This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.
Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Branded payments provider Blackhawk Network has teamed up with open finance data and intelligence platform Moneyhub to ensure compliance with open banking standards. Via the partnership, Blackhawk Network will be able to validate third-party providers, connect to them through live applications, and enable them, with user consent, to access user data and initiate payments.
“Using Moneyhub’s compliance solution means that we can adopt the industry best-practice approach to PSD2 in authorizing our unique prepaid card offering,” Stacey Richards, who handles Product Management for Blackhawk Network, explained. “We share the fundamental desire to deliver a transformative experience for the end-user with Moneyhub, and we look forward to working with the team to deliver on our ambitious vision for the future.”
Blackhawk Network helps businesses leverage branded payments to reach more customers, build engagement and loyalty, and increase revenue. A Finovate alum since 2012, the company has more than 3,000 workers around the world, and serves 26 countries with its branded payment solutions. Blackhawk features 1,000+ brands in categories ranging from dining and entertainment to retail and home improvement. The Pleasanton, California-based company went public in 2013, and was acquired by Silver Lake and P2 Capital Partners in 2018 in a deal valued at $3.5 billion.
More recently, Blackhawk acquired Edge Loyalty Systems, an Australian sales promotions and loyalty firm, for $23 million (A$32.2 million). This spring, the company purchased SVM Cards for an undisclosed sum.
Moneyhub’s partnership with Blackhawk is the company’s third collaboration this year. In June, Moneyhub teamed up with Lumio, a money management app. The following month, the company partnered with investment performance analytics firm, ARQ.
“Our Open Banking expertise means that we are able to deliver a comprehensive compliance solution to Blackhawk Network, ensuring that it remains a leader in the market and delivers excellence to current and future clients,” Moneyhub CTO Dave Tonge said. “Our growing product offering and the multi-use nature of our proposition means that we are able to work alongside Blackhawk Network and help support their growth and aspirations.”
Founded in 2011 and based in Bristol, U.K., Moneyhub made its Finovate debut at our European conference in 2015. Nationwide Building Society is the company’s primary investor, having led a corporate round for Moneyhub in the fall of 2018.
The news that eBay is teaming up with LendingPoint to help finance small merchants on its platform is the latest example of how technology marketplaces are going the extra mile to look after the merchants who make their platforms possible.
“We are committed to empowering entrepreneurs to make their dreams a reality and we are continuing to partner with our sellers to provide them with the tools they need to thrive,” Vice President of Global Payments at eBay Alyssa Cutright said.
The new program is called eBay Seller Capital powered by LendingPoint, and will provide eBay sellers with access to installment loans with flexible terms of up to 48 months. Currently being run as a pilot effort, the program offers funding of up to $25,000, with no origination or early payback fees.
“LendingPoint’s purpose is to accelerate and democratize commerce,” LendingPoint CEO and co-founder Tom Burnside said. He called eBay sellers “some of the world’s most dynamic ecommerce players,” and both companies have noted that the partnership is a first step toward providing the platform’s merchants with more and better tools to manage and grow their businesses.
Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, and founded in 2014, LendingPoint began the year with news that it had closed on $246 million in securitizations. More recently, the company launched its Lending Operating System SDKn, which integrates into existing payment platforms to provide businesses with a consumer financing solution with a variety of fulfillment options ranging from virtual cards to money transfers.
The news from eBay comes a few weeks after InstaPay announced a new financing solution that provides third-party sellers on Amazon – who often wait up to two weeks to be paid by the platform – with a daily payment that helps them better manage their cash flow. Google removed commission fees for merchants enrolled in its Buy on Google program last month, and said it is opening up its platform to third party providers PayPal and Shopify.
In a late-breaking announcement on Thursday, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) announced that it has agreed to purchase mortgagetech platform provider Ellie Mae from Thoma Bravo. Valued at $11 billion, Ellie Mae will add to Intercontinental Exchange’s growing presence as a major workflow solutions provider for the U.S. residential mortgage industry. This growth includes ICE’s acquisition of a majority stake in MERS in 2016, and the comany’s acquisition of Simplifile three years later.
Ellie Mae President and CEO Jonathan Corr referred to these other players and the chance to collaborate with them in his remarks about the acquisition agreement. “We are excited to be joining the Intercontinental Exchange family and having the opportunity to work closely with Simplifile and MERS in helping our industry to realize the true digital mortgage,” Corr said. “We have been on a journey, as we have long said, ‘to automate everything automatable’ for the mortgage industry, and joining ICE, which has followed a parallel journey in global exchanges, will allow us to further accelerate realizing our vision.”
