As the fintech world evolves, emerging technologies, strategic collaborations, and industry shifts continue to shape the financial landscape. Today’s briefing covers the intensifying AI race between fintechs and banks, transformative partnerships, executive changes, and industry-wide innovations, highlighting the crucial role of fintech in reshaping the future of finance.

The AI Race: Fintechs vs. Traditional Banks

The competition between fintech firms and traditional banks to dominate AI integration is heating up. Fintech companies are leveraging AI to enhance customer experience and streamline operations, whereas banks are adopting AI cautiously, balancing innovation with regulatory compliance. The dynamic is reshaping customer expectations, with fintechs pushing the envelope in personalization, risk assessment, and fraud prevention. Traditional institutions are adopting fintech-style agility to stay competitive.

Source: Yahoo Finance, Fintech Futures, Cointelegraph

Collaborations for Enhanced Services

Pennant Technologies and MogoPlus have joined forces in Australia to revolutionize the lending process. By integrating their technologies, they aim to streamline the value chain in lending, offering enhanced speed and efficiency to both institutions and borrowers. This partnership reflects a growing trend of fintechs collaborating to offer comprehensive solutions, expanding their reach and impact within traditional financial sectors.

Source: Fintech Futures

Leadership Shifts and Layoffs: Stash’s Turbulent Turn

Stash, a major player in the fintech space, is undergoing significant leadership changes and layoffs amidst acquisition speculations. The fintech industry is experiencing a wave of strategic realignments, with several firms reevaluating their business models in response to market pressures and investor demands. This reflects broader industry concerns about sustainability and scaling in a competitive, innovation-driven market.

Source: Fortune

Fintech Meets Pet Care: A Unique Philanthropic Move

Kennel Connection has made waves by contributing $5,000 to RedRover on Giving Tuesday, an amount doubled through impact matching. This innovative use of fintech in pet care philanthropy highlights how financial technology can facilitate social impact, offering seamless donation solutions and promoting corporate responsibility in niche markets.

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Source: PR Newswire

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Fund aims to support new projects building AI tools to accelerate breakthrough discoveries in mathematics

WASHINGTON and LONDON, Dec. 5, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Renaissance Philanthropy and XTX Markets today announced the launch of the AI for Math Fund. The fund will commit $9.2 million to support the development of new AI tools, which will serve as long-term building blocks to advance mathematics.

An increasing number of researchers, including some of the world’s leading mathematicians, are embracing AI to push the boundaries of mathematical discovery and learning. The AI for Math Fund will support projects that expand the use of leading AI technology by mathematicians globally.

Alex Gerko, Founder and co-CEO, XTX Markets said, “The fund will support this critical intersection between AI and math. Working in partnership with Renaissance Philanthropy, we want to give mathematicians the tools they need to advance the field. As AI continues to transform other sciences, we believe that mathematics will be next.”

Renaissance Philanthropy and XTX Markets are inviting proposals for innovative projects led by researchers, non-profits, companies, mathematicians, software engineers and computer scientists that are unlikely to occur under business-as-usual conditions. Click here to submit an application.

Proposals should be aligned with one of the following categories:

• Production grade software tools: AI for auto-formalization, proof generation, synthesis of verifiable code, and more
• Datasets: Open-source collections of theorems, proofs, and math problems
• Field building: Textbooks, courses, and resources to grow the AI-for-math community
• Breakthrough ideas: High-risk, high-reward approaches to AI-driven math research

XTX Markets is the founding donor of the AI for Math Fund.

“We are excited to partner with XTX Markets on this important initiative,” said Tom Kalil, CEO of Renaissance Philanthropy. “The convergence of AI and math has the potential to advance fundamental mathematics, the reasoning capability of AI systems, and the synthesis of verifiable code.”

Following a rigorous assessment of the proposals, individual grants of up to $1 million will be awarded for projects lasting up to 24 months.

Terence Tao, UCLA, Fields Medalist and AI for Math Fund advisor said, “The next generation of AI models and tools have the potential to enhance collaboration among mathematicians that was previously impossible. I am delighted to work with Renaissance Philanthropy and XTX Markets to realize this potential through the AI for Math Fund.”

About Renaissance Philanthropy

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Renaissance Philanthropy is a nonprofit organization with a mission to fuel a 21st century renaissance by increasing the ambition of philanthropists, scientists, and innovators. We do this by advising philanthropists, surfacing breakthrough ideas, and incubating ambitious initiatives.

About XTX Markets

XTX Markets is a leading algorithmic trading firm which uses state-of-the-art machine learning technology to produce price forecasts for over 50,000 financial instruments across equities, fixed income, currencies, commodities and crypto. It uses those forecasts to trade on exchanges and alternative trading venues, and to offer differentiated liquidity directly to clients worldwide. The firm trades over $250bn a day across 35 countries and has over 250 employees based in London, Singapore, New York, Paris, Bristol, Mumbai and Yerevan.

XTX Markets has an unrivalled level of computational resources in the trading industry, with a growing research cluster currently containing over 25,000 GPUs with 650 petabytes of usable storage. Teams across the firm include world-class researchers with backgrounds in pure math, programming, physics, computer science and machine learning. The firm is also constructing a large-scale data centre in Finland to future-proof its significant computational capabilities. 

