Finovate Global Egypt: Investing in Digital Payments, Innovation, and Future Tech Talent

Finovate Global Egypt: Investing in Digital Payments, Innovation, and Future Tech Talent
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

This week’s edition of Finovate Global features the latest fintech news from Egypt.

Fawry and Wadi Degla Partner to Offer Integrated Digital Payments

A strategic partnership between leading Egyptian fintech Fawry and real estate development company Wadi Degla Developments will bring integrated digital payment solutions to Wadi Degla customers. Wadi Degla will leverage Fawry’s online payment gateway and POS network, simplifying and accelerating payment processes, to enhance the customer experience and help drive digitization in the real estate sector.

The alliance fortifies Fawry’s status as a trusted technology partner for the country’s real estate developers and underscores Wadi Degla’s determination to increase operational efficiency and boost customer satisfaction. The partnership will also feature new value-added solutions including the Fawry Business Corporate Card and digital loyalty programs.

“This partnership marks a key milestone in our mission to drive digital transformation across Egypt’s vital real estate sector,” Fawry Chief Business Officer Heba El Awady said. “At Fawry, we aim to empower developers to provide modern, integrated payment services that cater to the growing demand for digitization. We continuously strive to develop innovative solutions tailored to the evolving needs of various sectors, and our collaboration with Wadi Degla Developments is a prime example of constructive partnerships between technology and real estate, enhancing operational efficiency and creating tangible value for customers.”

Headquartered in Cairo, Egypt, and founded in 2008, Fawry offers a digital transformation and fintech platform that delivers more than 1,186 financial services to consumers and businesses. With more than 29 million customers across Egypt, Fawry is the country’s largest payment network, processing more than three million operations a day. Ashraf Sabry is founder and CEO.

Egypt’s DisrupTech Ventures Makes Second Non-Egyptian Investment

Our last look at fintech in Egypt highlighted the launch of a new $31.5 million fund from HSBC Egypt that is dedicated to supporting small and medium-sized businesses in the fintech sector. Today, there’s another Egypt-based fund making fintech headlines: Egypt’s DisrupTech Ventures, which just made its second investment outside of Egypt and its first for a Moroccan fintech with its funding of Chari.

Founded by Ismael Belkhayat and Sophia Alj and backed by Y Combinator, Chari offers a fintech platform that transforms thousands of small neighborhood shops into access points for digital payments and other financial services. Chari’s payment institution license enables the company to empower small businesses to serve as financial hubs for their communities. Chari brings digitization to Morocco’s informal economy, helping businesses quickly access working capital, and embedding financial services including insurance and payment options into merchants’ daily operations. Launched in 2020, the company has onboarded more than 20,000 retailers to its platform.

“Our investment in Chari is a milestone for DisrupTech,” Managing Partner at DisrupTech Ventures Mohamed Okasha said. “Chari is redefining how financial services are delivered at the grassroots level. By empowering small shops to act as financial gateways, Chari is creating the foundation for a new, inclusive fintech infrastructure in Morocco. This is exactly the kind of transformative model we seek to support across Africa.”

The amount of the investment was not disclosed. The funding is part of Chari’s Series A extension round, which included raising $12 million and featured leadership from SPE Capital and Orange Ventures. Along with its investment, DisrupTech Ventures will also join Chari’s board of directors.

DisrupTech Ventures is headquartered in Cairo, Egypt. Founded in 2021, the company is the country’s leading fintech venture capital firm with an emphasis on early stage fintech and fintech-enabled startups.

Egypt’s Students Top Arab Fintech Talent Competition

The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE)’s FinYology initiative introduced the third edition of its FinTech Got Talent 2025 competition this year. In partnership with the Federation of Egyptian Banks (FEB) and the Egyptian Banking Institute (EBI), the fintech talent competition seeks to identify and support fintech innovation among university students.

This year’s competition was won by ESLSCA University for its mobile app, Tapay, that transforms an ordinary smartphone into a contactless payment terminal. Taking second place was the team from the British University in Egypt (BUE), which offered a financial literacy app called Money Adventure, that leverages gamification to help children learn about the importance of learning how to manage their money. Coming in third was the team from Cairo University, which presented AgriDawar, a digital platform that uses e-payment technology and e-wallets to connect farmers to buyers of agricultural surplus residues.

All three teams represented Egypt at the Arab FinTech Challenge 2025 last month, with the ESLSCA University and BUE teams again taking first and second, respectively, topping teams from universities from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Morocco.

FinTech Got Talent was initially launched in 2024 as part of the FinYology initiative. This effort is designed to integrate academic learning with hands-on fintech applications. FinYology includes more than 30 Egyptian universities, has supported more than 900 student-led projects, and featured the participation of 19,000 students. Eighteen partner banks have also provided continuing backing to the FinYology initiative.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Brazilian fintech Kanastra secured $30 million in Series B funding for its capital markets infrastructure and services offering.
  • Binance launched QR code payments in Argentina.
  • Brazil’s central bank announced new capital and compliance rules for fintechs.

