Author: David Penn

Klarna Announces Strategic Investment from Permira

Klarna Announces Strategic Investment from Permira
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Klarna

Less than a month after announcing strategic fundings from Visa and Brightfolk A/S, Klarna is back in the fintech headlines with news of a new strategic investment from a partnership advised by global investment firm, Permira. The partnership will acquire shares from a trio of existing shareholders – DST Global, General Atlantic, and Niklas Adalberth – in a transaction that will leave Adalberth as the only equity shareholder of the three. TechCrunch reports that the deal is worth between $225 million and $250 million, and estimates a valuation of $2.5 billion. They note further that Klarna has raised “somewhere in the region of $500 million in the last 7 weeks.”

Klarna CEO and co-founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski (pictured) put the new investment in the context of its recent brand new banking license, referring to the company’s growth from an innovator in enhancing the shopping experience to “a consumer-oriented and technology intensive bank.” Permira principal Andrew Young echoed Siemiatkowski’s sentiments, calling the company a “unique scale fintech innovator” for its work in e-commerce. “We see many vectors that will drive future success and with Sebastian, we look forward to supporting the company’s future organic, geographic, and acquisition growth strategies,” Young said.

Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, Klarna demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2012. The company provides payment solutions for 60 million consumers and 70,000 merchants transacting across borders. Participating in 18 markets around the world, Klarna supports direct payments, pay after delivery, and installment plans via a single-click “purchase experience” that gives shoppers a wider range of payment options. Founded in 2005 in Stockholm, Sweden, Klarna noted 50% growth in recorded transaction volumes in 2016 – including partnerships with 17,000 new merchants.

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New Investment Boosts Betterment Valuation to $800 Million

New Investment Boosts Betterment Valuation to $800 Million
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Betterment, Funding

It’s a Funding Friday here at Finovate! In addition to news of a strategic investment in Klarna, and new funding for credit scoring startup, Aire.com and DoubleNet Pay’s latest investment, we learn today that robo advisor Betterment is now that much closer to achieving unicorn status – courtesy of a $70 million investment from Sweden’s Kinnevik. The investment takes Betterment’s total capital to $275 million, and gives the robo advisor a valuation estimated at $800 million.

Praising the “strong partnership” between his firm and Kinnevik, Betterment CEO Jon Stein said that the investment will enable the company to “continue to build products that put even more money back in our customers’ pockets. The Kinnevik-led round, an extension of Betterment’s Series E from last year, featured participation from existing Betterment investors, Bessemer Venture Partners, Francisco Partners, and Menlo Ventures.

Senior Investment Director for Kinnevik, Chris Bischoff explained the nature of the extended Series E, saying that his firm’s approach was to “(invest) over multiple rounds into high-performing technology-enabled companies.” He added, “after a year of investment, we saw additional opportunities for growth and proposed the financing to Betterment. We are excited about the opportunity to deepen our relationship.”

Betterment CTO Dustin Lucien during his presentation with Quovo co-founder and CTO Michael Del Monte (not pictured) at FinDEVr New York 2016.

The news from Betterment arrives on the heels of the company’s launch of its Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) Portfolio. SRI enables investors to grow their capital while avoiding investments in companies whose products, services, and overall corporate behavior are considered to have a “negative social impact.” Instead, as VP of Financial Advice and Planning Alex Benke explained at the Betterment blog, “companies deemed to have strong social responsibility practices, such as Microsoft, Google, Proctor & Gamble, Merck, CocaCola, Intel, Cisco, Disney, and IBM may make up a larger portion of the SRI portfolio.”

A year ago, Betterment celebrated more than $5 billion under management. Today, the robo advisor boasts of nearly $10 billion AUM. In addition to its fully-automated, algorithm-managed investment portfolio, Betterment unveiled a new hybrid robo advisory service in June that includes either annual or unlimited check-ins with Betterment’s team of certified financial planners. Stein told Bloomberg Markets the company would use the new capital to grow the hybrid service, in particular.

