Finovate Global: Meet the International Alums of FinovateEurope 2026!

Finovate Global: Meet the International Alums of FinovateEurope 2026!
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

FinovateEurope 2026 is only days away!

With its home in London, it is no surprise that FinovateEurope often showcases the highest number of demoing companies headquartered outside of the United States. What’s especially interesting about this year’s cohort of FinovateEurope demoing companies, however, is the percentage of non-US companies compared to the total: more than 77% of this year’s demoers hail from countries other than the US. Check them out below and then join us next week for FinovateEurope 2026!

FinovateEurope 2026 kicks off at London’s Intercontinental 02—February 10 and 11. Tickets are still available. Visit our FinovateEurope 2026 hub to register and save your spot!

AAZZUR—Berlin, Germany

Founded in 2019, AAZZUR empowers brands to launch embedded finance solutions with a single integration, unlocking new revenue streams and enhancing customer engagement.

Candour Identity—Oulu, Finland

Founded in 2021, Candour Identity boosts onboarding conversions, reduces fraud losses, enables daily biometric use, and supports regulatory complaince to help instituions scale their digital offerings.

FINTRAC—London, England

Founded in 2024, FINTRAC automates workflows to deliver stronger controls, richer analytics, and lower costs across the model lifecycle. The company’s Model Ops platform helps banks and other financial institutions manage their most complex models and calculations.

Francis—London, England

Founded in 2025, Francis empowers financial institutions and fintechs to make the most of open finance by leveraging AI. The company’s technology turns fragmented financial data into actionable wealth insights.

Hagbad—United Kingdom

Founded in 2025, Hagbad digitizes trust-based savings, enabling compliant engagement, expanding customer reach and driving financial inclusion via regulated, culturally aligned financial infrastructure.

Intuitech—Budapest, Hungary

From simple workflows to complex cases such as commercial loans and mortgages, Intuitech delivers AI agents capable of automating over 90% of manual tasks, shortening approval times and lowering costs. The company was founded in 2018.

Keyless—London, England

Keyless replaces outdated multi-factor authentication (MFA) with biometrics, improving the user experience and saving millions. Founded in 2019, Keyless was acquired by fellow Finovate alum Ping Identity.

Maisa—Valencia, Spain

Maisa boosts business efficiency by automating end-to-end processes with traceability, hallucination-resistance, and governance, in regulated industries such as banking and financial services. Maisa was founded in 2024.

Mifundo—Tallinn, Estonia

Mifundo enables banks and other financial institutions to grow their business volume by up to 15% by enabling them to better serve foreign and cross-border customers throughout Europe. The company was founded in 2022.

MyPocketSkill—London, England

Founded in 2020, MyPocketSkill is a digital technology company at the nexus of fintech and edtech that offers solutions to help Gen Z to save, invest, and become more money savvy.

Neuralk AI—Paris, France

Founded in 2024, Neuralk AI makes predictive capability a viable option at every point where tabular data is available. The company’s technology delivers superior performance compared to traditional machine learning and large-language models.

Opentech—Rome, Italy

Founded in 2023, Opentech partners with banks and card issuers, supporting digital transformation with secure, compliant, and scalable payment solutions. The company combines UX design with software engineering via a co-design model that accelerates delivery while ensuring equality and reliability.

R34DY—Budapest, Hungary

Founded in 2019, R34DY offers an automated system, ABLEMENTS, that enables rapid AI transformation for banks, enabling them to deliver new products faster, lower IT costs, and differentiate themselves via context-aware modernization.

Sea.dev—London, England

Sea.dev provides embeddable AI for business lending. The company’s technology automates underwriting workflows, to enable credit analysts to focus on higher-value analysis, faster decision-making, and growth. Sea.dev was founded in 2024.

Serene—London, England

Founded in 2023, Serene combines behavioral insights, predictive intelligence, and financial data to enable institutions to identify and understand early signs of fraud, vulnerability, and financial stress.

Skill Studio AI—Dublin, Ireland

Founded in 2025, Skill Studio AI transforms training documents into engaging, AI-powered learning experiences. The company’s platform reduces training costs, accelerates compliance readiness, and scales globally.

Tweezr—Tel Avi, Israel and Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Tweezr empowers institutions to transform and grow by accelerating time-to-market and boosting developer productivity for both maintaining legacy systems as well as for modernization initiatives. The company was founded in 2024.

Photo by Lucas George Wendt on Unsplash

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Three Fresh Lending Tools that Are Redefining Credit Decisioning

Three Fresh Lending Tools that Are Redefining Credit Decisioning
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateEurope 2026 Sneak Peek, Intuitech, List series, Mifundo, Sea.dev

As banks digitize their lending processes and seek to expand credit access across borders, it is becoming increasingly difficult to make fast, accurate credit decisions. To mitigate risk, lenders need real-time insights into spending habits, automated functionality, and visibility into a broader set of data, especially as they seek to improve speed, enhance the customer experience, and maintain compliance.

