Author: David Penn

Making the Cost of Compliance Work for You and Against the Fraudsters

Making the Cost of Compliance Work for You and Against the Fraudsters
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2020

The West won the Cold War, says conventional thinking, not via open confrontation, but by making the cost of competition prohibitively high for its adversary. Some of the brightest minds in the digital identity business believe that a similar approach is key to undermining the ability of criminals to profit from cyberfraud.

“Eliminating all fraudulent accounts is an admirable goal, but perhaps unattainable,” wrote Cameron D’Ambrosi, Principal, One World Identity, and an upcoming participant in our FinovateFall Digital Future Financial Crime roundtable. “Making it more expensive to create a fraudulent account than the profit generated by a fraudulent account is … achievable. It will go the farthest towards meeting the goals of trust and growth teams alike.”

In a blog post earlier this year, D’Ambrosi put the case for digital identity in the context of the current global health crisis, seeing COVID-19 – and the social and economic response to it – as an accelerant of trends that had been in place before the onset of the coronavirus.

As D’Amborsi explains, in a world in which individuals are increasingly accessing an ever-growing array of digital platforms – on their own or under the influence of algorithms – distinguishing authentic users from digital-created fakes and imposters – is critical to a 21st century online experience that can be trusted. This challenge will be all the more intense because of the incentive brands and businesses will have to “go viral” and spread their content as widely as possible. Ensuring that customers are not conned by brands that are scams and that merchants are not fooled by customer-impersonating bots is a key task for digital identity companies today.

On the issue of digital identity and financial crime, Jas Randhawa, Chief Compliance Officer for Stripe has underscored the rise and challenge of “newer fraud typologies” and opportunities for fraud in the current, COVID-19 environment. He has also observed that the renewed volatility of the stock market during the global pandemic unfortunately has also provided fertile ground for fraudsters. Add to this the powerful incentive for merchants and other businesses to “go digital” in response to lockdowns and work-from-home, and the result is additional pressure on the ability of the identity management infrastructure – for institutions and individuals alike- to determine real, legitimate actors from fake or malevolent ones.

Randhawa will also join our FinovateFall Digital conversation on Future Financial Crime this September. A 14-year veteran of financial crimes and compliance management – including six years with PwC – and a certified anti-money laundering specialist, Randhawa has emphasized three general themes from his experience in compliance: de-siloing decision-making, embracing technology, and understanding the cyclic nature of identifying problems, developing solutions, innovating as new challenges arise – and then starting the whole process over again.

Randhawa’s example of Stripe is interesting, given that the company is a digital-first entity. While that shielded the firm from having to digitize in the middle of a pandemic, the company was faced with the task of securely onboarding a surge of businesses who had suddenly made the decision to pursue digitalization. Moreover, the company needed to thread the needle of keeping bad actors off the platform while not being so restrictive as to undermine its own goal of “growing the GDP of the Internet.”

For Randhawa the current circumstance likely represents a New Normal as far as the innovation cycle in compliance is concerned. “We’ll have to keep whacking away at this problem,” he said during an online panel earlier this year, Real Identity Validation in a Digital World, sponsored by One World Identity. He emphasized that creativity will be required in order to achieve an experience that is simultaneously the most seamless and the most secure.

Among the companies helping businesses and individuals cope with the new requirements of the New Normal are firms like Jumio and SheerID. Both companies are innovators in the digital identity management space, both Finovate alums, and both portfolio companies of venture capital firm Centana Growth Partners. Founded in 2015, Centana considers authentication and identity technology companies among its core competencies and the firm’s co-founder Eric Byunn will also join our conversation on Future Financial Crime next month.

“Authentication is of critical importance to a broad range of online and mobile applications across industries such as financial services, e-commerce, travel, and the entire sharing economy,” Byunn said four years ago when Centana acquired Jumio, making a statement that is all the more true today. He called identity “top-of-mind for companies” last fall when SheerID was named to the Deloitte Technology Fast 500.

Centana also has a more direct commitment to financial crime fighting than just its investments in digital identity innovators. The VC firm is also a backer of SpyCloud, a Finovate Best of Show winning startup that specializes combating account takeover (ATO) fraud and recovering stolen credentials from the online criminal underworld or “dark web.” SpyCloud raised $30 million in funding earlier this week in a round led by Centana and featuring the participation of Microsoft’s venture capital fund, M12, as well as Altos Ventures, Silverton Partners, and March Capital Partners.

