Author: David Penn

More Than $3.3 Billion Raised by 26 Alums in Q1 of 2021

More Than $3.3 Billion Raised by 26 Alums in Q1 of 2021
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Funding, Fundings, Quarterly Funding

When it comes to the competition for investment dollars, Finovate alums are off to their best start to date. Having raised more than $3.3 billion in funding in the first three months of 2021, companies that have demoed their innovations on the Finovate stage are attracting VC capital at the fastest rate in years.

In fact, Finovate alums in Q1 of 2021 raised more money than in the previous four first quarters combined.

Previous quarterly comparisons

  • Q1 2020: $1.3 billion raised by 14 alums
  • Q1 2019: $468 million raised by 20 alums
  • Q1 2018: $1.3 billion raised by 26 alums
  • Q1 2017: $230 million raised by 20 alums
  • Q1 2016: $656 million raised by 32 alums

This year’s powerful first quarter came courtesy of nearly a dozen, nine-plus figure investments. Global breadth was wide. Among the countries represented by the quarter’s top ten equity investments are Sweden, Brazil, Germany, and the U.K. And within the U.S., innovators from familiar locations in Silicon Valley share our top ten list with fintechs from Boston, New York, and Lehi, Utah.

Top Equity Investments

  • Klarna: $1 billion
  • Nubank: $400 million
  • Blend: $300 million
  • MX: $300 million
  • Feedzai: $200 million
  • Jumio: $150 million
  • OutSystems: $150 million
  • Mambu: $135 million
  • Stash: $125 million
  • Blockchain.com: $120 million

The top ten equity investments of the quarter represented $2.88 billion or 87% of the quarterly total. As large as these investments were, they represented a smaller share of the quarter’s overall total than we’ve seen in the past few years. In 2020, the top ten investments made up more than 99% of the Q1 total. In 2019, the top ten represented more than 91% of the total raised by Finovate alums for the first quarter.

Here is our detailed alum funding report for Q1 2021.

January: More than $1.3 billion raised by 10 alums

February: More than $533 million raised by eight alums

March: More than $1.5 billion raised by eight alums

If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the first quarter of 2021 and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at research@finovate.com. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum not included.

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Digital Onboarding Inks Partnership with Small Business Resources

Digital Onboarding Inks Partnership with Small Business Resources
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Digital Onboarding

Digital Onboarding, a company that offers solutions to enable banks and credit unions to better engage their customers, has announced a partnership with Small Business Resources (SBR). The company, which helps banks acquire small business deposits, and provides treasury management and lending services, will use Digital Onboarding’s platform to help its client banks boost engagement and increase revenue.

Specifically, the collaboration will enable Small Business Resources to offer a new branded solution, SBR FullWallet, to better serve the 42% of SMEs that, according to research from Accenture, believe that alternative providers can do a better job than traditional banks when it comes to serving small and medium-sized businesses.

“For banks, small businesses are significantly more profitable than consumers, but a large percentage of small business customers are unengaged and at risk,” Digital Onboarding CEO Ted Brown explained. “I am thrilled to partner with Small Business Resources to help regional and community banks deepen their business relationships and better compete in today’s marketplace.”

The challenge of new rivals was top of mind for Small Business Resources CEO Robert Boorin, as well. “Banks are facing stiff competition from fintechs and Neobank providers that are investing heavily to attract small and medium-sized business banking customers,” Boorin said. “Business banking relationship managers struggle to build deep relationships with all of the customers in their portfolios. SBR FullWallet will enable our Partner Banks to deliver timely and highly personalized communications that make it easier for small businesses to adopt additional products and digital banking services.”

Launched in 1998, SBR was founded to bring small business marketing solutions to institutions in financial services, insurance, and other strategic industries. With services ranging from customer acquisition and engagement to cross-selling and onboarding, SBR blends traditional and digital media services to ensure that financial institutions have multi-channel access to SMEs.

Digital Onboarding most recently demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall in 2018. At the event, the company showed how its platform gives banks and credit unions the email and marketing automation resources to create personalized digital journeys that educate and engage their customers. More recently, Digital Onboarding has announced partnerships with a sizable number of regional banks and credit unions including American Bank of Commerce, New York University FCU, Pacific Service Credit Union, Spirit FCU, and Southwest Financial FCU – all in the first quarter of 2021.

