Fintech, Finance, Technology, Banking Highlights – 7 November 2017
TerraPay and Wari partner for cross-border money transfers to mobile wallets and bank accounts
TerraPay, the world’s first mobile payments switch, and Wari, a global platform offering digital financial services have signed a strategic partnership agreement that will strengthen the remittances ecosystem in 35 key African markets.
The partnership is aimed at interconnecting the global money transfer operators with mobile wallets and bank accounts in Africa.
With this partnership Wari’s customers across Africa can send money to TerraPay’s network of mobile wallets in Africa and all bank accounts in India in real time. Also, TerraPay’s global partners with a presence in 160 countries would be able to send remittances instantly to Wari’s digital payments network including mobile wallets and bank accounts across 35 African markets.
ArchOver surpasses £50 million lending milestone
ArchOver, the peer-to-peer (P2P) business lending platform, has facilitated over £50 million of lending with no losses or late payments.
The platform has always been available to both institutional and retail investors, with both groups lending under the same terms and conditions. ArchOver will continue to focus on developing its lending strategies to meet growing market demand, while maintaining its unrivaled combination of transparency, equality and security with investors selecting the companies they wish to lend to.
With £4 million in total shareholder and investment capital, this latest achievement demonstrates the strength of ArchOver’s business model as it matches prudent spending with the rapid growth of its loan book. It is backed by parent company the Hampden Group, one of the UK’s most successful financial support services firms, which saw the potential in ArchOver’s business model early on.
NEX Optimisation provides central clearing connectivity for FX risk mitigation service
NEX Optimisation, which helps clients reduce complexity and optimise resources across the transaction lifecycle, announces today that it has provided central clearing connectivity for its FX risk mitigation service in non-deliverable forwards.
The clearing connectivity capability enables dealers to flag trades that are part of a risk mitigation cycle for automatic submission to a central counterparty clearing house (CCP).
Clients of the Reset FX risk mitigation service can now benefit from direct connectivity to CCPs allowing trades matched between two counterparties to be submitted directly for clearing rather than having to be re-submitted for secondary matching prior to communication to a CCP.
Sequoia India leads Series B funding round for investment research outfit Smartkarma
Smartkarma, Asia’s largest provider of independent investment research, today announced it has closed a Series B round of financing led by Sequoia India, which brings the company’s total funding to US $21 million.
Smartkarma is disrupting the traditional model of investment research, which has long been dominated by investment banks. It is a model in a state of flux: banks are under pressure from regulators to improve pricing transparency and resolve inherent conflicts between their research and investment banking departments. Many investment banks are also downsizing research desks due to cost constraints, resulting in a decline in the depth and breadth of coverage of certain stocks, assets and sectors.
