Author: David Penn

Feedzai Celebrates Growth Milestones, Welcomes New C-Suite Talent

Feedzai Celebrates Growth Milestones, Welcomes New C-Suite Talent
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Feedzai

Above-target growth and a pair of C-suite appointments characterize the first half of 2020 for risk management platform Feedzai. The company announced this morning that it has recorded H1 growth of 44% and negotiated “multiple multi-year enterprise contracts” during the initial period of the COVID-19 pandemic and related market uncertainty. This, along with new leadership in the CFO and CMO roles, enabled the company to have what co-founder and CEO Nuno Sebastiao described “one of the best quarters ever” despite the pandemic.

“This simultaneously shows that our technology is mission-critical, and our business is crisis resilient,” Sebastiao continued. “I’m confident that our next phase of growth will benefit from market conditions in which digital transformation will play a larger than ever role, and from a set of strategic decisions we’ve made in the last 9 months.”

SafetyPay, Credorax, and PayU are among the companies that have teamed up with the San Francisco, California-based risk management platform this year. And joining Feedzai’s executive ranks are Amaury Dauge, former Euronext CFO, who will take over as the company’s new Chief Financial Officer, and Varun Kohli, who has been appointed Chief Marketing Officer.

Founded in 2008 and a Finovate alum for six years, Feedzai leverages artificial intelligence and advanced machine learning to analyze 30 million transactions valued at $5 billion every day. The company’s technology is used by 10 of the world’s largest 25 banks, and has been recognized as “Best in Class” by Aite Group.

Financial crime has taken on new significance during the global health crisis. With more individuals working remotely, and more companies accessing new channels and agents in search of financial assistance, there has been a significant rise in the number of ways criminals can take advantage of the uncertainty of the current environment. Feedzai, in its statement, highlighted mule accounts, phishing attacks, and employer fraud, among the top three types of financial crime that have increased during the pandemic.

“Fraudsters thrive on periods of confusion and chaos,” Aite Group Research Director Julie Convoy said, “and this pandemic represents fertile breeding ground.”

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Google, 21st Century Branch Banking, and the Power of the Platform

Google, 21st Century Branch Banking, and the Power of the Platform
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2020, Google, Speaker series

This year, FinovateFall Digital brought representatives from some of technology’s biggest players to our all-digital stage. One of these individuals was Paul Rohan, Solutions Consultant with Google Cloud.

Rohan’s presentation on the future of banking showed a connection between the evolution of branch banking and the necessary changes banking will need to undergo in order to thrive in the 21st century. He also discussed the changing nature of competition in financial services brought on by trends like open banking.

Check out our interview with Rohan ahead of his FinovateFall Digital presentation last month.

On the current state of open banking and PSD2

This is a major change in mindset because you start to realize that you could have the very best banking product with superb features and brilliant pricing. But if it’s not a part of these connected digital experiences across multiple brands that customers are increasingly demanding, it could fail. And you could have a middle of the road, not the best financial product, with not the best prices and not the best features. But, boy, if it pops up with the right context, with the right personalization, and the right customization – in these connected digital experiences – it could be a tremendous success.

On open banking as 21st century branch banking

Why did unit banks fall away and then branch banking become the norm? Because it didn’t matter how superb the staff were in the one branch you had, or how wonderful the customer experience was once they came into the branch, or how fast the decision-making was because everyone in your bank was in that one location. But if your one branch was in the wrong town, or beside the wrong industries, as things changed, it didn’t matter how wonderful the user experience was … In essence, (branch banking) started to allow customers to begin their customer journey with the bank where they were living their lives or where they did business.

On the difference between pursuing an app strategy versus a platform strategy as a financial services provider.

The sociology is quite different. In a traditional enterprise that’s quite reliant on doing everything themselves, and there’s always a human desire to innovate and serve your customers, if you do something clever to serve your customers, there is a big round of applause: “This is exactly what we should be doing.”

Companies that are immersed in the connected experiences of digital ecosystems (are) all about trying to make your partners clever. Enable them to be clever because they’ll do the customization, they’ll do the personalization. So there’s a huge amount of thought that goes into taking friction and difficulty out of your partner’s ability to deal with you, and to extend your brand and your proposition into segments you don’t want to serve yourself directly or you couldn’t serve yourself directly.

Watch the rest of the conversation. And for more from our FinovateFall Digital speakers, check out our Finovate TV YouTube playlist.

