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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
From the continued relevance of paper checks to the rapid growth of digital technology, payments continues to be one of the most fascinating — and important — areas in fintech.
In this week’s Streamly interview, William Mills, CEO of the William Mills Agency, talks with Kevin Brown, CMO and Head of Corporate Development for Onbe. The two men discuss a variety of key issues in the payments world, including the potential for AI to revolutionize payment systems and the future of cross-border payments.
“One of the very prevalent modalities, or payment instruments, that still exist are paper-based checks. We did research with the team at Oliver Wyman and, in 2023, there were still 1.7 trillion dollars of paper check or cash-based B2C payments. A huge amount of paper that’s out there. Checks are dated, not a great customer experience, require action on behalf of the consumer and they’re really expensive to corporate clients … As an industry, we have a huge opportunity to still alleviate a significant amount of pain, both for the ultimate enterprises and then their consumers and recipients, just by the doing away of paper checks.”
Onbe manages and modernizes consumer and workforce disbursements for corporate customers. The company’s technology platform powers a suite of turnkey managed disbursement solutions that enable its customers to outsource their entire B2C disbursement operations. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Onbe was founded in 1996. Bala Janakiraman Iyer is CEO.
In his role at Onbe, Kevin Brown leads marketing, corporate development, business development, and communications. A fintech and payments operator with experience at both public and private equity-backed businesses, Brown is a graduate of Marist College (BA) and Pace University (MBA).
U.K.-based financial planning and advice platform Dynamic Planner has teamed up with Salesforce.
The partnership will make Dynamic Planner available on the Salesforce AppExchange and is the company’s second CRM partnership in as many months.
Dynamic Planner made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2022 in London.
Risk-based financial planning system Dynamic Planner has announced a new partnership with Salesforce. Now launched on the Salesforce AppExchange, Dynamic Planner will give Salesforce customers access to an enhanced and engaging digital financial planning experience.
“This collaboration provides financial planning and wealth management firms who use Salesforce with the ability to underpin their entire financial planning process with Dynamic Planner,” company Chief Revenue Officer Yasmina Siadatan said. “It will boost productivity gains and efficiencies, whilst delivering seamless and engaging wealth and financial planning for Salesforce customers. We look forward to working with Salesforce to provide an enhanced experience for firms.”
Founded in 2004, Dynamic Planner offers a digital financial planning and advice platform that helps investment advice firms scale their businesses, boost capacity, and better engage clients with mapped investment solutions and digital experiences. Dynamic Planner enables advisers to profile clients, conduct annual reviews, and perform cash flow planning with increased efficiency and speed. The company notes that 80% of annual reviews conducted via Dynamic Planner are completed in 35 minutes or less, with 20% of these reviews completed in less than five minutes. More than 40% of U.K. investment advice firms and more than 150 asset managers use Dynamic Planner’s technology.
Dynamic Planner’s partnership with Salesforce comes a month after the platform announced a CRM integration with Adviser Cloud. The new integration will make it easier for advisers to transfer client records efficiently and securely between Dynamic Planner and Adviser Cloud, saving time and lowering the risk of manual errors during rekeying of information. Integrations such as these are an important way to boost efficiency and lower operational costs for financial planning firms and their client.
“Adviser Cloud has always focused on providing intuitive, user-friendly software for financial advisers, and this integration continues that mission by eliminating data rekeying and enhancing workflows,” Adviser Cloud Tech Lead Ewan Humphreys said.
Headquartered in the U.K., Dynamic Planner made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2022. At the conference, the company demonstrated its end-to-end, risk-based financial planning system that combines intuitive technology with a trusted, independent asset risk model. Dynamic Planner uses more than 2,400 covariance correlations to accurately assess the risk of tens of thousands of investments and client portfolios every day. Ben Goss is CEO.
Crypto.com’s new functionality, new partnership, and plans for the new year
Recently crowned the king of North American crypto trading, Crypto.com announced this week that it launched a new partnership with payments acceptance provider Ingenico. The partnership will enable users of Ingenico’s platform globally to accept payments in cryptocurrency. Consumers will benefit from earning rewards for transactions via Crypto.com’s Crypto.com Pay; merchants will benefit from being able to manage payments and services via both mobile and tablet devices.