Founded in 1997 – and acquired by Thoma Bravo in February of last year in a deal valued at $3.7 billion – Ellie Mae offers a digital lending platform to help mortgage lenders originate more loans, reduce origination costs, and shorten the time to close. An alum of both our developers conference, FinDEVr, and making its Finovate debut in 2017, Ellie Mae reports that its customers save an average of $813 per loan, and close loans seven days faster, producing an average annual ROI of 698%.
During its time as part of Thoma Bravo, Ellie Mae recorded “nearly double revenue” while improving profitability, partnered with firms like AI Foundry to further streamline the mortgage origination process, and acquired fellow mortgagetech company Capsilon. Both AI Foundry and Capsilon are also Finovate alums.
“We partnered with Jonathan Corr, Joe Tyrrell, and the Ellie Mae team to advance their vision to automate the residential mortgage industry while also using Thoma Bravo’s deep software expertise to greatly improve the company’s operations and accelerate growth,” Thoma Bravo Managing Partner Holden Spaht said. “We are confident that being part of ICE will enable Ellie Mae to continue transforming an industry still in the early innings of digitization, and we look forward to following Ellie Mae’s continued success as part of ICE for many years to come.”
A Fortune 500 company formed in 2000, Intercontinental Exchange owns financial and commodity exchanges, operating 12 such regulated institutions in the United States, Europe, and Canada. The Atlanta, Georgia-based company also owns and operates six central clearing houses around the world. With revenues of $6.5 billion in 2019, Intercontinental Exchange is publicly traded on the NYSE under the ticker ICE. The firm has a market capitalization of $54 billion.
This week for Finovate Global, we caught up with Mohammed Aziz, co-founder and CEO of Dapi, a fintech startup that offers a suite of open banking APIs to help connect customer bank accounts, initiate payments, and access data in real-time. Founded in 2019, the company currently operate in six countries in the Middle East and Africa, and is headquartered in both San Francisco, California, and the UAE.
We talked about the opportunity for open banking to fuel innovation in financial services in emerging economies, as well as the overall environment for fintech innovation in the MENA region. We also discussed the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on pre-existing trends such as digitization.
Finovate: Dapi is the third company you’ve founded, but your first fintech. What made you want to focus on the opportunities in this industry? What do you bring to fintech from your experience in other areas?
Mohammed Aziz: Dapi was the result of a problem that I personally faced when trying to build “Spendy” a hybrid between a peer to peer payment application and a personal financial management app. We were unable to build out Spendy for most emerging markets due to the lack of bank connectivity which got us super keen to build out the underlying infrastructure that would power the future of fintech in these markets.
Finovate: Tell us about Dapi. What problem does your company solve and who are your primary customers?
Aziz: Dapi’s mission is to provide the building blocks for a thriving fintech ecosystem in emerging markets around the world. Our API serves as the bridge between financial applications and banks, empowering developers to create digital wallets, budget trackers, investment applications and more. Our clients are developers working on fintech applications, businesses hoping to include financial services in their mobile and web offerings, and anyone that wants to include bank functionality within their digital offerings.
Finovate: Your business strategy relies on an embrace of open banking in the MENA region. How strong is the movement toward open banking there?
Aziz: The MENA region is a very exciting space to be operating in right now. Fintech is only beginning to develop here and the market is pretty much untapped, so we are hoping to serve as an influence towards the region embracing open banking and all the opportunities that come with that. I would also like to point out that we are able to activate and build connectivity regardless of open banking being present or not. We like to take the approach that companies like Plaid in the US or Truelayer in the UK did, whereby they were connected to banks despite frameworks and regulation being in place.
Finovate: Aside from open banking, what are some of the other exciting trends in the fintech industry in the Middle East/Abu Dhabi right now?
Aziz: There’s a general trend of growing interest for the kinds of applications that financial technology empowers, from digital wallets and peer to peer applications to investment platforms and digital banks. The market is new and rapidly evolving.
Finovate: We talk about the Middle East and North Africa as a region. But there is a great deal of variation among countries in MENA. How does this impact your ability to market your technology in the area?
