FinTech Futures: Top five stories of the week – 15 December 2023
Here’s our pick of five of the top news stories from the world of finance and tech this week.
SumUp bags €285m in funding to fuel expansion plans
SumUp raises €285 million in fresh funding
UK-based fintech SumUp has secured €285 million (around $307 million) in fresh funding as the company looks to pursue international growth opportunities and broaden its suite of payment services for SMEs.
The company’s latest capital raise was led by Sixth Street Growth and builds on the $100 million credit facility it secured with Victory Park Capital (VPC) in August this year.
SumUp, which offers businesses across Europe, the Americas and Australia a range of financial and payment products, is now believed to have raised a total of €1.5 billion since its inception in 2012.
It was last valued at around €8 billion ($8.6 billion) when it raised €590 million in a round led by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities in June last year. This latest injection of capital is believed to have raised the fintech’s value above this former figure, but a definitive valuation has not been disclosed.
Banco Santander migrates CIB business to the cloud
Banco Santander has migrated its corporate and investment banking business, Santander CIB, to Gravity, its cloud-native core banking platform launched in May 2022.
The business unit has used the Gravity platform to migrate to Google Cloud, where it claims to manage around one million accounting operations and half a million treasury operations per day.
The bank says it has “already successfully migrated all commercial customers in the UK and the consumer business in Chile without any service interruption”.
Santander hopes that the full migration will be completed by the end of next year, with the current transition of its Brazilian operations being described as “well advanced”.
Jeff Parker joins Paymentology as new CEO
Jeff Parker joins Paymentology as CEO (Image: LinkedIn)
UK-based issuer-processor Paymentology has named Jeff Parker as its new CEO with immediate effect.
Parker joins the firm from Marqeta, having announced last month that he was stepping down from his position as SVP and managing director, international at the California-headquartered card issuing firm.
He says his focus as CEO will be “on building Paymentology’s position as the global neo-processor of choice for fintechs, telcos, corporates and challenger banks”.
Parker is to succeed interim co-CEOs Abe Smith and Angy Watson, who have led the company for the last seven months during its search for a permanent replacement for former CEO Roman Brewer after he transitioned to the role of chairman back in May.
Splitit delists from ASX as Motive Partners snaps up controlling stake
Four years after first going public, the white-label buy now, pay later (BNPL) solution provider Splitit has voluntarily delisted from the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) after private equity firm Motive Partners acquired a controlling stake in the company.
Initially announced last August, Motive Partners will invest $50 million via two equally split tranches of $25 million as part of its growth commitment to the Aussie firm.
The first $25 million instalment closed this week after Splitit’s shareholders voted last month to approve its delisting from the ASX, which has now officially been completed.
Shareholders also voted to approve “the redomicile of the Company from Israel to the Cayman Islands by means of a share-exchange accomplished through a merger”. This move, which is also part of the requirements of Motive Partners’ investment, is scheduled for Q1 2024.
Receipt of the second tranche also hinges on Splitit achieving certain milestones related to its full-year financial performance for 2023, which the paytech claims to be “currently exceeding”.
Apex Fintech Solutions files draft statement for IPO with US SEC
Apex Fintech files for IPO in the US
Apex Fintech Solutions, which provides a range of investing and wealth management tools, has confidentially filed a draft registration statement for an initial public offering (IPO) in the US.
The company has held ambitions of going public since 2021 when it attempted to enter a $4.7 billion SPAC merger deal with Northern Star Investment Corp II, which ultimately did not go through.
The Dallas-based company, which is majority owned by US-based Peak6 Investments, says it has not yet determined the number of shares to be offered or the price range for the proposed offering, which is now subject to a review by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
