Author: David Penn

China Teams Up with On Demand Transport Firm Didi to Test Digital Currency

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

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.
  • Visa launches its online payment solution, Click to Pay, in South Africa.

Photo by Caio from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

FinovateAsia: Finding Opportunities in Emerging Markets and Financial Inclusion

FinovateAsia: Finding Opportunities in Emerging Markets and Financial Inclusion
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateAsia Digital 2020, Speaker series

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.

Photo by Soulful Pizza from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Trulioo Adds Document Verification, Facial Recognition to EmbedID

Trulioo Adds Document Verification, Facial Recognition to EmbedID
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Trulioo

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.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Halftime Heat Check: The Biggest Fintech Headlines of 2020

Halftime Heat Check: The Biggest Fintech Headlines of 2020
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, List series

Two of the biggest stories of 2020 so far – the global public health crisis of COVID-19 and the worldwide resurgence in social justice activism – have had as much impact on the fintech industry as they have the rest of the world.

The mobilization of banks and fintechs to facilitate financing for small businesses, for example, or to offer discounts on their services for essential workers in other industries has been impressive.

And it has been heartening to see companies in the financial technology and services space join with corporations and entrepreneurs in other industries to express their commitment to fighting ethnic discrimination and actively encouraging diversity.

But behind the bright lights of these two, year-defining stories, there have been some pretty impressive fintech-specific headlines that are worth remembering as we dive into the second half of the year. With that in mind, here is our take on the biggest fintech stories from the first half of 2020.

The collapse of Wirecard early this summer was the first major negative headline for the fintech industry this year. What began as an inquiry into a missing $2.1 billion in cash has turned into a major scandal involving the arrest of former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun and talks that the company could become an attractive acquisition target thanks to its relationships with the major card companies.

With Visa’s acquisition of Plaid at the beginning of the year and Mastercard’s purchase of Finicity near 2020’s midway mark, card companies are putting their money where they believe the future of fintech lies: open banking and the leveraging of consumer-permissioned data.

If you had nCino on your bingo card of fintechs most likely to be among the first to go public this year, then you are a luckier soul than most. The news that the Wilmington, North Carolina, Bank Operating System provider is planning an IPO for later this year was a sign that some fintechs still see the public markets as an optimal way to raise capital.

The boost in e-commerce brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic was a major boon for digital payments company Stripe, which raised $600 million this spring, earning a valuation of $36 billion.

Starting as a student loan refinancing company and since expanding its portfolio to include loans, investment products, and debit cards, SoFi made yet another expansion to its product suite with its $1.2 billion acquisition of payments company Galileo.

From the outside, $7.1 billion might be a lot to pay for the ability to help younger consumers better understand and manage their credit. But Intuit’s decision to acquire Credit Karma in the first few months of 2020 may have been an early sign of the sort of consolidation that could await the fintech industry on the other side of COVID-19.

A $500 million Series D round has sent the valuation of U.K.-based fintech Revolut soaring to more than $5.5 billion. Led by Silicon Valley-based VC firm, TCV, the February investment set an optimistic tone for Q1 VC fintech funding before the reality check of the coronavirus set in.

In acquiring Radius Bank for $185 million early this year, P2P lending pioneer LendingClub became the first U.S. fintech to acquire a licensed bank. Boston, Massachusetts-based Radius Bank is an online bank with $1.4 billion in assets.

By mid-year, the rise of the retail trader a la Robinhood and Dave “Stoolpresidente” Portnoy may have become a bit of a cliche. But that only makes Morgan Stanley’s $13 billion acquisition of ETrade – announced back in February – that much more of a prescient move to diversify its online and self-directed customer base beyond the ultra-rich.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

FinovateAsia: Innovation in Wealth Management; New Players in Lending

FinovateAsia: Innovation in Wealth Management; New Players in Lending
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateAsia Digital 2020

From the arrival of disruption to the shores of the wealth management industry to the eagerness of Asia’s large e-commerce platforms to bring credit to the region’s overlooked consumers and small businesses, Day Three of FinovateAsia Digital continues to provide some of the most insightful commentary on fintech trends in the Asia-Pacific region. Today we share some of the highlights from the third day of our online conference.

