Author: David Penn

Bill.com Unveils New Intelligent Business Payments Platform

Bill.com Unveils New Intelligent Business Payments Platform
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bill.com


Financial process automation innovator Bill.com has launched its new Intelligent Business Payments platform, a solution that puts AI to work to bring end-to-end automation to financial workflows. The platform leverages its Intelligent Virtual Assistant capacities to automatically capture data from invoices and start the approval process, as well as recognize workflows, and create new business rules.

The new solution also drives payment flexibility, enabling international payments, virtual cards, and other options to accelerate the payment process; and supports auto pay for recurring bills.

“Our new intelligent platform, which is the most significant update to Bill.com since its inception, is built on ten years of experience managing business payments and hundreds of millions of bills and invoices to train the AI,” Bill.com CEO and founder Rene Lacerte said. “Increasing the speed and ease of payments will help businesses get ahead.”

The company said that customers in a recent survey reported averages weekly savings of 5.5 hours, more than 35 business days a year, using Bill.com’s process automation solution. In a statement noting that many companies spend nearly a quarter of the work day managing manual processes, Bill.com suggested there was a growing need for work flow automation technology.

“Bill.com has focused on developing new technologies that help SMBs grow,” Lacerte said. “Automating the back office is a huge industry-wide need.”

The company’s latest announcement comes a little over a month since it picked up $88 million in new funding in a round led by Franklin Templeton. The investment boosted Bill.com’s total capital to $275 million, and puts the company’s valuation above $1 billion. Also this year, Bill.com teamed up with American Express to offer a new AP solution, VendorPay for the firm’s business and corporate cardholders.

Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Bill.com demonstrated its CashView Command and Control system at FinovateSpring 2012. The technology helps businesses better manage their accounts payables and receivables, and provides online billpay, custom invoicing, unlimited document storage, collaboration tools, and mobile access.

With more than $60 billion in payments managed every year and a network of three million members, Bill.com works with 70+ of the top 100 accounting firms, as well as accounting software providers like NetSuite and fellow Finovate alum Xero. The company is also CPA.com’s preferred provider of digital payments.

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Checkbook Teams Up with Event Management Platform Castifi

Checkbook Teams Up with Event Management Platform Castifi
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Checkbook.io

One month after launching its InstantPay solution, Checkbook.io is back in the fintech headlines with news of its partnership with event production booking platform Castifi. The hub for event and media production managers is leveraging technology from Checkbook to make it easier to ensure that short term workers get paid as quickly as possible.

“Many of the cast and crew members that we work with can’t wait 2-3 weeks to get paid, which is the industry norm,” Castifi founder and CEO Rum Sheikhani said. “Our users regularly tell us about the difficulties of managing everyday expenses and (the) uncertainty around when they will get paid.” Sheikhani noted that the partnership with Checkbook has helped workers get paid in two business days or less, which she called “a game changer for our core business.”

Checkbook offers a secure payments alternative for companies that avoids the inefficiency – in time and cost – of paper checks. The company’s Digital Checks enable recipients to get payments online without requiring them to create an account or enroll in a specific digital wallet. With Checkbook, as soon as the recipient authenticates their bank account, they will see that the money is being sent to them. Recipients can deposit the funds online, print their digital check and make a remote deposit capture with their mobile device, or get their funds transferred instantly on their debit card.

Culver City, California-based Castifi was founded in 2015. The company has raised $600,000 in seed funding, and helped event managers in more than 250 productions find, hire, manage, and pay their cast and crew. Most recently, Castifi was involved in the digital series, Grown, produced by Adaptive Studios.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Checkbook demonstrated its digital check technology at FinovateSpring 2017. The company celebrated surpassing the two million user mark last fall. Check out our profile of the company from last December, in which Checkbook CEO P.J. Gupta explained how accounting firms are taking advantage of digital check technology.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bill.com, CardFlight, Checkbook.io, Plaid, Revolut, Temenos, TransferWise

On Finovate.com

  • Checkbook Teams Up with Event Management Platform Castifi.
  • TransferWise Doubles Valuation with $292 Million Funding.
  • Bill.com Unveils New Intelligent Business Payments Platform.