At FinovateEurope 2026, a new group of fintechs will showcase how they are addressing these challenges by bringing intelligence and automation directly into the lending process. From sourcing alternative credit data to deploying AI-driven lending agents, the companies below are helping banks and lenders modernize credit decisioning while keeping risk in check.

FinovateEurope 2026 will take place at London’s InterContinental O2 on February 10 and 11. Tickets are available now. Visit our FinovateEurope hub today and save your spot!

Intuitech

Intuitech brings live AI agents into lending workflows to automate manual, time-consuming processes across origination and servicing. The company helps lenders streamline tasks including data collection, validation, and borrower interactions. This automation helps reduce operational burden while improving speed and consistency.

By embedding AI agents directly into clients’ lending operations, Intuitech enables them to scale their lending activity without requiring additional talent in-house. The automated approach helps bring modern credit delivery to lenders of all sizes.

Mifundo

Mifundo’s technology enables customers to assess cross-border credit risk by sourcing and standardizing credit data from across European markets. The company helps lenders better evaluate borrowers with international financial histories by assess creditworthiness for mobile, expatriate, and cross-border customers. Mifundo enables banks to reach more borrowers, as many are underserved by traditional credit systems and therefore are overlooked.

With remote work becoming more popular and the potential for cross-border lending increasing, firms are realizing that there is a gap in data for European credit markets. Mifundo closes this gap by expanding access to reliable credit information, ultimately helping lenders minimize risk while unlocking new lending opportunities across borders.

Sea.dev

sea.dev provides real-time risk insights designed to help lending teams make better credit decisions across the loan lifecycle. The company’s platform aggregates and analyzes borrower, portfolio, and market-level data to offer lenders clearer visibility into risk exposure, ultimately supporting faster approvals.

sea.dev enables lending teams to continuously monitor risk and adapt decisions as inputs change. The company’s more dynamic, insight-driven approach helps lenders explore more products and serve new borrower segments.

Why banks should care

With more consumer data available than ever before, lenders can now underwrite loans more effectively, especially for customers who were once considered risky or had limited credit histories. This abundance of data also introduces new challenges, including inaccurate, unclean, or cross-border information that can complicate analysis and require specialized expertise. Fortunately, new tools are emerging to help automate data collection, filtering, and validation. These tools have the potential to enable lenders of all sizes to expand their reach and better serve a broader customer base.

Photo by RDNE Stock project

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Sumsub Partners with Fireblocks to Ensure Travel Rule Compliance

Sumsub Partners with Fireblocks to Ensure Travel Rule Compliance
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, Sumsub

Compliance and fraud prevention platform Sumsub has teamed up with digital asset infrastructure solutions provider Fireblocks to provide Travel Rule compliance.

The Travel Rule is a regulation mandated by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) designed to fight money laundering and terrorist financing. The rule requires financial institutions and Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) to share specific information about the sender and receiver of funds during certain transactions. Enacted to defend traditional financial transactions from money laundering and terrorist financing, the rule has been extended to cover cryptocurrencies and digital assets.

Courtesy of the partnership, Sumsub’s Travel Rule solution will be natively integrated into the Fireblocks platform. This will provide both financial institutions and VASPs with real-time, automated, and dynamic verification for virtual asset transactions. Fireblocks users will benefit from complete control over compliance workflows, enabling them to customize these workflows to fit their preferred risk profiles. The integration features automated and encrypted Travel Rule data exchange between VASPs, supporting faster and more secure stablecoin payments.

“We’re excited to partner with Fireblocks to bring native Travel Rule compliance directly into one of the world’s leading digital asset infrastructure platforms,” the company noted on its X page. “Together we’re setting a new standard for Travel Rule compliance—secure, automated, and designed for scale—helping businesses power faster, safer, and fully compliant stablecoin payments.”

The Sumsub/Fireblocks partnership comes at a time of increased interest in stablecoins, with stablecoin volumes nearing $1 trillion per month in 2025, twice the levels of the previous year. The rise of stablecoins has put pressure on the fragmented settlement rails and compliance workflows of VASPs and other financial institutions. Further, evolving regulations—from MiCA in the European Union to the latest moves from the FATF—are driving firms to improve their ability to manage financial risks associated with virtual assets, including both implementation and operationalization of the Travel Rule.

“As digital asset payments and stablecoin adoption accelerate, our customers need compliance solutions that are robust and operationally seamless,” Fireblocks SVP of Corporate Development & Partnerships Adam Levine said. “By integrating Sumsub’s Travel Rule solution directly into the Fireblocks platform, we’re giving institutions the flexibility to meet global regulatory requirements while maintaining efficient, streamlined transaction workflows.”