Asia-Pacific

  • Japan’s JCB International partnered with Agoda to enhance digital travel payments throughout Asia.
  • Hong Kong’s ZA Bank launched its StockBack x ZA Card, the first Visa card in Hong Kong to offer shares of stock as a purchase reward.
  • ISH acquired Sydney, Australia-based spend management software company ProSpend.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Financial services platform Mukuru teamed up with AI-powered banking technology provider JUMO to launch new fast loan solution.
  • UAE-based fintech Optasia raised $345 million in its IPO on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in South Africa.
  • Kenya’s mobile money market reached 91% penetration this year according to the Communications Authority of Kenya, a jump from 77% penetration last year.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Hamburg, Germany-based fintech Atrya locked in €1.5 million in funding for its stablecoin payment network.
  • Estonian fintech Creem raised €1.8 million in pre-seed funding for its “programmable finance layer” the helps startups manage payments, taxes, compliance, and more.
  • Embedded financing platform YouLend and business management platform Tide take their partnership to the German market.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Photo by David McEachan

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Modernizing Financial Systems: A Strategic Approach to Legacy Transformation and Fraud Prevention

Modernizing Financial Systems: A Strategic Approach to Legacy Transformation and Fraud Prevention
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2025, Interview

For financial institutions deciding on their modernization strategy, what are the options? Does legacy technology need to be abandoned immediately or entirely? Or are there ways that financial institutions can leverage the infrastructure they have while embracing areas where digital and other modern solutions can bring real efficiency gains?

In this interview, I talk with Casey Ferguson, VP of Marketing at Zoot Enterprises, about the company’s phased approach to modernizing financial systems, integrating legacy technology, and enhancing fraud prevention strategies. Ferguson explains why incremental progress, cross-functional collaboration, and layered fraud defenses are key to effective digital transformation.

“At Zoot we look at modernization this way: It’s not about tearing everything down. When you look at this kind of rip and replace mentality you’ve got to remember that it can be pretty risky, it can be very expensive, and it can be kind of slow, as well. When you think about the pace of change, architecting the perfect environment, the world may have changed by the time you have a perfect picture of all this. So working on things incrementally and in phases can really make a difference.”

Headquartered in Bozeman, Montana, and founded in 1990, Zoot Enterprises provides acquisition, origination, and decision management solutions that help financial institutions streamline processes, increase flexibility, and accelerate growth. Zoot offers comprehensive and flexible platforms for numerous specific business operations—from loan origination and data acquisition to fraud detection and prevention.

Photo by Charles Moll on Unsplash

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Ripple Raises $500 Million on $40 Billion Valuation

Ripple Raises $500 Million on $40 Billion Valuation
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Funding, Ripple
  • Financial infrastructure and blockchain technology company Ripple has secured $500 million in new funding at a valuation of $40 billion.
  • The funding comes at time of great activity for the San Francisco, California-based fintech, which has announced six acquisitions in the past two years and whose stablecoin, RLUSD, topped the $1 billion market capitalization mark this month.
  • As OpenCoin, Ripple made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2013.

We shared this news in yesterday’s Finovate weekly LinkedIn newsletter (subscribe if you haven’t). But we’re happy to share it with Finovate blog readers today. Financial infrastructure and blockchain technology company Ripple has raised $500 million in new funding, boosting the firm’s valuation to $40 billion. The funding follows the company’s recent $1 billion tender offer at the same valuation, and comes at a time of renewed interest in digital assets such as stablecoins and the growing importance of crypto services such as custody and trading.

“This investment reflects both Ripple’s incredible momentum and further validation of the market opportunity we’re aggressively pursuing by some of the most trusted financial institutions in the world,” Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said. “We started in 2012 with one use case—payments—and have expanded that success into custody, stablecoins, prime brokerage, and corporate treasury, leveraging digital assets like XRP. Today, Ripple stands as the partner for institutions looking to access crypto and blockchain.”

The investment was led by funds managed by affiliates of Fortress Investment Group, affiliates of Citadel Securities, Pantera Capital, Galaxy Digital, Brevan Howard, and Marshall Wace. The fundraising comes as Ripple celebrates completing six acquisitions, including two valued at over $1 billion, in the past two years. The company, which first introduced itself to Finovate audiences at FinovateSpring 2013 as OpenCoin, has also expanded into new markets in prime brokerage and treasury management, adding to its existing footprint across payment, custody, and stablecoins.

This year, Ripple acquired stablecoin infrastructure company Rail to enhance its Ripple Payments offering as a full-service cross-border platform that leverages Ripple’s stablecoin RLUSD and XRP to make international fund transfers faster and more efficient for businesses. The acquisition of multi-asset prime brokerage firm Hidden Road in October—now integrated into Ripple’s Ripple Prime platform—enables Ripple to offer its institutional clients a range of financial services including trading, custody, and derivatives for both traditional and digital assets. The company’s purchase of Palisade, a digital asset wallet and custody firm, will bolster Ripple’s Ripple Custody offering. Ripple Custody provides banks and other financial institutions with safe and secure ways to store digital assets, stablecoins, and Real World Assets (RWA).

Just this month, RLUSD surpassed $1 billion in market capitalization. Reaching this milestone in less than a year after it was launched, RLUSD is now the 10th largest, US dollar-backed stablecoin. RLUSD is the primary stablecoin used by Ripple for payment flows, Ripple President Monica Long noted in an interview with CoinDesk, adding that Ripple has processed “nearly $100 billion in payments volume to date.” Also this month, Ripple announced that its digital asset spot prime brokerage capabilities were now available to customers in the US.