Around the web

  • CardFlight partners with payment solutions provider Talus.
  • Revolut introduces social savings solution, Group Vaults.
  • Plaid unveils its easy integration toolkit, Plaid Direct.
  • Temenos forges partnership with UBX, the fintech subsidiary of Philippines-based UnionBank.
  • Wipro develops blockchain-based payment solution for Travacoin.

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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Trustly and Collector Bank Bring Instant Payments to Nordic Merchants

Trustly and Collector Bank Bring Instant Payments to Nordic Merchants
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Trustly

A new collaboration between online banking e-payments innovator Trustly and digital bank Collector will bring instant bank payments to the checkouts of Nordic merchants of all sizes. The partnership seeks to take advantage of the popularity of online bank payments in the region; nearly one in three shoppers in Finland, for example, expressed preference for paying directly from their online bank, according to a recent report.

Trustly’s cross-border pedigree was an important factor for Collector Bank. Calling the company a “great match” on this score, the bank’s General Manager for Payments Mikael Anstrin said, “(Trustly’s) cross-border payment solutions are available in our all of our existing markets and its vast coverage also opens up the opportunity for us to expand into new geographies.”

Trustly enables users the ability to shop and pay directly from their bank accounts. Individuals can Pay with Trustly by simply choosing and logging into their bank, selecting the account from which they want to pay, and then confirming the payment with the authentication option of their choice. The company processes transactions to and from consumer bank accounts at more than 3,000 banks in 29 European markets.

“We’re delighted to partner with Collector and offer our fast, simple, and secure bank payment solution to their hundreds of merchants,” Chief Commercial Officer for Trustly, Johan Nord said. “The partnership is very much aligned with our strategy of delivering the best, most versatile and, for PSPs as well as merchants, most operationally easy-to-use bank payment solution in the markets where we operate.”

Trustly demonstrated its Direct Debit solution at FinovateEurope 2017. The technology adds support for recurring charges and one-click payments from a bank account, and offers the highest encryption standard available. More recently, the company teamed up with fellow Finovate alum Eurobits Technologies to help form the European Third Party Suppliers Association (ETPPAO, and announced that it had reached the 300 employee mark.

Founded in 2008, Trustly was acquired by Nordic Capital last spring. The company is based in Stockholm, Sweden.

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Vymo Partners with Microsoft to Help Sales Teams Leverage AI

Vymo Partners with Microsoft to Help Sales Teams Leverage AI
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Vymo

Giving sales professionals the ability to leverage AI to provide better service is the goal behind the new partnership between Vymo and Microsoft. Specifically, the two will work to grow the market for Vymo’s intelligent personal assistant for sales, bringing predictive and actionable insights to customer relationship management (CRM).

“We are helping organizations move to a more proactive CRM experience powered by mobility and intelligence,” Vymo co-founder and CEO Yamini Bhat explained. ” With Vymo, salespeople can operate more effectively in a deskless environment and that has translated into a significant revenue impact for businesses. We look forward to working closely with Microsoft as we scale.”

Vymo’s intelligent personal assistant delivers intelligent and actionable insights to sales professionals. The solution helps boost productivity by more than 30% by detecting the sales representative’s actions, and anticipating what the rep should do next. The technology learns from the most effective sales reps in the network and helps users achieve the best possible outcomes for customers. Sales productivity metrics from conversion percentage to turnaround time to activity per opportunity are among the KPIs Vymo can help sales teams improve.

The collaboration between Vymo and Microsoft builds on the existing relationship between the two companies. Vymo is a 2015 graduate of Microsoft’s Winter Accelerator, and won the Microsoft’s AI for All award in 2018. Vymo is already working with more than 85,000 users in verticals ranging from banking and financial services to insurance and pharmaceuticals, powering machine learning and AI-based tools backed by Microsoft Azure.

In Vymo’s statement announcing the news, Microsoft General Manager for Partner Ecosystem Rajiv Sodhi said the partnership represented “Microsoft’s commitment to enabling its partner ecosystem to leverage AI capabilities to be able to build powerful solutions and tap growth.” Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, added that the Vymo “was fundamentally changing both how retailers work and (how) financial services work.”

