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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Concentrix Corporation and Napier AI are teaming up to help companies enhance their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing operations.
Integrating Napier AI’s compliance platform into Concentrix’s network of financial crime capabilities will enable businesses to boost their fraud prevention efforts with banking-grade, AI-powered solutions.
Napier AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2018. The London-based financial crime prevention specialist was founded in 2015. Greg Watson is CEO.
The collaboration adds Napier AI’s compliance platform to Concentrix’s network of financial crime and regulatory technology capabilities, leveraging intelligent transformation, data, and operational excellence to enable companies to transform their fraud prevention and financial crime operations with banking-grade, AI-powered AML and sanctions screening capabilities. The partnership will help companies detect and stop financial crime with greater accuracy and speed, reduce the risk of false negatives, lower the number and frequency of false positives, use automation and intelligent workflows to streamline compliance processes, and enhance regulatory reporting and audit readiness.
“Nobody should have to choose between effective compliance and business growth,” Napier AI Head of Asia Pacific Ron Mullins said. “By partnering with Concentrix, we’re combining cutting-edge AI technology with global scale and transformation expertise to help organizations across ANZ rethink how they approach financial crime—making compliance smarter, faster, and more trusted.”
Designed for banks and credit unions, the collaboration will also benefit Tranche 2-impacted firms such as real estate agents, accountants, legal practitioners, and other professional service providers. These entities are expected to be subject to AML and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) regulations once Tranche 2 of Australia’s Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) reforms is fully implemented. Tranche 1 of the framework, which focuses on traditional financial institutions like banks, credit unions, and money transfer services, was implemented in 2006.
“Financial crime compliance is at a pivotal moment in ANZ, where institutions must balance increasing regulatory demands with the need to deliver seamless customer experiences,” Concentrix GVP of Growth for ANZ Dhiraj Kumar said. “Our collaboration with Napier AI enhances our broader ecosystem of capabilities, strengthening our ability to deliver intelligent, tech-powered solutions that help clients stay ahead of financial crime while driving operational efficiency and innovation.”
A global technology company, Concentrix Corporation helps more than 2,000 clients solve business challenges via a combination of unique data and insights, deep industry expertise, and advanced technology solutions. An intelligent transformation partner and member of the Fortune 500, Concentrix serves companies in verticals ranging from banking and financial services to healthcare, e-commerce, energy, transportation, and more. The firm recently unveiled its immersive experience center, iX360: a hands-on environment that gives clients the opportunity to see technology in action and understand how it supports customer and operational needs.
Napier AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2018. At the conference, the company demonstrated its customer screening and transaction monitoring enhancement software, which boosts the performance of legacy AML and client screening solutions. The company’s flagship solution, the Napier AI Continuum platform, integrates multiple compliance solutions into a single dashboard and provides cloud-native, API-first architecture to ensure low-latency performance without disruption during transaction spikes. Founded in 2015, Napier AI today is trusted by more than 100 institutions around the world, with clients including Banco do Brasil, NVIDIA, and State Street. Greg Watson is CEO.
The conversation continues on the Finovate Podcast with Finovate VP and Director of Fintech Strategy, Informa Festivals, Greg Palmer!
Ahead of the release of the Finovate Podcast Best of Show interview series from FinovateSpring, catch up with episodes from earlier in the year that you might have missed.
From AI in banking and consumer finance to digital payments and the challenges facing small businesses, Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast cover the top issues in fintech today, as well as underdiscussed topics like financial literacy and the fate of cannabis banking.
Check out the latest from Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast below.
Finovate Podcast host Greg Palmer talks with Melissa Solis, CEO of Inbenta, on the evolving role of artificial intelligence in the banking and financial services industry.
Solis introduces her four-stage approach to successful AI implementation and management for banks looking to build on their existing systems. Solis also discusses the customer-facing side of AI, sharing her thoughts on best practices for virtual assistants, live agent support, and enterprise search tools.
Stacy Litke, VP of Banking Services at Green Check, and Megan Bennett, Manager of Marijuana Related Business at Wright-Patt Credit Union, talk with podcast host Greg Palmer about the challenges and opportunities involved in providing banking and financial services to businesses in the cannabis industry.
Green Check is a Florida-based provider of software solutions for financial and business services in this industry. Wright-Patt Credit Union is Ohio’s largest, member-owned credit union, and one of the 50 largest credit unions in the US.
