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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Zenus Bank to deploy onboarding authentication technology from Fortress Identity.
Paystand to provide an end-to-end payments platform for customers of Japanese payment card issuer and acquirer, JCB.
Blackhawk Networkintroduces new SVP of Global Commerce, Brett Narlinger.
Ovum highlightsQuadient and its leadership role in providing customer journey mapping in its report, Customer Journey Management’s Path to Optimization.
Forbes Senior Contributor Ron Shevlin givesTransferWise an “Honorable Mention” among the Winners in his review of the Winners and Losers in Fintech this year.
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.
The challenger bank revolution is alive and well in Mexico. This week, three upstart financial institutions in the Latin American country were the recipients of a combined $20+ million in funding. The investments are a testament to the way local entrepreneurs are seizing the opportunity to provide banking services to a growing number of previously underbanked people in Mexico.
For some observers, Mexican banks have long been ripe for disruption. A 2017 feature in The Financial Times cited a Gallup poll in which more than three in four customers in Mexico were “indifferent to, or unhappy with their bank.” The same article noted that challenger banks and other fintechs could take as much as 30% of the Mexican banking market in the next ten years due to inefficiencies in the current banking system. Incumbents have also been criticized for a lack of outreach to the underbanked, to younger potential customers, and to the digitally savvy.
Check out Thiago Paiva’s in-depth look at the Mexican neobank market – and how some incumbents are fighting back – published at TechCrunch this fall. Paiva is product manager at Oyster, a challenger bank for Latin American SMEs.
Here’s our weekly look at fintech around the world.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Trulioogoes live with its GlobalGateway in Nigeria and Ghana.
Disrupt-Africa looks at the expansion and fundraising plans of South African payments startup Airbuy.
Kenyan insurtech firm Turaco closes $2.1 million seed funding round.
Central and Eastern Europe
Wefox, an insurtech based in Berlin, Germany, locks in $110 million extension to its Series B round.
Based in Latvia and founded in Russia, Robocash announces plans to raise $5 million in funding over the next six month to support expansion to SE Asia.
An AML startup founded by former workers at TransferWise and Skype, Estonia’s Salv has raised $2 million in seed funding.
Middle East and Northern Africa
National Bank of Fujairah, based in the UAE, readies for the launch of its new SME banking platform.
Oman’s Bank Muscat introduces $100 million fintech investment program.
UAE fintech FlexxPay locks in an investment from Wamda.
Central and Southern Asia
ZestMoney, an Indian fintech specializing in providing credit assessment and financing for the underbanked, raises $14 million as part of an extended Series B round featuring participation by Goldman Sachs.
Delhi, India-based SME lender LivFin secures in $5 million in growth funding.
What can Central Asian companies learn from Southeast Asia when it comes to building a fintech industry?
Latin America and the Caribbean
Mexican neobank Albo adds $17 million to its Series A, taking the round’s total to more than $26 million.
Flink, a Mexico-based challenger bank, receives seed funding from Spanish fintech Latina.
Challenger bank Fondeadora reels in $2.5 million in funding.
Asia-Pacific
Ant Financial and Alibaba ink strategic payments partnership with Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC).
Hong Kong’s WeLab picks up $156 million to fund its digital bank launch in 2020.
ZA Bank pilots internet-only banking services in Hong Kong, the first FI to do so in the city.
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.
In a Series C led by Tetragon, payments innovator Ripple has picked up an investment of $200 million. Featuring participation from SBI Holdings and Route 66 Ventures, the round takes the Ripple’s total capital to more than $321 million, and gives the firm a valuation of $10 billion.
In a statement, company CEO Brad Garlinghouse explained that the funding will help fuel expansion of the company’s “open developer platform for money” Xpring, as well as enable Ripple to add talent to the team.
“We are in a strong financial position to execute against our vision,” Garlinghouse said. “As others in the blockchain space have slowed their growth or even shut down, we have accelerated our momentum and industry leadership throughout 2019.”
The funding is timely for Xpring, which Ripple recently configured to make it easier for both crypto and non-crypto developers to add payments functionality into mobile apps. The new platform leverages Ripple’s XRP Ledger, Interledger, and Web Monetization technologies that give developers tools, services, and programs that empower them to develop and power wallets and exchanges, as well as take advantage of monetization opportunities in content and gaming.