Digital Onboarding has also been a ready partner to its fellow fintechs – including some fellow Finovate alums. In March, Digital Onboarding partnered with both Moven to support user adoption of a turnkey digital bank-in-a-box, as well as with StrategyCorps to help financial institutions “maximize the profitability of checking account relationships.”

Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, Digital Onboarding was founded in 2015. The company has raised more than four million dollars in funding from investors including FINTOP Capital, Detroit Venture Partners, and Jack Henry & Associates. Digital Onboarding’s most recent financing came in August of last year; the amount of the investment was not disclosed.

Photo by Jayden Burdick from Pexels

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Fintech Innovation and Open Banking in the Nordics

Fintech Innovation and Open Banking in the Nordics
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

This week we learned that Norway-based Finovate alum Signicat has teamed up with a German software company Cryptshare to market a new B2B identity verification solution. The technology combines email encryption and secure file transfer with trusted sender and recipient identities to make business communications safer and more accountable.

In other fintech news from the Nordics, Santander Consumer Bank in Norway went live with a new PFM app that leverages open banking solutions from Nordic API Gateway. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, Nordic API Gateway made its Finovate debut last month at our all-digital fintech conference, FinovateEurope.

At the event, co-founder and CTO Gudmundur Hreidarsson demonstrated how the company’s platform simplified open banking payments and access to financial data, offering powerful account-to-account payment services through a single API. More than 40 financial institutions in Europe – including Lunar, Danske Bank, OP Financial Group, and Checkout Finland – rely on Nordic API Gateway’s open banking services.

“Current payment rails such as cards are very expensive for businesses and and increasingly inconvenient for consumers,” Hreidarsson said during his presentation last month. “Open banking changes that. It enables payments with low fixed fees per transaction rather than the high percentage fees of cards which can mean very significant cost savings for businesses – and is very convenient for consumers.”

“But getting into open banking and using open banking is hard,” he added. “It’s really hard. The APIs of the banks are slow to mature and there is still quite some way to go. Businesses are just starting to realize what kind of use cases can be solved with open banking. And consumers are only now discovering the convenience of paying with their accounts. That’s why we built Aiia, to offer an open banking platform that simply works.”

Companies from the Nordics (Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, and Greenland) have been well represented at FinovateEurope of late. This year alone featured – in addition to Nordic API Gateway – two companies from Sweden: Stockholm’s Dreams and Gothenburg’s Econans. Our most recent in-person FinovateEurope conference – held in Berlin, Germany – featured three companies from the region, as well: ReceiptHero and NordCheck of Finland, and Subaio of Denmark. Other Nordic fintechs that have demonstrated their technologies live on the FinovateEurope stage over the years include BehavioSec, Tink, and Klarna (Sweden); Encap Security, EVRY, Monobank, and Spiff (Norway); Meniga and Trustev (Iceland/U.K. and Iceland); and Mistral Mobile (Finland).

“It certainly seems that Schumpeterian destruction, where creating new markets is preceded by old ones being challenged or even destroyed, applies in the Nordics,” the team of Frida Jonsdottir, Olli Toivonen, Visa Jaatinen, Arttu Utti, and Richard Lindqvist wrote in the introduction to their FinTech in the Nordics: A Deloitte Review. “The Nordic FinTech market is rapidly growing and diversifying, with more companies and new technologies being created. This is happening regardless of the fact that the incumbent financial institutions are challenged by the lagging economic growth rates and ever changing regulatory burden, both of which afflict those who are looking to enter the market.”

Read the rest of the Deloitte report on fintech in the Nordics. For more about fintech in the region, check out:

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Photo by Valdemaras D. from Pexels

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FinovateFocus: From Payments and Remittances to Data Technology

FinovateFocus: From Payments and Remittances to Data Technology
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateFocus, Speaker series

This week featured the second of our new, all-digital FinovateFocus conferences. With a theme on payments, remittance, and foreign exchange within the fintech industry, our day-long offering of rapid-fire presentations and live roundtable Q&A sessions provided a fast-paced, no-fluff opportunity for financial services professionals to get up to speed on the latest in fintech – and to make the kind of high-quality connections that will lead to partnerships and collaborations in the weeks and months to come.