Per the partnership, Fireblocks will remain the hub for transaction processing. Sumsub will provide secure, real-time Travel Rule data exchange to enrich the transaction workflow, facilitating access to 1,800+ VASPs across top protocols including GTR, CODE, Sygna, the Sumsub protocol, and more. The data sharing between counterparties in virtual asset transfers is fully embedded in the Fireblocks platform to ensure scalable, friction-free compliance.

New York-based Fireblocks is a digital asset infrastructure company that helps organizations build, manage, and scale their businesses on the blockchain. The company streamlines stablecoin payments, settlement, custody, tokenization, and trading operations across a large ecosystem of banks, payment providers, stablecoin issuers, exchanges, and custodians. Fireblocks counts 2,200 organizations among its customers including Finovate alums like Worldpay and Revolut. The company secures more than $10 trillion in digital asset transactions across 100 blockchains.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in London, Sumsub (“Sum & Substance”) made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2020 in Berlin, Germany. At the conference, the company demonstrated its all-in-one technical and legal solution to help firms meet KYC/KYB/AML requirements. The company’s technology helps accelerate verification, reduce costs, and detect fraud, and is used by more than 4,000 companies around the world. Andrew Sever is company Co-Founder and CEO.

Photo by Pixabay

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Equifax Unveils Credit Abuse Risk to Combat First-Party Fraud

Equifax Unveils Credit Abuse Risk to Combat First-Party Fraud
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Equifax
  • Data, analytics, and technology company Equifax unveiled Credit Abuse Risk, a new solution to help lenders fight first-party fraud.
  • The new offering leverages machine learning to identify common first-party fraud tactics such as credit washing and loan stacking.
  • News of Equifax’s Credit Abuse Risk predictive model comes on the heels of the launch of the company’s Synthetic Identity Risk tool. The solution empowers institutions to identify when fraudsters are using fake identities to set up credit accounts and obtain loans.

A new offering from international data, analytics, and technology company Equifax will help protect lenders from first-party fraud. Credit Abuse Risk is a new predictive model that leverages FCRA-regulated data to spot fraud tactics such as credit washing and loan stacking. The model will help lenders make more confident lending decisions.

“By focusing on application behavior in real time, Credit Abuse Risk quickly helps to reduce the potential for fraud and related costs,” Equifax Chief Product Officer for US Information Solutions Felipe Castillo said. “This supports a more confident lending environment and helps keep credit available for consumers.”

In a world of phishing and deepfakes, first-party fraud is a type of financial crime that often goes overlooked in conversations about fraud prevention. First-party fraud, unlike third-party fraud, involves fraud committed by the actual customer or account holder rather than by an external party impersonating someone else. Credit Abuse Risk is designed to detect two specific forms of first-party fraud: loan stacking, in which an individual applies for multiple loans in a short period of time with no intention of repaying the debt, and credit washing, in which an individual attempts to remove accurate but negative information from their credit report. Credit Abuse Risk identifies the behaviors associated with these types of fraud during prequalification, account origination, or portfolio review, enabling lenders to adjust loan terms based on FCRA-compliant insights.

Powered by machine learning, Credit Abuse Risk offers enhanced insights derived from behavioral indicators that detect atypical credit activity, and provides targeted decisioning that addresses the lifecycle of fraud. Credit Abuse Risk features comprehensive portfolio protection covering all credit tiers and actionable intelligence that empowers lenders to make real-time, regulated decisions on credit terms. This includes FCRA-compliant scoring with adverse action reason codes to ensure transparency in the event of application denials, restrictive credit term modifications, and related actions.

Credit Abuse Risk is part of Equifax’s suite of fraud solutions and works alongside the company’s Synthetic Identity Risk tools. Introduced earlier this month, Equifax’s Synthetic Identity Risk uses machine learning algorithms to detect fraud patterns—such as those related to synthetic identity fraud—that are often difficult to spot using traditional methods. Synthetic identity fraud occurs when a fraudster combines aspects of a real identity with fake data to create a new, fictitious identity. The fraudster then uses these fictitious identities to open credit accounts and secure loans on which they eventually stop making payments. The fact that these synthetic identities often include real data and appear in mostly legitimate means that these frauds can be difficult to detect and can persist for long periods of time. Equifax estimates that charge-offs per known synthetic identity cost companies on average $13,000.

“Synthetic identity fraud is a rapidly growing threat impacting the consumer lending ecosystem,” Castillo said. “With Synthetic Identity Risk, Equifax strengthens lenders’ fraud defenses, helping them to uncover hidden risks and ultimately shift from reactive loss recovery to proactive prevention. In doing so, they not only reduce their financial losses but they (also) safeguard and build long-term trust with their legitimate customers.”

Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Equifax made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2011 in New York. The company’s differentiated data, analytics, and cloud technology help financial institutions, companies, employers, and public agencies make better decisions with more confidence. Along with Experian and TransUnion, Equifax runs one of the three major credit reporting agencies in the US, has nearly 15,000 employees around the globe, and operates or has investments in 24 countries in North America, Central and South America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region.

Equifax is publicly traded on the NYSE under the ticker EFX and has a market capitalization of $24 billion.

Photo by Growtika on Unsplash

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FinovateEurope 2026 Is Almost Here: What You Need to Know Before You Go

FinovateEurope 2026 Is Almost Here: What You Need to Know Before You Go
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateEurope 2026

The countdown is on! FinovateEurope 2026 lands in London on February 10 through 11 at the InterContinental O2 in London, and the global fintech community is gearing up for one of the year’s most engaging events.

The two-day conference will feature more than 1,000 senior decision-makers, including bankers, investors, founders, and fintech leaders as they uncover what’s next in fintech and banking. You’ll see over 20 live demos of cutting-edge technology with 100+ expert speakers offering insights that go well beyond buzzwords.

If you already have your ticket (if you don’t, there’s still time to register), here’s how to make the most of your days on-site:

  • Download the ConnectMe app and create your profile to start networking, set your schedule, and view the agenda.
  • The invitation-only Leaders+ and Impact+ sessions begin on February 9 at 6:00 pm.
  • Registration and networking begins at 8:15 am on February 10 and the day concludes with the Best of Show announcement during the evening cocktail reception, which starts at 4:30 pm.
  • Breakfast and networking begins at 8:15 am on February 11 and the day concludes with the Investor All Stars panel, which wraps up at 4:30 pm.
  • Bring your badge each day. You’ll need it for entry!
  • Plan your travel time to the venue, especially if you’re commuting or taking public transport.
  • Dress code? Business casual to business formal. Be comfortable, but ready to make an impression.
  • Need help? Stop by the registration desk or find a Finovate team member for assistance.
  • Follow #FinovateEurope on LinkedIn and Twitter for live updates and key takeaways.

Whether your goal is to track early fintech trends, forge new partnerships, or benchmark your strategy against peers, FinovateEurope delivers. With elite networking, live product insights, and industry-shaping conversations all under one roof, this conference promises to kick off 2026 with fresh ideas and real momentum.

See you in London!

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Varo Raises $123.9 Million to Scale its Lending and Banking Platform

Varo Raises $123.9 Million to Scale its Lending and Banking Platform
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • Varo raised $123.9 million in a Series G round led by Warburg Pincus and Coliseum Capital.
  • The bank will use the investment to scale its chartered banking and lending platform.
  • Alice Milligan, former chief marketing officer at Morgan Stanley, and Kevin Watters, former division chief executive officer at JPMorgan, have joined Varo’s Board of Directors.

Digital challenger bank Varo landed $123.9 million in financing this week. The Series G round, which boosts Varo’s total funding to $1.1 billion, was led by existing investor Warburg Pincus and new investor Coliseum Capital Management. Also contributing to today’s investment are existing investors such as Northview.

For new investor Coliseum Capital Management, the appeal lies in Varo’s ability to use its charter to compete with incumbent banks while expanding its product depth. “We are thrilled to join Warburg Pincus as long-term, collaborative partners, and support Varo’s work to expand its customer value proposition and to further differentiate from traditional banks,” said Coliseum Capital Management co-founder and Managing Partner Chris Shackelton. “We believe Varo is building a resilient and scalable platform from which to capitalize on a significant market share opportunity.”

Varo was founded in 2017 and secured a bank charter three years later. The fintech’s banking platform brings digital-first bank tools, from money management to lending, credit building, and savings accounts and tools. Varo offers two lending products, Varo Advance and Varo Line of Credit, which together generated $547 million in volume last year. The bank’s lending tools are powered by the company’s machine learning models that supplement traditional credit data, allowing the bank to lend to non-traditional borrowers.

As part of today’s announcement, Varo disclosed that Alice Milligan, former chief marketing officer at Morgan Stanley, and Kevin Watters, former division chief executive officer at JPMorgan, have joined its Board of Directors.

From a governance and operating perspective, Varo’s board sees the company’s combination of regulated banking discipline and modern technology as a key differentiator in a crowded challenger market. “Varo has built something rare: a technology-first customer experience paired with the governance and risk discipline required of a nationally chartered bank,” said Varo Bank Board of Directors Alice Milligan and Kevin Watters. Watters reports that Varo will use today’s funds to support the company’s next phase of growth by scaling its lending and banking platform.

“This combination of new capital, Coliseum’s partnership, and experienced banking leaders joining our board, is propelling Varo into its next phase of growth,” said Varo Bank CEO Gavin Michael. “We remain focused on operating with discipline and delivering meaningful impact for our customers.”