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Instnt Partners with Identity Verification Platform Prove

Instnt Partners with Identity Verification Platform Prove
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Instnt

A new partnership will enable customer onboarding platform Instnt to leverage phone intelligence-based authentication to enable firms to “green light” more customers without having to resort to time-consuming, knowledge-based authentication protocols. The company announced that it has teamed up with Prove, whose technology is used by more than 1,000 businesses and 500 bank clients to provide frictionless, passive authentication to their customers.

“As mobile devices have become the de-facto second-factor authentication tool, Prove’s robust phone intelligence technology becomes a crucial component to enable frictionless digital acceptance and authentication of consumers on Instnt’s digital customer onboarding managed service,” Instnt CEO and founder Sunil Madhu explained. “Through this partnership, Instnt aims to bring digital inclusion and one-click federated sign-up to consumers across mobile apps and websites on the internet.”

Instnt enables retail financial institutions and e-commerce merchants to sign up more customers with less risk and fewer fraud losses. Using Instnt’s technology, companies follow a simple, three-step process to create their digital sign-up form and generate a single line of code. This code is added to their website or app to create the onboarding functionality. Instnt leverages AI-powered predictive analytics to validate the user and the device being used during the onboarding process, conducting device and cohort analysis, network analysis, and data validation and verification to provide high accuracy and “requirement levels of compliance.” Instnt goes so far as to indemnify users of its customer onboarding offering for up to $100 million in annual fraud losses.

Instnt’s partnership with Prove comes just weeks after the company announced that it was collaborating with ComplyAdvantage. The partnership will bring machine learning and natural language processing-powered financial crime detection capabilities to Instnt’s onboarding and verification platform. Instnt began the year raising $2.9 million in seed funding from Charge Ventures, Fantail Ventures, Third Prime, and Revel Partners.

Based in New York City, Instnt made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall. The company returns to Finovate’s all-digital stage in November for FinovateWest Digital. Find out more about our upcoming live and on-demand fintech event, November 23 through 25.

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See Me, Hear Me: Revation and the Revolution in Digital Customer Engagement

See Me, Hear Me: Revation and the Revolution in Digital Customer Engagement
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, FinovateWest 2020, Revation

The big changes we are seeing in the realm of customer engagement have to do with inevitable trends becoming immediate demands. Whether the need is reaching customers over the digital channel for the first time or automating and streamlining processes to improve efficiency and maximize productivity, the global health pandemic has been the midwife – if not the mother – of the fast-changing technology landscape we live in today.

“Meeting customers where they are” has been a rallying cry for customer engagement specialists for years. And as the number of channels grows, more companies are offering new solutions that provide easy-to-use, secure, and compliant ways for businesses to more comprehensively engage with their customers and clients.

One company in this space is Revation Systems. A Minneapolis, Minnesota-based firm, founded in 2003, Revation recently partnered with fintech and regtech solution provider Computer Services Inc. (CSI), who will offer Revation’s LinkLive Banking platform to community banks. LinkLive Banking provides regional and community banks, as well as credit unions, with key capabilities such as digital messaging, AI-powered chatbots, voice and video communications, and the ability to move seamlessly between physical and digital channels.

“Given the remote work demands of COVID-19, LinkLive Banking empowers our banks to provide a world-class customer experience while taking precautions to protect the health and safety of their employees and customers,” CSI Group President of Enterprise Banking Giovanni Mastronardi said. “Together with Revation Systems, we’re providing the innovative technology necessary to increase customer satisfaction and reduce friction in the customer journey.”

In addition to its messaging, chatbot, voice, and video functionalities, the platform also provides secure desktop sharing and encrypted email. LinkLive Banking leverages AI to power service chatbots with keyword recognition and the ability provide fast, automated responses to common banking queries. The video banking capabilities, announced in August, are the most recent addition to the platform.

“We are extremely excited about utilizing LinkLive’s video banking features as we seek to improve our member experience,” United Educators Credit Union CTO Dennis Griesgraber said. He noted that the new feature integrated not only with the LinkLive contact center the credit union used, but also with the institution’s digital banking platform. John Eyre, Assistant VP of Information Technology at TAPCO Credit Union underscored the technology’s value for enhancing communications among employees, as well. “LinkLive’s video banking feature will not only enhance the interactions between our members and representatives, but will also help improve communication among our own staff internally,” Eyre said.