Aziz: Beyond market considerations, the regulation surrounding the use of APIs in financial applications varies greatly from country to country. This is a new and mostly unregulated space, but we have had to consider completely separate approaches to integrating our services in the UAE as opposed to KSA, for example. Culture is also another important factor, as it varies between countries and impacts the products that you would want to launch along with the go-to-market approach.
Finovate: How has COVID-19 impacted the fintech industry in the region? Early in the crisis, we heard news from countries like Iran, but not as much since. How are businesses, especially fintech businesses, faring?
Aziz: The COVID-19 pandemic and its push towards social distancing and remote work has actually increased interest in digitization of financial services. For example, there have been a number of announcements within the UAE that the country will be moving towards enabling more online payments and other financial services without the need to physically go to a bank.
Finovate: You participated in the Y Combinator program. What was that experience like? What advice do you have for startups with the opportunity to pursue a similar path with a top-notch accelerator?
Aziz: Y Combinator has been a phenomenal experience for us. It really put us out there on the map and helped expand our network in silicon valley. From our experience, investors and VCs in the US are not usually convinced about investing in early stage MENA startups, but YC really helps establish that credibility.
Finovate: Tell us about your experience of setting up your business in Abu Dhabi.
Aziz: Abu Dhabi is an exciting place to work, since it is a rapidly growing and developing market, as mentioned above. Furthermore, we have received a lot of support from our involvement in ADGM and Hub71, which provided resources for us to establish and grow our operations in these beginning stages.
Finovate: What can we expect from Dapi over the balance of 2020 and beyond?
Aziz: We are very excited to continue growing and expanding into a variety of developing markets, beyond the UAE. At the same time, we have a number of exciting partnerships in our sights for the UAE, which we hope will bring our vision of a strong fintech ecosystem in the MENA region closer to reality.
Here is our look at fintech around the world.
Asia-Pacific
Singapore-based MatchMove launches cross-border remittance platform for businesses.
Clik, a payment aggregator and merchant acquirer based in Cambodia, raises $3.7 million in seed funding.
Leading Asian financial services platform GoBear teams up with UnionBank to launch lending-as-a-service solution in the Philippines; announces new Chief Financial Officer.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Fiservinks partnership with Absa Regional Operations (ARO) to enhance credit card management and processing in nine African countries.
Ecobank Group unveils the finalists for its fintech challenge, now in its third year. Ten African startups from seven different countries made the cut out of an applicant pool of more than 600.
Salaam Gateway looks at the development of Islamic fintech in Kenya.
Central and Eastern Europe
Onfido to streamline digital identity verification for Poland’s Alior Bank.
Russia’s Tinkoff Banklaunches new charitable program, Cashback to Give Back.
Austrian regtech kompany lands $7.14 million in funding.
Middle East and Northern Africa
Salt Edgepartners with Jordan Ahli Bank Cyprus, making it one of the first banking groups in Cyprus to achieve PSD2 compliance.
Israeli fintech Approve.com raises $5 million in seed funding for its technology that automates the procurement process.
Infosys Finacle to deploy its Liquidity Management platform with National Bank of Bahrain.
Central and Southern Asia
Uzbekistan’s People’s Bank partners with Finastra to automate its risk management business.
TerraPay collaborates with Bank Alfalah to enable instant money transfers to Pakistan.
Indian B2B fintech Signzy announces plans to hire “close to 70” employees over the next six moths in response to increased demand.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Feedzaiexpands partnership with PayU, enabling the company to enhance its fraud prevention capabilities in Latin America and the EMEA region.
TechCrunch profiles Mozper, a digital banking service based in Latin America that caters to parents and Gen Z kids.
MercadoLibre announces plans to launch branded credit cards in Brazil and Chile “in the near future.”
Paystand’sZero Card, launched today, offers businesses a touchless, prepaid corporate expense ePayable solution that leverages Paystand’s zero-fee payment network to eliminate the cost of transaction fees.
Geared to help mid-market businesses in particular, which often require a high degree of flexibility and control over their budgets, the Zero Card streamlines expense management operations such as invoice processing, expense reporting, and payment execution. The prepaid virtual expense card also enables businesses to manage, track, and control spending in real-time. The offering includes fraud prevention controls and the ability to capture and add critical remittance data to transactions to make expense reporting and reconciliation easier.
“The Paystand Zero Card combines the consumer-like experience of peer-to-peer payments with the speed and security of Paystand’s no-fee payment network,” Paystand CEO Jeremy Almond said. “We completely re-engineered the corporate card so businesses can move away from reactive spend management tactics to a place where they have visibility of spend before it happens.”