US-based Varo is one of the few true challenger banks that operate with their own bank charter, a structural advantage that gives it direct control over deposits, lending, customers, and unit economics. But a charter alone does not guarantee scale. Varo is still small when compared to competitors such as Chime, which operates under a sponsor banking model and has tens of millions of users. And while SoFi is Varo’s closest chartered competitor, the gap between the two is widening. SoFi recently reported record Q4 2025 results, including $1 billion in net revenue, $174 million in net income, and one million new members added in a single quarter.

As bank charters increasingly become table stakes in the challenger banking field, Varo will need to focus on scaling by differentiating its offerings and channels to reach new markets, especially as international players like Nubank, which just received regulatory approval to operate in the US, bring their customer-winning strategies to the US.

Photo by Landiva Weber

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Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News

Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Fintech Rundown

Welcome to the first week of February! Both FinovateEurope and Valentine’s Day are just around the corner, and there’s lots to love about this week’s fintech news headlines. Below, we’ve aggregated the top news in fintech for the week. We’ll continue to add more announcements as the week progresses.

Payments

Payments platform PPRO and Southern European Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) solution provider Scalapay announce partnership.

Verisave launches credit card processing fee optimization program for professional services firms.

NCR Atleos and Heart of England Co-operative extend relationship to enhance financial inclusion.

STAR Financial Bank partners with CorServ to meet demand for enhanced commercial credit cards.

dLocal partners with DHL Express Brazil to automate Pix payments and accelerate parcel release.

Wealth management

UK-based Novum Investment Management secures investment form UK local government pension fund to launch and scale Doris, a new offering to help transition people from saving to investing.

Envestnet appoints Jonathan Linstra as Chief Growth Officer (CGO). 

Arcesium acquires Limina to deliver a unified front-to-back investment platform.

Back office tools

HuLoop and Ceto partner to advance adaptive work optimization for financial institutions.

Embedded lending

Affirm expands buy now pay later network with Expedia.

Digital banking

OnePay names Patrick O’Connell Chief Financial Officer.

Afin Bank introduces new Chief Risk Officer Rebecca Griffin.

DeFi

NymCard enables stablecoin settlement with Visa in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region including countries such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Oman.

Credit, data, and analytics

Analytics software firm FICO forges global partnership with technology consulting and digital solutions provider Tech Mahindra to help companies integrate AI-powered decisioning and advanced analytics.

Digital identity and verification

LexisNexis Risk Solutions announces the availability of LexisNexis IDVerse for Insurance, an AI-powered document authentication and identity verification solution.

Photo by Monstera Production

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Payoneer Expands Services in Indonesia and Mexico

Payoneer Expands Services in Indonesia and Mexico
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Payoneer
  • Payoneer is expanding local collection capabilities across Indonesia and in the Mexican Peso.
  • The investments aim to scale infrastructure and capabilities that support Payoneer’s global payments and commerce ambitions.
  • With nearly 2 million customers, Payoneer aims to offer further improved local access and cross-border payment efficiency through 2026.

Global payments company Payoneer made moves to help companies doing business in Indonesia and Mexico this week. The New York-based company expanded its global payment platform in Indonesia and enhanced local collection services in Mexico.

The new capabilities aim to help customers transact and receive funds from local buyers and ecommerce platforms. Payoneer anticipates its platform will facilitate the funds faster and at a lower cost, ultimately helping businesses tap into new, global markets.

In Indonesia, Payoneer will help small businesses collect funds from local businesses. The company aims to offer more control over foreign exchange management while providing increased access to a trade in the largest ecommerce market in Southeast Asia.

For global businesses looking to collect funds in the Mexican Peso, Payoneer has expanded its collection services in that currency. With the expansion, the company is aiming to reduce friction for global sellers who need to collect funds across multiple channels, supporting shifting international demand.

“Global trade is dynamic—reshaping in response to macro factors and trade policy,” said Payoneer SVP of Treasury and Payment Services Derek Green. “For over 20 years, Payoneer has supported and enabled our customers’ global ambitions. By expanding our capabilities in critical markets like Mexico and Indonesia, we continue to empower our customers as they look to expand into fast-growing markets, leveraging our ecommerce marketplace ecosystem to enable access to customer demand on Amazon Mexico, Walmart, Mercado Libre, and Shopee.”

Payoneer was founded in 2005 to help SMBs transact, do business, and grow globally. The company’s global financial stack helps remove barriers and simplify cross-border commerce to make it easier for businesses to connect to the global economy, pay, get paid, manage their funds across multiple currencies, and grow their businesses.

The new capabilities launched this week add to Payoneer’s existing local collection infrastructure across North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia Pacific.

In today’s announcement, Payoneer disclosed that it plans to expand local collection capabilities in other high-growth markets in Latin America and Asia Pacific later this year to support its almost 2 million customers. 


