July 2024: Top five fintech partnership stories of the month
The global fintech industry delivered a range of compelling partnerships over the month of July. Here, we’ve selected five of the most notable partnership stories, featuring BNP Paribas, NatWest, Lloyds Banking Group and more.
Banque de France partners HKMA to explore interoperability between wholesale CBDC infrastructures
BDF partners HKMA to test wCBDCs for Eurosystem
The Banque de France (BDF) has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) to explore how their differing infrastructures can support cross-border settlement using wholesale central bank digital currencies (wCBDCs).
The interoperability study will engage the BDF’s distributed ledger for securities settlement system, DL3S, and the HKMA’s Ensemble Sandbox, which the regulator uses to research and test tokenisation use cases.
BDF first deputy governor, Denis Beau, explains that the collaboration with the regulator will seek to test “different use cases for payment versus payment (PvP) between the tokenised form of the Hong Kong dollar and the Euro” under the “clear objective to improve cross-border payments”.
The partnership builds upon the participants’ mutual participation in the European Central Bank’s (ECB) Eurosystem CBDC exploratory project.
NatWest enables bank-verified digital identities for Nordic structured finance business in partnership with OneID
NatWest has sought to eliminate text authorisations and one-time passwords within its customer verification processes by tapping its existing partnership with digital identity service provider OneID.
The partnership will see the UK bank apply the vendor’s bank-verified digital identity solution to its structured finance business in the Nordics.
Online banking customers in the UK, Sweden, Finland and Norway will now be able to leverage existing authentications with their local bank when signing a NatWest leasing agreement with Adobe Acrobat Sign.
The OneID solution also supports the scanning of government-issued identity documents to verify customer identities, while supporting a coverage of over 200 countries.
NatWest says the solution’s integration with its structured finance business “enhances security and reduces friction, improving efficiency and customer satisfaction”.
BNP Paribas inks multi-year deal to implement Mistral AI commercial models across all business lines
BNP Paribas signs multi-year deal with Mistral AI
Paris-headquartered banking group BNP Paribas has signed a multi-year agreement with Mistral AI, a technology start-up recently valued at $6 billion.
Through the partnership, the bank will gain access to “current and future Mistral AI commercial models”, which are to be implemented “across all the bank’s business lines”.
With specific attention to Mistral AI’s large language models (LLMs), this development includes a number of use cases “across customer support, sales, IT and other areas”.
The bank claims to have been engaging with the start-up, also headquartered in Paris, since September last year, when its Global Markets division first began experimenting with its AI models.
It says that the outcome of its initial engagement produced “strong results”, which led to the collaboration being extended to the wider group in February.
Jordan Kuwait Bank partners Mastercard and FOO to launch multicurrency prepaid wallet offering
Jordan Kuwait Bank (JKB) has partnered with Mastercard and UAE-based fintech FOO to launch eliWallet, a prepaid digital wallet offering both virtual and physical cards for multicurrency transactions across online and in-store payments.
The $7.3 billion-asset commercial bank says the new offering will enable its customers to “gain the opportunity to transfer money swiftly across borders”.
The offering leverages Mastercard’s “extensive network and expertise in digital payments” for global payment acceptance.
Meanwhile, FOO has been tasked with overseeing the development, customisation and deployment of eliWallet, and will also take charge of testing and third-party integrations.
Suhail Al-Salman, head of retail business at JKB, says eliWallet marks a “giant leap forward into the future of financial empowerment, providing our users with an array of features and services designed to make their lives easier”.
Lloyds Banking Group terminates five-year agreement with invoice financing fintech Satago
Lloyds Banking Group terminates Satago contract
Lloyds Banking Group has given notice to terminate its five-year commercial agreement with Satago, an invoice financing fintech based in the UK, after just two years.
A statement issued by Satago’s parent company TruFin says: “Following an internal review, the bank has decided to no longer prioritise the Satago platform and exercise its right to terminate the contract.”
Lloyds has been utilising Satago’s cash management tech since July 2022 to allow the group’s business customers in the UK to access cash against invoices due.
It also invested £5 million into the fintech in exchange for a 20% equity stake and installed Ben Stephenson, then its managing director and head of invoice finance and asset-based lending (ABL), on the Satago board.
In addition to the agreement’s termination, TruFin has also confirmed that Stephenson will resign from the board “with immediate effect”.
