Fintech, Finance, Technology, Banking Highlights – 26 March 2018
Atom bank joins Faster Payments
Atom bank, the UK’s first bank built exclusively for smartphone and tablet, has joined the Faster Payments Scheme as a direct participant and migrated all traffic across its retail deposit book to the real-time payment scheme.
The Durham-based bank launched in 2016 and, since then has introduced a range of Fixed Saver products, Secured Business Lending and Residential Mortgages. New bank entrants often connect to Faster Payments via another bank. Being a real time and direct Faster Payments participant will enable Atom bank to connect customers and services directly to the payment system.
Mark Mullen, CEO at Atom bank said: “We are delighted to have become a member of Faster Payments and this is a critical milestone in our Atom journey.
Our customers expect real-time services so our joining Faster Payments enables them to send or receive money knowing that it will be instantaneous, safe and simple. Given most customers manage so much of their lives on their phone, this partnership is a huge step in helping them to better manage their finances through our app”.
Candex Raises $3.5 Million To Conquer The Pain Of Enterprise Payments
Candex, the simplest way businesses engage, track and pay for high volume services, has raised $3.5 million of series seed funding from Edenred Capital Partners, Partech Ventures, Advisors.Fund, Camp One Ventures, NFX, Tekton Ventures, Big Sur Ventures and fintech angel Mark Goines.
The financing positions Candex to accelerate its business in Fortune 500 customers and beyond.
Companies are taking advantage of the gig economy and using more vendors than ever to compete and stay nimble. In the typical large enterprise organization, admin layers across departments inefficiently cope with the 90 percent of tail service vendors that account for only five percent of spend. Sometimes the administrative costs exceed what is actually paid.
“It is amazing how much time and effort gets wasted when a typical organization tries to work with small vendors,” says Candex co-founder and CEO Jeremy Lappin. “Candex brings the speed and ease of consumer payment apps to large businesses, leveraging a private blockchain to ensure compliance and massively streamline financial system records.”
InsurTech cloud-company Insly raises EUR2.2 million
Insly, a cloud-based insurance platform, announces an investment of € 2.2 million led by Concentric and Black Pearls VC. Insly is a rising star in the global effort to bring the traditionally bureaucratic, paper based business of insurance trading into the modern day. The London-based company is serving 180 customers in 40 countries, with close to 2 million euros of revenue in 2017. Insly is turning a profit from its existing customers.
The raised funds will go towards developing the platform further, scaling the business and expanding into new markets. ‘We have proven the value of our product on several markets,’ says Risto Rossar, the CEO of Insly. ‘It is now a matter of scaling it all up. We will strengthen our position in the MGA and P&C insurance companies segment as well as continue with the geographical expansion with an immediate focus on the Polish market.’
‘We have been keeping an eye on the insurtech landscape for some time and it has been a challenge to find a company that has a long term vision and an actual, proven value proposition,’ says Kjartan Rist, Managing Partner of Concentric. ‘Insly has shown its capability to change the archaic insurance industry.’
