Author: David Penn

Meniga Builds Digital Banking Solution for BPER

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Italian banking group BPER has contracted Meniga to build its new digital banking solution, reports Antony Peyton of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

BPER said it has been working on modernising and increasing efficiency across operations and the “enrichment” of the digital banking with personal financial management (PFM0 solution for customers is “central to this”.

Diego Rossi, head of BPER’s IT department, said “Customers are increasingly looking for solutions that allow them to financially plan for the future. We are pleased to have identified a partner that can provide them with best in class software.”

Recently, BPER launched Smart Mobile My Money, a standalone mobile app, and a new version of its online banking Smart Web, allowing customers to manage their finances as part of their online digital solution.

Meniga’s products will be used to create engagement between the bank and its customers. This includes budget control and tracking of monthly spending.

BPER is the parent company of Gruppo BPER, with a network of over 1,200 branches throughout the country.

Meniga has offices in London, Reykjavik, Stockholm and Warsaw.

Recently, Meniga received a double dollop of delightful funding – €3 million equity investment from its customer, Swedbank, in April; and €3.1 million from UniCredit in June.

The company demonstrated its Richest Transactions solution at FinovateEurope 2018, winning Best of Show for its technology that enables banks to leverage open APIs to enrich transactions, helping consumers improve their financial lives and providing them with long-term value.

Finovate Alumni News

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On Finovate.com

  • Baker Hill Inks Loan Origination Deal with West Texas State Bank.
  • Finicity and Cre8tech Labs’ Lender Price Partner to Streamline Digital Lending.

Around the web

  • LendInvest partners with Onfido to bring identity verification to LendInvest’s Buy-to-Let digital applications.
  • Malauzai and Somerset Trust Company declare August 20th as National Fintech Day.
  • Thomson Reuters launches Compliance Management solution, an addition to its Connected Risk platform.
  • Ripple announces the transition of David Schwartz from Chief Cryptographer to Chief Technical Officer.
  • Identity verification startup Sedicii earns a finalist spot in BBVA’s Open Talent competition.
  • Barclays to deploy Finastra’s Fusion Loan IQ system.
  • AlphaPoint wins Best Distributed Ledger Technology Provider by the 2018 Water Technology customer survey.

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.

Best of Show Winner Bambu Raises $3 Million in Series A

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In a round led by Franklin Templeton Investments, B2B robo advisor Bambu has raised $3 million in Series A funding. The capital will be used to fuel the Singapore-based fintech’s global expansion.

“We are incredibly grateful for the support of all our existing and new investors and customers in helping us to build a leading global Robo-advisory technology company,” Bambu CEO and founder Ned Phillips said. He noted that the company already had topped growth targets for the year, and pointed to seven new clients in Asia and the U.S. that were slated to go live soon.

“This proves our B2B business model is working, as there is real global scalability without large capital requirements,” Phillips said. “Our next ambitious goal is to get a million end users on the platform by 2019.”

Also participating in the round were Singapore family office Octava and Japanese fintech investor Mamoru Taniya. Speaking on behalf of Franklin Templeton Investments, which made its first investment in the company last year, Managing Director and Head of Retail Harshendu Bindal praised Bambu’s ability to “drive constant innovation in the digital wealth management space” and called the company “a great long-term partner for us.”

The funding takes Bambu’s total capital to more than $4 million.

Bambu won Best of Show at FinovateAsia 2017 for its demonstration of People Like Me, a machine learning model that goes beyond traditional roboadvisory to make it easier for users to identify and reach their financial goals. The previous year, the company made its Finovate debut with a demo of its Robo and Intelligent Digital Advisory platform. The platform reimagines robo advisory by providing specific solutions for different market segments: a mobile private banker for the rich, a traditional robo advisory portfolio tool for the mass affluent, and a “robo saver” for retail customers.

This spring, Bambu opened offices in London and announced a number of new additions to its team – including a new Managing Director in Europe, Nick Wakefield. The company also made a trio of new hires who will fulfill roles in AI, design, and front-end development.

Bill.com Launches International Business Payments

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Business payments innovator Bill.com has introduced a new service to make it easy to pay international vendors digitally – putting cross border payments on par with domestic payments. The solution, International Business Payments, will save users more than 50% on the cost of international wire transfer fees and is available in more than 25 countries – with more countries to be added in the months to come.

