Umbrellar undergoes digital transformation, Visa acquires Kiwi company Fraedom

“We aim to help New Zealand businesses thrive in the cloud economy,” says Umbrellar Group CEO, Michael Foley.

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Kiwi web hosting company Umbrellar has redesigned its cloud product lines to provide customers a ‘multi-cloud experience’.

“This change means the company can focus on offering the best of breed cloud services that New Zealand needs,” says Umbrellar Group CEO, Michael Foley.

“It’s an exciting time to be making this transformation,” says Foley, in a statement. “After 21 years building our business on servers, domains and web hosting, and having now gone through our own digital transformation, we are ready to take Umbrellar, and the New Zealand customers we serve, to the next level.”

“We’ve built our business by helping New Zealand companies grow in the internet era and now we’re going to take that to the next level. By providing Kiwis with the tools they need to digitally operate in the most efficient way possible, we aim to help New Zealand businesses thrive in the cloud economy.”

Umbrellar has four data centres (three in New Zealand and one in Australia), and helps 85,000 New Zealand customers to work smarter online.

Umbrellar works with Microsoft to offer Azure and will be introducing Azure Stack and Microsoft 365 offers in the weeks ahead.

In another development, Visa has announced it is acquiring Kiwi company Fraedom.

Fraedom provides payments and transaction management solutions for financial institutions and their corporate customers.

Fraedom has been a Visa partner for nearly 10 years, and its technology is used in Visa IntelliLink Spend Management, a core platform for Visa’s commercial and small-business clients.

This is another great example of NZ fintechs developing world class business solutions that can meet the needs of financial institutions and their customers globally

Marty Kerr, Visa

The acquisition will strengthen and expand Visa’s business suite of solutions to meet the rapidly evolving needs of the B2B payments industry, says Visa, in a statement.

“Increasingly, businesses are replacing inefficient paper-based payment systems with digital tools,” says Vicky Bindra, global head of products and solutions, Visa.

“This strategic acquisition allows Visa to offer a more comprehensive business solution to our corporate clients that is innovative, global, highly configurable and intuitive for their employees.”

"This is another great example of New Zealand fintechs developing world class business solutions that can meet the needs of financial institutions and their customers globally," says Marty Kerr, Visa country manager, New Zealand and South Pacific.

“We couldn’t be more excited to join the Visa family,” says Kyle Ferguson, CEO of Fraedom.

“The combination of Visa’s leadership, reach and deep knowledge of digital payments, coupled with our expertise in the B2B market for our growing customer base, will allow us to better service businesses around the world with fast, secure and robust commercial payments solutions.”