PaySend Adds KYC and Risk Management Tech from 4Stop

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Moving money with international money transfer platform PaySend just got a lot more secure. German KYC and anti-fraud technology solutions provider 4Stop has integrated its KYC, compliance and risk management technology with the company’s platform.

“We have always been focused on solving and removing the complexities for businesses’ KYC, regulatory obligations and fraud prevention obstacles in a manner that truly performed on a global scale,” 4Stop CEO Ingo Ernst said. “We are thrilled to see our technology integrated with PaySend and to further support their KYC, compliance and anti-fraud requirements with a fail-safe accuracy, and in the most streamlined and efficient manner possible.”

4Stop leverages hundreds of global KYC data sources, as well as a multi-faceted rules engine, real-time monitoring, rich database management, and data science to provide maximum, real-time KYC coverage. The company’s platform also enables businesses to future-proof their technology by activating any required KYC for compliance as regulations are updated.

Headquartered in Malta and founded in 2015, PaySend demonstrated its international payments and money remittance platform at FinovateEurope 2016. The company leverages a global banking network – as well as partnerships with Visa, MasterCard, and UnionPay – to enable FIs to participate in a network that simplifies remittances, tokenizes card data in demand for social-based transfers, and decreases the cost of sending money.

Earlier this month, PaySend was shortlisted in the Best Consumer Payments category of the PayTech 2018 awards. In 2018 alone, the company has launched its service in the UAE, Canada, Mexico, and Israel – with more than 50 countries now able to receive PaySend transfers. More than 100,000 people currently use its service.

Finovate Alums Take Top Honors at FinTech Breakthrough Awards

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Dedicated to recognizing “the top companies and products in the financial services and technology industry today,” FinTech Breakthrough has announced its FinTech Breakthrough Award Winners for 2018. This marks the second year the independent organization has sponsored the fintech awards event, recognizing fintech startups and veterans from a wide variety of categories including payments, lending, investing, and regtech.

“The FinTech Breakthrough Awards serve as a testament to the passion, skill and vision of individuals and teams that are truly setting the standard for innovation in the global FinTech industry,” Managing Director for FinTech Breakthrough James Johnson said in 2017 during the Awards’ inaugural year. “We are thrilled to recognize all of the FinTech Breakthrough Award winners for their well-deserved industry recognition as they drive the global FinTech market forward.”

This year featured 20 Finovate alums earning top honors from FinTech Breakthrough. The names and Finovate demo dates for each winning alum – as well as the category they won – are featured below. For a complete list of 2018 FinTech Breakthrough Award Winners, visit the company’s awards announcement page.

Leadership

Consumer Lending

  • Innovation Award for Consumer Lending – Text for Credit by Experian (FF17)

Business Lending

Wealth Management

Payments

Investments

Consumer Banking

Financial Research and Data

Fraud Prevention and Transaction Security

This marks the second time both eMoney Advisor and ThreatMetrix have been honored by the FinTech Breakthrough Awards. Among last year’s winners were a significant number of Finovate alums including: Sindeo, BizFi, DriveWealth, Quovo, Jumio, Trulioo, Qumram, and Xero.

WeInvest Raises $12.3 Million for its WealthTech Platform

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on

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B2B digital wealth management solutions provider WeInvest has taken in an investment of its own today. The Singapore-based company just closed on $12.3 million in Series A funding.

The financing comes from a handful of angel investors, along with London-based Schroders, which acquired a minority equity stake in the company. This is WeInvest’s first major funding after an undisclosed round in 2017.

In an interview, WeInvest Co-Founder and CEO Bhaskar Prabhakara told DEALSTREETASIA that the funds will be used to promote product development and to “expand the functional range of [the] platform across regional regulatory requirements, business models, and products.”

Unlike other models, WeInvest’s roboadvisory services empower traditional advisors with tools to help them compete with pure roboadvisory plays. WeInvest has three main products. TrackWealth offers simplified account aggregation and wealth analysis for advisors to provide their clients. GrowWealth, provides goal-based and thematic investing roboadvisory services that advisors can offer their self-directed clients. And AdviseWealth offers a service for relationship managers.

Founded in 2015 and with 38 employees, WeInvest offers its services in Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, India, and Dubai. Prabhakara recently presented AdviseWealth at FinovateMiddleEast 2018 in Dubai. WeInvest has 5 clients and anticipates it will double that number by the end of the year.

Watch Demo Videos from FinovateSpring for Free

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If you’re bummed because you missed out on FinovateSpring– or just missed a demo session to take a conference call– we’ve got you covered! Starting today, you can watch all of the FinovateSpring demos for free on Finovate’s video archives.

Of course, there’s nothing like seeing the demos live and in person– networking opportunities included– but this is the next best thing. To start you off with a small sample, here are the five companies whose demos won Best of Show (as voted by the audience).

AlphaRank

Conversation.one

Dynamics

Kasasa

Trusona

Mitek Acquires A2iA for $49.7 Million

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Digital identity verification company Mitek is bolstering its capabilities this week with the acquisition of A2iA, an artificial intelligence and image analysis company, for $49.7 million. This is Mitek’s second acquisition in under a year– last October the company acquired ICAR for $15 million.