Founded in 2008 and based in New York City, New York, Betterment demonstrated the Multiple Goals feature of its platform at FinovateFall 2011. More recently, the robo advisor joined Quovo at FinDEVr New York 2016, where Betterment CTO Dustin Lucien and Quovo co-founder and CTO Michael Del Monte presented “The Power of Aggregation Demonstrated by Quovo and Betterment.” The firm was named to CB Insights Fintech 250 list last month – along with 43 of its fellow Finovate/FinDEVr alums. We featured the robo advisor in our look at Passive Investing in our Savings Tech Horizon series this spring.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Aire, Betterment, Dwolla, ID Analytics, Klarna, Neener Analytics, PayPal, Persistent Systems, Taulia, Tavant

On Finovate.com

  • Aire Pulls in $5 Million, Lands Partnerships with Zopa and Toyota Financial Services.
  • New Investment Boosts Betterment Valuation to $800 Million.
  • Klarna Announces Strategic Investment from Permira.

Around the web

  • PayPal extends partnership with JP Morgan Chase, providing greater payment options for consumers.
  • Taulia joins European E-invoicing Service Providers Association.
  • Persistent Systems agrees to acquires Swiss firm Parx Werk in deal valued at $16 million.
  • ID Analytics partners with Acxiom to strengthen risk assessment and combat fraud.
  • Dwolla adds Multi-User Feature to the Access API Dashboard.
  • Neener Analytics joins Plug&Play fintech accelerator.
  • Tavant selected by Fairway Independent Mortgage To Transform Its Digital Lending Experience.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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LendKey Raises $13 Million in Equity and Debt Financing

LendKey Raises $13 Million in Equity and Debt Financing
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, LendKey

Lending-as-a-service specialist LendKey raised $13 million in Series C funding this week. The round consisted of both equity and debt financing ($8 million of the former, $5 million of the latter) and was led by Portland, Maine-based North Atlantic Capital. Also participating in the investment were existing investors DFJ, Gotham Ventures, TTV Capital, and Updata Partners.

“Traditional financial institutions are now more than ever adapting to evolving customer needs to remain competitive and better reach millennials,” LendKey CEO and founder Vince Passione said, “LendKey empowers these institutions to compete in today’s lending market by digitizing their loan businesses.” This week’s investment boosts LendKey’s total capital to more than $27 million. Passione said the financing will help the company “meet the strong bank and credit union demand” for its services. LendKey plans to expand its regional office in Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as add talent in account development and sales.

Pictured (left to right): CEO and founder Vince Passione and CPO Strati Papgeorge demonstrating LendKey Marketplace at FinovateSpring 2015.

North Atlantic Capital Managing Director Mark Morrissette praised LendKey’s “impressive industry knowledge and background” and the way its technology solved “a real need for banks and credit unions.” LendKey’s white-label, lending-as-a-service model enables banks, credit unions, and alternative lenders to digitize their lending operations with a solution that manages the entire loan cycle. This includes demand generation, online decisioning, loan origination, and customer service. The company’s solutions help lenders conduct programs in private student loans, student loan refinancing, auto loans, and home improvement loans.

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in New York City, LendKey demonstrated its LendKey Marketplace at FinovateSpring 2015. With clients including Navy FCU, McGraw-Hill FCU, and WSFS Bank, LendKey has deployed more than $1.5 billion in capital to borrowers. This spring, LendKey presented its Student Loan Refinance Report, highlighting borrower trends in lending preferences and loan performance. Also this spring, LendKey earned a finalist spot in the 2017 Best of FinXTech Awards, along with fellow Finovate alums Roostify, Moven, and Green Dot.

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Top Five Trends in Customer Engagement Technology

Top Five Trends in Customer Engagement Technology
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Guest Post, SuiteBox

Guest post by Ian Dunbar, CEO of SuiteBox

—

Financial services businesses face many pressures – cost reduction, scalability, risk mitigation, compliance, and regulation. Technology is the solution, at least in part, to these pressures. However, technology adds to the friction or customer effort of engaging with the financial service. More effort = customer disengagement.

Cutting across fintech, there are rapid advances being made in technology that drives customer engagement. Here are some of the top themes in CETech – customer engagement technology – that are worth watching.

