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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Whether you believe our climbing stock markets around the world are a result of massive, coronavirus-fighting monetary and fiscal stimulus, or merely Millennials easing into their family formation years, there’s no doubting the demand for solutions that help investors maximize the opportunities of advancing markets.
This makes the news that Barclays has launched a new digital wealth management service – Barclays Plan and Invest – all the more timely. It also makes the fact that they’ve partnered with Finovate alum Scalable Capital to launch the new service all the more interesting.
“Over the last few months, we’ve seen a rise in the number of people wanting to invest for the first time and it feels more important than ever that we give people the right tools and advice to plan for their financial future,” Dirk Klee, CEO of Wealth Management and Investments at Barclays explained.
“We launched Plan & Invest after listening to our customers, who said they wanted an investment service that gave them the convenience and affordability of robo-advice, but with more of the personalization of Wealth Management.”
Barclays will pilot the new roboadvisory service with current account customers that have at least £5,000 to invest. The solution will be accessible via Online Banking, and features dedicated customer support via telephone. Barclays said that it will add to the service over the balance of the year, including adding it to the Barclays app this summer.
Customers will be able to set up their own personalized investment plans using Barclays Plan & Invest for free. They will be charged an annual fee of between 1.39% and 1.59% once accounts are established and funded; the actual amount of the annual fee is based on the value of the customer’s investments, and is divided between service and product costs.
Founded in 2014 and making its Finovate debut two years later at FinovateEurope, Scalable Capital specializes in leveraging technology to make sophisticated investment management accessible to the average investor. Headquartered in Munich, Germany, and in London, U.K., the company offers investors access to globally diversified, cost-efficient, ETF portfolios based on their individual risk preferences and investment goals.
Among the largest roboadvisors in Europe, Scalable Capital serves more than 60,000 customers and manages more than £2 billion for its clients. The company has raised €66 million in funding, and includes BlackRock, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, and Monk’s Hill Ventures, among its investors.
After nCino’s impressive initial public offering this week – the largest, one-day gain for a U.S.-based tech IPO since the Dot Com Days – everyone now will be able to name at least one Finovate alum from the great state of North Carolina.
But there’s more to Carolina fintech than nCino. Among Finovate alums alone there are at least a dozen other companies from the Tar Heel State whose innovations in and contributions to fintech are also worth noting.
nCino’s Record-Setting IPO – We previewed the initial public offering from cloud banking innovator and Finovate alum nCino a few weeks ago. Yesterday, the Wilmington, North Carolina-based company made its debut on the Nasdaq, climbing more than 150% on its first day of trading.
The one-day gain for nCino, which trades under the ticker “NCNO,” was the biggest for a U.S. tech company IPO since the dot.com days. The “exponentially oversubscribed” offering was priced at $31 on Monday, above two previous, lower price ranges, and nCino sold just over eight million shares to raise $250 million. The pricing gave the company a diluted market capitalization of $3 billion.
MaxMyInterest Integrates with Morningstar – A new partnership between cash management solution provider MaxMyInterest and Morningstar will give financial advisors a broader range of options when it comes to delivering higher yields for their clients’ cash. Head of Morningstar ByAllAccounts David Johnson said the integration would help “solve the problem of zero-interest rates on cash or cash-like balances for investors.”
The initial integration between MaxMyInterest and Morningstar ByAllAcounts data aggregation service will feature the ability to deliver client balance data into 40 platforms used by financial advisors for client reporting. Morningstar ByAllAccounts leverages AI technology to collect, consolidate, and enhance financial data and, regardless of platform, deliver that information to clients for a unified view of their investment holdings.
Currencycloud Readies for EU Expansion – Currencycloud has been one of our busier alums in recent weeks. The company partnered with fellow alums Ripple and Mambu in June, accessing the former’s RippleNet to better serve SMEs in underserved regions, and teaming up with the latter in an integration that will enable financial services companies to deploy virtual accounts, payments and FX services faster.