Our all-digital event, FinovateAsia Digital, continues all week. Join us live or On Demand and access hours of insightful commentary and conversation on the trends shaping fintech innovation in the Asia-Pacific region. Visit our FinovateAsia Digital hub and register today.

On fintech’s role in creating value at a time of change in the wealth management industry

Connectivity to fintechs is often a high priority when asked to create new and additional value to the client’s overall proposition. When I was a panelist at Finovate in Berlin back in February, I noticed there were few fintechs representing asset management – which is surprising given the tens of trillions of assets which impact every single one of us whether you are investing yourself or someone does it on your behalf.

Why was this sector late to the disruption party? Or was it happening without us noticing? Little did any of us know that, in the following months, asset management, like many other sectors, would experience an acceleration in embracing change and wonder about its relevance and role in the Now and the Next Normal.

— Simone Vroegop, Head of Strategic Partnerships for FinTech, Brown Brothers Harriman

On key insights from case studies in the optimization of fintech solutions in the cloud

You want to be very disciplined when you look at your online architecture, your solution, or any cloud provider’s platform. You don’t want to get distracted by a lot of existing native services, or third party services. That’s great. That’s the nature of the cloud. But you have to be very disciplined, and every time you introduce a component, you have to rationalize it, why you need it, and how to keep this new component that you’re going to introduce as reliable and as efficient as possible.

You also have to have a very rigorous test plan in place. You don’t exercise this plan toward the end, when you have built everything. That could be too late. You want to start doing some of these rigorous tests early on, using either a prototype or proof of concept, so you can mimic some of your market conditions plus your system conditions.

–Harry Tong, Senior Solutions Architect, InterSystems Corporation

On the importance of large e-commerce platforms in Asia’s digital lending landscape

Micro, small, and medium enterprises have traditionally struggled to access capital. Many lack an existing banking relationship or detailed financial record. And obviously incumbent banks in China favor corporate lending as smaller businesses fail to meet their credit check standards. Again, the larger e-commerce platforms have been enthusiastically filling the gap left by inadequate lending from incumbents. And by avoiding all those traditional evaluation processes that require substantial credit history, in favor of more data-based appraisals, platforms have demonstrated to incumbents that they must reform if they wish to compete across that sector of lending and to bring that experience to more businesses.

In rapidly growing countries with populations the size of China’s or India’s, the ability to lend vast sums of money to millions of SMEs places those platforms in a position of really significant power. How incumbents respond to this shift will determine the future of lending in this whole region.

–Louise Beaumont, Chair, Smart Data, Open Banking & Payments Working Groups, techUK

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.

Photo by ALAMEEN A-DAE from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Xignite Unveils its Enterprise Microservices Suite

Xignite Unveils its Enterprise Microservices Suite
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Xignite

Financial market data distribution and management solutions provider Xignite has launched a new set of market data management services to change the way businesses manage their data in the cloud. Xignite Enterprise Microservices is a suite of solutions that make it easier and more efficient for companies to store, distribute, manage, and control market data.

The microservices approach – embraced by Xignite in this latest offering – provides core functionality via a combination of “loosely coupled, independently deployable components.” Not only can these components work together or separately, but also they can be massively scaled at a very low cost. This compares favorably to legacy systems, which often consist of monolithic platforms that are more expensive, difficult to scale and manage, and typically not used at full capacity.

Xignite Enterprise Microservices runs on Xignite’s cloud-based architecture, which supports 250+ different data sources and 12 billion API calls daily for more than 750 clients in fintech and financial services. The vendor-agnostic solution has already been deployed by fellow Finovate alum NICE Actimize.

“We are incredibly excited to launch Xignite Enterprise Microservices, which we believe will truly revolutionize market data management,” Xignite founder and CEO Stephane Dubois said. “The culmination of over 10 years of nonstop innovation, we have taken the cloud-native architecture that has powered some of the world’s most prominent fintechs and scaled it to meet the unique requirements of institutional players that consume huge amounts of data but often have no way of integrating and optimizing it in an efficient and cost-effective way.”

