The Monday Roundup: what we are watching this week

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.

The sweeping impact of DORA

Transcard, a global payments technology, has announced its expansion into the Canadian market. Transcard has launched its first Canadian customer, Xodus Travel Services. The company leverages the SMART Suite for payment orchestration and is adopting an enhanced digital payment experience.

Transcard’s embedded payment platform supports global payments across multiple currencies, configurable language packs, and domiciled data capabilities. The Canadian expansion includes local payment rails and supports Canadian French across solutions. Designed to streamline global financial operations, Transcard’s payment solutions have been designed to meet GDPR, RPAA, and PIPEDA Data Protection requirements.

“Launching in Canada marks a significant milestone in the company’s mission to enhance digital payment solutions worldwide. We’re excited to expand our capabilities, build more strategic partnerships, and support customers in Canada,” said Greg Bloh, CEO of Transcard.

LogicMonitor, the SaaS-based hybrid observability platform powered by artificial intelligence (AI), has announced a strategic partnership with Gieom, a specialist in operational resilience solutions.

Together, the companies will help financial institutions address evolving regulatory requirements, including the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and the FCA Operational Resilience Requirements, by providing end-to-end oversight through Gieom’s Operational Resilience Platform powered by LogicMonitor’s LM Envision platform.

Operational resilience in financial services extends beyond cybersecurity, requiring a holistic approach to identifying, managing, and mitigating risks across systems and third-party relationships. The sweeping impact of regulations like DORA, which affects over 22,000 financial institutions, is creating a pressing need for continuous monitoring and swift reporting of operational incidents.

Increase payment conversion with AI

FinTech Adyen has launched an AI-powered payment optimisation suite designed to help businesses increase payment conversion, simplify fraud management, and reduce the cost of payments. The solution, Adyen Uplift, enables customers to use data-driven, tailored performance recommendations to test different payment configurations to maximise performance.

AI-powered payment optimisations bundled in a single product suite are trained on Adyen’s global transaction dataset. Rather than navigating the complexity of payments in operational silos, the AI-first approach uses risk-based intelligence and automated conversion optimisation to help businesses get more out of payments.

Piloted by 60 enterprise businesses, including Patagonia, On, Indeed, NordSecurity and Fubo, the solution has shown a significant effect on profits, with companies seeing an overall uplift of up to 6% on their payment conversion rate.

AirAsia MOVE, Asean’s travel booking app and the OTA (online travel agency) platform business of Capital A, has partnered with Ant International’s Antom to transform travel and to offer seamless payment experiences on the app.

Under the agreement, AirAsia MOVE will work closely with Antom, a merchant payment and digitisation services provider, and 2C2P, a full-suite global payments platform and a subsidiary of Antom.

This collaboration is set to integrate Antom and 2C2P’s advanced payment solutions, including payment orchestration and acquiring for both cards and local payment methods (LPMs), into AirAsia MOVE’s platform.

These technologies will empower AirAsia MOVE to streamline payment methods, reduce cross-border transaction costs and operational expenses, and broaden its consumer base while providing customers with a broader range of preferred payment options.

What is the Buzz

India ranked third globally in FinTech funding in 2024, despite experiencing a 33% reduction in investment compared to the previous year. The total funding for the year amounted to $1.9 billion, a significant drop from the $2.8 billion recorded in 2023. This decline was largely attributed to a broader slowdown in demand and various geopolitical challenges.

The report, published by Tracxn, highlighted that despite the decrease, India maintained its strong position in the global FinTech landscape. The country continued to attract substantial investments, reflecting the resilience and potential of its FinTech sector. The report also noted that the reduction in funding was not unique to India but was part of a global trend affecting the FinTech industry.

Despite these challenges, the Indian FinTech ecosystem showed signs of maturity and adaptability. The report emphasized that the sector’s long-term prospects remained positive, driven by a large and growing market, increasing digital adoption, and supportive regulatory frameworks. Innovations in areas such as digital payments, lending, and insurance technology continued to attract interest from both domestic and international investors.

In summary, while India faced a decline in FinTech funding in 2024, it remained a key player on the global stage, demonstrating resilience and potential for future growth, according to Tracxn’s Annual India FinTech Report 2024.