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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 23 through 25, 2019 in New York City. Register today and save your spot.
JSOL Corporation provides IT consulting and digital transformation related services to clients from various industries by leveraging its technology and know-how developed over the years.
Features
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Presenters
Kimitaka Honma, Deputy Unit Director Honma is a Deputy Unit Director of the Digital Innovation Business Unit and has ample experience assisting financial institutions with their digital transformation efforts.
Andrew Ogata, Sales and Strategic Partnerships Ogata is a sales specialist in the Digital Innovation Business Unit and focuses on domestic/overseas sales and strategic partnerships.
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 23 through 25, 2019 in New York City. Register today and save your spot.
The StreetShares platform provides “Lending-as-a-Service” technology to community banks and credit unions, empowering them to offer fully-digital small business loans… up and running in 30 days.
Features
Ability to grow and retain small business customers
Fully-digital borrower onboarding and management with no core software integration
Precision, 100% digital underwriting at the industry’s leading loss rates
Why it’s great Community banks and credit unions struggle to make small business loans due to costly underwriting and core software integration. StreetShares Lending-as-a-Service technology solves this problem.
Presenters
Mark Rockefeller, CEO Rockefeller leads the StreetShares team in its mission to help community banks and credit unions offer fully-digital small business loans to America’s main street businesses. LinkedIn
Sanjay Bhaskar, Vice President, Development and Partnerships Bhaskar focuses on identifying opportunities for community banks and credit unions to use StreetShares Lending-as-a-Service technology to offer fully digital small business loans. LinkedIn
One month after digital core banking provider Five Degreesannounced its collaboration with fellow Finovate alum W.UP, the company is back in the fintech headlines with another round of partnership news: digital security platform Entersektwill join its Open Banking Marketplace.
“Partnering with Entersekt is testament to our vision for the future of banking and finance so we are delighted to welcome the company as part of our Open Banking Marketplace,” Five Degrees EVP Peter-Jan van de Venn said. “Our marketplace is championing a culture of collaboration throughout the industry, enabling us to provide a better customer experience via interconnected APIs.”
In their statement, the companies indicate that the partnership between the two companies will help financial service providers perform better both at home in Europe as well as in their global banking and finance operations. Five Degrees Open Banking Marketplace is designed to encourage financial services companies and fintechs to work together to build engaging digital customer experiences, increase their own efficiencies, and make regulatory compliance easier.
“(We) help tens of millions of end users across the globe, securing 150 million digital transactions every month in 45 countries,” Entersekt CEO Schalk Nolte said. “We look forward to being part of five degrees’ Open Banking Marketplace and are confident that our partnership will drive further innovation in (digital services) and help our mutual customers differentiate themselves from the competition.”
Entersekt’s Chief Technology Officer presented “Securing Mobile Applications through Transport Layer Diversity” at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley, in 2014. The South African company, which was founded in 2008, opened its second office in Cape Town in April, and that same month was named to the Wealthtech 100. Entersekt teamed up with fellow Finovate alum BioCatch in March to offer financial services companies a “one-stop-shop” for security solutions such as continuous and multi-factor authentication, passwordless login, and enhanced remote user registration.
In its most recent Finovate appearance at FinovateEurope 2018, Five Degrees demonstrated its digital wealth management solution, Prospery. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the company was selected last month to join the Kickstarter Innovation Program. In June, Five Degrees announced a partnership with Bankingblocks to assist challenger banks and payment companies as they offer new solutions to their customers.
With $11 million (€10 million) in funding, Five Degrees includes Karmijn Kapitaal and Velocity Capital Private Equity among its investors.
Financial and blockchain API provider Hydrogen is the latest technology to achieve “Powered by Oracle Cloud” status, making the app building platform available to Oracle Cloud customers via the Oracle Cloud Marketplace.
“Hydrogen’s participation in the Oracle Cloud Marketplace further extends our commitment to the Oracle community and enables customers to easily reap the benefits of our APIs,” Hydrogen co-founder and CEO Mike Kane said. “We look forward to leveraging the power of the Oracle Cloud to help us achieve our business goals.”