Scheduled for the fourth Thursday of every month, FinovateFocus enables like-minded professionals to discuss top issues within fintech, advance business objectives, and grow their networks.

To whet your appetite for our upcoming FinovateFocus in April, which will focus on Data Technology, here’s a look at the speakers and topics from our just-concluded FinovateFocus in March. In the meanwhile, to learn more about our upcoming April FinovateFocus event on April 22nd, visit our FinovateFocus hub today.

  • Millicent Tracey, Digital Payments Advisor, NACHA, on the buy now/pay later phenomenon in e-commerce. LinkedIn
  • Fergal de Clar, Marketing Manager, Fabrick International, on managing subscriptions from your banking app as a value-add for customers and an opportunity for customer engagement. LinkedIn.
  • Josh Stephens, VP of Product, Current, on the rising importance of instant payments. LinkedIn.
  • Matt King, Head of Payments Platform, Brex, on the build it or buy it innovation question with regard to financial partnerships at a time of hypergrowth. LinkedIn.
  • Timothy Chiodo, Director & Lead Analyst: Payments, Processors and Fintech, Credit Suisse, with a selection of key themes and topics on the minds of payments, processors, and fintech investors. LinkedIn.
  • Colin Wynd, Head of Real Time Payments Technology, The Clearing House, on the impact of faster and real-time payments. LinkedIn.
  • Mark Ruddock, CEO, BFS Capital, on how a new generation of small business owners is demanding change. LinkedIn.
  • Christopher Simco, VP, Emerging Payments Product Management, TD Bank, on how payments and innovation tempo are shaping consumer trust in banking. LinkedIn.
  • Gilles Ubaghs, Senior Analyst, Aite Group, on innovation in the payments industry, the familiar versus the new. LinkedIn.

To learn more about our upcoming April FinovateFocus event on April 22nd, visit our FinovateFocus hub today.

Photo by Monica Silvestre from Pexels

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Signicat Teams Up with Cryptshare to Enhance Identity Verification in the Enterprise

Signicat Teams Up with Cryptshare to Enhance Identity Verification in the Enterprise
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Signicat

A partnership between digital identity company Signicat and German software solution provider Cryptshare soon will bring to market a new B2B identity verification solution. The new offering marries platform-independent email encryption and secure file transfer technology with trusted sender and recipient identities to ensure secure business communication as well as legal proof of the sender and recipient. With a broad range of use cases in both retail and enterprise markets, the companies anticipate making the new solution available in the third quarter of 2021.

In their partnership announcement, the companies highlighted both the centrality of email as a communication channel for both personal and business use. Despite the rise of alternative forms of communications including text messaging, email is still embraced by 87% of all citizens in the U.K. Businesses can take advantage of the popularity of email, Signicat and Cryptshare assert, if they are willing to take the necessary steps to ensure both security and traceability. Today’s announcement integrates the two companies’ technologies so that Cryptshare’s services can be accessed using eIDAS-compliant secure authentication.

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Trondheim, Norway, Signicat made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2017. At the event, the company demonstrated its rapid onboarding and digital signing solutions Signicat Assure and Signicat Sign. Acquired by Nordic Capital in the spring of 2019, the company has since appointed a new CEO in Asger Hattel, acquired Dutch identity verification specialist Connectis, collaborated with fellow Finovate alums like Mambu, and was named one of the fastest growing companies in Europe by The Financial Times.

“We live in a society where now more than ever we must ensure trust between businesses and consumers online,” Hattel said when the announcement in the FT was made. “In Signicat, we are building a progressive digital trust company that both embraces innovation and business needs in this area. We have a decade’s worth of experiencing building the tools, so we are ideally placed to address this growing market opportunity.”

Signicat partner Cryptshare is headquartered in Freiburg im Breisgau in Southern Germany. Founded in 2000, the company has four million users of its technology in 30 countries around the world, including 2,000 corporate customers. Dominik Lehr is CEO.

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Spiral Secures $14 Million for its Ethical Banking App

Spiral Secures $14 Million for its Ethical Banking App
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding

Digital banking services company Spiral picked up a $14 million investment this week. The New York-based company will use the capital to fund its new app that makes it easy for users to donate to the charity of their choice.