Also this week, Crypto.com announced that it would expand its offering to include banking services, credit cards, and stock trading. Additionally, the company unveiled its new rewards program, Level Up, that enables customers to access benefits across multiple products — credit cards, stock trading, and banking services — through partner banks. Level Up offers a flexible rewards structure that enables users to secure benefits across a range of different products in the Crypto.com ecosystem.
“This product expansion represents our most aggressive push across traditional and digital finance and brings users to one simple app for industry-leading benefits through Level Up,” Crypto.com President and COO Eric Anziani said.
Finishing 2024 on a busy note, Crypto.com is already eyeing the new year. The Singapore-based fintech announced this week that it is planning to expand its crypto offerings in 2025 to include both a stablecoin and an exchange-traded fund (ETF) product. Traditional financial products such as stock trading and banking are also top of the 2025 agenda for the company, as noted above. Crypto.com has put a date of Q1 2025 for the launch of its banking product services. The firm also plans to expand its debit card services in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa in Q4 of this year, and to launch credit cards in the U.S. and South Korea by Q2 of next year.
Boerse Stuttgart Digital partners with Fenergo
European cryptocurrency and digital asset infrastructure provider Boerse Stuttgart Digital has teamed up with KYC, client lifecycle management, and transaction monitoring solutions provider Fenergo to speed the onboarding of financial institutions that are looking to launch their own cryptocurrency offerings.
“Fenergo’s client lifecycle management solution, validated by the world’s largest financial institutions, will allow Boerse Stuttgart Digital to future-proof its solutions against regulatory change,” Fenergo Managing Director EMEA Ruth Ormsby said. “With this level of compliance automation, Boerse Stuttgart Digital can onboard banks, brokers, and asset managers seeking to unlock crypto trading faster, thus accelerating growth.”
The partnership between Fenergo and Boerse Stuttgart Digital will speed the onboarding of banks, brokers, and asset managers ready to launch their own cryptocurrency and digital asset offerings. Integrating Fenergo will streamline Boerse Stuttgart Digital’s underlying compliance processes for both Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML). This will enable financial institutions working with Boerse Stuttgart Digital to offer secure and reliable crypto trading and custody services to their customers.
“In the race to realize their own crypto offerings, financial institutions require efficient trading and custody solutions without compromising on regulatory compliance,” Boerse Stuttgart Digital Chief Digital & Product Officer Ulli Spankowski said. “Our partnership empowers banks, brokers, and asset managers to enter the crypto market, backed by infrastructure that ensures scalability, security, and full regulatory compliance.”
Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, Fenergo made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2012 in London.
BitPay launches new cryptocurrency payout service
Payments company BitPayunveiled a new service late last week that will enable companies to pay employees, contractors, customers, and vendors in crypto.
The service, BitPay Send, is especially designed for international and gig economy companies that need to pay multiple recipients online at the same time. Companies are not required to buy, own, or manage cryptocurrencies themselves, and payout recipients receive their payments more efficiently and at less cost, according to BitPay CEO Stephen Pair.
“Blockchain payment adoption is growing because it offers an easy way to send and receive payments on a global scale,” Pair said.
BitPay Send can be used for a number of different payment operations including payroll, customer cash-outs, contractor payments, rewards, and settlements with marketplace sellers. The new offering also puts the firm in a position to compete with other crypto payroll services such as BitWage.
Swift, UBS, and Chainlink conclude blockchain pilot
That’s a wrap! Swift, UBS Asset Management, and Chainlink announced this week that they have successfully completed a pilot project that involved settling tokenized fund subscriptions and redemptions using the Swift network. The goal of the project is to enable digital asset transactions to settle with fiat payment systems across 11,500+ financial institutions in more than 200 countries and territories.
The pilot project builds on an initiative by UBS Asset Management and SBI Digital Markets to develop a digital subscription and redemption system for tokenized funds. This is often an inefficient aspect of traditional fund operations that is typically burdened by manual interventions, delayed settlements, and the absence of real-time transparency. The pilot demonstrated how blockchain technology can be used to settle subscriptions and redemptions for tokenized investment fund vehicles, paving the way for straight-through-processing of the payment component without requiring global adoption of an on-chain form of payment.
