In today’s profile we are featuring Steve Round, the Co-Founder of SaaScada. Who are you and what’s your background? Steve Round, Co-Founder of SaaScada I’m Steve Round – Co-Founder of SaaScada and in a nut shell: 7 years as Chair, Ecology Building Society – building a greener society. 10 years as Chair, The Big Issue Foundation – a hand up not a handout. Founder of The Change Account – cloud based bank account for people in debt, homeless and low income Co-Founder SaaScada – a cloud-native banking platform enabling banks to offer first class banking services to all. Non-Executive Director a ..read more

Today’s profile features Claus Nielsen, CEO & Co-Founder of CXFacts. CXFacts provides a SaaS platform for unparalleled bank insights on their quality of service for corporate treasuries and as well unparalleled corporate customer insights for banks. One solution, globally, for both the sell-side and the buy-side. Who are you and what’s your background? I spent 25 years in Corporate Banking, heading different advisory entities within the Transaction Banking area, both in Nordic based banks as well as one of the large international banks. I also spent more than a decade in Financial Consul ..read more

Does your bank still have legions of customer service agents bashing keyboards and phones? Most banks do. The leading financial players are way, way ahead of you. We deployed a chatbot at my bank a few years ago. Customers responded really, really well to it. The first-time resolution rates were utterly astonishing – and this was 5 years ago. I checked in with my colleagues recently to see how the chatbot is doing today. I can’t give precise numbers – but think of a super-super-super high percentage rate (a rate you’d genuinely be astonished by) and that, dear reader, is how effective th ..read more

An ‘artist’s impression’ of the engine room of a bank (thanks to the imagination of ChatGPT) Here’s an opinion piece from Ewan published earlier today on LinkedIn: UniCredit is rumoured to be interested in buying Banking-as-a-Service player, Vodeno. So says a Bloomberg report this morning. Just what would that do to the European banking landscape? It would electrify it. For the longest time I have been obsessing over BaaS — and by extension, Open Banking/Open Finance. In various chief positions in banks over the years, I have felt the acute pressure to get it right, especially when the bank’s ..read more

It’s almost time for Stockholm FinTech Week and our editor Ewan is very much looking forward to attending. There is still time to purchase your tickets and flights. Will we see you there? Our editor Ewan is heading out tomorrow evening and will be on the hunt for interesting FinTech and financial services technology firms to profile here on FinTech Profile. You can find his LinkedIn profile here. If you’re a founder or CEO of a FinTech, drop me a note (emma@fintechprofile.com) and I’ll send you the standard questions to answer. Once you’ve completed them, send them back and I’ll get your inte ..read more

I tell you what, I really enjoyed visiting Bahrain. Really enjoyed it. I liked everything. I liked the small but very modern airport. I really enjoyed meeting local Bahrainis who were all incredibly positive and friendly. And I really appreciated how I was able to use contactless – Apple Pay in my case – everywhere. There was one bump in my GCC Contactless Challenge that I’d set myself and it happened on Day 1, hour 1 of my visit: I walked out of the airport to the taxi rank and was directed to the first taxi on the rank. The chap was very friendly. “Do you take cards?” I asked – as I always d ..read more

Hello from Doha, Qatar. I have had a great time with my on-going GCC Contactless Challenge here in Doha. Everything – and I do mean everything – has been utterly seamless from a contactless/Apple Pay standpoint. I haven’t had to use cash, or even credit card at any point. Now, again, it’s worth pointing out that this is because I have been routinely paying my hotel rooms in full when I check in (via Apple Pay). Otherwise I would have had to resort to credit card – because there isn’t yet a method of ‘paying’ or ‘holding’ a deposit via contactless. Yet. So that’s been my trick to get round tha ..read more

I think I am going to need some help from some Kuwaiti locals or expats to fully get to grips with contactless Kuwait. Here’s a reminder about the ‘Contactless Challenge’ I set myself as I began my FinTech Tour around the GCC countries: I wanted to see how easily I could ‘exist’ in each country without ever using a physical card or physical money. Ideally I want to try and only use my phone or Apple Watch to pay for everything. I also included app usage here too – so in many cases, the transaction wouldn’t be contactless at all, it would be ‘digital’ (for example, ordering food via Talabat or ..read more

This is my favourite photo of my trip to Saudi Arabia. I know from closely browsing the Visit Saudi website that there are some much better-looking vistas across the Kingdom (like, for example Al Hada Road). But that hasn’t been my focus for this trip. I was aiming to see just how things have been developing in the Saudi ecosystem. I took the photo yesterday at the LEAP event’s Food Court area which featured an array of food trucks offering all sorts of different foods. I headed for the Dominos food truck!) The poster itself was on the side of one of the food trucks with a lot of people queui ..read more

Now then I caught this one the other day and made a note to write about it – the job title is Head of Crowdfunding. That’s it. There’s a small write-up from the recruiter, Huxley, aaaaand that’s about all the information! Here’s what’s published on the LinkedIn add: On behalf of our client, we are recruiting for a Head of Crowdfunding for a Financial Services / Investment company. The position will be based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The role will be reporting to the Head of Finance Fintech background is preferable / Experience in Fintech platforms CMA 1 or CMA 5 would be a plus. Looking for s ..read more