“The launch of OTC spot execution capabilities complements our existing suite of OTC and cleared derivatives services in digital assets and positions us to provide US institutions with a comprehensive offering to suit their trading strategies and needs,” Ripple Prime International CEO Michael Higgins said.

Founded in 2012, Ripple is based in San Francisco, California.

Photo by Mackenzie Marco on Unsplash

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New Canadian Budget Embraces AI, Stablecoins, Open Banking, and More

New Canadian Budget Embraces AI, Stablecoins, Open Banking, and More
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: List series

Just days after we featured Canada in our weekly Finovate Global column, we can now add to our understanding of what is driving fintech innovation in Canada with a look at the country’s recently unveiled federal budget.

“Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget—and I’ll tell you what you value,” former US President Joe Biden liked to say. In this regard, Canada’s budget—with CAD $141 billion in new spending and CAD $51 billion in cuts and other savings—reflects a commitment to investing in the most transformative technologies of our time for the benefit of Canadian businesses and citizens, as well as for the wellbeing, defense, and even sovereignty of the country itself.

“The world is undergoing a series of fundamental shifts at a speed, scale, and scope not seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall,” the budget document begins. “The rules-based international order and the trading system that powered Canada’s prosperity for decades are being reshaped—threatening our sovereignty, our prosperity, and our values.”

“This is not a transition. It is a rupture—a generational shift taking place over a short period of time.”

Against this backdrop, here are four takeaways for fintech and financial services from Canada’s newly released budget.

Open Banking on Track for 2027 Implementation

The Canadian government will commit to introducing the last remaining pieces of legislation needed to complete the Consumer-Driven Banking Framework, advancing the country’s open banking system. The budget indicates that process will take place in two phases: data sharing (“read access”) followed by transaction initiation (“write access”), with full implementation set for the middle of 2027.

Oversight of open banking will remain with the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC), which will ensure strong consumer protection and compliance. The country’s Department of Finance will continue coordinating the framework’s policy and legislative rollout. Meanwhile, the Bank of Canada, the country’s central bank, will oversee the broader payments ecosystem as new participants—from fintechs to non-bank Payment Service Providers (PSPs)—and new instruments such as stablecoins become a part of the country’s real-time payment infrastructure.

Stablecoin Regulation Framework Unveiled

Canada will introduce federal legislation to regulate fiat-backed stablecoins. Stablecoin issuers will be required to maintain asset reserves and meet consumer protection standards. These entities will also be mandated to establish and implement redemption policies and risk-management frameworks. The government also will amend its Retail Payment Activities Act, first passed in 2021, to enable payment service providers to use approved stablecoins for transactions.

Per the new budget, the Bank of Canada will receive CAD$10 million over two years (2026-2027) to administer the new framework and receive funding of approximately CAD$5 million a year afterwards. This sum will be offset by fees collected from regulated stablecoin issuers.

The move to embrace stablecoins is a major part of the country’s effort to modernize its payment systems and create new efficiencies. But, as with efforts in Europe and elsewhere, the initiative is also designed to avoid what some Canadian observers worry could be excessive and undue use of foreign-issued stablecoins, including those from the country’s larger neighbor to the south.

Real-Time Payment Rail Infrastructure on Track

The new budget also confirms that Canada’s Real-Time Rail (RTR) system will be operational in 2026. RTR will provide instant, cheaper payments for a broad range of transactions including payroll, expense reimbursements, and other business-related fund transfers. There will also be further updates to the Retail Payment Activities Act to enable new entities, such as non-bank PSPs, to apply for membership in Payments Canada and participate directly in national payment systems including RTR. Payments Canada is the public, non-profit entity that owns and operates Canada’s national payment clearing and settlement infrastructure.

Canada’s RTR project is very much intertwined with other fintech-based initiatives in the budget, such as open banking and stablecoins. For example, the budget notes that the combination of write access and RTR by mid-2027 will help usher in the “next phase of consumer-driven banking” characterized by safer, faster payments and greater choice for Canadian businesses and consumers.

A Billion-Plus Investment in AI and Quantum Computing

The budget allocates CAD $1.26 billion for AI and quantum computing technologies. The inclusion of quantum computing technology is especially interesting, affirming Canada’s determination that investment in quantum computing is key to ensuring the country remains on the cutting edge in terms of innovation-enabling technologies.

The allocation for AI represents the lion’s share of the sum at just over CAD $925 million. The funding will support the construction of a large-scale, publicly-accessible AI infrastructure. It also provides for investments in data center infrastructure and domestic compute capacity. The budget endorses a “Sovereign Canadian Cloud” to help ensure sufficient compute capacity as well as data sovereignty. Notably, there is also funding specifically focused on tracking AI technology adoption, a major concern for many decision-makers when it comes to investing in AI. Over six years, CAD $25 million will be allocated for a Statistics Canada program to implement the Artificial Intelligence and Technology Measurement Program, also known as TechStat.

With regard to quantum computing, the budget earmarks more than CAD $334 million over the next five years to bolster the country’s quantum ecosystem via the Defense Industrial Strategy introduced in the budget. The budget places quantum computing technology alongside AI in Canada’s broader innovation plan, describing it as “similarly transformative,” with promising use cases in finance and cybersecurity.

