Author: David Penn

Digital Banking Platform Alkami Raises $140 Million

Digital Banking Platform Alkami Raises $140 Million
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alkami Technology, Funding

In a round led by D1 Capital Partners, cloud-based digital banking technology platform Alkami has secured $140 million in new funding. The investment takes the company’s total capital to more than $378 million and comes as the firm reaches nearly 10 million digital users under contract.

“We are proud to add world class crossover investors to our strong existing investor base, supporting Alkami’s mission,” company CEO Mike Hansen said. “We inspire and power the digital strategies of financial institutions as they seek to grow confidently and build thriving digital communities.”

Also participating in the venture round were Fidelity Management & Research Company, Franklin Templeton, and Stockbridge Investors.

The financing also comes just a few weeks after the company learned it had made CB Insights roster of top 250 fastest-growing fintechs. This year’s cohort was selected out of a pool of 16,000 companies. Also this month, Alkami topped $130 million in annual recurring revenue under contract, as the company onboarded its 165th digital banking platform client.

“Our clients are among the best performing and fastest growing FIs in the country, in part due to the strength and velocity of our platform, solutions, and ecosystem,” Hansen added. “Together we are creating and delivering winning digital solutions to our clients’ customers, members, and businesses.”

Last month, Alkami announced that it had teamed up with fellow Finovate, multiple Best of Show winner Glia, integrating its Digital Customer Service platform as part of Alkami’s suite of online offerings. “With Glia, banks and credit unions can break down the walls of traditional customer support by meeting customers online and guiding them to quick and satisfying resolutions,” Glia co-founder and CEO Daniel Michaeli said. “By partnering with Alkami, we are making digital-first customer service more easily accessible to premier financial institutions and their users.”

Headquartered in Plano, Texas, Alkami is among Finovate’s oldest alums, demonstrating its technology as iThryv back in 2009.

Photo by nagaraju gajula from Pexels

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FinovateFall’s 25-in-5: Hot Takes from the Brains Behind the Demos

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2020

What’s the best way to get to know a fintech CEO, serial entrepreneur, or founder in 2020?

a. Coffee after breakfast

b. Drinks before dinner

c. 25 questions in five minutes

d. All of the above

At FinovateFall Digital this year we took an all of the above approach to bringing our world-famous networking-friendly events into the all-digital world. With Meet at the Cafe in the mornings and our customary, end-of-day networking opportunities in the afternoon, we were thrilled to have so many of our attendees join us, our demoing companies, and sponsors, for a week’s worth of virtual meetings.

One addition to the year’s goal of bringing the social to digital is our new 25-in-5 series. Hosted by Senior Research Analyst Julie Muhn and Research Analyst David Penn, our 25-in-5 series interviews the founders and CEOs of our demoing companies in a new and exciting, rapid-fire style. From their insight into “What Makes Their Company Unique Among its Competitors?” to their best take on “The Greatest City for Tech Startups That No One Knows About,” 25-in-5 provides a novel way to get to know about – and what’s on the mind of – today’s most creative fintech innovators.

“We wanted to stress the fun, personal side of our speakers, because all we usually see is the professional side,” Finovate VP and Demo Director Heather Stowell explained. She noted that the questions asked were a blend of fintech- and company-specific queries and more casual, inquiries designed to show a little bit of the person and personality behind the technology.

“While our technology demos are immersive, thought-provoking and insightful,” Stowell added, “let’s not forget about the lighter, more personal side of events, too. These clips we’ve put together explore the fun side.”

Check out our 25-in-5 interviews from FinovateFall Digital in our Finovate YouTube playlist. And stay tuned: our 25-in-5 series will be back in November to help you get to know the demoing companies of FinovateWest Digital!

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ClickSWITCH Secures Strategic Investment from USAA

ClickSWITCH Secures Strategic Investment from USAA
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ClickSWITCH, Funding

Digital account switching company ClickSWITCH has locked in an investment of $2 million from a subsidiary of USAA. The funding, which takes the company’s total to more than $21 million, will be used to help the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based firm “build additional momentum around the ClickSWITCH solution and its features,” according to founder and CEO Cale Johnston.

