The Weekly Wrap: all you need to know by Friday COB | Feb 27th

By Puja Sharma

The Weekly Wrap is published every Friday and recaps the week’s main stories and deals, as well as upcoming events and announcements for Prime subscribers only.

The Big Story

The recent migration of Nationwide Building Society’s Buy-to-Let platform to the cloud marks a significant step in the UK lender’s broader technology modernisation journey. By transitioning its infrastructure to Amazon Web Services and upgrading its core platform in partnership with IBM and Sopra Banking Software, Nationwide Building Society is reinforcing its operational foundations in a segment that remains both complex and strategically important.

The Buy-to-Let market continues to demand sophisticated underwriting capabilities, robust compliance frameworks, and continuous portfolio monitoring. Legacy technology environments often constrain lenders’ ability to respond to regulatory changes or evolving borrower expectations. In this context, cloud-based infrastructure and modern core platforms provide a scalable and resilient backbone, enabling institutions to adapt faster and deliver more responsive services. For Nationwide, this move is likely to improve system performance, enhance resilience, and support quicker deployment of product and policy changes.

The programme also highlights the increasing role of ecosystem partnerships in large-scale core transformation initiatives. Delivering such migrations within tight timelines requires coordinated execution across vendors, particularly where data, workflows, and customer-facing services must remain uninterrupted. Collaboration between technology providers and financial institutions is becoming a defining feature of modernisation strategies, allowing lenders to balance innovation with operational continuity.

Deals of the week

• TruFin raises strategic funding to expand institutional DeFi access
• Pesalink and PAPSS unlock cross-border payments in Kenya
• SumUp taps Form3 to scale real-time SEPA payments
• Noah and Jupiter enable fiat–crypto banking integration
• Emirates partners Cellulant to enable split payments in Africa
• Bank Aston taps Oracle for end-to-end cloud banking platform
• Allica Bank secures $155m series D for SME lending growth
• Nairagram secures $6m to scale payments across Africa
• Neysa Datalabs raises $1.2bn in Blackstone-led round

Be on the lookout for

The Cedar-IBSi Building a Future-Ready Bank Summit in Bahrain on 1st April 2026 will convene leading bankers, regulators, and technology innovators to explore the transformation of financial services in the digital era. Positioned at the crossroads of innovation and regulation, Bahrain has emerged as a dynamic FinTech hub in the GCC, making it the ideal setting for this forward-looking dialogue. The summit will focus on critical themes such as open banking, digital infrastructure modernisation, SME financing, and financial inclusion, while highlighting opportunities in embedded finance and cashless economies.

With mobile wallets and digital payments rapidly reshaping customer expectations, participants will gain insights into strategies for enhancing engagement, monetising transaction flows, and extending services to underserved communities. The event will feature keynote sessions, panel discussions, and networking opportunities with senior executives and thought leaders, offering practical frameworks for building resilient, agile, and customer-centric banks. By fostering collaboration between financial institutions, policymakers, and technology providers, the summit underscores Bahrain’s role as a catalyst for innovation-driven growth and sets the stage for a future-ready banking ecosystem across the Middle East.