Author: David Penn

Tinkoff Launches Super App, Integrating Finance, Leisure, and Lifestyle

Tinkoff Launches Super App, Integrating Finance, Leisure, and Lifestyle
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Tinkoff Bank

Neither a bird, nor a plane … the latest offering from Russian digital bank Tinkoff is its new “super app” – launched his week – which offers functionality to support and enhance the users’ personal financial, leisure, and lifestyle needs.

“The Tinkoff app has evolved into more than a traditional mobile bank, and the latest changes are the culmination of this transformation,” said Tinkoff SVP Arten Yakanov. “The super-app is both our own version of the App Store, with its own mini-app, and the first WeChat-like app in the Russian or any other European financial market, featuring products and services from our partners.”

The app is currently in beta, and will be available “shortly” in version 5.0 for iOS, with an Android version to follow. The technology currently features Tinkoff digital banking and lifestyle services (movies, concerts, restaurants, travel, commerce, sporting events, etc.), and integration with the complete Tinkoff ecosystem of investment, business banking, and insurance services. Users of the app will also benefit from end-to-end integration with Oleg, Tinkoff’s voice assistant.

In a statement, Tinkoff signaled a number of features to be added to the super app, including more retail experiences, food and flower delivery, car sharing, as well as fitness and wellness services. The bank said it has agreements with a number of industry partners to offer customers discounts and cashback via the app.

“Unlike other Russian ecosystems, we decided to blaze a trail of our own,” Yamanov added. “Instead of scooping up businesses, we opted for a win-win solution, attracting the market’s best partners who share Tinkoff’s qualities and values.” Yamanov said one goal would be to expand these partnerships, working with businesses “from Instagram bloggers to Russia’s largest B2C companies.”

Named one of the world’s leading digital banks, Tinkoff demonstrated Stories for Mobile Banking at FinovateEurope 2018. Headquartered in Moscow, Russia, and founded in 2008, the digital bank has more than seven million customers and has been listed on the London Stock Exchange since 2013.

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Capture-as-a-Service Specialist Ephesoft Partners with Malaysia’s Alliance Bank

Capture-as-a-Service Specialist Ephesoft Partners with Malaysia’s Alliance Bank
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Ephesoft

Small and medium-sized businesses in Malaysia are the focus of a new partnership between enterprise content capture and data discovery solution provider Ephesoft and Alliance Bank Malaysia Berhad. The pact, announced today, heralds the integration of Ephesoft’s intelligent capture automation technology, Transact, into Alliance Bank’s middle office operations.

Alliance Bank Group CEO Joel Kornreich praised the way Ephesoft’s technology helps it manage the high volume of high-value documents it deals with every day. “Ephesoft is able to meet our requirements and is versatile to scale with us as we continue to transform our business processes to deliver faster, simpler, and more responsive customer experience to our clients,” he said.

Kornreich added that the technology will also enable Alliance Bank to better defend itself and its customers against fraudulent activity. “We also use the information (from customer transactions) to perform financial casting to understand our customers better, and due diligence in assessing customers,” he explained.

Ephesoft Transact enables businesses to accurately and quickly convert unstructured data in documents into actionable information. The technology leverages human-supervised machine learning to examine documents ranging from mortgage applications to insurance claims and to extract required data from them.

Transact improves in efficiency over time, becoming more “intelligent” with every correction, new layout, or new document type. The solution is available as both an on-premise option, running on Windows, Ubuntu, CentOS, and Red Hat servers, as well as via the cloud courtesy of Ephesoft’s Cloud HyperExtender add-in.

“Ephesoft’s machine learning-powered software enables Alliance Bank employees to accelerate tedious processes and use their time to bring value to the organization in strategic ways that provide a competitive advantage,” company founder and CEO Ike Kavas said.

The company’s partnership news comes one month after it announced a collaboration with Thailand-based insurance company, Tokio Marine Asia. The month before, Ephesoft unveiled a pact with automation-driven, IT, BPO, and consulting service provider Hexaware. The company will combine Ephesoft’s intelligent data capture technology with Hexaware’s own robotic process automation-based solutions to enhance a wide variety of business processes.

“Many organizations suffer from having a tremendous amount of untouched, unstructured data that they either don’t use or must manually process,” Kavas said when the Hexaware partnership was announced. “We solve those challenges so that companies can be nimble, efficient, and accurate using modern tactics.”

Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Irvine, California, Ephesoft demonstrated its Capture-as-a-Service platform for smart document capture at FinovateSpring 2018. With customers in more than 50 countries, and partnerships with 250+ fintechs, integrators, solution partners, and resellers, the company has raised $15 million in funding from investors including Mercato Partners.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Ephesoft, Finastra, ID.me, ThetaRay, Tinkoff Bank, Trulioo

On Finovate.com

  • Capture-as-a-Service Specialist Ephesoft Partners with Malaysia’s Alliance Bank
  • Tinkoff Launches Super App, Integrating Finance, Leisure, and Lifestyle

Around the web

  • Trulioo brings its identity verification service to Nigeria and Ghana.
  • ID.me introduces new solution to help businesses to comply with California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
  • Greece’s Pancreta Bank partners with Finastra to enhance regulatory compliance.
  • ThetaRay taps Edward Sander as its new Chief Product Officer.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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SoftBank Showers Latin American Fintechs with Millions in New Capital

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Avaloq, DriveWealth, Finovate Global, PaySend, SumUp, Temenos, Tinkoff Bank, Vymo

SoftBank Backs Latin America

Last week, the international fintech buzz was all about the booming investment in African startups. As you can see in our sub-Saharan Africa section below, that buzz continues as analysts wonder how African fintechs can best leverage their good financial fortunes of late.

But this week, it’s all about Latin America as fintechs from Mexico to Argentina lock in triple digit investments. What’s especially interesting is that two of the week’s biggest beneficiaries – Konfio and Uala – have the same participating benefactor in SoftBank.

The investment in Argentina’s Uala was the first time the Japanese-based firm had funded a company from Argentina, but not SoftBank’s first funding in the region. The firm invested $1 billion in Colombian delivery app Rappi in April of this year. SoftBank has a deeper history investing in Mexican startups, having funded payments startup Clip and used car buying platform Kavak. SoftBank is also especially active in Brazil; the firm led a $140 million round for the country’s e-commerce solution provider VTEX in November.

FinovateEurope Goes to Berlin!

It’s not too early to start thinking and planning for 2020 – especially with our first conference right around the corner in February.

After six years of basing our annual European fintech conference in London, Finovate is crossing the channel and setting up our stage in Berlin, Germany next year. Our new FinovateEurope location will also feature a new event format designed to ensure attendees maximize their time at the conference. Take a look at our developing agenda to see what we have in store February 11th through the 13th.

Here’s our weekly look at fintech around the world.

Asia-Pacific

  • Singapore’s FinAccel, maker of Kredivo, raises $90 million in round led by Asia Growth Fund and Square Peg.
  • Maybank Group, the fourth largest bank by assets in Southeast Asia, goes livewith Avaloq’s banking suite.
  • South Korea announces plans to launch opening banking system before year’s end.
  • Vymo brings AI-powered sales coaching to insurance giant Sompo.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Can Africa’s fintech startups learn from the experience of M-Pesa? TechCrunch considers the opportunities now available thanks to recent positive funding trends.
  • A partnership between Smartstream and Union Systems will help African FIs digitize their post-trade environments.
  • QuartzAfrica takes a look at the “niche ecosystems” that are developing amid Africa’s rapidly expanding fintech industry.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Berlin, Germany-based SME digital banking platform Penta teams up with SumUp.
  • First Investment Bank (Fibank) goes live with the first, PSD2-compliant, open banking platform in Bulgaria.
  • Tinkoff GDRs will be included in MOEX Russia indices next month.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Sudan’s Nile Bank is the latest FI to choose Oracle’s Flexcube core banking solution.
  • Temenos teams up with Egyptian National Post Organization.
  • Dubai Financial Services Authority inks fintech pact with Luxembourg’s Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier.

Central and Southern Asia

  • DriveWealth helps Indian investors access U.S. stocks via new partnership.
  • Indian banking technology provider TCS Financial Solutions migrates three credit unions to a cloud-version of its TCS Bancs system.
  • Paysend introduces worldwide money transfers to Uzbekistan.
  • Sri Lanka’s central bank examines the possibility of applying blockchain technology to streamline KYC processes for FIs.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Uala, a money management app from Argentina, raises $150 million in Series C round led by Tencent and SoftBank.
  • Mexican SME credit assessment specialist Konfio closes $100 million investment from SoftBank.
  • MercadoLibre picks up $125 million loan from Goldman Sachs.

As Finovate goes increasingly global, so does our coverage of financial technology. Finovate Global is our weekly look at fintech innovation in developing economies in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe.