Described as the global financial operating system by its founders, Hydrogen offers a wealth of fintech and blockchain APIs – known as atom and molecule respectively – to power a wide range of financial services from banking and investing to savings, financial wellness, and insurance.
The Oracle Cloud provides enterprise-quality services at all levels of the technology stack including both platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). And by joining the Oracle Cloud Marketplace, the Hydrogen platform will be readily accessible by Oracle Cloud customers. The marketplace has an intuitive user interface to make it easy for developers to browse and discover not only applications and services, but also solution ratings and reviews from users to help customers find the optimal resource for their needs. The Marketplace recently has unveiled its automated application installation tools to enable customers to deploy provider business apps from a centralized, cloud-based UI.
“Hydrogen’s commitment to innovation with the Oracle Cloud and quality execution helps our mutual customers receive cloud-enabled fintech solutions ready to meet critical business needs,” Oracle VP for Worldwide ISV Cloud Business Development David Hicks said.
At FinovateEurope 2018, Hydrogen made its Finovate debut, demonstrating how its technology enables developers to build sophisticated financial apps – such as a European savings platform with UI/UX, onboarding, simulations, backend connectivity, and business intelligence – in a matter of minutes.
Hydrogen has seen its share of plaudits this year. The company was named to the Wealthtech 100 in April, the same month it was listed in Fast Company’s “World Changing Ideas” compilation in the Developing World Technology category. Hydrogen joined the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) in May and, the following month, was named a finalist in WealthManagement.com’s 2019 Industry Awards in the Blockchain/Cryptocurrency category.
More recently, the company earned recognition from Bank Director’s FinxTech Awards, winning a finalist spot in the Best of FinXTech Connect category. Hydrogen was named a finalist in the Financial Inclusion category of the Finnosummit Challenge and was shortlisted for three awards – Top Emerging Tech Company, Best Use of Blockchain, and Innovator of the Year – at Finovate’s inaugural awards series (check out more information on the Finovate Awards, or FinovateFall, which will take place the same week in New York this month).
Founded in 2017 and headquartered in New York City, Hydrogen includes Canadian bank and wealth manager TD Bank, global insurer Principal, and investment manager CI Investments among its clients.
Low-code platform OutSystems has formed a deal with Nationwide to develop a new digital business savings service, reports Ruby Hinchliffe of FinTech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
By “dumbing down the back-end” so it becomes “a system of record only,” OutSystems will take on all the business logic and process for Nationwide, giving it a more agile front-end with less reliance on its legacy back-end.
OutSystem’s regional financial services and insurance director, Garry Larner, told FinTech Futures: “There’s a lot of legacy technology out there. It’s difficult and expensive to find talented developers, especially when it comes to native mobile. It’s becoming too costly to innovate, so that’s where we come in.”
He added: “In an ideal world you’d want to rip everything out and start from the beginning. But from a practical view, that’s not possible unless you’re prepared to spend hundreds of millions.”
The software platform can offer a traditional bank like Nationwide access to accelerators, such as templates, patterns and multi-factor authentication plugins which all speed up the UX development process.
It’s newest partnership with Nationwide is all about “creating the digital channel for business saving customers. Banking at the drop of a fingertip.”
Speaking more broadly on low-code, Larner recognized the “enormous” market opportunity, excited the industry is “finally catching up with the concept challenging the status quo – that traditional development is not the only option.”
OutSystems has had a 54% yearly growth rate globally and enjoyed a $360 million investment from Goldman Sachs and KKR last year.
Larner said: “There’s going to be a series of very large enterprise customers which we’ll be announcing over the next three or four months, because it’s almost caught up with the mainstream.”
Currently OutSystems works with British councils to digitize taxes, insurance companies to build broker portals, and, most recently, it is working on a new credit comparison market with a fintech to be announced soon.
Founded in 2001, OutSystems presented “Low-Code: The Next Evolution in App Dev Platforms” at our developers conference, FinDEVr New York 2017. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, and has raised more than $422 million in total funding from investors including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Goldman Sachs, and North Bridge Venture Partners & Growth Equity.