“The future belongs to socially-conscious brands that care as much about giving back to society as they do about generating profits and growth,” Spiral CEO and co-founder Shawn Melamed said. He explained that the company’s goal is to create a new solution to serve an ecosystem of millions of charitable givers and more than one million non-profit businesses.

“People are increasingly supporting brands that align with their values,” Spiral President and co-founder Dan Blumenfeld added. “And they expect a simple and effortless user experience. Spiral will offer customers both a personalized banking experience and a deeper connection to the charities they support.”

Currently in beta, Spiral boasts that it offers account holders 15x more than the national average in savings and cash bonuses. No minimum balance is required and no fees are charged for active accounts or for transferring money by ACH. Spiral provides donation matching of up to $150 per year to more than one million charities and nonprofits ranging from the David Ortiz Children’s Foundation to the Cerebral Palsy Research Alliance Foundation. Automatic donation reports for tax returns are provided, and the company’s deposit accounts are issued by nbkc Bank of Overland, Kansas, and are FDIC-insured up to $250,000.

The funding round was led by Team8 and featured participation from Communitas Capital, Phoenix, Nidoco AB, and MTVO. Melamed and Blumenfeld founded Spiral after Melamed served as Managing Director of Morgan Stanley’s Technology Business Development and Innovation Offices and Blumenfeld served as Head of Product and Growth at Skype.

Photo by Gerritt Tisdale from Pexels

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DriveWealth Forges Partnership with Plaid

DriveWealth Forges Partnership with Plaid
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, DriveWealth, Plaid

It’s getting hard not to wonder if Plaid is better off as a bachelor …

Last week, we highlighted how the financial data connectivity platform rebounded from its failed union with Visa to launch a range of new initiatives including new offerings (new income verification solution Plaid Income), new partners, and a diversity-oriented accelerator program, FinRise.

Today brings news that Plaid has teamed up with global brokerage infrastructure platform – and fellow Finovate alum – DriveWealth. Courtesy of a single API integration, customers of both firms will be able to streamline and simplify the online investment account funding process for their clients.

“The combination of DriveWealth and Plaid to enable anyone from fintechs and banks to investment advisors and RIAs to quickly and securely add investment capabilities to their current offerings, via a simple API, will give more consumers equal access to investing in the U.S. markets,” DriveWealth CEO Bob Cortright said.

The integration will enable customers of both DriveWealth and Plaid to authenticate end user bank accounts using Plaid’s technology, and leverage tokenization to provide fast and secure verification of bank funding sources using DriveWealth’s API. The combination not only improves the ACH success rate, it also boosts transparency into the fund transfer process while safeguarding client data.

Plaid Head of Revenue Paul Williamson credited the wealth management industry for its advances in technology in recent years. But he pointed out that there is still more friction in the process than there needs to be. “Companies like DriveWealth are changing that and this partnership combines to power of Plaid with DriveWealth to make digital investing experiences even easier,” Williamson said.

In addition to this week’s partnership with DriveWealth, Plaid also announced that it is working with Dun & Bradstreet to bring the benefits of alternative data to small business credit risk analysis. The new integration will enable small business owners to safely share financial account information and potentially improve their credit profile with the commercial credit reporting agency.

“Small businesses need all the support they can get, and this integration makes the process of creating and building a business credit profile secure and simple, which can lead to better access to financing and more business opportunities,” Global Head of Policy at Plaid John Pitts said.

And by the way, Plaid is not the only fintech in today’s partnership announcement that is populating the headlines of late. DriveWealth began 2021 with the acquisition of institutional broker dealer Cuttone & Company. The deal will bring additional market and regulatory expertise to the Chatham, New Jersey-based brokerage infrastructure API provider – as well as a network of institutional trading partners.

More recently, DriveWealth teamed up with Aghaz to support the Seattle-based roboadvisor’s investment app for Muslim customers, partnered with cross-border roboadvisor Hemista to bring fractional share investing in both U.S. and Indian stocks to Indian ex-pats, and collaborated with GenZ-focused investment app Alinea.

