Mid-Week Tech News Roundup – December 8th to December 12th 2025
10 Dec, 20256 minutesCurrensea appoints Enrique Garland as Chief Operating OfficerUK paytech Currensea has appoin...
Currensea appoints Enrique Garland as Chief Operating Officer
UK paytech Currensea has appointed Enrique Garland as its new COO as the company accelerates the growth of its co-branded travel and rewards card partnerships.
Garland joins after three years as head of operations at Dealstack and brings extensive experience from the UK and European rewards sector. His earlier career includes senior roles at American Express, where he worked across international loyalty partnerships and premium product strategy, and a year at Wise managing strategic partnerships. He also sits on the board of South American automotive group Grupo Maquinarias.
Currensea, founded by James Lynn and Craig Goulding in 2018, has built a customer base of more than 200,000 with its direct debit travel card, which lets users spend in over 180 countries without requiring balance top-ups. The fintech has been expanding through co-branded partnerships, launching reward-earning debit cards with Marriott Bonvoy and Mastercard, and previously partnering with Hilton and Dogs Trust.
The company says Garland’s background in loyalty products and European rewards ecosystems will support the next phase of its partnership strategy. The appointment follows Currensea’s £1.7 million crowdfunding round last year, which valued the company at £28.5 million and helped fund its ongoing expansion.
Red Flag Alert partners with Border Merchant Systems to bring real-time risk intelligence to builders’ merchants
Red Flag Alert has announced a new partnership with Border Merchant Systems, the business management software provider used widely across the UK builders’ merchant industry. The integration aims to give merchants faster access to credit risk insights and automated onboarding tools in a sector that is heavily reliant on trade credit.
Border Merchant Systems users will now be able to access Red Flag Alert’s live company data, compliance checks, and fraud indicators directly within their existing workflows. The combined solution is designed to help merchants make quicker, more informed decisions when opening customer accounts or extending credit, replacing manual processes that previously took days with automated checks completed in seconds.
Red Flag Alert says the partnership will support merchants of all sizes, from independent single-site operators to national networks, by improving how they manage credit risk and monitor customer performance across their portfolios.
Marc Bishop, Senior Business Development Manager at Red Flag Alert, said the collaboration gives the sector access to the kind of tools that are becoming essential in today’s trading environment, where managing credit exposure and compliance requires accurate, real-time data rather than retrospective checks.
The partnership is positioned as a step towards improving resilience within the merchant sector, enabling businesses to onboard customers more safely and maintain stronger control over financial risk as they scale.
51toCarbonZero strengthens sustainability platform with Cedar AI partnership and new Climate Success Manager hire
Sustainability platform 51toCarbonZero has expanded its capabilities through a new partnership with AI workflow provider Cedar, alongside appointing Daniel Crockatt as its new Climate Success Manager. The developments reflect the company’s continued growth as demand for high-quality, data-driven Net Zero reporting accelerates across UK and European enterprises.
51toCarbonZero, led by Richard Davis, has become a recognised name in corporate carbon footprinting, emissions reporting, decarbonisation planning and climate risk assessment. As organisations face increasing scrutiny over the accuracy and auditability of sustainability data, the company has been investing heavily in enhancing the speed and reliability of its platform.
Through the new partnership, Cedar’s custom AI workflows will be embedded directly into 51-0’s software. The integration automates complex and time-consuming tasks such as data ingestion, categorisation, emissions factor mapping and calculations — areas where sustainability teams often face bottlenecks. By reducing manual effort, 51toCarbonZero aims to free consultants to focus on strategic decarbonisation work rather than administrative processing.
The company has also welcomed Daniel Crockatt to its growing team. Crockatt brings over three years of carbon accounting experience across food and beverage, construction and cosmetics supply chains, supported by a Masters in Environmental Science for Sustainability from King’s College London. His role will centre on helping clients translate climate data into measurable emissions reductions and credible Net Zero pathways.
The dual announcements highlight 51toCarbonZero’s ongoing expansion and its commitment to combining domain expertise with AI-enabled efficiency — a trend increasingly reshaping the sustainability and climate-tech landscape.
xpln.ai expands into the UK with new London office and appoints Dominic Di Talamo as Managing Director
Ad attention technology company xpln.ai has expanded its international footprint with the opening of a new London office, appointing Dominic Di Talamo as Managing Director UK to lead the next phase of its growth.
The move forms part of xpln.ai’s wider global expansion, following recent launches across Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. With the UK market long regarded as a pioneer in advanced media measurement and attention-based advertising, the new office represents a strategic step in strengthening the company’s presence in one of the sector’s most innovation-driven environments.
CEO and co-founder Fabien Magalon said the UK has played a central role in elevating attention as a key media metric, making it a natural next stage for the company’s expansion.
As Managing Director UK, Di Talamo will lead commercial growth, build local partnerships with agencies and advertisers, and grow a dedicated UK team. His remit includes accelerating adoption of attention-based measurement and helping cement attention as a standard currency for media effectiveness.
Di Talamo brings more than ten years of leadership experience in digital advertising, with roles including VP EMEA at Audigent (acquired by Experian), UK General Manager at SmartMedia Technologies, and Head of International Sales at MiQ.
“I’m thrilled to join xpln.ai at such a pivotal stage of growth,” he said. “Our mission is to help advertisers make smarter investment decisions through unified, intelligent attention measurement across all media.”
Magalon added that Di Talamo’s understanding of the UK ad tech ecosystem will be crucial in deepening relationships and supporting partners as attention-driven planning becomes more widely adopted.
International markets now represent 25% of xpln.ai’s revenue, with the London expansion reinforcing the company’s aim to become the global reference point for attention-based measurement and optimisation.
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