Finance automation and corporate credit card startup Ramp has raised $150 million in a funding round co-led by Khosla Ventures and Founders Fund.
Police have arrested 37 members of a criminal gang that operated a phish-for-subcription Website that duped up to 70,000 UK victims into entering their bank details at fraudulent internet sites.
Revolut has reportedly made a $100 million-plus bet on Mexico's remittance market to cover short-term expenses and plan for expansion.
Welcome to The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Thursday 18 April 2024 Funding and investments Wagestream, a financial benefits platform used by employers at Asda, Burger King, Bupa and Hilton, has raised a further £17.5million in funding from new and existing investors. Wagestream will use the latest funding to expand its range of services as well as to become a ‘complete financial platform’ for low and middle-income workers. Manchester-based fintech Lemon has successfully raised its pre-seed funding round, securing £500,000 to support the business through the next stage of development. As well as SFC Capital and Pitchdrive, Lemon has also received angel investment from ex partner of debt advisory at KPMG, Nick Dodd, and co-founder of fintech communications agency SkyParlour Started, who both join the Lemon advisory board. Bridgewise, the AI-based analysis platform for global securities, has completed a $21million funding round, bringing its total capital raised to $35million. The round was led by SIX Group with participation also from Group11 and L4 Venture Builder. It will use the new funding to accelerate market penetration and growth. Pliant, a business-to-business (B2B) credit card platform has closed more than €18million in Series A extension financing, led by PayPal Ventures. Existing investors SBI Investment, Motive Ventures and Alstin Capital also participated in the round. This brings Pliant’s total Series A financing to more than €50 million. Pliant will now pursue expansion outside the EU, starting with the UK. Ramp is completing a $150million Series D-2 funding round, raising the company’s valuation to $7.65billion. This round was co-led by Khosla Ventures and Founders Fund, with additional new investors Sequoia Capital, Greylock, as well as 8VC. This new funding will allow Ramp “to triple down on the next wave of innovation to deliver much more value for our customers”. Additional funding Fortis, a retail tech and fintech solutions provider tailored for SMEs, has completed a Series A funding round, raising $20million in investment led by Opportunity Venture (Asia). This funding marks a significant milestone in Fortis’ journey as it embarks on a mission to shakeup the retail tech and fintech landscape in the Middle East and North Africa region. Flatpay, a Danish payments solutions provider for SMEs, has secured €45million in a Series B funding round. The round was led by Dawn Capital, with also participation from Seed Capital and other investors. Funding will be used to further develop the product, expand into new markets as well as rapidly scale its team. M&As Huma Finance, a tokenisation platform, and Arf, a global transactions services platform, have merged to expand global blockchain powered financial services. The merger combines two of the most prominent blockchain use cases — cross-border payments and tokenisation of real world assets — into a single full-stack platform. The new company expects to surpass $3billion on-chain liquidity volume by the end of 2024. Cloud tokenisation provider TokenEx, and IXOPAY, the independent payments orchestration platform, have agreed to merge. The combined company will be called IXOPAY, a TokenEx Company, and Marc Olesen will lead the combined organisation as CEO. Customers will benefit from a comprehensive platform that enables increased authorisation rates and decreased interchange fees for merchants, along with PCI-certified secure payment data. Partnerships Cryptocurrency company Knaken has unveiled a strategic partnership with OARO, a specialist in digital identification and access control. This collaboration aims to leverage advanced crypto and identification technologies to transform the stadium visitor experience. Mysten Labs, a web3 infrastructure company, has forged a partnership with BytePlus, ByteDance’s enterprise technology arm, to explore collaboration on data warehousing, AI recommendation algorithms, and AI visual algorithms in web3 game platforms and socialFi projects on the Sui blockchain. Alter Domus, a provider of tech-enabled fund administration, private debt, and corporate services for the alternative investment industry, has gone live on Temenos’ automated fund management platform, implementing the solution in under six months. Aryza Group, a leading provider of financial software solutions, announces its strategic partnership with Dotdigital, an all-in-one customer experience and data platform. This partnership enhances customer experience when they access credit and debt solutions. Bankjoy, a digital banking provider for banks and credit unions across the US, has partnered with Pinwheel, a fintech that helps financial institutions win primacy with frictionless account activation. Through the partnership, Bankjoy will help its customers integrate the Pinwheel Prime digital deposit switching solution into the digital banking experiences for over 70 banks and credit unions nationwide. Cashflows, a platform that makes it easy for merchants