A2iA leverages AI and machine learning to create algorithms that process millions of checks, IDs and documents daily for financial services companies, retailers, mobile operators, healthcare providers, and governments. The company, which pulled in revenues of more than $15 million last year, works in more than 42 countries and 11 languages. A2iA’s software is used by top U.S. banks as well as all banks in the U.K., 90% of French banks, and 90% of Brazilian banks. It is leveraged by more than 75,000 ATMs worldwide.

In the press release, James B. DeBello, CEO and Chairman of Mitek said that he anticipates the acquisition to help Mitek get ahead in the industry. He added, “Mitek’s Mobile Verify product will be able to read government-issued identity documents even more accurately and quickly than today, and authenticate them using A2iA’s advanced AI algorithms, thereby increasing companies’ trust that their customers are who they say they are.” The move will also double the size of Mitek’s Labs team, a group that has been behind each of Mitek’s 39 patents.

Mitek software is deployed in 6,100 U.S. banks, including all 10 of the largest U.S. financial institutions, and is used by more than 80 million end consumers. The company is publicly traded on NASDAQ under the ticker “MITK” with a market cap of $305 million. Mitek was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in San Diego, California. The company most recently demoed its MobileVerify solution at FinovateFall 2017. Earlier this month, Mitek made headlines when it agreed to deliver digital KYC for cryptocurrency broker BTCDirect.

Finovate Alumni News

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On Finovate.com

  • Mitek Acquires A2iA for $49.7 Million.
  • WeInvest Raises $12.3 Million for its WealthTech Platform.
  • Finovate Alums Take Top Honors at FinTech Breakthrough Awards.
  • PaySend Adds KYC and Risk Management Technology from 4Stop..

Around the web

  • Deutsche Bank Luxembourg to deploy Avaloq Banking Suite.
  • Temenos unveils new digital onboarding and origination platform, Temenos Origination.
  • Revolut announces support for XRP and Bitcoin Cash.
  • Moneyhub integrates with Intelliflo to enable real-time, two-way sharing between financial advisors and clients.
  • Klarna acquires e-commerce shopping cart, Shop.co.
  • Sberbank to test ICO technology issued by Level One.
  • Tinkoff Bank to launch a new Development Hub in Sochi.
  • ID.me teams with LinkedIn to provide one year of LinkedIn Premium for free to U.S. service members and veterans.

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

GoodData Launches GoodData Spectrum UI Tools

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Data analytics and insights company GoodData has launched a new tool today that will help businesses transform their user interface. GoodData Spectrum is a set of three user interaction frameworks that deliver insights to help support decision-making and change how organizations use analytics.

GoodData Spectrum consists of three frameworks:

  • GoodData.UI offers turnkey, commercial, open source, and custom components organizations can use to build their own custom apps.
  • KPI Dashboards helps organizations track KPI changes over time and receive alerts when KPIs reach a certain threshold.
  • Analytic Designer allows organizations to explore curated datasets and discover insights.

“Analytics within organizations today is no longer about one-size-fits-all with low adoption rather, analytics is now critical to everyday business success,” said Roman Stanek, CEO at GoodData. “With GoodData Spectrum, we now enable data and insights to support the complete range of business decisions.”

In the press release, Cody Alton from GoodData client Zalando said that the new tools help his organization design with end users in mind. He added, “With GoodData Spectrum we can roll out customized features based on our product vision and roadmap to ensure we exceed the needs of our customers.”

Founded in 2007, GoodData works with 70,000 companies across the globe, including 8 of the 10 largest brands. The company’s business intelligence solutions reach more than 1 million end users. At FinovateFall 2017, GoodData showcased its Insights PaaS. Last month, the company made its first foray into insuretech with the launch of two new solutions, Underwriting Insights and Claims Insights

identitii Forges New Partnership with Robot Automation Specialist Blue Prism

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Secure information sharing specialist identitii has joined forces with robotic process automation specialist Blue Prism. Together, the two will design technology to help FIs securely digitize and automate corporate payment and trade transaction processes – including a detailed audit trail – in an effort to better detect fraud.

identitii will integrate its verification engine, Integrity, and its permission data sharing capabilities into Blue Prism’s Digital Workforce, which is used by businesses to automate complex work processes. This will help businesses better organize and verify the data required in typically manual, time-consuming processes like cross-border corporate transactions, as well as provide for needed AML review and financial crimes sanctions checking.

“By combining our core strengths, we will enable our customers to achieve enhanced transparency and a complete audit trail of the provenance of information from Blue Prism’s digital workforce,” identitii CEO and co-founder Nick Armstrong said. “This will allow users to share information more securely, reduce the risk of information being tampered with and allow for detailed reporting.”

Blue Prism’s Digital Workforce enables businesses to automate tasks such as collection and management of documentation across multiple legacy systems. Businesses using the platform can leverage AI, machine learning, intelligent automation, and sentiment analysis to improve processes, share information more securely, and provide clearer, more detailed reporting for compliance purposes.