“Bank wires typically cost $25 to $40 each,” Bill.com CEO and founder René Lacerte said. “International payments through a bank requires a separate bill payment process with many extra steps. There is no automated approvals or accounting software integration, which means less controls and more errors.”

In the company’s press release, Bill.com noted a Deloitte Consulting study that indicated cross-border payments make up 26% of all U.S. B2B payment value. The study also pointed out that bank wire transfers are still the most common method for international payments. “Bill.com is changing that,” Lacerte said. “We are very happy to be delivering a simple and cost-effective way to pay vendors around the world inside the same Bill.com service with all the same features customers love.”

These features include an automated approval process, vendor management, online document storage, and seamless integration with leading accounting software solutions such as Intuit Quickbooks, Xero, Sage Intacct, and Oracle NetSuite.

With an introductory price of $9.99 per transaction, International Business Payments is currently available to select Bill.com clients. The service will open to all Bill.com customers by the end of August.

Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Bill.com recently surpassed a milestone of $50 billion in business payments processed annually. In May, the company announced new Chief Marketing Officer Yael Zheng. Bill.com began the year introducing its Accountant Partner Program, which provides accounting firms with tools to manage billpay services for clients.

Bill.com demonstrated its CashView Command and Control System at FinovateSpring 2012. The technology enables businesses to manage AP and AR and provides online billpay, custom invoicing services, unlimited document storage, collaboration tools, and mobile access.

With partnerships with four of the top 10 largest U.S. banks and more than 60 of the top 100 accounting firms and major accounting service providers, Bill.com has raised more than $259 million in funding. The company includes Temasek Holdings, JP Morgan, Silicon Valley Bank, Scale Venture Partners, Bank of America, Financial Partners Fund, Icon Ventures, DCM Ventures, and Emergence Capital Partners among its investors.

Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World

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As Finovate goes increasingly global, so does our coverage of financial technology. Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World is our weekly look at fintech innovation in developing economies in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Brazilian card processor Conductor to deploy 3D Secure authentication technology from TAS Group later this fall.
  • Distributed check capture specialist Panini and technology distributor J. Fleischman team up to bring check truncation to Paraguay.
  • Visa introduces loyalty program available to issuing banks in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Asia-Pacific

  • TransferWise opens office in Hong Kong as part of expansion into Asia.
  • AsiaCollect, a credit management services provider based in Singapore, raises $4.5 million in funding.
  • Foreign exchange and international payments company, Frontierpay, opens Asian headquarters in Singapore.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • South African fintech walletdoc partners with EasyPay to make it easier for consumer to pay monthly subscriptions and utilities.
  • Western Union opens office in Ivory Coast.
  • Nigeria’s Bureau of Public Procurement introduces eGovernment Procurement System.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Albania’s Raiffeisen Bank Shqipëri partners with NF Innova to deploy digital self-service kiosks.
  • Efigence provides UI/UX design, development and implementation for new investment platform from Polish home equities broker, CDM Pekao.
  • Russian SME crowdfunding platform SimplyFi partners with Tochka Bank to offer direct lending to the bank’s business customers.
  • Sberbank introduces support for Google Pay.
  • Western Union partners with Russia’s Post Bank, enabling money transfers via Post Bank’s mobile app.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Kuwait Finance House (KFH) to use VISA’s token service for its mobile wallet.
  • Saudi Arabia-based Maalem Financing to deploy Islamic core banking technology from Path Solutions.
  • Turkish government launches fintech task force to improve fintech ecosystem locally.

Central and South Asia

  • The Economic Times looks at the role of bankers in India’s “coming fintech revolution.”
  • RBS India, the innovation hub of the Royal Bank of Scotland, to launch forum on disability inclusion.
  • PaySend joins Astana International Finance Centre (AIFC), a central Asian fintech hub based in Kazakhstan.

Top image designed by Freepik

Finovate Alumni News

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On Finovate.com

  • Best of Show Winner Bambu Raises $3 Million in Series A.
  • Bill.com Launches International Business Payments.