Since 2017, XTX Markets has committed over £250 million to charities and non-profit partners, establishing the firm as a major philanthropic donor in the UK and globally. The firm’s philanthropy focuses on advancing mathematics education and research, having committed over £50 million in grants to UK charities and education institutions, with the aim of supporting more students to progress to degrees, PhDs and highly-skilled careers in maths, especially those from low-income backgrounds. XTX Markets has also committed more than £25 million to support elite mathematics talent worldwide. More broadly, the firm’s giving also supports high-impact education programmes in low- and middle-income countries, humanitarian relief and local community initiatives in the regions where our offices are located internationally.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/renaissance-philanthropy-and-xtx-markets-launch-new-9-million-ai-for-math-fund-302324035.html

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• The acquisition marks a strategic move by the cloud banking leader to extend its payment capabilities for customers, as Mambu eyes market expansion and accelerated growth in support of long-term plans.
• Numeral’s platform will be integrated into Mambu’s core banking offerings, with advanced payment solutions technology, to accelerate and advance the next generation of financial products.

AMSTERDAM, Dec. 5, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Mambu, a leading cloud banking platform, has announced the acquisition of Numeral, a French payment technology provider for banks and fintechs.

The acquisition strengthens Mambu’s position as an industry leader, in a move that underscores market confidence and growing demand for modern financial experiences. The addition of advanced payment capabilities represents a significant investment in the next phase of Mambu’s growth as an established market player.

With Numeral’s platform, Mambu is set to drive new value from wider audience segments that will increase its overall share of the market. It also offers a unique strategic fit to the foundation of the cloud banking leader’s long-term expansion efforts.

“This acquisition marks a considered move to deliver a more modern, comprehensive payment offering which is now an integrated part of Mambu’s product portfolio. Numeral’s advanced payments platform will enable us to address changing customer demands, strengthen existing product lines and expand our market reach, while offering businesses advanced capabilities to meet an extensive range of needs.” – Fernando Zandona, CEO at Mambu.

Speaking about why Numeral was the ‘right fit’ for Mambu, Zandona added: “Numeral’s values, proven agility, and robust onboarding processes match perfectly with our growth mindset as a business. We look forward to welcoming their talented team as we unlock new growth opportunities together.”

Founded in 2021, Numeral is a fast-growing payment technology provider that offers financial institutions a universal gateway to connect to partner banks and access schemes and a modern payments hub to automate payment processing. The Paris-based firm processes more than €10 billion in payments annually and has established a strong presence in Europe, having expanded its operations to the UK last year.

The size of the market opportunity for bank payments is striking. In 2022, the value of bank payments in the Eurozone stood at €191 trillion, that is 58x more than card payments (€3.3 trillion). This vast global market is transforming rapidly, driven by the rise of instant payments as a catalyst for modernising core banking and payment platforms. With its robust bank integrations, a modular API and modern dashboard, Numeral’s platform will enable Mambu to capitalise on this market opportunity. 

The cloud banking platform will also benefit from Numeral’s roster of partnerships with some of Europe’s leading banks, including BNP Paribas, Barclays, HSBC, and ABN AMRO.

“Payments are at the heart of how companies do business around the world, yet they remain trapped in systems designed decades ago, unfit for the ongoing instant payments revolution,” said Numeral co-founder and CEO, Édouard Mandon. “This is a problem that Mambu intimately understands having helped banks and financial institutions worldwide to migrate from rigid, traditional core systems to agile and adaptable cloud infrastructure. Bringing together our dedicated payments technology with Mambu’s leading cloud banking platform and global customer base, we can enable more companies to make their payments future-proof and ever-compliant while eliminating hidden payment complexity at scale.”

The integration of Mambu and Numeral’s advanced payment platform will enable banks, fintechs, and non-financial service firms to seamlessly manage end-to-end payment workflows, support multiple payment methods, and provide real-time transaction capabilities. This will drive greater operational efficiency, improved customer experiences, and accelerated time-to-market for innovative financial solutions.

Mambu will gain the flexibility to offer an even more sophisticated, readily-available set of payment capabilities. New and not-yet-live customers can take advantage of this from day one, while customers that already have a payment solution in place will have the option to upgrade.

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Notes to editors

About Mambu

Mambu is the world’s only true SaaS cloud banking platform. Launched in 2011, Mambu fast-tracks the design and build of nearly any type of financial offering for banks of all sizes, lenders, fintechs, retailers, telcos and more. Our unique composable approach means that independent components, systems and connectors can be assembled in any configuration to meet business needs and end user demands. Mambu supports over 260 customers in over 65 countries – including Western Union, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, N26, BancoEstado, Raiffeisen Bank, ABN AMRO, and Bank Islam. www.mambu.com 

About Numeral

Numeral is a payment technology provider that offers financial institutions a universal gateway to connect to partner banks and access schemes and a modern payments hub to automate payment processing. Numeral enables fintechs and banks to unlock growth by launching new products and expanding geographically faster, eliminating hidden payment complexity and making their payments future-proof and ever-compliant. Launched in 2021, Numeral provides the payment infrastructure for the most innovative European banks and fintechs like WorldFirst, Argentex and Alma and partners with Europe’s leading banks, including BNP Paribas, Barclays, BPCE, HSBC and LHV.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/mambu-acquires-payment-technology-provider-numeral-bolstering-its-market-position-to-target-new-growth-opportunities-302323963.html