Small business financing company Kabbage has made a purchase that will help it get to know the world of SMEs all the better. In a deal announced today, Kabbage will acquire small business intelligence firm, and fellow Finovate alum, Radius, adding insights from more than 20 million U.S. small businesses to its platform.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Upon the successful closing of the acquisition, Kabbage said in a statement that it will add “nearly 20 team members” from Radius to its offices in San Francisco, including Radius CEO Joel Carusone, to help support the integration of the two platforms and the two companies.
“Data has always been our competitive advantage, and Radius strengthens it by adding millions of new and verified small business insights to our platform,” Kabbage CEO Rob Frohwein said. “These new technology and data-analysis capabilities further differentiate us from other SMB-focused fintech companies as we dramatically expand our product set and service platform to address the unique cash flow needs of small businesses.”
Expressing a “deep respect for Kabbage’s data-driven technology and focus,” Radius’ Carusone highlighted similarities between the two firms. “Our companies have complementary technical architectures and domain experience for decision making,” he said. “With Kabbage, we can build a more sophisticated analytics solution to identify, reach, and serve small businesses.”
San Francisco, California-based Radius was founded in 2009. The company demonstrated its platform at FinovateSpring 2014, showing how it leverages big data to gain insights into more than 27 million small and medium-sized businesses. This information helps FIs find the best customer segments, build efficient and accurate targeted lead lists, and measure the success of marketing campaigns.
Radius began 2019 with the launch of its Data for Good campaign to help the company’s employees and customers give back to their communities. This included credit-backs to the accounts of for-profit companies for any data used to support philanthropic causes. The campaign also featured service donations to nonprofits to enable them to use the Radius’ enterprise customer data platform to reach out to and potentially partner with small businesses.
In May, Radius unveiled a new data stewardship app designed to fix bad, siloed Salesforce data. The new solution enables enterprises to manage data across any Salesforce field based on unified, trusted data. “Existing tools enrich some external data,” Radius CEO Joel Carusone explained, “but what’s missing is an easy-to-use application coupled with a powerful platform that gives users access to data unified across all third-parties and their internal data sets.”
Atlanta, Georgia-based Kabbage made its first appearance on the Finovate stage in 2010, demoing its Kabbage Loan offering at FinovateSpring that year. The company most recently demoed its Kabbage Card, a part of the company’s Kabbage Everywhere product expansion, at FinovateSpring 2015.
Featured in June by CEO World in its look at fintechs that are helping fight for fair lending, Kabbage announced a partnership with online banking platform Azlo in May that would create a new entity, Mission Street Capital, to help small businesses get the financing they need to grow. Kabbage also announced in May that it was teaming up with the BTEA (Building Trades Employers’ Association) in a strategic alliance to help women and minority-owned business enterprise contractors to secure funding for their projects.
With $2.5 billion in funding, Kabbage includes SoftBank Capital, Mohr Davidow Ventures, and BlueRun Ventures among its investors. The company was founded in 2009.
Volkswagen Bank, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Volkswagen AG, will leverage technology from OneSpan to secure its transactions and ensure PSD2 compliance. The bank announced today that it will protect its standalone mobile authentication app, PhotoTAN app, with OneSpan’s mobile SDK, Mobile Security Suite.
The SDK also enables the app to take advantage of OneSpan’s Cronto technology, which ensures banks comply with PSD2 requirements with regard to authentication and dynamic linking. Cronto offers a patented visual transaction signing solution that uses a graphical cryptogram of colored dots to encrypt transaction data. The technology provides banks with a strong defense against a variety of cyberthreats, including account takeover and man-in-the-browser Trojan attacks.
“Cronto is a unique technology available in the market in that it combines security and support for regulatory compliance with a seamless customer experience,” OneSpan SVP of Global Sales Dan Dica said. “This combination is important because it enables our customers to advance their digital transformation easily and securely.”
Citing customer demand and new regulation as key drivers of change in the financial industry, Volkswagen Bank Project Manager Mario Bandau praised OneSpan as a company that has “proven to be knowledgeable in all areas.” Bandau credited the firm for “providing us with all the necessary advice and the solutions we need to deliver the kind of experience customers request while ensuring PSD2 compliance.”
With more than €83 billion in assets and deposits of more than €32 billion, Volkswagen Bank is one of the leading direct banks in Germany. Founded in 1949, the bank provides new and used vehicle financing for Volkswagen brands, as well as direct banking and dealer financing. The firm’s PhotoTAN app, available on both iOS and Android, uses facial biometrics to authenticate and sign transactions whether those transactions are started online or on the mobile device.
OneSpan made its most recent Finovate appearance (as VASCO) at FinovateEurope 2017, demonstrating its Smile & Sign mobile onboarding solution. The technology provides institutions with a secure, easy-to-use, compliant way to onboard customers via their mobile devices using biometrics, push notifications, visual cryptograms, and e-signatures.
OneSpan has been in the fintech headlines frequently of late. In June, the company won the SIIA CODiE Award for Best Fintech Solution for its Intelligent Adaptive Authentication technology. That same month, OneSpan announced a partnership with Belgian online lender Buy Way, and launched its Secure Agreement Automation cloud solution for digital account opening.
With a market capitalization of $542 million, OneSpan trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker OSPN.
U.K.-based start-up B-North has chosen a German Software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, Mambu, to provide its core banking technology, reports Ruby Hinchliffe of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
The Manchester neobank, which is still awaiting a license from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), is the first client to experience a co-created solution by Mambu and a U.S.-based cloud banking tech provider, nCino.
The cloud provider will deliver its loan and deposit origination platform, enabling the challenger to speed up its processes and deliver a highly efficient, “minimum hassle” service to its SME customers.
“The advantage of creating a new bank without legacy systems or legacy business processes is we can design the solution around our customer’s needs and leverage the very best cloud-based technology,” said B-North CTO, Ewan Hutton.
He added: “Mambu has already proved its engineering capabilities with its core banking solution in the marketplace and for B-North it is a perfect fit vs traditional solutions that are over-engineered legacy designs with recent front-end face-lifts.”
B-North’s new localised technology will make loans available to SMEs in just ten working days, rather than the standard three to four months.
Currently, SMEs make up 99% of U.K. businesses and employ more than 16 million people.
nCino’s area vice-president, Jacqui Morcombe, said: “B-North is taking a progressive approach to its technology strategy. By building a foundational cloud-based architecture it is establishing itself as a customer-centric institution without the constraints of inflexible systems as market pressures shift.”
Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, nCino demonstrated its Bank Operating System at FinovateEurope 2017. Berlin, Germany-based Mambu made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia 2013, and returned to participate in our developers conference FinDEVr New York in 2016. Mambu was founded in 2011.
Paysendreaches one million customer mark for its card-to-card money transfer service, Global Transfers.
Tinkoffgoes live with Pulse, a free social network for investors.
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.
Avalara announced this week that billing and revenue automation platform Ordway is the latest company to join its Certified Partner program. Ordway customers will now be able to choose Avalara’s AvaTax to ensure accurate, real-time calculation of all applicable taxes, fees, and surcharges for every billed item.
“We’re excited to partner with Avalara to provide our customers with an option to automatically calculate sales tax,” Ordway founder and CEO Sameer Gulati said. “Our out-of-the-box tax calculations work for many of our customers, but for those that desire the additional power of AvaTax, our integration makes effortless tax calculation and collection possible.”
The integration will lower the amount of manual work typically involved in determining and collecting state and local taxes by providing sales and use tax calculations within existing business apps at the time of checkout or billing. Avalara’s systems keeps track of the most current tax rules and rates, covering more than 12,000 U.S. sales and use tax jurisdictions. The cloud-based, SaaS technology features 700+ prebuilt integrations into ERP, ecommerce, and other systems, as well as an advanced API.
“Ordway understands the needs of its customers, and their billing revenue automation platform reduces accounts receivable complexity for their customers along many fronts,” SVP of Business Development for Avalara Greg Chapman said. “We understand that digitization of business processes is not an option it is essential. We are proud to offer more accurate and efficient tax compliance solutions to our shared customers.”
In addition to the benefits of the AvaTax integration, Ordway customers who also use Ava CertCapture will also be able to seamlessly link to exception certificates collected and maintained within Avalara’s system.