This week we learn that the U.K.-based, B2B cross-border technology company has formed a new partnership – this time with Canadian payments and FX platform Shift Connect. The company is seeking Currencycloud’s help as it expands into the U.S., Europe, and the U.K.
Currencycloud also reported this week that it has been granted an e-money license from the Dutch Central Bank. The license, only one of seven the central bank issues to non-banks, will enable the company to store money, operate e-wallets, process payments, and collections. Currencycloud will also be able to “passport” its e-money license to other countries in the E.U., ensuring its ability to continue its expansion throughout Europe. This will remain the case for the company – headquartered in London – after the Brexit transition period is over, according to Currencycloud CEO Mike Laven.
“The Netherlands possess the perfect blend of factors to support our expansion in the E.U.,” Laven said. “It has a strong fintech sector, access to top talent and a safe regulatory environment, which allows us to keep driving forward our services and product.”
Here is the latest news from our Finovate alums.
Sezzleannounces $60 million fundraising on Australian Stock Exchange, consisting of an institutional placement and a non-underwritten share purchase plan.
Backbaseexpands in the Asia-Pacific, opening offices in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia.
D1 Capital Partners invests $200 million for a 4% stake in TransferWise, sending the company’s valuation to $5 billion.
United Federal Credit Union to deploy core banking technology from Fiserv.
iProovteams up with IDV Pacific to support identity verification in Australia and New Zealand.
Nordigenfeatured in Silicon Canals’ look at top tech startups from Latvia.
NYMBUSteams up with Payrailz to enable financial institutions to access enhanced digital payment solutions.
Marqeta to power new digital wallet from Swiss fintech YAPEAL.
U.S. Secret Service to use blockchain analytics technology from Coinbase.
Today we feature a sponsored post on best practices in automation from leading open source solution provider Red Hat.
While many things have changed over the past six months, the need remains for financial services companies to increase speed and efficiency, and deliver a differentiated customer experience, all whilst complying with complex regulations and requirements.
To overcome current and future challenges, IT organizations are working to increase the flexibility of their infrastructure and operations. With security at the forefront, regulatory and compliance controls adherence requirements, digital products, and services must be efficiently developed, deployed, and managed. Often this means that infrastructure and processes require updates to support digital offerings and protect against costly security breaches and cybercrime-related risks.
An automation framework can help organizations achieve this transformation, improving agility, flexibility, and speed to adapt to changing requirements. Optimization of resources and increased efficiency to control costs allows not only innovation but also the delivery of digital customer experiences with less risk. Organizations seeking to automate infrastructure to should consider the following best practices.
Deliver Results with People, Tools, and Processes
An effective approach to automation includes people, processes, and tools.
Start with your people
All initiatives, including automation, start with people. Begin with the following actions:
Build consensus to gain cultural buy-in. Ensure a successful start to your project by building consensus among all stakeholders. Failure to do so can result in well-intentioned, but isolated activities, or the continuation of time-consuming manual activities which would reduce the benefits possible with a standardized automation approach.
Define the scope. Determine the extent of your automation and explain the strategy, IT benefits, and business benefits at both the organizational and individual job levels.
Encourage participation. Solicit technical advice from staff who will implement, administer, and use the automation technology from the start. People will avoid using a solution if they believe it to be inadequate, regardless of its actual capabilities.
Inspire collaboration. Create a culture of automation by unifying teams and technical domains for tooling that can be used by the entire organization.
Select appropriate processes
Not all processes are candidates for automation. When planning automation projects:
Be instinctive. Prioritize automation use cases that involve repeatable, time-intensive processes with predictable outcomes. If automating a process requires significant customization or is a single delivery to an external team, automation may not be at the top of this list, or even appropriate.
Focus on benefits. Automate processes that provide benefits that scale as your adoption and scope increases.
Plan for maintenance. Plan for quick and efficient ongoing maintenance of your automation activity to keep up with the business, process, and technical changes.
Choose the right tools
The right – or wrong – tools can greatly impact the success of your automation project. Look for the following capabilities:
Adaptability. Needs and services will not remain static. Choose tools that can adapt to change and prepare you for the future.