ClickSWITCH offers an automated account management solution that enhances the onboarding process for financial institutions by enabling them to quickly and efficiently switch all direct deposits and recurring payments from old accounts to new ones. The solution helps banks and credit unions gain higher account holder acquisition and activation rates, capture more deposits, and increase profitability.

“The financial investment from USAA is encouraging during these uncertain times and we are excited to support USAA’s mission of supporting the U.S. military community,” Johnston added.

USAA Head of Corporate Development Nathan McKinley praised ClickSWITCH for its “commitment to solving a persistent consumer problem” and put the investment in the context of USAA’s goal of providing military families with “the best value in financial services.” Based in San Antonio, Texas, USAA is a leading financial services provider, offering insurance, banking, and investment solutions to nearly 13 million members of the U.S. military, veterans, and their families.

With more than 500 financial institution customers in North America, ClickSWITCH sees this week’s investment as helping drive further innovation on its technology and enabling the six-year old company maintain its status as a leader in the account switching space. This spring, as the COVID-19 crisis took hold in the U.S., ClickSWITCH forged a partnership with fellow Finovate alum Finastra. The company said it would leverage ClickSWITCH for its Fusion Phoenix and Fusion UltraData core clients to help them increase both deposits and customer engagement.

Photo by Steve Johnson from Pexels

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Ephesoft and Fortude Partner to Boost Intelligent Document Processing

Ephesoft and Fortude Partner to Boost Intelligent Document Processing
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Ephesoft

A new global alliance between Ephesoft and Fortude will make it easier for businesses all over the world to unlock and extract enterprise data in documents and fulfill their digital transformation goals. The partnership, announced today, combines Fortude’s experience as an enterprise and technology solution provider with Ephesoft-powered Infor Document Management (IDM) Capture to help ensure that “customers get the data they need quickly,” Ephesoft founder and CEO Ike Kavas said.

“At Ephesoft, we focus on creating an exceptional customer experience from beginning to end. Partnerships with leading consulting and implementation organizations, like Fortude, enable us to expedite business process around the globe for our joint customers,” Kavas added.

Specifically, the partnership will draw upon Fortude’s experience in helping customers implement and manage Infor’s Cloudsuite and other solutions. Here, customers using IDM Capture will enjoy up to a 4x increase in processed invoices each day, and a faster process time of 36 seconds per invoice. Customers can be up and running with IDM Capture with minimal time and effort, enabling users to automatically capture, classify, and extract data and export it into any Infor solution.

“This strategic partnership with Ephesoft will allow us to accelerate implementations, and in turn provide customers a way to access information to make more insightful decisions and drive productivity,” Fortune Managing Director Arjuna Sirinanda said. “We help our customers optimize their product lifecycle and ensure business continuity. Offering businesses the ability to easily unlock their data with an intelligent document processing solution will help further our goals.”

Most recently demonstrating its technology at FinovateSpring 2018 (this year, FinovateWest Digital), Ephesoft has been an innovator in intelligent document processing since its founding ten years ago. Headquartered in Irvine, California, and maintaining offices throughout the U.S., EMEA, and Asia-Pacific, the company released a new version of its cloud-based document processing solution Transact in July. Shortlisted for the Global 2020 SaaS Award in August, Ephesoft announced that CEO Kavas had similarly made the finals in the Entrepreneur of the Year 2020 Pacific Southwest-Orange County Awards.

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Finovate Alums Take Top Honors at Lendit Fintech Awards

Finovate Alums Take Top Honors at Lendit Fintech Awards
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Blend, CircleUp, Equifax, Plaid, Stash, VISA

Lendit Fintech announced the winners of its fourth annual Lendit Finitech Industry Awards this week. And out of the 500+ entries competing for awards in 13 different categories, Finovate alums left the stage with nearly half of them.

Taking the highest honor as Fintech Innovator of the Year was Stash. The New York-based mobile-first investment platform made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2017, demonstrating its Stash Retire solution. This year marks the second year in a row that Stash has picked up Lendit’s top prize in this category. Fellow Finovate alum Marqeta was among the category’s finalists.