“SpyCloud’s approach to fraud prevention is helping businesses protect themselves and their customers at a time when threats are more pervasive than we’ve ever seen,” Byunn said when the funding was announced. “We heard from major financial institutions and a wide range of enterprises that SpyCloud’s solutions are critically important to their anti-fraud efforts.”

The fact that VC firms continue to plow money into companies that fight cybercrime – either directly like SpyCloud or indirectly by enhancing the identity management infrastructures we rely on – is a positive sign in and of itself. But in the context of winning the arms race against technology-savvy criminal adversaries, it’s a welcome indication that the money is flowing in an area where the challenge appears never-ending.

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CredoLab Locks in $7 Million in New Investment

CredoLab Locks in $7 Million in New Investment
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: CredoLab, Funding

Alternative credit scoring innovator CredoLab announced a new $7 million investment today. The Series A round was led by identity data specialist GBG, a company that entered a technology partnership with CredoLab back in June and is now taking a minority stake in the Singapore-based firm. CredoLab plans to use the additional capital to fuel expansion in markets in Asia, Latin America, Europe, and Africa.

Founded in 2016, CredoLab made its Finovate debut at our Asian conference in 2018. At the event, the company demonstrated its proprietary CredoScore which converts digital footprints into highly predictive scores that can be used by banks and lenders to guide credit decisioning. The company’s technology examines mobile device data – collected after securing the user’s permission – and leverages AI-based algorithms to analyze 50,000+ data points to, as the company puts it, “connect the dots that traditional credit scoring methods can’t.”

GBG Group uses Credo’s technology to bolster its own antifraud platform’s ability to determine creditworthiness during the onboarding process. GBG Chief Executive Chris Clark praised the way Credo’s risk scoring will help it better serve “good customers who are financially excluded” – especially by lowering false positives.

In addition to its partnership with GBG, CredoLab teamed up with GoBear and fellow Finovate alum Mambu in June to help the financial platform expand to the Philippines. The previous month, CredoLab was highlighted by Fintechnews Singapore in its look at fintechs in SE Asia that are making a difference when it comes to financial inclusion. The company this year has also worked with LenDenClub, among the fastest-growing P2P lending platforms in India, and collaborated with Salary Dost – also based in India – to help the lending platform enhance its underwriting process.

A winner in the ASEAN Open category of the SFF x SWITCH Fintech Awards last year, CredoLab was recognized in January as Indonesia’s first credit scoring company. Since inception, CredoLab has powered more than $2 billion in loans issued, analyzing more than one trillion data points across 21 countries. Peter Barcak is co-founder and CEO.

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Why a Lack of Diversity in Fintech Poses an Existential Threat

Why a Lack of Diversity in Fintech Poses an Existential Threat
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Diversity in Fintech, Guest Post

This is a guest post written by Philippa Ushio and Hal Bienstock of Prosek Partners.

In an extremely uncertain business environment, there are two things that almost every expert agrees to be true:

  1. The most innovative companies are likely to come out ahead when the COVID-19 crisis comes to an end
  2. Diverse leadership teams are more innovative and generate better business results 

So, why is it that venture capitalists – the very people tasked with funding innovation – are so monolithic? According to a report from Richard Kerby of Equal Ventures, just three percent of VC employees in 2018 were Black and only one percent were Hispanic. Eighteen percent are women.

The numbers for fintechs tell a similar story. According to research from Oliver Wyman, women represent just 14% of fintech boards, compared with 23% in the banking sector. The consulting firm found that 39% of fintechs it studied had no women on their board at all. 

Now consider that McKinsey’s Delivering Through Diversity Report found that companies in the top-quartile for ethnic/cultural diversity on executive teams were 33% more likely to have industry-leading profitability. And research from Boston Consulting Group found that companies with more diverse management teams have 19% higher revenues due to innovation. Clearly, there’s a disconnect.

