Fintech, Finance, Technology, Banking Highlights – 8 March 2018
Browser-based payments startup RateX raises $3 million
RateX, a Singapore-based payments startup has raised S$3million (US$2.3million) in a pre-series A funding round – among the largest pre-series A funding rounds to date in Southeast Asia.
Participating investors include Alpha JWC Ventures, Insignia Ventures Partners, alongside other various strategic angel investors.
RateX is a free browser extension that automatically provides shoppers with the lowest exchange rate at no transaction fee for overseas purchases through e-commerce platforms. It also allows users to automatically apply coupon codes of their choice upon checkout. RateX seamlessly integrates with some of the largest globally recognized e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, TaoBao, Lazada, Singapore Airlines, AirAsia, Expedia, among others. It also works closely with the likes of payment processors Adyen and Alipay. Till date, RateX’s users have saved over S$264,000 (US$200,000) through lowered exchange rates and transaction fees, and S$396,000 (US$300,000) through discount coupons offered at checkout via RateX.
Jake Goh, CEO and Co-Founder of RateX said, “Our vision is a simple one – at a time when online commerce is booming, we want shoppers to pay less for their overseas purchases. We are doing this by solving ecommerce and financial inefficiencies inherent in cross-border commerce. These include mark-ups around transaction fees, foreign exchange rates, as well as a lack of consumer awareness around available discounts and promotions.”
Finastra to port products to Microsoft Azure
Finastra and Microsoft have formed a strategic alliance to deliver secure, flexible and cost effective financial services cloud solutions.
As part of the alliance, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s enterprise-ready trusted cloud platform, will underpin FusionFabric.cloud as Finastra’s strategic cloud platform. In addition, Finastra will launch a selection of its global payments and retail banking products on Azure over the course of this year. The news was announced today at Finastra’s regional flagship thought leadership event, Finastra Universe, in Frankfurt.
Simon Paris, Deputy CEO at Finastra said, “As we change the way software is written, deployed, consumed and monetized with our FusionFabric.cloud open architecture, it makes sense to team up with a trusted technology powerhouse like Microsoft which shares our values in providing secure, accessible and modern technology in high performance environments. FusionFabric.cloud completely opens our software up to third parties, and our broad solution set is unparalleled, enabling us to revolutionize the traditional development model and pave the way for future generations to embrace a collaborative ecosystem approach. The Azure cloud ensures we are best placed to make this happen and offer our customers robust technology on a secure and proven platform.”
ABN Amro Chooses Wolters Kluwer and SAS for regulatory compliance project
ABN AMRO, the third largest bank in the Netherlands with more than 22,000 employees, has chosen Wolters Kluwer and SAS to provide a truly integrated finance, risk and regulatory reporting software solution.
The implementation of the software is part of the bank’s major transformation project, the Finance and Risk Architecture Alignment Initiative (FRAAI), which is designed to better meet increasing requests internally as well as from regulatory bodies for ever more granular or different data within shorter time lines.
Better management of high-quality data and improved risk analytics are key pillars to meet the increasing need for control, intelligence and insight in the bank’s performance. At the same time the bank aims to optimize its IT maintenance costs, promote automation and increase the efficiency and agility of the finance and risk processes.
Together, Wolters Kluwer and SAS will provide the software component ABN AMRO needs to achieve these goals.