Social media delivering personalization (and profiling)

Social media, search history, and analytic tools leveraging our digital social footprint will become mainstream in building real time client profiles. This will enable financial services providers to engage with clients through highly-relevant personalized content and to leverage profiles to determine product suitability.

For example, being aware of changes in a client’s family situation (perhaps the death of a loved one or a divorce) may enable the proactive deployment of more effective financial strategies. Product designers can even leverage existing social media data to determine the risks associated with the delivery of a product or service. A life insurer can build an individual’s risk profile more accurately from social media data than from a questionnaire.

Artificial intelligence and cognitive learning

Conversational speech and facial expressions can be analyzed to determine customer emotions. Microsoft’s Emotion API, for example, can detect anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise from a voice stream and images.

Financial service providers can use cognitive tools to deliver their products in a more engaging manner. Meeting with a client in person, via video or on the telephone, can be analyzed in real time. Risk assessment for miss-selling, real timing adapting of what and how a product is presented, or even determining if client is misrepresenting information will all be possible.

The power of video

Most surveys continue to tell us that customers prefer meeting personally with their financial providers. However this can be costly and inconvenient. Do you or your clients want to spend time in traffic, battling for a parking spot, and suffering the stress of congested roads, for a personal meeting?

Of course not. So we use the phone as our primary non-physical meeting tool. But the problem with the phone is it doesn’t employ the power of sight. Eye contact is fundamental to human communication. We can tell a lot from a person’s eyes, what mood they are in, and their level of comfort. Avoiding eye contact with strangers is a common strategy to remain private, especially in situations of close proximity. Yet this is what we do in important telephone calls with our clients.

Biometrics gather momentum

Usernames and passwords are an enormous source of consumer frustration and customer effort. Fingerprint recognition of smartphones has led consumers to treat biometrics as mainstream. This will rapidly expand as biometrics allow a convergence between previously incompatible goals of enhanced security without customer effort.

Smarter virtual assistants

Natural language voice recognition combined with smart virtual assistants mean we will increasingly talk to our financial services websites or apps, rather than our fingers doing the work. Love or hate Siri, voice commands will be increasingly accepted as the norm.

Get ready

Embed customer effort reducing measures and customer-centric design into your digital strategies. Embed the customer experience into user journeys using the latest engagement technologies. Create your own “Customer Experience Lab” to test the experience. There is no better time to put your customer back into the centre of your IT strategy.

Ian Dunbar is the CEO of SuiteBox. SuiteBox enables a permanently open digital workspace to be established between a host and participants of a meeting, allowing participants to meet via video or physically, share and collaborate on documents between the parties, digitally sign documents, establish evidence of identify & record the meeting for future reference. Headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand and founded in 2013, the company demonstrated its technology at FinovateEurope 2016.

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Innovation Acceleration: Incubators and Innovation Labs Driving Development in Fintech

Innovation Acceleration: Incubators and Innovation Labs Driving Development in Fintech
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2017

 

Post updated to present Showcase sponsor, Fintech71 and latest Showcase addition, FinTech Innovation Lab.

—

To prepare for our expanded FinovateFall conference in September, we’re taking a look at some of the new additions during Discussion Days September 13 and 14. Today, we’re previewing our Showcase of Accelerators, Incubators, and Innovation Labs on the 14th.

FinovateFall 2017’s showcase on accelerators, incubators, and innovation labs features demos from startups representing each of our accelerators, with the audience selecting the most innovative startup based on “biggest impact in startup ecosystem.” Here is a sampling of the accelerators and incubators whose startups will be represented during our showcase.

Fintech71

We lead off with our Showcase sponsor, Fintech71. One of the newest fintech accelerators to emerge on the scene, Fintech71’s goal is to attract fintech startups to Ohio and grow the innovation pipeline for the state’s private sector stakeholders. Backed by companies such as KeyBank, Progressive, and Fifth Third, Fintech 71 provides innovative entrepreneurs with a $100,000 investment for up to 6% equity, daily 1-on-1 mentor support, as well as access to participating companies and  “millennial talent” thanks to nearby Ohio State University.