That said,  we can agree that not all talk about diversity and serving underserved populations is just lip service; many fintechs are in fact delivering on their missions. Facilitating access to PPP is a good example, with loan marketplaces like Lendio, Fundera and Nav having all been credited with reacting quickly to help small businesses during the first round of government support. And many neo-banks and earned wage access providers are helping low-income workers achieve financial wellness during a period of great economic uncertainty. Pandemic aside, there is no doubt that it is easier today than it was 10 years ago for businesses and individuals to get reasonably priced short-term credit, specialized financial advice, and avoid high percentage loans, among other things. Yet, for all the good fintechs are doing, it’s impossible not to think about the problems that founders haven’t begun to even consider – let alone solve – because they don’t have people on their teams who are actually living with these issues.

In addition to the disturbing lack of ethnic and gender diversity at VC firms, Richard Kerby found that 40% of VC employees went to one of just two schools – Stanford or Harvard. How many of them grew up unable to afford an unexpected $400 expense, like 40% of Americans? Or with parents running small businesses that lived or died based on what was in the cash register at the end of the day?

Over the past decade, fintechs have done a lot to help small and medium businesses. But there’s an opportunity to do so much more and there has never been a more important time than now as so many face the reality of shutting their doors in the wake of the pandemic. 

If founders and VC firms continue to ignore the benefits that diversity in leadership bring, it won’t be long before the disruptors find themselves disrupted by those who are more innovative, more thoughtful about the problems they are trying to solve, and more able to reach a customer base that consists of far more than just Harvard and Stanford grads. 

The good news is that things are changing. Many fintechs and VC firms put out strong statements of support following recent racial justice protests and committed themselves to taking measurable action to diversify. Only by living up to these ideals can the current fintech wave continue to build. Let’s watch this space.

Philippa Ushio is SVP at Prosek Partners where she leads teams in developing communications strategies and mounting multi-disciplinary campaigns to protect and enhance business value. Throughout her career, she has provided strategic counsel to clients facing a wide variety of complex issues, focusing particularly on their communications challenges. 

Hal Bienstock is a Managing Director at Prosek Partners. A fintech specialist, he has spent more than 20 years working as a brand strategist and corporate communications executive. He has extensive experience counseling C-suite leaders and developing integrated campaigns that change perceptions internally and externally. 

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon from Pexels

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Urban FT Helps Banks Bridge Fintech’s Infrastructure Gap

Urban FT Helps Banks Bridge Fintech’s Infrastructure Gap
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Urban FT

Urban FT’s newly-launched X-35 FinTech Core will enable financial institutions to centralize their fintech infrastructure into a singular hub that sits beside and is connected to the bank’s existing core or payment processor. The API-based, developer-friendly technology helps FIs create and deploy new, innovative solutions to their customers faster and at significantly less expense.

Urban FT sees the new offering as a tool to help smaller and mid-sized FIs maximize their engagement with their customers via more personalized products and services. Company CEO Richard Steggall said in a statement that providing these resources to banks was not just a matter of helping them keep up with the larger competition, but also was designed to empower them to “leap frog the competition entirely.”

“We founded Urban FT with the vision of giving our clients the means to dream big and deliver exceptional, and that’s exactly what X-35 does,” Steggall explained. He compared his company’s approach to providing “an Amazon Web Services for FIs” enabling them to leverage Urban FT’s R&D team on a continuous basis. “FIs can digitize nearly every interaction they have with their customers while significantly compressing the number of implementations, systems, and platforms they need to outpace the competition.”

Urban FT’s new solution is geared toward bridging the gap between the dreams of open banking and the reality of a fintech infrastructure that is not yet capable of maximizing this opportunity. By contrast, Urban FT’s offering relies on a cloud-based, serverless, microservice architecture that supports continuous innovation, seamless updates, and greater operational efficiencies in a scalable environment. “It makes the ‘impossible’ possible by providing both the foundation and the plumbing that realize the vision that many have tried but few have been able to deliver on,” said Urban FT board member and former Citibank Managing Director Aditya Menon.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in New York City, Urban FT made its Finovate debut in 2015. A member of the Inc. 5,000, Urban FT has more than 500 financial institution clients, and processes more than $18 billion in transactions a year. The company has raised more than $15 million in funding.