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Nubank Lands US Regulatory Approval

Nubank Lands US Regulatory Approval
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Nubank
  • Nubank has received conditional approval from the US OCC to form a national bank, marking a major regulatory milestone as it begins the setup phase for entering the US market.
  • Unlike past challenger bank attempts, Nubank enters the US from a position of strength, with more than 127 million customers, strong engagement, and $783 million in quarterly net income.
  • Regulators require Nubank to fully fund the bank within 12 months and begin operations within 18 months.

Brazil-based digital bank Nubank (also known as Nu) just achieved a long-standing goal. The fintech received conditional approval from the US OCC for the formation of a de novo national bank, Nubank, N.A.

Announcing the approval, Nu Founder and CEO David Vélez framed the move as a strategic validation of the company’s long-held belief in digital-first banking. “This approval isn’t just an expansion of our operation; it’s an opportunity to prove our thesis that a digital-first, customer-centric model is the future of financial services globally,” said Vélez. “While we remain fully focused on our core markets in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, this step allows us to build the next generation of banking in the United States.”

The conditional approval, granted about four months after Nu initially submitted its application, places the company in the early setup stage of forming a US national bank. During this period, Nu must meet a series of requirements set by the OCC and secure additional approvals from the FDIC and the Federal Reserve. Regulators also require the company to fully fund the bank within 12 months and begin operations within 18 months.

After Nu receives full regulatory approval for a national bank charter, it will operate under a comprehensive federal framework that allows it to launch deposit accounts, credit cards, lending, and digital asset custody. Nu plans to establish strategic hubs in Miami, San Francisco, Northern Virginia, and the North Carolina Research Triangle.

Cristina Junqueira, Nu’s co-founder and CEO of its emerging US business, highlighted the regulatory milestone as a step toward establishing credibility and competitiveness in a crowded market. “Receiving federal approval for a national bank charter is a significant step in our journey to becoming a solid, compliant, and competitive regulated institution in the US,” said Junqueira. “We look forward to delivering the transparent, efficient financial experiences already trusted by more than 127 million customers around the world to our future customers in the US.”

Founded in 2013, Nu has operated in its home country of Brazil as a fully regulated financial institution since 2016 and announced that it plans to obtain its full banking license this year. The fintech also operates in Colombia and has an expansion plan in Mexico, where it is waiting on approval from the Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores to organize as a banking institution.

While international expansion efforts have been slow, the company’s customer acquisition growth has not. With more than 127 million customers, Nu is known throughout fintech for its high customer engagement level, reaching an activity rate exceeding 83%. In the third quarter of last year, the fintech reached a record revenue of $4.2 billion, which represents a 39% year-over-year growth.

It’s important to note that Nu’s entrance into the US market will likely succeed where other challenger banks have failed. Monzo, N26, and Bunq have all tried and failed to secure a US license from the OCC, while Revolut still does not have a US banking license, either. The difference is that Nu is massively profitable with relatively low customer costs. The company reported $783 million in net income in the last quarter alone.

For Nu, which caters to a largely Hispanic customer base, the US is full of opportunity. There are more than 65 million Hispanics living in the US, many of whom are left out of traditional banks in the US due to high fees, limited access to credit, and legacy onboarding models that fail to reflect their financial realities. Nu’s success in Latin America has been built on designing for inclusion at scale. The fintech boasts transparent pricing, an intuitive digital experience, and unique underwriting. Bringing this successful model to the US while navigating one of the world’s most demanding regulatory environments, would be a huge win for Nu, and perhaps could serve as a model for other overseas challengers seeking to launch in the US.

Photo by Steppe Walker

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10x Banking Inks Partnership with Alternative Asset Manager Remara

10x Banking Inks Partnership with Alternative Asset Manager Remara
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: 10x Banking, Alumni News
  • Core banking platform 10x Banking has teamed up with Australian asset manager and lender Remara.
  • Remara will use 10x Banking’s core banking platform to bring new lending and investment solutions to market faster.
  • Headquartered in London, 10x Banking won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023.

Cloud-native core banking platform 10x Banking announced a partnership with Australian asset manager and alternative lender Remara. The firm will leverage 10x Banking’s core banking platform to launch new mortgage, commercial lending, term investment, and novated lease products faster.

The Sydney-based firm sought a partner that could support the unique financial products Remara offers to its clients. The company highlighted 10x Banking’s API-first and event-driven architecture, which will enable Remara to bring new products to market quickly and give the company the control it needs to differentiate its offerings. The new core banking platform will also support Remara as it scales across Australia and the Southeast Asian region. The company noted in its partnership statement that the APAC core banking market is expected to grow by more than 10% CAGR through 2032.

“Remara’s decision to select 10x reflects both the maturity of Australia’s alternative lending scene and the broader shift towards next-generation core technology in the region,” 10x Banking Founder and CEO Antony Jenkins said. “We’re committed to supporting innovative financial providers that make banking better for everyone. Our partnership with Remara is the latest proof point that cloud-native platforms deliver real differentiation and tangible value, both to businesses and end users. This is our ninth ANZ client, underlying the impact our local strategy is having for new and established players.”