The project was also undertaken as part of Project Guardian, a cooperation between policy makers and industry players to enhance financial market efficiency and liquidity via asset tokenization. Project Guardian is sponsored by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
“For digital assets to be adopted globally, they must seamlessly integrate with both existing payment systems and digital currencies,” Swift Head of Strategy Jonathan Ehrenfeld said. “Our work with UBS Asset Management and Chainlink in MAS’ Project Guardian leverages the global Swift network to bridge digital assets with established systems.”
Commercial Bank International inks MoU with Zumo
Commercial Bank International, a financial institution based in the UAE, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with U.K.-based digital assets platform Zumo. The goal of the partnership is to investigate the tracking of digital asset sustainability and comes as the UAE makes a bid to be seen as the leading international hub for digital assets and innovation.
“Our collaboration with CBI will see Zumo’s pioneering digital assets and blockchain technology complement CBI’s financial expertise and innovative approach to drive sustainability,” Zumo COO Clark Povey said. “Zumo solves the biggest challenges in digital assets for financial institutions by providing business-critical technologies to navigate the rapidly evolving digital asset landscape, and with Zumo’s technology and leadership in sustainability to digital assets, the exciting journey ahead is just beginning.”
Crypto-as-a-service platform Zumo provides banks, fintechs, and financial services companies with the infrastructure they need to launch sustainable digital asset products. The company is a pioneer in sustainability and crypto assets, developing research and solutions to enable the crypto market to move closer to net zero. Registered with the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Zumo has secured public funding to build and launch a solution to help cryptocurrency companies measure, mitigate, and report on their carbon footprint. Founded in 2017, Zumo helped establish an industry standard with the release of its MiCA-compliant sustainability module in September.
API platform Speakeasy has secured $15 million in Series A funding.
The company will use the capital to expand its product offerings, accelerate its roadmap, and hire additional talent.
Headquartered in San Francisco, California. Speakeasy made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in New York this year,
In a round led by FPV Ventures, API platform Speakeasy has raised $15 million in Series A funding. Also participating in the investment were Google Ventures (GV) and Quiet Capital. Speakeasy noted that it plans to use the funding to expand its product offerings, accelerate its roadmap, and grow its team.
“Building a really great … modern API is very much undervalued and underestimated at companies,” Speakeasy CEO Sagar Batchu said in a statement on LinkedIn. “Everyone wants to be Stripe or Twilio or GitHub in terms of quality, but to get to that status … takes huge amounts of effort.”
Founded in 2022, Speakeasy offers an API platform designed to give developers the tools they need to build quality, reliable APIs. Concerned over the fact that growing API use among businesses was outpacing the ability of developers to provide them, Speakeasy looks to close the gap with a platform that handles the more cumbersome aspects of API development, freeing developers to focus on higher-order tasks like refining business logic.
Developers can use their favorite API framework to build APIs, and Speakeasy will help ensure APIs adhere to both industry and internal best practices. Speakeasy’s platform automates API testing to avoid shipping unintentional breaking changes, and also automatically generates the SDKs to make API integration easier.
“The Speakeasy team’s past experience building enterprise APIs has given them profound insight into, and empathy for, the struggles engineering teams are facing,” FPV Ventures Managing Partner Wesley Chan said. “They are building a platform that will not only address existing inefficiencies in API development but anticipates future challenges in the ecosystem.”
Speakeasy made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2024 in New York. At the conference, the company demonstrated how its technology enables financial institutions to build robust, well-managed, easy-to-use APIs. With Speakeasy’s API platform, technology teams can automate the creation and maintenance of API documentation and client SDKs that facilitate rapid and seamless API integration. Customers using the platform have been able to boost API user adoption, reduce time-to-integration, and save significant engineering costs. In 2024, Speakeasy noted that nearly 3,000 users have generated 7,250 SDKs.
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Speakeasy includes fellow Finovate alums Apex Fintech Solutions and Apiture, as well as API companies Kong, Codat, and Shippo, among its customers.
Digital relationship banking innovator Agent IQ has teamed up with digital banking solutions provider Narmi.
The partnership will integrate Agent IQ’s Lynq banking platform with Narmi’s digital banking solutions to enable community banks and credit unions to offer enhanced, more personalized services.
Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Agent IQ most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2022 in New York.
