The Fintech Fix 03/11/2022

Welcome to The Fintech Fix, where we cover the biggest fintech stories of the working week. Whether it’s the next groundbreaking trend in crypto or a new partnership that’s about to change the global economic landscape, this is the place to keep up with the breaking news of the future.

Growth is Key

As we race through the final quarter of the year, fintech’s biggest movers and shakers are bolstering up their operations, both internally and externally, to leave a quintessential mark on 2022. One area where this is evident comes from growth – from million-dollar funding deals to world-first payment solutions, the industry is proving that sometimes, bigger does mean better.

A monumental leap for the NFT movement, Supply@ME and VeChain announced that the NFT underpinning the first Inventory Monetisation transaction has officially been minted on the VeChain blockchain. Representing a new way for vehicle manufacturers to access capital, the €1.6 million transaction offers a new asset class for investors. The move is also the first in Supply@Me’s and VeChain’s further collaborations in the coming months, with Inventory Monetisation transactions worth up to $8.5 million.

“Our Inventory Monetisation facility offers a new, more cost-effective alternative for businesses to free up significant levels of working capital,” said Alessandro Zamboni, CEO at Supply@ME. “In VeChain, we have found the ideal, visionary partner to progress this path using digital assets and we are looking forward to offering access to this vast new market to more investors.”

In the M&A space, pet insurer ManyPets Inc. continues its quest for US domination with its acquisition of Digital Edge Insurance Company from Munich Re Digital Partners US Holding Corporation. With a presence of 85% in the US market, acquiring Digital Edge will allow the ManyPets group to underwrite its policies, currently undertaken by Accredited Surety and Casualty Company, Inc. The insurer’s foothold in the US was solidified by their astronomical Series D funding round back in 2021, where they secured $350 million and attained Unicorn status.

Another win for the insurtech sector, wefox has opened its third tech hub, now in the city of Milan, providing further investment into AI innovation and solidifying itself as a global technology disruptor. With the first two hubs established in Paris and Barcelona, the new location will welcome a wealth of new expert talent to the wefox workforce, expanding their once 650-person business in 2021, to 1600.

“We have proved already that AI helps us to increase product innovation, it increases productivity for our brokers, and it reduces fraud,” said Sergi Baños, the Chief Technology Officer at, wefox. “ In Milan, we will invent and build new technology to accelerate our embedded insurance products through our affinity partnerships.

Partnerships for Payments

Payment partnerships have reached a sonorous peak, with financial services providers realising that the gateway to real-time Faster Payments is through technology and collaboration. Workforce management company Papaya Global aims to expand its international payments efforts with the integration of JP Morgan’s payment processing products and solutions. The venture would enable Papaya Global to deliver secure and visible international global payroll services.

“We believe this partnership coupled with our extensive licensing enables the Papaya Global platform to deliver payments at unmatched velocity compared with other market solutions,” said Eynat Guez, Papaya’s CEO and Co-Founder.

The UAE’s first platform bank, Wio Bank, has announced its partnership with fintech Magnati, to improve access to payment processing services for Wio Business customers, mainly SMEs, entrepreneurs, and freelancers. Providing Wio’s SME merchants with secure payment tools, the move aims to simplify the procurement and management payment processing services for Wio’s business clients.

Jayesh Patel, Chief Executive Officer of Wio Bank said: “Building industry ecosystems that enable and nurture the growth of SMEs is a key focus for us at Wio Bank. As the region’s first platform bank, we continuously explore new ways to help our customers solve their business challenges and our partnership with Magnati does exactly that.

Open baking trailblazer, Raisin, has announced the migration of its UK platform to ClearBank. UK customers of Raisin will now have access to faster payments through ClearBanks embedded banking platform – the latter underpinning the FSCS-protected accounts of Raisin UK customers. From a securities perspective, customers will have access to the ‘Confirmation of Payee’ feature, where ClearBank’s cloud-based API will add another layer of security when it comes to transferring funds.

Expansion inside and out

Keeping with the theme of growth, neobank favourite Starling Bank has revealed their team increase of 20% since the start of 2022, adding up to more than 2000 employees. With talent scattered across Cardiff (1000), London (650), and Southampton (400), the bank expects to continue its workforce expansion by 10% at the end of the year. New hires will be bulking up some of Starling’s most dynamic teams, including engineering, financial crime, customer service, and card operations.

“We’re a British Bank full of brilliant talent and we’re opening our doors to more hires as we continue in our mission to change banking for good,” said Anne Boden, founder and CEO of Starling Bank. “Our new office is based in between the financial district of the city and London’s Silicon Roundabout – the perfect location for Starling, which stands apart from traditional banks and challenger banks and is firmly in a category of one.”

On the funding side, data and analytics company, BMLL, has secured $26 million in their latest Series B funding round led by Nasdaq Ventures, FactSet and IQ Capital’s Growth Fund. The backing comes just as the company is beginning to grow rapidly in the last year, from its revenue size to its attainment of Tier 1 clients. The funding will go toward improving BMLL CX efforts, acquiring new global datasets and evolving their engineering capabilities.

“The investment is a testament to the increasing need for more sophisticated tools to understand how markets truly behave and drive performance,” said Paul Humphrey, the CEO of BMLL“Our granular Level 3 data and analytics capabilities help market participants unlock the full potential of the predictive power of historic pricing data and make more informed decisions.”

That concludes your weekly Fintech Fix! Stay tuned for another round of big fintech buzz, right here at FF News.