News
Plum, the world’s first AI-powered personal money management chatbot has attracted financing of $4.5million. This brings total investment in the firm to $6.3 million.
Plum have some pretty impressive figures to talk about: the company achieved 433% user growth in one year, growing from 75,000 to 400,000 users.
Plum will be one of the first UK-based companies to offer both iOS and Messenger, allowing users to choose the most convenient platform for interacting with its money assistant, truly bringing interactions to where the customer is.
Plum will use the funding to expand its staff in both its London and Athens offices, to focus on its multi-platform strategy and to expand into new markets.
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Sainsbury’s is launching the UK's first till-free store at its Holborn Circus branch to allow customers to pay through their phones.
Customers can use the Smartshop app to scan groceries as they go round the store, pay in the app and scan a code before leaving to confirm payment.
The store, which has been chosen as 82% of payments at the London branch are currently cashless, has been refurbished to remove all tills and self-checkouts in a three-month experiment.
The in-app payment technology is available in seven other Central London stores, in Blackfriars, Mansion House, Paternoster Square, Shoreditch, Clapham North, Clapham High Street and Clapham Old Town, however, the Holborn branch is the first to go completely digital.
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Perkbox, Europe’s fastest growing employee experience platform, has raised £13.5M in equity funding to support the worldwide expansion plans for its employee experience platform.
The round is led primarily by existing investor Draper Esprit, alongside long-term Perkbox angels.
This funding will help finance part of the company’s expansion operations in its recently launched markets, including Australia and France. Alongside this, it will also help scale the development and distribution of Perkbox’s new products – Perkbox Medical, Perkbox Insights and the platform’s card-linked PerksGO feature, which were all launched in Q4’2018.
Perkbox had raised a conservative £11M in equity funding so far, making it one of the most capital efficient SaaS businesses operating in Europe.
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Fintech startup Tully has launched to help solve the UK’s consumer debt problem.
The startup is free for consumers and created to improve financial education and make it easier for people to manage their money and repay debts faster.
The start-up’s innovative approach to money management has caught the attention of like-minded industry names such as Nationwide.
Currently, the debt of an average UK household has reached a record £15,400, amounting to a combined total of £482bn across the UK. Thousands of people struggle with debt every year and it is estimated that the accompanying physical and mental health impacts resulting from debt stress, costs UK employers as much as £51 billion per annum. Tully aims to alleviate this.
To read more, click here.
In addition to announcing a 48% surge in revenue for the year ended February, British e-tailer revealed on Wednesday that Brian Small is to join its board as an independent non-executive director with immediate effect.
Small was chief financial officer of JD Sports for 15 years until October last year, when he announced his retirement from executive life.
Prior to that, he was operations finance director at healthcare company Intercare and has also been finance director of a number of other companies.
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The NHS must adopt new technology in order to survive, the health secretary has warned, as a report calls for widespread use of robots and artificial intelligence.
The study by the Taxpayers Alliance suggests 10% of the NHS budget could be saved by the introduction of “automation” across the health service. This could be aided by the fact there is greater public demand for use of automated systems to book appointments, with 9 out of 10 people preferring to book GP appointments online.
The study estimates that the amount of staff time saved by greater use of such technology is equivalent to £12.5bn a year - around a tenth of its budget.
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UK advertisers spent £13.4bn on digital ads last year – a 15% boost on 2017.
Analysing UK ad revenue from 64 participants, combined with additional data from Warc, the study also found that for the first time ever ad spend on smartphones overtook desktop to account for 51% of all media budgets. In total, advertisers spent £6.9bn on smartphone ads, up 2017’s £5.2bn.
Along with mobile, video was found to be a driving force behind digital ad spend, accounting for 44% of the total display market at £2.31bn.
Banner ad spend clocked in at £1.19bn.
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TrueLayer, Europe’s leading provider of Open Banking and financial APIs, has partnered with business current account and digital admin assistant ANNA Money.
The partnership will enable ANNA to provide its customers with enhanced Open Banking-based services including account aggregation and financial data which will make VAT calculations via its assistant app much faster and easier.
There are also potential plans to integrate TrueLayer’s Payments API into ANNA’s platform. This will enable ANNA’s customers to also make and receive payments via the cheaper, faster and more secure route of payment initiation.
To read more, click here.
Cytora, a provider of AI-powered solutions for the commercial insurance industry has announced its £25 million Series B funding round led by EQT Ventures. Other participants include existing investors Cambridge Innovation Capital, Parkwalk and a number of angel investors.
The company applies AI to public and proprietary data, including property construction features, company financials, and local weather – combined with an insurance company’s internal data – to better predict risk and ensure more transparent pricing.
The funding will be used to accelerate the expansion of Cytora’s product suite and scaling into new geographies.
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LendInvest secures up to £200 million in funding from HSBC UK to back entry into home loan mortgages
LendInvest, the marketplace for mortgages, has secured funding of up to £200 million from HSBC UK, one of the world’s largest banking and financial services organisations, bringing further institutional capital to its platform.
This new funding will enable LendInvest to enter the regulated home loan market for the first time, marking the company’s next step towards achieving its ambition of becoming a whole-of-market mortgage provider. Launching in 2019, LendInvest’s first home loan product will be available to homeowners that require short-term bridging finance for terms up to 12 months.
To read more, click here.