Fintech, Finance, Technology, Banking Highlights – 30 May 2018
PayPal acquires Jetlore
As part of our continued commitment to provide merchants and consumers with more personalized commerce experiences, I am pleased to announce that PayPal has acquired Jetlore, an AI-powered prediction platform for some of the world’s top retailers.
Headquartered in San Mateo, Calif., Jetlore was founded in 2011 by Ph.D. students from Stanford University’s computer science program with the goal of applying the power of machine learning to the retail market. Jetlore’s proprietary prediction platform empowers global online retailers such as Uniqlo and Nordstrom Rack to deliver personalized customer experiences to increase sales and loyalty. The company is led by many pioneers in retail AI, including Eldar Sadikov, Montse Medina and Sergey Andreev, who will join PayPal.
With Jetlore’s talent and AI-powered technology, we will enhance and accelerate PayPal Marketing Solutions, adding new capabilities that continue to expand PayPal’s value proposition for merchants beyond the online checkout experience. We share Jetlore’s passion for creating amazing – and personalized – customer experiences and believe their capabilities will accelerate our ability to help merchants optimize content and communication for their customers.
Welcome to PayPal, Jetlore team and customers. Together, we’ll continue to help merchants develop even more meaningful customer relationships.
Intercontinental Exchange Agrees to Acquire TMC Bonds
Intercontinental Exchange, a operator of global exchanges and clearing houses and provider of data and listings services, announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire TMC Bonds LLC for $685 million in cash.
The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2018, subject to customary regulatory and anti-trust approvals, and is not expected to materially impact 2018 financial results or capital returns.
Established in 2000, TMC Bonds is a premier fixed income marketplace, supporting anonymous trading across multiple protocols, including click-to-trade and request-for-quote (RFQ) in various asset classes including Municipals, Corporates, Treasuries, Agencies and Certificates of Deposit.
“TMC Bonds will offer a new and complementary access point to liquidity for our customers and expand our portfolio of diverse solutions in the global fixed income markets across analytics, execution and post-trade,” said ICE President Benjamin Jackson. “As the fixed income markets continue to automate and migrate to electronic trading, ICE’s trading and data infrastructure offer customers more choices to access liquidity, conduct price discovery and manage risk in more efficient ways.”
“By leveraging both ICE’s expansive reach and breadth of data and analytics, TMC’s clients will have access to workflow solutions far superior to what’s currently available in the market,” added Thomas Vales, TMC’s Chief Executive Officer.
Pleo smart company cards secures $16m Series A investment for European expansion
The London and Copenhagen based fintech startup Pleo, that offers smart company payment cards to automate expense reports, announced a $16M Series A financing round led by Kinnevik, a leading European venture fund based in Stockholm, with participation from existing investors Creandum, Founders and Seedcamp.
The round brings the total amount raised by the company to $23M. Pleo combines payment cards that can be easily assigned to employees with individually set limits, with software and mobile apps to automatically match receipts and track all company spending in real-time with detailed analytics. Pleo does away with expense reports, and automates bookkeeping tasks as it integrates directly with accounting software providers, saving companies time and money. 10 new businesses join Pleo every day, most of them from the UK.
Currently only available in the UK and Denmark, around 1500 companies have switched to Pleo just in the last year: “It’s quite amazing what we have achieved in just a year in only two countries, since our launch from beta. We’ve seen tremendous growth and great reception, due to our very focused and localised approach. Our NPS score is around 80, we receive incredible reviews and have negative churn, all very clear indicators that we are on the right path. We are now ready to expand our services across other Europe countries, where we have already see a lot of demand. The backing from Kinnevik, one of the most reputable European investment funds, will help us achieve our ambitious goals,” said Jeppe Rindom, who co-founded Pleo with Niccolo Perra, both Seedcamp alumni and early employees at another Danish startup success, Tradeshift.
