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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
The five companies that won Best of Show represent many of the top trends in fintech today, from embedded finance and stablecoin-powered payments to mainframe modernization and AI-enabled personalization. In these interviews, we learn about the inspiration behind the founding of these innovative companies and the problems they are solving for banks, credit unions, other financial institutions, and their customers.
Finovate podcast host Greg Palmer talks with Caitlyn Truong, CEO and Co-Founder of Zengines.
Palmer and Truong discuss how Zengines addresses the challenge of managing legacy core banking applications written in older programming languages like COBOL, RPG, and PL1. Truong explains how her company is modernizing legacy mainframe applications without losing critical logic, satisfying auditors faster, and making legacy systems searchable so transformation and compliance do not stall.
Juan Jurado-Blanco and Armando Quintana, CEO and Chief Revenue Officer of Clockout, respectively, sit down with Greg Palmer in this Finovate podcast conversation.
The trio discuss the benefits of earned wage access as an offering for community banks and credit unions. Clockout’s technology enables users to access their earned wages the same day they work, rather than waiting for traditional biweekly or even monthly pay cycles. The solution embeds seamlessly into existing bank experiences.
Oren Buskila, CEO and Co-Founder of Cobalt, talks with Finovate podcast host Greg Palmer about the challenge of financial institution system dependencies.
Cobalt offers a technology that automatically maps real system dependencies across complex banking environments, enabling agentic AI, real-time visibility, safer changes, reduced risk, and confident operations. Cobalt enables technical teams to anticipate the consequences of modifications before implementation, preventing failures and ensuring safer deployments.
Podcast host Greg Palmer catches up with Craig McLaughlin (CEO) and Baron Conway (Chief Strategy Officer) of Finalytics.AI in the wake of the company’s second consecutive Best of Show win at FinovateSpring (2025 and 2026).
Palmer, McLaughlin, and Conway discuss how Finalytics.AI enables community financial institutions to deliver personalized, high-touch experiences through digital channels while leveraging the wealth of customer data these banks and credit unions possess.
Host Greg Palmer interviews Crebit co-founders Jensen Coonradt (CEO) and Simmi Sen (Chief Product Officer).
In this podcast conversation, Coonradt and Sen explain how their company is modernizing international money transfers by leveraging stablecoin technology to send money across borders as easily as sending a text message. Crebit’s “stablecoin sandwich” approach enables users to on-ramp funds using local payment methods before settling into virtually any currency worldwide in minutes.
How are financial institutions like US Bank helping small businesses take advantage of new, innovative tools and technologies that will enable them to better serve their customers and scale their operations? At FinovateSpring 2026 earlier this year, I spoke with Queanne Smith, Senior Vice President at US Bank, on how integrated digital solutions and strategic partnerships can bring greater efficiency and new revenue opportunities to small and medium-sized enterprises.
In our conversation, Smith talks about the challenges that small businesses face when confronted with fragmented banking services, and explains how embedded banking and platform integration can build trust and efficiency. Smith also discusses the importance of delivering end-to-end solutions like billpay and payroll and shares her thoughts on the best practices for bank-fintech partnerships.
“We did a survey in 2025 with about a thousand of our small business owners and identified that 63% of those small business owners were really struggling and overwhelmed by the number of platforms they were utilizing for their cash management services … The integration that we’re looking to build enables our small business owners and midsize businesses to have a one-stop shop experience. The opportunity for us to think about how clients interface with us and experience us is a real thing. The objective is to minimize the points of friction and improve the client experience overall.”
Queanne Smith is a Senior Vice President at US Bank, where she leads business strategy and partnerships designed to expand access to capital and growth tools for small business owners. Smith works at the intersection of banking, technology, and community impact, leveraging partnerships, data, and emerging tools to deliver scalable, measurable outcomes. In 2025, Smith was recognized as part of American Banker’s Most Powerful Women in Banking Top Teams.
The fifth-largest commercial bank in the United States, US Bank serves millions of clients via a diversified range of business lines. These operations include commercial and institutional banking, business banking, payments, wealth management, and consumer banking. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and a member of the Fortune 500, US Bank was named one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute.
LexisNexis Risk Solutions and Promon announced a strategic alliance to enhance fraud prevention in mobile apps around the world.
The partnership will combine access to LexisNexis’ ThreatMetrix digital identity, device, and behavioral intelligence with Promon’s in -app protection and trusted telemetry technology.
Headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, LexisNexis Risk Solutions made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2025 in New York.