Headquartered in Bangalore, India, and founded in 2013, Vymo demonstrated its technology at FinovateAsia 2018. The company began this year with news that it would be a part of Bangkok Bank’s 12-week accelerator program, and announced that Zurich Topas Life, a division of Zurich Group, had selected Vymo’s solution to boost sales productivity.

In March, Vymo announced that it was going live in Vietnam courtesy of a partnership with local consumer finance firm, FE CREDIT. That month the company also announced that it won the FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce) Award for Innovation in Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics. Vymo also reported that its technology was available on the Salesforce AppExchange.

Vymo has raised $5 million in funding. The company includes Sequoia Capital India, who led the company’s Series A round in 2016, among its investors.

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Fiserv Partners with Allegacy FCU

Fiserv Partners with Allegacy FCU
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Fiserv

North Carolina-based Allegacy Federal Credit Union is moving its core system to Fiserv’s Open Solutions-derived DNA, reports Martin Whybrow of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

The credit union’s president and CEO, Cathy Pace, said: “We needed a comprehensive solution to support our strategy of expanding commercial and member relationships, while providing the efficiency, integration and real-time processing benefits needed to manage our ongoing growth.”

Allegacy Federal Credit Union has opened six new financial centers in the last five years, with one more scheduled for this autumn. At present, it operates out 16 locations and eight high school student-run credit unions.

Allegacy is taking a host of Fiserv applications spanning loan originations, wire services, fraud management, marketing and the creation of personalized statements. It has also signed for Fiserv’s Verifast branch biometric solution, which scans a member’s unique palm-vein pattern and instantly pulls up their account for authentication and increased front-line efficiency.

Allegacy Federal Credit Union is based in Winston-Salem and has $1.43 billion in assets. It is one of the largest credit unions in North Carolina, serving more than 151,000 members.

Founded in 1984 and based in Brookfield, Wisconsin, Fiserv teamed up with Samsung SDS America last year to jointly demonstrate Fiserv’s Commercial Center: Security with Samsung SDS biometric authentication at FinovateSpring 2018.

Allegacy FCU is the latest FI to collaborate with Fiserv. Earlier this month, Fiserv announced a trio of new Canadian credit union partners that would deploy the company’s DNA solution. Also this month, Mercury Payment Solutions and Arion Bank – headquartered in Dubai and Iceland, respectively – announced they had selected Fiserv’s AML solution, AML Risk Manager.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Fenergo, Fiserv, Jscrambler, Ping Identity, RightCapital, Tinkoff Bank, Trustly, Vymo

On Finovate.com

  • Vymo Partners with Microsoft to Help Sales Teams Leverage AI.
  • Trustly and Collector Bank Bring Instant Payments to Nordic Merchants.
  • Fiserv Teams Up with Allegacy Federal Credit Union.

Around the web

  • Gartner recognizes Jscrambler in its 2019 Market Guide for Online Fraud Detection.
  • Fenergo launches new suite of CLM tools, Digital Client Orchestration, leveraging APIs to integrate front, middle, and back office systems.
  • Ping Identity unveils new cloud-based multi-factor authentication and single sign-on bundle do defend against identity-based cyberattacks.
  • Tinkoff Bank introduces its own branded online travel agency.
  • RightCapital announces technology integrations with advisor technology platform Capitect and independent research firm Morningstar.

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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Marqeta Secures $260 Million in Series E Funding

Marqeta Secures $260 Million in Series E Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Marqeta

Global card issuing platform Marqeta, which demonstrated its Payment Gateways technology at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, announced today that it has secured $260 million in new funding in a round led by Coatue Management. The capital will be used to further develop the company’s payment card platform and to fuel global expansion, according to company founder and CEO Jason Gardner.

The investment boosts Marqeta’s valuation to “nearly $2 billion” and featured the participation of new investors Vitruvian Partners, Spark Capital, Lone Pine Capital, and Geodesic. The company’s existing investors include Visa, ICONIQ, Goldman Sachs, 83North, Granite Ventures, CommerzVentures, and CreditEase.