Active in the healthcare vertical as well as financial services, Revation has more than 400 customers using its LinkLive Banking platform, representing more than 100 million digital banking customers. Adding the video banking component, Revation notes, requires only a few configuration changes to the LinkLive platform, and does not require the customer to download an app or manage a separate communications account to participate in video banking.

Perry Price, Revation CEO, echoed the now-common wisdom that the pandemic has accelerated pre-existing, if not inevitable technology trends. He noted that while adoption of video banking before COVID-19 had been a “long-term goal,” the onset of the crisis had turned those goals into “urgent” priorities.

Featured in CIOReview’s Most Promising FinTech Solution Providers for 2020 this spring, Revation is scheduled to make its Finovate debut next month at FinovateWest Digital. To learn more about our upcoming, all-digital event and how to watch Revation’s technology in action, visit our FinovateWest Digital hub.

Photo by Cristian Dina from Pexels

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Expensify Does Billpay

Expensify Does Billpay
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Expensify

As of October, Expensify isn’t just for expense management anymore.

This week, the company announced that it has added a new service that will enable Expensify users to leverage the platform to pay their bills, as well. For free.

“A little known fact is that Expensify was never intended to be an expense reporting company: it was always intended to be a platform for all things accounts payable and receivable,” company founder and CEO Dave Barrett wrote.  “Expenses, invoices, bills — they’re all slight variations on the same thing.  But the variations are so slight, there’s really no reason to Frankenstein together a bunch of financial tools to cover all your needs: Expensify is a one-stop shop for everything you need to run your back office.”

All Expensify users need to do in order to take advantage of the new service is to have their vendors send their invoices to:

“yourdomain.com@expensify.cash.”

Expensify will SmartScan the invoices, present them to the payer, and then send payments to the vendors from the payer’s business bank account. Expensify will also ensure that the transaction is accurately and promptly noted in the company’s accounting system, as well.

The goal is to show how Expensify serves as a small business platform rather than just an expense management solution. After all, that’s how Expensify treats it. “We’ve got hundreds of employees split between several international subsidiaries,” Barrett wrote, “thousands of vendors scattered around the world in multiple currencies, a hundred thousand customers spanning dozens of countries — and we run the whole business on Expensify.”

A long time Finovate alum, San Francisco, California-based Expensify has demonstrated its technology and its solutions at both our developers conference, FinDEVr, as well as at our Finovate events. Over the summer, the company unveiled its Concierge Travel solution, a virtual travel assistant that helps travelers build their itineraries and plan their trips – free of charge.

Expensify has raised more than $38 million in funding from investors including OpenView, PJC, Redpoint. The company began the year with the launch of its corporate card, the Expensify Card, that offers a special reward called Karma Points. Cardholders can use these points to make charitable donations to one of five partnering philanthropic organizations. Expensify also will donate 10% of all revenue from the card to charity, During the COVID-19 health crisis, donations are being directed to the Expensify.org/hunger fund.

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NEC Acquires Avaloq in $2.2 Billion Deal

NEC Acquires Avaloq in $2.2 Billion Deal
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Acquisition, Avaloq, Mergers & Acquisitions

After 35 years in operation, Swiss-based digital banking solution provider Avaloq has agreed to be acquired by Japan’s NEC Corporation. The deal, in which NEC will buy 100% of the company’s shares from existing shareholders, valued the Swiss firm at more than $2.2 billion (CHF 2.05 billion), is billed at enabling Avaloq to “accelerate” its “growth, global expansion, and value creation strategy.”

“With NEC, Avaloq found a perfect new home to continue our success story of serving our clients with solutions that make their lives simpler in an ever more complex world,” Avaloq CEO Jürg Hunziker said. Company founder and chairman Francisco Fernandez added that acquisition would help the company continue to “invest heavily in R&D,” and highlighted the two firms’ shared emphasis on the “caring about customers and people.”

The transaction is expected to be completed in April 2021. The company will continue to operate as its own entity, based in Zurich.

First introduced to our audiences at our developers conference, FinDEVr London, in 2017, Avaloq made its Finovate debut a year later at FinovateEurope with a demonstration of its goal-based, wealth management solution. The cloud-based microservice enables wealth managers to provide risk-optimized investment objectives for their clients, which helps ensure that the client and their investment preferences, concerns, and risk tolerance are at the center of the investment advisory experience.