The suite consists of seven cloud-native microservices tailored for both buy and sell-side firms, fintechs, and exchanges. These include:

  • Data Lake
  • Optimization
  • Entitlements and Usage
  • Reference
  • Historical
  • Real-Time
  • Fundamentals

Headquartered in San Mateo, California, Xignite introduced its data-as-a-service market data solution in 2006, and has been a Finovate alum since 2014. Recently, the company announced that it had enhanced its financial data cloud APIs to streamline delivery of news headlines and company earnings during the global public health crisis. This announcement followed news from the company that it was seeing “record demand” for its financial data during the pandemic.

“The past two-and-a-half months have been difficult both within our industry and in the wider world,” Dubois said. “It is reassuring to know that we’ve been a reliable source for our clients in these trying times. There is enough to worry about right now and nobody wants their market data providers to be a part of that.”

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Canadian Data Aggregator Flinks Raises $11 Million in Funding

Canadian Data Aggregator Flinks Raises $11 Million in Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding

Flinks, a startup based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, that specializes in data aggregation for financial services, has secured $11 million in Series A funding. The investment was led by NAventures, the VC arm of National Bank of Canada, which also provided $5.2 million in debt financing. Also participating in the round were Intact Ventures, Luge Capital, and Panache Ventures.

Flinks CEO Yves-Gabriel Leboeuf called the investment “timely” adding that the company was “well on track” to meet the goals it has previously set and was now ready to “face new, bigger challenges.” In a Q&A announcement at the company blog, Lebouef explained that, having focused on retail banking up to this moment, the company will look to expand into what he referred to as “wealth data.”

“Flinks will enable connections to data sources in the wealth management space, through a new aggregation service,” Lebouef said. “This is something we’re going to pull off in the near future – in fact, we’re already well into the beta phase.”

Founded in 2016, Flinks helps businesses provide users with the financial services they want. The company’s technology enables companies to connect their customer’s bank accounts, and to leverage data insights to build better, more personalized financial products. Lebouef noted that “roughly 1 in 3 Canadians” have connected their bank accounts with his company, which has processed 300+ million connections.

The investment will help Flinks expand to new markets and take advantage of the opportunities of open banking. Managing Director, Venture Capital, NAventures Philippe Daoust said, “We see great alignment between Flinks’ mission and our own focus on helping our clients manage their finances by providing them with innovative and reliable digital solutions.”

Flinks, which signed its first client in the spring of 2017 and its 100th client a year later, began 2020 by adding Clayton Feick as its new Chief Revenue Officer. Feick is a veteran of Quandl and Thomson Reuters, where he was vice president and global head of sales and business development and global lead, respectively.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

FinovateAsia: Digital Payments, Financial Services, and FutureTech

FinovateAsia: Digital Payments, Financial Services, and FutureTech
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateAsia Digital 2020

The second day of FinovateAsia Digital focused on a pair of themes – digital payments and futuretech – that are increasingly intertwined. Both offer solutions to the challenge of liberating consumers and communities from their “cash addiction” by combining industrial applications of the Internet of Things with the processes of the financial services industry. It is clear that the nexus of payments and advanced, enabling technologies is one of the key frontiers of fintech innovation today.

Below are a few insights and observations on these topics from our speakers on Day Two of our conference. And remember, to join our all-digital event – live or On Demand – visit our FinovateAsia Digital hub to register and begin enjoying all the content we have to offer.

On the persistence of cash, and the urgency to bring alternatives to communities that rely on cash

The newspapers are full of stories about how some communities are being left without ATMs, and people are finding it hard to access cash. You can see why that is because as the number of cash transactions falls, the cost of cash infrastructure – not just ATMs, but every shop with its tills and counting up cash and depositing it and vans full of cash driving around all over the place to fill up the ATMs, security guards – all of that infrastructure falls on fewer and fewer transactions, so the per transaction costs goes up.

So how to you protect people who need to work in cash? Well, (innovation in ATMs) seems to me to be an expensive way to do it. The alternative would be to find ways of moving them away from cash, not finding ever more expensive ways of allowing them to continue their cash habit. It’s the people who are trapped in a cash economy that face the highest transaction costs anyway.