“By integrating our Lynq relationship banking platform with Narmi’s digital banking solutions, we’re equipping banks and credit unions with tools to offer a vastly improved customer experience while also empowering them to be more efficient,” Agent IQ Co-founder and CEO Slaven Bilac said.
Agent IQ specializes in digital relationship banking, providing personalization and customer engagement solutions that help banks and credit unions enhance customer relationships. The firm’s Lynq platform empowers financial institutions to provide proactive guidance and real-time insights to customers by combining human emotion and empathy with the efficiency of computer intelligence and AI. Narmi offers a digital banking platform designed to help community banks and credit unions provide their customers and members with the same kind of digital experience as their larger rivals. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in New York, Narmi boasts that its customers have seen account growth of as much as 3x in less than 30 days and deposit growth of 4x in as little as 90 days.
In a statement, the companies highlighted two major benefits of the partnership. These benefits include seamless digital banking functionality with AI personalization to provide customers with tailored support and consistent engagement, whether opening an account or using mobile banking. Another benefit of the partnership is the ability to enhance customer relationships by allowing customers to make digital transactions while accessing personal guidance from a dedicated banker — all without having to travel to a branch.
“Agent IQ is a perfect complement to Narmi’s digital banking and account opening products,” Narmi SVP of Operations Angela Gentry Yue said. “Together, we’re providing financial institutions with a comprehensive suite of tools that significantly enhance digital engagement and operational efficiency. This collaboration marks a major advancement in our mission to drive innovation in the banking industry.”
Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, Agent IQ made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2019. The company most recently appeared before Finovate audiences at FinovateFall 2022 in New York. At the conference, Agent IQ demoed its Lynq platform that enables customers to choose a personal banker to help them manage all their financial needs across any digital channel. Lynq leverages built-in augmented intelligence to enable personal bankers to better engage customers and build relationships in the digital space that are as personalized as relationships in a physical branch.
Agent IQ began the year announcing an extension of its integration partnership with fellow Finovate alum Q2. The extension empowers Q2’s sales organization to resell Agent IQ to Q2’s bank and credit union customers. Also in January, the company announced a collaboration with another fellow Finovate alum, ebankIT. Here, the partnership combines ebankIT’s self-service digital channels with Agent IQ’s personal digital engagement platform. “We wish to redefine the digital banking experience, make it more human, and set new benchmarks for customer engagement and satisfaction,” ebankIT CEO Renato Oliveira said when the collaboration was announced.
More recently, Agent IQ made fintech headlines via its work with community banks and credit unions. In July, Stanford Federal Credit Union won the Q2 Innovation Award for the launch of its digital communications channel powered by Agent IQ. The following month, Agent IQ announced a new partnership with the Bank of Utah. The independent community bank leveraged Agent IQ’s Lynq digital engagement platform to launch its new chat solution.
It’s going to be hard to avoid the avalanche of news coverage of the U.S. Presidential election this week. But if you’re looking for a respite from the political headlines, Finovate’s Fintech Rundown is here for you! Be sure to check back all week long for the latest in fintech news.
Open banking
Financial API platform Salt Edgepartners with Central Bank of Bahrain to enhance corporate banking with open banking.
Tinkteams up with international money app Zing to launch automatic and one-tap top-ups leveraging open banking.
This week’s edition of Finovate Global features news from the fintech industry in Nigeria.
Africa’s newest fintech unicorn raises $110 million
African fintech Moniepoint is the continent’s latest fintech unicorn. The firm, Nigeria’s largest merchant acquirer, announced this week that it has raised $110 million in a funding round led by private equity firm Development Partners International (DPI). The round also featured participation from Google’s Africa Investment Fund, Verod Capital, and Lightrock. The infusion of capital boosts Moniepoint’s valuation above $1 billion, and is providing a positive light at a time when many fintechs in Africa are struggling to secure funding.
The funding takes Moniepoint’s total capital to more than $180 million.
Formerly known as TeamApt, the nine-year-old fintech will use the capital to accelerate the company’s growth across the continent. Moniepoint is building an all-in-one, seamlessly integrated platform for African businesses that features services including digital payments, banking, foreign exchange, credit, and business management tools. Speaking on behalf of DPI, Adefolarin Ogunsanya praised the company for its “combination of innovative technology, fast growth, and positive impact on the continent.”