With more than 150 clients in 30 countries and nearly $5 trillion (4.5 trillion CHF) in client assets managed using its software, Avaloq recently announced partnerships with Belgium’s Banque Degroof Petercam in October and integrated with Enterprise Bot, an conversational AI and automation solution provider, in September. Also that month, FintechNews Switzerland featured Avaloq Group Chief Product Officer Martin Greweldinger, author of a report on the need for wealth managers to “democratize” their offerings to a wider audience in order to survive and grow.

“This democratization requires wealth managers to deliver personalized advice at scale while addressing the specific needs of this new affluent clientele through a balance of industrialization, innovation, and individualization,” Greweldinger noted. Read more about Avaloq’s report.

Photo by Bing HAO on Unsplash

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iCapital Closes Acquisition of Alternative Investment Platform Artivest

iCapital Closes Acquisition of Alternative Investment Platform Artivest
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Artivest, Mergers & Acquisitions

Here’s a bit of news that slipped beneath our radar: online investing platform Artivest, which made its Finovate debut six years ago at FinovateSpring, is now a part of the iCapital Network. iCapital announced its intention to acquire the New York-based firm this spring and in August, announced that the transaction has been completed.

The acquisition includes management of Artivest’s 28 proprietary alternative investment funds, as well as the company’s Open Network platform, which provides access to alternative financial products and investment strategies to 1,800 advisors and their investors. The deal will result in iCapital servicing more than $55 billion in client assets. Artivest’s 28 team members are expected to join iCapital.

Chairman and CEO of iCapital Network Lawrence Calcano praised Artivest’s “technical innovations and capabilities in registered funds and direct investments” when the deal was announced. He said that the two companies shared a goal of making alternative investments more broadly available to wealth and asset managers, and added that the integration of Artivest’s technology with iCapital’s platform would create a “powerful combination delivering a ‘best-in-breed’ technology experience.”

Founded in 2012, Artivest offers a curated investment experience that leverages expert insight and exclusive access to reduce the time and complexity involved in discovering, evaluating, and engaging in investment opportunities such as private investment funds. Ahead of its acquisition by iCapital, the company had forged partnerships with EJF Capital, WM Partners, KKR, Wellington Management, and MacKay Municipal Managers all in the second half of 2019.

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BioCatch Secures $20 Million to Drive Innovation in Behavioral Biometrics

BioCatch Secures $20 Million to Drive Innovation in Behavioral Biometrics
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BioCatch, Funding

A new investment of $20 million takes the total capital raised by behavioral biometrics innovator BioCatch to more than $213 million. Participating in this week’s funding were a quartet of major global banks: Barclays, Citi, HSBC, and National Australia Bank (NAB). The funds add to BioCatch’s Series C round, which brought $145 million to the company’s coffers in April.

In addition to its funding announcement, BioCatch also unveiled a new BioCatch Client Innovation Board. The Board is a collaborative, invitation-only forum where members can discuss and develop new approaches to leveraging what the company called in a statement “the unique attributes of behavior.” BioCatch’s signature innovation in behavioral biometrics is a cognitive behavioral approach that focuses on the way a user interacts with their device, as well as online and mobile applications in order to combat fraud. The company’s Invisible Challenges mechanism operates without the user even being aware of it, enabling BioCatch to provide strong authentication with minimal friction for the user.

As part of the funding, each of this week’s investing banks, as will existing BioCatch investor, American Express Ventures, will have two seats on the Innovation Board.

“We have already seen the power of collaboration in solving difficult problems in other areas of the financial services industry, such as clearing corps, transaction networks, post-trade processing, margin calculation, and collateral management, when banks work together and share knowledge, workflow, and data in the common interest,” Edelstein said. “We are extremely excited that five of the largest and most important global financial institutions are working with BioCatch to jointly address today’s most pressing problems in the areas of online fraud, account authentication and digital identity.” 

Founded in 2011 and based in both New York City and Israel, BioCatch was named to CB Insights’ Fintech 250 list of the fastest-growing fintechs earlier this month. Over the summer, the company announced that it had created anonymous behavioral profiles for more than 150 million individual online banking users, and now analyzes more than one billion digital sessions a month in real-time.

Learn more about BioCatch in our June profile, COVID-19 and the Fight Against Cyberfraud.

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Crypterium Makes Crypto Virtual; ndgit and Entersekt Partner on Open Banking

Crypterium Makes Crypto Virtual; ndgit and Entersekt Partner on Open Banking
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Crypterium, Entersekt, Finovate Global, NDGIT

Crypterium Launches Virtual Card

Earlier this month at FinovateFall Digital, it was heartening to hear a number of fintech founders and CEOs highlight the blockchain and cryptocurrencies among the technologies they are most excited about in 2021. While a number of other enabling technologies such as AI and machine learning are in the spotlight right now and others, such as 5G and the IoT are waiting impatiently in the wings, innovations in digital assets and cryptocurrencies have seemed less common in 2020 compared to years past.

