Meniga Builds Digital Banking Solution for BPER

Meniga Builds Digital Banking Solution for BPER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finovate Favorites: A Baker’s Dozen of Best of Show Winners

Finovate Favorites: A Baker’s Dozen of Best of Show Winners

Which fintech companies have continued to impress Finovate audiences over the years? The return of Kasasa to FinovateSpring last month, winning its fourth Best of Show award in the process, got a few of us thinking that it was a good time to take a look at which companies have been selected as fan favorites most frequently after demoing their latest technologies live on stage.

We’ve highlighted companies that have been especially popular at certain conferences, such as FinovateAsia and FinovateSpring before. Here is our compendium of the top Best of Show vote-getters to date for all shows combined (minimum of three wins).

The Big Three

The three companies that have won the most Best of Show awards from Finovate audiences reflect three different themes in fintech over the years: the allure of social investing (eToro), the rise of data analytics in banking (MX, formerly Money Desktop), and the persistence of the payment card (Dynamics). What is especially impressive about all three companies in our Best of Show Big Three is their ability to innovate over time. Each alum won their first Best of Show award between 2010 and 2012 and won their most recent Best of Show award between 2016 and 2018.

Dynamics (8) Founded in 2007. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Jeff Mullen is CEO.

MX / Money Desktop (6) Founded in 2010. Headquartered in Lehi, Utah. Ryan Caldwell is CEO.

eToro (6) Founded in 2007. Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel and London, U.K. Yoni Assia is CEO.

The Super Six

Of our Super Six – the six companies to have won Best of Show awards four times – what is most interesting is also the way many of them have been proven innovators over a time of major change in fintech. Companies like Kasasa (formerly BancVue) and Yodlee (now Envestnet | Yodlee) made their big splash back in the earliest days of Finovate and, with recent Best of Show wins in 2018 and 2017, respectively, shown that they are still among fintech’s most inspiring solution providers.

Backbase – 4

Kasasa / BancVue – 4

Meniga – 4

oFlows – 4

SaleMove – 4

Yodlee (including Envestnet | Yodlee) – 4

The Fantastic Four

Two of the companies in our Fantastic Four companies that have won Best of Show awards three times have since been acquired. LearnVest, a three-time Best of Show winner from 2011-2013, was acquired by Northwestern Mutual for more than $250 million in 2015. EyeVerify, which won Best of Show awards on three different continents, was acquired by Ant Financial in 2016. The company now operates as ZOLOZ, and is focused on providing digital identity solutions for the underbanked in Asia.

BehavioSec – 3

EyeVerify (now “ZOLOZ”) – 3

LearnVest – 3

mBank – 3

Note: FA: FinovateAsia, FE: FinovateEurope, FF: FinovateFall, FS: FinovateSpring. Audience favorite awards from FinDEVr not included.

Meniga Scoops Up $3.6 Million in New Funding Courtesy of UniCredit Investment

Meniga Scoops Up $3.6 Million in New Funding Courtesy of UniCredit Investment

Via its venture arm, UniCredit EVO (Equity Venture Opportunities), UniCredit has taken a $3.6 million (€3.1 million) minority stake in digital banking solutions provider Meniga. The investment is part of a strategic partnership that will integrate Meniga’s Financial Fitness solution into UniCredit’s platform, providing customers with a data-driven, personalized way to better meet their financial goals.

“The partnership represents the biggest PFM deal in Europe to date and the Meniga team is excited to be part of UniCredit’s digital transformation journey,” Meniga CEO Georg Ludviksson said. “The investment from UniCredit EVO will enable us to keep momentum and focus on the continuous development of our products to ensure we are delivering the most innovative digital banking solutions to our clients.”

Meniga said the additional funding will be used to bolster product development ahead of an anticipated surge in demand for its solutions as companies adapt to PSD2. The new capital comes just over a month after the  company picked up a similarly-sized investment from Nordic bank Swedbank, and takes the company’s total financing to more than $30 million.