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Cybersecurity Innovator SpyCloud Secures $30 Million

Cybersecurity Innovator SpyCloud Secures $30 Million
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, SpyCloud

Account takeover (ATO) prevention specialist SpyCloud locked in $30 million in Series C funding today. The round, led by Centana Growth Partners, featured participation from all of the company’s existing investors, a list that includes Altos Ventures, March Capital Partners, Silverton Partners and M12, Microsoft’s venture capital fund. This week’s funding takes SpyCloud’s total capital to $58.5 million.

“Criminals work together to steal information and find creative ways to monetize it. As a result, even the most careful and sophisticated organizations are vulnerable,” SpyCloud CEO and co-founder Ted Ross said. “SpyCloud will continue to pursue new and innovative ways to stay ahead of criminals and provide solutions that make the internet a safer place for individuals and businesses.”

SpyCloud made its Finovate debut in the fall of 2017, earning a Best of Show award for its exposed credential monitoring and alert service. The company, based in Austin, Texas, finds and recovers stolen and compromised assets that are actively trading on the digital underground, capturing 40 million exposed assets a week using techniques that go beyond web crawlers and other automated solutions.

This spring, SpyCloud partnered with security operations platform ThreatConnect, integrating its database with two of ThreatConnect’s offerings. More recently, the company teamed up with third party risk management platform Privva, and worked with MENA-based information security valued added distributor Spire Solutions,

One of the more interesting partnerships SpyCloud announced this year was a collaboration with Zero Trafficking, a company that provides solutions to combat human trafficking. Taking advantage of the fact that the bad guys are as likely to suffer from the same data breaches and stolen credentials as everyone else, SpyCloud has leveraged its technology to help Zero Trafficking round them up.

“Billions of data assets per year are exposed in breaches, including assets belonging to criminals,” SpyCloud Head of Investigations Jason Lancaster explained. “By drawing on the 100+ billion assets SpyCloud has recovered from third-party breaches, Zero Trafficking can piece together criminals’ digital breadcrumbs to uncover the identities of specific adversaries engaging in human trafficking activity.”

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Robinhood Gains $11.2 Billion Valuation on Latest $200 Million Fundraising

Robinhood Gains $11.2 Billion Valuation on Latest $200 Million Fundraising
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding

The aptly-named stock trading app Robinhood continues to show that it is as good at taking money from the rich as it is in bringing investment opportunity to the masses. The company announced on Monday that it has raised $200 million in new funding in a Series G round featuring D1 Capital Partners. This latest funding comes less than a month after the Robinhood closed a Series F round that was topped off with a $320 million investment, and takes the company’s valuation to $11.2 billion.

“For seven years, the team at Robinhood has been focused on enabling more access to the markets for more people,” the company’s blog read Monday morning. “With this funding, we’ll continue to invest in improving our core product and customer experience.”

Believe it or not, Robinhood has been busy between its last multi-million dollar fundraising less than 30 days ago and this one. Earning certification as a Great Place to Work in the U.S. in July, Robinhood hired Christina Smedley as Chief Marketing Officer early this month and, also in July ,unveiled a new visual identity. Last week, ahead of today’s fundraising announcement, the company revealed plans to “hire hundreds of additional registered financial representatives in both Texas and Arizona this year.

“Supporting and communicating with our customers – both those new to investing and those with more experience – is a critical part of our responsibility to them,” Head of Customer Experience at Robinhood Alex Mesa said. “We’ve more than doubled our support team since January and we’ll continue to grow our teams to provide timely, helpful responses to our customers.”

With its commission-free trading and investing platform, fractional share availability, and Millennial, mobile-first mindset, Robinhood has become a major influence in the retail brokerage business. Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the company has more than 13 million traders and investors on its platform.

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It’s Official: American Express to Acquire Kabbage

It’s Official: American Express to Acquire Kabbage
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: American Express, Kabbage, Mergers & Acquisitions

The big card companies continue to make the kind of deals that underscore the importance of fintech to the future of financial services. This week we get confirmation that international payments giant American Express has agreed to acquire SME lender Kabbage.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Speculation on the deal in recent days has put the purchase price between $850 million and $1 billion.

The acquisition will include Kabbage’s team, its suite of financial technology solutions, as well as the company’s data platform and IP built for small businesses. American Express also plans to leverage Kabbage’s technology and talent to offer additional cash flow management and working capital solutions to its small business customers. In the acquisition announcement, American Express highlighted Kabbage’s recently introduced business checking account, which centralizes funds for easier cash flow management.