Flexibility. Use tools that can automate infrastructure and IT processes without complex configuration or customization. Find tools that easily integrate and operate with other automation and management solutions.
Simplicity. Look for tools that are easy to install, configure, manage, and maintain at scale. Analyzing and understanding the results of an automated process should be simple and straightforward.
Usability. Select tools that are easy to learn. Hard-to-use tools will not be adopted by most of your team and can result in a small, segmented group of subject matter experts.
Accessibility. Adopt tools that feature simple, human-readable syntax and graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to help users without advanced coding skills contribute to automation projects.
Automate for success with Red Hat
Red Hat helps financial services organizations move forward with higher performance and advanced automation. In a recent study*, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was shown to increase the efficiency of application environment management teams by 41%, and IT security teams by 21%.
Gain business and IT agility and speed through cross-organizational automation and collaboration.
Boost efficiency and focus on new initiatives by eliminating manual, repetitive tasks.
Innovate and deliver digital customer experiences with less risk and at a lower cost by using modern platforms that meet today’s needs and easily adapt to tomorrow’s requirements.
Nude, a U.K.-based fintech that helps prospective homebuyers save money to buy their first home, raised $4.1 million (£3.3 million) in a funding campaign waged on Seedrs. The company also managed to secure additional funding from the U.K. government’s Future Fund. Both fundings add to the $2.1 million (£1.7 million) in growth capital Nude secured last year.
“The challenges facing young people are huge, with a massive wealth imbalance, a complex financial system and little help,” Nude CEO and founder Crawford Taylor explained. “We’ve been planning, testing, and building Nude to make the financial world fairer and easier, starting with helping people buy their first home faster and easier than ever before.”
Nude combines a savings account, PFM app, and financial advisory to help homebuyers determine just how much money they will need to save for their first home by analyzing property location and type, as well as the homebuyer’s capacity to save. The app looks at the user’s overall spending to identity areas of potential savings that could be diverted towards the homebuying goal, and uncovers potential “savings boosters” such as government bonuses or savings “streaks” that can accelerate the saving process.
“We don’t think the financial world is very friendly, or easy, and it definitely doesn’t make you feel as good as you should when you’re managing to save up a house deposit,” Nude co-founder and CMO Marty Bell said. “We’re here to change that. Nude is like having a friend that’s really good with money with you, all the time.”
The company’s future plans include securing a banking license and offering mortgage products, as well as children’s accounts and retirement savings accounts.
What do mid-tier and boutique banks need in order to enhance their ability to onboard new customers quickly and efficiently? What solutions are available to enable them to remain compliant with an ever-changing set of regulations while at the same time keeping up with even faster changes in customer expectations? And how has the global health pandemic made these challenges all the more complicated for financial institutions of all sizes?
We caught up with James Follette, Head of North American Sales and Global Head of Commercial, Business, and Retail Banking with Fenergo. A Finovate alum since 2012, the Dublin, Ireland-based company specializes digital transformation, customer journey, and client lifecycle management (CLM) solutions for banks and other financial institutions.
Finovate: Fenergo secured a major investment earlier this year – the largest in the company’s history, I believe. What was the significance of this fundraising in terms of helping Fenergo reach its goals for 2020 and beyond?
James Follette: Fenergo received $80 million in funding from DXC Technology and our client, ABN AMRO at a valuation of just under $1 billion, so it was of huge significance for the business. Both firms’ pedigrees, deep experience and industry knowledge made them the ideal investment partners for Fenergo. Apart from the continuous enhancement of our product, the funding will go towards recruitment and growth initiatives.
Finovate: The company just released a cloud-based version of its CLM solution, Fen-Xcelerate. What does the technology do? Who does it do it for? And why make the solution available now?
Follette: Fen-Xcelerate is a lower cost, cloud-based SaaS version of Fenergo’s client lifecycle and journey management (CLM) solution. It is tailored specifically to mid-tier, community and boutique commercial, business and retail banks seeking to accelerate digital transformation, so they can offer digital services and open accounts remotely.
