Author: David Penn

Finovate Global Egypt: Investing in Unicorns and Point of Sale Financing Startups

Finovate Global Egypt: Investing in Unicorns and Point of Sale Financing Startups
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

This week’s edition of Finovate Global features recent fintech developments from Egypt.

MNT-Halan Achieves $1.4 Billion Valuation with Latest Investment

An investment from Al Ahly Capital, the investment arm of the National Bank of Egypt, has boosted the valuation of Egyptian fintech MNT-Halan to $1.4 billion. The investment represents the first closing of a new round for the firm; a second closing is expected as part of the ongoing funding. Reports indicate that the company has received an initial infusion of $30 million out of what will be a $70 million-plus funding round. In any event, MNT-Halan noted that the capital will help the company expand its operations in Egypt, as well as support growth in the region.

Currently operating in Egypt, Turkey, and the UAE, as well as in Pakistan, where it owns a bank that serves micro and small businesses, MNT-Halan offers a range of digital financial services including both consumer and business lending, payments, e-wallets, savings, investments, and e-commerce tools. The company achieved unicorn status in 2023, becoming the first Egyptian fintech to earn a valuation above $1 billion.

“While we have partnered with more than 30 Egyptian banks and financial institutions, this is the first time a commercial bank has become an equity partner in our journey, making this a particularly important milestone for us,” MNT-Halan Founder and Chairman Mounir Nakhla said. “Together, we will redefine access to financial services for small and micro businesses, as well as people living in remote towns and villages across Egypt who have historically been underserved.”

Headquartered in Giza, MNT-Halan has more than 1.5 million quarterly active users. The firm has disbursed more than $15.5 billion in loans and served more than eight million customers globally since its founding in 2018.

Telda and Mastercard Team Up on New Integrated Payments Offering

A partnership between Mastercard and Cairo-based financial brand Telda will bring a new integrated financial services solution to consumers in Egypt. The new offering will seamlessly connect everyday payments and investment wallets within the Telda app for an experience that is inclusive, accessible, and integrated.

“By embedding Mastercard’s digital capabilities within Telda’s platform, we are creating a seamless bridge between everyday payments and investment opportunities, empowering users to manage, grow, and access their wealth instantly,” Mastercard Country Manager for Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria Mohamed Assem said. “Together, we are redefining financial inclusion and supporting Egypt’s vision for a fully digital, unified financial ecosystem.”

Designed for Millennials and GenZ consumers, Telda offers an app that enables users to send and request money as easily as sending a text message. The company’s Telda Mastercard can be used online or in-store, as well as to withdraw cash from any ATM worldwide. Telda offers instant payment notifications to keep users apprised of transactions, and spend categorization functionality to help users understand their spending habits better.

“Telda was founded with a bold vision to redefine the financial services experience,” Telda CEO Ahmed Sabbah said. “Today, the integration of daily payments and the investment wallet within a single app through our collaboration with Mastercard marks a significant leap forward, giving individuals immediate control over their money.”

Blnk Secures $37 Million in Funding

Egyptian Buy Now, Pay Later outfit Blnk has raised $37 million in combined debt and equity. The equity component, led by Algebra Ventures and featuring participation from SANAD Fund for MSME, Endeavor Catalyst, and Emirates International Investment Company, amounted to $12.5 million. Debt facilities from local banks, totaling $24.6 million, completed the round.

“This new round of funding positions us to strengthen our profitability—expanding our reach, diversifying our offerings and doubling down on our commitment to unlocking financial access for millions of consumers in Egypt and beyond,” Blnk Co-founder and CEO Amr Sultan said.

Blnk offers inclusive financing programs for all Egyptians, less than 4% of whom have access to credit cards. This means that many Egyptians can only afford to buy products with cash or after borrowing money from hard money lenders at high interest rates. In response to this, Blnk’s point-of-sale financing options offer instant approvals in minutes and allow borrowers to apply with just their National ID and mobile phone number at the stores they are already shopping at.

“Since our seed round in 2022,” the company noted on its LinkedIn page earlier this week, “Blnk has grown to serve more than one million customers, built a loan portfolio exceeding EGP 1 billion, and reached profitability in 2025. Today, 75% of our customers were previously unbanked or underserved, while more than 35% are women.”

Blnk’s approach to financial risk assessment relies on dynamic, data-driven risk maps. The company’s proprietary AI analyzes hyper-local variables to identify patterns that guide precise credit decisioning. Blnk also leverages specialized machine learning models to provide real-time, precise Probability of Default (PD) predictions which support instant credit decisions with risk-based pricing.

Founded in 2020, Blnk is headquartered in Giza.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Montevideo, Uruguay-based cross-border payment company Bamboo teamed up with Swedish payment network Centiglobe to streamline cross-border B2B and B2C payments throughout Latin America.
  • Mexican fintech Clip unveiled its digital wallet ecosystem Mi Clip.
  • The Fintech Times looked at the current fintech landscape in Costa Rica.