Also winning award categories were:

  • Plaid for Innovations in Digital Banking
  • Urjanet and Equifax for Most Promising Partnership
  • Visa for Top Service Provider
  • Blend for Top Technology Service Provider.
  • CircleUp for Top Small Business Lending Platform

“Our purpose at Lendit Fintech is to elevate and celebrate the achievements of others,” co-founder and CEO of Lendit Fintech Bo Brustkern explained in a statement. “This year has been a hard year for many bank and fintechs, and the many enterprises that support them. Now more than ever we need a reason to come together – even if it’s virtually – to recognize and applaud excellence in these circumstances.”

Other companies earning awards were Upstart for Top Consumer Lending Platform, PeerStreet for Top Real Estate Platform, BlockFi for Emerging Lending Platform of the Year, Orrick for Top Law Firm, and Branch for Excellence in Financial Inclusion. Two individuals were also recognized: Colin Walsh, founder and CEO of Varo Money, as Executive of the Year and Nicky Goulimis, COO and co-founder of Nova Credit, as Fintech Woman of the Year.

A number of other Finovate alums earned finalist spots in this year’s competition. Both Lending Club and SoFi competed as finalists in the Consumer Lending Platform category. And BlueVine provided a strong Finovate alum showing in the Small Business Lending Platform group.

Credit is also due to Finovate alum Mambu as a finalist (along with Stash) in the Innovations in Digital Banking category, and to both Finicity and Ocrolus, which competed in the finals of the Top Technology Service Provider category.

Photo by Ylanite Koppens from Pexels

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Deliver Tailored Experiences Using Automated AI and Cognitive Data

Deliver Tailored Experiences Using Automated AI and Cognitive Data
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: David's column, Finovate Webinar

It’s probably a good thing that many of us saw fintech’s Year of the Customer coming a mile (or at least several months) away.

There is no one who anticipated a year ago what the world would look like right now. But I suspect that fintech’s preoccupation with the customer experience going into this year has helped the industry make the necessary adjustments now that 2020 has actually arrived – in all its unpredictable craziness.

One of Europe’s most underrated fintech countries, Portugal, is home to this week’s latest Finovate webinar host: Celfocus, a company that is helping other companies offer a better customer experience. Founded in 2000 and headquartered in Lisbon, Celfocus is a system integrator and specialist in digital transformation that works with businesses in a number of verticals to enable them to enhance their operations using automation and AI.

On Wednesday, September 30th, Celfocus’ Henrique Cravo (Digital Lead) and Carlos Domingos (Digital Channels and Integration Lead) will lead an interactive conversation that looks at how cognitive data insights can be the key ingredient – along with automated AI – that enables financial institutions to build and deliver “tailored experiences that trigger new targets, portfolios, and customer lock.” With the demand for greater personalization growing, Cravo and Domingos will show how financial institutions that customize offerings to meet their clients’ needs are likely to develop the deepest and most meaningful engagement. And the key to being able to deliver this high level of customization is being able to effectively manage and interpret customer data.

“From risk takers, tech-savvy, and hungry for innovation customers to tech avoiders that value human touch,” Cravo and Domingos wrote earlier this year, “banks must accommodate different engagement approaches and insights to differentiate customer profiles. This happens,” they wrote, “not because they don’t have the data, but because they can’t mine it.”

Learn more about Celfocus’ approach: Customer Knowledge Augmentation and Activation from their July 2020 guest post. And then join us on Wednesday for an in-depth conversation on how banks and other financial institutions can not only gain new insights into their data, but also leverage that data into actionable knowledge to provide better, more consistent, personalized customer experiences.

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels

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NYMBUS Names New CEO Jeffery Kendall

NYMBUS Names New CEO Jeffery Kendall
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, NYMBUS

Big changes at the top continue for banking technology provider NYMBUS. The company announced on Monday that former Kony DBX EVP and General Manager Jeffery Kendall will take the helm as the NYMBUS’ new CEO. Effective October 1, Kendall will succeed Scott Killoh, who founded the company in 2015. Killoh will remain with the company as Executive Chairman of the Board.