Fenergo launched Fen-Xcelerate in response to a growing demand amongst mid-tier and boutique banks for a digitally enabled CLM solution that could be up and running in weeks. This cohort of banks, heavily reliant on manual processes for onboarding and compliance, were also looking for an off-the-shelf solution that was plugged into Customer Relationship Management (CRM), data and screening providers such as Salesforce, Microsoft, Refinitiv and RDC, at a price point more suited to their budgets. Fen-Xcelerate addresses these challenges, enabling banks to more readily step up and support businesses and the community in their hour of need.
Finovate: What is required on the bank’s part in terms of deployment and integration? How much work and how much time is involved?
Follette: With minimum customization, Fen-Xcelerate can be deployed in six to twelve weeks. It removes the need for banks to spend time and resources plugging into services such as Salesforce, RDC and World-Check One. As a result, banks can very quickly switch to a digital onboarding and client journey management model, while performing client due diligence (CDD) for KYC and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance, digitally and seamlessly. Deployment will typically be carried out by Fenergo’s professional services team.
Finovate: The combination of rapid technological advancement, accelerating customer expectations, and ever-changing regulatory obligations can create a challenging environment for mid-tier business and retail banks. How does Fenergo, both specifically with Fen-Xcelerate and more generally, help these FIs successfully navigate this territory?
Follette: Many mid-tier commercial, business and retail banks lack the wholistic solution required to offer digital services and open accounts remotely, while being able to meet regulatory obligations and detect financial crime. With Fen-Xcelerate, mid-tier and boutique banks can benefit from Fenergo’s deep financial services heritage and best-in-class CRM, data, screening and identity and verification (ID&V) integrations in one solution. Validated by the industry, Fen-Xcelerate can be quickly deployed to digitalize account opening while delivering a seamless customer experience and regulatory compliance across 100+ jurisdictions and offering access to Fenergo’s community of global banks and regulators. By leveraging Fen-Xcelerate, the goal posts for digitalization within these banks could move from months to just weeks.
Finovate: This territory has become all the more complicated with the global public health crisis – and the economic consequences of fighting it. What has Fenergo done to help its customers and partners manage this challenge specifically?
Follette: Our community of clients, partners, regulatory and financial services experts means that we are very tuned in to the needs of the industry. We are continuously enhancing our solution according to the rapidly evolving technology and regulatory needs of financial institutions – and today is no different. Many of our clients have had to pivot to a remote account opening model overnight, this is why we brought forward the launch of Fen-Xcelerate. Banks need to be up and running with a client onboarding and journey management solution very quickly, so that they can provide support to their customers when they need it most.
Finovate: This year Fenergo has introduced its remote account opening solution, partnered with the likes of IBM, PwC, and Aviva, and of course, released Fen-Xcelerate. What can we expect to see from Fenergo in the second half of 2020?
Follette: We are experiencing very high demand and have signed 16 new clients since the beginning of the year. The second half of the year will be spent doubling down on supporting our clients in their digital transformation journeys, as they navigate uncertain territory.
Now we know why the men (and women!) around Robinhood are so merry. The mobile trading and investing platform announced this morning that it has secured $320 million in additional funding. Combined with the $280 million the company raised earlier this year as part of its Series F round, Robinhood now has raised more than $1.5 billion in capital and sports a valuation of $8.6 billion.
This latest infusion comes courtesy of both new and existing Robinhood investors, including TSG Consumer Partners and IVP. The Series F was led by Sequoia Capital, and featured participation from NEA, Ribbit Capital, and Unusual Ventures, as well.
Founded in 2013 by co-CEOs Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, and officially launched two years later in the spring of 2015, Robinhood has grown into one of the more influential – and increasingly well-funded – online investment platforms aimed at millennials. The company leveraged commission-free trading in both stocks and ETFs to present an immediate challenge to incumbent brokerage firms – a challenge that is credited for eliminating trading fees at rivals like Charles Schwab, E-Trade, and TD Ameritrade by the fall of 2019.