The investment also comes as Ripple completes a year in which its RippleNet global payments network added more than 300 customers. Additionally, Ripple’s $50 million dollar strategic partnership with MoneyGram, announced this summer, has enabled the company to demonstrate how its On-Demand Liquidity solution leverages Ripple’s digital asset XRP to help MoneyGram boost volume on international money transfers. As of November, MoneyGram reported that is moving 10% of its Mexican peso trading volume via Ripple’s technology.
“Our partnership with Ripple is transformative for both the traditional money transfer and digital asset industry,” MoneyGram Chairman and CEO Alex Holmes said. “For the first time ever, we’re settling currencies in seconds.”
Chris Larsen, co-founder of Ripple, introduced the Ripple protocol at FinovateSpring 2013 via a company called OpenCoin. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Ripple began the year by earning a spot on the 2019 Forbes Fintech 50 Roster. In addition to its partnership with MoneyGram, Ripple announced in August that PNC, the eighth largest bank in the U.S. had begun using its RippleNet network for cross-border payments – the first U.S. bank to do so.
On the international front this year, Ripple has teamed up with Vietnam’s TPBank, partnered with Brazilian brokerage Frente Corretora de Cambio, and inked a cross-border remittance agreement with India’s Federal Bank.
Nutmeg CEO Martin Stead will leave his post in early 2020, and will be replaced by CFO and COO Jason Alexander.
Datasineforges technology partnership with digital marketing platform Mapp.
MacKay Municipal Managers chooses open architecture digital platform from Artivest for its financial advisors.
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.
Updated 12/20/2019: Finovate alums raised more than $876 million in the fourth quarter of 2019. The amount takes the total raised by Finovate alums this year to more than three billion. It is both the second year in a row our alums have topped this milestone, and the biggest Q4 fundraising for Finovate alums to date.
The fourth quarter of 2019 is also the fourth Q4 in a row in which alum funding has climbed above the $500 million mark.
Previous Quarterly Comparisons
Q4 2018: More than $800 million raised by 19 alums
Q4 2017: More than $730 million raised by 23 alums
Q4 2016: More than $700 million raised by 26 alums
Q4 2015: More than $302 million raised by 28 alums
The top equity investment of the quarter was the $200 million raised by Ripple, followed by the $182 million raised by Zopa and the $102.5 million raised by BlueVine the previous month. Given the relatively small number of fundings this quarter, it is little surprise to find that our top ten equity investments for Q4 make up the vast majority of the reported spending total (note that the sums involved in two of our fourteen fourth quarter investments were undisclosed).
Top Equity Investments
Ripple: $200 million
Zopa: $182 million
BlueVine: $102.5 million
nCino: $80 million
Spreedly: $75 million
Passport: $65 million
SheerID: $64 million
Eigen Technologies: $37 million
Aerospike: $32 million
Kreditech: $24 million
Here is our detailed alum funding report for Q4 2019.
October 2019: More than $104 million raised by four alums
If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the fourth 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.
UK-based Metro Bank has partnered with Canadian technology firm Sensibill to launch a receipt management beta for SMEs, reports Alex Hamilton of Fintech Futures, Finovate’s sister publication.
The new feature, available via the Metro Bank app in 2020, will allow users to capture receipts using a smartphone camera and have them be automatically added to their transaction history.
According to the bank, the new pilot is the first in a “long list of innovations” that it is set to test out in the 2020. Metro states that it plans to “take the essential daily tasks of invoicing, receipt management, bookkeeping and VAT returns, and embed them intuitively into the Metro Bank mobile app.”
Paul Riseborough, chief commercial officer at Metro Bank, said of the new pilot: “Accounting tasks, along with chasing invoices and staying on top of receipts, are major pain points for SMEs.”
“By partnering with Sensibill we’re offering an innovative, digital solution that solves real problems for our customers, saving them time spent on admin and allowing them to focus on running and growing their business. And this is just the first piece in the puzzle as we set about developing a major new digital ecosystem of services to help SMEs,” Riseborough said.
Co-founder and CEO of Sensibill, Corey Gross, added: “Metro Bank is building a suite of compelling tools that will help transform the small business banking experience in the UK.”
“Our partnership with Metro Bank demonstrates our shared focus to deliver customer-centric solutions that improve the financial well-being of banking customers. We’re excited to support Metro Bank’s commitment to strengthening its relationship with their customers through digital innovation,” Gross said.
In October Metro Bank announced that it would be partnering with a number of fintech firms following the £120 million funding it secured from the Capability and Innovation Fund in February.
