News
Mastercard agreed Tuesday to acquire fintech company Ethoca for an undisclosed sum in a transaction expected to close in the second quarter of this year, according to a Mastercard press release.
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Moneyhub, the financial management platform, has integrated Starling Bank into its Payment Gateway. This makes Starling Bank the first challenger bank to support PSD2 PISP (Payment Initiation Service Provider) legislation.
Moneyhub’s integration with Starling Bank’s API will mean users can initiate a payment straight from one account to the other, at a fraction of the time and cost to organisations of traditional payments. This follows the implementation of Open Banking in January 2018 and comes ahead of the new requirement that all banks must support PSD2 legislation by September 2019.
This also means that Starling Bank users, currently tallying around half a million, can use features in the Moneyhub app such as Smart Nudges to help them save more or invest more.
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CreditDigital, a B2B lending platform, has secured a £2 million investment from London-based VC fund Fuel Ventures.
The startup offers a lending platform that allows businesses to spread their payment over a year whilst paying the vendor or supplier the full cost upfront. CreditDigital is able to compete with banks on rates and can approve purchases up to £15,000 instantly and up to £250,000 within one working day.
A key part and especially useful element is that the payment platform can be integrated into any B2B e-commerce checkout or existing invoice system, thus helping to streamline the whole process
The funds will be used to expand CreditDigital’s business in the UK and increase the product offering, which will allow greater customer flexibility.
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Onfido, a startup which makes technology used to verify customer identities for companies like Revolut, Monzo and Zipcar, has raised £4m of investment from Augmentum Fintech.
The digital identity company has so far managed to raise £48.7m, including this latest investment, from investors including Taavet Hinrikus (Transferwise founder), the venture capital arms of Salesforce and Microsoft as well as Darktrace investor Talis Capital.
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Innovate Finance, the UK's independent industry body for FinTech, has launched its FinTech for Schools initiative. The focus for this is inspiring the next generation of FinTech leaders and developing the ambitions of young people in terms of innovation in financial services.
The FinTech for Schools campaign is designed to encourage young people to understand the increasing importance of digital skills in the workplace, with an emphasis on ensuring the sector is as appealing to girls as it is to boys. It has been shown that by 10 years old, children already have a strong sense of identity of what they can and cannot do. Inspiring young girls, by providing them with a wide variety of role models from diverse backgrounds and skill sets, is a vital first step in creating a new model to deliver real change in terms of diversity.
FinTech is a fast growing sector and so it is increasingly important to approach students to provide them with the education and guidance which will help them to make the right decisions which will enable them to enter the industry.
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Playfair Capital, a UK seed investor, has raised a $32 million fund that will allow it to continue investing in promising early-stage tech startups.
The VC firm was started in 2013 by Federico Pirzio-Biroli, who is the new fund’s sole LP, and it is an early investor in companies including Stripe, Ravelin, Thought Machine, CryptoFacilities and Mapillary.
The firm is focusing on early-stage companies across all sectors, but specifically deep tech — e.g. artificial intelligence, machine learning and computer vision — and B2B SaaS and marketplaces, which have worked well for Playfair in the past.
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According to research by Volterra Partners government-led digital tax initiatives, such as Making Tax Digital (MTD), could boost the UK economy by £6.9 billion a year, or £46 billion over a five-year period.
It said companies may struggle at first with adjusting to the new tax laws, but after the first hurdle it should streamline the process as they apply new digital tools which will help them adapt to the changing demands.
MTD will have the biggest impact on sole traders, with an average annual gain of £1,900.
The biggest gains will be for businesses in London and the south-east, whilst the manufacturing and retail sectors will be the most positively affected verticals in the UK.
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Tessian, a cybersecuity startup based in London, has successfully raised $42 million in a round led by Sequoia Capital. Other firms that participated in the round include Latitude, Balderton Capital, and Accel.
The company was founded in 2013 and originally known as CheckRecipient. It applies machine learning to enterprise email security in order to eliminate threats such as spear phishing and misdirected emails. The way it does that is by analysing the historical email data and then looking for anomalies in communications going forwards. Tessian’s mission is to help organisations protect people processing data using technology that empowers, rather than restricts the way they work.
Tessian will use the new funds to grow its team and expand its product line.
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Klarna, an online Swedish payments firm, has issued shares in a bid to increase funds from existing investors. It is intending to raise 1bn Swedish krona, equivalent to £82m. Klarna will also launch a larger external fundraising round later in the year.
The fintech company received an investment of $2.5bn in January from rapper Snoop Dogg and this was accompanied by a marketing campaign in which he rebrands himself as Smoooth Dogg. This has helped to increase the presence of the Swedish company.
Klarna acquired a Swedish banking license last year and this, alongside the new funds, will help it to expand into several new countries in 2019.
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