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FinovateEurope: Customer Experience, Collaboration, and the Post-COVID Era

FinovateEurope: Customer Experience, Collaboration, and the Post-COVID Era
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateEurope 2021

The post-COVID era of fintech will be defined by a renewed commitment to the customer experience – both digital and in-person. Add to this an eagerness to find and work with new partners, new markets, and new communities and you have a glimpse at what we saw in fintech’s future at FinovateEurope this month.

Among our demoing companies we saw innovators like Meniga that have developed solutions to help financial institutions better engage their increasingly climate-conscious customers. iProov, a multiple-time Best of Show winner, followed up a demonstration of its biometric authentication solution with a post-Demo Q&A conversation on how the technology is being applied in the fight against COVID-19. Finovate newcomer Cobase, which provides bank connectivity and treasury management solutions to corporates, shared insights into its decision to pivot toward also offering a white-label version of its platform to banks.

There was a moment, before COVID, when fintech’s perennial “Year of the Customer” declaration was in danger of becoming a bit of a cliche. Clearly, COVID turned that potential cliche into a real crisis in financial services as institutions were, due lockdowns and quarantines, literally cut off from their customers. Customer service strategies that had been perfectly appropriate – even innovative – a year ago, were obsolete in a matter of weeks.

How fintechs and financial services companies, internally, with their customers and members, and with each other, responded to this challenge was understandably the overarching theme of FinovateEurope. What we learned was that, in virtually every case, it was an embrace of both digital and human capital that enabled companies large and small to continue to serve their customers. And by taking advantage of a widening range of channels including voice and chatbot, and upgrading their capacity to effectively manage a higher volume and sophistication of digital transactions and activity, these institutions are well-positioned to outperform as the threat of the pandemic subsides.

A large part of this outperformance may well come from a renewed sense of the power of partnerships. The collaborations between financial institutions and fintechs to help facilitate relief funding to small businesses and individuals during the COVID crisis are not likely to be forgotten when the days of mask-wearing and social distancing are gone. And as the Meniga example shows, we should be equally observant to those heterodox partnerships; ones, for example, that add lifestyle offerings rather than just traditional financial solutions. As competition grows – including competition with Big Tech – these brand-redefining partnerships may become a more common response for fintechs and financial services companies, in Europe as well as in the rest of the world.

For more on FinovateEurope, check out the FinovateEurope eMagazine!

And last but not least, congratulations to the winners of Best of Show for FinovateEurope 2021: Dbilia, Proptee, and Quantum Metric.

Photo by anna-m. w. from Pexels

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Avanti Closes $37 Million Round En Route to Digital Asset Bank Launch

Avanti Closes $37 Million Round En Route to Digital Asset Bank Launch
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding, Women in Fintech

Avanti Financial Group has put the final touches on a deal that will bring the firm that much closer to its goal of launching a digital asset bank.

Late last week, Avanti announced that it had closed a Series A round, raising $37 million from a wide swathe of institutional investors, cryptocurrency companies, family offices, and angel investors.

The investment takes Avanti’s total capital to $44 million. Launched last year, Avanti secured $5 million in angel funding last June in a round led by the University of Wyoming Foundation and featuring participation from Morgan Creek Digital, Blockchain Capital, and Digital Currency Group. The new financing will fund the necessary regulatory capital for Avanti’s digital asset bank, as well as support engineering and operating expenses.

“Our roadmap includes offering API-based U.S. dollar payment services for wires, ACH, and SWIFT; issuance of our tokenized, programmable U.S. dollar called Avit; and custody and on-/off-ramp services for bitcoin and other digital assets,” Avanti founder and CEO Caitlin Long said. Long highlighted the number of customer inquiries (2,500+) that Avanti had received since it secured a bank charter back in the fall of 2020 and said that those looking to become a part of the firm’s digital asset bank should expect a launch “soon.”

Headquartered in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Avanti sees itself as a bridge between traditional banking and a world in which digital assets are bought, sold, and trusted as thoroughly as fiat currencies. A software platform with a bank charter, Avanti gives customers a strong regulatory environment compared to other digital asset companies, including a full-reserve requirement for dollar deposits and resources like its tokenized dollar, Avit, to help solve painpoints in the payments process.