In a statement, Gardner positioned Marqeta at the center of a worldwide transformation in card issuance. “When today’s innovators are in need of modern payment solutions, they aren’t turning to banks as their primary issuers any more and want a platform built for their needs,” he said. “We’ve been proud to power this transformation as the most advanced card issuing platform built in over two decades.”

With more than 300 employees around the world, Marqeta leverages its platform and open APIs to enable fintechs to build and offer a wide variety of payment-based solutions for customers. The growth in the company’s business has been connected increasingly to the rise of new technology-savvy companies entering the financial services space who seek to offer payment, lending, and other solutions without relying on traditional banks.

“Marqeta is attacking a multi-trillion dollar opportunity in this market,” Gardner said. “This investment puts us in prime position to round out our product vision, bring Marqeta to new geographies, build even more groundbreaking features for our customers and double down on our already aggressive growth trajectory.”

Founded in 2010, Marqeta is based in Oakland, California. With partners including Square, Affirm, and Kabbage, the company has doubled revenues for the past three years and opened a new office in London last fall to kick off its European expansion. TechCrunch reported that Marqeta is considering an initial public offering within the next year and a half.

Marqeta presented Democratizing Issuer Payment Processing with Just-In-Time (JIT) Funding at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016. The discussion, led by Marqeta CTO Tony Ford, introduced the company’s open payment APIs, which democratize issuer payment processing by making e-commerce innovators a part of the authorization stream.

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Fundopolis Turns to AlphaPoint for Tokenization Initiative

Fundopolis Turns to AlphaPoint for Tokenization Initiative
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: AlphaPoint

Equity crowdfunding portal Fundopolis will partner with asset tokenization and digital asset trading technology provider AlphaPoint to support its tokenization initiative. The company will use AlphaPoint’s technology to facilitate the issuance of equity crowdfunding perks, as well as make it easier for fundraising customers to interact with investors.

“Small businesses have been priced out of traditional capital markets due to their prohibitive upfront costs, listing fees, compliance costs, complex terms, and the list goes on,” Fundopolis Chief Strategy Officer Ben DiScipio said. “AlphaPoint’s cloud-based blockchain technology helps us as we work to change the game for small businesses by providing them (with) an opportunity to reach funding goals with less costs and fewer headaches than traditional capital markets.”

Greater transparency is also the gift that blockchain technology keeps on giving. Together, AlphaPoint and Fundopolis will be able to provide investors and issuers with updates during the entire fundraising lifecycle, letting them know when they will receive perks or pay-out once the fundraise is complete.

AlphaPoint CEO Igor Telyatnikov underscored this point. “By building Fundopolis’ portal on AlphaPoint’s powerful blockchain technology,” he said, “this new crowdfunding approach will provide investors and companies alike (with) the peace of mind that investments are secure, transparent, and verifiable.”

AlphaPoint was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in New York City. The company demonstrated its AlphaPoint Distributed Ledger Platform (ADLP) at FinovateFall 2017. The proprietary blockchain platform enables users to digitize, trade, and manage any asset, and is currently powering digital asset networks on five continents. Designed to optimize for high data throughput and low system latency, the technology helps financial institutions access new sources of capital while keeping operational costs low.

Recent headlines for AlphaPoint include the company winning a spot in the inaugural cohort of cross-border regulatory sandbox, Global Financial Innovation Network (GFIN), earlier this month. In March, AlphaPoint announced that it had enhanced its technology stock to service security token issuance and exchange customers.

With $17.6 million in funding, AlphaPoint includes Galaxy Digital LP, Blockchain Capital, Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania, and Robin Hood Ventures among its investors.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Ethoca, Marqeta, MasterCard, ThetaRay, YellowDog

On Finovate.com

  • Marqeta Secures $260 Million in Series E Funding.
  • Fundopolis Turns to AlphaPoint for Tokenization Initiative.

Around the web

  • Mastercard partners with Samsung Electronics to develop mobile digital verification solutions.
  • YellowDog appoints James Stevens as its new Chief Commercial Officer.
  • Chile’s largest acquirer Transbank to deploy UP Retail Payments solution from ACI Worldwide.
  • ThetaRay adds Steve Mann as Chief Marketing Officer.
  • Spectrum Equity closes sale of Ethoca to Mastercard.