 

Fintech71 will begin its inaugural class on September 10. Up to 12 startups will participate in the 10-week program, which will be based in Columbus, Ohio. “Ohio’s ranking as a Top 5 Fortune 500 and Top 5 Fortune 1000 headquarter destination is not without reason,” Fintech71 executive director Matt Armstead said, adding, “We aim to leverage Ohio’s tech-savvy talent, attractive cost of doing business, and established industry strength to make Ohio a global hotspot for fintech innovation and growth.

Citi Ventures

Citi Ventures is the “innovation engine” of Citi. The division invests in startups, supports new technologies, and tests new products and services in its Innovation Labs and businesses. Citi Ventures made its first investment in July 2010, and saw its first portfolio company exit (Silver Tail acquired by EMC) two years later. Citi Ventures launched its first fintech accelerator in Tel Aviv in 2013.

  • Founded in 2010 by Debby Hopkins
  • Headquartered in Palo Alto, California
  • Notable Startups: Linkable Networks (FF12), Ayasdi (FF14), Feedzai (FE14), Betterment (FF11), Chain (FD15), BlueVine (FF14), Plaid (FD14), Pindrop Security (FF12)

In 2017, Citi Ventures began the year appointing a new chief, Vanessa Colella, who was also named Chief Innovation Officer of Citi. Citi Ventures launched its Citi University Partnerships in Discovery program in February and in May, the venture capital arm of Citi leveraged the technology from portfolio company (and Finovate alum) Chain, to launch Citi Connect for Blockchain integrated with Nasdaq Linq.

FinTech Innovation Lab

Fintech Innovation Lab specializes in early and growth-stage fintech companies, helping these startups get access to some of the biggest financial services companies in the world. With programs in New York, Hong Kong; Dublin, Ireland; and London, the Lab’s alums have raised $530 million in VC funding since graduating from the accelerator program – more than $460 million from the New York lab alone. FinTech Innovation Lab is sponsored by Partnership Fund for New York City and Accenture.

  • Founded in 2012 by Maria Gotsch and Robert Gach
  • Headquartered in New York City, New York
  • Notable Startups: AlphaPoint (FE15), Atsora (FE14), BehavioSec (FF15), Big Data Scoring (FF15), BillGuard (FS12), bondIT (FF16), Dashlane (FE13), DeMystData (FA12), EverSafe (FF14), ForwardLane (FS16), Logical Glue (FE16), MaxMyInterest (FF14), Modelshop (FD17), Narrative Science (FF13), PhotoPay (FE15), RevolutionCredit (FF13), True Office (FE13), Uniken (FF16)

Last month, FinTech Innovation Lab celebrated its seventh anniversary, as a new class of startups – including Finovate/FinDEVr alums BehavioSec, DemystData, and Modelshop – demonstrated their technologies at the Lab’s annual Demo Days event. The occasion encouraged FinTech Innovation Lab co-founder Robert Gach to note that many of the technologies that have been seen at the Lab have anticipated trends ranging from big data analytics to the blockchain. “We expect this year’s innovations will experience a similar trajectory,” Gach said.

Omidyar Network RegTech Accelerator

Omidyar Network is an active impact investor that provides both financial and human capital to entrepreneurs in five main focus areas: education, emerging technology, governance and citizen engagement, property rights, and financial inclusion. The firm, launched by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, has a special interest in “entrepreneurs who share our commitment to advancing social good at the pace and scale the world needs today.”

  • Founded in 2004 by Pierre and Pam Omidyar
  • Headquartered in Redwood City, California
  • Notable Startups: Digi.me, Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (FA12), Lenddo, Prosper (FS09), RevolutionCredit (FF13), Tandem Bank

Earlier this year, Omidyar Network teamed up with Finovate alum Twilio as the firm launched its Impact Fund to support social impact programs. In February, Omidyar Network invested $2.9 million in an initiative to support the development of civic technology platforms in Latin America. In total, Omidyar Network has committed more than $900 million in for-profit investments and non-profit grants since inception.

Startupbootcamp NY

With partners including Mastercard, Santander, and Route 66 Ventures, Startupbootcamp NY provides fintech startups with seed funding, professional mentorship, New York City office space, and access to a worldwide network of fintech investors and businesses. The program’s areas of focus includes advanced analytics, blockchain technology, financial inclusion, identity & authentication, investments & personal finance, mobile security, P2P lending, and payments.