Photo by Guillaume Jaillet on Unsplash

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HSBC Teams Up with ValidiFi to Enhance Payment Security

HSBC Teams Up with ValidiFi to Enhance Payment Security
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, ValidiFI
  • HSBC has partnered with bank account and payment intelligence specialist ValidiFi.
  • ValidiFi will help ensure the integrity of bank accounts used to pay credit card balances.
  • Headquartered in Florida, ValidiFi made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2019.

Banking and financial services company HSBC has selected ValidiFi to power its bank account validation and fraud monitoring operations. A leader in predictive bank account and payment intelligence, ValidiFi will help bolster the integrity of bank accounts used to pay credit card balances. The company’s technology will validate account ownership, spot fraudulent payment attempts, and detect suspicious behavioral patterns across all bank accounts. HSBC will also benefit from real-time validation of newly enrolled accounts, as well as ongoing monitoring to defend against emerging fraud threats.

“Providing customers with efficient and secure ways of making credit card payments is essential,” HSBC US Head of Retail Product and Lending John Phelan said. “Our innovation and transformation efforts in personal banking require advanced fraud services, such as those offered by ValidiFi, that protect our clients.”

ValidiFi’s technology was sought out in large part to help deal with threats like synthetic identities, mule accounts, and payment scams. The company’s comprehensive data network and advanced data intelligence analyze a wide range of behavioral and transaction data to detect anomalies before they affect customers. HSBC will leverage a number of key capabilities via the partnership with ValidiFi. These include account ownership verification, pre-transaction risk detection to spot high-risk activity before funds begin moving, behavioral analytics to spot patterns associated with scams and fraud, and ongoing monitoring to keep pace with evolving fraud tactics and security threats.

“HSBC is setting a new standard in payment security by proactively adopting technologies that go beyond traditional fraud prevention,” ValidiFi CEO John Gordon said. “Its decision to implement our intelligence platform demonstrates a clear commitment to safeguarding customer transactions and staying ahead of increasingly complex payment schemes.”

Headquartered in Sunrise, Florida, and founded in 2015, ValidiFi made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2019. At the conference, the company demonstrated its Payment Risk Optimizer (PRO), a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solution that scrubs payment files for ACH and card payments to assess the likelihood of a successful payment.

Photo by Kelly

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Ripple Acquires Palisade to Bolster Crypto Custody Capabilities

Ripple Acquires Palisade to Bolster Crypto Custody Capabilities
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, Ripple

Crypto solutions provider for businesses Ripple has announced its acquisition of digital asset wallet and custody company, Palisade. The move is designed to enhance Ripple’s custody capabilities—specifically, the company’s Ripple Custody offering—to better serve the needs of fintechs, corporates, and crypto-native companies. Terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.

Ripple Custody supports banks and other financial institutions looking for safe, secure ways to store digital assets, stablecoins, and Real World Assets (RWA). Palisade’s secure, fast, and scalable “wallet-as-a-service” technology will enable Ripple to serve a broader range of customers and use cases, especially those high-speed use cases for customers that require an out-of-the-box solution built for high-frequency transactions, on- and off-ramps, and payments.

Ripple Custody is currently being used by a number of tier-1 global institutions such as BBVA, DBS, and Societe Generale. The solution serves as a “vault” for institutional cryptocurrency holdings, supporting the management of multiple vaults and a complete view across assets and venues. Ripple Custody provides a tamper-proof audit trail and cryptographic approval process to ensure compliance.

“Secure digital asset custody unlocks the crypto economy and is the foundation that every blockchain-powered business stands on—that’s why it’s central to Ripple’s product strategy,” Ripple President Monica Long said. “Corporates are poised to drive the next massive wave of crypto adoption. Just as we’ve seen major banks go from observing to actively building in crypto, corporates are now entering the market, and they need trusted, licensed partners with out-of-the-box capabilities. The combination of Ripple’s bank-grade vault and Palisade’s fast, lightweight wallet makes Ripple Custody the end-to-end provider for every institutional need, from long-term storage to real-time global payments and treasury management.”

Palisade’s technology offers fast wallet provisioning, multi-chain support, and DeFi integration. The solution also features strong governance and security features, such as Multi-Party Computation (MPC) that divides wallet keys into key fractions or “shards,” and zero-trust architecture which mandates strict verification for all users and devices that are attempting to access the network. Per the acquisition, Palisade’s technology will also integrate directly into Ripple Payments, supporting use cases that require faster, more efficient responses. It will also provide the core infrastructure for subscription payments and collection capabilities.

“Joining Ripple marks a new chapter for Palisade,” the company noted on its LinkedIn page. “Our technology will become a cornerstone of Ripple’s next-generation wallet infrastructure, accelerating their Payments and Custody products while expanding market reach globally. This partnership combines our technology with Ripple’s enterprise network and scale, regulatory expertise, and established market presence.”

A Finovate alum since its debut at FinovateSpring 2013 (as OpenCoin), Ripple today boasts a global payments network with more than 300 customers across 40+ countries and six continents. The company’s payments, custody, and stablecoin solutions enable banks and financial institutions to simply and securely integrate blockchain and digital assets into their operations while remaining compliant. With payments settlement in three to five seconds, and more than a million custody wallets in circulation, Ripple provides 90% international FX market coverage.