Menlo Park, California-based Robinhood has expanded its offerings in recent years to include commission-free trading in cryptocurrencies, and a “cash management” feature that offers FDIC insurance and an annual interest rate of 1.8%. The company noted earlier this year that it has added more than three million new accounts in 2020 alone, and that 50% of its new users this year are first-time investors.
“As more people choose Robinhood, we remain focused on continuously improving the experience we provide,” the company’s blog read when the initial investment in the Series F was announced in May. “With this funding, we’ll continue to invest in scaling our platform, building new products, and accelerating build-out of our operations. This means hiring more top talent across all of our offices, including our newest office in Denver.”
Michigan-based Bankjoy announced a pair of new credit union partners late last week. The company, which enables credit unions and community banks to offer their members and customers a variety of mobile banking and online banking solutions, will work with both CACL Federal Credit Union of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, and SIU Credit Union of Carbondale, Illinois, to help them add new members and enhance the experience for current customers.
“As digital demands continued to rise – as well as fraud – within the credit union industry because of COVID-19, we are pleased to provide our technology offerings to meet these growing demands at SIU and CACL,” Bankjoy CEO Michael Duncan said. “Having these progressive tools to make online processes more efficient and user friendly enhances the value of credit unions not only right now but for the foreseeable future, as well.”
CACL FCU, with 11,600 members and $146 million in assets, will leverage its new relationship with Bankjoy to boost its membership base by offering more mobile options. “We were blown away by the layout and advancements within the platform compared to the competition,” CACL FCU COO Joshua Burgess said in a statement. Burgess also praised Bankjoy’s voice banking solution Joy, which he called a “huge selling point.”
Bankjoy’s online and mobile solutions are equally likely to make a big impact with the even-larger SIU CU – which boasts 40,800 members and $344 million in assets.
These deals reflect a resumption of Bankjoy’s aggressive, partner-making pace from earlier this year. In April alone, the company announced that it was working with seven different credit unions representing 87,000+ members and more than $1 billion in assets combined. Also this spring, Bankjoy hosted a COVID-19 Online Summit to help address the impact of the global health crisis on the credit union industry.
“Our COVID-19 Online Summit was a very transparent event for credit union executives to freely exchange ideas and help each other,” Duncan told CU Times. “We’re all looking for more information to stay in front of this crisis and when you can get it from a peer that’s always a good thing.”
The global health crisis has been hard on credit union members, as well. The impact of COVID-19 on those who rely on credit unions for their banking was the focus of a Gallup study earlier this year. The survey revealed that credit union members were feeling more disruption in their financial lives due to the pandemic compared to the national average (76% versus 70%). The data also showed a significant increase in the number of credit union members who characterized their financial wellbeing as “struggling” or “suffering”.
Many of the recommendations – helping increase peace of mind, building hope, and reducing unnecessary stress – mirror those suggested by other financial institutions looking for ways to help their customers during the fight against the coronavirus.
How have customer expectations changed as financial services companies around the world rush to embrace digital transformation? How can technology be leveraged to provide more personalized financial solutions without violating privacy or adding unnecessary complexity? What is the role of digital identity technology in making the online and mobile worlds safer places for all of us to work and live?
On our final day of FinovateAsia Digital, these are some of the questions our fintech industry experts answered – often with surprising responses. From the rise of “the offer you can’t refuse” in customer experience to negotiating between the helping hand of government and its ever-present regulatory arms, our experts bring a wealth of experience and insight into fintech’s most urgent themes.
If you missed any of the conversation from FinovateAsia Digital this week, then you’re in luck. You can still register and gain access to an entire week worth of informed commentary and lively discussion on the biggest trends shaping fintech in Asia.
On the opportunities in digital and the rise of new customer expectations
I think if you look at what happened in the first few months of this year, I tend to call this the biggest digital training course the world has ever seen. We had to turn to digital for every aspect in our life. And we learned the benefits of digital, like working from home. Sometimes it’s really fun and sometimes it’s really challenging. But it’s part of our day-to-day life and it won’t disappear soon.