CEO Tosin Eniolorunda co-founded the company in 2015. In the years since then, Moniepoint has grown into an all-in-one financial ecosystem that serves 10 million businesses and individuals. The company powers most of the point of sale transactions in Nigeria and, via its subsidiaries, processes $17 billion a month for its customers. Headquartered in London, Moniepoint maintains offices in Lagos, Nigeria; and Nairobi, Kenya, as well as in the U.S.
“This milestone validates the work we’ve put in for almost a decade,” the company noted in a post on its LinkedIn page. “And with this raise, we’ll be making financial happiness a reality for every African, everywhere. This is just Day One, and we’re excited for where this takes us.”
CB Insights also named Moniepoint to its 100 most promising startups roster for 2024. The Nigerian fintech is one of seven African startups to make this year’s list.
MTN Nigeria aims for higher quality mobile wallet users
There’s good news and bad news in the latest financial report from African telecommunications company MTN Nigeria. The bad news is that the company reported a significant after-tax loss of $312.7 million (₦514.9 billion), due largely to volatility in the currency market. MTN also noted that though active data users grew by more than 5% to 45.3 million, the company’s mobile money wallet business declined by more than 21%.
The good news? MTN’s fintech division grew revenues by 18%, with much of the gains coming from its mobile money service, MoMo. The decline in active mobile money wallets noted above was attributed in part to a shift in the company’s sales strategy to focus more on “high-quality wallet users” rather than just maximizing the number of users in general. MTN Nigeria also noted that its MoMo service has recently added functionality to support cross-border transactions.
“In the fintech business, we focused on executing our growth strategy, prioritizing increasing wallet quality, focusing on advanced services, and the MoMo PSB app to enhance the user experience and engagement,” MTN Nigeria CEO Karl Toriola explained. “We have introduced cross-border remittances with 13 fellow African countries to boost adoption and monetization. Taking advantage of their interoperability, we are now leveraging the existing network of agents and merchants … in the industry to bring our services closer to our customers.”
PalmPay wins recognition for financial inclusion
Lagos, Nigeria-based fintech platform PalmPay was recognized as the “Most Outstanding Fintech Driving Financial Inclusion” at the 2024 BrandCom Awards held late last month. Sponsored by Brand Communicator, the award acknowledges the fintech’s work in bridging financial gaps and promoting financial inclusion in Nigeria.
“At PalmPay, we believe financial inclusion is the foundation for economic empowerment, and we’re dedicated to ensuring that every Nigerian has access to secure, user-friendly, and reliable financial services,” PalmPay Head of Marketing and Communications, Hanson Femi said.
Founded in 2019, PalmPay has more than 35 million users. The company connects more than one million businesses via its mobile money agent and merchant network, and provides services ranging from instant transfers and billpay to its new USSD feature. This feature enables customers to perform a variety of banking transactions without needing internet connectivity by dialing *861# on their mobile phones.
“We aim to bridge the gap in digital access, and the introduction of our USSD service aligns with that mission,” PalmPay Managing Director for Nigeria, Chika Nwosu, said when the service was launched in September.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Asia-Pacific
South Korean fintech unicorn, Viva Republica, which operates the mobile financial super app Toss, announced plans to debut in the U.S. market.
Singapore has established a “Global Finance & Technology Network” (GFTN) to support the region’s reputation as an international fintech hub.
Wise became the first non-bank operating in Japan to earn approval to join the country’s domestic payment network, Zegin.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Stanbic Bank Kenya, in partnership with Mastercard, has launched a pair of new credit cards designed to serve the institution’s affluent customers.
Nigeria-based fintech Moniepoint achieved unicorn status after raising $110 million in new funding.
Côte d’Ivoire-based investment platform Daba Finance won the Ecobank Fintech Challenge.
Central and Eastern Europe
Lithuanian identity verification and fraud prevention company iDenfy partnered with O2Factoring.
Erste Group teamed up with Neterium to help the firm bring its transaction screening solution to markets in Central and Eastern Europe.
Tech Times profiled Germany fintech billionaire and founder of Black Banx, Michael Gastauer.
Leveraging AI to enhance the customer experience is one the biggest challenges – and greatest opportunities – in fintech and financial services.