“This acquisition accelerates our plans to offer U.S. small businesses an easy and efficient way to manage their payments and cash flow digitally in one place, which is more critical than ever in today’s environment,” President of Global Commercial Services at American Express Anna Marrs said.

A Finovate alum for more than a decade, Kabbage has raised $2.5 billion in funding, with the company’s last equity round closing in 2017 after raising $250 million. This year, in addition to the launch of its business checking account, Kabbage distinguished itself as a major conduit for small businesses seeking COVID-19 related relief funding. The company said it has facilitated 300,000 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans valued at more than $7 billion. Kabbage’s participation in the program was a dramatic return to its role as a resource for small business financing after the company suspended SME lending in April in response to the global health crisis.

“At Kabbage, we have always made the success of America’s small businesses our primary objective,” Kabbage CEO and co-founder Rob Frohwein said in a statement. “We have built a technology and a data platform that provides them with the kind of capabilities and insights often reserved for larger businesses. By joining American Express, we can help more small businesses succeed with a fully digital suite of financial products to help them run and grow their companies.”

As part of the agreement, both Kabbage’s securitized SME loans and its PPP laons will be serviced by an separate entity to be established by Kabbage and American Express, the Financial Times reported.

American Express’ purchase of Kabbage comes less than a month after another big acquisition in the online SME lending space: Enova International’s $90 million deal for OnDeck. For both companies, the acquisitions provide the opportunity to expand meaningfully beyond their core competencies: Enova adding to its consumer lending operations, and AMEX bringing working capital and SME financing to its commercial card business.

The acquisition is expected to close later in 2020.

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Alliance in the Americas: Constellation Software Acquires Infocorp

Alliance in the Americas: Constellation Software Acquires Infocorp
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finastra, Finovate Global, InfoCorp

The decision by Canada’s Constellation Software to acquire Uruguayan technology firm – and Finovate alum – Infocorp earlier this year is a reminder of the vibrancy of the fintech ecosystems thriving in the countries to the north and south of the U.S. The acquisition was completed in June via Constellation Software’s U.S.-based subsidiary Aquila.

“We have been looking for a partner to support us as we move to our next level of experience for our clients,” InfoCorp CEO Ana Inex Echavarren said. “We are excited to join Aquila and the Constellation family as they believe in long-term relationships, and the ‘buy and hold forever’ approach supports us in our focus on long term growth with our clients.”

Montevideo-based InfoCorp offers its customers an omnichannel banking platform that leverages the latest advanced technologies – conversational AI, machine learning, voice recognition, and chatbots – to build solutions to better engage and serve financial services customers. With clients such as Banco Santander, Banco de Bogota, Banco Internacional, and Towerbank, the 25+ year old company made its Finovate debut in 2017, demonstrating its marketing and commercial actions orchestrator platform that enables more agile, personalized, marketing campaigns that lead to higher conversion rates and ROI.

“InfoCorp has an inspiring focus on their clients,” Aquila CEO Mike Byrne said. “To produce solutions that connect the banks with their clients is such a deep passion for the team at InfoCorp. We are really looking forward to working with the group.” Operations at InfoCorp will remain the same, post-acquisition, with Echavarren continuing as CEO and the company keeping its client portfolio and offices. InfoCorp has 250+ workers in its development and innovation centers in Santiago de Chile, Montevideo, and Colonia.

In fact, the company announced last month that it is looking to expand into both Mexico and Argentina in the wake of the acquisition, with potential expansion to Europe, Canada, and the U.S., as well. Echavarren told BNamericas that the company is currently growing at a rate of 40% to 50% a year over the past five years and is looking at investments to power Infocorp’s ability to enter bigger markets.

The fintech ecosystem in Uruguay is often overlooked compared to the fintech industries in other Latin American nations such as Mexico and Brazil – both of which Uruguay borders. With a population of approximately three and a half million, the country is the second smallest in South America and gets high marks on a number of metrics including democracy, low perception of corruption, and e-government. Uruguay is regarded as a “high-income country” by the United Nations.

In its look at fintech in Uruguay, Contxto highlighted a baker’s dozen of companies that are not only growing regionally, but moving closer to expansion worldwide. The feature divides the country’s fintech industry into five components: payments, exchange, open banking, investments, and what it calls “fintech enterprise services (FES).” This primarily involves providing fintech solutions to online financial services companies.

