Finovate is part of the Informa Connect Division of Informa PLC
This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.
The Breaking Banks PowerHour – a live feed of Brett King’s Breaking Banks podcast – returned to FinovateEurope last week.
In case you missed it, here’s your chance to join Brett, J.P. Nichols, Jim Marous, and Greg Palmer as they discuss the latest trends in fintech innovation, the rise of TechFin competitors around the world, the impact of Brexit on U.K. fintech, and their favorite demos from our conference.
On Finovate.com
Around the web
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.
After a successful four-month pilot with the Department of Veterans Affairs, the government agency will launch its Virtual In-Person Identity Proofing offering – powered by identity verification platform ID.me.
“Using Virtual In-Person Identity Proofing, we can serve the 19 year-old active duty service member with a thin credit file, the 82 year-old veteran who struggles with technology, and the 35 year-old military spouse living internationally,” explained ID.me CEO and founder Blake Hall. “As a former soldier, I can say that no man left behind is one of the most important promises service members make to one another. This collaboration between VA and ID.me ensures that no identity is left behind. We are proud to lead the way.”
The new program enables eligible users to access VA services and benefits at VA.gov regardless of circumstances – such as a lack of an address. With Virtual In-Person Identity Proofing, veterans will have the option to complete the identity verification process via a consultation with one of ID.me’s “Trusted Referees” via video chat.
“As part of the digital modernization of the VA, it is important that all veterans can securely access their benefits and services online,” Department of Veteran Affairs CTO Charles Worthington said. “Adding Virtual In-Person Identity Proofing is a critical step towards making sure that no veteran is left behind while keeping VA in compliance with the latest NIST standards.”
The VA is the first federal agency to comply with new NIST 800-63-3 Assurance Level 2 standards. These guidelines apply to all federal agencies with citizen-facing applications that require “a high degree of trust.” With Virtual In-Person Identity Proofing, the VA will be able to reach veterans with few financial records, who live overseas, or find the online process challenging and require assistance – all without having to require the veteran to travel to a government facility.
ID.me demonstrated its ID.me Identity Gateway at FinovateSpring 2017. Headquartered in Herndon, Virginia and founded in 2010, ID.me has provided identity verification services for a wide range of public and private entities – from NASA and the U.S. Treasury Department to USAA and Under Armour.
Earlier this year, ID.me announced surpassing the 10 million user milestone. Last fall, the company unveiled its KYC/AML identity verification and ID document solutions, and expanded its offering to enable retailers to readily and accurately verify their customers for a variety of discounts and rewards.
ID.me has raised $46.9 million in funding, and includes FTV Capital, the National Institute of Skilled Training (NIST), and USAA among its investors.
Three months into its rebrand, GPU-accelerated analytics innovator OmniSci (formerly MapD) is reporting “wide-ranging growth” including significant increases in revenue run rate and the size of its customer base. The company credits its growth to the success of its technology that enables organizations to conduct advanced big data analytics “at extreme speed.”
“OmniSci’s customers are increasingly battling against the limitations of mainstream analytics tools in the age of big data,” OmniSci CEO Todd Mostak explained. He pointed to the processing challenges that are common in high-frequency decision-making – interactive queries and visualization of large datasets – as beyond the capabilities of CPU-based solutions. “Our momentum, especially in the past 12 months, has proven the value of our technology for querying and visualizing big data at the speed of curiosity.”
In a statement, the company announced a set of expansion plans for 2019, including doubling its workforce by the end of the year, and a move into new San Francisco headquarters in the first half of 2019.
2018 featured the launch of OmniSci’s MapD Cloud, the first SaaS-based, GPU-accelerated analytics solution. The company announced partnerships with NVIDIA and Pure Storage in the fall, ahead of its corporate rebrand announcement in October. Also in October, the company finished a $55 million Series C round that brought the company’s total capital to $92 million. Tiger Global Management, New Enterprise Associates, Vanedge Capital, In-Q-Tel, Verizon, Google Ventures and NVIDIA are among the company’s investors.
As MapD, the company demonstrated its MapD Core and MapD Immerse solutions at FinovateSpring 2018. MapD Core represents the platform’s GPU-powered database and MapD Immerse is the platform visualization engine. The database runs across multiple GPIs, supporting analysis of multi-billion row datasets by multiple users. The company’s visualization engine uses GPUs to render billions of points on the front end without the network bottlenecks common to other systems.