How are financial services companies leveraging enabling technologies like AI to empower consumers? Podcast host Greg Palmer interviews Debbie Hsu, EVP of Product at Experian, to talk about solutions such as Experian’s virtual assistant, EVA.
A consumer-based AI-powered solution that simplifies complex financial questions and provides actionable guidance, EVA is an example of the value that finance-specific AI tools—built on trusted data and domain expertise—provide compared to generic AI solutions that can generate misleading or incomplete advice.
Podcast host Greg Palmer talks with Luz Urrutia, CEO of the Accion Opportunity Fund (AOF), about the current state of small businesses in the US and the challenges they face when it comes to securing access to capital.
Accion Opportunity Fund is a nationwide provider of affordable loans, educational resources, coaching, and networking for underserved small businesses. Headquartered in San Jose, California, AOF has served more than 4.5 million clients across lending and learning, and invested more than $1 billion in small businesses since inception in 1993.
Robert Bueninck, CEO of Unzer, talks with podcast host Greg Palmer about the challenges facing small and medium-sized businesses in the digital payments industry.
Unzer is a German fintech, headquartered in Berlin, that offers a unified commerce suite for businesses that enables them to integrate online, in-store, and mobile paymentsƒ into a single ecosystem. In their conversation, Bueninck and Palmer discuss the unique characteristics of the German market, including the fact that cash still dominates many retail transactions.
The first month of summer is upon us! Whether your plans over the next several weeks include time away in exotic locations or sticking to the grindstone, Finovate’s Fintech Rundown is here with the fintech news you need to know. Be sure to check back all week long for the latest updates!
Lending
FinastralaunchesData Insights 2.0, an analytics solution that helps lenders transform complex data into actionable insights.
Baker Hilllaunches one-click loan participation exchange with Participate to help financial institutions scale commercial lending.
Experianbrings personal loan shopping to ChatGPT with new AI-powered experience.
Cross Riverextends $250 million forward-flow commitment for Figure’s crypto-backed loans.
Liliembeds business credit solutions to help small businesses access capital faster.
Embedded finance
Embedded payments and financing solutions provider Adyenteams up with venue management platform ROLLER.
Germany embedded finance fintech Rivertysecures regulatory approval for a Luxembourg banking license and plans to initiate operations in July 2026.
Jack Henrypartners with Woodforest National, a $9 billion, multi-state bank based in The Woodlands, Texas.
Brazil’s Nubankintroduces new offering for customers between 16 and 18 years old called NuCel that combines 5G mobile connectivity with a savings feature.
Payments
European Pay by Bank network TrueLayeracquires Dutch consumer payments company In3.
AI is transforming banking and financial services. From simple chatbots to sophisticated AI deployments that are acting with increased independence on behalf of customers, AI-based solutions are driving some of the biggest innovations in our industry—both in terms of customer-facing tools as well as back-office operations.
In this conversation with Merlin Bise, Chief Technology Officer with Inbenta, we discuss the growing role that AI is playing in financial services, what challenges financial institutions face when implementing AI, how modern AI integrates with legacy technology and, interestingly, why smaller and mid-tier financial institutions might have an advantage over their larger rivals when it comes to quickly getting up to speed with AI-powered solutions.
There was an initial wave a couple of years ago, in which companies didn’t want to get left behind. So everything was being sold based on fear. There are two ways to sell things: fear and emotion. And I think that was what was driving it. Today, they’ve taken a step back and said, “Why should we be building AI that’s already solved? We should be building AI that impacts our core offering. Let’s let other companies that know how to do chat and search and voice bots and these things really well. Let’s see if we can trust them and they’re willing to build a relationship with us. Let’s let them do that. Let’s focus on our core.”
Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Allen, Texas, Inbenta enables companies to leverage agentic AI to enhance the customer experience. The company’s platform automates user interactions with accurate, intent-driven responses while simultaneously ensuring both safety and regulatory compliance. With more than 1,000 customers around the world, Inbenta’s agentic AI-enabled suite of Chat, Search, Knowledge, Assist, and Learn solutions features an accuracy rate of 95% and supports more than 100 languages worldwide.