“Security, auditability and compliance can’t be an afterthought when thinking of automation,” David Moss, CTO and co-founder of Blue Prism said. “Working with identitii bolsters our ecosystem of security partners while providing our joint customers with the Digital Workforce they need to complete their digital transformation programs, which helps ensure that every transaction is safe and accounted for.”

Founded in 2014, identitii demonstrated its identitii Serra solution at FinovateFall 2017. identitii Serra is a permissioned, append-only, federated database designed for the financial industry. Using distributed ledger technology and relational and graph databases, identitii Serra enables FIs to exchange information in a way that is both secure and auditable.

identitii raised an undisclosed amount from The Lind Partners in January 2017. The company supports offices in Sydney, Australia, and in Singapore.

ShopKeep Launches on Android to Broaden Hardware Options

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Point of sale technology provider ShopKeep is offering its small business clients more options this week. That’s because the company launched an Android version of its software.

The company’s plan with the new Android version of the ShopKeep Register app is to broaden the hardware choices for small and independent business owners. ShopKeep currently serves more than 25,000 independent retailers and restaurants and aims to lower startup costs for entrepreneurs, who can now buy a turnkey hardware solution for $499.

Until today’s announcement, the New York-based company had deployed its app exclusively on Apple’s iOS platform. ShopKeep, which originally partnered with First Data in Q1 2017, is piloting the Android launch on First Data’s Clover Mini device. It will be available on the larger Clover Station in the third quarter of this year. ShopKeep also plans to leverage additional partnerships to deploy its Register app on other devices later this year.

“Extending ShopKeep to Android-based hardware platforms ensures that both our customers and partners have access to the full range of device options available in the market,” said Michael DeSimone, ShopKeep CEO. “We are very excited to deploy our solution on the Clover platform as a first step in expanding the availability of ShopKeep in the market, and plan to extend our reach onto several hardware platforms through the back half of 2018.”

ShopKeep founder Jason Richelson demoed the point-of-sale platform at FinovateSpring 2012. The company supports more than 289 million transactions annually and has processed $7 billion in transaction volume since it was founded in 2008. Last month, ShopKeep expanded its payment processing capabilities to include TSYS‘ ProPay.

Conversation.one Among U.S. Fintechs to Join Finastra’s FusionFabric.cloud Platform

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FinovateSpring Best of Show winner Conversation.one is among four U.S.-based fintechs that are joining Finastra’s FusionFabric.cloud open platform. Conversation.one, which offers a voice banking and chatbot building solution for banks and credit unions, will leverage FusionFabric.cloud’s developer environment to boost its technology’s deep learning capabilities.

“Accessing Finastra technology and APIs through the FusionFabric.cloud platform is extremely efficient. It brings additional value to our solutions and, importantly, to our clients,” Conversation.one CRO and co-founder Rachel Batish explained. “The platform gives us access to more than 9,000 financial institutions across the globe. Our goal over the next two years is to deliver the capability to build cross-channel conversational solutions in minutes to close to 30% of Finastra’s clients, so they become our customers as well.”

Also among FusionFabric.cloud’s latest round of early adopters this week were Tradle, a blockchain-based KYC solutions provider; Active Allocator, a digital asset allocation platform; and regtech solution provider for banks and insurance companies, GreenPoint Financial.

Chief Cloud Officer for Finastra Natalie Gammon pointed to the “broad financial service spectrum” available to fintechs via FusionFabric.cloud. “It means fintechs and developers can dramatically reduce build time for apps, bringing them to market faster. We see FusionFabric.cloud gathering significant pace, championing a collaborative ecosystem and changing the way the financial services industry develops and deploys software for the better,” Gammon said.

The news comes just days after Conversation.one announced that First Abilene Federal Credit Union, a Texas-based credit union with $71 million in assets and nearly 11,000 members, had leveraged Conversation.one’s technology to launch its Amazon Alexa Skills and Google Home Action offerings.

Conversation.one CEO Chen Levkovich credited First Abilene FCU with recognizing the potential of voice and chat technology to improve customer engagement. “First Abilene can now provide their members with a wider range of services, from multiple digital touch-points,” Levkovich said. “We are extremely excited to work with such an innovative team and we are looking forward to their expansion into additional channels.”

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Conversation.one demonstrated its build-once-deploy-anywhere platform for conversation apps at FinovateSpring 2018, winning Best of Show honors. Conversation.one’s solution enables banks and credit unions to build, deploy, and enhance Alexa Skills, Google Home Actions, FB Messenger Bots, as well as phone and texting intelligent assistants in a single process that takes as little as a few minutes.

Finastra, which formed via a merger between Misys (FinovateEurope 2017) and D+H last summer, has been gaining early adopters to its FusionFabric cloud open architecture since the fall and began 2018 with a trio of new platform users, as well as a partnership with Thomson Reuters as a data provider. A strategic alliance with Microsoft announced in March meant that the company’s enterprise-ready trusted cloud platform, Microsoft Azure, would underpin FusionFabric.cloud. Shortly afterward, Finastra announced another trio of APAC fintech companies that would leverage its solution to develop and deploy their apps.