Asia-Pacific

  • Singapore-based payments and treasury management platform Sunrate introduced Sunrate.AI, a new category of AI-native global payment infrastructure for complex enterprise workflows.
  • Three Japanese banks—MUFC, Mizuho, and Sumitomo Mitsui Bank—announced plans to issue a Yen-backed stablecoin in 2026.
  • XTransfer, a cross-border financial and risk management service company based in Shanghai, inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Societe Generale.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • South Africa-based payments service provider (PSP) Kwik Payments has gone live on the ACI Payments Orchestration Platform.
  • MTN Group Fintech, the fintech arm of African telecom MTN Group, announced a strategic partnership with Ant International to enhance mobile money services.
  • A new proposal from Kenya’s legislature, Finance Bill 2026, could bring additional tax reporting and compliance requirements for virtual asset providers and digital payment platforms.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Estonian white-label banking platform Wallester has been granted a license from the FCA to enable the firm to expand to the UK.
  • Lloyds Banking Group secured approval from the Bank of Lithuania to acquire electronic money institution Curve Europe.
  • The Fintech Latvia Association signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the UK’s Innovate Finance to foster knowledge exchange and joint business initiatives.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Photo by Roaming Pictures on Unsplash

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Veritus CEO Joshua March on Deploying Compliant AI Voice Agents in Financial Services

Veritus CEO Joshua March on Deploying Compliant AI Voice Agents in Financial Services
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateSpring 2026, Speaker series

More and more banks and financial services companies are leveraging AI-powered communications to enhance the customer experience with faster response times and reduce operational costs. However, there is a wealth of key issues that institutions need to address in order to deploy technologies like AI voice agents safely and effectively while remaining compliant with an ever-shifting range of regulations.

In this interview, recorded at FinovateSpring 2026 in San Diego, California, earlier this year, William Mills, CEO of William Mills Agency, talks with Joshua March, Founder and CEO of Veritus, about how these challenges and how AI voice and text agents are transforming banking and financial services.

“The operational benefits from AI are so immense that no financial institution can really make the decision to be left behind. Everyone has to make this leap. So the question is not ‘are we going to do it?’ It’s ‘just how do we do it in a compliant and safe way.’ Our philosophy is that by being 100% focused on the needs of these regulated financial entities and building in all of the compliance capabilities—not just in how the AI agents are speaking and the guardrails around that to prevent hallucinations and ensure compliance, but also in, for example, a TCPA compliant outbound dialer, TCPA compliant on the channel orchestration—we’ve built multiple layers of compliance at every single step.”

Veritus enables lenders to deploy AI-powered compliant voice, SMS, andemail agents across the entire loan lifecycle, from origination to recovery. Founded in 2025 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Veritus helps lenders frustrated with stalled applications, limited service hours, rising delinquency costs, and other pain points. Veritus’ Negotiation Engine is a rules-based solution that dynamically offers payment plans, settlements, and hardship options based on individual company policies. Veritus helps providers increase the number of funded loans, improve recovery rates, scale instantly while maintaining brand consistency, all while remaining compliant with FDCPA, TCPA, FCRA, GLBA, and state-specific regulations.

Joshua March founded Veritus in 2025. He previously was Co-Founder and CEO of SCiFi Foods, a cultivated meet company backed by a16oz. Before that, March was Co-Founder and CEO of Conversocial, a call center software firm that was acquired by Verint.

Photo by Jumping Jax on Unsplash

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Feedzai Unveils Fraud Intelligence Network, Feedzai IQ Score

Feedzai Unveils Fraud Intelligence Network, Feedzai IQ Score
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Feedzai
  • Fincrime prevention company Feedzai has launched its Feedzai IQ Score, an AI-native, network-derived fraud risk solution for banks of all sizes.
  • The new offering provides banks and other financial institutions with real-time access to anonymized, aggregated insights from the company’s global transaction network.
  • A Finovate alum since 2014, Feedzai’s fraud prevention technology processes 120 billion events annually and secures $9 trillion in payments every year.

Financial crime prevention specialist Feedzai announced the availability of Feedzai IQ Score. The new offering is an AI-native network-derived fraud risk scoring solution for banks large and small. Delivered via a single API and available on the AWS Marketplace, Feedzai IQ Score provides banks with real-time access to anonymized, aggregated insights from the company’s $9 trillion global transaction network.

“Fraud has outpaced what any single institution can stop alone,” Feedzai Chief Product Officer Pedro Barata said. “Feedzai IQ Score puts an end to isolated defense by giving banks access to collective insights from across our entire network. Today, we open up this product to institutions of all sizes who now have a ready-made way to make smarter fraud decisions and modernize their defenses without the disruption of fully overhauling infrastructure.”

Feedzai IQ Score helps financial institutions deal with a paradox in the field of fraud prevention in which the data used to prevent fraud is typically restricted to internal sources. The growing sophistication of financial criminals has made this limited view of data untenable. Additionally, network-based fraud risk scoring can be a boon for regional and middle-sized financial institutions that may not have the internal data volume or resources to build sophisticated fraud models independently. Feedzai IQ Score enables these institutions to access anonymized, network-level intelligence, while keeping customer data secure. Feedzai noted that its new offering delivers proven detection gains with 4x more fraud detected and 50% fewer alerts compared to traditional rules-based strategies.

There is no historical data requirement for banks in order to use Feedzai IQ Score, nor is there a lengthy model training process or heavy operational lift. Via expert AI models that have been trained and validated across Feedzai’s network, banks and other institutions can move from integration to value realization in days.

“Network fraud intelligence sharing is becoming increasingly important in the monitoring of fragmented fraud signals within the financial ecosystem,” Chartis Senior Research Principal Philip Mackenzie said. “We considered this capability to be a key differentiator of Feedzai’s IQ Score solution, which combines real-time cross-institutional fraud insights and collective intelligence across a range of financial institutions.”