In the company’s announcement of the news, Killoh praised Kendall’s “strong domain and go-to-market expertise” which he said comes at a “critical time” when financial institutions and financial services companies are rapidly attempting to digitize their backend and customer-facing operations. During his tenure at Kony DBX, Kendall was credited for growing the firm’s digital banking division by 5x in less than three years. Kony DBX was acquired by Temenos for $520 million a little over a year ago.

As CEO of NYMBUS, Kendall will be tasked with continuing the company’s success in helping financial institutions make their digital transformations. “In record time, NYMBUS has already delivered over 25 successful customer deployments,” Kendall said in a statement. “This is a powerful validation of the efficacy of our robust software and solutions, and the trajectory for continued success and growth by remaining focused on serving our clients, creating significant value for our shareholders, and providing exceptional opportunities for our employees.”

The Kendall hire is the second big C-suite move from NYMBUS in recent months. In June, the company tapped Jim Modak as its new President and Chief Financial Officer. Modak previously served as CFO at Tradex Technologies (sold to Ariba in 2000) and as both Chief Operating Officer and CFO at enterprise software provider DWL (sold to IBM in 2005). He is also a 12-year veteran of KPMG.

NYMBUS demonstrated its full-service, standalone, digital banking alternative, SmartLaunch, last year at FinovateFall in New York. The technology won the 2020 Best Solution for Customer Experience at the FinXTech Awards this spring. In what has been a busy year for the Miami Beach-based company, NYMBUS has inked partnerships with PeoplesBank, Transpecos Banks, fellow Finovate alum NCR, Pacific National Bank, and Payrailz.

Securing $12 million in growth funding in June, NYMBUS has raised a total of $45.4 million from investors including Vensure Enterprises, Insight Partners, and Home Credit Group.

Photo by Fillipe Gomes from Pexels

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Will COVID-19 Mark the End of European Fintech?

Will COVID-19 Mark the End of European Fintech?
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, Marqeta, MasterCard, Tinkoff Bank, VISA, Yandex

A new study from McKinsey & Company suggests that European fintechs are experiencing an “existential crisis” as venture capital funding plunges “from surplus to scarcity.” The report compares the 11% drop in funding for fintech worldwide in the first half of the year with Europe’s far steeper decline in fintech funding of 30% over the same time period, and puts the blame squarely on the economic and social impact of the coronavirus.

But while the report anticipates a significant contraction in European economies – 11% this year with pre-crisis levels remaining elusive until 2023 – and that fintech is “already feeling the squeeze”, the authors note that there are a variety of advantages fintech has that could enable the industry’s most innovative players to emerge successfully if not stronger on the other side of the crisis. Among the main factors are:

  • The fintech sector has grown over the past six years by more than 25%.
  • Fintechs are native to the digital realm.
  • Fintechs are more efficient than many other businesses: with more efficient cost structures, “organizational agility,” and significant customer loyalty.

“As more incumbents struggle to adapt, the winners will be those that quickly recognize the changed context and that are most capable of responding with clear decisions and bold actions,” the report authors note. “Many organizations, both incumbents and startups, have adapted with surprising quickness and rapid decision making through the COVID-19 crisis. This new sense of possibility and potential should inform future action.”

Read the report.

Speaking of Europe – and on the heels of the big news of Yandex‘s agreement to buy Russian digital bank Tinkoff for $5.5 billion earlier this week – we took a look at our favorite Russian fintechs. Check out our Baker’s Dozen of fintechs from Moscow, St. Petersburg, and more.

To learn more about fintech in Russia, here’s an overview from last December that cites an Ernst & Young study that calls the country’s fintech industry “the third most developed market in the world.” This is based on the relatively high, 80% adoption rate of fintech services in Russia, and occurs despite a relatively low participation in fintech areas like securities investment, as well as savings and financial wellness.