Serving more than 50 million digital banking users in 23 countries, Meniga helps financial institutions leverage their data to improve customer engagement and provide more personalized service. The company’s digital banking solutions include both PFM and BFM products, as well as a customer engagement platform to build and run personalized campaigns. Its marketing solutions enable FIs to generate revenue with merchant-funded card-linked offers, and provide valuable consumer data analytics that FIs can offer to their business customers to help them better understand market trends.

Supporting Meniga’s product suite is the company’s data consolidation and enrichment engine that collects and enriches transaction and financial product data to enable a high degree of personalization for the customer. With 34 million transactions processed daily, Meniga has enriched more than 30 billion transactions to date.

With offices in London, U.K.; Reykjavik, Iceland; Stockholm, Sweden; and Warsaw, Poland, Meniga demonstrated its technology at FinovateEurope 2018, winning Best of Show. Earlier this year, Meniga announced a partnership with French banking group, BPCE. The company began the year with a win at the Icelandic Web Awards, taking home top honors in the Best App and Best Web Solution categories.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Signicat and Mitek Team Up to Improve Digital Onboarding.
  • Meniga Scoops Up $3.6 Million in New Funding Courtesy of UniCredit Investment.
  • OutSystems’ $360 Million Funding Round Boosts Valuation Above $1 Billion.
  • Credit Karma Hires Colleen McCreary as First Chief People Officer.

Around the web

  • Oman’s Bank Sohar to deploy core banking platform from Infosys Finacle.
  • IdentityMind Global announces update of its trusted digital identities platform.
  • Revolut CEO Nikolay Storonsky tells Reuters his company will seek a banking license in the U.S.
  • i-Sight to deploy ACI Worldwide’s Case Management solution to fight bank fraud.
  • D3 Banking Technology unveils new account opening service.
  • collectAI improves Hanseatic Bank’s receivables management with a 24 percent higher collection rate.
  • SMArtX adds 18 new strategies.
  • Kony unveils new digital banking solution – Kony DBX
  • Edwards Federal Credit Union signs with Bankjoy to enhance home and mobile banking functionality.
  • Two of the top 5 US banks (and three of the Top 10) are now using Socure’s ID+ platform.

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.

Meniga Receives $3.7 Million to Fuel International Rollout

Meniga Receives $3.7 Million to Fuel International Rollout

Digital banking and marketing startup Meniga announced it received a $3.7 million (€3 million) investment from Nordic bank Swedbank. This brings the company’s total funding to $27.1 million since it was founded in 2009.

Swedbank’s investment comes after the bank agreed to launch Meniga’s digital banking solutions for its customers in Sweden and in the Baltic countries. Swedbank has more than 7 million retail customers and 625,000 corporate customers. The bank has 218 branches in Sweden and 133 branches across Baltic countries.

Lotta Lovén, head of digital banking at Swedbank, said that the banks’ customers not only prefer a digital experience, but also want relevant offers and services to make life easier. “We see Meniga as an innovation partner to give our customers a digital experience that includes a better overview and insights of all their finances both from Swedbank and external parties. We are very pleased with the agreed partnership,”Lovén added.

Headquartered in London and with offices also in Reykjavik, Stockholm, and Warsaw, Meniga offers white-label digital banking solutions for 50 million digital banking users in 23 countries for banks such as Santander, Intesa, ING Direct, Commerzbank and mBank. At FinovateEurope earlier this year, the company won Best of Show for Richest Transactions, a solution that helps banks leverage data associated with transactions.

This month, the company’s CEO Georg Ludviksson was selected as one of top 200 Fintech leaders in Europe. In February, the company announced a partnership with France’s second largest banking group, BPCE.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • doxo Teams with Coinstar to Facilitate Cash Payments for Underbanked.
  • Agreement Express Lands Funding from Frontier Capital.
  • Low-Code Development Platform OutSystems Forges Strategic Partnership with Atos.

Around the web

  • Iowa City-based Farmers & Merchants and Savings Bank to deploy Fiserv’s retail and business banking platform.
  • Zopa announces restructuring in advance of the launch of its challenger bank.
  • PYMNTS.com features Trulioo CEO Stephen Ufford in a conversation about the present and future of KYC.
  • Santander introduces its Santander One Pay FX service, a blockchain-based money transfer offering that leverages Ripple’s xCurrent technology.
  • Meniga CEO Georg Ludviksson selected as one of top 200 Fintech leaders in Europe
  • NuCypher teams with Origin Protocol to control access to sensitive information in decentralized marketplaces.
  • Efigence powers concept, UX, and design for BGŻOptima Bank’s new portal.
  • PYMNTS.com profiles anti-cyberfraud startup, Emailage.