–David Birch, Director of Innovation, Consult Hyperion

On the value of artificial intelligence to those business leaders who have implemented the technology

Thirty percent of the (business) leaders who have adopted and integrated artificial intelligence into their business models are very convinced that AI will deliver (on) their core strategic business decisions. So, in other words, 30% of those who have already deployed artificial intelligence believe that artificial intelligence must sit at the core of their deliverables in business strategy.

45% of these leaders invest three times more in this type of technology than the late adopters or the laggards. And 7% of the leaders record more revenues and savings than the late adopters of this technology. So as you can see, these numbers speak volumes. It’s also interesting to understand that these numbers compound over time. And the speed of compounding this growth and acceleration will be translated in a higher market share, better customer deliverables, and improved market reach in different jurisdictions. In other words: stronger business.

— Clara Durodié, Chief Executive, Cognitive Finance Group

On the enabling power of the Internet of Things and Industry 4.0 for payments and other financial services

Once we have the ability to connect devices and large industrial systems into financial services we suddenly have interesting opportunities, for example, in enabling real-time payments and machine-to-machine payments. So we are talking about creating a payment ecosystem and financing capabilities based on data streams and digital representations of physical assets in the industrial landscape.

This, of course, opens up a lot of questions. We need to think about, first and foremost, the trust model that has to be established. For example, when you create a digital representation of a physical asset, if we want to give that asset or a machine a payment capability where they are able to exchange value with other machines, we have to define a structure for a machine identity. You could almost argue that we need to establish a “Know Your Machine” process instead of a “Know Your Customer” process.

– Ville Sointu, Head of Emerging Technologies, Nordea Bank

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.

Photo by Addie from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

U.S. Challenger Bank Point Secures Series A Funding

U.S. Challenger Bank Point Secures Series A Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news

U.S. challenger bank Point, which offers a consumer banking app and pledges to provide a “credit card experience” to debit cardholders, announced that it has raised $10.5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Valar Ventures, and featured participation from Y Combinator, Kindred Ventures, Finventure Studio and “business angels.” Company CEO and co-founder Patrick Mrozowski said the challenger bank has raised a total of $12.7 million.

The San Francisco, California-based company has been in private beta “for the past year” plans to launch a major new version of its technology later this year, according to reporting in TechCrunch. In addition to its Point Card debit product – available as both a physical and virtual card – the company offers a Point Checking mobile savings account. The account is backed by FDIC-insured, Point partner Radius Bank, and the challenger bank leverages technology from Finovate alum Plaid in order to link accounts on its platform to a third-party bank account. Point does not charge foreign transaction fees for international transactions, and relies on Mastercard’s exchange rate for overseas transactions.

Users of the Point Card earn points when shopping with popular merchants including Airbnb, Uber, and Starbucks where cardholders can pick up 2x, 3x, and 4x in points respectively for each dollar they spend. Seamless integration between the Card and the app ensure a holistic consumer experience with features including purchase notifications, in-app card management, and rewards tracking.

Previous to his co-founding of Point, Mrozowski founded and ran Crumbs, a micro-investing platform for cryptocurrencies and digital assets that was acquired by Metal Pay two years ago.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

FinovateAsia Digital: Startups, Social Distance, and Digital Transformation

FinovateAsia Digital: Startups, Social Distance, and Digital Transformation
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateAsia Digital 2020

How has COVID-19 affected fintechs in the Asia-Pacific region and their ability to grow and expand into new channels and new markets? Who is better positioned – fintechs or banks – when it comes to managing the global health pandemic? What role does the public sector play in supporting fintech innovation in the different countries of the region, and how has the coronavirus impacted those relationships?

In keynote addresses, fireside chats, and roundtables, our fintech experts and analysts began FinovateAsia Digital today with the topic that is most central to everyone fintech right now: what can the fintech industry do now to best prepare for the “New Normal” on the other side of COVID-19?

With a focus on startups and digital transformation, here are a few highlights from some of the day’s conversations from our first, all-digital, Finovate conference. To join us live – or to watch the program On Demand during the conference week – visit our FinovateAsia Digital Hub to register.

On forming partnerships and building relationships between startups and incumbents at a time of social distancing

For us the pre-dominant fact was that we had to move everything online for the very first time. We have always run our programs face-to-face. This is where we believe innovation and magic happens: when people are in the same room and brainstorm together. This has been a great challenge to show our corporates and our startups that this is possible online as well.