One of the aspects of the Zero Card the company is touting is the way it brings a common payment infrastructure to accounts payable and accounts receivable operations. In its statement, the company referred to this disconnect as “one of the biggest challenges in B2B payments today,” which pits payers and receivers against one another as “technology and process improvements for one group often lead to inefficiency and friction for the other.”
In contrast, the Zero Card is designed for both accounts payable and accounts receivable, natively connecting both AP and AR to keep costs low, ensure swift and secure payments, and effectively bridge what the company calls “the payables gap for B2B payments”
Challenges like the payables gap, according to Paystand VP of Marketing Mark Fisher, are why he believes B2B payments have “a long way to go before it achieves the ease and speed of consumer payments.” Fisher credited the Zero Card for helping B2B payments catch up. “When money moves over our network,” he said, “it’s instant, automated, and comes at no cost. That’s good for businesses and that’s good for the economy overall.”
Founded in 2013 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Paystand secured $20 million in funding in February in a round led by DNX Ventures. Mitch Kitamura, Managing Director at the firm put the company’s latest offering in the broader context of the “cashless transformation” led by fintech innovators like Paystand. In a statement, he referred to the Zero Card as “a critical step … in driving more seamless interaction between businesses to help realize the true economic value of digital infrastructure.”
If there are any lingering doubts about the power (and popularity) of the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) movement, installment payments platform Splitit has 71.5 million reasons to cast those doubts aside.
The New York-based company, which made its Finovate debut as PayItSimple in 2014, announced that it has raised $71.5 million in a private placement and share purchase plan (SPP). With institutional investors such as Woodson Capital Management, the company plans to use the capital to “accelerate sales and marketing, plus (make) further investments in product and technology” according to a statement. Splitit boasts more than 1,000 ecommerce merchants using its technology, and 300,000+ shoppers with an average order value of $893.
Splitit’s fundraising comes as the company reports record Q2 growth, including processing more than $65 million in merchant sales volume, and growth of 1.76x quarter over quarter and 2.6x year over year. In discussing the company’s success, CEO Brad Paterson credited a new willingness on the part of consumers to “maximize their existing credit to preserve cash flow” while at the same time not incurring additional new debt.
Paterson also noted that while the COVID-19 crisis has helped move digital transformation in ecommerce toward the top of the agenda, it was important for those involved in payments to make it easier for merchants to accommodate their customer’s cash management requirements.
As such, it’s hard not wonder if, once again, crisis is responsible for accelerating innovation. After all, one of the initial innovations in retail, the layaway program, emerged during the Great Depression as a way to maintain at least a minimal level of consumption of non-essential goods during a severe economic retraction. By enabling customers to pay for items in small increments over time and then receive those items once they had been fully paid for, the growing retail economy was able to survive an extended period of historically low demand.
The buy now pay later phenomenon is layaway in reverse, allowing customers to gain the benefits of the purchase immediately and moderating the impact of the cost by paying for that purchase over time. But the goal – to accelerate consumer activity and expand the ability of people to spend – remains the same. The only difference is that layaway tended to disappear once credit cards became ubiquitous, while buy now pay later appears to be rising at a time when we are realizing that affordable consumer financing might not be as ubiquitous as we thought.
For Finovate fans, Klarna has been the pioneer in the Buy Now Pay Later space, with fellow alums like Sezzle also earning recognition for its interest-free buy now pay later option. Founded in 2005 and 2016, respectively, both companies are reminders of how fintechs have been providing consumers with alternative financing options well before the coronavirus hit.
That said, it is clear that COVID-19 has stimulated interest in Buy Now Pay Later options. The Business of Finance reported earlier this week that BNPL had become “fashion’s go-to during the pandemic.” Also this week, American Express announced that it would extend its buy now pay later service to more of its cards. The Wall Street Journal featured Australian Buy Now Pay Later specialist Afterpay at the beginning of this month in the wake of the firm’s announcement that it had signed up more than 1.6 million U.S. users since the onset of the coronavirus in March. And Shopify announced this month that merchants on its platform would have access to BNPL financing from installment payment company Affirm. Affirm looks like it is ready to maximize the Buy Now Pay Later moment with an initial public offering, according to reporting in the Wall Street Journal.