Founded in 2008, Feedzai made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2014. Today, the San Mateo, California-based company leverages trusted AI to defend consumers and transactions against financial crime, fraud, and money laundering in real time. Feedzai’s technology processes 120 billion events annually and secures $9 trillion in payments every year. The company’s Tier 1 bank clients have reported detecting 62% more fraud with Feedzai compared to their previous solution, 73% fewer false positives, and 25% faster model development. Co-founder Nuno Sebastião is Feedzai’s CEO and Chairman.

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Members First Credit Union Partners with Mahalo Banking

Members First Credit Union Partners with Mahalo Banking
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Mahalo Banking
  • Digital banking solutions provider Mahalo Banking has partnered with Members First Credit Union of Utah.
  • Members First CU will deploy Mahalo’s Thoughtful Banking platform as part of an overall modernization initiative that will also involve a transition to the Corelation Keystone core platform.
  • Mahalo Banking, based in Troy, Michigan, won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2023 in New York. Jim Stickley is CEO.

Utah-based Members First Credit Union has teamed up with Mahalo Banking as part of a technology modernization drive that will involve the financial institution deploying Mahalo’s Thoughtful Banking platform as well as transitioning to the Corelation Keystone core platform.

Members First CU CEO Darryn Hodgson indicated that selecting a digital banking provider that could evolve with the institution was key. Hodgson also praised Mahalo’s culture, level of commitment, and collaboration, noting that it reflected “the same member-first philosophy that drives our credit union.” Mahalo’s Thoughtful Banking platform will provide improved mobile functionality and a streamlined overall experience for the credit union’s members, with enhanced digital account opening capabilities to be introduced later after the initial launch. Hodgson added that ease of use was another major factor in choosing Mahalo, which is known for its incorporation of neurodiverse functionality that helps financial institutions serve customers and members with a range of cognitive and sensory challenges. “We have members across multiple generations,” Hodgson said, “and it was important to choose a solution that was approachable and easy to navigate.”

In addition to deploying Mahalo’s Thoughtful Banking, Members First CU will also transition to the Corelation Keystone core platform. Mahalo’s solution will serve as the member-facing digital experience for Members First CU, delivering online, digital, and mobile banking functionality.

“Credit unions today need technology partners that are flexible, responsive, and committed to continuous collaboration,” Mahalo COO Denny Howell said. “Members First is taking a thoughtful approach to modernization by aligning its digital banking and core strategies around long-term agility and member experience. We are proud to support its team with a platform designed to simplify the member journey while enabling faster innovation and stronger operational flexibility.”

A member-focused financial cooperative, Members First Credit Union was founded in 1958 and serves communities in northern Utah. Launched as the Thiokol Employees Credit Union, the financial institution has grown into a 13,000-member entity with more than $206 million in assets. Members First Credit Union offers a full range of financial services including deposit accounts, consumer lending, credit cards, home equity loans, and digital banking solutions.

Mahalo Banking won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2023 in New York. At the conference, the Troy, Michigan-based fintech demonstrated its online banking solution that fully integrates comprehensive neurodiverse functionality directly into its platform. The functionality enables credit unions to support a wider range of members, including those with unique needs due to autism, dyslexia, epilepsy, ADD/ADHD, color blindness, and more.

Mahalo Banking’s partnership announcement with Members First Credit Union comes just weeks after the fintech reported that CU Hawai’i Federal Credit Union had selected its Thoughtful Banking platform. The decision is also part of a strategic dual implementation that saw the credit union announce a core conversion to Corelation Keystone.

“The feedback we received from other credit unions about Mahalo’s platform and partnership approach was overwhelmingly positive,” CU Hawai’i President and CEO James Takamine said. “Beyond the technology, it was clear that Mahalo’s team and culture are truly aligned with how we serve our members. The dedicated focus on usability, security, and collaboration made Mahalo the clear choice for our long-term digital strategy, especially as we undergo our core conversion to Keystone.”

Photo by Nils Huenerfuerst on Unsplash

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3forge Unveils Application Fabric for Finance, 3forge Enterprise

3forge Unveils Application Fabric for Finance, 3forge Enterprise
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: 3forge, Alumni profile

For companies involved in the business of empowering developers to build business-critical fintech applications, the world has changed a great deal over the past decade. From the rise of AI to a sea-change in regulatory priorities that has increased scrutiny on third-party relationships, fraud and risk management, consumer data protections, and more, the task of providing fintech developers with the tools they need to innovate has only become more challenging.

This makes the recent news from 3forge, a New York-based fintech that has been empowering fintech designers and developers for 15 years, all the more interesting.

“We started 3forge in New York, in 2011, to build a transformative platform enabling your designers and developers to build applications in a fraction of the time and cost, with a focus on business-critical scale, performance, and interoperability,” 3forge Founder and Chief Technology Officer Robert Cooke said from the Finovate stage at the beginning of the company’s Finovate debut in 2022.

Today, the New York-based fintech announced the launch of its application fabric for finance. 3forge Enterprise unifies real-time data, business logic, AI, and application development in a single operational environment. This gives financial institutions a production-ready continuum from data to deployed application. 3forge Enterprise provides a data gateway that unifies current-state access to real-time and historical tables, streams, and procedures across data nodes in the 3forge fabric. The technology enables developers and applications to publish, subscribe, query, and insert data via native connectivity in Java, Python, and C++, and provides failover support and integrations across JDBC, Pandas, and SQLAlchemy libraries. 3forge Enterprise also provides MCP server and AI agent access, live prompting and agentic development, and an operations hub that centralizes the management of 3forge deployments.