It does require a bit more structuring, so that has been keeping us busy as the incubator management team. It’s something we have been focusing on for quite some time: to identify what are the right tools that we are going to use that both engage the startups and the corporates. (Many startups) typically can access Zoom and all those tools. But our corporate partners on the other hand have a bit more of a challenge to bring their businesses online – or even to communicate online.

–Lisa Schroeder, Operations and Progamme Lead, F10

On crisis presenting opportunity for fintechs in Asia and how these companies rose to the challenge

If fintech every had a “moment” in its life, it is now, in this crisis. Because the whole fintech narrative has been: we can deal with situations, crises, far better than traditional, incumbent banks because we have technology, we can interact with the consumer more directly, we have algorithms which can understand risk better … Now we had a perfect storm to go and look at all possible stress scenarios and find a way to serve the consumer the best. So from a fintech standpoint, they had a perfect environment to go and succeed. And we saw very strong evidence of such in Asia.

If I look at the growth of e-payment services … if I look at the demand (from) people who are looking for lending from alternative platforms – it just went through the roof … There are other data points which strongly show that if you are a fintech and you have a mature product during the crisis, you tend to gain a lot. For example, the graph of fintech investment in Singapore from April, May, and June went up like a hockey stick. And the biggest beneficiaries of these investments are the fintechs which are serving the small and medium enterprise, and the fintechs that are helping banks digitize faster.

–Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer, Monetary Authority of Singapore

On how the global health pandemic signals a shift in the pace of digital change in fintech

Traditional financial institutions are moving toward a collaborative, partnering, co-creation model, where they are partnering with the startup companies. And this partnership is a bit like a parent and a child. The parent, which is the financial firm, wants resilience, reliability, security, stability. The child wants to change the world, it wants challenge everything, it wants to kick down the walls and break down barriers and do everything differently because they want the world to change. And it is changing, because “the parent” is now having to work with “the child” in order to do things differently.

And that’s where this world of fintech today is really interesting because it’s not a simple one. It’s one where the mentor is the traditional financial firm who’s investing in the disruptor, which is the new startup technology firm. And the coronavirus pandemic has actually turbocharged (the) change, because traditional financial firms that were prevaricating and thinking about “maybe we should do more on digital” have been forced to suddenly overnight wake up and do digital.

–Chris Skinner, Author, theFinanser, and Doing Digital: Lessons from Leaders

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.

Photo by Alaric Sim from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

solarisBank Raises $67 Million; More MENA Fintech; What’s Next for Wirecard

solarisBank Raises $67 Million; More MENA Fintech; What’s Next for Wirecard
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

Berlin, Germany-based “tech company with a banking license” solarisBank has secured $67 million in funding (€60 million). The Series C round was led by HV Holtzbrinck Ventures and Storm Ventures, and featured participation from a wide number of investors including BBVA, ABN Amro, SBI Group, Global Brain, Hegus, and Lakestar. Also participating in the oversubscribed round were Vulcan Capital and Samsung Catalyst Fund.

The investment takes the company’s total funding to more than $180 million (€160 million), and will be used to help fuel Solarisbank’s continued expansion throughout Europe. Since 2017, the company has doubled its revenues every year, and grown its product portfolio to include solutions like decoupled debit cards and post-purchase installment products. With more than 400,000 end-customer accounts as of the end of the first half of 2020, the company also announced that it will expand its operations in the cryptocurrency space via its subsidiary solaris Digital Assets.

“solarisBank is continuing its impressive growth and the current financing round will help us to expedite building a pan-European platform,” solarisBank CEO Dr. Roland Folz said in a statement. He added, “We are the leading platform for Banking-as-a-Service in Europe and are excited that this exceptional group of new investors will now be a part of our journey.”

More on MENA Fintech

Last week we reported on a study that highlighted the fintech innovations that were most likely to drive financial inclusion in the MENA region. This week we note another report on fintech in the Middle East and Northern Africa, this time from Deloitte, which noted a growing appetite for fintech solutions from the region’s banking customers.