A specialist in bringing tax compliance automation to businesses, Avalara presented “The Wacky World of Sales Tax” at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley in 2015. The company’s senior manager for developer relations showed how the Avalara’s APIs help businesses navigate the complicated world of transactional sales taxes.
More recently, Avalara announced the acquisition of Portway International, a Canada-based firm that provides Harmonized System classifications and outsourced customs brokerage services. Earlier this month, the company reported second quarter revenue growth of 43% over the previous year, and more than 10,000 “core customers.”
“We continue to believe that the automation of transaction tax compliance will be adopted over an extended period,” Avalara founder and CEO Scott McFarlane said in a statement, “as customers upgrade systems, expand their businesses both domestically and internationally, and respond to changing government rules, such as the recent legislative responses to the Supreme Court’s Wayfair decision.” The Wayfair decision refers to the 2018 ruling that states can collect sales tax from internet retailers.
Avalara began the year with a bang. In January, the company acquired the “operational assets” of a firm called Compli that helps alcoholic beverage makers comply with regulations with regard to alcohol production, distribution, and sale. A month later, Avalara was back in the acquisition business with a purchase of Seattle-based AI technology company Indix. Also that month, Avalara announced a trio of major executive hires: appointing Amit Mathradas as president and Chief Operating Officer, Sanjay Parthasarathy as Chief Product Officer, and Ross Tennenbaum as EVP of Strategic Initiatives.
Founded in 2004, Avalara trades as AVLR on the New York Stock Exchange following its 2018 IPO. The company has a market capitalization of $6 billion.
Join us in October as our annual Asia-Pacific fintech conference returns to Singapore! FinovateAsia is one of the best ways for fintech startups and innovative industry veterans from the region and around the world to showcase their latest technologies before an audience of C-level decision-makers, venture capitalists, all-star analysts, and more.
For information on how to participate in FinovateAsia as a demoing company, partner, or sponsor, send us an e-mail and we’ll tell you everything you need to know.
Middle East and Northern Africa
A partnership between R3 and Dubai’s platform-as-a-service company Wethaq will help digitize Islamic capital markets.
Working capital solution provider Demica goes live with supply chain finance technology from Saudi British Bank.
National Bank of Bahrain unveils new bulk cash deposit machines with secured with a biometric scan.
Central and Southern Asia
BharatPe, a digital payments company based in New Delhi, raises $50 million in new funding.
Tech Mahindra teams up with Adjoint to launch blockchain-based enterprise financial management and insurance services.
Bangalore-based fintech CRED announces $120 million funding round.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Mexican online lender Credijusto announces $42 million investment from Goldman Sachs and Point72 Ventures.
Brazilian online personal loan platform REBEL raises $42.2 million via financial loan securitization.
Forbes interviewsNubank founder and CEO David Vélez.
Asia-Pacific
Finastrataps Wissam Khoury as new head of its Asia Pacific (APAC) team.
Flywirepartners with Vietnam Prosperity Bank to simplify international tuition payments for Vietnamese students.
Avaloqappoints Imad Abou Haidar as its new Head of Asia.
Sub-Saharan Africa
South Africa’s Nomanini inks $4 million deal with Standard Bank.
Brink News looks at the “game-changing” potential of fintech in sub-Saharan Africa.
SME financing solution provider Nvoicia takes top honors at Seedstars Ghana competition.
Central and Eastern Europe
Tremend Software Consulting announces strategic partnership with Mastercard Romania.
CIO of AXA Poland Oliver Schemberg talks about the “people-led strategy” behind the success of its digital transformation.
Tax Compliance Innovator AvalaraPartners with Billing Automation Platform Ordway
Finovate Global: Indian Fintech Get Funding; Finastra, Avaloq Bring New Leadership to APAC
Around the web
Plaidbecomes a Nacha Preferred Partner for account validation.
Finastrataps Wissam Khoury as its new head of its Asia Pacific (APAC) team.
Revolutteams up with the WWF and The Rainforest Alliance to raise support for the Amazon rainforest.
Frost & Sullivan namesOnfido the winner of its 2019 European Technology Innovation award for its AI-based hybrid identity verification solution.
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.