GPU-based systems promise to enable more companies to take advantage of big data. “The sheer volume of data is often an impediment to processing information and completing analyses in a timely way,” Constellation Research VP and analyst Doug Henschen said. “GPU acceleration is a cutting-edge method that leaders and fast-followers are embracing to quickly gain insight without sacrificing in-depth analysis.”
Curious about which companies will be demonstrating their latest technologies at FinovateSpring this year? Stay tuned to our FinovateSpring page to find out!
As Finovate goes increasingly global, so does our coverage of financial technology. Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World is our weekly look at fintech innovation in developing economies in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe.
Entrust Datacard, a provider of identity and secure issuance technology, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Thales’ general purpose hardware security module (GP HSM) business, nCipher Security, reports Henry Vilar of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
NCipher Security has been operating as a separate stand-alone business within Thales since January 2019.
The acquisition is expected to be finalized during the second quarter of 2019. Financial terms of the acquisition will not be disclosed.
Thales is divesting its nCipher GP HSM business, in accordance with regulatory clearances necessary to complete Thales’ acquisition of Gemalto.
“This acquisition is an excellent complement to our expertise in both cryptography and hardware,” said Todd Wilkinson, president and CEO of Entrust Datacard.
“There is a powerful synergy between our solutions and the combination of our organizations will accelerate innovation for our customers as they embark on initiatives such as mobility, cloud and IoT to grow their businesses and simultaneously strive to protect data and manage ever-growing cyber risk,” added Cindy Provin, CEO of nCipher Security.
Entrust Datacard said GP HSMs are a core component of its solutions, and an underlying part of the security infrastructure of the company’s public key infrastructure (PKI) and secure socket layer (SSL) offerings.
The acquisition will allow the company to address the increased demand for data security stemming from regulations such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the electronic identification, authentication and trust services (eIDAS) regulation.
The transaction is subject to the successful completion of the acquisition of Gemalto by Thales, the approval of Entrust as a suitable purchaser by the European Commission, US Department of Justice, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and New Zealand Commerce Commission, and the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.
Entrust Datacard is a two-time alum of our developers conference, FinDEVrSiliconValley. The company presented Securing the Omni Channel Experience with a Trusted Identity in 2015, and returned the following year with Safeguarding Your Banking Applications, a look at the value of integrating second factor authentication into banking apps.
The Austrian unit of LGT, the international private banking and asset management group owned by the Princely House of Liechtenstein, has gone live with the Avaloq Banking Suite, reports Henry Vilar of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
The roll-out complements similar activation projects for LGT with Avaloq in Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Singapore and Hong Kong, meaning that all of the group’s core markets now use the same banking system.
The LGT deal with Avaloq dates back to 2006 – the company has been rolling out the core banking system across LGT locations over the years, and Austria is the last site to join. The project in Austria started in 2016.
Jürg Hunziker, CEO of Avaloq, said: “Avaloq is now able to support Austrian banks as the sector increasingly looks to digitise its infrastructure.”
Dietmar Baumgartner, co-CEO of LGT in Austria, added: “The integration of Austria into LGT’s group-wide core banking system makes it possible to benefit from synergies and further simplifies internal processes.”
LGT is a financial services group that has been controlled by the Liechtenstein Princely Family for over 80 years. With Avaloq’s adoption, it aims to strengthen its client-centric sales and service model.
The solution addresses market needs specific to Austria, such as the local tax system and current and future financial regulations. This means that the bank’s advisers automatically meet regulatory requirements.
The going live marks the market entry of Avaloq in Austria. Its scalable solution is now also available to other private as well as retail banks.
Back in 2017, FinTech Futures reported that LGT was implementing the vendor’s OneSumX platform for the regulatory reporting and risk management of its Asian operations – in Singapore and Hong Kong.
Avaloq demonstrated its “double marketplace” that brings the app store concept to banking, at FinovateAsia 2018, winning Best of Show. The Zurich, Switzerland based firm was founded in 1985.
On Finovate.com
Around the web
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.
