FinTech Futures: Top five news stories of the week – 22 March 2024
Here’s our pick of five of the top news stories from the world of finance and tech this week, featuring Nuvei, Silverbird, nCino and more.
Nuvei evaluating bids for potential buyout with Advent reportedly leading the race
Nuvei weights up bids for potential buyout
Canadian payments processor Nuvei says it has formed a special committee to “evaluate and consider” potential buyout deals put forward by third parties that would see it become a private company.
The Montreal-headquartered paytech has been trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE) since its record-breaking $700 million initial public offering (IPO) in September 2020. It subsequently launched on Nasdaq in October 2021.
Its latest statement is in response to reports by the Wall Street Journal and Reuters that it is in advanced talks with US private equity firm Advent International over a potential takeover.
However, reports suggest that should a deal be on the table, its exact terms could still be subject to change and a deal still may not materialise. Advent declined to comment on the matter when contacted by FinTech Futures.
UK fintech start-up Silverbird enters special administration
UK fintech Silverbird Global Limited (SGL) has entered special administration, with Daniel Conway and Geoffrey Rowley of UK business advisory firm FRP Advisory appointed as joint special administrators (JSAs).
According to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Silverbird officially entered special administration on 13 March under the Payment and Electronic Money Institutions Insolvency Regulations of 2021.
Founded in 2020 by Max Faldin, the London-based fintech provides small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with multicurrency business accounts designed to power international trade, enabling businesses to store funds in e-wallets and make cross-border payments.
Cloud banking tech provider nCino acquires DocFox to streamline account opening
nCino buys DocFox
US-based cloud banking tech provider nCino has acquired fintech start-up DocFox for an undisclosed sum.
Founded in 2016, DocFox provides commercial bank account opening software built to help automate and streamline the customer onboarding process.
nCino says the integration of DocFox’s technology into its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) cloud banking platform will help financial services firms simplify the onboarding and account opening experience and enable them to “unify and intelligently manage the entire client lifecycle across information intake, document collection and due-diligence on a single platform”.
Railsr approaches Equals Group over potential merger
UK-based fintech Embedded Finance, which trades as Railsr, has approached Equals Group to propose a potential merger of the two firms, as first reported by Sky News.
Following the Sky News report earlier this week, London-headquartered Equals Group, a provider of scalable payment solutions, put out a statement confirming that “as part of its ongoing strategic review, the board has received an indicative non-binding proposal” from a consortium led by Embedded Finance Limited and TowerBrook Capital Partners, expressing interest in a “possible offer for the entire issued and to be issued share capital of Equals”.
Equals adds that there can be “no certainty that any firm offer for the company will be made, nor as to the terms on which any firm offer, if made, might be made”.
Stax Payments founders launch business credit decisioning platform Worth AI
Worth AI’s co-founders and co-CEOs
The founders of US fintech Stax Payments, Sal Rehmetullah and Suneera Madhani, have teamed up once again to launch a new AI-powered business credit score and financial underwriting platform.
Launching this month, Worth AI enables banks, credit unions, fintechs and financial service providers to leverage AI when analysing both traditional and non-traditional data sources during the credit decisioning process for business loans in a bid to help speed up decision making and increase risk accuracy.
The Florida-based start-up consolidates these data points to provide creditors with a single business credit score, called a WorthScore, which it claims can be produced by the platform “in minutes”. The platform also supports predictive risk monitoring and business onboarding capabilities.