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.

FinovateEurope 2018 Best of Show Winners Announced

FinovateEurope 2018 Best of Show Winners Announced

If there is one theme that unites all of our FinovateEurope Best of Show winners this year, that theme may be summed up in one word: data. As Finovate senior research analyst Julie Muhn pointed out during a recent conversation, the ability to leverage data to create more meaningful, more personalized, more secure experiences for consumers of financial services underlies much of the innovation that we see not just on the Finovate stage, but across fintech writ large, as well.

In this way, financial technology is turning the old adage – it’s not what you know, it’s who you know – on its head. The connections between us and the things we do, the places we go, the transactions we make, are in many ways the Holy Grail for companies that are constantly seeking out better ways to serve us. And for those companies that do win our trust and gain access to what we know and do, the rewards could not be greater.

With this in mind, we present to you a small sample of those companies that may be best positioned to take advantage of this Golden Age of Data: the Best of Show winners of FinovateEurope 2018.

Backbase for its Customer OS, the next generation of the Backbase Digital Banking Platform, which is laser-focused on providing customer-first journeys. Video.

 

Be-IQ for its holistic and gamified approach to risk profiling and financial well-being that accounts for the very contradictions that make us human: our behaviors. Video.

 

CREALOGIX for its customer banking platform, Gravity, which is breaking new ground with its intuitive and user-friendly, self-service insights application. Video.

 

iProov for its liveness-protected, facial biometric authentication technology which is fully-automated for fast, easy and ultra-secure mobile and PC on-boarding. Video.

 

 

Meniga for its digital banking solution that helps banks around the world use data to personalize digital channels and drive customer engagement. Video.

 

Microblink for BlinkReceipt, its SDK for real-time extraction of all purchase data from retail receipts and OCR technology which eliminates typing from mobile apps. Video.

 

 

W.UP for its digital banking sales and engagement solution that uses pre-built customer insights to build relevant, personalized, and timely interactions with clients. Video.

 

Please join us in thanking our sponsors and partners who help us make FinovateEurope a huge success year in and year out. And be sure to stay tuned for coverage of our new extended format on Thursday and Friday as we take deep dives into some of the most pressing issues and fascinating trends in fintech today. For more information about the keynote addresses, panel discussions, and fireside chats coming up on Days Three and Four, our full agenda is available on our FinovateEurope 2018 page.


Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their three favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The seven companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2018 conferences are below:
FinovateEurope 2015
FinovateSpring 2015
FinovateFall 2015
FinovateEurope 2016
FinovateSpring 2016
FinovateFall 2016
FinovateAsia 2016
FinovateEurope 2017
FinovateSpring 2017
FinovateFall 2017
FinovateAsia 2017
FinovateMiddleEast 2018

Meniga to Support Digital Transformation for French Banking Group, BPCE

Meniga to Support Digital Transformation for French Banking Group, BPCE

With FinovateEurope right around the corner, our antennae is tuned to any and all news from what Americans call “The Old Country.” The latest dispatch features European digital banking solutions provider – and multiple Finovate Best of Show winner – Meniga and its newly announced partnership with France’s second largest banking group, BPCE.

“Meniga is excited to be partnering with BPCE,” Meniga co-founder and CEO Georg Ludviksson said. “We have been very impressed by BPCE’s commitment to digital innovation and their clear focus on their mobile banking application through a simple and personal user experience.”

Per the agreement, BPCE will deploy Meniga’s technology across its Banques Populaires and Caisses d’Epargne in France. The first phase of the rollout will feature Meniga’s Financial Activity Feed, a real-time spending overview with personalized, data-driven alerts and insights for customers. The partnership comes as the EU Payment Services Directive (PSD2) compels new relationships between banking customers, financial services providers, and third party fintechs.