Trace Meyer, who formed the consortium that led Avanti’s Series A, praised Avanti’s “potent, institutional-quality human capital.” A Bitcoin investor and early adopter, Meyer emphasized that both smart regulation and “experienced, competent operators” are critical to the institutionalization of digital assets, and said that Avanti was “well-positioned to competently answer questions that most in the industry have not even thought about.”

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Fabrick, Open Banking, and an Update on Fintech in Italy

Fabrick, Open Banking, and an Update on Fintech in Italy
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finastra, Finovate Global, MODIFI

Last week, we leveraged the occasion of French alum Ledger’s new, cryptocurrency-focused, business division to bring readers up to speed on the latest in French fintech. This week, news from Fabrick, a financial services company based in Milan (and a sponsor of the just-concluded FinovateEurope Digital) offers us a similar opportunity to catch up with innovations in fintech in Italy.

Fabrick announced this week that it had forged a partnership with Microsoft Italia. The collaboration will enable the open banking financial services provider to leverage cloud computing and other new technologies to develop solutions that help accelerate digital transformation in financial services. As part of the alliance, Fabrick’s offering will become a part of the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace and enable the company to better market its technology to the enterprise sector. Fabrick’s personal financial management solution is already available on Microsoft’s marketplace.

“For us, the partnership with Microsoft represents an extraordinary opportunity to grow and strengthen our positioning in the market,” Fabrick CEO Paolo Zaccardi said. “We have found a valuable ally who, like us, has seen in technological evolution and Open Finance a new way to innovate the delivery of corporate services for the end user.”

Founded in 2017, Fabrick is an open banking ecosystem and a regulated TPP. Within digital payments, channel innovation, and open banking, Fabrick helps enrich the offerings of banks, processors, and fintechs. With customers including Bankart, HDI Assicurazioni, and illimity, Fabrick made fintech headlines earlier this year via collaborations with DizmeID Foundation for a hackathon based on innovations in digital identity, and with Banca Progetto and Faire to help the Italian challenger bank offer an instant lending service for small and medium-sized businesses.

“We are particularly enthusiastic about this collaboration because it testifies to the validity of the ecosystem proposed by Fabrick,” Zaccardi said when the partnership was announced last month. “On the one hand (we have) the capacity of our platform, through which the service will be implemented, and on the other the important synergies that arise within our community Fintech District, of which Faire is part and through which we have begun to collaborate with them.”

Like France, which we looked at last week, Italy has a fintech industry that is often overlooked in the broader conversation on European financial technology. To this end, this week’s Finovate Global Reports turns to the Fintech District and its The Italian Fintech Guide 2020 for a peek into “the most promising fintech companies operating in Italy.”

According to Fintech District, Italy had 345 fintech startups as of the end of 2019. It is a young industry – with most startups at an intermediate stage of growth and with less than one million in capital raised. Additionally, these fintech teams have members who are, on average, less than 32 years old. As with most regions, fintechs in Italy have increasingly been looking to enhance the digital capabilities of incumbent banks and insurance companies – as well as developing B2C solutions for Italian consumers. Open banking has helped accelerate this trend, and companies like Fabrick have been among those helping banks and third party solution providers connect and innovate together.

To learn more about fintech in Italy, check out IBS Intelligence’s 5 Italian FinTech companies transforming the financial sector from last fall. For a more inclusive look, consider Italian entrepreneur Claudio Bedino’s Top 100 FinTech leaders and influencers in Italy that appeared a year before IBS Intelligence’s roundup.

In recent years, our FinovateEurope conferences have featured a number of alums headquartered in Italy, as well. Ten of these companies, along with the year of their most recent Finovate appearance and their home city, are listed below.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

  • Gimo, a fintech startup that serves underbanked workers in Vietnam, received seed funding from ThinkZone Ventures, BK Fund, and others strategic investors.
  • Jakarta, Indonesia-based insurtech, Qoala, acquired Thai insurech FairDee in bid to expand into the Thailand market.
  • Malaysia Debt Ventures and Kenanga partnered to launch a new $73 million fund to back new fintechs and stimulate the VC industry in Malaysia.