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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Kabbage and Azlo Launch Mission Street Capital to Help Fund SMEs

Kabbage and Azlo Launch Mission Street Capital to Help Fund SMEs
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Kabbage

A new partnership between cash flow technology and SME lending innovator Kabbage and online banking platform Azlo will make it easier for small businesses to secure growth financing. The two companies have launched a new program, Mission Street Capital, which will provide loans of up to $250,000 for SMEs.

“Azlo is helping fill a crucial gap in our financial system to serve underbanked small businesses,” Kabbage Chief Revenue Officer Laura Goldberg said. “Kabbage’s real-time lending platform allows Mission Street Capital to effectively serve any small business in any location to access the funding they need to grow.”

Firms with an Azlo small business banking account will be eligible to participate in the program, and can apply via Mission Street Capital to access Kabbage loans. Azlo will use Kabbage’s technology to analyze banking and other business performance data in real-time in order to generate a fully automated financing decisions for the customer. The digital-only bank with no physical branches believes Mission Street Capital will make it easier to reach its business customers who may struggle to secure financing because they have relatively thin-file credit histories or because they are a part of the gig economy.

“Azlo is proud to be serving today’s small businesses,” Azlo Chief Operating Officer Bryan Crumpler said. “Our mission is enabling small businesses to succeed in their mission and partnering with Kabbage is a huge step forward in being able to accomplish that.”

More than 175,000 small businesses have accessed more than $6.5 billion through Kabbage’s platform. In its most recent Finovate appearance at FinovateSpring in 2015, the company demonstrated its Kabbage Card solution. The card, part of its Kabbage Everywhere initiative, gives small businesses the ability to use their Kabbage credit to pay for inventory or supplies wherever they may be. Also that year, the Kabbage participated in our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley, showing how developers can leverage its technology to build their own automated lending platform.

Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Kabbage has raised more than $2.3 billion in funding, including a debt financing round this April that added $700 million to the company’s coffers. Also this spring, the firm was highlighted in Inc.com’s feature: 5 Companies That Prove You Must Evolve to Thrive.

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Conversational AI Fintech Clinc Raises $52 Million in Series B

Conversational AI Fintech Clinc Raises $52 Million in Series B
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Clinc, Funding

In a round featuring participation from Insight Partners, DFJ Growth, Drive Capital, Hyde Park Venture Partners, and other investors, conversational AI innovator Clinc has raised $52 million in new funding. The Series B round brings the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based fintech’s total capital to $60 million.

“We’ve had phenomenal growth and built unbelievable momentum in a very short period of time,” Clinc CEO Jason Mars said. “Now we’re adding more world-class investors to support our growing team as we work to accelerate the pace of innovation and to reshape the conversational AI landscape, one industry at a time.”

Mars, who recently participated in FinovateSpring’s AI Summit Day conversations on AI in financial services, noted that the new investment would help the company add to its team and expand to new, larger offices in Ann Arbor. He also suggested to TechCrunch that this funding, which dwarfs the company’s $6.3 million Series A round from two years ago, could be the firm’s last financing before pursuing an IPO.

Clinc’s technology leverages natural language processing, advanced machine learning, and neural networks to decipher and respond to not just the meaning, but also the context and intent of human speech. In addition to being able to comprehend unstructured speech, the technology’s ability to learn and improve itself with every interaction allows it, for example, to quickly support new languages after being introduced to as few as 500 utterances.

Clinc demonstrated its conversational AI technology at FinovateFall 2016, winning Best of Show honors. Earlier this year, the company proved its technology could be used to provide in-game assistance for gamers, enabling them to communicate with the game using natural language, including slang, without requiring the use of specific commands.

In 2018, Clinc announced that it was expanding its technology to the automotive industry to give developers the ability to add natural language-based interaction and control functionality to vehicles. Also last year, the company teamed up with Turkey’s Isbank to launch the world’s second biggest mobile banking voice assistant.

With customers including USAA, Barclays, S&P Global, OCBC Bank, and US Bank, Clinc was founded in 2015. The company has achieved 300% year-over-year revenue growth, and anticipates tripling its business in 2019. Via its partners, Clinc estimates that more than 30 million people are using its conversational AI technology.

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