LexisNexis Risk Solutions has forged a strategic alliance with mobile application security firm Promon to bolster fraud prevention in mobile apps. The partnership will combine LexisNexis’ ThreatMetrix digital identity, device, and behavioral intelligence with in-app protection and telemetry from Promon’s Promon Shield and Promon Insight, respectively.
“Fraud prevention is increasingly dependent on understanding the full context of a digital interaction,” LexisNexis Risk Solutions Chief Commercial Officer Grayson Clarke explained. “Promon’s app protection capabilities complement the insights delivered through our LexisNexis Risk Intelligence Network, helping customers strengthen the signals they rely on to better detect fraud across the mobile environment.”
Defending mobile apps from fraud comes with a range of challenges. Using techniques such as malware, overlay manipulation, device tampering, reverse engineering, and automated abuse to bypass controls, fraud attacks are increasingly targeting the mobile app itself. This means that fighting fraud requires not just knowing who a user is, but also whether the environment the user is operating in can be trusted.
In response, combining access to in-app protection and telemetry provided by Promon Shield and Promon Insight with identity, device, and transactional risk intelligence from LexisNexis enhances the integrity of the app and strengthens fraud detection quality. These capabilities are orchestrated by the LexisNexis Dynamic Decision Platform, which enables companies to combine app-level protection and identity intelligence to provide better, real-time decisions throughout the mobile customer’s journey.
“Promon has always believed that strong mobile security is a critical foundation for digital trust,” Promon Chief Executive Officer Daniel Kollberg said. “As fraud increasingly targets the mobile app and device environment, organizations need clearer insight into whether each session can be trusted. We are bringing Promon Shield, mobile risk detection, behavioral insights, and tamper-resistant telemetry into one of the world’s leading fraud intelligence platforms, helping organizations protect customers, reduce fraud losses, and deliver safer mobile experiences.”
Together, Promon and LexisNexis Risk Solutions assess risk and protect applications across billions of installations and digital identities around the world. By providing a more comprehensive view of mobile fraud risk, bolstering both the application layer and the signals used for fraud detection, Promon and LexisNexis Risk Solutions are enabling organizations to reduce the number of blind spots in app environments.
Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Oslo, Norway, Promon provides runtime intelligence for apps, embedding protection into compiled apps in seconds with no source code changes and no SDK. Promon’s technology sits inside running apps, detecting threats, transforming trusted telemetry into informed decisions, and executing responses before attacks reach users. Promon has 500+ enterprise clients around the world and protects more than 13 billion transactions a month.
Headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, and founded in 2000, LexisNexis Risk Solutions made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2025. At the conference, the company demonstrated its AI-powered identity verification and fraud detection solution, IDVerse. The technology authenticates documents and provides biometric verification to defend customers against deepfakes and forged documents. LexisNexis Risk Solutions acquired IDVerse in February 2025.
Due to the changing nature of both fintech funding and Finovate alums—a growing number of which are younger, smaller firms—we are presenting our latest alum funding report based on the entirety of the first half of 2026, rather than a single quarter. This year, we are proud to announce that a baker’s dozen of Finovate alums have raised more than $208 million in funding for H1 2026.
We should note that there were companies that secured funding shortly before becoming alums. For example, AAZZUR raised more than $2millionless than a month before making its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2026 in London. Zocks raised $45 million ahead of its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2026 in San Diego. And while these sums cannot be considered as part of the total presented here, they still reflect the level of interest that investors have when it comes to the kind of companies that demo their innovations on the Finovate stage.
Top equity investments from the first half
Jump: $80 million
Saris AI: $28.8 million
Paysend: $25 million
Eisen: $18.5 million
Lyzr AI: $14.5 million
While there were three investments of undisclosed amounts in the first half of 2026, the $80 million raised by Jump, the AI-powered meeting assistant for financial advisors that made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2025, represents the top equity investment from any Finovate alum so far this year. Used by more than 16,000 advisors and leading enterprise IBDs, RIAs, and FIs, Jump saves advisors up to 15 hours per week by putting meeting administration and other tasks on “AI autopilot.”
After Jump, the next largest investments were secured by Saris AI ($28.8 million) and Paysend ($25 million). Saris AI, which made its Finovate debut this year at FinovateSpring 2026, offers an agentic AI solution with AI agents that automate back-office workflows. The San Francisco-based fintech was founded in 2023. Paysend, by contrast, has been a Finovate alum since its debut at FinovateEurope 2016. Supporting more than 25 billion digital endpoints across 170+ countries, Paysend operates a payment infrastructure that features a full stack of proprietary systems, from processing and FX to orchestration and settlement. London-based Paysend was founded in 2015.
