Continuing our focus on fintech partnerships, this latest instalment of our FinTech Founders series takes a look at how companies can ensure their business goals are aligned with their partners’ goals to enable effective collaboration and better outcomes. Joining this discussion is Matt Ong, founder and CEO of alternative investment management platform Ctrl Alt; Victor Bastor, founder and CEO of investment bank DAI Magister; and Jacob Ayres-Thomson, founder of machine learning company 3AI. View more videos from our FinTech Founders series here ..read more

Newbury Building Society, a UK-based mutual building society providing mortgage and savings services, has expanded its partnership with French fintech firm Sopra Banking Software (SBS) to power its new app. Newbury Building Society to launch a new app The building society, which operates 10 branches throughout Berkshire, Hampshire and Oxfordshire, has selected the vendor’s mobile app solution as part of its “digital transformation journey”. With self-service capabilities, the software will enable its 75,000 members to view statements, handle deposits, and manage savings and mortgage accounts ..read more

At FinTech Futures, we know that it can be easy to let funding announcements slip you by in this fast-paced industry. That’s why we put together our weekly In Case You Missed It (ICYMI) funding round-up for you to get the latest funding news. Fintoc bags $7 million Chilean B2B fintech start-up Fintoc has raised $7 million in a Series A round led by Propel VC, with additional backing from its seed investor Monashees. Fintoc offers an API-based account-to-account (A2A) payment solution that enables businesses to accept payments directly from customers’ bank accounts. The company ..read more

Here’s our pick of five of the top news stories from the world of finance and tech this week, featuring Jordan Kuwait Bank, Monese, Temenos, Aspiration and more. TabaPay to acquire assets of BaaS fintech Synapse TabaPay offers Synapse a lifeline with acquisition Payment processor TabaPay is to acquire the assets and affiliates of US-based Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform Synapse Financial Technologies for an undisclosed sum. San Francisco-headquartered Synapse filed a Chapter 11 voluntary bankruptcy petition last week. The company had previously laid off over half of its workforce i ..read more

Financial infrastructure platform Fidel API has sold its loyalty business to Enigmatic Smile (ES), a London-headquartered customer rewards technology provider, for an undisclosed sum. Fidel API sells off its loyalty business The sale includes all assets associated with Fidel’s loyalty business, including its customer base, partnerships, staff, technology platform, and the Fidel brand. Founded in 2014, ES offers loyalty programme managers and their clients a reward programme infrastructure. It currently claims to be integrated with over 20 financial enterprises worldwide, including industry h ..read more

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has ordered Kotak Mahindra Bank to “cease and desist” the onboarding of new customers via its online and mobile banking channels and to stop the issuance of new credit cards, effective immediately. Kotak Mahindra Bank barred from onboarding new customers online by RBI Kotak Mahindra Bank, India’s fourth largest private lender, will continue providing services to its existing customers, including credit card customers. The central bank says its actions are “necessitated based on significant concerns arising out of Reserve Bank’s IT Examination of the bank for t ..read more

Revolut says it is planning to increase its global headcount by 40% to around 11,500 staff over the course of 2024. Revolut aims for 11,500 headcount by end of 2024 The UK challenger started the year with a workforce of 8,000 and says that it has so far increased this figure to surpass the 10,000 mark. With Revolut’s latest industry announcement, the digital bank will now look to further this figure to 11,500 by the year’s end. Currently, it has over 70 live job listings posted online for roles predominantly across its sales, customer support and financial crime teams. Revolut posted its fir ..read more

UK regtech Encompass Corporation has promoted Stuart Barnard, its VP of finance and business operations, to the position of chief financial officer (CFO). Encompass names Stuart Barnard as new CFO Effective this month, Barnard is to take “ultimate responsibility” for the KYC solution provider’s global finance and business operations in the newly created position and will lead the firm’s legal, finance, people, revenue operations, IT and information security functions. Barnard was first hired by the regtech back in 2016 as head of finance at its division in Sydney, Australia. He then moved to ..read more

As I write this, it’s Earth Day 2024. It’s very early in the morning, but LinkedIn has already started filling up with posts to mark the occasion. We must ensure that banking technology follows a more planet-friendly path than plastic This year’s theme is ‘planet vs plastics’, with Earthday.org, the NGO behind Earth Day, demanding a 60% reduction in the production of all plastics by 2040 and advocating for widespread awareness of the health risks they pose. I am a strong supporter of this movement. When I was a child, I lived in Fiji, which was a beautiful place for a ten-year-old. It felt l ..read more

Zafin, a Canada-based provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) core modernisation and transformation solutions for banks and credit unions, has announced a strategic leadership transition which will see Al Karim Somji step down as company CEO after more than two decades in the role. New Zafin CEO Charbel Safadi (Image: LinkedIn) Somji, who also founded the company in 2002, will remain as a member of Zafin’s board of directors, offering support to the company’s new CEO, Charbel Safadi, who assumes the role with immediate effect. Having served as group president of Zafin for the last five mont ..read more