“For years, financial institutions treated data platforms, business logic, and applications as separate architectural domains,” Cooke said. “That separation made sense operationally, but it is increasingly inefficient for high-value capital markets workflows. As AI raises the stakes, models and agents need more than disconnected data estates and fragmented application logic.”

3forge Enterprise uses three layers to transform platforms into an enterprise-wide fabric for financial systems: a governed real-time intake and exhaust layer for financial data, an application engine and AI-assisted development layer for building and running financial workflows that helps users move from data to production, and an operational control layer to facilitate managing deployments at scale. Combined, these layers enable vendor platforms, internal systems, and AI-powered applications to access real-time and historical data via unified queries, streams, APIs, and agents. At the same time, 3forge Enterprise preserves the entitlements, auditability, and production controls needed for capital markets.

“An application fabric brings data, decisions, execution, AI, and applications onto the same controlled, auditable foundation,” Cooke explained. “For tier-one financial institutions, 3forge Enterprise provides a way to extend and modernize complex existing infrastructure. For mid-market banks, broker-dealers, hedge funds, and asset managers, it provides access to a production-ready application fabric without having to build one from scratch.”

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in New York, 3forge made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2022. At the conference, the company showed how its Full Stack Enterprise platform enables developers to quickly build customized business-critical solutions with an emphasis on workflow transparency, real-time visualization, and data discovery without limitation.

Photo by Vincenzo Marotta on Unsplash

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Aeropay Integrates with Jack Henry to Extend Pay-by-Bank Capabilities

Aeropay Integrates with Jack Henry to Extend Pay-by-Bank Capabilities
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Jack Henry
  • Pay-by-bank provider Aeropay has teamed up with banking technology and modernization company Jack Henry.
  • Aeropay will integrate with Jack Henry Payments Orchestrator to boost its bank integration capabilities and enhance its pay-by-bank network.
  • Founded in 1976 and celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, Jack Henry has been a Finovate alum since 2010. The company is based in Monett, Missouri.

Pay-by-bank provider Aeropay announced an integration with Jack Henry that will help the company expand its instant payments capabilities and boost the resilience of its national pay-by-bank network. Aeropay is integrating with Jack Henry Payments Orchestrator (formerly Victor Technologies) to not only enhance its bank integration capabilities, but also to introduce new payment rail infrastructure throughout its ecosystem.

“Bank payments just got more reliable,” Aeropay noted on its LinkedIn page when the news was announced. “Aeropay just integrated with Jack Henry, expanding our real-time payment infrastructure and adding smart routing across our network. For merchants, that means even fewer failed payments and faster funds. The integration is live.”

The integration enables request-for-payment (RfP) and real-time payment (RTP) capabilities, enhancing Aeropay’s multi-rail architecture. Aeropay will be able to dynamically route transactions based on performance, availability, and risk conditions. As RfP and RTP networks continue to expand to more and more US financial institutions, this architecture improves uptime, accelerates transactions, and offers greater flexibility for instant payment acceptance and settlement.

Chicago, Illinois-based Aeropay offers a national pay-by-bank network that outperforms cards, cash, and checks with a multi-rail payment infrastructure that includes ACH, RTP, RfP, and FedNow capabilities. Aeropay makes it easy for companies to add and scale bank connections, pay-by-bank, instant payouts, and AI risk prevention. The firm’s pay-by-bank offering lowers processing costs by 50% and helps accelerate cash flow with payments that settle same-day (or faster). Aeropay’s pay-by-bank network also features built-in risk prevention, preventing returns and eliminating chargebacks via real-time verification, AI risk scoring, network intelligence, and guaranteed settlement.

A Finovate alum since 2010, Jack Henry & Associates serves banks, credit unions, fintechs, and businesses with comprehensive, cloud-native solutions that unify core, digital, and other services into a single, adaptable ecosystem. Jack Henry offers financial institutions a range of internally developed modern capabilities as well as the ability to integrate with innovative fintech technologies. Currently celebrating its 50th year, Jack Henry serves more than 7,500 community and regional banks and credit unions with solutions for digital banking, payments, lending, fraud risk, and more. Jack Henry & Associates is headquartered in Monett, Missouri. Greg Adelson is President and Chief Executive Officer.

Photo by Chris Dickens on Unsplash

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Temenos Acquires Swiss Wealth Management Orchestration Platform additiv

Temenos Acquires Swiss Wealth Management Orchestration Platform additiv
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: additiv, Mergers & Acquisitions, Temenos
  • Banking technology company Temenos announced its acquisition of Swiss fintech additiv in a half-cash, half-equity transaction.
  • The acquisition will bolster Temenos’ wealth management franchise with additiv’s out-of-the-box orchestration and mass affluent capabilities.
  • Both Temenos and additiv made their Finovate debuts at FinovateEurope 2013 in London.

Banking technology firm Temenos has agreed to acquire Swiss fintech additiv. The 50/50 cash and equity deal is expected to be completed early in Q3 of 2026.

Additiv offers a specialist platform to orchestrate financial services. The company’s technology integrates process steps and data into a single orchestration layer for wealth and other financial workflows. With 30 clients in wealth management, banking, and insurance, additiv’s technology enables banks and wealth managers to rapidly design and launch wealth propositions that boost advisor productivity, orchestrate investment propositions, and provide consistent client experiences at scale.

With an extensive global client base in the wealth space, Temenos will benefit from additiv’s native mass-affluent capabilities and AI-enabled orchestration layer. The company’s fast, low-risk implementation model offers deployments in as little as 3-6 months compared to the industry standard of 12 months. With a high Net Promoter Score (NPS) above 90, Net Revenue Retention (NRR) of 138%, and double-digit growth over the past three years, additiv will enable Temenos to expand its client footprint within investment services in both developed and emerging markets, as well as provide Temenos’ wealth clients with future-ready, front office workflows.