Chief Technology Officer with Inbenta, Merlin Bise delivered a special address at FinovateSpring 2026: AI That Makes It to Production: Deploying Trusted CX in Days, Not Months. In his presentation, Bise discussed some of the common strategic mistakes financial services companies make when it comes to deploying AI. He provided a mental model to help leaders evaluate the build vs. buy decision when it comes to AI technology and explained the different challenges and opportunities faced by small financial institutions compared to larger financial institutions when it comes to deploying and scaling AI.
Embedded finance platform AAZZUR has teamed up with Corpay Cross-Border, a division of Corpay Inc.
The partnership will combine AAZZUR’s infrastructure with Corpay Cross-Border’s international network, allowing businesses to integrate and manage payments, expenses, and cross-border transactions more efficiently.
London-based AAZZUR made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateEurope 2026. Philipp Buschmann is CEO.
Embedded finance orchestration platform AAZZUR has inked a partnership with Corpay Inc.’s cross-border business. The partnership will combine AAZZUR’s infrastructure with Corpay Cross-Border’s global network to enable businesses to integrate trusted payment, expense, and cross-border solutions to better manage risk and scale internationally.
“We’re excited to be partnering with Corpay to help bring powerful financial tools closer to the businesses that need them most,” AAZZUR CEO Philipp Buschmann said. “Corpay has built strong solutions around payments, expenses, and cross-border transactions, and our role at AAZZUR is to make those capabilities simple and intuitive for customers to access and use in their day-to-day operations. This partnership removes friction, helping businesses launch and scale financial services faster, while giving their customers a smoother and more connected experience.”
AAZZUR’s technology replaces complex multi-provider builds with an option that requires no platform investment and offers faster time-to-market. The company’s platform serves as an orchestration layer between financial services providers and customer-facing applications, enabling businesses to integrate and manage multiple payment and FX provider relationships from a single access point. This partnership with Corpay now brings cross-border payments to businesses using AAZZUR’s technology.
“By combining Corpay Cross-Border’s global payments expertise with AAZZUR’s embedded finance infrastructure, we’re helping customers simplify international transactions and support their growth ambitions with greater confidence and efficiency,” Corpay Cross-Border Solutions Chief Marketing Officer Brad Loder said.
Corpay Cross-Border is a division of Corpay, which offers corporate payment and expense management solutions. With more than 800,000 customers, Corpay helps businesses streamline accounts payable and manage international transactions while reducing costs and defending against fraud. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, and founded in 2000 as FLEETCOR Technologies, the company rebranded to Corpay in March 2024 in a move designed to reflect the firm’s evolution from a regional fuel card company to a global payments firm.
Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Berlin, Germany, AAZZUR made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateEurope 2026 in London. At the conference, the company demonstrated its Smart Finance Blocks, a suite of modular, plug-and-play fintech components that allow businesses to build or embed financial services into customer journeys. AAZZUR’s Smart Finance Blocks transform complex API services into ready-to-use, embedded finance solutions, making embedded finance up to ten times cheaper and four times faster to launch.
Since making its Finovate debut in February, AAZZUR has announced partnerships with European electronic money institution Wallester to integrate the firm’s card issuing infrastructure and with fellow Finovate alum Doshi for its financial education, gamification, and behavioral insights engine.
Modern card platform Highnote unveiled its new Agentic Commerce capabilities this week.
Built using Visa Intelligent Commerce, Highnote’s Agentic Commerce will allow businesses to power AI-initiated payments that feature programmable controls, tokenized credentials, and dynamic authorization.
Headquartered in San Francisco, Highnote made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022.
Courtesy of a partnership with Visa, Highnote—a modern issuing, acquiring, credit, ledger, and money movement platform—has launched its new Agentic Commerce capabilities this week. Built using Visa Intelligent Commerce, the new offering will enable businesses to securely power AI-initiated payments with programmable controls, tokenized credentials, and dynamic authorization.
The new Agentic Commerce capabilities will allow companies to add payment capabilities to AI agents while enabling software to initiate and execute transactions with predefined rules, spend controls, and approval structures. In a statement announcing the launch, Highnote listed invoice and accounts payable automation, vendor payments, operational spend management, and AI-assisted procurement as some of the initial use cases for the new solution.