I think we’re at the beginning of a new phase of customer experience. Customer expectations will change. I think that in the last ten years, we mainly saw an evolution of digital convenience, and many companies understood that and became really big because of that. I think that situation has matured. In my opinion, we’re at the beginning of a new curve, of new customer expectations that will be formed thanks to new technologies like AI, IoT, 5G, quantum computing, robotics, the general purpose technologies … But it’s not going to just be technology that drives new customer expectations, it will also going to be personal dreams and wishes, and also the challenges the world will be facing.
–-Steven Van Belleghem, Author, Customers The Day After Tomorrow
On leveraging advanced technologies to deliver more personalized solutions
I’m a techie. And that’s true for the rest of our team. We love our algorithms, our data models. And one of the things we’ve learned is that sometimes (with) personalization, the best one (solution), the most engaging one, does not come from the most clever models that you come up with, but instead comes from fairly simple rules. So it should not be underestimated: you should not fall in love with your beautiful, artificial intelligence and data science models to the detriment of simplicity, because sometimes simplicity is what is bringing the most engaging content.
Another (lesson) we learned as well very early on is to make sure that customers and users are in control. And that whatever bite-sized, personalized piece of content you are delivering to them is going to give them them the option to say “stop” or “give me more” or “give me less often” … (to put them) in control of that feed of information they are receiving.
–Olivier Berthier, CEO and Co-founder, Moneythor
On the challenge of providing digital identity solutions in an increasingly globalized world
If I was to look at the way that digital identity is changing the landscape, I think actually what we’re seeing at the moment is really the proliferation of a lot of intermediating layers. So there is quite a number of different platforms that are evolving, platform players that are actually doing a lot of the heavy lifting for a lot of the companies in the fintech space. So whether you might be talking about somebody like Onfido or any of their competitors, there’s been this whole big wellspring of different types of companies that are actually doing that integration work.
And I think they have been carrying off the back of a lot of the actual governmental work that’s been happening to come up with different digital identity models. These are very complex problems, but I think given that the last decade or so, a lot of trade has been increasingly globalized, payments have been increasingly globalized, it’s become very difficult for people to keep pace with the change of all of these different governments coming up with different types of systems and experimenting.
–Danielle Szetho, Fintech Client Advisory, Standard Chartered Bank
Available On Demand for five days after the end of the conference week, FinovateAsia Digital is a unique opportunity for those interested in learning more about fintech in the Asia-Pacific region. Browse our all-digital presentations, interviews, and discussions; network with fellow attendees; and gain key insights into the trends driving fintech innovation in critical, emerging markets.Visit our FinovateAsia Digital Hub and register today.
The ways that ride-sharing companies in Asia have leveraged their platforms to bring a variety of financial services to underserved communities is one of the more noteworthy – and unexpected – developments in the evolution of fintech in the region.
Many people are familiar with Grab, the car-sharing and food delivery company founded in 2012 and based in Singapore. The firm picked up more than $850 million in funding in February to help fuel both its payments and financial services operations. Grab competes with other similar companies in the region such as Indonesia’s Gojek that have also taken the so-called “Super App” route to diversifying their offerings into e-commerce and financial services.
This week we learn that Asia’s ride sharing industry is helping financial services innovate in another way: China’s Didi has inked a deal with the country’s central bank to test its digital national currency. The strategic partnership, announced earlier this week, is designed to “jointly study and explore the innovation and application of digital RMB in the field of smart mobility.”
Digital RMB trials began earlier this year in April, and involved four Chinese cities – as well as host of major U.S. brands like Starbucks and McDonald’s. China’s top four, state-owned banks have been included in the trials, and are reportedly testing a wallet to enable users to store and send the digital currency. The People’s Bank of China hopes to launch its digital RMB around the time of the 2022 Winter Olympics, to be held in Beijing. The central bank has been working on its digital currency project – known as Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP) since 2014.
