Singapore-based fintech Xalts acquires digital trade platform Contour Network
Summary
In a role reversal, Xalts, a Singapore fintech startup founded 18 months ago, has acquired Contour Network, a digital trade platform set up by eight major banks including HSBC, Standard Chartered and BNP. Xalts was founded in 2022 by Ashutosh Goel and Supreet Kaur, who previously held senior executive positions at HSBC and Meta, respectively. If a financial institution decides to build applications to make the process more efficient, they usually ask their IT teams or external software service providers, but that can cost a lot of money and take months. It will focus first on enabling banks and logistics companies to offer embedded trade and supply chain apps on a single platform to their customers. Transactions often take a lot of time, as everyone involved — including importers, exporters, banks, logistics companies and customs — swaps information in a mostly manual process.