The Monday Roundup: what we are watching this week | October 9th

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.

Disrupting Core Banking Market

UK-based core banking platform SaaScada has received an undisclosed investment from FinTech venture capitalist TX Ventures.

Having raised £2.5 million in seed funding during May of last year, the platform, which supports a SaaS data-driven core banking engine, has reportedly expanded its sales and marketing functions within the European market, while allegedly also “making inroads” in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific.

Speaking on its latest raise, Nelson Wootton, the platform’s co-founder and CEO, said the investment from TX Ventures “further validates the platform, the product and the team as we continue to disrupt the core banking market”.

Adding to this, the platform’s other co-founder, Steve Round, explains that with the funding, SaaScada is “now eager to take our sustainable offering to a wider audience”.

Truecaller, the global platform for verifying contacts has acquired the India-based company Unoideo Technologies.

The company provides the service TrustCheckr which is a SaaS platform seeking to help businesses verify customer information and detect risk of fraud based on phone numbers and digital signals.

TrustCheckr’s current offering has attracted interest from companies in different industries from banks, FinTech, and other financial institutions. The acquisition will strengthen Truecaller’s risk intelligence tool for enterprises, which was launched last week.

“Truecaller is the number one solution for identifying spam as well as fraud attempts globally. While our focus has been on CallerID and spam protection, fraud calls and messages are increasing at an unprecedented rate globally by virtue of e.g., mobile banking,” shared Nami.

Supporting eCommerce Growth

Canadian growth capital firm Clearco has raised $60 million in a Series D funding round and secured a $100 million financing facility as part of its financial recapitalisation strategy. The Series D round was led by the firm’s existing investors Inovia Capital and Founders Circle Capital, while the new asset-backed facility is being provided by Pollen Street Capital.

The fundraise and facility are set to benefit Clearco’s revenue-based financing solution, Invoice Funding, which underwrites business loans using the firm’s AI and proprietary machine learning-based technology. The firm claims to have funded over 10,000 e-commerce businesses to date and advanced over $2.5 billion.

“All of these actions allow us to continue to support the growth of eCommerce businesses during a time of funding challenges for many companies,” explained Andrew Curtis, CEO of Clearco.

The firm says the recapitalisation comes “at a pivotal time when start-ups and specifically eCommerce businesses are facing multiple challenges”, due to the cautious approach of banks lending to small businesses amid tough macroeconomic conditions.

Banking-as-a-service startup Synapse confirmed today that it has laid off 86 people, or about 40% of the company.

The San Francisco-based company, which operates a platform enabling banks and fintech companies to easily develop financial services, has been open about past layoffs. In June, CEO Sankaet Pathak wrote in a blog post that the company had let go of 18% of its workforce as “the current macroeconomic conditions” had begun to impact its clients and platforms, affecting its anticipated growth.

Earlier this week, Fintech Business Weekly publisher Jason Mikula posted on X that “one of the company’s largest clients, Mercury, gave notice of non-renewal & plans to move directly to Evolve.” He had also heard that the company was actually laying off at least 130 people.

What is the buzz

Coinbase receives payment licence from Monetary Authority of Singapore. The cryptocurrency exchange has landed a Major Payment Institution (MPI) licence from the regulator, and comes just one year after it also received its In Principle Approval (IPA), enabling it to kickstart operations and offer its products and services in the country.

In its attempt to gain a foothold it what it describes as a “vital” market, Coinbase has developed and released products “tailored specifically” for Singapore, including the launch of PayNow and FAST bank transfers earlier this year.

It also claims to have led various training and hiring initiatives in Singapore, while simultaneously investing in 15 start-ups through its ventures arm, and building partnership with local associations and partners.

At the same time, and just over 9,000 miles away, the exchange is also readying the ground for its intended launch in Canada, as part of its plan to create a platform that is “for Canadians, by Canadians”.