Less than one month after announcing its expansion into France and a new partnership with IDEMIA, Onfido is back in the news. The identity verification specialist is bringing its technology to San Francisco, California-based online rental marketplace, 2nd Address.
“As the rentals market gets ever more popular, with millions of online transactions happening every month, it’s hard to know if your customers are who they claim to be,” Onfido CEO and co-founder Husayn Kassai said. “We bring trust to digital interactions worldwide and pride ourselves in delivering an experience that’s as rapid as it is robust.”
2nd Address provides furnished, long-term rental accommodations for business professionals in the U.S. Onfido’s identity verification technology will enable the company to quickly and accurate verify and onboard new renters at the point of booking while helping protect hosts against fraud. The process is straightforward: potential renters take a selfie and a photo of their identity document. Onfido’s technology determines the legitimacy of the ID document, and compares the selfie image to the photo on the ID.
“2nd Address is committed to making sure that not only do our guest have a modern booking process, but that our hosts receive high-quality guests,” company CEO Chung-Man Tam said. “Onfido helps us deliver a smooth user experience while also creating the trust and safety that’s crucial to our community.”
Onfido demonstrated its Facial Check with Video technology at FinovateFall 2018. The point-of-signup solution leverages machine learning to detect liveness to ensure that facial checks cannot be spoofed by stolen photos or IDs. Partnered with firms such as Zipcar and fellow Finovate alum Revolut, Onfido provides verification checks in more than 190 countries around the world.
The company has raised $60.3 million in funding. Crane Venture Partners, Microsoft Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures are among Onfido’s most recent investors.
Capitalise.com, the London-based financial marketplace for accountants, has raised a $4.5 million (£3.5 million) Series A investment round, reports Henry Vilar of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
The round was led by QED Investors, a US fintech venture capital firm, and supported by existing investor Hambro Perks, as well as Gauss Ventures.
Capitalise positions accountants as experts, using its data analytics and marketplace access, so it becomes the point of advice to discuss growth plans with small business clients.
Paul Surtees, co-founder and CEO of Capitalise, said it wants to build a “culture of funding.”
The firm cites the UK’s Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), which says access to finance and cash flow are business owners’ top concerns despite the UK market having over 360 small business lenders.
Surtees said: “Whilst the bank manager might be a thing of the past, we say it is ‘long live the accountant.’”
According to Capitalise, its platform and online learning for accountants has allowed for an annual compounded growth rate of 234%.
“The recent raise will be used to expand our cloud product for advisers to navigate the market of financial products for SMEs”, explained Ollie Maitland, co-founder and chief product officer at Capitalise.
Through its online platform, Capitalise works with 105 partners, including PKF, Armstrong Watson, Farnell Clarke, BluSky, Wow and Woods Squared.
Not to be confused with fellow Finovate alum Capitalise from Tel Aviv, U.K.-based Capitalise demonstrated its platform at FinovateEurope 2016.
Crypto exchange Coinbase is in a buying mood again with the acquisition of Milan-based blockchain intelligence platform Neutrino, reports Antony Peyton of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
Financial details were not disclosed.
According to Coinbase, blockchain intelligence is “increasingly important” in the crypto ecosystem, and is “necessary to achieve our mission of bringing the open financial system to the world”.
By analyzing data on public blockchains, Neutrino’s tech will let Coinbase prevent theft of funds from peoples’ accounts, investigate ransomware attacks, and identify bad actors. It will also help bring more (unspecified) cryptocurrencies and features.
For example, on its website, Neutrino offers its XFlow nSpect solution. This is developed specifically for law enforcement agencies, and provides features for criminal investigations and intelligence gathering.
Neutrino, which was founded in 2016, will continue to operate as a standalone business based out of its London office.
Meanwhile, Coinbase seems to be making good progress.
Last month, it bought Blockspring, a San Francisco-based start-up enabling data collection through APIs.
Back in August 2018, it acquired another San Francisco-based start-up – Distributed Systems – as it plans to use cryptocurrencies and blockchain for validating and verifying identity.
Coinbase demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2014. With more than 20 million users and $150+ billion traded, the fintech unicorn was valued at $8 billion at the time of its last fundraise in October 2018.
On Finovate.com
Around the web
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.