  • Founded in 2o1o by Alex Farcet, Carsten Kolbeck, Patrick de Zeeuw, and Ruud Hendriks
  • Headquartered in London, U.K.
  • Notable Startups: BankGuard (FE17), bondIT (FF16), Dragon Wealth Asia (FA13), investUP (FE16), InvoiceSharing (FE17), iproov (FE17)

An accelerator network with a global reach, Startupbootcamp sponsors events in more than 100 cities every year. It has more than 460 startups in its portfolio, more than 70% of which received funding. Startupbootcamp was named Best Accelerator 2014 in the European Tech Startup Awards. In addition to its fintech accelerators in New York, London, Singapore, and Mumbai, Startupbootcamp also provides programs in e-commerce (Amsterdam), insurance (London), and IoT (Barcelona).

Techstars

Since its inception, Techstars has accelerated more than 1,000 companies, with an active or acquired rate of 90%. The firm has provided $3.7 billion in total funding to startups with a total market capitalization of more than $9 billion. “We fund technology oriented companies, typically web-based or other software companies,” Techstars explains in an FAQ, “but we’ve funded companies that don’t quite fit that mold as well.”

  • Founded in 2006 by David Cohen, Brad Feld, David Brown, and Jared Polis
  • Headquartered in Boulder, Colorado
  • Notable Alums: Remitly, DigitalOcean, ImpulseSave (FF12), Realty Mogul, Good April (FS13), Market IQ (FF13), Bitfusion, Zighra (FF13), Robinhood,

Techstars just celebrated the 10th anniversary of its Techstars Startup Weekend. Also this month, Techstars announced the addition of more than 100 companies to its Worldwide Network. In June, Techstars teamed up with GINCO to launch the Techstars Dubai Accelerator, which opens this month and will begin its first class in January. Techstars introduced a new accelerator in Paris in March, partnering with venture capital firm, Partech Ventures.

The upcoming Showcase of Accelerators, Incubators, and Innovation Labs at FinovateFall will feature demos from each of our featured accelerators. To be a part of our Discussion Days audience at FinovateFall, be sure to register and save your spot at the show today.

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Expensify Announces Five New ReceiptBurner Partners

Expensify Announces Five New ReceiptBurner Partners
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Expensify

Expensify unveiled a quintet of new partners for its automation-first ReceiptBurner platform this week. The new integrations will make it easy for qualified business expenses such as corporate travel bookings, on-demand parking payments, “and even private jet airfare” to be tracked and recorded into Expensify.

Calling his company’s technology a “full-time travel companion,” David Barrett highlighted the importance of removing the hassle from business travel. “We aim to make business travel smoother every step of the way,” Barnett said in a statement. “That means easing the burden of expense management for everyone involved, from the admin coordinating the travel to the employee out in the field.”

The five new partners are: The Parking Spot, ParkWhiz, Pana, TRAVO, and Jettly. The Parking Spot and ParkWhiz are on-demand parking reservation platforms; The Parking Spot is actually the largest owner/operator of airport parking properties near airports. Pana and TRAVO are trip booking and planning resources. Jettly is a private jet chartering marketplace.

Users of Expensify’s ReceiptBurner no longer have to smartscan or email their receipts to the company for tracking. Instead, when a transaction with one of the company’s growing number of partners occurs, ReceiptBurner automatically creates a receipt and sends it directly to Expensify where it is added to the user’s expense report. “ReceiptBurner eliminates one more step in the expense reporting process,” Expensify Marketing Generalist Gabi Horowitz announced on the company blog a year ago this month when the new solution was introduced. “(ReceiptBurner brings) us even closer to a utopian world in which business travelers can focus on business rather than the logistics of travel.”