Here is our detailed alum funding report for the first half of 2026.
If you are a Finovate alum that raised funding in the first half of 2026 and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at [email protected]. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum is not included.
It’s a holiday shortened week in the US, with Independence Day (also known as the Fourth of July) just days away. With that in mind, we’ll keep you posted with all the fireworks in the fintech headlines this week here on the Fintech Rundown!
Maldives Premier Bank (MPB) partners with Finastra for its Financial Messaging API, enabling resilient, secure, always-on payment connectivity.
Paysafejoins Primer platform to streamline card payments for online merchants.
Investing
Education Community Alliance partners with InvestiFi for in-platform investing.
Financial wellness
Family technology company Greenlightlaunches its smart home display—Family Hub—to help families manage finances, chores, and more.
Lending
Baker Hill and Lumos, a specialist in predictive credit intelligence for small business lending, announce a partnership to help community banks and credit unions expand lending opportunities.
Financial services app Tabbysecures a consumer finance license and a SME finance license from the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA.)
Identity and authentication
AI-native risk intelligence solution provider for financial crime and national security operations Quantifindsecures $200 million in funding in a round led by Summit Partners.
Post-quantum authentication and digital identity solutions provider Wultraraises $7.75 million in Series A funding.
Agentic AI
Communication risk management platform for financial services Shieldadded new AI agents to AmplifAI, its agentic suite for digital communications surveillance and investigations.
This week’s edition of Finovate Global looks at recent fintech headlines from India.
CRED raises $900 million in round led by Meta
CRED, a membership-based, credit rewards platform that offers solutions across payments, lending, insurance, wealth, and lifestyle, has secured $900 million in Series H funding. The round was led by Meta, and will be structured through a combination of primary and secondary share purchases. Meta will join the CRED cap table as a minority investor; CRED will earn a post-money valuation of $4.5 billion.
With 1.7 million members engaging with its platform every month, CRED processes more than 40% of credit card bill payments in India, and has seen its lending business grow to more than $2.5 billion in managed assets. The investment will enable the company to accelerate growth, build “institutional muscle,” and extend its leadership across verticals. The company announced that its founder, Kunal Shah, will transition from his operating role as CEO to head WhatsApp internationally. India is WhatsApp’s largest market, with more than 500 million users. Miten Sampat, who has led strategy and finance for CRED since 2020, will take the helm as interim CEO.
“I started CRED in 2018 with a belief that creditworthiness deserves to be rewarded,” Shah said. “In under eight years, that belief has turned into a new category: millions of members, $325 million in revenue, profitability, a full stack of licenses, and a strong brand. On this foundation, with additional capital and an extraordinarily talented team, CRED is poised to become an enduring institution for decades to come.”
CRED is headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. The company’s investment announcement comes as the firm launches a new AI-powered credit coaching solution for CRED members. The AI credit coach provides personalized, real-time guidance based on the user’s credit profile to help them better understand their credit status and improve their credit health.
Navi UPI enhances fraud protection capabilities
Navi UPI, a popular UPI app, has unveiledNavi Secure, a new unified framework that combines the platform’s existing fraud prevention, risk monitoring, and user protection capabilities. The offering is designed to help merchants and users deal with the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated fraud attacks that leverage social engineering, compromised devices, false merchants, and more.
With intelligent risk signals, contextual alerts, and preventive safeguards embedded in the customer journey, Navi Secure helps firms reduce risk across a range of fraud scenarios, including scam-driven payments and manipulation-based fraud; compromised devices and apps; unsafe networks and environments; and high-risk entities and transaction behavior.
“Given digital payments have become central to everyday life, fraud prevention needs to be real time and contextual. Navi Secure reflects our commitment to building trust-first financial infrastructure, where safety is embedded into every transaction, not added as an afterthought,” Navi Limited MD and CEO Rajiv Naresh said. “By combining advanced risk intelligence with user-friendly safeguards, we are ensuring that customers can use UPI with confidence, knowing that Navi is actively working in the background to protect their money.”
Navi UPI is among the fastest growing financial services companies in India. The company’s UPI transaction volumes grew from more than 709 million to more than 824 million between January and May 2026. The company currently has 3.6% of India’s UPI market share; a market dominated by PhonePe (46.2%) and Google Pay (32.7%).
