The Weekly Wrap: all you need to know by Friday COB | February 16th

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

India’s central bank has instructed Visa and Mastercard to cease business-to-business transactions, such as rent payments or vendor transfers, conducted through third-party FinTech companies.

While the reasons for these restrictions haven’t been explicitly stated, it appears that the impact will be limited to commercial payments channeled through third parties, sparing corporate card payments in general.

This directive affects a specific segment of payments routed through FinTech firms, particularly those categorized as “business payment solution providers” (BPSPs), which facilitate transactions for merchants not equipped to accept card payments directly.

Ankit Ratan, CEO & Co-founder at Signzy said, “The RBI asked card networks like Visa and Mastercard to stop card based commercial payments made by corporations and small businesses. Such regulatory hurdles can be avoided by adhering to regulator’s rules and guidelines through innovative KYC solutions. It becomes imperative for financial institutions and fintech players to ensure that all financial transactions taking place are within the regulatory ambit and that no fraudulent or unauthorized transactions are occurring on the digital platform while maintaining the security posture.”

Deals of the week

• Pagaya secures $280m credit facility from BlackRock, UBS, JPMorgan Chase
• Accounting software firm Pennylane raises €40m in Series C
• Kema raises $2m to transform B2B cash flow for SMEs in MENA
• Dutch FinTech Finom raises €50m to boost SME banking services
• Sweden’s Kameo secures £1.1m to expand investment platform
• Mastercard & Bank of Punjab to boost commercial digital payments in Pakistan
• Bandhan Bank selects Oracle to modernise its Core Banking systems
• UK’s Admiral selects Google Cloud to enhance digital transformation
• Sinch integrates Messaging APIs for banks on Temenos Exchange
• ACI Worldwide & RYVYL EU to streamline payment for merchants
• Moneyhub to provide Open Banking solutions to UK government

Be on the lookout for

FinTech LIVE New York, scheduled for June 17, 2024, will take place virtually and bring together leading executives from finserv, banking, insurance, and more across North America.

Bringing together leading executives from finserv, banking, insurance and more across North America, FinTech LIVE New York will gather leading executives from the Fintech industry to deep dive into the current trends, innovations, movements and more.

FinTech LIVE serves as the ultimate virtual platform to network and connect with like-minded peers in North America providing invaluable insights and the opportunity to contribute to the collective efforts in driving digital transformation in the industry.