“Basically we went from savings books to payments over mobile phone almost overnight,” said Roman Prokhorov, the head of the association Financial Innovations, who was quoted in the study. “Therefore, our consumers are more receptive to fintech innovations, and this explains the popularity of these services.”

Here is our look at fintech around the world.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • JPMorgan Chase-based Brazilian fintech FitBank Pagamentos Electronicos plans expansion to the U.S. in the first half of 2021.
  • TechCrunch profiles Jefa, a challenger bank that caters to women in Latin America.
  • IFLR looks at the role regulators in Costa Rica will play in the development of the country’s fintech industry.

Asia-Pacific

  • Vietnamese credit scoring technology provider for micro, small, and medium-sized businesses Kim An Group secures Series A funding.
  • Could Malaysia be the “world pioneer” in Islamic fintech? Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation chairman Datuk Wira Rais Hussin makes the case.
  • The Business Times of Singapore highlights an S&P Global Ratings report on Thai consumers pushing Thai banks to embrace fintech.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Mono, a Nigerian API fintech startup that seeks to be the “Plaid of Africa,” raises $500,000 in pre-seed funding.
  • Lexology reviews the current state of fintech regulation in Kenya.
  • Innovation consultancy Beta-I partners with Angola National Bank to build the nation’s first regulatory sandbox.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • German fintech Vanta teams up with Marqeta to launch its credit card for startups.
  • Open banking platform Raisin partners with German financial solutions broker Procheck24.
  • Samsung, Visa, and Solarisbank AG work together to bring Samsung Pay to Germany.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Commercial Bank of Kuwait teams up with Thales Digital Solutions to drive mobile payments.
  • Could Saudi Arabia top Dubai in terms of fintech funding? Arabian Business looks at the growth of fintech in the Kingdom.
  • PYMNTS profiles Imad Aloyoun, CEO of Jordan-based payments platform Dinarak.

Central and Southern Asia

  • A joint project between U.K.-based Checkout.com and Pakistan’s National Institutional Facilitation Technologies (Nift) will bring new international payment options to the Pakistan.
  • Pakistan’s Silk Bank announces a partnership with MasterCard to boost credit card issuance in the country.
  • Times of India profiles Indian fintech MoneyTap, founded by Anuj Kacker.

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Giving AI and Machine Learning the Business

Giving AI and Machine Learning the Business
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateWest 2020, Speaker series

When it comes to leveraging technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence to enhance processes and improve business operations, many financial services firms know what they want but, to steal a line, “just don’t know how to go about getting it.”

One of the keynote presentations at the upcoming FinovateWest Digital conference in November is designed specifically to address this problem. Jeff Fried, Director of Product Management for InterSystems, will provide a address titled The 7 Steps to Using Machine Learning to Improve Your Business that will give stakeholders key insights into the steps they can take to get their machine learning- and AI-based projects underway.

“Continued advancements in ML and AI have huge potential in many domains,” he wrote in a blog post titled Maximize Today’s Downtime to Train ML Models for Tomorrow in August. “The key is to surface low-risk, high reward business solutions to ensure your organization continues to thrive, while also weathering the effects of an economic downturn.”

Specifically, Fried is cautioning companies against treating any COVID-induced slowdown in business activity as “downtime.” Encouraging companies to not let “the crisis go to waste,” Fried sees this year as a unique opportunity for companies to hone in and test out some of their ML-oriented projects. This is because while he considers machine learning and AI to be “high promise” technologies, the time and energy required to test and implement these initiatives is often hard to find when the usual, every day business concerns are often more “urgent and immediate.”

One factor in favor of companies looking to innovate using machine learning and artificial intelligence is that while there is a high demand for talent in these areas, the actual technologies themselves require relatively modest capital investment. This, at a time of heightened financial risk aversion by most businesses and combined with new tools that are making machine learning technologies more accessible to data scientists (and even those who aren’t data scientists), further argues for companies to make the most of the current moment when it comes to pursuing their more ambitious technology projects.

A self-described “long-standing data management nerd” and a former Chief Technology Officer for BA Insight, Empirix, and Teleoquent, Fried joined InterSystems in 2018 and is passionate about helping people build powerful data-driven applications. Learn more about Fried and his upcoming presentation at FinovateWest Digital in November.