Bengaluru-based Navi is a financial services company that provides personal and home loans, insurance, mutual funds, and gold investing, as well as UPI, India’s flagship instant real-time payments system (Unified Payments Interface). Navi UPI is the company’s money transfer solution, which leverages UPI to deliver money transfers anytime, anywhere. Navi was founded in 2018.
Indian paytech Skydo expands to Canada
Payments platform Skydo has won its first regulatory approval outside of its native India. The Bengaluru-based company has secured an international payment license in Canada that will enable the company to offer two-way payment flows, including local collections and payouts, between India and Canada.
“Securing our first international license marks Skydo’s evolution from an India-focused cross-border payments platform to a multi-country payments operator,” Skydo CEO and Co-Founder Srivatsan Sridhar said. “With Canada, we are expanding beyond collections to enable seamless two-way payment flows and support growing India-Canada commerce.”
Founded in 2022, Skydo is a cross-border B2B payments specialist, reducing foreign exchange charges for businesses by more than 50%. The company partners with leading banks around the world, providing businesses with their own foreign virtual accounts to enable them to receive payments without tax or compliance complications. Supporting more than 150 countries, Skydo’s platform processes more than 200,000 payments a year and is used by 40,000+ Indian exporters.
Skydo has referred to Canada as a strategic market, given the scale of trade activity between India and Canada. In 2025, India and Canada reached $10.9 billion in bilateral merchandise trade. Both countries have indicated that they would like to more than double two-way trade, currently at just over $30 billion annually, to $70 billion by 2030.
“Our ambition is to build for the world, from India,” Skydo Co-Founder Movin Jain said. “Canada strengthens our global footprint, enables local collections and payouts, and creates a strong foundation for future expansion across North America.”
Skydo’s regulatory win in Canada comes just a month after the company received in-principle approval to operate as a Payment Service Provider (PSP) in the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) at Gujarat International Finance Tec-City.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Asia-Pacific
Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings agreed to acquire crypto exchange Bitbank for $298 million.
Singapore-based fintech platform Airwallex earned a valuation of $11 billion after securing $320 million in Series H funding.
Mynt, the parent company Philippine mobile payments and finance superapp GCash, has filed for an $1.5 billion IPO on the Philippine Stock Exchange.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Nigerian fintech Daya secured $2.4 million in pre-seed funding to expand its stablecoin payments technology for African businesses.
Kenya-based fintech WapiPay received a Money Services Business license from Canada’s Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center (FINTRAC).
Pan-African fintech DigiPay and French fintech Belmoney launchedDigiTransfer, a mobile app that enables money transfers between France, Belgium, the Republic of the Congo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Central and Eastern Europe
Albania launched its first fully digital bank, Jet Bank.
Mastercard and PrivatBank announced completion of Ukraine’s first payment executed by AI agent.
Austrian-Swiss global payout infrastructure startup Talentir raised €4 million in seed funding in a round led by Redstone.
Middle East and Northern Africa
Egyptian fintech MNT-Halan announced plans for an IPO that could give the company a valuation of $1 billion.
Lean Technologies and Ziina teamed up to launch the UAE’s first One-Tap Pay by Bank experience.
Israeli fintech Payoneeragreed to be sold to Canadian firm Nuvei for $2.7 billion.
Central and Southern Asia
Indian fintech Cred secured $900 million in Series H funding in a round led by Meta.
Karachi-based easypaisa digital bank inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Binance to “explore innovative opportunities” in fintech, digital savings, and investment solutions.
Indian UPI app Navi UPI, unveiled a new unified safety framework, Navi Secure.
Iupana looked at how new governments in Colombia and Peru are seeking to bolster the fintech sectors of their respective countries.
Payward, financial infrastructure platform and parent company of Kraken, secured a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) registrations from the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission (BVI FSC).
How is innovation in blockchain technology, specifically the growing interest in stablecoins and tokenized deposits, creating ways for banks and financial services companies to offer new services, engage current customers better, and introduce new potential revenue sources?
Steven Ramirez, CEO of Beyond the Arc, caught up with Chris Nichols, President of Institutional Banking at SouthState Bank, earlier this year at FinovateSpring 2026 in San Diego. At the conference, Nichols gave a keynote address on the emergence of agentic AI as a new frontier in financial services and discussed ways that agentic commerce will reshape the retail landscape. More specifically, Nichols explained how the combination of tokenization and agentic AI could create major opportunities for banks and financial institutions, enabling 24/7 settlement, smart contracts, programmable money, and more.
