MonetaGo sets sights on “trade finance OS” with beefed-up board
Courtesy Global Trade Review (GTR)
Financial technology solutions provider MonetaGo has made three high-profile additions to its board of directors, as it positions itself to deliver what its CEO calls a “comprehensive aggregated trade finance operating system”.
The appointees are Arnau Porto, founder of Greentrail Capital and CEO of Nasdaq-listed Global Technology Acquisition Corp, who joins as executive chairman; Robyn Dittrich, vice-president of global operation programmes at BHP; and David Rutter, CEO of R3, the provider of the Corda blockchain platform upon which numerous trade finance applications have been built, including the now-defunct Marco Polo Network and Contour, which closed its doors last month, as well as a previous iteration of MonetaGo’s Secure Financing service.
Secure Financing, which entered full production in 2018, enables financiers to check for duplication of financing requests linked to invoices, bills of lading, air waybills, warehouse receipts, purchase orders and other trade-related documents.
In recent years, the software has been implemented by trade finance institutions across multiple jurisdictions. The tool has been made available over Swift’s API-enabled infrastructure to the over 11,000 institutions on the messaging network. In addition, the service supports invoice financing on the Reserve Bank of India-backed Trade Receivables Discounting System (TReDS), and underpins Singapore’s Trade Finance Registry, a secure database for records of trade transactions financed across foreign and local banking institutions in Singapore.
MonetaGo says that the addition of the new board members will bolster and support its executive team as the company capitalises on its growth so far.
“Their combined and diverse experience and achievements provide unique leadership which will be instrumental in continuing to advance MonetaGo as a global provider in digitisation and fraud prevention for financial services,” says Neil Shonhard, MonetaGo’s CEO, who also sits on the board alongside company founder Jesse Chenard. “Secure Financing encompasses modules aimed at providing a comprehensive aggregated trade finance OS over the coming years.”
“This is an opportunity to enhance [MonetaGo’s] practices across a number of operational areas and to participate in an exciting evolution,” says Dittrich.
“MonetaGo has shown that it is extremely adept, not only in using new technologies but also in applying them to solve real, industry-wide problems. This puts them in a unique position to make a substantial impact on trade at a global scale. It’s a privilege to be working with the team and to have the opportunity to participate in their next phase of growth,” adds Porto.
How MonetaGo’s “trade finance OS” vision will materialise remains to be seen, and the company has not yet revealed further details on its plans.