Photo by Emily Geibel from Pexels

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FinovateEurope Best of Show Winners Announced

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Best of Show, Dbilia, FinovateEurope 2021, Proptee, Quantum Metric

Our first all-digital European fintech conference is in the books. And given a little extra time to resolve a truly historic number of tied votes, our attendees have decided which companies will take home our Best of Show trophies for FinovateEurope 2021.

This year’s winners are:

Dbilia for its digital memorabilia that leverages blockchain and NFTs to enable fans to invest in creatives. Video.

Proptee for its global property app that helps reinvent the way people invest in real estate. Video.

Quantum Metric for its technology that helps retail banks differentiate on the digital experience, improve digital adoption, and enhance internal efficiencies. Video.

Thanks to all of our demoing companies, our partners and sponsors, and to you, our attendees in the fintech and financial services community. Be sure to stay in touch with the Finovate blog in the days and weeks to come for more information on our “Spring Collection” of webinars, networking opportunities, and upcoming conferences – including FinovateSpring in May.

Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their three favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The three companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2020 conferences are below:
FinovateEurope 2015
FinovateSpring 2015
FinovateFall 2015
FinovateEurope 2016
FinovateSpring 2016
FinovateFall 2016
FinovateAsia 2016
FinovateEurope 2017
FinovateSpring 2017
FinovateFall 2017
FinovateAsia 2017
FinovateMiddleEast 2018
FinovateEurope 2018
FinovateSpring 2018
FinovateFall 2018
FinovateAsia 2018
FinovateAfrica 2018
FinovateEurope 2019
FinovateSpring 2019
FinovateFall 2019
FinovateAsia 2019
FinovateMiddleEast 2019

FinovateEurope 2020

FinovateFall 2020

FinovateWest 2020

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Plaid Introduces the Inaugural Cohort of its New Fintech Accelerator

Plaid Introduces the Inaugural Cohort of its New Fintech Accelerator
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Diversity in Fintech, Plaid

Not letting any grass grow beneath its feet in the wake of the U.S. Justice department’s decision to block its acquisition by Visa, fintech infrastucture company Plaid has since launched its FinRise incubator to support early-stage founders who are members of ethnic minority groups.

“While technology has come a long way to level the playing field, the reality is that many minority-owned businesses are still frequently denied access to some of the most basic resources needed to start and grow their businesses,” Nell Malone and Bhargavi Kamakshivalli wrote on the Plaid blog when the program was announced in January. Highlighting in particular the plight of African-American owned businesses as noted in a report from the Small Business Administration, Malone and Kamakshivalli wrote: “It is a shared responsibility to help power a financial system that works for everyone, and we recognize that one way to achieve that is to support and promote a diverse ecosystem of entrepreneurs.”

All this makes today’s announcement that FinRise has chosen the first companies to participate in its accelerator program that much more exciting for supporters of financial inclusion and diversity. Out of more than 100 applications, five early-stage fintechs were selected, offering solutions in everything from identity verification and authentication to financial wellness and lending.

The qualifications for consideration were startups with at least one founder who is African-American, indigenous, or a “person of color,” has two or more employees, and is post-seed, pre-Series B in its funding status. The members of the incoming class are below:

Global Data Consortium: a global identity verification API that provides KYC and eKYC services for businesses

Guidefi: a financial wellness marketplace to help members of ethnic minority groups connect with “vetted, culturally-attuned” financial advisors

OfColor: a financial wellness program that offers personalized PFM and loans to help ethnic minority employees maximize their 401(k) contributions

Walnut: a point-of-sale lending platform that works with healthcare providers to make it easier for patients to pay for their medical bills

Zeta: a financial wellness company that specializes in PFM solutions for couples and families

FinRise begins with a three-day bootcamp of workshops covering issues ranging from regulatory and policy concerns to marketing and communications strategy. After the bootcamp, startups will be paired with Plaid mentors to help them further develop and scale their products. The nine-month program consists of workshops and networking opportunities with accelerator partners, as well as discounts on services offered by Plaid network partners. Even those startups not selected for the accelerator this session will be eligible for discounts and credits from companies supporting the program.

FinRise’s network partners include: Alloy, AWS Activate, Brex, Fintrail, FS Vector, Hummingbird, Very Good Security, and Zendesk.

Photo by RF._.studio from Pexels

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