The Weekly Wrap: all you need to know by Friday COB | October 13th

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

Backbase, an Engagement Banking platform provider, has announced the launch of Grand Central, its Integration Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS). The offering aims to empower banks in expediting their modernization and digital transformation endeavors.

Grand Central delivers unified APIs to power banks’ channel applications and third-party developers. Using BIAN-based domain model and unified banking APIs, the iPaas platform connects any channel application to various downstream systems, including core banking platforms, customer relationship management systems, payment and FinTech systems, and more.

Through the use of industrialized plug-and-play connectors, banks can rapidly accelerate their time-to-market while significantly reducing the budgets typically associated with integrations.

With Grand Central, banks will gain the ability to harmonize data across their diverse tech stack, ultimately resulting in seamless digital customer experiences across web and mobile applications running on the Backbase Engagement Banking Platform.

Deals of the week

• Sonovate expands securitisation to £240m with Lloyds onboard
• Ascend Money becomes Thailand’s FinTech unicorn with $150m funding
• India’s AuditCue raises $1.5m in Seed Round led by Kalaari Capital
• Lyvia Group raises $145m in financing from Danske Bank and DNB
• Arnur Credit bags $9m from IFC to aid Women-led MSMEs in Kazakhstan
• BetterPlace launches goBetter to boost global presence; plans to invest $35m
• DeepTech investor Jolt Capital reopens fund to add $106m
• India’s AuditCue raises $1.5m in Seed Round led by Kalaari Capital
• Lloyds Bank renews payment suite with FreedomPay partnership
• Delta Capita launches DLT solutions for Trade Settlement, Tokenization & KYC
• Sopra Banking Software launches AI-enabled Core Banking system
• InsurTech Reserv raises $20m Series A to accelerate growth

Be on the lookout for

Hong Kong FinTech Week 2023 (October 30 to November 5), organised by the FSTB and InvestHK, and co-organised by the HKMA, the IA, and the SFC, is Asia’s global financial technology event for scaling new heights. It is expected to host over 500 speakers, 700 sponsors and exhibitors, and welcoming over 30,000 attendees and attracting over 5 million views from over 100 economies to the event. The week-long event will feature multi-track conferences with prominent speakers, exhibitions, a deal floor, workshops, networking and satellite events, demo sessions and metaverse experiences.

The premier Fintech conference in Asia, Hong Kong FinTech Week (HKFW), is returning for its eighth edition this year. Bringing together influential leaders and industry experts from around the world, the event is poised to shape the agenda of fintech development for the city, region and beyond. With the captivating theme of “Fintech Redefined,” this year’s edition of HKFW is dedicated to delving into and propelling the industry’s evolution within the dynamic landscape of the new Fintech era.