Around the web

  • Onfido to provide identity verification for HBUS, the strategic partner of cryptocurrency exchange Huobi.
  • Jack Henry migrates 66 FIs to its JHA Card Processing Solutions.
  • Avaloq to help U.K.-based financial services firm Smith & Williamson deliver investment management services to clients.
  • PYMNTS.com looks at Emailage and its expansion into the Canadian market.
  • Jumio and Backbase partner to improve customer onboarding with online identity verification technology.

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.

PayPal’s Pledge: CEO Commits to $3 Billion a Year in M&A Spending

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PayPal President and CEO Dan Schulman told a German business daily, Handelsblatt, that the spending spree the company has been on in over the past few years (five acquisitions in the past 24 months) is not slowing down yet.

“We have a healthy balance sheet and we are ready to put it to work to buy more companies,” Schulman told Handlesblatt this week, adding that the company was prepared to invest up to $3 billion a year on acquisitions geared toward “specific capabilities.”

Some of these specific capabilities include fraud prevention, courtesy of PayPal’s acquisition of Simility for $120 million; merchant payouts thanks to its purchase of Hyperwallet for $400 million; and even AI-powered marketing technology with its pick up of Jetlore this spring for an undisclosed sum.

But PayPal’s biggest buy of 2018 so far is clearly the $2.2 billion in cash spent on Swedish payments startup iZettle, which the company acquired in May. Referred to as the “Square of Europe,” iZettle is the largest acquisition in PayPal’s history and will help put the company’s service in hundreds of thousands of brick and mortar stores, and help PayPal compete with rivals – like Square.

In addition to a busy acquisition pace, PayPal has been making friends and influencing people, as well, of late. The company sold its consumer credit receivables business to Synchrony for $6.9 billion earlier this month. Schulman noted at the time that the move would help the company invest in other areas of the business or fund future acquisitions. PayPal expanded its partnership with Google Pay in May, making PayPal as a payment option throughout the Google ecosystem. Also that month, the company extended its agreement with Visa to speed the adoption of digital and mobile payments in Canada. In April, PayPal teamed up with Yahoo to make PayPal subsidiary Braintree available to online merchants using Yahoo Merchant Solutions and Yahoo Stores platforms.

PayPal demonstrated its Instant Account Creation solution at FinovateEurope 2012. Founded in 1998 and headquartered in San Jose, California, PayPal is a publicly-traded company on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol “PYPL.” PayPal has a market capitalization of more than $100 billion.

Thinking Capital and Equifax Launch ‘Cash Flow Revolution’ for Canadian SMEs

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Now we know what happens when a global information solutions company with a talent for credit scoring and a small business financing specialist get together to help SMEs in Canada to better understand their credit profile and obtain the financing they need.

Equifax Canada and Thinking Capital have launched a new solution, BillMarket, designed specifically to enable Canadian small businesses to leverage their credit profile to extend payment terms in their supply chain.

“BillMarket creates a new language of credit for small business in Canada,” Thinking Capital CEO and co-founder Jeff Mitelman said. “For the first time, there is a practical way to talk about and put a dollar value on small business credit in Canada.”

The new solution works by using Equifax’s Small Business Grade to establish a credit limit businesses can use to extend payments. Businesses can learn how much credit they are eligible to access by registering with BillMarket and reviewing their certification report. Financing via BillMarket gives small businesses more time to pay suppliers, increased purchasing power, and the ability to deepen relationships with business partners thanks to greater potential spending and consistently prompt payment.

Suppliers benefit from on-time payment, as well, and have the ability to pick up new business from companies unable to pay cash upfront for purchases. Small Business Grade also helps suppliers determine a company’s credit and purchasing power, helping them spot and manage potential late payment risks in advance.

“BillMarket expands the purchasing power for Canadian SMBs and eliminates friction in the supply chain,” Mitelman said. “Through BillMarket, small businesses can translate their credit grade to real-time available credit that they can use to extend payments with suppliers by up to 120 days.” The service, he added, represented a “cash flow revolution for the Canadian small business market.”

Thinking Capital participated in our developers conference, FinDEVr New York 2016. The company’s Chief Strategy Officer, Anthony Lipschitz, and Chief Technology Officer, Pat Forgione, presented Lending as a Service, a look at how the company leveraged big data to streamline the complex lending process for small businesses in Canada.

Headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Thinking Capital was founded in 2006. Since inception, the company has facilitated business financing for more than 14,000 Canadian SMEs. Financing from $5,000 to $300,000 is available to small businesses through Thinking Capital’s fixed and flexible payment solutions. SMEs must be based in Canada, in operation for at least six months, and have average monthly sales of at least $7,000. Thinking Capital was acquired by Purpose Investments in May in a deal reportedly valued at more than $200 million.

Atlanta, Georgia-based Equifax demonstrated its mobile app at FinovateFall 2011. Earlier this month, the company – with operations in 24 countries in North America, Central and South America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific – announced a partnership with account information service provider Consents.online. In June, Equifax hired former IBM Watson and Cloud Platform CTO Bryson Koehler as its new Chief Technology Officer.

Equifax is publicly owned and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “EFX.” The company has a market capitalization of $15 billion.

NF Innova | NFG and Mambu Team Up to Deliver New Digital Banking Solution

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New Frontier Group (NFG), the company behind software development and digital transformation firm, NF Innova, has announced a new partnership with SaaS banking specialist Mambu. The partnership will enable NFG to extend its digital banking offering, creating a fully online and automated digital banking solution that will make it easier for FIs to not only digitize and automate customer-facing processes, but also get new products and services to market faster.

“Customer expectations have changed and institutions need to be flexible enough to respond quickly in an evolving market,” NFG Managing Director Gregor Bierent said. “Our partnership with Mambu is a natural fit that creates an integrated solution where the approach to agility, integration, modularity is aligned.”

NFG’s platform provides personalized, real-time service and easy onboarding across all digital channels. Leveraging Mambu’s banking engine, the solution delivers PFM, customer segmentation, smart bots and other applications via a cloud-native API-enabled architecture. Institutions can readily integrate complementary solutions to the platform to suit the specific needs of their markets, as well.

“We can now deliver an end-to-end solution from online onboarding to loans administration, KYC and availability across opti-channels, ranging from mobile to watches which are all managed through a single interface,” Bierent added. “Through the intuitive and configurable combined solution, institutions can offer their customers a rich and seamless experience.”

“We are pleased to welcome NFG to our growing partner ecosystem,” Mambu CTO and CPO Ben Goldin said. “Their opti-channel solution will help our mutual clients to create intuitive and seamless experiences for digitally driven financial institutions.”

NF Innova was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Serbia. The company demonstrated its iBanking Opti-Channel Bot at FinovateEurope 2018. Part of the New Frontier Group, NF Innova is dedicated to building state-of-the-art customer engagement solutions. The company also announced this week that Albania’s Raiffeisen Bank will be deploying its digital self-service kiosks to provide 24/7 availability, reduced transaction times, and improved ease of access for the bank’s customers.

Mambu made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia 2013 in Hong Kong. Based in Berlin, Germany, and founded in 2011, Mambu leverages its cloud-based SaaS technology to provide financial institutions with a state-of-the-art, end-to-end core banking system. Mambu’s offering provides FIs with a range of solutions including loan and deposit product creation and servicing as well as client relationship management and reporting. With more than $13 million in funding, Mambu includes Acton Capital Partners and CommerzVentures among its investors. Eugene Danilkis is co-founder and CEO.

Finovate Alumni News

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On Finovate.com

  • NF Innova | NFG and Mambu Team Up to Deliver New Digital Banking Solution.
  • Thinking Capital and Equifax Launch ‘Cash Flow Revolution’ for Canadian SMEs.
  • PayPal’s Pledge: CEO Commits to $3 Billion a Year in M&A Spending.

Around the web

  • AI Foundry forges integration partnership with MTS Software Solutions.
  • PaySend joins Astana International Finance Centre (AIFC), a central Asian fintech hub based in Kazakhstan.
  • Thomson Reuters expands strategic partnership with SAP to simplify costs of cross-border transactions.
  • GreatHorn welcomes Vijay Malik as its new Vice President of Engineering.
  • Nanopay plans for B2B cross border and domestic transfer service.
  • Multiple Best of Show winner Trusona launches partner program.
  • Kinetica taps Gary West as Vice President of Sales, EMEA.

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.