In this conversation, Ramirez and Nichols discuss SouthState Bank’s dual token strategy that embraces both deposit tokens and stablecoins, payment orchestration and the future of treasury management, as well as how AI and tokenization are shortening development times from months to days.
What’s really interesting to us, and our number one use case, is the store of value internationally. The customers—specifically the non-US customers of our customers—have subsidiaries in places like Australia or Mexico. These subsidiaries have expenses in dollars that must be converted into local currency, such as Mexican pesos. They then generate revenue and have to convert it back to dollars to repatriate that money. It’s much more efficient to hold some of that capital in a US dollar stablecoin.
As President of Institutional Banking for SouthState Bank, Nichols supports innovation, artificial intelligence, digital assets, loan pricing, asset-liability management, open banking, payments, and fintech investing for the bank, in addition to capital market activities. He produces the Banker-to-Banker blog and is a frequent host of The Community Bank Podcast.
Headquartered in Winter Haven, Florida, SouthState Bank is a $67 billion, publicly traded regional bank with a network of more than 379 branches throughout the southeastern and south-central US. The institution has grown significantly via merger and acquisition in the past few years, most recently acquiring Texas-based Independent Bank Group in 2025.
TransUnion UK announced the availability of its Modelled Income Assessment solution this week.
The new offering sits inside the company’s Affordability Report and helps lenders make income estimates to guide affordability decisions.
TransUnion’s new solution comes at a time of greater volatility in consumer incomes, making it more challenging for lenders who require accurate income data.
A new solution from TransUnion UK will help lenders make affordability decisions with greater confidence. Sitting inside the company’s Affordability Report, TransUnion’s Modelled Income Assessment solution estimates monthly income at configurable confidence thresholds. This enables proportional affordability checks and an income estimate consistent with client-agreed custom thresholds, allowing lenders to tailor outputs to their own risk appetites.
“The way people earn and manage money has fundamentally shifted,” TransUnion UK Chief Product Officer Kelli Fielding said. “Incomes are more volatile, data gaps are more common, and lenders are under growing pressure to evidence affordability decisions. Modelled Income provides lenders with a dependable, data-driven proxy that fills critical gaps in affordability strategies, without adding friction for consumers or compliance risk for lenders.”
TransUnion’s new offering comes as research indicates that more than a third of adults in the UK saw income changes over the previous three months. TransUnion’s Consumer Pulse Q1 2026Survey reflects consumer income patterns and household finances that are increasingly volatile and under pressure. This has created challenges for lenders who require reliable income data and insights, especially when access to traditional salary information is inconsistent or difficult to access.
With Modelled Income Assessment, lenders no longer have to try to generate a precise pound-value prediction. The new offering from TransUnion UK provides an estimate of an individual’s net monthly income and leverages advanced machine learning technology to deliver proportional affordability assessments in real time. The solution also addresses client demand for frictionless alternatives to manual verification such as open banking.
“Expectations around affordability assessments continue to rise as regulation, such as Consumer Duty, demands richer affordability data, clear evidence of fair outcomes, earlier identification of vulnerability, and support for customers showing signs of financial stress,” TransUnion UK Director of Credit Clare Hollis said. “Modelled Income is designed to sit within strong model risk management frameworks and address regulatory pressure for fairness and appropriate consumer outcomes, while helping lenders streamline onboarding and reduce unnecessary friction in the customer journey.”
An international information and insights company with more than 12,000 associates operating in 30+ countries, TransUnion most recently demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2024 in San Diego. At the conference, the company demonstrated its Enhanced BreachIQ solution, which replaces one-size-fits-all resources with modern, gamified consumer identity protection. The offering generates an Identity Safety Score based on a user’s individual data breach history, Breach Risk Scores that measure the severity of an incident in which their data was exposed, and a Personalized Action Plan to provide practical, effective mitigation steps to reduce risk.
TransUnion UK’s launch announcement comes at the same time that the company inked a multi-year partnership agreement involving Marshmallow Insurance and data specialist Percayso Inform. The partnership is an extension of Marshmallow’s and Percayso’s relationship, but marks the first time Percayso will deliver TransUnion data across the insurance and auto finance sectors for Marshmallow via Percayso’s platform.
Entrust has unveiled its Entrust Biometric Authentication solution to help organizations defend, high-risk, “moments of truth” in the customer lifecycle, such as account onboarding and device transfer, from fraud and financial crime.