Headquartered in San Francisco, Expensify demonstrated its Invoices solution at FinovateSpring 2013. Earlier this month, the company announced a new partnership with Lyft that will make it easier for business travelers using the ride-sharing service to manage their Lyft-related expenses using Expensify. And last month, Expensify reported exceeding the 35,000 customer milestone, reached in part by 15,000 new U.S. customers this year alone. In May, the company teamed up with fellow Finovate and FinDEVr alum, Xero, to power in-house expense management for the New Zealand-based cloud accounting innovator’s 21 offices around the world.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Expensify, Flybits, Jumio, NYMBUS, PayPal, ThreatMetrix, TransferWise, Urban FT

On Finovate.com

  • Expensify Announces Five New Receiptburner Partners.
  • Flybits Raises $6.5 Million to Help Banks Put Data to Work

Around the web

  • Jumio introduces eyeball tracking to the “liveness” check of its biometric authentication solution, Netverify.
  • NYMBUS adds executive talent, opens center of strategic excellence in Glastonbury, Connecticut.
  • Co-founder Kristo Käärmann takes the helm at TransferWise.
  • PayPal announces strategic partnership with Samsung Pay.
  • ThreatMetrix named the Leader in The Forrester Wave: Risk-Based Authentication, Q3 2017.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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NCR Software at Center of Swiss ATM Harmonization Initiative

NCR Software at Center of Swiss ATM Harmonization Initiative
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: NCR Corporation

Technology from NCR will help drive a new initiative to modernize and upgrade ATMs used by Swiss banks. The project, ATMfutura, is being led by Switzerland’s SIX Group, and will standardize UI and user guidance on all ATMs in the country. The pilot begins this summer and continues through the balance of the year, with the new software from NCR, based on the company’s NCR APTRA Top Client Server, made available to all Swiss ATMs in 2018.

The goal of the ATMfutura project is to bring a common standard to Swiss ATMs – replacing more than 20 different solutions currently in use – making ATMs easier to use for customers and more cost efficient for FIs to run and manage. Among the features to be added as part of the “harmonization” of Swiss ATMs are mobile cash withdrawals using QR codes, the ability to choose cash denominations, and a voice-guided interface for customers with visual impairments. Many of these features are offered by certain Swiss banks; the ATMfutura project aims to bring these features to all Swiss ATMs.

Pictured: Digital Insight Labs Product Management Co-Lead Suzan Szollar demonstrating NCR’s VR Collaboration for ATMs at FinovateSpring 2017.

“We are proud of the trust that SIX placed in us with this project,” NCR Switzerland Country Manager Paul Thuer said. “The configuration and modernization of existing components for a new, standardized ATM software platform is a complex task that requires a trusting cooperation between both parties,” Thuer explained, adding that he felt the ATMfutura project would have a positive “lighthouse effect on other countries.”

Six Payment Services Division CEO Juerg Weber called the ATM software standardization “only the first step in the ATMfutura project.” Weber sees the project eventually providing Swiss banks solutions that help them further lower costs and boost usability of their ATMs “through standardization, volume purchasing options, and optimized processes.” Weber credited NCR for having the “long term experience, flexibility, and know-how” to manage a project of ATMfutura’s scale.

Founded in 1884 and headquartered in Duluth, Georgia, NCR demonstrated Virtual Reality Collaboration for ATMs at FinovateSpring 2017. Earlier this year, NCR introduced its SelfServ 80 Series ATMs, which feature 19-inch touch display drives and a tablet-like user interface. In February, the company announced that Bottomline Technologies had integrated NCR’s intelligent transaction processing platform, Authentic, into its Direct Faster Payment Service solution.

The largest provider of multivendor ATM software in the world, NCR is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “NCR.” The company has a market capitalization of $5 billion, and includes Finovate alum, Digital Insight, among its subsidiaries. Each day, NCR’s software, hardware, and services enable nearly 700 million transactions in verticals ranging from retail and hospitality to financial services and technology. William Nuti is CEO and Chairman.

 

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defiSOLUTIONS Hires Keven Sticher as Chief Information Officer

defiSOLUTIONS Hires Keven Sticher as Chief Information Officer
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: defi Solutions

defiSOLUTIONS has appointed Keven Sticher as its new Chief Information Officer. Sticher comes to the company after stints as SVP of Technology and Security for Monogram Residential Trust and VP of IT for Exeter Finance Corporation. At defiSOLUTIONS, Sticher will be responsible for “business alignment, vision, strategy, and execution of information technology and security.”