to accept payments, is chosen as a ‘Gold Partner’ for the National Association of Funeral Directors, a representative body for the UK funeral profession. The Gold Partner status makes Cashflows the NAFD’s preferred payment partner for its 4,100 funeral home members. Appointments Camden-based 365 finance has appointed Warren Abbey as its new CEO. Abbey joined 365 finance in 2023 as chief commercial officer. Current CEO and founder Andrew Raphaely transitions to the role of executive vice chairman. Raphaely will also remain actively engaged with the business, supporting Abbey as the board’s principal point of contact with the executive committee, and the business at large. Paymentology, the global issuer processor, appoints Anna Porra as chief revenue officer. She had previously held key positions at organisations including Soldo, Marqeta and Barclaycard. In her new role, Porra will accelerate Paymentology’s global growth with responsibility for sales, marketing partnerships as well as client success. Gigs, the telecom-as-a-service platform, has welcomed Rishi Sachdeva as head of fintech. Sachdeva joins Gigs after six years at Stripe. Based in San Francisco, Sachdeva will lead Gigs’ strategy and growth in the fintech sector, overseeing key partnerships. It follows the promotion of Rafa Plantier, who previously led Fintech and will now serve as head of go-to-market for the organisation. Cross Switch, provider of global payment processing platform CS+, adds two new executives to its leadership team. Mark Chirnside joins Cross Switch to spearhead the expansion of the business in all markets, while Charles Elliman will focus on driving exponential growth in Africa. More hires Mark Jennis has joined the US team of Pirum, the global post trade services fintech, to lead business development for CollateralConnect in North America. He previously held roles at Transcend, PeerNova, DTCC-Euroclear GlobalCollateral, Morgan Stanley as well as Banker Trust. The appointment follows Pirum’s success in growing its ColletaralConnect client-base on both sides of the Atlantic. Creditinfo, a global service provider for credit information and risk management solutions, has named John Cannon as its global chief commercial officer. He will play a key part in promoting financial inclusion globally while bolstering Creditinfo’s international growth. In his new role, John will also be responsible for delivering the right products and services to Creditinfo’s customers to maximise value, as well as identifying new business opportunities. The post This Week in Fintech: TFT Bi-Weekly News Roundup 18/04 appeared first on The Fintech Times.
The post Memecoin Mania Halts! What’s Next For PEPE And WIF Prices This Month? appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News The memecoin industry continues displaying a significant valuation correction, indicating investor’s rising disinterest in it. Further, the top 5 meme coins have recorded a massive correction of over 25% each over the past seven days. With Bitcoin Halving around the corner, the market continues to stumble, highlighting the high possibility of the crypto industry concluding the month of April on a bearish note. Will memecoin experience a second round of surge Post-halving? Pepecoin (PEPE): The PEPE coin price displayed a neutral start to the year, however, as the hype for memecoins gained traction, the PEPE price recorded a jump of over 500% in valuation. Following this, the bulls lost momentum at the resistance of $0.000010. Since then, the price has been trading under a bearish influence. TradingView: PEPE/USDT The PEPE price continues to display a negative trend by recording a correction of approximately 8% within the past 24 hours. Moreover, the memecoin has lost 32.59% within the past seven days and 24.89% over the past 30 days, highlighting increased selling pressure in the crypto industry. The Cross EMA 50-day shows a bearish curve, indicating a strong bearish influence for this altcoin in the market. Furthermore, the technical indicator, MACD, shows a constant red histogram with its averages displaying a steady decline in the chart. If the market holds the PEPE token above the support level, the bulls will regain momentum and prepare to test its upper resistance level of $0.00000785. However, a bearish reversal may pull the price toward its low of $0.00000400. dogwifhat (WIF): Since its launch, the WIF price has gained significant attention in the cryptocurrency market. Following its launch the price recorded a surge of over 2,500%, resulting in the dogwifhat token recording an ATH of $4.85. Since then, the price has been trading negatively and has lost over 50% in valuation. TradingView: WIF/USDT The viral Solana-based memecoin has lost 5.06% within the past 24 hours and 33.89% over the past seven days, indicating a bear power for the memecoin in the crypto industry. Moreover, the Year-to-Date of this altcoin has reduced to +1,589% at the time of writing. The MACD shows a constant red histogram in the chart with its averages showing a steady decline. Moreover, the Simple Moving Average (SMA) displays a bearish price movement, suggesting a negative price sentiment for the WIF token in the coming days. If the bears continue to dominate the market, the dogwifhat (WIF) price will fall to test its crucial support level of $2.09. However, if the bulls regain momentum, the price will prepare to test its upper resistance level of $3.90 in the coming time.