Here is our look at fintech around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • A partnership with Standard Chartered Bank will enable Airtel Africa to build its fintech business and help support financial inclusion.
  • South African digital banking platform provider Ukheshe earns finalist spot in the 2020 Ecobank Fintech Challenge.
  • ThisDayLive features VC investor Ameya Upadhyay on the challenge of startup development in Africa.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Fintech Futures takes a look at financial inclusion in Russia.
  • Poland’s mPay teams up with iDenfy to bring biometric facial recognition and other identity verification technologies to its mobile payments platform.
  • Romania’s PayByFace brings its biometric facial recognition technology to Up Romania cardholders, enabling biometric purchases as participating stores and restaurants.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • CIH Bank of Morocco partners with Finastra for a remote implementation of the company’s Fusion Corporate Channels and Fusion Trade Innovation systems.
  • Cairo, Egypt-based payments-as-a-service fintech Paymob raises $3.5 million in funding.
  • National Bank of Oman enables cardless ATM transactions.

Central and Southern Asia

  • MEDICI featured Indian regtech startup Signzy in its RegTech Top 21 Startups for 2020 roster. Signzy is the only Indian regtech to make the list.
  • Reserve Bank of India announces offline digital payments pilot project.
  • JCB International and PJSCB Orient Finans initiate merchant acquiring operations in Uzbekistan.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Mexican lending platform Creze raises $12 million.
  • Rapyd partners with PayMyTuition to boost the company’s ability to accept bank transfer-based payments from countries in Latin America and the Asia Pacific region.
  • WorldRemit teams up with a pair of Mexican neobanks, albo and Klar.

Asia-Pacific

  • Ayoconnect, a billpay network based in Indonesia, raises $5 million in pre-Series B funding.
  • Southeast Asian fintech TrueMoney teams up with cross-border payments firm Thunes to expand its remittance business.
  • Vietnamese digital banking platform Timo announces new partnership with Viet Capital Bank.

Top image designed by Freepik

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Facebook Launches New Payments Group: Facebook Financial

Facebook Launches New Payments Group: Facebook Financial
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news

Led by David Marcus, co-creator of Facebook’s cryptocurrency project Libra, Facebook Financial is the social media giant’s latest effort to enhance the company’s payments initiatives.

Facebook has not made an official announcement about Facebook Financial – referred to internally as F2. Reporting at both MarketWatch and Bloomberg suggests that the new unit will also feature Stephane Kasriel as payments vice president. Kasriel comes to the project from Upwork, where he was CEO. Marcus currently runs Novi, a division of Facebook that is developing a digital wallet for Libra, and will continue in that capacity as Novi moves under the F2 umbrella.

“We have a lot of commerce stuff going on across Facebook,” Marcus told Bloomberg earlier this week. “It felt like it was the right thing to do to rationalize the strategy at a company level around all things payments.” Notably, Marcus has significant payments experience, having been PayPal president from 2012-2014.

Facebook Financial will also handle WhatsApp Pay, recently launched in Brazil, and Facebook Pay, the social media platform’s e-commerce payment system. Engadget’s reporting on the conversation surrounding the new division noted that Facebook sees unifying payments on its different platforms as key to boosting value for advertisers and increasing in-app transactions.

The discussion over Facebook Financial comes just a week after the firm announced another e-commerce-friendly initiative: a Commerce Accelerator that will partner with 60 startups from countries in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America to help build out Facebook’s online marketplace.

“In this critical time, Facebook is doubling down on commerce and accelerating its work to enable every business to sell online and help people gain inspiration and discover and buy the products they love. We can’t achieve this alone,” the company announced in a blog post, “so we are looking for startups to build technology with us.”

Zuckerberg himself has praised the role of payments in Facebook’s future. In a recent earnings call, the Facebook CEO noted that “as payments grow across Messenger and WhatsApp, and as we’re able to roll that out in more places, I think that that will only grow as a trend.”

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Top Ten Fintech Hires of 2020 … So Far

Top Ten Fintech Hires of 2020 … So Far
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Dwolla, List series, MasterCard, Signicat

This week’s announcement that Stripe had hired former General Motors Chief Financial Officer Dhivya Suryadevara as its own new CFO is a reminder that the hunt for top talent in fintech has never been hotter. As tech titians and financial services giants embrace fintech solutions, the pressure to find the most effective leaders, the most insightful technologists, and other key executives is forcing companies to up their game when it comes to attracting the best of the best.

With that in mind, here are another nine companies who in 2020 have done just that: made a major, C-suite addition to their leadership ranks that should help propel their respective companies to the next level.

Nicolas Weng Kan – Yolt CEO – news. Former Google Compare CEO Kan took the helm of ING’s smart money app, Yolt, as well as Yolt Technology Services (YTS), a provider of open banking services in Europe last month. Yolt won Best Personal Finance App at the Wealth & Finance FinTech Awards earlier this month.

Anna Manz – London Stock Exchange CFO – news. The London Stock Exchange has a new Chief Financial Officer as former Johnson Matthey CFO and executive director Anna Manz succeeds David Warren, who had held the position since 2012. Prior to her time at Johnson Matthey, Manz spent more than 16 years in executive roles with Diageo.

Lucy Hagues – Capital One UK CEO – news. Hagues, who spent three years as Chief Marketing Officer at Capital One UK and is an alum of the firm’s graduate program, replaced outgoing CEO Amy Lenander. Hagues is the first program graduate to reach the CEO’s office.

Nkihil Rathi – Financial Conduct Authority CEO – news. Appointed CEO of the FCA at the age of 40, U.K. head of the London Stock Exchange Rathi is the first member of an ethnic minority to lead the regulatory body.

Steven van Rijswijk – ING CEO – news. ING Chief Risk Officer Steven van Rijswijk is the company’s latest CEO. He took over for outgoing Ralph Hamers who is headed toward a CEO post at UBS. Van Rijswijk’s promotion comes after 25 years of service at the bank.

Brady Harris – Dwolla CEO – news. Former President of payment solution provider Payscape, Harris was tapped by Dwolla founder Ben Milne to lead the company this spring. Milne praised Harris for helping lead Payscape’s merger with Payroc, “creating a full-service payment powerhouse that operates in 46 countries.”

Michael Miebach – Mastercard CEO – news. “Putting products first” might be one way to describe Mastercard’s decision to replace its outgoing CEO Ajay Banga – who is transitioning to the role of executive chairman – with the company’s chief product officer Michael Miebach. A 10-year Mastercard veteran, Mieback is credited for being a “key architect” of the company’s “multi-rail strategy.”

Hironori Kamezawa – MUFG CEO – news. The appointment of Kamezawa as Chief Executive Officer of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group was a bit surprising, insofar as the outgoing CEO has only been in place for a year. But observers speculated that Kamezawa’s leadership will likely mean a broader and more aggressive embrace of fintech by the company.

Asger Hattel – Signicat CEO – news. A new year, a new CEO for the Denmark-based digital identity solution provider as former CEO and Head of Nets Merchant Services Asger Hattel took leadership of Signicat in January. Hattel replaces company co-founder Gunnar Nordseth, who will remain as a shareholder and help support business development.

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Women in Fintech: Dhivya Suryadevara Named New Stripe CFO

Women in Fintech: Dhivya Suryadevara Named New Stripe CFO
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Women in Fintech

In the latest example of the New Economy leveraging the best of the Old Economy, online payments innovator Stripe (founded 2010) announced that it has hired Dhivya Suryadevara as its new Chief Financial Officer. Suryadevara will leave her position as CFO for General Motors, a company that was founded in 1908.

“Dhivya is a rare leader who has run an industry-leading leviathan but also gets excited about enabling the brand-new products and the yet-to-be invented products, too,” Stripe co-founder John Collison said in a statement. “She has the expertise and the instincts to help steer Stripe through our growth in the years ahead.”

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More than just the corporation’s most recent CFO, Suryadevara was a long-time General Motors veteran. She joined the company’s Treasurer’s Office as a Senior Financial Analyst in 2004, and became the Chief Investment Officer and CEO of GM Asset Management by 2013. Appointed Vice President of Corporate Finance for General Motors in 2017, she was named CFO a year later. Suryadevara was educated at the University of Madras and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.