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Envestnet |Yodlee Forges Data Exchange Agreement with Wells Fargo

Envestnet |Yodlee Forges Data Exchange Agreement with Wells Fargo
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Envestnet, Yodlee

Is this another instance of open banking, American-style?

One of the major topics of discussion at FinovateFall Digital last week was how the open banking phenomenon that is sweeping the globe will manifest itself in the U.S. The consensus was that open banking will not be driven by regulations in the U.S. as it is in many parts of the world. Instead, the ability of U.S. consumers to access third-party financial solutions via their primary banking partner more likely will be driven by consumers themselves. Another key driver will be companies looking to distinguish themselves from rivals by providing better, more diverse solutions from which to choose.

This is very much top of mind as we receive the news that Wells Fargo has entered a data exchange agreement with major financial data aggregation and analytics platform Envestnet | Yodlee. The partnership will enable the bank’s customers to seamlessly and securely share their data with the 1,400 third-party financial apps available on the Envestment | Yodlee Financial Data Aggregation Platform.

The agreement is also a large step for APIs (another major theme at FinovateFall Digital last week). Wells Fargo announced that it will also transition virtually all of its current third-party financial app screen-scraping to API-based data exchange, and added that the partnership with Envestnet | Yodlee represented the bank’s commitment to forge more API-based data exchange agreements with third-parties going forward.

“As we help customers navigate these uncertain times, we want to enable them to seamlessly connect with and use third-party apps that help them manage their finances and do so in as secure a way as possible,” Wells Fargo Strategy, Digital, and Innovation Group SVP Ben Soccorsy said. “Wells Fargo’s agreement with Envestnet | Yodlee does just that. In the future, our customers will be able to share their financial information with Envestnet | Yodlee-supported apps with enhanced ease, security, and control.”

Wells Fargo customers will be able to access third-party services via the bank’s Control Tower digital experience, which sits inside Wells Fargo’s banking app and is also available online. Control Tower enables both consumer and small business banking customers to manage their finances more efficiently, providing a single, unified view of their accounts with Wells Fargo. Importantly, customers will not only be able to turn the data sharing option on and off, they also will be able to designate the specific data they wish to share with third parties.

“API-based connectivity in the United States is leading to an increasingly connected financial ecosystem, spearheaded by the partnerships like the one we now have with Wells Fargo,” SVP of Data Access & Management at Envestnet | Yodlee Chad A. Wiechers said.

With more than 27 million users around the world, Envestnet | Yodlee demonstrated its Insight Solutions at FinovateFall Digital last week. The new offering enables financial services providers to build and scale hyper-personalized financial wellness experiences for their customers. Long-time Finovate alum Yodlee was acquired by Envestnet five years ago for $660 million. Envestnet was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Redwood City, California.

Photo by Stephanie Pombo from Pexels

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A Baker’s Dozen of Our Favorite Russian Fintechs

A Baker’s Dozen of Our Favorite Russian Fintechs
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Ak Bars Digital Technologies, C24, JuicyScore, LifePAD, LifePay, List series, myWishBoard, PayReverse, Sberbank, SoftWear Finance, SpeechPro, Tinkoff Bank, Tinkoff Credit Systems, Yandex

News this week that Russia’s Yandex had agreed to acquire the country’s biggest online bank Tinkoff was a reminder of how vibrant fintech is not just in Europe, or even just in Central and Eastern Europe, but in Russia, as well.

As our Senior Research Analyst Julie Muhn noted in her coverage of the news, “This is a pretty big deal, not necessarily because of the size of the transaction, but because of the players involved. Yandex is essentially the Google of Russia– it is a tech giant in the region. And Tinkoff Bank is the world’s largest digital bank in terms of customers, boasting more than 10 million clients.”

With this in mind, we want to send out a shout-out to the many fintech companies based in Russia that have demonstrated their technologies live on the Finovate stage over the years. Here’s a look at our Russia-based alums going back to our first European conference in 2012.

