The Weekly Wrap: all you need to know by Friday COB | Sept 23rd

By Gaia Lamperti

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

A new not-for-profit trade association pushing Open Finance in the UK and EU is launching soon boasting top FinTech players as members, such as Plaid, Truelayer and Yapily. PSD2 introduced open banking to Europe, giving consumers and businesses the right to access their payment accounts via third-party providers. Now, the Open Finance Association (OFA) is looking to bring the benefits of open banking to a broader array of financial products.

Backed by a host of other leading FinTechs, including the likes of GoCardless, Volt, Token and Worldpay, the OFA has appointed Nilixa Devlukia, who has held senior roles at the FCA, Obie and EBA, as chair. The association has set three priorities: enabling consumers and businesses to access their data across all their financial accounts.; developing the adoption of a competitive and convenient instant payment method base on open payments; and promoting a sustainable open finance ecosystem.

Deals of the week

• Ratio secures $411 million to transform B2B SaaS payments, financing, and pricing
• Axle Payments rebrands to Denim, raises $126 million
• Yellow Card secures $40 million in Series B funding round
• erad raises $2.4 million to scale alternative growth financing platform
• NeteraPay partners with Nordigen to simplify KYC processes
• Railsr partners with Maslife to launch a finance app
• Netcetera and Mastercard partner to simplify digital payments

Be on the lookout for

Global FinTech M&A rose sharply in the first half of 2022 with 591 recorded deals, with deals at discounted prices. The figures come from corporate finance advisory firm Hampleton Partners which noticed a 46% increase in H12021 numbers (406 FinTech deals), and a massive 70% increase in the pre-pandemic figures (348 FinTech deals) Meanwhile, valuations remained steady: 1H2022 saw the trailing 30-month median revenue multiple at 3.1x – broadly in line with the levels seen in the past two years.

Events & Appointments

• The World Cloud Show, Dubai’s most elite event in the Cloud Industry. The show is a thought-leadership-driven, business-focused, global series of events that takes place in strategic locations/time zones across the world. The Dubai edition is gathering pre-qualified CIOs, CEOs, CTOs, Heads of Research, Industry Practitioners, IT Decision Makers and Experts in Cloud Computing among others from cross-industry verticals and will be held from 27th to 28th September at the Dubai Mall.
• The 5th Annual World Digital Banking Summit this year is held from the 29th – 30th September in Berlin, Germany. This hybrid event will bring together banking, financial services and FinTech professionals to discuss how integrated solutions are shaping the future of digital banking. Leading professionals from global brands will be in attendance to share their experiences and discuss trending topics such as AI, ML, deep learning, cognitive computing, NLP, digital assets and much more.