Even the big banks are getting into the Buy Now Pay Later game. Goldman Sachs has introduced a new, installment payment feature called MarcusPay – in partnership with JetBlue Airways – as part of a bigger “build-out” of its Marcus by Goldman Sachs digital banking platform. This week, Citi partnered with Amazon to launch its own BNPL offering Citi Flex Plan.
The latest offering from Envestnet | Yodlee enables financial service providers to combine actionable insights, peer benchmarking, and personalized views to build digital financial experiences that better serve and engage their customers across channels. Insight Solutions, unveiled today, provides a set of new APIs that will help companies leverage data to improve the quality of their virtual financial assistance offerings.
“Hyper-personalization is the new baseline for success, and financial institutions and FinTechs who have a more advanced understanding of consumers and tailor their offerings accordingly will have a strategic and competitive advantage,” Envestnet | Yodlee SVP of Product Brandon Rembe said. “Through our Insights Solutions, financial service providers will have access to meaningful consumer insights faster and more affordably than by growing their own data science team.”
Users will be able to take advantage of features like predictive cash flow; spending, credit limit, and refund monitoring and alerts. The new tool will also provide transparency into subscription-based and other recurring expenses. The solution puts the power of machine learning and algorithms to work to provide users with a comprehensive overview of their personal finances, enhancing their ability to save for retirement, build an emergency fund, as well as manage their everyday spending.
With more than 26 million users worldwide, more than 1,300 partners (including 16 of the top 20 U.S. banks), and 50+ patents, Envestnet | Yodlee offers data aggregation and analytics technology solutions that support financial wellness and sound wealth management. Envestnet acquired Yodlee, one of Finovate’s oldest alums and a multiple-time Best of Show winner, in 2015 in a deal valued at $660 million.
Envestnet | Yodlee began this year with the acquisition of financial data aggregation and analytics platform, FinBit.io. This month, the company issued a report looking at income and spending trends during the COVID-19 crisis. In the form of an eBook, the report looks at how retailers in different industries – from restaurants and transportation to barbershops and gaming – were impacted by consumer behavior shifts due to the economic effects of quarantines, lockdowns, and other efforts to fight the pandemic.
Barrons featured Envestnet co-founder and current CEO Bill Crager in an interview last month. Crager took the helm at the company after the tragic death of previous Envestnet CEO Jud Bergman in a 2019 automobile accident. Crager discussed the personal and professional challenges of the succession, as well as plans for 2019 acquisition MoneyGuide, and the company’s strategy for serving its clients during the global pandemic.
Envestnet | Yodlee is a publicly traded company – ENV on the New York Stock Exchange – and has a market capitalization of $4.4 billion.
Much of the technology world is puzzling over Microsoft’s moves toward a purchase of popular and controversial social media app TikTok. But more discerning observers may spend more time considering the ramifications of Apple’s $100 million acquisition of Mobeewave.
Based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Mobeewave enables contactless payment acceptance simply by tapping enabled smartphones (or credit cards) to another enabled device. Mobeewave’s app leverages NFC (near field communications) technology, a feature that has been on the iPhone since 2014, and could allow the devices to be more effectively used by merchants to process in-person payments. This spring, the company introduced its latest contactless payment solution, Mobeewave Limitless, that provides the varied authentication, regulatory controls, and Cardholder Verification Method (CVM) standards required by regulators in North America, Europe, and APAC when it comes to supporting high value contactless transactions.
As such, the acquisition puts Apple in competition with Square, which has been a leading innovator in providing merchants with a hardware/software combination to enable smartphone and tablet payment processing. The option of a hardware-free alternative – sans dongles and readers – could make Apple an instant player in the small business payments space.
Typically tight-lipped about its acquisitions, Apple said in a statement that it “buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.” We do know that Mobeewave’s team will be retained and will continue to operate out of its Montreal headquarters.
One thing that’s especially interesting about the acquisition is that Mobeewave had agreed last fall to integrate its contactless payments technology into Samsung mobile devices, and had expected to deploy the solution worldwide this year. Samsung is also an investor in Mobeewave, having played a leading role in the Canadian company’s Series B round in January. Mobeewave has raised a total of $26.6 million in funding.
ZenBusiness, an Austin, Texas-based company that specializes in serving micro-businesses, announced late last week that it has closed its first acquisition. The company has purchased fintech platform Joust in a move that will bring Joust’s business banking features to the ZenBusiness platform, and enable the firm to re-launch as ZenBusiness Money later this year.