Ripple’s acquisition announcement comes just days after the fintech reported the launch of digital asset spot prime brokerage capabilities for US customers via its Ripple Prime offering. The launch was made possible by Ripple’s acquisition of multi-asset prime brokerage, Hidden Road, earlier this year, and will enable Ripple’s US-based institutional clients to execute over-the-counter (OTC) spot transactions across a wide range of digital assets including XRP and RLUSD.

“The launch of OTC spot execution capabilities complements our existing suite of OTC and cleared derivatives services in digital assets and positions us to provide US institutions with a comprehensive offering to suit their trading strategies and needs,” Ripple Prime International CEO Michael Higgins said.

Founded in 2012, Ripple is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Brad Garlinghouse is CEO.

Photo by Pixabay

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Ping Identity Acquires Best of Show Winner Keyless

Ping Identity Acquires Best of Show Winner Keyless
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Keyless, Mergers & Acquisitions, Ping Identity
  • Digital identity company Ping Identity has agreed to acquire UK-based biometric authentication firm Keyless. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
  • Ping Identity will integrate Keyless’ Zero-Knowledge Biometrics technology into its platform to enable business to enhance their fraud prevention and user verification processes.
  • Ping Identity has been a Finovate alum since its appearance at FinovateEurope 2012. Keyless won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025.

Digital identity company Ping Identity has agreed to acquire UK-based biometric authentication specialist—and FinovateEurope 2025 Best of Show winner—Keyless. Terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed, and the transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

“In an era where trust is continuously tested, organizations must deliver digital experiences that are more secure, private, and effortless,” Ping Identity CEO and Founder Andre Durand said. “By joining forces with Keyless, we aim to make privacy-preserving authentication as simple as a glance—building greater confidence into every digital interaction.”

With its Zero-Knowledge Biometrics technology, Keyless separates itself from traditional biometric authentication solutions in a number of ways. Requiring a only single glance at the camera, Keyless’ technology verifies the user’s face and device against enrollment data, leveraging cryptographic techniques that prevent biometric data from being stored in a retrievable form. This prevents the data from being reconstructed and potentially linked back to the original image—whether on the device or in the cloud. Additionally, Keyless does not require a dedicated device, which makes the technology easier to deploy across a range of different environments and user groups.

The technology helps defend users against fraud techniques such as account takeover, providing instant biometric authentication and deepfake detection for frontline and mobile workers with sub-300ms performance benchmarks. Keyless also supports employees with passwordless multi-factor authentication and seamless single sign-on (SSO) for easier, stronger access. The technology is also designed to enhance readiness for a variety of international regulatory compliance standards for privacy including GDPR, CCPA, and PSD3.

“Trust lies at the heart of every digital relationship,” Keyless CEO and Co-Founder Andrea Carmignani said. “This acquisition will help to embed trust throughout the identity journey—from verification to authentication to authorization—and reflects our shared commitment to a more secure, seamless, and private world.”

Per the acquisition, Ping Identity will integrate Keyless’ privacy-preserving biometric authentication into its platform to enable businesses to enhance their fraud prevention and user verification processes without adding friction to the user experience. The acquisition also helps Ping Identity manifest its One Platform vision of providing verified trust across all identities, including customer identity and access management (CIAM) workforce, and B2B use cases. This vision also means delivering secure, passwordless access for frontline, shared terminal, and manufacturing environments.

Headquartered in Denver, Colorado and founded in 2003, Ping Identity first demonstrated its technology at FinovateEurope 2012. Today, the identity verification innovator boasts 99.99% uptime and more than three billion identities under management. The company’s acquisition announcement comes in the wake of a survey it conducted that indicated that while AI use is climbing rapidly, its impact on customer trust has been increasingly problematic. “AI and the rise of agents is compounding the attack on trust, making threats more persuasive and harder to detect, which raises the stakes for identity verification and protection,” Ping Identity VP of Consumer Segment Strategy Darryl Jones said.

Winning Best of Show in its FinovateEurope 2025, Keyless was founded in 2019 and is based in London. The company’s privacy-preserving biometric authentication technology has helped banks, fintechs, crypto platforms, and more reduce account takeover incidents, secure high-risk transactions, and boost operational efficiency. Keyless’ Zero-Knowledge Biometrics solution provides multi-factor authentication with a single glance at the camera, delivering results in 300 milliseconds without storing valuable biometric information.

Last month, Keyless announced that it had been named a “Luminary” in Acuity Market Intelligence’s Biometric Digital Identity Privacy and Compliance Prism Report. In September, Keyless was featured in Gartner’s Emerging Tech Impact Radar: Disinformation Security for its innovations in biometric continuous identity assurance.

Photo by cottonbro studio

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Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News

Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Fintech Rundown, Plumery

Tomorrow is Election Day in the US, and there are a number of high-profile contests in places like New York, New Jersey, and Virginia—the results of which are likely to dominate headlines over the next several days. For now, here in the fintech world, we’re seeing plenty of news in the fraud prevention and mortgagetech fronts, with new products and new partnerships on offer. We are also noticing an uptick in activity in the insurtech space, where AI-powered solutions to continue to make inroads.

Be sure to follow Finovate’s Fintech Rundown all week long for the latest updates in fintech news!

Fraud prevention and digital identity

AI transaction monitoring platform Flagright to power real-time transaction monitoring for online investment platform Webull.

TrustFinance announces global expansion of its financial company verification platform

Insurtech

AI automation firm Unitary launches its Virtual Agents for Insurance.

Digital solutions provider for the life insurance and financial services industry iPipeline introduces CHARLi, an AI foundation to enable L&A carriers and distributors to optimize workflows.

Crypto and Defi

Crypto tax compliance and accounting technology provider CoinTracker unveils Crypto Broker Tax Compliance Suite.

Payments

Saudi Arabian ATM provider Alhamrani Universal deploys Atombeam’s Neurpac SaaS solution to accelerate transmission of electronic payment transaction data.

Investing and wealth management

Prospero.ai renews its partnership with Finimize to provide retail investors with institutional-grade AI insights.

Mortgagetech

Intelligent payout solutions company Verituity teams up with mortgage servicing modernization firm Sagent.

AI-powered mortgage loan provider Better.com launches a Wholesale HELOC and CES Platform to enable mortgage brokers to access their technology for the first time.

Loyalty and rewards

Digital banking experience platform Plumery launches its Cashback Management capability.

Photo by Tara Winstead

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Finovate Global Canada: Wealthsimple’s $10 Billion Valuation and a Look at Investment Trends

Finovate Global Canada: Wealthsimple’s $10 Billion Valuation and a Look at Investment Trends
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Coinbase, Finovate Global, Nubank, Salt Edge, Tink

This week’s edition of Finovate Global features recent fintech news from Canada.

Wealthsimple secures $750 million at valuation of $10 billion

Canadian fintech Wealthsimple has raised CAD $750 million at a post-money valuation of CAD $10 billion. The funding round includes both a CAD $550 million primary offering and a secondary offering of up to CAD $200 million. Dragoneer Investment Group and GIC led the round, which also featured participation from new investor Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) as well as existing investors Power Corporation of Canada, IGM Financial Inc. ICONIQ, Greylock, and Meritech.

“This raise reflects deep confidence from new and returning investors in our mission and our role as a defining Canadian company,” Wealthsimple Co-Founder and CEO Michael Katchen said. “We were intentional in choosing partners committed to the long-term future of Wealthsimple. These are well-respected, global leaders with a proven track record (of) scaling category leaders, and who believe in our vision for the future of financial services.”

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Wealthsimple offers a suite of low-cost financial solutions to help Canadians build wealth. The company’s platform features self-directed investing, managed portfolios, digital asset investing, tax filing, advisor services, and more in a single, integrated experience. Wealthsimple serves three million Canadians and has $100 billion in assets under administration.

“Few companies have achieved what Wealthsimple has in the last few years,” Dragoneer Investment Group Partner Christian Jensen said. “The Wealthsimple team has built an expansive financial platform that millions of Canadians trust. They’re not just participating in Canada’s financial services industry; they’re redefining it.”

Earlier this year, Wealthsimple unveiled a waitlist for its first credit card, which topped 300,000 Canadians in the first six months. The company’s fundraising news follows a profitable 2024 and current profitability in 2025, as well. The capital infusion will help Wealthsimple accelerate its product roadmap in investing, spending, and credit, as well as support the company’s efforts to expand its platform.

Fintech investment slows in H1 ahead of potential rebound in H2

Speaking of investment and Canadian fintech, KPMG’s Canada Fintech Investment Report is a great way to get up to speed on the investment trends that are supporting fintech innovation in Canada. The report was published in August, and focuses on investment trends from the first half of 2025.

While the report indicates that Canadian fintech investment fell significantly compared to international trends, the report authors suggest that the first half of 2025 represented a normalization in the wake of record high levels of investment in 2024. Areas of investor interest include AI, especially agentic AI, and digital assets, which represent a continuation of trends from 2024. A more positive regulatory tone toward cryptocurrencies—especially stablecoins—in the US has been credited for this rebound in interest in digital assets. The report also noted some interest in quantum computing among insurers.

“Last year was exceptionally strong for fintech investment, thanks to two major take-private deals,” Dubie Cunningham, a Partner in KPMG in Canada’s Banking and Capital Markets Practice, explained. “Since then, investment activity has dropped to more stable levels. In fact, when you consider the economic shifts such as tariffs affecting global trade, investment in the first half was quite robust compared to historical levels. There’s still a lot of dry powder ready to be deployed by investors, but they are demonstrating more selective behavior than in previous years. They’re looking for quality companies and we’re seeing longer tails for maturing mid-to-large stage private equity deals.”

Read the full report.

Coming to Canada: Atlanta’s Rainforest and Lebanon’s Whish Money

This week reminds us of how attractive Canada is to a growing number of fintechs around the world. Rainforest, a embedded payments company based in Atlanta, Georgia, announced recently that it is looking to expand to Canada. The company, founded in 2022, secured $29 million in funding in September, taking its total capital raised to $57.5 million. The idea of expanding to Canada, as Rainforest Founder and CEO Joshua Silver explained to Global Atlanta, represents more than a regional expansion for the company itself. The move would also help Rainforest’s platform client expand their offerings in a new market.