Chief Operating Officer Georgine Muntz praised Sticher’s “solid track record of deploying scalable technology.” In addition to his work with Monogram Residential Trust and Exeter Financial, Sticher is a board member of computer and network security consultancy, Fox Three, and an official member of the Forbes Technology Council. “His leadership will strengthen the defi core as we continue to expand and provide even greater value to our lenders,” Muntz said.

“I love this company,” Sticher (pictured) said. “I believe in it and what the defi team has been accomplishing. And I look forward to making certain we successfully get to the next level.”

defiSOLUTIONS made a name for itself by delivering the auto lending industry’s first fully-configurable Loan Origination Solution (LOS). Demonstrated at FinovateSpring 2014, the technology has enabled the company’s clients – ranging from established auto finance companies to startup lenders –  to process up to 30,000 applications and fund up to 1,500 deals a month. Now the company provides a wide range of services including loan management and servicing, analytics and reporting, digital loan document handling, direct loan application services, and an auto loan portfolio marketplace, defiEXCHANGE introduced in May.

defiSOLUTIONS was founded in 2012 and is based in Grapevine, Texas. Stephanie Alsbrooks is founder and CEO. Earlier this month, she was named the Southwest Region EY Entrepreneur of the Year in Emerging Technology .

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Cloud Lending Solutions, CREALOGIX, defi Solutions, eMoney Advisor, Global Debt Registry, M1 Finance, NCR Corporation, TSYS

On Finovate.com

  • defiSOLUTIONS Hires Keven Sticher as Chief Information Officer.
  • NCR at Center of Swiss ATM Harmonization Initiative

Around the web

  • CREALOGIX wins The Goodacre Systems in the City Award for 2017.
  • Business Insider profiles Brian Barnes, founder of M1 Finance.
  • Fujitsu begins selling SaaS lending and leasing technology developed by Cloud Lending Solutions.
  • TSYS extends commercial payments agreement with Germany’s Degussa Bank.
  • The Entrust Group announces new integration with eMoney Advisor.
  • Global Debt Registry finishes trial of secure, permissioned blockchain proof of concept.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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New Partnership Turns PayPal into Apple App Store Payment Option

New Partnership Turns PayPal into Apple App Store Payment Option
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: PayPal

One small step for consumer choice in e-commerce. One giant leap in PayPal’s quest to be the payment option of choice for shoppers online.

This week the company announced a partnership with Apple to allow shoppers to pay for their purchases at the App Store using PayPal. The feature will be available for users of a variety of Apple devices including iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Apple Watch, and iPod. In addition to the App Store, PayPal will be a payment option for a variety of Apple services including Apple Music, iTunes, and iBooks. The new partnership is a major coup for PayPal insofar as the App Store previously limited payment options to debit and credit cards. Accepting PayPal also lowers the potential threat the company faced from Apple’s own payment technology, Apple Pay. This week’s deal follows a similar arrangement PayPal forged with Google that launched in April.

“PayPal’s availability across Apple’s services further expands our vision of providing customers a variety of ways to easily make mobile purchases,” PayPal EVP and COO Bill Ready wrote at the company blog. He noted that consumers will be able to ask Apple’s Siri to make a payment via the PayPal app. The agreement between Apple and PayPal is also seen a a big win for consumer choice. MarketWatch quoted industry analyst James Cakmak who noted that the trend toward giving consumers more payment options was strong among the major payment networks and card issuers.

Founded in 1998 and acquired by eBay in 2002, San Jose-based PayPal demonstrated its Instant Account Creation functionality at FinovateEurope 2012. The company is also an alum of our developers conference, teaming up with Braintree to present “The Future of Payment Identity” and host a workshop “Making Payments Fun” at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2014. PayPal made headlines last month when it made an undisclosed investment in online lender and fellow Finovate alum, LendUp. Also in June, PayPal partnered with Flywire – also a Finovate alum – to facilitate international money transfers. The company began the year with a major acquisition, picking up TIO Networks for $230 million in February.

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