Today we share the insights of Rahul Kumar, VP and GM for Financial Services and Insurance with Talkdesk, on the central role of contact centers in AI-driven customer experience. In our Streamly Snapshot conversation, which took place in September at FinovateFall 2024 in New York, Kumar discusses what financial institutions are doing to overcome the barriers to delivering a superior customer experience. Kumar also explains why leaders in financial services are prioritizing the contact center as a central part of their AI and CX strategy.
“One of the things we’re seeing in the industry is that customer experience is fast becoming a strategic initiative for executives across the board — for banks and for credit unions. Recently, in a survey, we polled over 200 customer experience professionals and the responses were unsurprising: 86% of executives said that they do believe CX is a strategic investment priority that can lead to brand differentiation for themselves. 63% felt that they could tie CX metrics to value. And 80% do believe that contact center is fast becoming a strategic investment area for them. It’s definitely top of mind for executives.”
Founded in 2011 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Talkdesk is an international cloud contact center leader for businesses of all sizes. The company’s contact center platform leverages AI and automation to enable businesses to deliver exceptional outcomes for their customers. Talkdesk’s AI-powered customer experience platform helps enterprises reduce costs, grow revenues, and streamline operations to boost efficiency. Tiago Paiva is Founder and Chief Executive Officer.
In his role at Talkdesk, Rahul Kumar leads business, product, and go-to-market strategy for financial services and insurance. He also leads the customer success function for all strategic industry customers, managing C-suite relationships for enterprise customers.
Investment management platform Quoroom has merged with portfolio management software company Investory.io.
The merger will help streamline the capital-raising process for venture capital funds, angel syndicates, and startup founders.
Headquartered in London, Quoroom made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023.
It’s been M&A week here on the Finovate blog! Over the past few days, we’ve highlighted merger and acquisition activity from a pair of alums: nCino’spurchase of Full Circl and Array’sacquisition of fellow Finovate alum, Payitoff. For those looking for a silver lining among the VC funding slowdown in fintech, M&A activity like this might do the trick.
Here’s another fintech M&A announcement that almost slipped beneath our radar. Quoroom, an investment management platform that provides end-to-end fundraising and cap table management software for private companies, has merged with Investory.io.
Investory.io provides portfolio management software that facilitates structured and data-driven communication between investors and startups. With more than 3,000 company accounts and 6,500 investor accounts (including more than 1,000 institutional investors and 4,000 angel investors) on its platform, Investory.io leverages data and AI to enable data-driven portfolio decision-making for investors and simplified investor reporting for startups.
Quoroom’s technology provides an investment workflow that covers every aspect of a company’s lifecycle, from building an investor pipeline to legal completion. By giving investors a singular “source of truth” on deal flow and the metrics of portfolio companies, Quoroom helps companies stand out from the crowd and raise capital faster.
The strategic merger between Quoroom and Investory.io will help unify a fragmented market for venture capital infrastructure and analytics. Quoroom users will be able to leverage the integrated functionality of Investory.io to manage investor updates and cap tables in one place. At the same time, angel syndicates and venture capital funds will benefit from being able to manage fundraising, SPVs, portfolios, and LP reporting from within a single investment management platform.
“With this acquisition, Quoroom users can now manage cap tables, investor relations, and fundraising activities all in one place, making the process more efficient and effective,” the company noted on its LinkedIn page earlier this month when the deal was first announced. Quoroom added separately that it plans to offer “enhanced functionalities in the coming months” to further streamline investment management and make investor relations operations more efficient.
Headquartered in London and founded in 2018, Quoroom made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023. At the conference, the company demoed its latest suite of investor relations tools, including enhanced investment recommendations, the ability to automatically visualize company financial metrics, and investor updates to keep shareholders informed during funding rounds.
We interviewed Quoroom CEO and CoFounder Ulyana Shtybel last summer as part of our Finovate Global interview series.
Cloud banking platform nCino has agreed to acquire Client Lifecyle Intelligence platform FullCircl. The purchase price is $135 million, subject to customary adjustments.
The acquisition comes a year after the two first forged a partnership in July 2023.
Wilmington, North Carolina-based nCino made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2017 in London.