These high-risk moments are increasingly the targets of choice by AI-powered fraud threats including presentation, injection, and deepfake attacks.
Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Entrust is an alum of Finovate’s developer conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley. Tony Ball is CEO.
As high-risk security moments like account recovery, device changes, and large transactions are increasingly targeted by fraudsters, developing strategies to defend consumers against these threats has grown in demand. This makes the latest announcement from Entrust, the launch of the company’s Entrust Biometric Authentication solution, all the more noteworthy.
“Too many organizations are treating authentication as a login problem, but attackers have already moved beyond access,” Entrust Chief Technology & Product Officer Mike Baxter said. “Preventing account takeover in the age of AI requires confirming the person behind every interaction. Entrust helps organizations apply the right level of assurance at the right moments while delivering secure, low-friction experiences.”
The Entrust Biometric Authentication solution introduces identity-centric assurance to high-risk processes by combining biometric identity verification with adaptive risk-based authentication. This approach helps defend against presentation, injection, and deepfake attacks by requiring identity assurance checks during key, high-risk moments. Entrust’s new offering leverages the verified identity that was established at enrollment and extends it across every access point and interaction. This anchors a biometric check to that trusted identity, making it easier for companies to consistently make authentication decisions with a high degree of confidence.
Entrust’s new solution uses three different authentication strategies, based on varying risk levels. These include a biometric passkey that provides biometric authentication at high-risk moments by linking authentication to a verified human identity; face authentication that accelerates everyday verification and step-up authentication, and motion authentication that leverages advanced liveness detection to combat deepfake, replay, and injection attacks in high-assurance use cases.
The new technology from Entrust comes at a time when AI-powered fraud attacks are resulting in significant increases in fraud and financial crime. According to research from TransUnion in its H2 2025 Update to the Top Fraud Trends Report, global businesses lost an average of 7.7% of annual revenue to fraud, with account takeover representing nearly one-third of those losses. Entrust’s own 2026 Identity Fraud Report noted that one in five biometric fraud attacks use AI-generated deepfakes.
The statistics on fraud attacks during what Entrust called “moments of truth” in the customer lifecycle—the high-risk moments mentioned above—are stark. According to Entrust, 55% of fraud in digital banks is related to account takeover (ATO), 67% of fraud in cryptocurrency operations occurs during the onboarding process, and 81% of fraud targeting payments takes place at authentication.
In response, Entrust Biometric Authentication enables companies to deploy identity assurance to fight account takeover, reduce unnecessary account lockouts from password and passcode failures, minimize manual review and support calls, and improve the user experience with intuitive biometric experiences that save time and avoid friction.
Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Entrust was formed when Datacard Corporation acquired digital security company Entrust in 2013. The combined entity operated as Entrust Datacard when it made its Finovate debut at our developers conferences FinDEVrSiliconValley 2015 and 2016, and rebranded to Entrust in 2020. The company’s new product announcement follows the appointment of Adam Dimopoulos as Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). Dimopoulos previously led enterprise-wide identity security and Zero Trust transformations as VP of Information Security at Synchrony. Earlier this year, Entrust announced that it was collaborating with IBM Consulting, combining the firm’s quantum-safe transformation experience with Entrust’s expertise in cryptographic security and PKI.
For our latest installment of Finovate First-Timers, a new series profiling companies that recently made their debuts on the Finovate stage, we catch up with Marco Ma, Co-Founder and CEO of Ventus AI. Ventus AI helps banks personalize every touchpoint across the customer journey, boosting engagement, lifetime value, and assets under management.
The company’s technology transforms raw transaction data into a cross-categorized behavioral intelligence layer that spans more than 3,000 spending subcategories to surface life events, dynamic personas, and real-time intent signals. Founded in 2025 and headquartered in New York, Ventus AI demoed its technology at FinovateSpring 2026 in San Diego, California.
In this week’s conversation, Ma talks about the challenges banks and credit unions face when it comes to leveraging data to create better, more personalized experiences for customers and members. He explains how Ventus AI plugs into existing stacks to provide a new analytics layer that delivers answers to questions about customer preferences and pain points without building anything new.
What problem does Ventus AI solve and who does it solve it for?
Marco Ma: Banks sit on enormous volumes of transaction data, but most of it stays trapped as raw, messy records their teams can’t actually read. The result is a lose-lose: customers get served demoralizing generic experiences which leads to lost relationships and deteriorated customer economics. We solve this for banks and credit unions that want to understand and serve their customers more deeply.