The post BEFE Coin: The Future of Decentralized Finance appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News Decentralized finance is unarguably one of the best stratum of the blockchain sector. Its capacity to give investors opportunities to generate passive income is one reason it stands out amongst other sectors of blockchain. The future of Decentralized Finance is bright with impressive projects springing up that offer better financial services to users and top-notch transparency which is the foundation on which Defi is laid on. BEFE is one of such projects bringing the needed positive turnaround to the Defi sector. We will take a look at how BEFE is advancing Defi in its entirety. Growth Of Decentralized Finance Over The Years The decentralized finance sector has experienced an impressive level of growth over the years. Decentralized finance became an official structure in the year 2020 via Compound (COMP) as investors were able to make passive income from it. During this period, the DEFI space was able to rise to a whopping $16billion from an initial starting mark of about $650milliom. This is due to investors seeing how valuable the Defi space is and getting involved with it fully to generate passive income. Ever since its inception, the space has kept growing with the rise of impressive Defi projects like BEFE which is pushing the DEFI space to greater heights. BEFE has been able to achieve this by implementing innovative solutions to the Defi space to solve lapses that investors could encounter while utilizing it. BEFE Coin, Taking Over The Defi Sector The Defi space is one of the most popular aspects of blockchain known for meeting a number of investors’ needs. However, there are some aspects at which the Defi sector slacks and BEFE has been able to bring needed correction in those aspects. BEFE is fast transforming the Defi sector and this is powered by its partnership with Bitgert. Bitgert is well known for its superb offerings which include scalability, efficiency, zero gas fees and a lot more. BEFE’s partnership with Bitgert has made it possible to extend these utilities to its Defi offerings, making it stand out from every other Defi related project. Now investors can enjoy Defi transactions at a scalable pace which encourages efficiency. It is possible for investors to earn BEFE by staking on Bitgert which largely improves the earnings of investors. BEFE also offers stronger security to the decentralized finance space. This is one of the lapses of Defi as some other projects have been susceptible to hacks but BEFE is untouchable due to its impressive security. This has given investors reason to invest fully on BEFE’s Defi offerings. Conclusion BEFE’s exceptional approach to the Defi industry is one reason it is fast becoming at the forefront of leading Defi projects. BEFE offers nothing but the best of Defi experience. However, it is still important proper researcg is carried out before making any financial decision. Know more on BEFE here.
This ISDA Future Leaders in Derivatives (IFLD) whitepaper sets out guidance for industry stakeholders, regulators and technology providers seeking to harness the power of generative artificial intelligence (genAI) in transforming the over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market.
The post Bitcoin Price is Playing Above the Important Support; Is the Time to Long BTC? appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News The Bitcoin price is facing some extra upward pressure as the token is printing constant bearish candles after failing to surpass $72,000 for over a month. The bulls are trying hard to keep up the bullish momentum, but the bears appear to be poised to restrict the rally below the major resistance. With this, the final resistance zone has become more rigid after the BTC price faced multiple rejections and a massive bullish push is required to slice through the zone. The BTC price hit the local support just above $60,000, a couple of times but the latest bearish push compelled it to drop below the levels. This move has weakened the bulls to some extent, as the upward pressure is expected to escalate further. However, on the other hand, the traders have become pretty uncertain about the next trend as both shorts and longs pile up to some extent. The liquidation heatmap of Bitcoin shows the formation of clusters around $60,758 and later at $60,475 where nearly $55.81 million and $55.35 million shorts are placed as of now. Interestingly, a similar cluster was formed at $62,063 and $62,119.86, with more than $120 million liquidated as the BTC price hit these price levels. However, the next resistance level could be around $62,500 to $62,700, where more than $110 million is placed. The market sentiments are quite bearish right now and hence the upper cluster is yet to thicken a bit. It is now very important to closely observe the lower cluster, which may offer a slight push if these shorts get liquidated. Therefore, yet another bullish push may be triggered but if the buying volume escalates, then a rise beyond $61,800 or even $62,000 may be expected. The short-term price analysis displays the price in the middle of a steep descending trend and one final push towards the lows may lead the levels towards the lower support at $58,800. The stochastic RSI in the 4-hour chart has been squeezed between the resistance and support levels, which suggests a significant drop in bullish & bearish power. Therefore, this substantiates the bearish claim. Hence, the Bitcoin (BTC) price may fall below $59,000 in the coming days, which may attract a bullish trend as the token marks levels lower than this.