Headquartered in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, Remara is an alternative asset manager that offers specialty finance, middle-market lending, and tactical credit strategies that are not typically available to investors via banks or traditional brokers. Remara offers at-call, 6-month, and 12-month cash management funds; investment grade, high-yield, and credit income funds; as well as a real estate fund that provides exposure to small and medium scale developments. Founded in 2019, Remara has more than $3 billion AUD in assets under management.

“10x Banking’s platform puts us in the driving seat for product and delivery flexibility, letting Remara go to market faster with innovative, specialist lending solutions that really meet our customers’ needs,” Remara Managing Partner Andrew McVeigh said. “Australia’s financial services sector is modernizing fast, and being able to offer something different to the market is vital. With 10x, we can do that, building on a best-of-breed core foundation and executing on our vision for growth.”

10x Banking was founded in 2016, and won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023. The company’s technology enables banks to deploy next-generation core banking solutions via a cloud-native, SaaS core banking platform. This empowers firms to deliver new products, services, and customer experiences to customers—both retail and corporate—faster and with less cost. 10x Banking’s partnership announcement with Remara comes a little over a month after the company reported that it was working with Audax Financial Technology to help banks in Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East scale new digital products and services and modernize their core banking systems.

Photo by Johnny Bhalla on Unsplash

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Beyond the Demos: The Industry Stage Conversations Driving FinovateEurope 2026

Beyond the Demos: The Industry Stage Conversations Driving FinovateEurope 2026
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateEurope 2026, Speaker series

As FinovateEurope returns to London on February 10 and 11, the spotlight on the second day of the conference shifts from demos to deep discussion. On February 11, FinovateEurope’s Industry Stages run in parallel with one another, giving attendees the opportunity to dive into strategic conversations shaping financial services in 2026.

This year’s event features five Industry Stages: Artificial Intelligence; Banking, Regulation & Risk; Customer Experience; Lending; and Payments. Each stage is designed to offer banking and fintech leaders more than just theory. The sessions focus on what’s working in practice, what’s breaking under the pressure of new technology and regulations, and what institutions need to rethink about their current operations.

Artificial Intelligence: from pilots to production

The AI stage will feature discussions on one of the biggest challenges facing financial institutions today: moving beyond experimentation. The sessions will explore lessons learned from early AI agent pilots, governance frameworks to combat “shadow AI”, and how banks can scale AI responsibly. Highlights include a keynote from Richard Davies, CEO of Allica Bank, who will speak about the realities of implementing AI in production. The stage will also host panels tackling ROI, data readiness, and responsible AI as a competitive necessity.

Customer Experience: personalization without losing the human touch

On the Customer Experience stage, the conversation moves past buzzwords to focus on execution. Sessions will examine how open data enables hyper-personalization, why mindset can be the biggest challenge, and how banks can retain empathy while scaling. A standout power panel brings together leaders from J.P. Morgan, Invesco, and PolyAI to explore what banks can learn from other industries as customer expectations are being reset by the evolution of enabling technologies.

Payments: instant, intelligent, and under threat

Payments are quickly evolving across the globe, especially with new regulations such as PSD3 and new capabilities and enabling technologies such as instant payments, stablecoins, and cross-border modernization. Panels will focus on how data-centricity and AI can unlock growth while strengthening security, especially as fraud losses and cyber threats keep rising.

Banking, regulation & risk: resilience in a volatile world

Regulatory pressure and operational resilience will be the center of the conversation on this stage, where discussions will span DORA, dispute management, and the risks embedded in cloud and AI adoption. These sessions are especially relevant for banks navigating complex vendor ecosystems while being asked to do more, faster, and with greater accountability.

Lending: capturing the embedded opportunity

The Lending stage will look at how banks can reclaim growth by meeting unmet needs, especially in small business and embedded lending. Panelists will explore how AI is reshaping credit decisioning, how regulation is evolving, and where incumbents can realistically compete with fintech challengers.

Together, these five Industry Stages on February 11 will offer a concentrated look at the decisions that will define banking’s next chapter. If you register for FinovateEurope before January 30, you can still save £300.

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IMPACT+ Showcases Early-Stage Fintech Innovation at FinovateEurope 2026

IMPACT+ Showcases Early-Stage Fintech Innovation at FinovateEurope 2026
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateEurope 2026

This year, FinovateEurope 2026 is bringing a new addition to our annual showcase of innovative fintech. Our invitation-only Impact+ event, held on Monday, 9 February, is a unique opportunity for investors to meet and network with fintech startups that have developed solutions for a variety of challenges currently facing banks, financial services providers, and their customers and members. As part of the program, the evening will feature a series of four-minute pitches from eight startups selected in collaboration with London & Partners, Fintech Sandbox, and other leading startup specialists.