“This acquisition strengthens our wealth proposition at a time when we see strong, growing demand for our products across tiers and geographies in the wealth segment, with financial institutions increasingly focused on launching scalable hybrid wealth models,” additiv founder Michael Stemmie said. “additiv’s orchestration capabilities complement our market-leading platform and support our strategy to help clients deliver personalized, regulatory compliant wealth services efficiently and at scale. Together, additiv’s AI-powered orchestration capabilities and Temenos’ existing front-end solutions create strong differentiation at the banking experience layer.”

Temenos offers a core banking suite and modular composable solutions to help banks and other financial institutions modernize their operations. Deployable on-premises, via the cloud, or as a SaaS solution, Temenos’ technology empowers financial institutions of all sizes to deliver innovative, AI-enhanced experiences to their customers. Founded in 1993 and based in Geneva, Switzerland, Temenos today serves more than 950 core banking and 600 digital banking clients. Thibault de Tersant is Temenos Chairman. Takis Spiliopoulos is Chief Executive Officer (and interim Chief Financial Officer).

Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland and founded in 1998, additiv offers an API-first, cloud-based financial services orchestration platform that enables financial institutions and brands to launch, automate, and scale financial services from a singular solution. Empowering companies in wealth management, banking, credit, and insurance, additiv’s technology allows firms to expand their own offerings and introduce third-party products and services to their customers without having to replace core systems. A Finovate alum since 2013, additiv most recently demoed its technology at FinovateAsia 2017 in Hong Kong.

Earlier this year, additiv launched a new dedicated solution to help Germans navigate planned reforms to the country’s pension scheme. The reform calls for a new state-subsidized retirement investment account (Altersvorsorgedepot) that is offered digitally as a simplified, standardized solution, Standarddepot. Millions of legacy pensions (so-called “Riester” contracts) will be migrated to the new pension product, creating new urgency for institutions that seek to attract or simply retain these customers.

“This reform marks a genuine paradigm shift for German private pensions,” additiv CEO Nils Frowein said. “For the first time, capital market-based products are sitting at the heart of state-subsidized retirement savings. Institutions that are now establishing scalable digital infrastructure will secure long-term customer relationships—and with millions of Riester contracts up for migration, the window to act is open.”

Photo by Henrique Ferreira on Unsplash

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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: Backbase, Expensify, Fintech Rundown, Jack Henry, Klarna, MasterCard

Finovate’s Fintech Rundown is back with the fintech headlines you need to know as the working week begins!

We’ve got news of a funding in the consumer financing world, new products for financial wellness and credit trading, a collaboration in the money movement market and more. Be sure to check back all week long for the latest in fintech headlines.

Financial wellness

The US arm of BMO launches an new app developed by MSN Holding, DollarGPS, to help users improve their financial health.

Lending

Egyptian Buy Now, Pay Later firm Blnk raises $37 million in combined debt and equity funding.

Digital banking

Backbase announces a strategic collaboration with Mastercard to integrate its money movement capabilities, Mastercard Move, into Backbase Banking OS.

Credit, data, and analytics

TP ICAP unveils new credit trading and data platform, RealQ.

Credit intelligence platform Octus acquires LevPro, a front-office software provider for public and private credit markets.

Agentic AI

Spend management software provider Expensify launches Expensify MCP, a new integration that enables AI assistants and other MCP-compatible clients to securely access Expensify data via natural language queries.

Payments

Wallester UK secures authorization from the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as an Electronic Money Institution.

XTransfer and Societe Generale team up to streamline cross-border payments.

Aeropay integrates with Jack Henry to grow its real-time, pay-by-bank infrastructure in the US.

Financial crime and fraud prevention

Klarna offers in-app inbox that consolidates all official communications in an effort to keep customers safe from impersonation scams.

Photo by Sergey Shmidt on Unsplash

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Finovate Global Eastern Europe: Funding Payments, Modernizing Banks, and More!

Finovate Global Eastern Europe: Funding Payments, Modernizing Banks, and More!
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Backbase, Finovate Global, MasterCard, PayPal, Ripple

This week’s edition of Finovate Global looks at recent fintech headlines from the Eastern European nations of Bulgaria, Albania, and Hungary.

Bulgarian Fintech Paypercut Raises €5M

Paypercut, a fintech based in Sofia, Bulgaria, has secured €5 million in seed funding. The round was co-led by Concentric, Passion Capital, and Araya Ventures, and featured participation from additional investors including SMOK Ventures, Portfolio Ventures, BrightCap Ventures, BlackWood, SABAH.fund, MFG Invest, Main Set, and Matt Doka, a payment entrepreneur. Paypercut’s total funding now stands at €7 million.

Founded in response to the fragmentation of payments in Central and Eastern Europe, Paypercut has grown from a Buy Now, Pay Later aggregator into a more comprehensive payments platform. The company offers merchants access to card payments, local payment options, Buy Now Pay Later products, payment links, QR code payments, multi-currency settlement, and billing tools via a single integration. Paypercut raised €2 million in pre-seed funding in July 2025 and has onboarded more than 200 merchants in eight CEE markets since that time.

This week’s investment will help fuel Paypercut’s continued expansion across Central and Eastern Europe. The funding will also enable the firm to meet the capital requirements for an EMI license with the Central Bank of Ireland.

