know Your Customer) processes and has use cases ranging from account opening and insurance enrollment in financial services to medical record access, government benefit disbursement, and more. DigiLocker is a cloud-based digital document storage platform that enables users to store and access official documents digitally. DigiLocker is estimated to have more than 465 million registered users.

In each case, the solution has been both a significant technological innovation and a way of bringing a wider range of financial services to a greater number of communities and businesses, and individuals.

Underscoring the compatibility between financial inclusion and technological innovation, Malhotra added, “serving the privileged will be a lucrative business, but companies must focus on serving the underserved sections of society. Build for inclusion. There may be higher profits to be made by deepening access to the haves and the privileged, but prioritize building systems to expand financial services to the unaccessed, the unreached, and the unserved segments of society.”

The RBI also made headlines with the launch of its digital currency sandbox. The initiative will enable fintech firms to build and test solutions using the central bank digital currency (CBDC) as part of its ongoing pilot project. The RBI’s first retail e-rupee pilot (India’s central bank digital currency or CBDC) went live in December 2022, and currently has more than seven million users.

The announcement was made by Suvendu Pai, General Manager at the RBI. Pai said that the launch was designed to encourage innovation in digital payments and to grow the ecosystem for India’s CBDC.

“The CBDC retail sandbox will give innovators the space to experiment and build on top of the digital rupee,” Malhotra explained. “It will help create new use cases, improve customer experience, and add value to ongoing pilots.”

Meet Finovate’s Indian alums

Would you believe that outside of the US and the UK, the next largest group of Finovate readers are based in India?

As our previous story acknowledged, India is an under-recognized superpower when it comes not only to fintech innovation, but also when it comes to making sure that technological innovations are built to benefit as many people as possible.

Finovate has been happy to host a growing number of Indian fintechs at our conference both in the US and abroad. Our most recent event, FinovateFall 2025, featured a trio of India-based fintechs—MoneyPlanned, OPL, and Sequretek—on stage and a fourth, CloudBankin, in our Impact Zone. But these are only the most recently added alums. Here are some of the Indian firms that have demonstrated their latest innovations on the Finovate stage.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Google Payment Lithuania launched its bank account verification service.
  • Deutsche WertpapierService Bank (dwpbank) completed its acquisition of Berlin-based fintech lemon.markets.
  • Learn how the Latvian government is preparing to adopt the second edition of its national fintech development strategy.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Banco de Crédito del Perú, the largest bank in the country, has launched Criptococos, a digital asset-compatible banking platform, in partnership with BitGo.
  • Chilean HR tech firm Buk acquired fintech Bemmbo to provide financial services via the new Buk Finanzas offering.
  • Brazilian Buy Now Pay Later firm Pagaleve raised $30 million in Series A2 funding.

Asia-Pacific

  • Bank of Singapore unveiled a new agentic AI tool to automate components of the KYC process.
  • Binance Japan, a subsidiary of Binance, forged a digital assets alliance with financial services provider PayPay Corporation.
  • Singapore-based equity management platform Qapita raised $26 million in Series B funding.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • South African AI-powered fintech Optasia announced plans to raise $375 million when it goes public on South Africa’s Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
  • Kenyan asset financing firm M-KOPA reported its first profit of $9.2 million in 2024. The startup experienced a $24.7 million loss in 2023.
  • Check out Greg Palmer’s Finovate Podcast interview featuring Bridgit Antwi, Head of Strategy and Planning at African payments company Flutterwave.

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Finovate Global Netherlands: Insurtech, SME Financing, and Digital Banking

Finovate Global Netherlands: Insurtech, SME Financing, and Digital Banking
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, MasterCard, Nubank, VISA

This week’s edition of Finovate Global reviews recent fintech news from the Netherlands.

Dutch insurtech RISK acquires Amsterdam-based fintech Dyme

Dutch insurtech RISK has acquired Amsterdam-based savings app Dyme. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The deal will enable Dyme to boost its presence in the Netherlands as well as enter the German market. Courtesy of the agreement, both Dyme’s brand and management team will remain intact.

“From being featured on Dragon’s Den to becoming one of the largest finance apps in Europe and reaching profitability, our mission has always been the same: helping people take control of their money,” Dyme noted on its LinkedIn Page. “This step opens up some great opportunities for Dyme and its customers: expand the product, especially with great insurance packages and service, reach millions more people through the RISK ecosystem, and take Dyme international, beginning with Germany.”

Dyme currently has more than 600,000 consumers who have linked their bank accounts to the Dyme platform. The company’s app serves as a personal financial assistant to help users lower costs, and uses smart algorithms to automate subscription cancellations and provide financial guidance. Dyme announced its first profitable quarter in 2024, and has said that it has helped users save more than €40 million since inception. The acquisition will combine RISK’s market expertise and technological platforms with Dyme’s user-friendly financial solutions that enable users to easily manage their expenses, budgets, and more.

RISK offers an advanced IT platform, SureBase, that assists financial advisors, online labels, and insurers in product comparison and distribution. SureBase, according to RISK CEO Harm Vollmuller, will serve a key base for the new synergy between RISK and Dyme. “By combining that with our platforms and market knowledge, we can reach people at a time when financial breaking space is more important than ever,” Vollmuller said.