That makes the news of Crypterium’s new virtual card – and Apple Pay compatibility – all the more welcome for those who believe the best days for cryptocurrencies are still to come. The Estonia-based company, founded in 2017 and making its Finovate debut one year later, announced this week the availability of its new Crypterium Virtual Visa Card. The new free option gives users the ability to chose between a physical, plastic card, a virtual card, or both, and enables them to make all their contactless purchases with the convenience of a single virtual card on their mobile device. Cardholders can load their cards daily from €2 to €5,000, and have immediate access to their funds.

The company noted that it plans to enable users to integrate their virtual card with Google Pay as well. A timeline for this update was not specified.

Crypterium helps make cryptocurrencies practical by enabling users to load their digital wallets – and now their virtual cards as well – with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin, and use those cryptocurrencies to transact with more than 42 million retailers. The company has 500,000 users worldwide, operates in more than 180 countries, and has processed more than 50 million payments.

Entersekt and ndgit Partner to Boost Open Banking

A partnership between two Munich, Germany-based firms – identity verification innovator Entersekt and open banking platform provider ndgit – will make Entersekt’s authentication and smart messaging solutions available on ndgit’s Marketplace. The marketplace offers a curated environment for financial services companies to access a variety of fintech solutions.

Entersekt partners with banks and other enterprises around the world to fast-track their digital enablement journeys, helping them respond to changing consumer preferences while meeting their compliance obligations with confidence,” Central Europe country manager for Entersekt Uwe Hartel said. “We are proud to join forces with ndgit, which has a very similar outlook. Together, we can drive innovation in open banking, securely.”

More than 30 banks and businesses around the world use ndgit’s API platform to digitize their operations and take advantage of the opportunities in open banking. In 2017, the company implemented the first open banking system for Switzerland, earning the Euro Finance Tech Award that year for best fintech bank partnership. At ndgit’s most recent Finovate appearance at FinovateEurope last year, the company demonstrated how its platform powered a PSD2-enabled digital loan application with minimal data entry and a fully secure risk profile.

Here is our look at fintech around the world.

Asia-Pacific

  • Hong Kong-based financial infrastructure company Airwallex secures an additional $40 million in an extended Series D round.
  • PayMongo, a Philippines-based online payment platform, announces a $12 million Series A round led by Stripe.
  • South Korea’s Kakao Pay plans to be the first mobile payment fintech in the country to go pubic.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Will South African banks make paper checks a thing of the past?
  • Vodacom Tanzania opens its M-Pesa API to encourage developers to build new use cases for its mobile payment service.
  • Nigeria’s Jumia teams up with Airtel Kenya to enable consumers to make online transactions using Airtel Money.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Germany fintech Deposit Solutions goes live in the U.S. with its savings portal SaveBetter.com.
  • Romanian card processing firm Romcard / Supercard (formerly Wirecard Romania) is acquired by Portuguese payments company SIBS.
  • Polish ecommerce platform Allegro earns valuation of $11.2 billion in Warsaw’s biggest IPO to date.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • National Bank of Bahrain introduces its Tap & Go contactless payment service at POS terminals and cards.
  • The Fintech Times features Noha Shaker, founder and Secretary-General of the Egyptian Fintech Association as part of its MENA Women in Fintech Series.
  • Are banks stifling fintech innovation in Israel’s financial services industry? Crowdfund Insider reviews concerns from the country’s Competition Authority.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Quartz takes a look at Amazon’s interest in the mobile payments market in India.
  • Pakistan-based fintech and logistics hybrid PostEx secures “six-figure, pre-seed investment” from angel investor Farhan Abbas Sheikh.
  • HatchX, the first fintech accelerator in Sri Lanka, showcases seven startups that are building insurance, payments, and credit solutions.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Facial recognition technology from FacePhi is helping senior citizens in Argentina collect their pensions without fear of fraud.
  • Euromoney looks at the potential impact of Chile’s new financial portability law on the country’s digital banking industry.
  • Argentina’s Ualá, a mobile payments startup backed by George Soros and Steve Cohen, goes live in Mexico.

Photo by Erik Karits from Pexels

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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.

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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.

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