“I’m delighted to unveil the Impact+ Founders & Funders program at FinovateEurope 2026,” Heather Stowell, Finovate VP and Director of Demos, said. “The eight startups pitching to investors as part of the February 9 session are presenting cutting-edge ideas and technologies from across fintech and finserv. It’s inspiring to see this level of innovation from such young companies and exciting to foresee the connections coming up for them with investors.”

Exclusively for investors and startups, Impact+ takes place Monday, 9 February—the evening before FinovateEurope 2026 begins in earnest. The program starts at 6pm and ends with a networking and drinks reception beginning at 7:15pm.

Anna Tsiganchuk—CEO & Co-Founder, Aleta Index

A product leader with a foundation in design, a passion for AI innovation, and a track record of building and scaling impactful solutions, Tsiganchuk is CEO and Co-Founder of Aleta Index.

Aleta Index is an AI-powered platform that analyzes alternative data sets including news and social media to expose bias and source credibility to enable business analysts and researchers to make better decisions and develop more accurate prediction models driven by machine learning. Founded in 2024, Aleta Index is headquartered in London.

Filiberto Tasca—CEO & Co-Founder, Aurea Hub

With a strong conviction that the third internet revolution of Web 3.0, decentralized finance (DeFi), and the metaverse will have a significant impact on every aspect of society, Tasca is CEO and Co-Founder of Aurea Hub.

Aurea is the EU-native B2B infrastructure for on-chain finance. The company offers a white-label, fully-compliant Wallet-as-a-Service (WaaS) platform that serves as a neutral technological bridge to empower banks, fintechs, and merchants to integrate digital assets and stablecoins into their existing applications.

Barak Katz—CEO & Founder, DotzLink

An alum of Tel Aviv University and Harvard Business School with more than a decade of Chief Executive experience, Katz is founder and CEO of DotzLink.

DotzLink is creating a financial protection platform designed to fight the growing challenge of scams and financial abuse. The company’s AI-powered technology provides real-time detection, proactive protection, and actionable insights to help seniors and families stay safe and financially secure. Founded in 2025, DotzLink is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Máté Jendrolovics—CEO & Founder, Intuitech

With a background as a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Head of Digital at Hungary’s Gránit Bank, Jendrolovics is CEO and founder of Intuitech, an Agentic AI and digital solutions provider for companies in the financial industry.

Intuitech is a 200+ member, full-stack development and AI services studio—launched in 2018—that empowers banks, insurers, consultancies, and other firms to reach their digital potential, from customer applications and automated platforms to sophisticated back-office and AI solutions. The company is based in Budapest, Hungary.

Joshua Ojo—CEO & Founder, Ndewo Finance

An innovator with a background in mathematics and a strong passion for using technology to solve business challenges, Ojo is CEO and founder of Ndewo Finance.

Ndewo Finance offers a platform for “credit invisibles”—people with significant gaps in their credit files. The company leverages alternative data sources such as home credit history and transactional data to enable underbanked and unbanked individuals to access financial and non-financial services such as rents, mortgages, student loans, credit cards, retail financing, and more. Ndewo Finance is based in Manchester, UK.

Rukayyat Kolawole—CEO & Co-Founder, PaceUP Invest

Dedicated to breaking barriers and reshaping financial empowerment, Kolawole is CEO and Co-Founder of Wealthtech PaceUp Invest.

PaceUp Invest is a B2B and B2C hyperpersonalized wealth technology platform that leverages AI, behavioral science, inclusive cultural context, and human expertise to drive financial wellness. The platform offers multilingual guidance and integrates seamlessly with banks, corporations, insurers, and digital financial apps. Headquartered in Mannheim, Germany, PaceUp Invest was founded in 2020.

Savannah Price—Founder & CEO, Serene

A FinTech London Rising Star for 2025, Price is Founder and CEO of Serene, the infrastructure for financial care that empowers banks, lenders, and fintechs to provide customers with better financial outcomes.

Serene combines behavioral insights, predictive intelligence, and financial data to detect early indications of vulnerability, fraud, or potential distress. This enables financial institutions to do more than just identify risk, but also to understand, predict, and prevent it. Headquartered in London, UK, Serene was founded in 2023.

Mariana Barona—CEO & Co-Founder, Synthera AI

With a background as an analyst at Goldman Sachs and an education from the University of Cambridge, Barona is CEO and Co-Founder of Synthera AI.

Headquartered in London, Synthera AI generates synthetic yield curves, equities, FX prices, and other financial instruments to enable professional investors to test their portfolios on realistic but unseen market scenarios using generative AI. The company’s synthetic data redefines portfolio analysis with AI-driven dynamic scenario testing, predictive analytics, and deep portfolio insights.

Photo by Ben Wicks on Unsplash

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