The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
CEO and co-founder of ZenBusiness Ross Buhrdorf called the acquisition an opportunity to extend its “mission to provide the nation’s 57 million micro-businesses with exceptional and friendly tools that simplify the process of forming and running their business.” Founded in 2015, ZenBusiness helps entrepreneurs complete the necessary filing and paperwork to ensure compliant formation of their business, and provides a variety of additional services – from identity theft protection and business management tools – to help micro-businesses grow and expand.
Also based in Austin, Texas, Joust offers merchant services and business banking for entrepreneurs, freelancers, and the self-employed. The company, which merged with LoanDolphin earlier this year to scale mortgage reverse auctions, was a finalist at the 2020 SXSW Innovation Awards, and raised $11 million in funding prior to its acquisition by ZenBusiness. Joust was launched in 2017.
“We believe all entrepreneurs should have access to the same banking services reserved for large companies,” former CEO and Joust co-founder Lamine Zarrad said. “By bringing our financial tools to the ZenBusiness platform, we will quickly scale up and empower even the smallest businesses by simplifying and strengthening their daily operations while protecting their interests.”
ZenBusiness has raised $19.5 million in funding from 11 investors including Greycroft and Lerer Hippeau. The company was featured last December by The Jeruslem Post in its look at the top seven business formation services in the U.S.
Village Capital has unveiled the names of the 12 companies that will participate in its Finance Forward Latin America 2020 accelerator program. The incoming cohort will get five weeks of training to help them improve their business models and tailor their solutions for the current demands of the marketplace. The top two peer-selected startups will be eligible to receive $50,000 each in grant funding from program partner MetLife Foundation. Startups ranked third to fifth each will receive $16,000 in grant funding.
What do the 12 startups chosen – from an applicant pool of more than 140 – suggest about the state of fintech innovation in Latin America?
First of all, in some ways, the geographic distribution of companies is representative of what we see in terms of fintech’s strength in the region. Mexico has three representatives, Argentina has two, and Brazil and Chile both have one. Perhaps more surprising is the representation from Colombian fintech, with the country bringing five startups to the program.
Village Capital notes that the selected startups also reflect impressive gender diversity, with more than 80% of the participating companies having one or more female founders. The accelerator also credited the more than 40% of these companies that are innovating “outside major fintech hubs.”
The startups are involved in a wide range of fintech focus areas – from debt management and credit services to e-commerce, “buy now pay later” solutions. Many of these firms offer innovations that are particularly geared toward un- and under-banked populations. Among the more interesting startups in this category are Fundefir, a Colombia startup that specializes in bringing credit and insurance to the underbanked, and Quipu Market, also based in Colombia, which offers an e-commerce marketplace that enables informal microbusinesses to buy and sell locally using community tokens rather than cash.
Village Capital’s accelerator program features the support of PayPal and Moody’s, as well as MetLife Foundation. Since its launch in 2009, Village Capital has worked with more than 1,000 early stage entrepreneurs via its accelerator programs.
“The coronavirus pandemic has had devastating financial effects on low-income populations in Latin America,” Regional Manager for Village Capital Daniel Cossio said. “Now more than ever, tech-driven innovation can be at the forefront of helping small businesses stay afloat, families manage their income, and the region embark on what is bound to be a challenging recovery.”
Some of the more recent research on fintech in Latin America includes this February report from CB Insights, which helps provide context for the expectations many analysts had for the region at the end of 2019. For insights since the COVID-19 crisis, the May discussion published by Latin America Reports shows how fintech has played a “stabilizing” role in helping businesses and individuals cope with the economic and social impact of the pandemic.
Here is our weekly look at fintech around the world.
Payment solutions provider Cohort Go teams up with Brazilian bank Itau as it expands into the country.
Konsentus and Open Vector collaborate to bring open banking to financial institutions in Latin America and Canada.
Asia-Pacific
Hong Kong payments network infrastructure startup EMQ raises $20 million in funding to accelerate cross-border payments.
Venio, a mobile app that specializes in providing financing in emerging markets, goes live in the Philippines.
AEE News Today profiles Malaysian fintech Instapay Technologies which recently partnered with Mastercard to launch an e-wallet service for migrant workers.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Alegra, a cloud-based accounting software provider based in Colombia, announces expansion to Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa.
Airtel Africa teams up with Mukuru to enable cross-border payments.
Mobile money operators are among the biggest players in fintech in sub-Saharan Africa. TechZim reviews the state of mobile money in the southern part of the continent.