“AI is quickly moving from insight to action,” Highnote CEO John MacIlwaine said. “Businesses want AI to do more than recommend or analyze. They want it to initiate and execute real financial workflows. The challenge is making those transactions secure, controlled, and operational at scale. That’s exactly what Highnote is built to do.”
Agentic commerce enables software to participate directly in purchasing and payment decisions based on preset authorization rules. The new capabilities give firms a structured framework for enabling AI-driven transactions with real-time visibility and decisioning across the payment lifecycle. Highnote’s Agentic Commerce offering will also support emerging financial operations powered by AI, such as intelligent procurement, dynamic payment routing, supplier optimization, recurring operational spend, and industry-specific autonomous payment experiences.
“Agentic commerce is already changing how businesses operate,” said Visa VP and Head of Agentic CMS Ivy Lee. “Through Visa Intelligent Commerce, we’re enabling B2B workflows where agents can initiate and complete transactions at scale. Visa provides the underlying infrastructure that makes this possible—handling the complexity so businesses and developers can focus on building differentiated experiences, not payments.”
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Highnote made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022. At the conference, the company demonstrated how its modern card platform with a GraphQL-based API enables businesses to make card issuance an embedded capability. The demo also featured the developer experience and financial operations interface that provides control of the payment transaction lifecycle and access to transaction processing data.
Named to the Forbes Fintech 50 for a second consecutive year, Highnote last month unveiled expanded commercial card issuing capabilities for online travel agencies (OTAs), marketplaces, and travel platforms. The new offering enables these platforms to run on Highnote’s commercial card issuing platform, using virtual card programs that are purpose-built for the challenges of travel supplier payments. Highnote’s solution combines issuing, controls, ledger, and reconciliation into a single system in order to deliver faster reconciliation, bolster supplier relationships, and improve unit economics on every transaction.
Financial services company Zip announced a new partnership with international payments company InComm Payments.
The partnership will bring Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) functionality to the gift card category.
Founded in 1992, InComm made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2011 in New York. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Australia-based Zip was founded in 2013 and serves customers in New Zealand and the US, as well as Australia.
Digital financial services company Zip has teamed up with global paytech InComm Payments in a partnership that will bring Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) installment buying to the gift and prepaid card category. The integration will enable eligible consumers to buy popular gift card brands directly through the Zip app. Available gift cards include brands representing retailers, as well as entertainment, dining, and travel providers. Eligible users will be able to select their card of choice and the denomination, and then choose how to split the cost at checkout—completing the transaction without having to leave the Zip app.
“Our priority is making shopping for gift cards quick and simple, whether consumers need a gift for a special occasion or simply want to treat themselves,” InComm Payments SVP of Financial Services Adam Brault said. “Partnering with Zip to bring more flexible payment options is an effective way to further take the stress out of the gift card shopping process.”
The partnership arrives at a time when consumer interest in BNPL options is growing rapidly. Based on data from the US Federal Reserve, the number of consumers using BNPL over the past 12 months reached 15% in 2024, climbing from 14% in 2013, and 10% in 2021. Although headquartered in Australia, Zip has 4.6 million active customers in the US and 29,000 merchant partners who will be able to take advantage of this new payment flexibility when it comes to buying gift cards.
“Short-term installment payments have become a mainstream behavior, and our customers tell us they value this flexibility across all areas of their cashflow,” Zip Chief Marketing and Customer Officer Jinal Shah said. “Shoppers deserve more say over how they manage their money, and we’re committed to expanding flexible options to more consumers.”
Founded in 2013 by Larry Diamond and Peter Gray, Zip offers innovative and people-centered financial products to customers in New Zealand and the US, as well as in its native Australia. The company provides point-of-sale credit, cashflow, and digital payment services, connecting millions of consumers with its international network of tens of thousands of merchants. Zip has more than six million active customers and 85,000+ merchants using its technology, and processes 93 million transactions annually. Cynthia Scott is Group CEO and Managing Director.
Zip’s partnership announcement with InComm follows the company’s launch of its new mobile offering, ZMobile, in April. Created in partnership with TPG Telecom, ZMobile is a prepaid mobile plan that features 4G/5G network access reaching 98.5% of the Australian population, as well as global roaming and international calling capabilities. Zip currently serves 10% of Australian adults; ZMobile will be offered to the company’s existing customers in the weeks to come.