Sensibill demonstrated its Receipts for Microbusinesses solution at FinovateEurope 2018 in partnership with NatWest. The Toronto, Ontario, Canada-based company was founded in 2013, and has raised more than $50 million in funding. Sensibill includes Radical Ventures, First Ascent Ventures and National Bank of Canada among its investors.
Growth, growth, and more growth is the goal of FintechOS as the company announces receiving a new investment of $14 million (€12.7 million). The open source, digital banking solution provider, which made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateEurope, will use the funding to fuel its expansion to both the U.S. and South East Asia, as well as continue its growth in Europe. The capital will also help the company invest further in the development of more pre-built apps and solutions to enable FIs to offer better experiences for their customers.
“Our disruptive approach is customer, not technology driven,” company co-founder and CEO Teodor Blidarus said. “We created FintechOS to transform the financial industry, empowering banks and insurance companies to act and react faster and to create a smarter, slicker customer experience. As a result, hyper-personalized services and elevated customer experiences are now available almost plug and play.”
The Series A round was led by Earlybird’s Digital East Fund and OTB Ventures. Also participating were existing investors Gapminder Ventures and Launchub. The new funding takes FintechOS’s total capital to $16 million.
FintechOS enables banks and insurance companies to offer personalized, data-driven digital solutions to their customers in weeks rather than months or years. Via cloud SaaS or on-premise deployment, FintechOS offers 150+ integrated data sources out of the box and more than 20 automated financial processes to support AI-enabled functions like KYC, Customer 360, pricing, and risk analytics. Firms can also use FintechOS to access a marketplace of 50+ open source, prebuilt apps for key processes ranging from client onboarding and lending to pensions and wealth management.
“FintechOS’s technology is transformational in its ability to provide true end-to-end digital automation for all services and products that banks and insurance companies offer,” OTB Ventures General Partner Adam Niewinski said. “This new technology is inexpensive and versatile, ultimately enabling massive cost savings and growth stimulators for financial institutions.”
With clients in more than 20 countries and three continents, FinechOS was founded in 2017 and has offices in London, Amsterdam, Vienna, Copenhagen, and Bucharest. The company reported annual recurring revenue growth of 4.5x this year.
Swiss IT and digitization specialist Inventx is the latest company to leverage technology from ndgit to enable it to maximize the opportunities of open banking. The company will use an open API integration layer from ndgit to power its new Open Finance Platform, ix.OpenFinancePlatform, which makes it easier for banks and insurance companies to connect with fintechs and other third party providers.
“The partnership with Inventx gives us clear strategic advantages, allowing us to expand our range of fintech solutions for Swiss clients and further boost local market growth,” ndgit Business Manager for Switzerland Roger Wisler said. “Inventx’s innovative Open Finance Platform is the next logical step for the evolution, adoption, and promotion of Open Banking in Switzerland. Together, our optimized interfaces will help to facilitate smooth and seamless integration of fintechs and financial service providers.”
Inventx’s ix.OpenFinancePlatform will use ndgit’s technology and open APIs to facilitate the connections between FIs, fintechs, and software partners. Inventx Head of Consulting and Software Solutions Pascal Wild said the two companies complemented each other insofar as ndgit’s APIs provide the standardized APIs for front-end applications while Inventx offers backend system connectivity. The combination makes it easier for FIs to take advantage of open banking for themselves and their customers “without having to worry about the technical challenges of system communication and orchestration,” Wild explained.
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Munich, Germany, ndgit demonstrated its PSD2-enabled Digital Loan Application at FinovateEurope earlier this year. The company, which implemented Switzerland’s first Open Banking Platform in 2017, notes that its technology has been deployed by 20+ banks over the past year. Ndgit’s API platform won the CEE Fintech Challenge in 2018, the biggest fintech conference in the Central and Eastern European region.
In October, ngdit forged a partnership with Swiss fintech incubator and accelerator F10. The following month, the company collaborated with Synpulse to launch Switzerland’s first fintech app marketplace. Ndgit was awarded the Finance IT Innovation Award in June, along with partners Finstar, Sonect, and neo.
Payoneer to acquire Munich, Germany-based open payment orchestration platform (POP), optile.
Open banking solution provider Tokenannounces digital money spin-off, M10 Networks.
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.
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 demonstratedStories 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.
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.
Capture-as-a-Service Specialist EphesoftPartners with Malaysia’s Alliance Bank
TinkoffLaunches Super App, Integrating Finance, Leisure, and Lifestyle
Around the web
Trulioobrings its identity verification service to Nigeria and Ghana.
ID.meintroduces 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.
ThetaRaytaps 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.
