It’s no surprise that CEE offers the best software developers in the world. Whether you’re hiring teams and talent in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, or Ukraine, there are certain differences that you should remember about it. Sergiu Matei (Index) prepared a nice wrap up that’s now available on Sifted, have a look in the Reader’s Corner.
A DeFi outfit Unstoppable Finance announced its $5.2m Seed round, aiming to bring Decentralized Finance to mainstream investors around the world. Peter Grosskopf (CTO, co-founder) joined our Disruption Talks live chat yesterday, definitely a must see for everyone building finance tech products. Watch it here.
Disrupting Retail
- Walmart is flying high: After formalizing its partnership with drone company Zipline for health and wellness deliveries on Friday, the retail giant recently said it’s pushing ahead with DroneUp, another startup, on more aerial home deliveries.?
- U.K.-based hyper fast grocery delivery startup Weezy — which only raised a pre-seed for its 15-minute delivery services of supermarket fare last year (after founding the biz in 2019) — has been bagged by Turkish 10-minute delivery app Getir. Weezy CEO and co-founder, Kristof Van Beveren, said: “We are incredibly excited to continue our journey in disrupting the skyrocketing ultrafast grocery market. Getir has an unparalleled track-record of achievements and experience with an equally ambitious team. Our alignment in purpose and culture is a winning formula for expansion globally and we will continue to deliver an exceptional offering to consumers in minutes.”
- Amazon Web Services (AWS), announced that adidas AG, one of the largest sports brands in the world, has selected AWS as its preferred cloud provider for SAP workloads. Business-critical SAP workloads in the cloud will enable Adidas to digitize core business processes across its value chain to provide better consumer experiences, become a more data-driven business, and support new business models such as direct-to-consumer.
- Carrefour opens Flash 10/10, its next-generation test store, on 24 November in Paris' eleventh arrondissement. This new convenience store - developed in collaboration and exclusively with Californian start-up AiFi - uses technology that has never been seen before and is designed to provide customers the most accessible and fastest shopping experience ever.?
Finance & Tech
- ING has introduced a global contact centre platform that provides the same customer contact experience, wherever you are. “Using cutting-edge technologies like chatbots, virtual assistants and remote advice capabilities helps improve the customer experience and optimise our journeys. The global contact centre makes these technologies accessible for all countries,” said Marnix van Stiphout, chief operations officer of ING.
- Klarna, a leading global retail bank, payments and shopping service, yesterday announced the addition of 'Pay Now' to its range of payment services in the US. Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Klarna's Co-founder and CEO said: "Consumers continue to reject double digit interest rates and fee-laden revolving credit, while simultaneously seeking more choice, control and flexibility in how they shop and pay both online and in store. With the introduction of 'Pay Now', Klarna now offers US consumers the choice to pay immediately and in full, alongside our sustainable interest-free services. By launching 'Pay Now' and introducing the Klarna Card in the US, we are continually developing our services to meet consumers' changing needs."
- Global crypto payments infrastructure provider, MoonPay, has closed a $555 million Series A financing round. This has been led by Tiger Global Management and Coatue, with participation from Blossom Capital, Thrive Capital, Paradigm, and NEA. Ivan Soto-Wright, co-founder and CEO of MoonPay, says: “MoonPay is the world’s largest provider of crypto payments infrastructure that helps any organisation bridge traditional finance and crypto. We set out to democratise the crypto ecosystem by creating a foundation that helps entrepreneurs around the world accelerate their time to market from twelve months or more to a matter of weeks.”
- Brazilian digital banking giant Nubank has teamed up with a roster of retailers to add an e-commerce section to its app. David Vélez, CEO, Nubank, adds: "At Nubank, we’re constantly looking for ways to improve our customers' lives by making experiences simpler and unlocking greater value for their money. "We have worked closely with our customers to understand their needs and pains, and how to build products to address them, creating a 'Nubank standard quality' of services that customers have been asking to go beyond financial solutions for years.
- Visa has invested in Basiq, the API platform powering some of Australia’s most innovative banks and fintechs with financial data. Visa's strategic investment will accelerate Basiq’s ability to meet growing API demand as the Consumer Data Right (CDR) and Open Banking plays out in the Australian market. Julian Potter, Group Country Manager, Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific, Visa, said: “We’re excited to partner with Basiq on open data, an area where Visa sees great potential to drive innovation in financial services. Visa is known for money movement, but moving digital money is fundamentally about moving data. We’re extending our network capabilities and expertise into data movement, and our investment in Basiq is a great example of how we’re supporting the rise of the open data economy in Australia.”
- The financial infrastructure API platform Fidel API has launched its Transaction Stream API, enabling developers to connect to real-time payment card data whilst building both corporate expense management platforms and consumer financial management applications. “We are delighted to announce this expanded collaboration with Visa, which is a testament to the work we have done together over the last five years,” said Dev Subrata, Chief Executive Officer of Fidel API. “The launch of the Transaction Stream API is the first of many joint efforts that will deliver new value across the ecosystem: to our clients, issuers and individual cardholders.
- Swiss stock exchange SIX has launched a trading platform for digital assets – SIX Digital Exchange. Thomas Zeeb, global head exchanges at SIX, said: “The first issue of a tokenised bond on the SIX Digital Exchange, its listing and placement in the market proves that the forward-looking distributed ledger technology (DLT) also works very well in the highly regulated capital market.”
- ClearBank’s phenomenal annual growth of over 21,000 per cent over the last four years helped propel the fintech into the number one spot on Deloitte’s annual ranking. The Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 compares the revenue growth rate of the country’s top tech firms for the last four years to find which are experiencing the fastest growth. This year a dozen fintechs, including ClearBank, were named among the top 50, with familiar names like Paysend (ranked 3rd), Modulr (42nd) and Moneybox (45th).
Personal Changes?
- Deutsche Bank has appointed Olivier Vigneron as group chief risk officer (CRO), effective 1 June 2022. He will succeed Stuart Lewis, who in March announced his decision to retire after the AGM in 2022 following 25 years’ service. Paul Achleitner, chairman of the supervisory board of Deutsche Bank, says: “Stuart has played a vital role in establishing best-in-class risk controls for our bank and steered Deutsche Bank safely through some very challenging periods.”
- ING chief innovation officer Annerie Vreugdenhil is leaving the bank less than a year into the job to take up a position on the executive board of ABN Amro. Says CEO Steven van Rijswijk: “Innovation is and remains of key importance to us as we continuously seek to improve the way we serve our customers. Over the past years, Annerie was instrumental in reshaping ING’s innovation approach, leading the effort to combine all innovation activities into one dedicated business area called ING Neo."
A Number to Remember
- Samsung is planning to build a $17 billion semiconductor factory in Taylor near Austin, Texas, over the next three years as part of an effort to increase its manufacturing capacity and alleviate the global chip shortage.
Reader’s Corner
- There’s a reason why Romanian is the second most spoken language at Microsoft. If you don’t have at least one developer in your team from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), you’re missing a trick. The region, known for strong maths and computer science education, is home to more than one million engineers, or 6% of the total global pool. In fact, Slovakia was named the number one country in the world for finding the best developers, while Poland, Hungary and Ukraine also featured in the top five.