Top image designed by Freepik

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The Winning Ten: Finovate Alums Earn Spots on the 2020 Fintech Power 50

The Winning Ten: Finovate Alums Earn Spots on the 2020 Fintech Power 50
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: CREALOGIX, Currency Cloud, Finovate alums, Flybits, Icefire, Jumio, Keepabl, Meniga, nanoPay, Responsive AI, Salt Edge

The newly-released Fintech Power 50 for 2020 features ten Finovate alums. The roster is produced every December and bills itself as “meant to be controversial and provoke debate” while at the same time providing “inspiration to the rest of the industry.”

“Throughout its first year the Fintech Power 50 has seen consistent success for our members and we are very proud of the opportunities that being a member of the Power 50 has offered the companies involved,” Fintech Power 50 Managing Director and co-founder Jason Williams said. “We look forward to continuing the traction we have made this year with the 2020 cohort, with a more ambitious and exciting programme.”

The Finovate alums to make the cut are:

The Fintech Power 50 aims to help fintechs reach a broader audience around the world. Over the course of 2020, the program will offer media partnerships and networking, business development and branding support, and investment and talent acquisition. This year marks the third edition of the program; coincidentally, the 2019 Power 50 featured ten Finovate alums, as well.

“We’re incredibly excited at this announcement, which is clear recognition of Keepabl’s value to customers, and to trusted advisers alike, and our potential to keep disrupting compliance-as-a-service,” wrote Keepabl CEO Robert Baugh in an email.

CREALOGIX CEO David Joyce added that he was “looking forward to exchanging ideas with the renowned digital leaders in this unique group.” He praised the way the roster reflected “the breadth, diversity, and creativity of the global fintech scene.”

The Fintech Power 50 2020 also features ten fintech thought leaders whose names will be familiar to Finovate veterans. Nine of the ten – David Birch, Ghela Boskovich, Theo Lau, Brett King, Jim Marous, Devie Mohan, David Parker, and Ruth Wandhofer – have made major contributions to our Finovate conferences since we expanded our format in 2017. We’ll have to get Mr. Lawrence Wintermeyer, co-founder of Global Digital Finance and the tenth thought leader on this year’s Fintech Power 50, to a Finovate stage sooner than later!

See the full Fintech Power 50 2020 list.

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SumUp Partners with German SME Digital Bank Penta to Support Offline Commerce

SumUp Partners with German SME Digital Bank Penta to Support Offline Commerce
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: SumUp

Penta Partners, Berlin’s digital banking platform for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), has partnered with UK-based card reader SumUp to help its move into the traditional business space, reports Ruby Hinchliffe of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

Breaking out of its customer niche, which until now has been online-savvy entrepreneurs looking to avoid traditional bank processes, Penta will now expand its offering to restaurants, healthcare professionals, architects and manufacturers to name just a few of the longer-established sectors.

“We are now expanding to serve traditional industries, which form the backbone of German and European society and economy,” said Penta CEO Marko Wenthin, who believes these areas are “forming the largest part of the SME market in Germany and Italy” but don’t get the attention of traditional banks.

Acquired by German fintech company builder Finleap in April 2019 just months after raising $7 million in a Series A funding round, Penta used the acquisition to expand into Italy in partnership with Beesy, a Finleap portfolio company which focuses on digital business banking for freelancers.

The fintech says it already serves SMEs better than traditional banks, offering them a digital account-opening process, multiple payment cards, grant limits and team permissions, expense management and integrated accounting tools.

Now, with SumUp, it can offer SMEs the ability to accept card payments.

“By cooperating with partners who enable our customers to simplify bookkeeping, employee benefits and management or make foreign payments, Penta is already now the default financial platform for SMEs in both Germany and Italy,” Wenthin added.

SumUp demonstrated its technology at FinovateEurope 2013. Founded in 2011, the London, England-based company has raised more than $425 million in funding.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Fiserv, SumUp, Temenos

On Finovate.com

  • SumUp Partners with German SME Digital Bank Penta to Support Offline Commerce
  • The Winning Ten: Finovate Alums Earn Spots on 2020 Fintech Power 50

Around the web

  • Temenos partners with Canadian financial services company CWB Financial.
  • Motive Partners acquires majority stake in Fiserv’s investment services business, netting Fiserv $510 million in after-tax proceeds.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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RightCapital Inks Strategic Partnership with Financial Advisor Association

RightCapital Inks Strategic Partnership with Financial Advisor Association
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: RightCapital

Financial and tax planning solution provider RightCapital has formed its third partnership in as many months this week. The Connecticut-based company announced that it has entered a strategic partnership with the non-profit, International Association of Registered Financial Consultants (IARFC). This will enable members of the financial services association to access RightCapital’s financial planning solutions at a 10% discount.

“We welcome RightCapital to our growing list of Association benefits. Their services are well grounded by the experience of their founders and a dedicated knowledgeable support team,” IARFC Strategic Alliance Team Member Randy Kriner said.