How does Ventus AI solve this problem better than other companies?
Ma: We built a proprietary customer intelligence and personalization engine. It works across every account and payment rail and detects the full picture: lifestyle patterns, life-event triggers, financial vulnerability signals, and semantic budgeting. Where most tools stop at cleaning up a merchant name, we surface what’s actually happening in a customer’s life, and we deliver it into the tools banks already use rather than asking them to rip anything out.
Who are Ventus AI’s primary customers, and how do you reach them?
Ma: US financial institutions, with our initial focus on banks and credit unions in the $1 billion to $50 billion asset range, alongside an active enterprise pipeline. We reach them through industry programs and conferences like Finovate and the Fintech Sandbox network, direct relationships built by the founding team, and warm introductions through our advisors and ecosystem partners.
Can you tell us about a favorite implementation or partnership experience?
Ma: Our favorite work is on rewards and deals. The insight that makes it special is that the same offer can mean completely different things to different people. People don’t wake up one day and say “I want to shop at Crate & Barrel.” Some people want a new coffee machine, some people want a new side table. Because we understand the behavior behind the spend, the bank can present the same deal in the way that actually resonates with each person, turning a generic coupon book experience into something that feels personal.
What in your background gave you the confidence to respond to this challenge?
Ma: We have a strong founding team with backgrounds spanning Visa, McKinsey, AWS, and Credit Suisse, along with prominent advisors from the banking world. That mix of payments, data, and institutional banking experience meant we understood both the technical problem and the way banks actually buy and adopt technology.
You demoed at FinovateSpring in May. How was the experience?
Ma: It was a great moment for us. Banking is deeply personal. It touches the most important moments in people’s lives, and our hero demo follows an expecting-parent spending pattern across rails to show we can extract major life event signals and orchestrate the existing tech stack—rewards, product, relationship—to be personalized to help this customer through this journey. Demoing that live on the main stage reminded us why this matters: done right, this technology lets a bank show up for someone at exactly the moment it counts. We’re returning for the Fall show.
You were accepted into the Fintech Sandbox Data Access Residency. What is it, and why does it matter?
Ma: Fintech Sandbox gives early-stage fintech companies access to high-quality financial data and infrastructure to build and refine their products. For us, it’s meaningful because behavioral intelligence is only as good as the data it learns from. The residency accelerates our ability to develop and validate our engine against real, rich datasets, which directly strengthens what we deliver to banks.
What are your goals for the rest of 2026 and into next year?
Ma: Grow our pipeline through business development, move active conversations into live deployments, return to the Finovate main stage in the Fall, and close our current funding round. Beyond that, we’re heads-down building, deepening the behavioral signal we deliver and expanding what banks can do with it.
Accounting software provider FreeAgent launched a new AI-powered tool to enable landlords to capture and categorize rental statements.
The new offering helps bookkeepers and accounting firms better serve their customers in property management as the Making Tax Digital initiative comes into effect throughout the UK.
Headquartered in Scotland and founded in 2007, FreeAgent made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2013 in London.
Scotland-based fintech FreeAgentunveiled a new feature for its FreeAgent for Landlords accountholders. The new AI-powered tool enables rental statement capture and categorization, transforming letting agent statements into entries that are structured, categorized, and reconciled automatically.
“If you work with landlord clients, you’ll know exactly what we mean,” FreeAgent noted in a blog post announcing the new offering. “Every month, letting agents send out rental statements. On paper, they look straightforward enough. But a single statement can be a jumble of rental income, management fees, repair costs, contingency balances, and a net payout.” The challenge for accountants is recording all of this information accurately, especially for tax purposes. With data as diverse as this, separate categories for rent invoices, bills for fees and repairs, and more will have to be created and eventually reconciled against a final bank payment. For accountants managing a large number of landlord clients, this work can become overwhelming.
“Our new feature captures and categorizes rental statements using AI to lighten the load,” FreeAgent explained. “All you need to do is upload the letting agents’ statement. Then FreeAgent will extract rental income and fee data, match line items to the correct property, assign the right accounting categories, and reconcile the final net bank payment in seconds.”
Platforms like FreeAgent have become valuable resources for companies looking to comply with the Making Tax Digital (MTD) initiative launched by the UK’s HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) office. MTD is designed to modernize the country’s tax system by fully digitizing all aspects of tax administration. The goal is a more effective, efficient, and transparent process for taxpayers by reducing errors, delivering real-time information about tax liabilities, and simplifying tax compliance via digital record-keeping and reporting.
“We know that the real challenge of MTD isn’t just about hitting submission deadlines,” FreeAgent Director of Product Craig Clarke noted. “Overcoming the manual, disjointed bookkeeping that makes managing property finances a headache is going to be just as tall a hurdle. That’s exactly why we built FreeAgent for Landlords—a product specifically designed to make accounting for rental income as simple as possible.”
A Finovate alum since 2013, FreeAgent offers accounting software and support for small businesses and their accountants and bookkeepers. The company has more than 200,000 users who rely on FreeAgent’s software to manage finances from daily administration to big-picture, financial planning.
Fraud and financial crime prevention platform DataVisor has partnered with Tru Cooperative Bank (formerly First West Credit Union).
Via a pre-integrated deployment with VeriPark’s digital banking platform, Tru Cooperative Bank will leverage DataVisor’s technology to enable real-time fraud detection across the full digital banking journey.
Headquartered in Mountain View, California, and founded in 2013, DataVisor made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2023 in New York.
AI-powered fraud and AML platform DataVisor will put its fraud prevention technology to use protecting the members of Tru Cooperative Bank (formerly First West Credit Union). The offering will be delivered via DataVisor’s pre-integrated deployment with VeriPark’s VeriChannel digital banking platform, and will provide Tru Cooperative Bank with seamless, out-of-the-box fraud protection.
VeriPark is a London-based fintech, founded in 1998, that helps financial institutions embed real-time decisioning into every customer interaction, from omnichannel delivery and customer engagement to branch automation and loan origination. The company made its Finovate debut at FinovateMiddleEast 2019 in Dubai. Ozkan Erener is CEO.
DataVisor’s platform provides real-time fraud detection across the full digital banking journey, covering onboarding, login, profile changes, Interac e-Transfer, and billpay. The solution offers future-proof defense against a growing range of sophisticated financial crimes, replacing traditional solutions and enabling growth without introducing additional friction for members.
“As we build on our transition to a federally regulated cooperative bank, protecting our members is fundamental in everything we do—especially as we continue to evolve our digital banking experience,” Tru Cooperative Bank Chief Transformation & Information Officer Darrell Jaggers said. “DataVisor strengthens our ability to prevent fraud earlier across the digital journey, supporting a secure, seamless experience our members can trust.”
Formerly First West Credit Union, the financial institution transitioned to Tru Cooperative Bank in April 2026. The credit union’s members voted with 84% approval to apply for the right to operate under federal regulation rather than simply provincial jurisdiction, enabling the firm to serve members outside of British Columbia and to operate nationally across Canada. The name “Tru Cooperative Bank” was adopted with 87% approval from the institution’s members. While still operating its four regional brands in British Columbia: Envision Financial, Island Savings, Valley First, and Enderby & District Financial, Tru Cooperative Bank is the fourth federally regulated credit union in Canada since 2012. The financial institution has more than $20 billion in assets, nearly 300,000 members, and 45 branch locations.
“As financial crime grows more sophisticated, credit unions need a modern, AI-driven defense that prevents fraud in real time—not one that catches up after the fact,” DataVisor Co-Founder and President of Technology and AI Yinglian Xie said. “We’re proud to support Tru’s digital banking journey through our partnership with VeriPark, and to continue expanding DataVisor’s leadership in fraud prevention across the Canadian market and the credit union community.”
Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Mountain View, California, DataVisor made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2023 in New York. At the conference, the company demonstrated how its fraud and risk platform integrates any data source, including third-party data, and combines a rules engine, device intelligence, a decision engine, and case management to increase detection and minimize fraud losses. DataVisor’s platform processes 30 billion events a year, boasts of more than 15,000 queries per second in live production, and delivers real-time scoring latency of less than 100 milliseconds.
DataVisor’s partnership news with Tru Cooperative Bank follows the company’s launch of Vera, a suite of conversational AI agents designed for financial crime prevention. Vera is built into DataVisor’s platform to help teams with fraud detection, strategy optimization, investigation, and reporting, while ensuring that human oversight, auditability, and control remain part of the process.
“With Vera, for the first time, financial institutions can outpace AI-driven attackers,” Xie explained when Vera was unveiled in April. “By unlocking unparalleled speed and intelligence, we are redefining the playing field and enabling a more proactive defense against AI-driven fraud.”