We took a look at how different countries around the world have begun to examine the role digital currencies could play in their economies earlier this year in Finovate Global. Here is our reporting on digital currencies and central banks in Europe and the Americas. For more on the pros and cons of digitizing national currencies, check out our coverage from the beginning of the year, as well.
Founded in 2012, Didi has more than 550 million users in China, Asia, Latin America, and Australia who use its on-demand transportation service.
Here is our weekly look at fintech around the world.
Central and Eastern Europe
Pair Finance, a digital debt collection company based in Berlin, Germany, secures $2.2 million (€2 million) in new funding from existing investors.
U.K.-based banking services provider ELPASO goes live for Ukrainian SMEs and merchants.
Paysafe, a payment service provider headquartered in the U.K., launches its Paysafecash solution in Bulgaria.
Middle East and Northern Africa
Paymentology, a cloud-based payment processor based in the U.K., to expand its operations in the Middle East.
Discover and Saudi Payments ink strategic agreement that will enable cardholders to use the cars on the country’s mada network.
Libyan fintech Tadawul Tech launches its new Electronic Payment Platform.
Central and Southern Asia
India’s Paytm to acquire insurance company Raheja QBE in deal valued at $76 million.
Central Bank of Sri Lanka to develop blockchain-based KYC platform.
Pakistan-based digital wallet SadaPay hires former Gojek executive Jon Sheppard as its new Chief Technology Officer
India-based insurtech marketplace PolicyBazaar scores $130 million in new investment from SoftBank’s Vision Fund.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Fintech-as-a-service company Rapyd goes live in Mexico with its integrated payment solution.
Brazilian fintech Swap, which helps FIs build their own fintech businesses, raises $3.3 million in seed funding.
Brazilian SME financial solution provider One7 acquires small business invoice financing firm Rapidoo.
Asia-Pacific
Payfazz, an Indonesian company that provides financial services to the underserved communities, raises $53 million in Series B funding.
A partnership between Viet Capital Bank, 7-Eleven Vietnam, and JCB International (JCBI) powers the launch of the Viet Capital Bank JCB 7-Eleven credit card.
Fintech Futures looks at open banking adoption rates in South Korea.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Global online money transfer services company WorldRemit goes live in Somalia.
Nigeria’s Inter-Bank Settlement Scheme (NIBSS) reports an increase in mobile payments of more than 390% since May 2019.
Visalaunches its online payment solution, Click to Pay, in South Africa.
Day Four of FinovateAsia Digital focused on two issues that have only become more pressing in recent months: the role of emerging markets as sources of innovation and new markets in fintech, and the rise of financial inclusion as a moral – as opposed to simply economic – imperative.
For many entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, and consumers the fact that these themes have come to the forefront in 2020 is bittersweet. Global interconnectivity is now challenged by coronavirus-fighting lockdowns and quarantines. Efforts to bring more diverse voices to the fintech industry – and to bring the benefits of financial technology to more people – will put additional pressure on companies and entrepreneurs who are already negotiating technological disruption, increased competition, and economic uncertainty.
Here are some of the highlights from the fourth day of our all-digital conference. Visit our FinovateAsia Digital hub and register today to join us for hours of live and On Demand access to more insightful commentary on the trends shaping fintech innovation in the Asia-Pacific region.
On the importance of technology as a tool in advancing financial inclusion around the world
How can we use technology to include more people in the formal financial system? How can we reduce (the number of) unbanked and underbanked? Perhaps by 50% or more by 2022?
Half of the world’s unbanked adults reside in Asia. And there are more women than men who are unbanked. We can use technology to change that. Some of the top reasons for not having an account in a financial institution include: not having enough money, it costs too much to open an account; it’s too far to get to a branch; there’s not enough or insufficient documentation to prove you are who you say you are; or a lack of trust. A lot of these can be resolved with the proper business models, value proposition, and technology.
–Theodora Lau, Founder, Unconventional Ventures
On the biggest challenge Singapore faces in maximizing its opportunity as an international fintech hub
For us, for Singapore in particular, I think the ability for the cross-border business activity to start to pick up again (is key). Clearly during COVID-19 elements of that would have slowed down. So at the moment most countries are thinking about how do we get our domestic market back in shape again.