“As we enter into an era of open banking, we look forward to working closely with Meniga to transform our digital customer experience,” said Francois Perol, BPCE CEO. “Meniga’s data-driven digital banking solutions will help accelerate our digital transformation journey and help us adapt to the ever-evolving needs of our customers.”

Winner of Best App and Best Web Solution at the Icelandic Web Awards for 2017 earlier this month, Meniga was named one of five Reyjavik startups to watch by Wired in December and announced a new deployment of its technology at Spanish bank IberCaja in November. Meniga has raised nearly $23 million in funding, most recently picking up an $8 million investment in April. The company has offices in London, Reykjavik, Stockholm, and Warsaw, and serves more than fifty million digital banking users in 20 countries.

Meniga’s most recent Finovate appearance was at FinovateEurope last February. Ludviksson and Chief Product Owner Finnur Magnusson demonstrated Personal Finance Challenges, a new UX and API designed to help users take short-term actions that can improve their financial fitness. The solution leverages goal-making, community reinforcement, and “nudges” to help users accept and meet challenges that will encourage better financial habits. Challenges won a finalist spot at the FStech Awards earlier this month.

Be sure to check out Meniga’s latest solution when the company returns to FinovateEurope next month in March.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Tuition.io to Power Student Loan Repayment Benefit for Estée Lauder Employees.
  • Check out sneak peeks from next month’s FinovateEurope presenting companies:
  • Meniga to Support Digital Transformation for French Banking Group, BPCE. See Meniga at FinovateEurope 2018 in March.
  • Handle Financial’s Prism Mobile App Reaches $1 Billion in Bills Paid.
  • Finect Raises Capital as BME Takes Minority Stake.

Around the web

  • Actiance forges partnership with Relativity to bring seamless data delivery to eDiscovery platform.
  • Neustar unveils multi-factor authentication risk assessment tool to help enterprises mitigate fraud risk.
  • Tinkoff Bank and AHML to launch joint venture to offer mortgage loans via new electronic platform.
  • Y Combinator interviews Jake Rosenberg, cofounder and CTO of LendUp.
  • VentureBeat highlights OurCrowd, which has raised $650 million for 145 startups and plans to top $1 billion in 2018.

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.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • ThreatMetrix Acquired by RELX, Becomes Part of LexisNexis Risk Solutions.
  • figo Announces ‘License As A Service’ PSD2 Solution, RegShield.
  • BehavioSec Closes $17.5 Million Series B.
  • Payoneer Partners with Waze to Power Local Payments.

Around the web

  • Ellie Mae partners with COCC to offer its members access to Ellie Mae’s Encompass all-in-one mortgage management solution.
  • Meniga wins best App and best Web Solution at the Icelandic Web Awards 2017.

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

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Intelligent Environments Appoints New CEO.
  • TransferWise Brings New Multi-Currency, Borderless Accounts with Debit Cards to Public.
  • Dream Payments Integrates with QuickBooks and First Data’s Clover.

Around the web

  • Meniga announced as FStech Awards 2018 finalist for ‘Challenges’ financial fitness.
  • Foundr Magazine interviews Expensify CEO David Barrett.
  • The Asian Review features Financial data and chat startup Symphony Software Foundation.
  • Forbes highlights AutoGravity’s take on lending.
  • Privakey is the latest fintech to join the FIDO Alliance.
  • Bluefin Payment Systems partners with Choice Ticketing to support PCI-validated ticketing payments.

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.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • AutoGravity Introduces Sheng Wang as New Chief Technology Officer.
  • nanopay Launches B2B Platform for International Commerce.

Around the web

  • Fiserv announces agreements with five credit unions to deploy its core account processing platform, DNA.
  • PNC goes live on real-time payments network via Finastra’s payment services hub.
  • Fifth Third Bank picks FIS to provide real-time payments for customers.
  • The San Diego Union-Tribune recognizes Jack Henry & Associates as a Top Workplace
  • RightCapital ends its second year reporting $20billion total assets linked to platform.
  • Wired names Meniga one of five Reykjavik startups to watch.
  • NYMBUS completes SOC 2 Type 1 Certification.
  • Avoka named in Deloitte Technology Fast 50 and joins CRN Fast50.

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.