“CEE has always been treated as an afterthought by the payments industry, seen as too fragmented, too many local specifics, too complicated,” Paypercut Co-Founder and CEO Stoil Vasilev said. “We built Paypercut to fix that. This round gives us the resources to go further and faster: more markets, more payment options for merchants, and the infrastructure to move money in the way it should have always worked, instantly and at a fraction of the cost.”

In addition to its merchant payments operation, Paypercut is also developing stablecoin-based infrastructure for cross-border transfers in the region. The company will initially target high-volume corridors such as those between the Euro and the Polish Zloty (EUR-to-PLN) and the Euro and the Romanian Leu (EUR-to-RON).

Albania’s Tirana Bank Goes Live with Backbase

Tirana Bank, named “Best Bank in Albania” in 2025 by Euromoney, has gone live with a “complete omnichannel retail banking experience” built on the Backbase AI-native Banking OS. The launch covers accounts, deposits, online loan and credit card applications, internal and outgoing transfers, card management, billpay, and financial insights. Tirana Bank will also enable Digital Assist in the employee app.

“This launch marks a significant step in our digital transformation journey, as we continue to invest in solutions that bring real, everyday value to our customers. TiBank+ is designed to deliver a seamless and intuitive banking experience, combining convenience with the trust and human connection that define our model,” Tirana Bank Chief Retail Business Officer Lila Canaj said. “Through our partnership with Backbase, we have accelerated this transformation, bringing to market a modern and scalable platform built to evolve with our customers’ needs.”

One feature that Tirana Bank anticipates its customers will appreciate is real-time spending insights, courtesy of Backbase’s personal finance management capabilities. Offering customers these insights is not a common occurrence in the region and will help Tirana Bank differentiate itself from its competitors. The institution is also going live with Apple Pay, becoming one of the few Albanian banks to offer the service via a mobile app.

“Albania is on its path to EU membership, its government has made digitalization a national priority,” Backbase Regional Vice President for South East Europe Robert Mihaljek said. “Tirana Bank looked at that moment and decided to lead it. They came to us with a clear ambition. Twelve months later, they are live with not only an MVP but a full retail APP. This is a first for Albania, and a reference for the Balkans.”

A four-time Finovate Best of Show winner, Backbase has been a Finovate alum since 2009. The Amsterdam-based fintech offers an AI-native banking operating system that converts fragmented banking operations into a unified frontline for the benefit of customers and employees alike. Founded in 2003, Backbase counts more than 150 leading banks and financial institutions around the world as users of its solutions for retail, small business, commercial, and private banking, as well as wealth management. Riddhi Dutta is CEO.

Can Crypto Make a Comeback in Hungary?

For many observers, liberal democracy was one of the big winners in the recent Hungarian election that saw the end of the Orbán regime. But could the victory of Péter Magyar and his pro-EU Tisza Party also be a good sign for crypto and digital assets in the country?

In 2025, Hungary announced an amended Crypto Act that criminalized unauthorized exchange services and established a validation regime on all crypto-to-fiat and crypto-to-crypto transactions. This incentivized some firms, such as Revolut, to withdraw from the Hungarian market entirely, while others suspended services due to regulatory uncertainty.

This also set off a confrontation with the EU, with the European Commission initiating infringement proceedings against Hungary’s validation regime, saying that it was in conflict with the EU’s MiCA framework. Interestingly, Orbán had previously been relatively pro-crypto, with his regime offering some of the lowest tax rates on crypto in Central Europe. This made Hungary—at least before 2025—an attractive jurisdiction for retail crypto investors in the region.

There are many reasons offered to explain the shift toward a more restrictive attitude in recent years—from the influence of MiCA and its mandates to the regime’s well-known preference for state control and supervision of key financial and industrial activities. But the question now is whether or not new politics will result in new policy? The correct answer, at this point, is that no one knows. What some observers have noted, however, is Magyar’s relatively more pro-EU stance on other issues and his general interest in re-aligning with European institutions more broadly. To this end, even something as straightforward as revising the country’s crypto policy to match MiCA’s mandates—and remove or revise current criminal penalties for policy violations— might be an initial positive sign toward restoring crypto’s status in Hungary.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Southern Asia

  • India travel fintech Scapia, which combines co-branded cards with travel booking, secured $63 million in funding in a round led by General Catalyst.
  • Raqami Islamic Digital Bank Limited (RIDBL) has been granted a Retail Banking License by the State Bank of Pakistan.
  • The Eurasian Development Bank inked a $70 million loan agreement with IT company Uzum to support the fintech industry in Uzbekistan.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Via its Alipay+ gateway, Singapore’s Ant International announced the launch of cross-border mobile payment services in Latin America.
  • ACI Worldwide looked at the impact of real-time payments on growth in Peru, Chile, and Argentina.
  • Tearsheet profiled Brazilian digital financial institution Agibank.