In a deal valued at $135 million, banking solutions provider nCino has agreed to acquire U.K.-based Client Lifecycle Intelligence (CLI) platform, FullCircl. The acquisition comes a year after the two companies forged a partnership that combined FullCircl’s advanced data capabilities with nCino’s cloud banking platform.
“The acquisition of FullCircl is a strategic move for nCino that will not only enhance our data and automation capabilities, but also enables us to expand our reach across the U.K. and more broadly in Europe with an end-to-end experience for full client lifecycle management,” nCino CEO and Chairman Pierre Naudé said. “Having worked closely with the FullCircl team for some time now, we recognized the value our joint technology can deliver, and this acquisition marks an exciting step forward in our mission of driving innovation and powering a new era in financial services.”
nCino and FullCircl first partnered last year to improve the efficiency and profitability of acquiring, onboarding, and servicing SME customers. The collaboration set out to cut onboarding times, increase efficiency in credit operations, accelerate revenue growth, and win and retain more SME customers. Today’s acquisition announcement creates a new, end-to-end client lifecycle management experience that integrates customer acquisition and onboarding, KYC and KYB, as well as rules-based monitoring.
“We have been working with the nCino team for several years, and the close alignment in both organizations across vision, culture, customers, product, and market opportunity have contributed to this exciting acquisition making perfect sense,” FullCircl CEO and Cofounder Andrew Yates said. “We both serve regulated industries who walk a tightrope between a strict operating rulebook and a mandate to deliver growth and shareholder value, all while providing a seamless client experience.”
Founded in 2011, London-based FullCircl offers a Customer Lifecycle Intelligence (CLI) platform that helps companies in regulated industries better manage a variety of key business challenges. Via its applications, proprietary ‘graph’ technology, intelligent rules-based decision engine and APIs, FullCircl derives millions of actionable insights daily on entities from 160 countries. This enables the platform to provide a near real-time record of companies, corporate officers and shareholders, and the relationships between them. With more than 700 customers and 15,000+ users, the firm processes more than 300 million onboarding and monitoring transactions per month and facilitates the onboarding of more than 200,000 customers a year.
nCino made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2017 in London. Headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, and founded in 2012, the company currently delivers innovative banking experiences to more than 1,800 customers around the world, including community banks, credit unions, and independent mortgage banks, as well as some of the largest financial institutions in the world.
nCino began the month inking a partnership with Tokushima Taisho Bank. The Japan-based financial institution chose nCino’s Commercial Banking Solution to bring greater efficiency and increased value to its business lending operations. Other recent partnerships with nCino include the company’s work to enhance corporate lending at Netherlands-based bank ABN AMRO and its agreement to automate loan origination processes and expand portfolio management capabilities for U.K. specialist bank Shawbrook.
nCino is a publicly-traded company on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker NCNO. The firm has a market capitalization of $4 billion.
Cloud banking platform Mambu has teamed up with payments service processor Kuady.
Mambu is powering Kuady’s digital wallet offering, which has just launched in Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Mexico.
Headquartered in Berlin, Germany, Mambu made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia in 2013.
Courtesy of a new partnership with cloud banking platform Mambu, payments service processor Kuady has launched its digital wallet in Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Mexico. The launch comes less than nine months after the beginning of the partnership between the two companies, and sets the stage for further expansion in Latin America, as well as in Africa and Europe.
“We’re proud to support Kuady in its mission to enhance financial inclusion and transform how people manage their money,” Mambu Chief Revenue Officer Mark Geneste said. “As the adoption of digital wallets continues to grow globally, consumers are seeking smart alternatives to cash that provide flexible and ready-to-use spending, and we are here to support financial institutions and fintechs looking to expand and innovate in this space. We can offer the speed to market, future-proofing, and flexibility needed to stay ahead of the competition.”
Kuady’s new offering is powered by Mambu’s cloud banking platform and supported by Microsoft Azure. The company’s digital wallet will help consumers readily access their funds and manage their finances. Kuady’s wallet also empowers merchants to easily scale across borders, enabling instant payouts, chargeback protection, and more. Launched in July, the digital wallet arrives at a time when demand for digital wallets is surging. Mambu reported that the digital wallet market, which stood at 2.8 billion wallets and $5.5 trillion in spending globally in 2020, is expected to top $10 trillion in global spending by 2025. “One in every two people will choose to pay this way,” Mambu’s research into digital wallets revealed.