Designed for both independent advisors and advisor networks like IARFC, RightCapital’s technology gives financial planning professionals the tools they need to help clients plan and prepare for retirement, educational expenses for children, and insurance needs for their families. The company’s solution enables advisors to ensure their clients maximize Social Security benefits and make tax-efficient investment decisions. RightCapital’s offering also provides the kind of budgeting and debt analysis tools that help clients address their daily financial concerns.

The collaboration with the IARFC is only the latest partnership the company has forged in recent months. In October, RightCapital announced a strategic partnership with cloud-based advisory platform Advyzon, and inked an integration deal with SS&C’s Black Diamond Wealth Platform. The previous month, the company announced an integration with advisor technology platform Panoramix.

RightCapital has also made a commitment to the next generation of financial planning professionals. The company has provided its technology for free to students participating in the Personal Financial Planning (PFP) programs that are offered at many universities in the U.S., such as Texas Tech and Kansas State University. More than 20 universities are participating in the initiative, RightCapital reported in late August of this year.

“It’s deeply gratifying to know that we are making a difference,” RightCapital co-founder and CEO Shuang Chen said. “Providing the right educational tools to students pursuing their undergraduate degree in personal financial planning is essential to the future of financial planning.”

RightCapital demonstrated its API and enterprise solution at FinovateSpring earlier this year. Founded in 2015, the company has raised more than $8 million in funding from investors including Camellia Venture Capital.

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Temenos Teams Up with Egyptian National Post

Temenos Teams Up with Egyptian National Post
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Temenos

Egyptian National Post Organization (ENPO) has selected Swiss technology firm Temenos and its T24 Transact core banking system, replacing 20 legacy systems in the process, reports Alex Hamilton of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

T24 Transact will be deployed in the cloud alongside the vendor’s Infinity digital front office solution. Both will be used to underpin the firm’s drive to meet the Egyptian government’s financial inclusion initiatives.

ENPO has a network of 4,000 branches via its iPost, Post Express, and Post Cars channels. It provides financial services, including current and savings accounts, instant remittances, electronic collection with notification services.

Temenos said that it will be delivering a “single, packaged and upgradeable banking platform” and help EMPI create an “omnichannel, unified teller for all financial and non-financial services.”

“Egypt is a country of great importance for Temenos; we are the leading banking software provider serving over 12 banks in the country and have been in the region for over two decades,” said Andreas Andreades, executive chairman at Temenos.

Egypt’s National Financial Inclusion Initiative, sponsored by Egypt’s Government, aims to promote the use of digital financial services throughout the nation.

“Temenos is committed to enabling Egypt’s Digital Economy Transformation and Financial Inclusion program,” added Andreades. “We believe that ENPO’s end-to-end digital transformation will help them realize this digital vision and promote financial inclusion in Egypt.”

Temenos demonstrated its Connect Mobile Banking solution at FinovateEurope 2015. The company is also an alum of our developers conferene, FinDEVrSiliconValley 2015, where it discussed the evolution of and opportunities in its B2B financial apps marketplace.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Artivest, DriveWealth, Envestnet, Finastra, PaySend, Revolut, RightCapital, Temenos, Tink, Yodlee

On Finovate.com

  • RightCapital Inks Strategic Partnership with Financial Advisor Association

Around the web

  • Envestnet | Yodlee forges data sharing agreement with JP Morgan Chase.
  • Temenos partners with CWB Financial Group.
  • DriveWealth teams up with SBI Thai Online Securities, bringing access to U.S. stocks to Thai investors.
  • Open banking platform Tink announces expansion to Portugal and Italy.
  • New partnership with Smart Pension will enable Revolut to offer its business customers the ability to automate monthly pension contributions.
  • Artivest announces new partnership with Wellington Management.
  • Paysend introduces worldwide money transfers to Uzbekistan.
  • Jumio takes home top honors in the “Software Security Enterprise Product of the Year” category at the 2019 Best in Biz Awards.
  • Finastra inks deal with Pancreta Bank of Greece to deploy its Fusion Risk solution to help automate regulatory reporting.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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Hydrogen Wins Spot in Mastercard Start Path’s Incoming Cohort

Hydrogen Wins Spot in Mastercard Start Path’s Incoming Cohort
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Hydrogen

Development platform Hydrogen is one of seven companies selected to participate in the Mastercard Start Path accelerator program. The six-month virtual program for later-stage startups is designed to help these firms scale, land strategic investments, and forge key relationships with some of the world’s largest banks and FIs.

“We are proud to be part of Mastercard Start Path,” Hydrogen shared from its Twitter account earlier today. “We’re excited to partner with them as we continue to build the future of commerce.”

Hydrogen offers a set of fintech and blockchain APIs that enable a range of financial services including banking, investing, savings, and insurance. The company provides developers with a toolkit of configurable APIs, an integration library and standardized data model, as well as business logic and modular interface components, giving them the resources they need to build end-to-end apps and solutions.

The Mastercard Start Path program begins with a global pitch day and three-day, international program kick off. During the six-month program that follows, participants will receive support from a dedicated sponsor who serves as a “sounding board and relationship broker” to help startups develop a “unique and relevant” pipeline. Mastercard does not take equity in companies that participate in the program. Instead, it reserves the option to participate in the startup’s next funding round “if and when a strategic fit is identified.”

Jen Langione, Senior Specialist with Mastercard’s Global Communications team, wrote about the importance of innovation and creating value in determining which companies would make the cut. “Innovation is at the heart of Mastercard’s 50-year history,” Langione wrote, “and the cutting-edge technologies being pioneered by the latest group of Start Path companies align to the innovative, value-driven approach Mastercard takes to the solutions it creates and services it offers.”

Joining Hydrogen in the upcoming cohort are:

  • BharatPe
  • Cyberwrite
  • Eurkea AI
  • Kasha
  • mmuze
  • Ziosk

In its statement, Mastercard noted that it received applications from companies operating in more than 210 countries. The program accepts 40 startups per year, and has worked with more than 200 startups since the program’s inception in 2014.

Hydrogen’s Mike and Matt Kane demonstrated the company’s technology at FinovateEurope 2018. At the event, the two co-founders showed how to use the app development platform to build a European savings platform in five minutes. The platform leveraged the blockchain for security and a proprietary AI to offer an interactive digital assistant.

Last month, Hydrogen announced that it won a finalist spot in the South African Reserve Bank’s Fintech Demo Day – along with three other Finovate alums. In September, the company made its app building platform available to Oracle Cloud customers by way of the Oracle Cloud Marketplace. Named to the Wealthtech 100 this spring, Hydrogen was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in New York City.

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DriveWealth Helps Indian Investors Access U.S. Stocks via New Partnership

DriveWealth Helps Indian Investors Access U.S. Stocks via New Partnership
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: DriveWealth

A partnership between digital trading technology company DriveWealth and India’s SV Capital will allow two of India’s largest stock brokers – Stockal and HDFC Securities – to offer their investors greater access to the U.S. stock market. The brokerage firms will leverage DriveWealth’s technology and brokerage execution, including its fractional share offering, to make it easier for investors in India to diversify their portfolios with investments in U.S. stocks.

“India is a very important market for us,” DriveWealth CEO Robert Cortright explained, “and this relationship has the potential to have a real impact on expanding opportunities for individuals to have straightforward, affordable online investing experiences related to brands they know and products they use on a daily basis.”

DriveWealth enables banks, wealth management firms, fintechs, consumer brands, and global businesses to build or add to their existing investment offerings. The company’s cloud-based technology powers real-time, dollar-based fractional share investing, digital roboadvisory portfolios, and features such as card-linked, round-up investing and stock-back, loyalty and rewards programs.

Importantly, for international partners, DriveWealth offers the ability for brokerages and other financial firms around the world to give their customers access to stocks, exchange-traded funds, and other assets that trade on U.S. exchanges. HDFC Securities Head of Digital Strategy and Analytics Nandkishore Purohit said that the partnership will able its Indian customers to participate in “global growth stories” and take advantage of investment opportunities outside India’s borders. Purohit also praised DriveWealth’s technology for its ease-of-use. “Being a completely digital platform,” Purohit said, “we strongly believe that customers will easily warm up to its user-friendly interfaces and will appreciate the simplicity of the investing process.”

DriveWealth has spent the year at a furious, partner-making pace. Leading up to this week’s announcement, DriveWealth has collaborated with Nigerian investment platforms, Bamboo and Chaka; partnered with Asia digital trading platform FastWealth, and teamed up with fellow Finovate alum Revolut to enable the U.K.-based fintech to offer its users commission-free trading in NYSE and NASDAQ-listed stocks. DriveWealth said that the partnership enabled it to acquire 20,000 customers in 36 hours.

DriveWealth demonstrated its technology at FinovateAsia 2016. The company, which won Best of Show, earlier that year, was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Chatham, New Jersey. Since inception, DriveWealth has raised more than $29 million in funding from investors including Route 66 Ventures, Point72 Ventures, Raptor Group, and SBI Group.

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