As CFO for General Motors, Suryadevara oversaw financial operations involving more than $100 billion in annual revenue. She was credited for providing leadership in capital allocation decision-making, and for “spearheading numerous strategic transactions for the company.”

“I am very excited to join Stripe at a pivotal time for the company,” Suryadevara said. “Stripe’s mission to increase the GDP of the internet is more important now than ever.” She emphasized her enjoyment of “leading complex, large-scale businesses” adding that she hopes to “accelerate Stripe’s already steep growth trajectory.”

News of the new CFO encouraged some speculation that Stripe may be readying for an initial public offering. Company co-founder John Collison had said this is not the case.

Suryadevara’s hire comes shortly after Stripe made another major appointment: bringing on Mike Clayville as Chief Revenue Officer. Clayville arrives at the company having served as Vice President of Worldwide Commercial Sales and Business Development at Amazon Web Services (AWS).

In other recent Stripe news, the company announced that it was expanding its partnership with Jobber, a home service management provider that will leverage Stripe Capital to help its partner businesses get the financing they need to grow. Last month, Stripe teamed up with Irish online marketplace DoneDeal, enabling sellers on the platform to use Stripe for secure, contactless transactions.

San Francisco, California-based Stripe has raised $1.6 billion in funding, including $600 million announced in April as part of a Series G round that began last fall.

Photo by Kelly Lacy from Pexels

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Get Wise: Business Banking Gains a New Challenger

Get Wise: Business Banking Gains a New Challenger
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, Wise

Whatever benefits the challenger bank revolution may bring to retail banking customers, the opportunities these neobanks provide to small businesses may be even more significant. In fact, there is a growing cadre of digital-first challengers who have decided to put innovating on behalf of small business banking at the top of their priorities.

One such company is Wise, a BBVA-backed challenger based in San Mateo, California, that announced the release of its premium checking account in the U.S. this week. The new offering, available for $10 a month, enables businesses to earn up to 1% APY on deposits through a combination of a 0.5% base APY and an additional 0.1% for every $1,000 purchase using a Wise debit card. Accountholders get 25 free ACH deposits and 25 free outgoing bank transfers a month, as well as additional payments services. Among the functionalities to be added are remote check deposit, the ability to send digital checks and international wires, and support for Quickbooks.

The new offering comes in the wake of the company’s first major fundraising: a $5.7 million seed round in April led by Base10 Partners and featuring the participation of several other investors including Abstract Ventures and Backend Capital. The company told TechCrunch earlier this year that it has 1,000 business customers, with average workforces ranging from 2 to 10 employees, and “between $500,000 and $5 million in ARR (annual recurring revenue).”

Finovate audiences met Wise last year when the company made its Finovate debut at our September conference in New York. At the event, Wise co-founders Arjun Thyagarajan (CEO) and Suresh Venkatraman (CTO) demonstrated the company’s “small business banking-in-a-box” solution, and previewed additional products and services for small businesses including payments and invoicing.

From left: Wise co-founders Arjun Thyagarajan (CEO) and Suresh Venkatraman (CTO) at FinovateFall 2019.

Thyagarajan founded Wise after a stint managing product for Mojio, a platform for connected cars. Before that he was a classic serial entrepreneur, launching a personal organizer (LivingOrganized), and a pair of password management platforms (TeamsID and Gpass). But a sense that he wasn’t “doing what I really wanted to do” led him to leave the “hot startup” in search of what he called “problems that needed solving.”

“My explorations led me to FinTech and I was pleasantly surprised with the rapid advancements in technology transforming the financial industry, especially in banking and payments,” Thyagarajan wrote on the company blog last summer, looking back on his decision to launch Wise. “It got me thinking: what if we could build a banking product that can deliver on the promise of putting the customer first … And solving real world problems.”

Thyagarajan’s reflections are similar to those his co-founder Venkatraman, who in a companion post observed that Wise’s own experience as a small business trying to secure quality banking services was vindication of the company’s mission.

“The day started innocently enough as we walked into a local bank with all our paperwork in hand,” he wrote. “That was the beginning of a chase around Silicon Valley to find a bank that would take our money and open up an account. Banks would reject us for all sorts of reasons or just ignore us.”

These days, with an new offering, a big investment and a major banking partner in BBVA in hand, it looks like the fintech world might be ready to wise up.

Photo by Jean van der Meulen from Pexels

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