At the same time, Deloitte Digital’s Middle East FinTech Study, released in June, cautioned that further fintech development in the region faces challenges with regard to financing, and a wariness from traditional banks toward engaging fintechs. The latter issue in particular reflects what the report authors – Rushdi Duqah and Anthony Yazitzis – call “a certain degree of contradiction and dichotomy.”

“Customer behavior across the Middle East, especially in KSA, is characterized by a willingness to adopt innovative solutions offered by banks,” Duqah and Yazitzis observed. The two highlighted P2P money transfers, account aggregation, and roboadvisory as three such areas. “However, banks are not leveraging the full suite of FinTech solutions/features to address customer’s needs and requirements to enhance the daily banking journey and experience,” they wrote.

Read the full report to see how “harmonization and trust” are the path forward for financial services companies, fintechs, and banks in the Middle East and Northern Africa.

What’s Next for Wirecard?

We reported on the crisis facing Germany’s Wirecard two weeks ago in Finovate Global. Company CEO Markus Braun stepped down amid reports that Wirecard could not account for $2.1 billion in cash, and concerns that the company was “the victim of fraud of considerable proportions.”

This week we learned that Braun has been arrested – though since released on bail – and that Deutsche Bank has engaged with the now-bankrupt company and is considering providing financial support. A report in Bloomberg noted that Deutsche Bank had conducted talks with Wirecard last spring (referred to as “preliminary discussions” that were quickly concluded) and that, despite its woes, Wirecard could be a potentially attractive acquisition target thanks to its partnerships with Visa, Mastercard, and JCB International.

Here is our weekly look at fintech around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Billed as “the grand fintech consolidation,” TechCabal takes a look at MFS Africa’s purchase of SME digital payments provider Beyonic.
  • Nigerian fintech Wallets Africa locks in new funding from investors including Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel.
  • The East African makes the case for Kenya as a top destination for venture capital in Africa.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Top banking-as-a-service platform solarisBank raises $67 million (€ 60 million) in Series C funding.
  • Electronic payment network Paysera expands to Kosovo.
  • Azerbaijan’s Xalq Bank launches Compass Plus’ open development platform, TranzAxis.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Digital property management and rent collection platform Ajar earns UAE’s Most Trusted Fintech in 2020 honors from APAC Business Headlines.
  • UAE’s central bank and the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) announce the start of their annual Fintech Abu Dhabi Innovation Challenge for fintechs developing solutions for local small businesses.
  • Dubai’s Mamo Pay earns spot in Visa’s Finech Fast Track Program.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Transfast, a U.S.-based cross-border payments company, partners with Pakistan’s Habib Bank to enable money transfers to Pakistan.
  • Bangalore, India-based fintech Zeta announces expansion into Vietnam and the Philippines.
  • Indian gold lending startup, Rupeek, unveils zero contact gold loan kiosks to support touchless financing amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Mexican fintech ePesos announces $21 million debt financing round with Accial Capital.
  • BizCapital, a lending startup based in Brazil, raises $12 million in funding thanks to an investment from Germany development finance institution, DEG.
  • Credit Suisse buys 35% of Brazilian digital bank modalmais.

Asia-Pacific

  • Myanmar Citizens Bank (MCB Bank) issues MPU-JCB co-branded debit cards.
  • Razer’s fintech arm, Razer Fintech launches new initiative to support local businesses in Malaysia during the global health care crisis of COVID-19.
  • KrASIA profiles Indonesian fintech Akulaku, which offers online credit, wealth management, and digital banking services in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Oh Canada! A Tribute to the Top Fintechs from the Great White North

Oh Canada! A Tribute to the Top Fintechs from the Great White North
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, Finovate Global

Today is Canada Day, which commemorates the date in 1867 when three provinces – Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Canada Province (now known as Ontario and Quebec) – united to form a single nation. And while the global public health crisis may limit the holiday’s typical parades, cook-outs, fireworks demonstrations, and concerts, rest assured that Canadians all over the world will find a way to celebrate what is colloquially – if a bit inaccurately – referred to as “Canada’s birthday.”

With this in mind, the Finovate blog sends a hearty “Happy Canada Day!” to the dozens of Canadian fintechs that have demonstrated their innovative solutions at our conferences over the past decade-plus.

Photo by Andre Furtado from Pexels

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook