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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
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.
While rumors have been circulating for days, Zopaconfirmed today that it has raised $182 million (£140 million) in its largest fundraising to date. The capital comes from IAG Silverstripe, the investment division of IAG Capital, and will, in the words of Zopa CEO Jaidev Janardana, enable the P2P lending pioneer to fulfill the regulatory capital requirements and lift restrictions on its banking license.
“This new funding means we have concluded the fundraising phase of our bank mobilization,” Janardana said. “Definitive agreements to provide the funding have been finalized and are subject to final approvals including regulatory change of control.”
IAG Silverstripe has been an investor in Zopa since the fall of 2018, and holds a minority stake in the company. Zopa noted that its bank will operate along with its current P2P financing business (Zopa Limited) as part of the larger Zopa Group.
The funding for Zopa arrives at an opportune time for the company, which will celebrate its 15th anniversary next year. Granted an “Authorisation with Restriction” by U.K’s Financial Conduct Authority on December 4, 2018, Zopa had twelve months to meet the capital requirements that would enable the company to go ahead with a full launch. Even as the deadline drew near last week, Zopa representatives expressed confidence in the company’s ability to raise the necessary capital.
“We continue to hold our bank license with restrictions and are working closely with the regulators to gain our full license,” Janardana explained. “We are excited that, once approved, Zopa will be able to launch its bank alongside its peer-to-peer business and offer a broader set of products to our customers.”
One of Finovate’s earliest alums, the company demonstrated its P2P lending platform at FinovateSpring 2008, billing itself as the “world’s first social finance company,” In the years since its founding in 2005, Zopa has lent 5 billion pounds in unsecured personal loans to customers in the U.K. Headquartered in both New York and London, the company launched a new savings solution last month that offers a fixed-term account with 4% interest as part of its entry into the world of banking. In October, Zopa introducedBorrowing Power, a new offering that uses AI to help customers see what determines their personal borrowing power.
Fenergoteams up with PwC to provide KYC compliance and client onboarding as managed services.
SumUpforges partnership with German fintech Penta which will offer the company’s card reader to its customers.
Personeticsjoins Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN) Global Startups Program.
Temenosinks partnership with Egyptian National Post Organization.
Maybank Group, the fourth largest bank by assets in Southeast Asia, goes live with Avaloq’s banking suite.
Installment payment specialist Splititpartners with smart bed solution provider ReST.
SoFiscores New York BitLicense, which will permit the company to offer crytocurrency trading services in the state.
Jack Henry to provide a comprehensive technology upgrade, including deployment of its SilverLake core system, for Parkside Financial Bank & Trust.
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.
One of the largest insurance groups in Asia, Sompo Holdings, is turning to AI to help its field sales teams spend less time consulting and updating customer information on databases, and more time building relationships with actual customers.
The Japan-based insurer announced that it has partnered with Vymo to use the company’s AI-powered, mobile-first sales assistant technology to boost the efficiency and productivity of its agents. The agreement follows a successful pilot project between the two companies that was launched in September.
Vymo demonstrated its Intelligent Personal Sales Assistant technology at FinovateAsia 2018. The app uses contextual intelligence and proactive sales coaching to automatically detect the sales representative’s actions and provide guidance on the optimal next steps to improve outcomes. In addition to leveraging dialler and client integrations and geo-intelligence to automatically log sales activity such as calls, emails, and meetings, Vymo learns from the success of the best performing sales professionals to help others on the platform determine how to better prioritize leads and best engage customers.
“At a leadership level , Vymo enables decision-makers to understand where should the sales and development efforts be,” Anurag Srivastava, Vymo VP-APAC explained last year during his FinovateAsia technology demonstration. At a manager level, he added, the technology solution helps them understand what the sales people are doing on a daily basis, as well as how they can constructively intervene to help them to become better. Srivastava noted that the solution also makes life easier for sales professionals, helping them meet their numbers and “gain predictability into what they are doing.”
Vymo earned a finalist spot in the India FinTech Forum’s IFTA 2019 awards last month. This fall, the company partnered with ABeam Consulting in a move that will help Vymo further expand into Asia-Pacific and Japanese markets. Also this fall, Vymo teamed up with FE Credit, the consumer lending arm of VP Bank to help the Vietnam-based financial institution improve customer acquisition, lead generation, and onboarding. Vymo raised $18 million in funding earlier this year, taking its total capital to $22 million
More than 100,000 sales professionals in 50+ businesses use Vymo’s Intelligent Personal Sales Assistant technology. The company notes that its solution has helped sales teams experience a nearly 2x increase in productivity and sales gains of 30%-50% within the first three months of deployment.
Yamini Bhat is Vymo co-founder and CEO. Founded in 2013, the company is headquartered in New York City.
Having already worked with Amazon in the past, Swedish banking firm Klarna has reinforced its reliance on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to increase redundancy and fault tolerance as it aims to scale its business, reports Alex Hamilton of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
The company also plans to follow up the launches of its cloud-based Open Banking platform and customer authentication platform with additional on-demand products using AWS.
“Together with AWS we share a relentless focus on providing choices to consumers, so they no longer have to settle for the status quo,” said Koen Koppen, chief technology officer at Klarna.
“Our collaboration with AWS has helped us to rapidly innovate and create new services and applications that customers want, in a secure and seamless way.”
Andy Isherwood, managing director for AWS EMEA, added that Klarna is going to “change the world” with cloud technology.
“We have worked with Klarna for over a decade and it has been inspiring to see them grow from a Swedish startup to a global financial services powerhouse, using the secure, proven infrastructure of AWS,” Isherwood said.
The company demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2012. Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden and founded in 2005, Klarna has 80 million shoppers on its platform and partnerships with 190,000 retailers around the world. Company co-founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski is CEO.
VymoBrings AI-Powered Sales Coaching to Insurance Giant Sompo
KlarnaPicks Amazon Web Services as Preferred Cloud Partner
Around the web
Trusted digital identity specialist Signicatpartners with payment information service SurePay.
24sessionsopens doors at its first regional office in Paris, France.
Revolutfor Businessintroduces support for GBP Direct Debits.
eXatejoins the first cohort of the Velocity Birmingham Fintech Hub.
Temenosappoints Michelle Tea as Managing Director for Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific islands.
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.
Our second FinovateMiddleEast conference is in the books! And after a full day of live fintech demos, our attendees have made their voices heard as to which fintech innovations are most deserving of Best of Show honors. Congratulations to all of our demoing companies for their hard work, and a hearty thanks to our attendees for their votes in our Best of Show competition.
With that, here are the winners of Best of Show at FinovateMiddleEast 2019:
Amber Labs for its Bitcoin Bank, where people anywhere in the world can get all the benefits of a robust, global financial network, without the technical and jurisdictional restrictions, nor the inherent asymmetries, associated with the modern banking system. Video.
efigence for its EFI4 Digital Banking Platform, a seamless digital banking experience that guides retail banking customers through the complexity of the banking world using a three-screen environment. Video.
In addition to all of the companies that demonstrated their technologies live on stage at FinovateMiddleEast this week, we would like to thank our partners and sponsors for their participation and support. We also extend a special thanks to our Strategic Partner, the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Finance, whose guidance in this our second FinovateMiddleEast has been invaluable.
Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their three favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The two companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2019 conferences are below:
The nearly-$400 million poured into fintech companies in Nigeria alone this week is being remarked upon as a testament to the growing investor interest in sub-Saharan Africa. The three recipients of the new capital in recent days are OPay ($120 million), Interswitch ($200 million), and PalmPay ($40 million). The investors include Sequoia Capital China and SoftBank Ventures Asia, as well as China’s Transsion and Visa.
For comparison, African fintechs raised $357 million in all of 2018, according to a 2019 report from the GSM Association, The Mobile Economy, Sub-Saharan Africa. Quoted in the Financial Times on the week’s funding news, Guaranty Trust Bank chief executive Segun Agbaje credited the payments industry for the surge in investment, calling the growth in the sector “probably like no other on the continent.”
Finovate made its African debut last year in Cape Town, South Africa. For an in-depth look at recent trends in African fintech, check out Jonathan Gregson’s “Africa’s Fintech Makeover.”
China’s impact on international fintech is also evident in the news that Ant Financial is considering applying for a virtual banking license in Singapore. Successfully securing such a license would enable Ant Financial to compete against Chinese incumbents like DBS Group Holdings and Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. Ant Financial secured a license to operate a digital wallet in Hong Kong last year.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Brazil’s digital bank Neon raises $94 million in round led by General Atlantic and Brazil Banco Votorantim.
Biz Latin Hub’s Craig Dempsey makes the case for Mexico as the fintech sector to watch in 2020.
Mexican non-bank wallet service Todito Cash inks partnerships with four financial payment solutions companies.
Asia-Pacific
Ant Financial may be one the hunt for a Singaporean virtual banking license, reports Bloomberg, following the online finance titan’s recent scoring of a license to operate a digital wallet in Hong Kong.
InstaReM rebrands as Nium, announces cross border payments partnership with Cambodian banking group, PhillipBank.
Indonesia’s biggest banking group, Bank Mandiri will use the Avaloq’sBanking Suite to run its wealth management division, which has $14 billion in assets under management.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Nigeria’s OPay raises $120 million in new funding. The investment adds to the $50 million the mobile payments service raised in June.
Asilimia, a Kenya-based fintech that helps SMEs access more efficient mobile payment solutions, secures $350,000 in funding.
South African digital commerce fintech Vectra wins Seedstars Cape Town competition.
Central and Eastern Europe
Revolutreaches 250,000 users in Hungary and reports an 8x gain in monthly transaction volume since the beginning of the year.
Australian paytech Tyro Payments is vying to float on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) in an initial public offering (IPO) which is projected to raise up to $173.23 million (AUD 252.7 million), reports Ruby Hinchliffe of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the 2003-founded firm, which said it’s Australia’s fifth-largest payments provider, is pursuing a $1 billion valuation too.
Targeting small and medium-sized businesses, Tyro offers an electronic funds transfer point of sale (EFTPOS) service, as well delivering online payments, business bank accounts and business loans.
The plan to float on the ASX comes after six listings on it were aborted last month, suggesting Australia’s IPO market is not easy to break into. Reuters puts this down to investors demanding lower prices to protect themselves against the possibility of post-float losses.
With a price range of $1.70 to $1.87 per share, the paytech said its focus still “remains firmly on challenging the status quo” for its merchants.
Despite net losses of $18.6 million in the last fiscal year, existing investors, including Tiger Global, TDM Growth Partners, Telstra’s CEO David Thodey and Australian billionaire, Mike Cannon-Brookes, will wait until Tyro’s 2020 financial reports before selling any shares.
Thodey, who is also Tyro’s chairman, said he’s delighted to be able to invite new shareholders. “We [can] build upon our solid foundation to pursue an exciting growth strategy,” he added in a statement.
Tyro Payments demonstrated its Smart Growth Funding financing solution at FinovateSpring 2017. The offering is the first lending solution released by an Australian challenger bank. Tyro provides integrated payment, deposit, and unsecured working capital solutions to SMEs, and partners with more than 200 point of sale providers and cloud-based accounting platform such as fellow Finovate alum Xero.
Plaid makes inroads into France, Spain, and Ireland.
myGininamed to the Benzinga Global Fintech Listmakers and recognized as a Best Payments App.
BodesWelljoins FinMason’s FinSpring accelerator program
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.
A new partnership between verified digital identity specialist Signicat and Twikey will make it easier for merchants in Belgium and the Netherlands to accept digitally-signed SEPA e-mandates for recurring purchases. The arrangement will enable firms to reduce costs and improve efficiency by moving away from paper-based SEPA processes.
“By working with Twikey, we can offer a streamlined solution to the market where businesses are able to identify who they are dealing with online, build the mutual trust, and get an e-mandate for ongoing payments with their customers,” Signicat CEO Gunnar Nordseth said.
SEPA mandates provide an authorization that enables merchants to accept future and recurring payments for services such as rent and utilities. While such mandates have historically required consumers to make actual trips to the bank to sign paper authorizations, the partnership between Signicat and Twikey will allow consumers to sign SEPA e-mandates digitally.
Belgium-based Twikey enables businesses to better manage recurring payments to save money and time. Founded in 2013, the company’s technology also helps its customers get 70% to 97% of their invoices to recurrent customers paid in two days or less. Twikey founder Dominique Adriansens pointed to the growth in the company’s digital SEPA mandate business as a key reason for the partnership with Signicat.
“We have already more than 1 million consumers in Belgium and the Netherlands having signed SEPA mandates digitally,” Adriansens said. “In a lot of cases contracts need to be signed upfront and that’s where Signicat comes in.” He praised the company’s experience in deploying digital identity verification in Europe, calling Signicat “the ideal match for assisting companies in search of more digitalization.”
Signicat demonstrated a pair of digital verification solutions – Signicat Assure and Signicat Sign – at FinovateEurope 2017. As of this month, the company offers identity verification in 208 countries using identity document scanning, web-based video interviews, and NFC scanning of passports. Also this month, Signicat partnered with Swisscom Trust Services to integrate qualified e-signatures (QES) into its platform.
In October, Signicat introduced a handful of new platform capabilities, including a new interface and new third party integrations. Over the summer, the company purchased Norwegian digital identity firm, Idfy, one of the fastest growing digital trust companies in the region. Signicant also teamed up with open identity scheme for financial services, yes.com, earlier this year, helping streamline onboarding, authentication, and e-signatures for the German digital identity service.
Winner of the bobsguide’s Best Retail Banking System Integration Award – along with Rabobank – Signicat was acquired by Nordic Capital in April. Terms of the purchase were not disclosed. Prior to the acquisition, Signicat had raised $8.8 million in funding.
Finovate alums raised $1.1 billion in funding in the third quarter of 2019. The quarterly total represents a significant rebound over last year’s Q3 sum and is reminiscent of the third quarters from 2017 and 2015 in topping the $1 billion mark.
Previous Quarterly Comparisons
Q3 2018: More than $400 million raised by 19 alums
Q3 2017: More than $1 billion raised by 31 alums
Q3 2016: More than $500 million raised by 30 alums
Q3 2015: More than $1 billion raised by 40 alums
As our list of the quarter’s top equity investments below reveals, the $460 million fundraising from Klarna in August represents a significant amount of this year’s Q3 total. The investment, led by Dragoneer Investment Group, gave the Swedish ecommerce innovator a valuation of $5.5 billion and the title of the largest private fintech in Europe.
Also noteworthy was the $200 million raised by San Francisco, California-based payroll, benefits, and HR platform Gusto. Along with a pair of new participants Fidelity and Generation Investment Management, Gusto’s investors boosted the company’s valuation to $3.8 billion in the third quarter. There must be something special about Q3 and Gusto; the company’s previous $140 million in funding led the quarter’s top investments last year.
Top Ten Equity Investments for Q3 2019
Klarna: $460 million
Gusto: $200 million
Trulioo: $53 million
Credit Sesame: $43 million
Numbrs: $40 million
HackerOne: $35.4 million
Flybits: $35 million
Sezzle: $30 million (IPO)
Scalable Capital: $28 million
Kyndi: $20 million
Here is our detailed alum funding report for Q3 2019.
July 2019: More than $354 million raised by 10 alums
If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the third quarter of 2019, and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at research@finovate.com. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum not included.