Factris raises €100m to power SME financing

A new funding partnership with Brand New Day Bank will enable Factris to expand its ability to provide financial support to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The Dutch fintech has secured a €100 million facility to support financing SME factoring across Europe. This will enable Factris to finance sellers in nine countries and manage receivables from debtors in 27 countries.

“This new facility is a testament to the trust and confidence Brand New Day Bank has placed in Factris and our vision for SME financing,” Factris CEO Brian Reaves said. “As we continue to scale across Europe, this partnership ensures we can meet the increasing demand for alternative financing and provide SMEs with the liquidity they need to thrive.”

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Amsterdam, North Holland, Factris specializes in invoice factoring for small and medium-sized enterprises. The company offers selective factoring to enable companies to decide which specific invoices to factor, fund availability within 24 hours of invoice submission, credit insurance to protect against customer non-payment or bankruptcy, and debtor management for collections and account receivables.

Brand New Day Bank is a Netherlands-based digital-first, challenger bank and fintech that began operating in 2010. The financial institution serves both individuals and small-to-medium sized businesses with savings accounts, investment and pension products, tax-advantaged savings and investment solutions, and annuity payment services. Brand New Day Bank has more than €8 billion in assets.

Dutch fintech Plumery unveils Canada-based solutions

Digital banking experience platform Plumery announced a suite of new features and integrations designed especially for credit unions in Canada. These new capabilities will give these institutions the ability to provide personalized, compliant, and modern digital banking experiences for their members.

The Amsterdam-based fintech leveraged a collaboration with Aequilibrium, a digital services and technology consultancy headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, to make sure its Canadian-ready platform is built based on the way that Canadian credit union members prefer to bank. This includes not just hyper-personalized, mobile-first, and intuitive digital journeys, but also support for everyday payments and transfers including billpay and Interact e-Transfers, and Canadian savings and lending products like GICs.

Plumery’s move comes as Canadian banks and credit unions face a range of challenges including evolving customer expectations, fintech competition, and the pressure to modernize their legacy systems. More immediately, Canadian credit unions are scrambling in the wake of Central 1 Credit Union’s announcement that it will wind down its digital banking platform Forge (formerly MemberDirect). More than 170 credit unions across Canada had been relying on the technology.

“With Forge winding down, Canadian institutions have a rare opportunity to modernize on their own terms, rather than being tied to outdated systems,” Plumery CEO and Founder Ben Goldin said. “Our platform provides an immediate, future-ready option that puts control back in the hands of credit unions. By working with Aequilibrium, we are combining global banking innovation with local expertise to deliver experiences that meet the unique needs of Canadian credit unions’ members.”

Founded in 2016, Plumery enables financial institutions to offer unique mobile and online experiences on top of either their modern or legacy core banking platforms up to 80% faster. Plumery’s technology features foundations that are pre-integrated into its digital banking journeys that accelerate app development and shorten time-to-market while maintaining complete control over both design and functionality.

Check out my interview with Plumery’s Goldin from earlier this year.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Mastercard teamed up with African fintech Smile ID to introduce new digital identity solutions across the continent.
  • South African mobile payment platform Street Wallet partnered with Plush Car Wash to deliver secure, cashless payments.
  • Visa and digital payments network Onafriq launched Visa Pay in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Lithuania-based identity verification and fraud prevention company iDenfy launched its Criminal Background Check tool.
  • Hungarian payment service provider Barion Payment completed its acquisition of PSC CEE Ltd, the company behind the SmartKassa brand.
  • Turkey’s Türk Ekonomi Bankası (TEB) partnered with Provenir for its AI-powered decisioning platform.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

  • India’s Bank of Baroda launched its eRUPI Person-to-Person (P2P) gifting solution.
  • TBC Uzbekistan extended financial services to non-residents.
  • Indian fintech Kiwi unveiled its interest-backed EMI on UPI.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Brazilian digital banking giant Nubank has applied for a US national bank charter.
  • Unlimit announced securing Principal Membership with Mastercard and Visa in Peru.
  • Brazi-based proptech Lastro raised $15 million in Series A funding in a round led by Prosus Ventures.

Asia-Pacific

  • Cambodian MSME-focused bank Chief Bank teamed up with payment solutions provider BPC to launch its new Chief Mobile 3.0 mobile app.
  • The People’s Bank of China opened a digital yuan operation center in Shanghai.
  • The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) and the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) launched IADS Developer Hackathon to promote bank-fintech collaboration.

Photo by Javier M. on Unsplash

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Finovate Global Saudi Arabia: Embedded Finance, Digital Payments, and Lending

Finovate Global Saudi Arabia: Embedded Finance, Digital Payments, and Lending
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, Tuum

This week’s edition of Finovate Global looks at recent fintech news from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).

Saudi fintech HALA raises $157 million to fuel embedded finance

Saudi Arabia-based fintech and embedded financial services provider HALA has raised $157 million in Series B funding. The round is being billed as one of the largest fintech Series B rounds to date for a company based in the Middle East. Led by The Rise Fund and Sanabil Investments, the investment will be used to enhance HALA’s position in the Saudi market. This includes empowering the company to launch more embedded financial services and lending products to support micro, small, and medium-sized (MSM) enterprises, as well as freelancers, in the region.

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Riyadh, HALA offers a comprehensive embedded financial services including business accounts; card issuance, payment and transfer services; POS solutions, financing, and corporate cards. To date, HALA has supported more than 150,000 businesses and processed more than $8 billion in annual transactions.

“This landmark investment is a turning point for HALA, reflecting on our relentless pursuit of innovation and excellence in serving small businesses,” HALA Co-founder and Chairman Esam Alnahdi said. “We are honored that our new investors recognize the potential of our vision and the impact we aspire to make in the MSME landscape. Our journey is just beginning, and this support fuels our drive to create meaningful change.”

Also participating in the investment were QED, Raed Ventures, Impact46, Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), Isometry Capital, Arzan VC, BNVT Capital, Kaltaire Investments, Endeavor Catalyst, Nour Nouf Ventures, Khwarizmi Ventures, and Wamda Capital.

Paymentology teams up with Enjaz to enhance digital payments in Saudi Arabia

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between international card issuer processor Paymentology and payments solutions company Enjaz is designed to bring advanced digital payments to consumers in Saudi Arabia.

“At Enjaz, our focus has always been on giving our customers speed, convenience, and security, whether they are transferring money abroad or making everyday payments,” Enjaz CEO Bassam AlEidy said. “By collaborating with Paymentology, we can now extend our card services that expand choice and enhance financial freedom. This partnership represents a major step in shaping the future of payments in Saudi Arabia, delivering innovation that is inclusive, dynamic, and tailored to the needs of our market.”

Integrating Paymentology’s issuing and processing platform will enable Enjaz to offer prepaid, debit, and virtual cards, all of which will seamlessly integrate with the company’s current services. The partnership will also bring functionalities such as international and domestic scheme enablement; tokenization for Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, and Mada Pay, as well as tools to boost security and enable real-time decisioning. Enjaz will also be able to leverage its new relationship with Paymentology to offer features such as loyalty programs and multi-currency wallets.

“Saudi Arabia is building one of the world’s most dynamic payments ecosystems under Vision 2030. Enjaz’s ambition adds to that momentum, and Paymentology’s role is to power innovators with secure, scalable issuing. Together with Enjaz, we’ll expand choice, accelerate time-to-market, and raise the bar for customer experience in the region,” Paymentology CEO Jeff Parker said.

Enjaz was established in 2022 as a wholly-owned payments arm of Bank Albilad. The firm is licensed by the Saudi Central Bank as a Major Electronic Money Institution (EMI). The partnership with Paymentology comes at a time when the Saudi Central Bank is reporting that electronic payments represented 79% of total retail transactions in 2024, up from 70% in the previous year.

Riyadh-based financial services enabler Abwab.ai forges strategic partnership with Tuum

Abwab.ai, a financial services company that specializes in credit decisioning, risk management, and customer engagement solutions, has announced a strategic partnership with core banking platform provider and Finovate Best of Show winner Tuum. The partnership will enable Abwab.ai to deliver a seamless, end-to-end digital lending solution for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) throughout the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

“SMEs are the backbone of every economy, yet they remain underserved by traditional lenders,” Abwab.ai Founder and CEO Baraa Koshak said. “By combining Abwab.ai’s AI-driven intelligence with Tuum’s next-generation core banking capabilities, we are empowering financial institutions to unlock SME growth at scale.”

Founded in 2022 by a team that includes technology veterans from companies like NVIDIA and HALA, Abwab.ai offers an underwriting automation platform that helps lenders make better decisions by transforming unstructured data into actionable insights. The combination of Abwab.ai’s credit decisioning and analytics capabilities with Tuum’s modular core banking and lending platform will help financial institutions launch, scale, and optimize their SME lending products faster, more efficiently, and with greater transparency.

“Our mission at Tuum is to modernize financial services with modular technology,” Tuum Chief Revenue Officer Miljan Stamenkovic said. “Partnering with Abwab.ai allows us to bring a truly end-to-end, AI-enhanced SME lending solution to the region, one that addresses a real market need and accelerates digital transformation.”

UK-based Tuum won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2024. At the conference, the company showed how its modular, cloud-native, API-first banking platform leveraged its microservices architecture to deliver high scalability and flexibility, as well as lower maintenance costs.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Premier Credit Uganda raised $1.5 million from Swiss-based investor, Enabling Qapital.
  • EBANX announced an integration with South Africa-based, real-time, open banking payment method, Capitec Pay
  • South African fintech Street Wallet acquired Digitip, a South African startup that enabled informal works to receive tips digitally.

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • valU introduced Egypt’s first licensed Buy Now, Pay Later service, on digital marketplace Noon.
  • MENA-based financial infrastructure provider Lean Technologies teamed up with Know Your Payee (KYP) solutions company iPiD.
  • UAE-based fintech Kamel Pay secured In-Principle Approval from the country’s central bank for both Stored Value Facilities (SVF) and Retail Payment Services (RPS) licenses.

Central and Southern Asia

  • TechCrunch profiled Jar, an India-based fintech that enables its users to invest in gold via its app, that recently announced reaching profitability.
  • Kazakhstan’s third-largest bank, Bank CenterCredit (BCC) turned to core banking provider Tuum to power its new Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) proposition.
  • Bank of India launched its BOI Trade Easy instant loan offering in partnership with Cashinvoice.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Mexican fintech Klar acquired digital bank Bineo from Grupo Financiero Banorte.
  • Mercado Pago, the financial arm of Latin American e-commerce company Mercado Libre, acquired Brazil-based distributor of investment products Nikos DTVM.
  • Cryptocurrency exchange Binance launched its Mexican entity Medá to help advance demand for the company’s services throughout Latin America.

Photo by backer Sha on Unsplash

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Finovate Global: Meet the International Alums of FinovateFall 2025!

Finovate Global: Meet the International Alums of FinovateFall 2025!
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Aurem, Dimply, ebankIT, Finovate Global, FinovateFall 2025, FintechOS, ID-Pal, Keyless, LemonadeLXP, MoneyPlanned, OPL, R34DY, Sequretek

Eleven of the more than 60 companies that will be demoing their latest fintech innovations live on stage at FinovateFall next week are headquartered in countries other than the US.

This week’s edition of Finovate Global highlights these fintechs from the Middle East, Western and Central Europe, Canada, India, the UK, and Ireland. With innovations in fields ranging from wealth management and digital banking to fraud prevention and lending, this year’s roster of international alums is a reminder of the robustness of fintech innovation around the world.

FinovateFall 2025 comes to the New York Marriott Marquis in Times Square, September 8 through September 19. Tickets are still available. Visit our FinovateFall hub and save your spot today!

Aurem – Abu Dhabi, UAE

Founded in 2022, Aurem offers an intelligent operating system for retirement and wealth providers. Their platform helps institutions unify and optimize their products, processes, and data and deliver them globally in days.

Dimply – Ireland

Founded in 2020, Dimply enables organizations to optimize operations, enhance customer engagement, uncover growth opportunities, and accelerate digital transformation.

ebankIT – Porto, Portugal

Founded in 2014, ebankIT empowers financial institutions to innovate quickly, reduce costs, and deliver personalized services across all channels, accelerating growth and future-proofing their digital strategy.

FintechOS– London, England

Founded in 2017, FintechOS enables banks and credit unions to launch any product faster, modernize customer experiences, and adapt quickly to market and regulatory changes—without replacing their core systems.

ID-Pal – Dublin, Ireland

ID-Pal facilitates business growth with AI-powered identity verification and AML screening, increasing operational efficiency and customer trust.

Keyless – London, England

Founded in 2019, Keyless replaces outdated MFA with biometrics, improving UX and saving millions. One bank saved $3.5 million by eliminating call centers for OTP-based recovery.

LemonadeLXP – Ottawa, Canada

Founded in 2018, LemonadeLXP’s InsightAI improves staff and customer education and access to knowledge, while driving significant operational efficiencies.

MoneyPlanned – Bengaluru, India

Founded in 2021, MoneyPlanned empowers institutions to offer intelligent, automated financial planning—boosting advisor efficiency, reducing cost-to-serve, and delivering personalized client experiences at scale.

OPL – Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India

Founded in 2015, OPL’s cash-flow-based lending helps banks transform their operations through agile lending, AI-driven insights, and intelligent credit underwriting—expanding credit access to SMEs.

R34DY – Budapest, Hungary

Founded in 2019, R34DY helps organizations transform their business by taking the pain out of integrations and making it easy for business owners to create use cases and reduce time to market.

Sequretek – Mumbai, India

Founded in 2013, Sequretek provides AI-powered, continuous threat exposure management ensuring compliance, governance, and holistic threat visibility across cloud and on-premises systems.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Mexico-based SME platform Kapital doubled its valuation to $1.3 billion upon securing up to $100 million in Series C funding.
  • Latin America’s largest insurtech, 180 Seguros, raised $9 million in funding.
  • Evertec acquired 75% stake in Brazilian fintech Tecnobank.

Asia-Pacific

  • Hong Kong-based stablecoin-powered cross-border payments infrastructure provider Obita announced $10 million in new funding.
  • Stripe Terminal launched in Japan.
  • International payment solutions provider dtcpay inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the People’s Committee of Da Nang during Vietnam Blockchain Day.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Tanzania-based fintech NALA expanded into Kenya courtesy of a partnership with Equity Bank and Pesalink.
  • Ripple partnered with Chipper Cash, VALR, and Yellow Card to make its USD-backed stablecoin Ripple USD (RLUSD) available to institutions in Africa.
  • Congolese fintech Maishapay earned a spot in Visa’s Africa Fintech Accelerator program.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • JPMorgan Chase announced plans to launch a digital bank in Germany.
  • Payments network TrueLayer went live in Poland this week.
  • Tietoevry Banking signed a SaaS agreement with IC Cash Services, its first foray into the German ATM market.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Israel-based fraud prevention innovator BioCatch and Nasdaq Verafin partnered to fight payment fraud.
  • Mastercard and Zain Cash teamed up to advance digital payments in Jordan.
  • Egyptian cross-border digital solutions provider Munify raised $3 million in seed funding.

Central and Southern Asia

Photo by Gaël Gaborel – OrbisTerrae on Unsplash

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Finovate Global Singapore: Investments in Open Banking, Payments, and the Blockchain

Finovate Global Singapore: Investments in Open Banking, Payments, and the Blockchain
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

This week’s edition of Finovate Global looks at recent fintech news from Singapore.

Open banking firm Atlas Consolidated raises $18.1 million

Open banking may be on the ropes in the US, but progress is marching on in Singapore. Open banking platform Atlas Consolidated, a Singapore-based Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) company, announced that it had secured $18.1 million in Series B funding. The investment was led by Tin Men Capital, and featured participation from strategic investors Getz, Inc. and Woodside Holdings Investment Management.

Atlas Consolidated is the owner of Hugosave and HugoHub, and leads the consortium behind HugoBank. Hugosave is the company’s wealth and savings app with 100,000 customers in Singapore. HugoHub is Atlas Consolidated’s BaaS platform, which provides a full-suite of modular banking services via a single integration. HugoBank secured its digital banking license from the State Bank of Pakistan at the beginning of 2025.

“Banks are under immense pressure to transform digitally while still relying on decades-old core systems that are costly, rigid, and fragmented,” Tin Men Capital Co-Founder and Managing Partner Jeremy Tan said. “HugoHub’s full-stack ‘bank-in-a-box’ solution gives banks the flexibility to launch new products, integrate services where they matter most, and refine features without disrupting the wider system. In turn, they can innovate faster, compete with neo and challenger banks, and operate with radically better economics.”

HugoHub, according to the company, has reduced users’ technology spending by up to 90%, cut overall operating expenses by up to 80%, and enables higher customer-to-staff ratios than are possible with traditional banking models.

“This investment marks a pivotal step in our mission to build better banks through technology,” Atlas Consolidated CEO David Fergusson said. “With Tin Men Capital’s support, we can accelerate HugoHub’s expansion to new markets, helping traditional financial institutions create more efficient, inclusive, and sustainable systems.”

Ripple, Circle join investment in Tazapay

Speaking of funding for Singapore fintechs, Ripple (US) and Circle Ventures were among a handful of investors that participated in an investment in Singapore’s Tazapay, a cross-border payments infrastructure platform. The Series B round was led by existing investor Peak XV Partners. Norinchukin Capital (Japan), GMO VenturePartners (Japan), January Capital, and ARC180 were also involved in the funding. The amount of the investment was not disclosed.

Currently licensed to operate in Singapore, Canada, and the EU, the funding will help the Tazapay expand further into areas such as Japan. The company is presently applying for licenses in the UAE, Hong Kong, Australia, and the US, and is also applying for a Digital Payment Token (DPT) license in Singapore. Securing this license would help Tazapay meet regulatory obligations ahead of incorporating digital payment tokens, including stablecoins, into its cross-border payment offering. Company CEO and Co-founder Rahul Shinghal noted this last point in his statement on the funding.

“We’re entering the next chapter of our journey—one where modern payment technologies, regulatory compliance, and partnerships with global leaders will enable the future of cross-border commerce,” Shinghal said. “With this round, we are not just capitalizing the business; we are investing in our long-term vision to become the builder of a global payment collection and payout infrastructure built on modern rails. One of the key use cases this infrastructure serves is being the Fiat bridge for stablecoins in emerging markets.”

Founded in 2020, Tazapay offers local collection and payout capabilities in more than 70 markets around the world. The company processes more than $10 billion in annualized payment volume and is growing at 300% year-over-year. The company’s platform provides comprehensive coverage across alternative payment methods, cards, virtual bank accounts, payouts, and stablecoins.

OCBC launches billion dollar commercial paper program using the blockchain

Did someone say “stablecoins”? There’s news on Singapore’s blockchain beat, as well.

Singapore’s Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) has initiated a new, $1 billion digital US commercial paper program using blockchain technology. The goal of the program is to provide access to almost instantaneous short-term US dollar funding capabilities by leveraging on-chain tokenized securities and funds. In addition to issuance and settlement, the program will also feature on-chain record-keeping and servicing.

“Singapore’s blockchain ecosystem is advancing fast, and asset tokenization is gaining real momentum,” OCBC Head of Global Markets Kenneth Lai said. “Our focus is now firmly on commercialization. We have already tapped blockchain for intraday repo and reverse repo transactions—capabilities added last year—and are now expanding into the USCP market to strengthen liquidity and resilience.”

OCBC is the longest established bank in Singapore, formed in 1932 via the merger of three banks: the Chinese Commercial Bank Ltd, the Ho Hong Bank Ltd, and the Oversea-Chinese Bank Ltd. OCBC is also the second-largest financial services group in the Southeast Asia by assets. The institution offers a range of financial services including consumer, corporate, and private banking; insurance; and asset management. OCBC reported net profits of $2.88 billion (S$3.7 billion) for the first half of this year.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Mumbai-based business microservices startup TransBank raised $25 million.
  • Infosys and Mastercard teamed up to scale cross-border payments.
  • The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) opened applications for the first cohort for its new regulatory sandbox.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Latin American super app Rappi teamed up with international wallet platform AstroPay to launch a new wallet-on-file integration.
  • Bitso’s B2B arm Bitso Business announced a partnership with stablecoin payments provider BVNK.
  • The Central Bank of Barbados picked Montran Corporation to design and deploy the country’s new instant payment system.

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Nedbank announced plans to acquire South African fintech iKhokha for $94 million.
  • Techeconomy looked at the importance of understanding local financial habits in scaling fintech in Nigeria.
  • South African payments processor BankservAfrica rebranded to PayInc SA.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • AInvest examined the recent PayPal-Germany payment crisis, in which more than €10 billion in transactions blocked due to a security system failure.
  • Lithuanian regtech AMLYZE signed a partnership agreement with payment service provider Perlas Finance.
  • PEAC Solutions acquired German fintech topi as part of its European expansion plans.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • UAE-based fintech Holo secured $22 million in Series A funding.
  • Algeria introduced its first fintech regulations for payment service providers, digital wallets, agents, and more.
  • FenanPay secured a commercialization license from the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE).

Photo by Mike Enerio on Unsplash

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Finovate Global: Workforce Management and Capacity Planning with Cinareo Solutions’ Karen Elliott

Finovate Global: Workforce Management and Capacity Planning with Cinareo Solutions’ Karen Elliott
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: CEO Interview, Cinareo Solutions, Finastra, Finovate Global, Mambu, MasterCard, Nubank

This week’s edition of Finovate Global features an interview with Karen Elliott, CEO and Co-Founder of Cinareo Solutions.

Headquartered in Ontario, Canada and founded in 2022, Cinareo Solutions complements workforce management platforms, helping them streamline contact center operations and mitigate risk by enabling precise resource allocation and decision-making that is driven by data.

Cinareo made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego, demonstrating how its SaaS solution provides scenario-based capacity planning for both contact center agents and support staff. The company’s technology leverages industry-recognized statistical models and simulations to help businesses meet customer demands as well as vital financial KPIs.

We caught up with Karen Elliott recently to learn more about the field of capacity planning, the role of enabling technologies like AI, and how Cinareo Solutions helps contact centers ensure that the right person with the right skills is in the right place at the right time.

What role does capacity planning have in workforce management? What makes it challenging and how does Cinareo help companies better meet those challenges?

Karen Elliott: Capacity planning is the strategic backbone of workforce management. It determines how many people you need with the right skills, in the right place, at the right time, to meet service levels without overspending on labor. In contact centers, capacity planning sits upstream of scheduling—it uses historical data, forecasts, and business assumptions to set headcount and budget requirements weeks, months, or even years in advance. Effective planning ensures customer demand is met efficiently and profitably.

The challenge is that unpredictable demand, scattered data, and outdated tools make planning a constant challenge. Most organizations resort to using Excel spreadsheets and spend hours or even days of manual labor and embedded formulas to try to figure out the optimal plan. Cinareo streamlines the process by ingesting your data and enabling rapid “what-if” scenario modeling and multi-skilling simulation to create optimized plans for both agents and support staff with the click of a button. 

Not only does Cinareo handle planning with ease, but the platform also creates financial budgets and recruitment and training plans so you know who to hire, and when, to ensure you meet your service targets.

Who are Cinareo’s primary customers? How do you reach them?

Elliott: Cinareo is an industry-agnostic platform for all contact centers.  We have customers worldwide in financial institutions, telecom, travel, utilities, retail, and even government.  We partner with CCaaS and WFM solutions to integrate directly into their platforms so that data can flow seamlessly into Cinareo.  Any organization with variable demand, labor-intensive operations and service or cost targets would get huge benefits from using a platform like Cinareo. 

We have a wide network of referral agents and ISV partners that recommend Cinareo to their clients when they see a clear need.  Cinareo offers webinars and monthly product showcases to demonstrate the power behind the platform—or can even arrange custom demos and proof of concepts to make sure potential customers truly understand the benefits of a modern planning platform like Cinareo.

What in your background led you to pursue innovation in this field?

Elliott: I spent 12 years at the IBM Innovation Center earlier in my career within the User Experience group with a key focus on user-centric software solutions.  After leaving IBM, I co-founded a professional consulting firm that specialized in contact center optimization that helped organizations improve their people, processes, technology, and knowledge. 

Years of consulting highlighted a huge gap in the market in regard to capacity planning.  We worked with countless private and public sector organizations that would build these complex spreadsheets to determine their optimal staffing and we decided there needed to be a better way, so we created Cinareo.  It was built to complement any CCaaS or WFM platform in the market and integrate into whatever was the customer’s platform of choice.  If customers switch platforms, they can take Cinareo with them—having a portable, agnostic solution was key to the design. 

Another important goal was designing a platform that was simple and intuitive based on years of experience in user-centric design.  We even have our customers as active members of the planning and design of the solution—this ensures that everything we build is focused on the needs and requirements of the people using the software.

What role do enabling technologies like AI play in developing innovative workforce management solutions?

Elliott: Capacity planning remains relevant in contact centers even if AI is involved, and it can take on a different but crucial role in optimizing the overall performance. While AI can now handle routine queries or simple updates, the reality is much more complex. Cinareo helps determine the right mix of AI-driven processes and human resources to meet the demand efficiently. Our customers are modelling their operations using Cinareo to determine the ideal balance of human agents vs bot and the ROI on an investment in AI as well.  

Incorporating AI into Cinareo is a given—we are already full steam ahead in our strategic plans to ensure that AI-driven capacity planning can make a dramatic difference. But true innovation in customer support isn’t about replacing the people—it is about giving people the ability to work faster and smarter – and we are doing that with Cinareo. 

You recently launched Flexible Monthly Planning. What is the value proposition with this new offering?

Elliott: We initially offered Cinareo as a strategic, long-term capacity planning platform where users could build 12-, 24- or 36-month plans.  However, as we continued to enhance Cinareo, our customers were telling us they wanted more flexibility in their planning, so we built in the capability to do weekly planning up to 52 weeks in order for contact centers to create tactical plans over the short or medium term. 

To continue to expand on Cinareo’s flexible platform, we recently launched more flexibility into our monthly planning as well, so customers can build a plan for any number of months up to 3 years in advance.  These enhancements were all driven by the needs of our clients since our goal is to have our software reflect “the voice of the customer” and truly be user-centric.

You made your Finovate debut at FinovateSpring earlier this year. How was the experience?

Elliott: We had a fantastic debut at FinovateSpring!  We generated a lot of great interest in the solution from the demo we provided. Prior to FinovateSpring, we had recently started onboarding more fintech clients and noticed an uptick in interest from banks, credit unions, and insurance agencies looking for a solution like Cinareo.  We thought FinovateSpring would be a great opportunity to demo Cinareo to a wider audience and get fintech companies to see the realm of the possible with a modern capacity planning solution. There is such a clear need in this sector for a solution that will not only improve CX and EX, but also provide important KPIs like the cost per contact to help with financial management.

What can we look forward to seeing from Cinareo in the months to come?

Elliott: We are excited over some of the new features that are set to launch in the months to come—we have been scaling up significantly to meet customer demand.  A couple new features that are soon to be released are multi-lingual functionality in addition to the ability to compare a plan with your historical data in a quick and easy way.  We will be offering our clients a way to see how their plan performed against their actuals in both performance and staffing—down to the 15-minute interval level.  This new feature will help our customers understand trends and patterns and be able to improve their planning moving forward.

That is just the tip of the iceberg—we have so many more exciting things planned over the next while. We would love to increase our customer base to have even more voices driving the future of our software! If you want to see how Cinareo can solve your capacity planning challenges, feel free to contact us.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Whish Money teams up with Mastercard to enable cross-border payments to Lebanon.
  • Bank of Algeria joined the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) launched by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank).
  • Qatar-based AlRayan Bank went live with Finastra Corporate Channels.

Central and Southern Asia

  • India celebrated National Fintech Day earlier this week.
  • Ukrainian fintech Fintech Farm launched its mobile banking service Tezbank in Uzbekistan.
  • The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) announced plans to unveil new Information Systems Audit Standards to enhance audit practices for startups, fintechs, and e-commerce companies.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Brazil-based digital financial services platform Nubank introduced Armando Herrera as new CEO of its Mexican operations.
  • Uruguayan cross-border payment platform dLocal teamed up with cross-border marketplace platform Tiendamia.
  • Puero Rico-based transaction processor and fintech EVERTEC announced plans to acquire a controlling stake in Brazilian fintech vendor Tecnobank.

Asia-Pacific

  • Japanese fintech JPYC announced plans to launch the first yen-denominated stablecoin this fall.
  • Thailand unveiled a new pilot program to enable visitors to convert cryptocurrencies into the local Thai Baht to facilitate purchases.
  • New Zealand-based small business management platform Xero partners with UAE-based Wio Bank PJSC.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Digital payments provider Peach Payments launched real-time clearance (RTC) payouts for merchants on its platform in South Africa.
  • South African fintech Street Wallet raised $350,000 in new funding.
  • African business bank Absa Business Banking selected Network International as its digital payments technology partner.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • OYAK ANKER Bank GmbH migrated its core banking systems to Berlin, Germany-based Mambu’s platform.
  • Turkish investment platform Midas raised $80 million in Series B funding.
  • Disruption Banking looked at the increasing popularity of crypto in Lithuania.

Photo by Derek Sutton on Unsplash

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Finovate Global Pakistan: Profits in E-Commerce, Investment in Logistics, and Partnerships in Cybersecurity

Finovate Global Pakistan: Profits in E-Commerce, Investment in Logistics, and Partnerships in Cybersecurity
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

This week’s edition of Finovate Global features news on recent fintech developments in Pakistan.

Fintech Deal Draws Bazaar Technologies Closer to Profitability

A report in Bloomberg indicates that Pakistan’s most well-funded startup, Bazaar Technologies, is closing in on profitability. The company, which was founded in 2020, offers a B2B e-commerce platform that connects small retailers with suppliers. This digitization of traditional supply chains has been credited with empowering thousands of smaller merchants, known as “kiryana” shops, to participate in the digital economy.

It is the company’s recent acquisition of digital payments platform Keenu that has observers believing that Bazaar could achieve profitability in the coming quarters. Keenu offers payment services, including point-of-sale (POS) solutions, an online payment gateway, and a mobile wallet app, via a merchant acquiring network that spans more than 150 cities throughout Pakistan. A licensed Electronic Money Institution (EMI), Keenu processes more than $1 billion in annual payments.

The acquisition marked the first time a major Pakistan-based e-commerce company integrated payments into its operations, and has been seen as part of the State Bank of Pakistan’s National Payment Strategy to advance digital transformation and financial inclusion in the country.

“This is more than an acquisition—it’s a strategic alignment that redefines what it means to serve households and businesses in Pakistan,” Bazaar Technologies Co-Founder Saad Jangda said.

Bazaar has raised more than $100 million in funding from investors including Dragoneer Investment Group, Tiger Global, and Indus Valley Capital. The company is headquartered in Karachi.

Logistics Fintech Trukkr Secures Funding from UAE’s Yango Group

Via its investment arm, Yango Ventures, UAE-based technology company Yango Group announced an investment in Trukkr, a fintech platform in Pakistan that provides financial services to companies in the trucking business. The amount of the investment was not disclosed, but the funding does represent the first Pakistan-based investment for Yango Ventures. The investment will also provide Trukkr with Yango Group’s product expertise and insights from its operations in more than 30 markets around the world.

“We are excited to partner with Yango Group, in addition to their strategic equity investment, we find that their experience in building state-of-the-art logistics tech and deploying it in over 30 countries will allow us to strengthen our offerings in Pakistan and beyond,” Trukkr CEO Sheryar Bawany said.

Founded in 2019 by Hisham Adamjee, Mishal Adamjee, Kasra Zunnaiyyer, and Ali Haji, Trukkr is digitizing and modernizing Pakistan’s logistics market—a market alued at more than $35 billion. The company’s integrated SaaS platform and embedded finance solutions help trucking companies better conduct fleet management, trip coordination, invoicing, and lending operations. Recently securing a Non-Banking Finance Company (NBFC) license from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), Trukkr also provides working capital and fleet financing solutions, as well as a robust loan management suite.

“Pakistan’s logistics sector is full of potential, and Trukkr is helping move it forward—by giving operators the financial tools they need to scale and succeed in a competitive market,” Yango Group CEO Daniil Shuleyko said. “We’re here to support that transformation with our experience and technology. This is the kind of local innovation we want to help grow, and it’s just the start of our work in Pakistan.”

Pakistan Bolsters Cybersecurity in Fintech as NIBAF Teams Up with Risk Associates

In a bid to enhance cybersecurity for the financial sector, the National Institute of Banking and Finance-Pakistan (NIBAF Pakistan) partnered with Risk Associates to deliver training on the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). The training featured cybersecurity professionals and representatives from leading Pakistan-based banks and financial institutions, and was led by Risk Associates, an internationally recognized certification body and PCI Qualified Security Assessor (QSA).

The training included discussion on payment security architecture, cardholder data protection, and compliance lifecycle management. The partnership between NIBAF Pakistan and Risk Associates was made official via a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in June.

“Together with NIBAF Pakistan, we are delivering forward-looking training that empowers banking professionals to anticipate, adapt, and respond to dynamic threats with operational precision and confidence,” Risk Associates CEO Aftab Rizvi said in a statement. NIBAF Pakistan Co-CEO Lubna Farooq Malik noted that insofar as the financial industry is at the “forefront of profound digital transformation,” it must also lead the way in developing solutions that keep the financial industry and its customers safe.

Headquartered in Bella Vista, NSW, Australia and founded in 2004, Risk Associates assess and certifies businesses in order to establish their commitment to maintaining high security standards and complying with regulatory requirements. The company offers a variety of robust preventive, detective, and corrective cybersecurity solutions, and is a specialist in cybersecurity, risk, compliance, information governance, strategy, and training.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Latvian fintech Handwave secured $4.2 million in seed funding for its palm-based payment and identity platform.
  • Deutsche WertpapierService Bank (dwpbank) agreed to acquire Berlin-based brokerage-as-a-service platform lemon.markets.
  • Dutch paytech Mollie launched in Hungary, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Alaan, an AI-powered corporate spend management platform based in the UAE, secured $48 million in Series A funding.
  • Israel-based startup QuamCore raised $26 million to build one million qubit quantum computer.
  • Open banking and embedded finance platform Tarabut secured in-principle approval from the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates (CBUAE).

Central and Southern Asia

  • Uzbekistan-based fintech and digital bank Uzum locked in $70 million in equity financing at a valuation of $1.5 billion.
  • Logistics fintech Trukkr secured investment from UAE-based tech company Yango Group.
  • Indian debt collections platform DPDzero raised $7 million in Series A funding.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Mexican fintech platform Finsus acquired the technology of merchant cash advance platform Anticipa.
  • Stablecoin-based financial infrastructure company VelaFi forged a strategic partnership with stablecoin-powered payment network Noah.
  • Clip launched its all-in-one (AIO) point-of-sale (POS) device in Mexico.
  • Cross-border payment platform dLocal unveiled its SmartPix solution that enable merchants to process tokenized Pix payments including recurring and on-demand charges.

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Photo by Abuzar Xheikh on Unsplash

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