And the way that Singapore (sees it) – and I think this is a view from quite a few countries, not just around the region, but around the world – is if we start to think just domestically, then we miss a big trick here in terms of real growth and that will materially impact GDP. And so you have to start thinking about things as collections of countries, as regions, as a world. Because that way, if we all kind of plug together, we can stand up together rather than the opposite of that where everyone becomes a bit more nationalistic, the barriers come up, and we all end up a little bit worse off in terms of business activity.
–Pat Patel, Principal Executive Officer, Monetary Authority of Singapore
On the role of readiness and the public sector in helping the fintech industry survive COVID-19
It’s a difficult time to be a fintech, but when you look at the various different aspects that make this challenging, with collaboration, sales, these are things that many successful fintechs have had in place in southeast Asia for many years – and indeed globally.
We’ve been talking to a number of B2B fintech companies that are doing very well in the roboadvisor space, in the payments space. It’s one of those areas that, before COVID-19 started, you really needed to be ready for it. And after COVID-19, it’s even more important to have those collaboration tools and remote sales tools in place.
–Zennon Kapron, Founder & Director, Kapronasia
Available both live (Singapore time) and On Demand during the conference week, FinovateAsia Digital is a unique opportunity for those interested in learning more about fintech in the Asia-Pacific region. Browse our all-digital presentations, interviews, and discussions; network with fellow attendees; and gain key insights into the trends driving fintech innovation in critical, emerging markets.Visit our FinovateAsia Digital Hub and register today.
Advanced biometric technologies like facial recognition have their critics. The city of Boston, Massachusetts, just a few weeks ago, became the second community in the world to ban the use of facial recognition technology over concerns of bias against ethnic minorities. And the use of facial recognition in places like China has heightened concerns over the potential privacy-violating aspects of the technology.
Nevertheless, the fact that companies continue to innovate in the biometric authentication space suggests that these issues are more likely to be seen as contemporary challenges rather than permanent obstacles. This is all the more so in a world that is coming more – rather than less – connected, and digital.
Trulioo, a leading global identity verification provider, is one the companies that is helping small businesses take advantage of these technologies. The company announced today that its low-code developer tool, EmbedID, will now feature both facial recognition and document verification functionality. This will enable SMEs to verify new users during the account opening process more efficiently and accurately, and assure that KYC and AML requirements are met.
“Taking a multi-layered approach to identity verification offers businesses the strongest defense against increasingly sophisticated bad actors,” Director of Growth at Trulioo Rutherford Wilson explained. “Adding document verification gives another layer of protection to help reduce risk, especially when combined with reliable identity verification.” Wilson credited the combination of these features for providing businesses with the “increased confidence in knowing the user is tied to a real identity and that they are who they claim to be online.”
Small businesses can use the technology by copying a snippet of code and pasting it on their website. This will automatically generate a stylized registration form that is prewired to Trulioo’s GlobalGateway to provide instant verification of personal identification information. Via the connection to GlobalGateway, small businesses can verify the authenticity of government-issued ID documents and leverage facial recognition technology – equipped with liveness detection – to establish that the individual opening the account is the same person in the photo on the ID document.
“In an age of ongoing digital transformation, it’s essential for SMBs to be able to access the same identity verification solutions used by large organizations to protect their business and scale their company,” Wilson added. He cited cost as the main barrier for most small businesses when it comes to accessing “bank-grade” technology and security. This leaves them more vulnerable to fraudsters than their larger rivals, and makes it more difficult for them to compete.
“We designed EmbedID to help level the playing field to allow for accelerated innovation, customer acquisition, and competition in the marketplace,” Wilson said.
Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Trulioo has been a Finovate alum since 2014 and most recently demonstrated its technology at our European conference in February. Named to CNBC’s 2020 Disruptor 50 roster in June, Trulioo was featured in our look at Canadian fintech innovators on Canada Day earlier this month.