Asia-Pacific

  • Singapore-based Crypto payments network Moonpay and controlling shareholder Seoryong Electronics announced a joint investment in Korean fintech Finger.
  • Vietnam Bank OCB selected Backbase AI lead Chris Shayan as its Acting CEO.
  • Visa launched Germin Pay in the Philippines.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • African financial infrastructure company Anchor launched its Anchor MCP Server, becoming the first Nigerian fintech to make. its API documentation natively available to AI systems.
  • The Africa Report reported on the rise of mobile money in Ghana and how it is challenging the country’s incumbent banks.
  • Business Insider Africa looks at the fate of small business banking platform Brass which announced that it will be migrating its customers to Paystack Microfinance Bank.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • PayPal introduced a pair of Buy Now, Pay Later products for its customers in Austria.
  • Ripple launched its RLUSD stablecoin in Turkey courtesy of partnerships with local platforms BiLira, Bitexen, and Bitlo.
  • Equifax UK forged a partnership with Polish credit bureau BIK to boost access to identity verification and fraud prevention technology.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Saudi Arabia-based fintech Stitch announced a pivot to focus on infrastructure and offering a financial operating system for banks.
  • UAE-based fintech Comfi AI secured pre-Series A funding from Yango Group’s Yango Ventures.
  • Mastercard renews its partnership with CIB, Egypt’s largest private-sector bank.

Photo by Viktor Kiryanov on Unsplash

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Finastra Unveils New Analytics Solution for Lenders Data Insights 2.0

Finastra Unveils New Analytics Solution for Lenders Data Insights 2.0
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Finastra
  • Digital financial services software company Finastra unveiled its new analytics solution for lenders this week, Data Insights 2.0.
  • Available for Finastra’s mortgage origination solution, Originate Mortgagebot, Data Insights 2.0 gives lenders a comprehensive view of the borrower journey through the application process to identify areas of friction and applicant drop-off.
  • Finastra was formed via a merger between Finovate alum Misys and D+H in 2017. Chris Walters is CEO.

A new analytics solution offered by Finastra will help mortgage lenders convert more applications into funded loans. The new tool, Data Insights 2.0, is available for Finastra’s mortgage origination solution, Originate Mortgagebot, and gives lenders an accurate view of the borrower journey through the mortgage application process to identify where applicants tend to drop off. Data Insights 2.0 helps lenders pinpoint performance gaps to enhance their own processes, and features peer and industry benchmarking based on anonymized data from 1,000+ mortgage originators to allow them to measure their performance against the market.

“We knew we were losing applicants at specific points in the process, but we couldn’t figure out why,” United Bank VP and Mortgage Production Manager Brenda Stoerkel said. “Data Insights showed us exactly where the process was breaking down. By fixing our mobile experience and adjusting our communication timing, we saw our completion rates improve. Having the right information to make better decisions makes both our operations and our borrower experience stronger.”

Data Insights 2.0 offers real-time application exit point tracking as well as conversion analysis and geographic heat maps of application activity. The technology also provides insights into borrower demographic profiles, performance metrics for credit score distribution channels, and submission timing analysis. This will enable lenders to identify areas of friction in the application process better—including hard-to-understand forms, slow response times from the system, or a poor mobile experience—enabling them to accelerate approval timelines, enhance communication, and deliver a better experience for applicants. Data Insights 2.0 also provides peer benchmarking against industry standards to deliver a market-wide context for performance. These metrics—including applicant exit points, conversion rates, loan-to-value ratios, and more—enable lenders to move quickly from insight to action.

“Lenders have access to a considerable amount of data, but they need real insights to help them optimize their business,” Finastra Chief Product Officer for Lending Rick Foresta said. “We built Data Insights 2.0 to cut through the noise. It tells you what’s actually happening in your mortgage pipeline and what you should do about it to make it easier for people to buy homes.”

Formed via a merger between Finovate alum Misys and D+H in 2017, Finastra provides financial services software to more than 7,000 customers, including 40 of the world’s top 50 banks. Active in more than 110 countries around the world, the London-based company offers solutions for lending (LoanIQ and LaserPro), payments (Global PAYplus and Payments To Go), and universal banking (Essence), facilitating $7 trillion in transaction value daily.

Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash

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3 Takeaways from Bilt’s Breakup and Troubled Transition from Wells Fargo

3 Takeaways from Bilt’s Breakup and Troubled Transition from Wells Fargo
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: CFPB, List series

The recent crisis involving Bilt, a fintech that specializes in rent-payment rewards, is almost a perfect storm of the challenges faced by fintechs, banks, regulators, and their customers when it comes to third-party partnerships and their discontents.

This week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) reported that it had met with Bilt to discuss the issues surrounding the flawed transition process when its partnership with Wells Fargo ended in February of this year. The two companies had been working together since 2022 to offer the Bilt Mastercard. When the partnership ended, Bilt struggled to efficiently move customers into its new Bilt 2.0 structure. Customer complaints were rampant: rent and mortgage payments were returned, delayed, or debited without reaching intended recipients. Card declines were reported amid general confusion about the new arrangement. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who took an early interest in the problem, said that there had been a 1,300% spike in CFPB complaints due to the problems of the Bilt transition.

The CFPB’s statement today expresses confidence in the steps Bilt is taking to remedy the situation, including “reimbursing fees for more than 500 newly identified customers from its outreach following discussions with the CFPB.” The agency also noted that it would “continue monitoring Bilt’s efforts until it is satisfied that full redress will be provided and will share another update at such time.”

What are some of the biggest takeaways from Bilt’s breakup with Wells Fargo and its complaint-ridden transition process?

Partnerships are hard, breaking up can be harder

For all the understandable concern about making fintech/bank partnerships work, there is relatively little discussion about what fintechs should do—or need to do—when a partnership is ending to ensure that the transition does not negatively impact customers or damage relationships with other partners.

Arguably, this is the biggest single takeaway from the Bilt breakup and transition: whether it is because of a regulatory decision, a business challenge, or a bank failure, when transitions out of these partnerships go poorly, the negative impacts tend to fall disproportionately on consumers. There is also some question about who bears the responsibility of protecting customer data and funds during transitions. As such, when these events occur, they can have an industry-wide impact on consumer trust toward fintechs and can blunt innovation by making new technologies and services seem risky to end users and potential partners.