Rainforest specializes in payments partnerships with software providers that target businesses in underserved industry sectors. These software providers themselves are an underserved segment of the industry—processing $50 million to $2 billion in annual payments. Rainforest offers an embedded payments solution that enables software platforms to provide a robust payments experience for their end merchants without having to register as a payment facilitator with card networks.

Hailing from even farther away than the Peach State where Rainforest resides is Whish Money. Headquartered in Beirut, Lebanon, and regulated by the country’s central bank, Whish Money announced this week that it had secured financial services licenses in Canada. The regulatory approvals are the first for the company outside of the MENA region, and is part of a global expansion that includes entering markets in the US, the UK, the EU, and Australia.

“Securing our Canadian license is a monumental step that validates our compliant, customer-focused model and sets the foundation for our international expansion,” Whish Money board chairman Toufic Koussa said. “This move is about more than just entering a new market; it’s about strategically connecting high-diaspora communities with reliable financial infrastructure, beginning with North America. We are committed to building a regulated, transparent global ecosystem that truly serves our users.”

Whish Money offers a range of digital financial services including payroll, fund transfers, and billpay. Founded in 2019, the company’s e-wallet, money remittance, and e-distribution platform has a user base of more than 1.5 million. The company’s global expansion is being supported by partnerships with companies such as Visa, Mastercard, Ria, and Terrapay.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Pakistan-based fintech startup ZAR raised $13 million for its technology that enables consumer to convert cash into stablecoins.
  • Indian fintech infrastructure company Falcon announced a partnership with technology consulting firm Tech Mahindra.
  • Alipay+ and HUMO, Uzebekistan’s national payment system, teamed up to facilitate cross-border payments.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Blockchain infrastructure and cryptocurrency provider Binance unveiled QR code payments in Argentina
  • Kueski and dLocal team up to bring Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services to merchants in Mexico.
  • Nubank and OpenAI partnered to launch ChatGPR Go in Brazil to give individuals greater access to ChatGPT’s advanced capabilties at a lower cost.

Asia-Pacific

  • Remittance provider Viamericas partnered with Dong Phuong Money Transfer to expand access to remittance services throughout Vietnam.
  • Japanese fintech JPYC launched the country’s first yen-denominated stablecoin.
  • Malaysian fintech Instapay earned a spot on CB Insights’ Global Fintech 100.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • South African fintech SME Snapshot launched updated version of its business management dashboard.
  • Nigeria’s Flutterwave partnered with Polygon to launch a stablecoin payment network across 34 African countries.
  • Kenya’s Choice Bank teamed up with Safaricom to power cross-border money transfers.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Coinbase and Tink teamed up to bring Pay by Bank crypto payments to customers in Germany.
  • Lithuanian regtech IDenfy partnered with Australian remittance service provider J Forex Money Transfer.
  • Finlayer and Salt Edge annnounced a partnership to bring open banking to small and medium-sized businesses in Romania.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Saudi Arabian Buy Now Pay Later firm Tabby boosted its valuation to more than $4.5 billion in the wake of a secondary share sale.
  • Israel-based Viola Credit closed its third credit fund at $2 billion, topping its original target of $1.5 billion.
  • Lebanon-based fintech Whish Money secured financial services licenses in Canada.

Photo by Harrison Haines

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Breaking Through the Verification Barrier: How Middesk Simplifies Risk & Identity

Breaking Through the Verification Barrier: How Middesk Simplifies Risk & Identity
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2025, Middesk, Speaker series

Digital businesses in the modern era span geography, product types, and regulatory regimes, making the process of verifying identities and assessing risk difficult. Today, we’re highlighting a conversation that digs into how platforms can assess risk at scale by embedding identity and risk intelligence into a single workflow.

At FinovateFall earlier this year, I spoke with Kate Young, Marketing Manager at Middesk, a company specializing in identity verification and onboarding automation. During our conversation, Kate discussed identity and onboarding challenges, how platforms distinguish legitimate enterprises from fraudulent ones, and the importance of embedding risk intelligence and KYB tools into the onboarding and lending processes. The interview touches on real-world use cases, ROI metrics, and what it takes to move from spreadsheets to APIs.

“There’s still this… trust gap between all of the businesses and the changes that they make both legitimately and illegitimately and the understanding of those financial institutions of those businesses. So there’s a wide gap between that business identity data and financial institutions being able to trust it…. We can actually bring that [gap] much closer and financial institutions can get much closer to trusting those businesses and saying yes to them more confidently and honestly growing their portfolio with those businesses once they truly trust who they are.”

Founded in 2018, Middesk’s identity and business verification platform provides APIs for verifying B2B customers, reducing fraud risk, and automating underwriting. With features such as entity resolution, beneficial-owner monitoring, and embedded data flows, Middesk enables platforms to streamline onboarding, reduce fraud, and scale reliably by offering up-to-date, verified data about their business users and clients.

Photo by Lisa from Pexels

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Walmart’s OnePay Selects DriveWealth to Power Embedded Investing

Walmart’s OnePay Selects DriveWealth to Power Embedded Investing
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, DriveWealth
  • Walmart’s OnePay digital banking platform is partnering with DriveWealth to launch OnePay Invest, giving users access to stock and ETF trading within their existing app.
  • Since acquiring fintechs Even and ONE, Walmart has built OnePay into a full-service app offering savings, credit-building, BNPL, and now investing.
  • Integrating DriveWealth’s brokerage-as-a-service APIs, OnePay lowers the barrier to entry for first-time investors and strengthens Walmart’s bid to become a one-stop financial hub for everyday consumers.