Central and Eastern Europe
A biometric facial recognition-based payments system developed by Romanian fintech PayByFace goes live in Bucharest’s Tucano Coffee shops.
Nordigenscores payments license from Latvia’s Financial and Capital Markets Commission (FKTK), enabling it to provide account information services.
Lithuania’s Bankera introduces business loans for SMEs.
Middle East and Northern Africa
Arabian Business takes a look at the rise in popularity of buy now pay later platforms in the UAE.
Dubai International Financial Centre inks Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with China’s Jiaozi Fintech Dreamworks.
Al Khaleej Today profiles Saudi Arabia-based payments company Tap Payments and its initiatives to help small businesses during the COVID-19 crisis.
Central and Southern Asia
Indian online investment and wealth management platform, Paytm Money, introduces new Chief Executive Officer Varun Sridhar.
Uzbekistan’s first digital bank, TBC Bank, goes live with technology from Capital Banking Solutions.
Niyo, an India-based neobank, acquires mutual fund investment platform Goalwise.
It’s been a good year for Varo Money. The company became the preferred destination for clients leaving Moven this spring, when the fintech announced that it was pivoting away from consumer banking in favor of a focus on its financial wellness technology.
Today we learn that one of Varo’s biggest goals for 2020 – earning a national bank charter – has been fulfilled. The San Francisco, California-based company has been granted a charter by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and has earned regulatory approvals from both the FDIC and the Federal Reserve, making it now set to launch Varo Bank N.A. Varo is the first consumer-facing, U.S. fintech to accomplish this achievement.
“2020 has been challenging for many of us across the country and has highlighted, once again, how the traditional financial system is not meeting the needs of hardworking, everyday Americans,” Varo Money co-founder and CEO Colin Walsh said. “The ability to operate as a full-service national bank gives Varo more freedom to deliver the kind of innovation and allyship that many Americans have never had from their bank before.”
Launched in 2015, Varo Money offers consumers a digital banking alternative including a savings account with an initial APY of 1.21%, and a checking account that comes with a VISA debit card, and early payday for customers that sign up for direct deposit. Varo’s mobile banking app enables users to check up on their accounts and balances, make transfers and mobile check deposits, monitor incoming and outgoing transactions, and more. The company charges no hidden or overdraft fees for its service, and deposits are FDIC-insured up to $250,000.
Bank charter in hand, Varo will soon be able to offer a broader range of products and services including credit cards, joint accounts, and certificates of deposit.
A partnership between Nutmeg and TrueLayer will bring the benefits of open banking to the U.K. wealth management business for the first time. The online investment platform announced that it will leverage TrueLayer’s financial APIs to enable its customers to make faster, more secure payments to their accounts online or from their mobile device.
“The payments industry is still dominated by card payments, but bank transfers are the best and fastest way to get money into a Nutmeg account and therefore into the market,” Nutmeg Chief Operating Officer Matt Gatrell said. Unfortunately, he explained, the lack of a quality user experience has made customer reluctant to use this option. “With this in mind,” Gatrell said, “Nutmeg has worked with TrueLayer to launch Open Banking payments for customers – reducing a lengthy user process to just a couple of taps.”
Courtesy of the new partnership, all users will need to do is login to their bank, and confirm the payment to their Nutmeg account to make additions to their investments. Nutmeg said this will enable investors to get their money into the market quicker, and boasts that it is the first wealth manager in the U.K. to offer this account funding option, which TrueLayer CEO and co-founder Francesco Simoneschi called “the killer use case for Open Banking.”
Simoneschi explained: “Simplifying and speeding up processes such as payments makes a tangible difference to consumers. It helps them to have much more control and choice with their finances. This is a fundamental goal of Open Banking and another step forward in its wider adoption.”
Nutmeg has bigger plans for leveraging Open Banking than just bank transfers. In a blog post at the company’s website, Nutmeg Product Manager Charlie Masters noted that open banking has helped incentivize the company’s integrations with companies like Yolt, Emma, and MoneyDashboard earlier this year. “We see these new financial products as a great opportunity to improve the customer experience,” Masters wrote.
Founded in 2011 and headquartered in London, U.K., Nutmeg has been a Finovate alum for more than eight years. With more than $153 million in funding raised, the company includes Goldman Sachs, Armada Investment AG, Convoy Global Holdings, Taipei Fubon Bank, and Pentech Ventures among its investors.