PayReverse – FinovateAsia 2018. Founded in 2017. Headquartered in Moscow. Offers a white label cashback service.

Ak Bars Digital Technologies – FinovateFall 2018. Founded in 2016. Headquartered in Kazan. Offers a payments via face recognition technology, Face2Pay.

Tinkoff – FinovateFall 2018. Founded in 2006. Headquartered in Moscow. Offers a digital ecosystem of financial and lifestyle products and services.

JuicyScore – FinovateMiddleEast 2018. Founded in 2016. Headquartered in Moscow. Offers a digital risk-management-as-a-service solution for the financial industry.

SMART Valley – FinovateEurope 2018. Founded in 2017. Headquartered in Moscow. Offers a distributed innovation platform that enables key players to collaborate effectively.

Speechpro – FinovateSpring 2017. Founded in 1990. Headquartered in St. Petersburg. Offers a voice biometric technology, VoiceKey.FRAUD for use in contact centers. Finovate Best of Show winner. U.S.-based subsidiary of Russia’s STC Group.

Sberbank – FinovateSpring 2016. Founded in 1841. Headquartered in Moscow. Offers banking and financial services as the core bank of an international financial group. One of the largest banks in Russia and Europe.

C24 – FinovateEurope 2015. Founded in 2013. Headquartered in Moscow. Offers a multi-channel platform that enables users to connect and aggregate their accounts with different banks. Became Paysend.

LifePay – FinovateEurope 2015. Founded in 2012. Headquartered in Moscow. Offers payment services as one of the largest mPOS EMV chip and pin companies in Russia.

My Wishboard – FinovateEurope 2014. Founded in 2013. Headquartered in Moscow. Offers a social crowdfunding platform to help users fund their goals along with the help of friends, family, and subscribers.

SoftWear Finance – FinovateEurope 2014. Founded in 2012. Headquartered in St. Petersburg. Offers a platform that enables banks to provide their customers with the best possible user experience regardless of platform or device.

Yandex.Money – FinovateSpring 2013. Founded in 2002. Headquartered in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Offers a fast, reliable way for online businesses to collect payments for Russians and customers in Russian-speaking countries. The solution, since sold to Sberbank, originally was launched by Yandex, the leading IT company and search engine in Europe.

LifePAD – FinovateAsia 2013. Founded in 2012. Headquartered in Moscow. Offers a “personal online bank manager” in a table, providing customer service 24/7.

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New Funding Takes Robinhood’s Series G Round to $660 Million

New Funding Takes Robinhood’s Series G Round to $660 Million
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding

A little over a month after announcing a $200 million investment from D1 Capital Partners as part of its Series G round, the Millennially-targeted stock trading app Robinhood is back in the fintech funding headlines with another $460 million in new capital raised. The investment gives the company a valuation of $11.7 billion, and brings the Series G’s total to $660 million.

The company’s total funding stands at $2.2 billion.

The financing comes from a quintet of investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, DST Global, Ribbit Capital and 9Yards Capital. A Robinhood spokesperson said that the funds will be used to support Robinhood’s core product as well as “new offerings like cash management and recurring investments.”

Robinhood has been on an impressive fundraising pace this year, locking in more than $1 billion in 2020 alone as a rapidly advancing stock market – and the blunting of sports gambling due to pandemic restrictions – have brought new investors and traders to the platform. Robinhood offers commission-free trading in stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and options via Robinhood Financial, as well as the ability to buy and sell cryptocurrencies with its Robinhood Crypto platform.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Menlo Park, California, Robinhood has more than 13 million users. Earlier this month, the company announced a set of updates on its options trading offering, giving investors and traders greater control over exercising options, and adding improvements to the early assignment process, as well as enhancing both education and eligibility criteria for options trading. In August, Robinhood introduced a pair of new Chief Compliance Officers – Norm Askhenas for Robinhood Financial and Kelly Zigaitis for Robinhood Securities – who are veterans of Fidelity and Wells Fargo Advisors, respectively.

Photo by Kelly Lacy from Pexels

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