Digital trading and brokerage company DriveWealth scored a partnership this week with Walmart’s digital banking platform OnePay, which will leverage DriveWealth’s brokerage-as-a-service offering to launch OnePay Invest.

Walmart launched OnePay in January 2021 through a partnership with Ribbit Capital. In January 2022, Walmart expanded OnePay’s capabilities by acquiring two fintech platforms, Even and ONE, which helped Walmart create a more comprehensive financial services app. Since then, Walmart has been actively building up OnePay to compete with top fintech startups by adding features such as a high-yield savings account, credit-building tools, and BNPL capabilities.

DriveWealth will give OnePay users a new way to invest in stocks and ETFs. OnePay Invest will offer users access to trading tools within the same mobile app they already use to save, spend, and borrow.

“OnePay puts everyday money decisions in one place. By embedding DriveWealth’s investing technology directly into that experience, we are giving millions of Americans simple, reliable access to invest where they already save and spend,” said DriveWealth CEO Naureen Hassan. “This partnership moves our shared mission forward: make investing available to anyone, anywhere.”

Many OnePay customers may be new to investing, and embedding DriveWealth’s tools directly into the OnePay app lowers the barrier to entry. By enabling users to explore stock and ETF investing within the same platform they already use to manage savings, spending, and borrowing, OnePay creates a simple on-ramp to wealth building.

The move also helps OnePay differentiate itself from competitors such as Chime and Dave, which both cater to similar underbanked populations but have yet to integrate investing capabilities. In combining everyday money management with access to the markets, OnePay is positioning itself as an all-in-one financial hub for the mass-market consumer.

Today’s partnership isn’t Walmart’s first attempt this month to bolster the capabilities of OnePay. On October 3, the company announced plans to offer crypto trading and custody in its mobile app, allowing users to buy, hold, and trade Bitcoin and Ether. 

DriveWealth was founded in 2012 to allow third parties to enable access to US equities, fixed income, and other asset classes through scalable, compliant solutions via its suite of APIs. Earlier this year, the New York-based company teamed up with Moment Technology to make fixed-income investing more accessible to a broader range of investors.

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Devexperts Unveils New AI-Powered Data Analysis Tool Acomotrade

Devexperts Unveils New AI-Powered Data Analysis Tool Acomotrade
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Devexperts
  • Capital markets software developer Devexperts launched its latest AI-powered data analysis solution, Acomotrade, this week.
  • The new offering is designed to help online trading platforms better engage new users, most of whom rarely become the kind of active traders these platforms rely on.
  • Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, and founded in 2002, Devexperts demonstrated its technology at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016.

For all the excitement experienced when markets are soaring toward new highs, life for brokerage companies can actually be more complicated. While trading volumes are climbing, the fact of the matter is that many of the new traders and investors who decide to start participating in the market often don’t end up sticking around very long at all. The average new user lifetime on a trading platform is less than six months—to say nothing of those traders who abandon the platform shortly after registering, never even placing their first trade. New traders rarely become the kind of active traders that online trading platforms crave, which complicates the acquisition cost equation and makes it hard for platforms to recoup their investment in new users.

The new offering from capital markets software developer Devexperts, Acomotrade, is designed to help online trading platforms better manage these challenges. An AI-powered data analysis solution, Acomotrade leverages insights into user behavior to help brokers improve the return on acquisition via better engagement and lower early user churn.

Acomotrade features personal instrument recommendations, analyzing trader activity and behavioral patterns to suggest tools like watchlists that match the individual trader’s habits and preferences. The solution also includes disengagement detection, leveraging large-scale behavioral data to detect signs of user disengagement. At this point, brokers can intervene with personalized communications or incentives before the user leaves the platform entirely.

Acomotrade also relies on user representation to group traders together based on characteristics such as risk appetite, trading style, and engagement duration. This helps brokers personalize their engagement with different user groups. All of these features are designed to help platforms better understand, communicate with, and support their newest users when they are most vulnerable to becoming disenchanted with the online trading experience.

“Acomotrade gives brokers a practical way to strengthen user engagement and retention, directly improving profitability without additional acquisition spend,” Devexperts Data Science Team Lead Ivan Kunyankin said. “It will initially be offered as an opt-in feature within the DXtrade platform and we look forward to seeing our clients benefit from the advanced insights and functionalities Acomotrade has to offer, as well as working with our clients to develop these further over time.”

Dublin, Ireland-based Devexperts participated in our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016. The company specializes in providing trading platforms and brokerage automation, complex software development products, and market data products. The company also provides consulting services for financial institutions, particularly in the areas of real-time transaction monitoring, trading automation, and risk management. Devexperts’ DXtrade platform is a multi-asset, broker-agnostic trading platform for brokers and prop firms that offer trading in stocks, derivatives, FX, CFDs, spread bets, and blockchain-based currencies. More than 20 million users rely on Devexperts’ technology every day. Nikolaj Mosejev is CEO.

Photo by Sophie Popplewell on Unsplash

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