“With the tech foundation provided by Mambu, we’ve experienced incredible speed and flexibility allowing us to launch and expand our digital wallet across key Latin American markets in just under nine months,” Open Payment Technologies Ltd. Managing Director Mario Ricciardi said. Kuady is the registered business name of Open Payment Technologies. “As we look to enter more countries in Latin America and eventually expand across Africa and Europe,” Ricciardi added, “we’re excited about growing our business together with Mambu.”
Mambu made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia 2013 in Singapore, and most recently demoed its technology for Finovate audiences at FinovateFall 2021 and again in partnership with Persistent Systems, at FinovateEurope 2022. In addition to its partnership with Kuady, the Berlin, Germany-based firm this month teamed up with INDEXO Bank. The financial institution, which recently secured a banking license from the European Central Bank, leveraged technology from Mambu to launch banking operations in Latvia.
Array, an embedded consumer products platform, has agreed to acquire embedded debt guidance solutions provider Payitoff. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The deal will build on Array’s position in the intelligent debt management solutions industry, and further equip the company to help financial institutions, fintechs, and digital brands accelerate growth, create new revenue streams, and enhance the consumer experience.
“Financial institutions and other providers of financial products in digital experiences realize that helping their consumers better understand and manage their debt is a powerful way to increase deposits, revenue, and brand loyalty,” Array Founder and CEO Martin Toha said. “We acquired Payitoff because our companies have a shared vision to provide seamless, embeddable products that fuel financial progress. This provides our clients with the best of all worlds: bringing valuable products to market faster without additional resources and overhead.”
Founded in 2020, Array offers a range of embeddable private label products that enable businesses to serve as “one-stop shops” for financial services. The company’s solutions help financial institutions serve a wider range of customers’ financial needs, increasing engagement, and opening up new potential sources of growth. Array’s solutions can be implemented through embedded or private label sites, as well as via its API, and turn 18-month builds into 6-12 week deployments.
Array won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2021. The company returned to the Finovate stage the following year at FinovateSpring 2022, taking home its second Best of Show award in as many appearances. Most recently demoing its technology at FinovateSpring 2023, Array introduced its HelloPrivacy and Subscription Manager solutions. HelloPrivacy monitors and removes personally identifiable information (PII) from the web to help defend against identity theft, robocalls, and other privacy risks. Subscription Manager allows subscribers to manage their subscriptions from a single location, as well as cancel unwanted subscriptions and negotiate lower rates on select subscriptions.
Array began 2024 with the appointment of Kew Kelly-Yuoh as Chief Financial Officer, a partnership with digital banking solutions provider Narmi, and a spot on the Fintech Innovation 50 list for 2024. This spring, Array reported that its online privacy solution, Privacy Protect, had surpassed four million in protected users and removed more than 200 million online records on their behalf. Earlier this month, the company announced that Lumin Digital, a provider of cloud-native, digital banking solutions, will offer a suite of Array products including My Credit Manager with Offers Engine, and Identity Protect — along with Privacy Protect and Subscription Manager — as part of its Financial Wellness Monitoring Suite for financial institutions.
Founded in 2018, Payitoff was born out of CEO Bobby Matson’s personal struggle to pay off “six-figure student loans and debt.” After initially launching a student loan management solution, Matson and his team expanded their offerings to include a more comprehensive set of debt management tools. Enabling companies to seamlessly integrate broad debt management functionality into their digital platforms, Payitoff has managed 200,000+ loans valued at more than $1.5 billion.
“The opportunity for impact between Array and Payitoff is massive,” Matson said. “Student loan payments resumed a year ago, and with delinquencies starting to impact borrowers’ credit this month, the timing of this acquisition couldn’t be more critical. Array’s reach, combined with our debt management tools, will empower financial institutions and fintechs to help their consumers manage debt and save thousands — all with a seamless integration.”
Payitoff made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2023. At the conference, the consumer debt management tool provider demonstrated its white label, no code solution that empowers financial institutions to help their customers save money on student loan repayments. Earlier this year, Payitoff was selected to participate in Mastercard’s Start Path Open Banking Program.