The human touch helps in a crisis

Even though there were reportedly issues with customers accessing live customer support due to “high volumes,” the fact that many Bilt customers were steered toward AI chatbots to resolve issues was a operational and, potentially reputational, mistake.

On the operational level, many customers reported that AI chatbots were unable to answer their questions or provide basic information, let alone resolve specific complaints. Reputationally, this can leave an impression that a firm does not care about effectively triaging customer problems, even if it is understandably not able to solve some problems immediately.

This is also a reminder that human agents that can respond with authentic empathy to confused and frustrated customers are still valuable at a time of increasingly agentic customer care.

Regulatory clarity requires regulatory authority

The lack of regulatory clarity about the ultimate responsibility for safeguarding consumer data and capital during transitions like the one involving Bilt and Wells Fargo is a real problem.

But this lack of clarity is compounded when the disposition of the regulatory body itself is difficult to discern. In its statement, the CFPB underscored its preference for a “collaborative process” rather than what is called a “protracted investigation, followed by a public enforcement action, which could be litigated for years before consumers get any redress.” This, plus a swipe at the Biden-era CFPB director Rohit Chopra, suggests that the CFPB prefers to pursue a less confrontational approach when it comes to holding companies accountable when their actions harm consumers.

This is perhaps better than no approach at all. Recall that the Trump Administration in February 2025 launched a near-shutdown of the CFPB, stopping all enforcement actions, halting new and ongoing investigations, and even locking staff out of buildings. Many of the administration’s actions have been put on hold by a federal court judge ruling in 2025, and oral arguments on a lawsuit challenging the administration’s actions against the CFPB were heard this February. In the meantime, a slimmed-down CFPB has changed its mission to focus on what it calls issues of “clear consumer harm, particularly fraud affecting servicemembers and veterans.”

How well this approach will serve the consumers harmed by the next failed fintech/bank partnership remains to be seen.

Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash

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Bankjoy Announces Broad Adoption of Personal Finance Platform JoyCompass

Bankjoy Announces Broad Adoption of Personal Finance Platform JoyCompass
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Bankjoy
  • Digital banking provider Bankjoy announced that its personal finance platform JoyCompass is now deployed with 30 community financial institutions.
  • Embedded directly into users’ digital banking experience, JoyCompass is designed to help boost financial wellness while giving community financial institutions valuable data to help them deepen client engagement.
  • Bankjoy made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2016 and most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2023. Michael Duncan is Founder and CEO.

A year after digital banking provider Bankjoy introduced its next-generation personal finance platform, JoyCompass, the solution continues to see broad adoption by community banks and credit unions. Designed to help community financial institutions (CFIs) boost growth via client engagement, JoyCompass is embedded into users’ digital banking experience, supporting financial wellness while providing CFIs with data that helps them increase client engagement and total relationship value. Today, Bankjoy announced that a total of 30 CFIs are now using the platform, including Ellafi, CommunityWide, Advantage Plus, Statewide, Lewis Clark, OU FCU, and SIU CU, among others.

“Community financial institutions have a unique opportunity to differentiate themselves through digital banking experiences that are personal, proactive, and impactful. JoyCompass is helping our clients do exactly that,” Bankjoy Co-Founder and CEO Michael Duncan said.

Bankjoy noted that members using JoyCompass’ spending analysis functionality experienced retention gains of nearly 10% (93% vs 83.8%). Members who created a goal using JoyCompass saw retention gains of nearly 15% (98.5% vs 83.8%), and members who created a budget using JoyCompass experienced retention gains of more than 16% (100% vs 83.8%). These statistics, the company noted, mean deeper relationships with members and reduced churn.

“We were looking for different ways to help our members manage their finances,” said Dillon Tardiff, VP of Marketing and Digital Products at Ellafi Credit Union. “Having JoyCompass within our digital banking, powered by our own data, is just phenomenal. Having it right there is so easy, it helps members track goals and make progress on whatever matters most, whether paying off debt, saving for maternity leave, or other life events.”

Bankjoy’s offering comes as financial literacy continues to be a problem for many consumers. According to a report from Accenture, 40% of customers admit to lacking basic financial knowledge, with 88% of Gen Z and Millennial consumers saying they would like to expand their financial literacy. Additionally, 72% of customers value personalization in their banking options even as many community financial institutions remain unable to offer highly personalized experiences.

In response to this, Bankjoy’s JoyCompass offers a comprehensive financial wellness platform that features personalized education tools, a financial health scoring system, and gamification strategies to make challenging financial concepts and ideas easier to understand.

“JoyCompass enables growth by delivering on the original mission that made community banking special through the branch, now accomplished digitally: building meaningful, personal relationships and helping people succeed financially,” Duncan said when the solution was launched in May 2025. “JoyCompass solves the engagement challenge through gamified financial wellness tools that members actually want to use, delivering value for users and critical data for financial institutions. It creates a virtuous cycle that benefits both the client and the institution.”

Bankjoy made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2016 and most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2023, where it showed how its platform is helping neobank Panacea Financial deliver financial services for medical professionals. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Royal Oak, Michigan, Bankjoy also recently announced that four Corelation-core credit unions have renewed their partnerships with the fintech over the past three months. Bankjoy was recognized as the first Corelation Certified partner in 2021.

Photo by Nils Huenerfuerst on Unsplash

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