The Monday Roundup: what we are watching this week | June 19th

By Puja Sharma

The Monday Roundup sets the scene for the week’s biggest news stories, industry deals, and upcoming events. For Prime subscribers only.

Digital end-to-end investment offerings

⚙️Backbase, the global Engagement Banking software provider, has acquired Nucoro, the UK-based digital wealth platform for an undisclosed amount.

The acquisition will allow Backbase to integrate Nucoro’s headless platform capabilities directly into the Backbase Engagement Banking platform. This will enable Backbase’s customers to launch digital end-to-end investment offerings, such as robo-advisory, trading, or hybrid advisory services.

The wealth management platform market eclipsed $3 billion in 2022 with analysts predicting a 10% CAGR in the next decade. Investment products are an important value creator globally for retail banks, private banks, and wealth managers.

Backbase said the acquisition demonstrates its commitment to helping financial institutions deliver world-class investing experiences to their customers.

“We see a trend where retail banks want to quickly launch differentiating investment propositions to complement their daily banking services. Think of capabilities like enhanced savings, pension products, stock trading, and portfolio management. With these services, they can generate extra revenue and expand their share of wallet with their most valuable customers,” Jouk Pleiter, Founder and CEO of Backbase said.

‍ Blackbird.AI, a US-based AI-driven risk intelligence platform has closed a $20 million Series B funding round led by Ten Eleven Ventures.

The round also saw participation from existing investors Dorilton Capital, Generation Ventures, StartFast Ventures and Trousdale Ventures, among others. The latest funding brings its total capital raised to $32 million.

Founded in 2017, New York-headquartered Blackbird.AI helps organisations detect and respond to threats that can cause reputational and financial harm.

Human perception has become the latest frontier in cyberattacks, manifesting as misinformation and narrative manipulation. “This emerging threat is impacting a broad range of sectors and professionals, from strategic communicators and risk managers to information security teams,” said Wasim Khaled, CEO and co-founder of Blackbird.AI.

“We aim to help organisations understand and address the potential threats posed by perception manipulation, which often fly under the radar, while simultaneously providing them with significant strategic and competitive leverage.” With the new funds, the company plans to scale up its marketing and sales efforts and bring in more customers, drive awareness in key industries, and enhance its platform.

FinTech City

Brazil-based capital markets infrastructure provider Kanastra has secured $13 million in a seed round, one of the largest at seed stage in Latin America.

The investment was co-led by Valor Capital and Quona Capital, alongside QED Investors, Actyus, Collaborative, Crestone, Grão, Endeavor, Clocktower, Latitud, and Norte. A number of founders of Latin American companies also took part in the round.

Founded in 2022, São Paulo-based Kanastra simplifies debt facilities for both originators and investors through an “all-in-one, tech-driven solution”. The platform streamlines and provides all services needed to set up, run and invest in debt facilities in a digital and automated way.

The funding will be used to scale its technology platform and offer a more “streamlined, efficient and cost-effective” experience to its customers.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin laid the foundation stone for the FinTech City and FinTech Tower projects in Chennai. This is being constructed adjacent to the Chennai Trade Centre.

“The rapidly growing IT, IT-enabled services, electronics, innovation and electronics industries in Tamil Nadu have also witnessed excellent growth. I am confident that the financial technology sector, which integrates traditionally functioning banking and non-banking financial services with emerging modern technology, will also see tremendous growth in Tamil Nadu,” Stalin said in his address.

The FinTech City set up on 56 acres has an investment potential of $168 million and proposed job creation for nearly 80,000 persons. It will house international and national BFSI institutions. It will also have commercial, residential and social sustains with multimodal connectivity.

The Fintech Tower set up at a cost of $34 million has an investment potential of $122 million and jobs for nearly 7,000 persons. It will have a built-up area of 5.6 lakh sq ft with an auditorium to accommodate 250 persons.

The FinTech city will supplement the efforts of FinBlue, a FinTech Centre of Excellence hosted at STPI, Chennai, which identifies, nurtures, funds and scales FinTech start-ups. The State government had contributed $610K for the centre.

What is the buzz

A French investigation has prompted troubled cryptocurrency giant Binance to withdraw from the Dutch market. After failing to obtain a VASP licence, Binance leaves the Netherlands.

Binance failed to secure a virtual asset service provider (VASP) license in the Netherlands, resulting in the action. While it will not be accepting any new users residing in the Netherlands effective immediately, from 17 July, existing Dutch resident users will only be able to withdraw assets from the Binance platform.

“Although we explored many alternative avenues to service Dutch residents in compliance with Dutch regulations, unfortunately this has not resulted in a VASP registration in the Netherlands at this time,” Binance said in a statement.

It adds that it will continue its efforts to land necessary authorisations to offer its products and services to Dutch users. The news follows just a week after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed charges against both Binance and Coinbase, with the SEC chair alleging that Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao “engaged in an extensive web of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of disclosure, and calculated evasion of the law”.

The Paris prosecutor’s office is investigating the cryptocurrency exchange for “illegally” providing virtual asset services before receiving regulatory approval last May, and for “aggravated” money laundering.

However, Binance stresses in a statement that it is “already compliant” with EU standards on the prevention of money laundering and terrorism financing through its registrations in other EU countries including France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden and Lithuania.