March 31, 2022 @ 6:25 pm By Tony Zerucha  |  

Visa is launching a new venture designed to help creators produce their own NFTs. The Visa Creator Program aims to help digital-first artists, musicians, fashion designers, and filmmakers generate revenue with NFTs. Each cycle of the program will support a selected group of entrepreneurs looking to… Read More

March 31, 2022 @ 5:45 pm By Tony Zerucha  |  

Today, merchant commerce platform Pine Labs announced a $50 million investment from Vitruvian Partners, a London-headquartered international investment firm. Incorporated in Singapore, Pine Labs’ key investors include Sequoia India, Actis Capital, Temasek, PayPal and Mastercard. Pine Labs serves large, mid-sized and small merchants across India… Read More

March 31, 2022 @ 2:37 pm By Tony Zerucha  |  

Colombian-based consumer and fintech company Leal has raised a $10 million Series A round co-led by Rakuten Group (through its investment arm Rakuten Capital) and IDC Ventures. This will enable the company to launch its co-branded credit card and scale its operation in Mexico. Latin American consumers lack access to… Read More

March 31, 2022 @ 8:23 am By Tony Zerucha  |  

Hypernet Labs, a Web3 company developing enterprise-scale NFT technology, has gone live on Polygon, a full-stack scaling solution on Ethereum, to create digitally-native IDs and functional NFTs through Hypernet.ID and Hypernet.Mint. The integration will allow Hypernet to mint millions of NFTs for companies and creators and,… Read More

March 30, 2022 @ 11:11 pm By Tony Zerucha  |  

  The HBAR Foundation, an organization that directs the development of the Hedera ecosystem by providing grants and other resources, this week announced the launch of a $155 million Crypto Economy Fund to bootstrap Hedera Hashgraph’s decentralized finance ecosystem. The Crypto Economy Fund is focused on… Read More

March 30, 2022 @ 10:53 pm By Tony Zerucha  |  

LayerZero Labs today announced that it raised $135 million in a round co-led by Sequoia Capital, FTX Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz and with participation from Coinbase Ventures, PayPal Ventures, Tiger Global, and Uniswap Labs. This funding round values LayerZero Labs at $1 billion and will accelerate… Read More

March 30, 2022 @ 9:48 pm By Tony Zerucha  |  

CRB Group, the parent company of Cross River Bank, a technology infrastructure provider that offers embedded financial solutions, today announced a $620 million financing. The round was led by Eldridge and Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Investment… Read More

March 30, 2022 @ 3:04 pm By Tony Zerucha  |  

Yokoy, a spend management automation platform, has raised an $80 million Series B round, the company announced today. It was led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Speedinvest, Visionaries Club, Zinal Growth, and existing investors Balderton Capital, Six FinTech Ventures, Left Lane, and Swisscom Ventures…. Read More

March 30, 2022 @ 10:17 am By Tony Zerucha  |  

Medius, a provider of accounts payable (AP) automation solutions, announced the acquisition of OnPay Solutions, an invoice payments provider, for an undisclosed sum. The deal will enable Medius to integrate payment processing – AP automation’s “last mile” – directly into its source-to-pay platform, enhancing its customers’… Read More

March 30, 2022 @ 9:54 am By Tony Zerucha  |  

New York University Stern School of Business this week launched a global, one-year, part-time Master of Science in Fintech Program. Its goal is to provide working professionals with the skills and knowledge to lead in the increasingly technological finance sector. The first class will start… Read More

March 30, 2022 @ 8:08 am By Tony Zerucha  |  

This week, cloud banking platform Temenos announced a collaboration with Mastercard that will help banks accelerate their introduction of Request to Pay services in the United Kingdom. This new initiative combines pre-composed solutions on the Temenos Banking Cloud with market-certified Mastercard services, making it more… Read More

March 30, 2022 @ 8:05 am By Tony Zerucha  |  

While popular with consumers, buy now, pay later (BNPL) services also confuse them, results of a survey commissioned by BNPL firm Zilch suggest. Zilch plans on launching later this spring. BNPL has been used by 31% of consumers, but many folks do not understand how… Read More

March 29, 2022 @ 10:26 pm By Tony Zerucha  |  

Kenyan fintech Churpy this week announced a $1 million seed round led by Unicorn Growth Capital. Also participating were Antler East Africa, Nairobi’s business angel network and a group of Rally Cap LPs, including senior executives from Stripe. The funds will be used to support… Read More

March 29, 2022 @ 3:47 pm By Tony Zerucha  |  

Vivriti Capital, a tech-enabled credit investment platform in India serving institutional and retail markets, announced the close of a $55 million Series C round. Creation Investments Capital Management, a global alternative asset manager and impact manager in emerging markets, participated, along with London-based Lightrock India, a global private… Read More

March 29, 2022 @ 2:33 pm By Tony Zerucha  |  

Chainlink Labs, the organization developing a global decentralized oracle standard to support mainstream blockchain adoption, today announced that Dr. Dahlia Malkhi, former Diem Association chief technology officer as well as a lead researcher at Novi, has joined as a chief research officer. Dr. Malkhi joins… Read More

March 25, 2022 @ 6:37 pm By Tony Zerucha  |  

Coinweb, a layer-2 blockchain interoperability protocol, this week announced the addition of the Ethereum underlying chain to its expandable blockchain infrastructure. This integration lays the groundwork for protocol-level unification of the Bitcoin-derived chains and the Ethereum family of chains. By integrating and unifying the chains… Read More

March 25, 2022 @ 11:06 am By Tony Zerucha  |  

The Government of Canada this week named its open banking lead. Abraham Tachjian was named to the post by the Hon. Randy Boissonnault, Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance. Tachjian is currently a director in the financial services practice at PwC Canada, where… Read More

March 25, 2022 @ 9:02 am By Tony Zerucha  |  

U.S. Fintech company Brex has provided $10 million in growth capital via venture debt to Zesty.ai, a provider of predictive data analytics in the climate risk space. The financing will help Zesty.ai expand into use cases beyond insurance, including lending. Zesty.ai uses AI to deliver real-time assessments… Read More

March 25, 2022 @ 8:58 am By Tony Zerucha  |  

The United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) this week again warned consumers about some of the risks it sees associated with cryptocurrencies. While acknowledging benefits cryptoassets bring, such as the abilities to reduce costs and increase efficiencies, the FCA said they also present risks to… Read More

March 24, 2022 @ 10:21 pm By Tony Zerucha  |  

Cambodia’s Vattanac Bank this week announced a partnership with global payments network EMQ, to facilitate real-time cross-border payments across Asia. By integrating with EMQ’s API-enabled payments platform, Vattanac Bank said it can further expand to new geographies and provide their customers with multi-currency payout to… Read More