Founded in 1992, Atlanta, Georgia-based InComm made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2011. Today the company manages more than one billion cards a year facilitating $65 billion in annual transaction volume. InComm boasts more than 525,000 points of retail distribution and more than 2,400 employees across 35 countries and five continents. With solutions ranging from gift cards and reloadable debit cards to cash load technology and transaction processing, InComm serves companies in financial services, e-commerce and gifting, healthcare, and more. Brooks Smith is CEO.
With the wealth of conversation about AI at FinovateSpring just a few weeks ago, what are some of the key takeaways on how businesses are understanding and deploying the technology?
One of the more compelling presentations on this issue was the keynote address provided by Chris Nichols. Nichols is President of Institutional Banking at SouthState Bank where he supports innovation, AI, digital assets, loan pricing, asset-liability management, open banking, payments, and fintech investing. He is also producer of the Banker-to-Banker blog. Based in Winter Haven, Florida, SouthState Bank traces its roots back to First National Bank, founded in 1933 in South Carolina. Today, the institution has more than 370 branches across eight states and, last year, completed a major $2.49 billion acquisition of Texas-based Independent Bank Group. SouthState Bank reported total assets of $66 billion as of Q3 2025.
In his keynote, Why Agentic AI is Truly a New Frontier in Financial Services & How Agentic Commerce Will Reshape the Retail Landscape, Nichols suggested that the intersection of tokenization, a technology that comes to us from blockchain technology, and agentic AI, the leading iteration of AI technology today, will radically change payments and commerce and, as an impact, change the way we order our professional and personal lives. These developments also introduce a major challenge and opportunity for banks. Here are some takeaways from his address.
Tokenization, Micropayments, and Smart Money
Nichols pointed out that tokenization and blockchain-based payments are poised to significantly reduce friction and costs for most transactions. This is huge for cross-border payments especially, but the technology would help enable 24/7 settlement, off-hour transactions, smart contracts, programmable money, and other capabilities.
It is easy to point to the cost of transactions like wire transfers and paper checks. But even instant payments as currently configured are significantly more costly than what is promised in a world of tokenized payments. In addition to payments that, in Nichols’ words, could cost less than a penny, the infrastructure that supports tokenized payments would also enable true micropayments and transactions of less than a cent. Such payments may have had little utility a few years ago, but the rise of the subscription economy and the gig workforce have created demand for a new kind of payment flexibility.
“As we think this through, we see commerce evolving dramatically,” Nichols said from the FinovateSpring stage. “If you are a content provider or another type of digital agent and you need 1/30,000th of a cent, it changes the face of commerce.”
Not only will tokenization make transactions faster and less expensive, transactions will also become intelligent. The ability to program money, to create smart contracts that are executable only when certain conditions are present, could revolutionize lending in finance, claims processing in insurance, and fractional ownership of assets in real estate—to name a few likely use cases.
Agentic Commerce’s Autonomous Participants
Interestingly, Nichols pointed out that what many of these smart contracts and programmable money technologies are likely to do is send commands not to human actors but to AI agents who will carry out the requisite tasks. Nichols used the example of planning and traveling to FinovateSpring in San Diego as work that will soon be completed almost 100% by AI agents acting on an individual’s behalf—from travel planning and hotel booking to registration fees and hotel bill.
What was especially noteworthy about Nichols’ observation was the role of discovery that these autonomous actors will play in a world in which they—the AI agents—are doing the research, inquiry, and even negotiation with various merchants, vendors, and other agents. “Yes, although humans will initially remain in control, the major debate is how much autonomy people are willing to give their agents,” Nichols said in response to an audience question. “The next evolution will likely involve validating agents independently, rather than always validating them via a human intermediary. Eventually, agents may even create other agents.”
AI Orchestration as an Opportunity for Banks
Where does this leave banks?
One major role for banks in this emerging environment is that of an orchestration platform. In this view, banks evolve into 21st century financial services facilitators, moving beyond deposits and money movement to serve as the infrastructure layer for a wide variety of financial workflows for multiple participants. The tasks of the bank would be to coordinate, automate, and secure the actions of everyone and everything from individual consumers and businesses to merchants and suppliers, and from payment rails and compliance systems to lenders and third-party platform partners—and their AI agents.
“For example, consider a property management company,” Nichols suggested. “An agent could upload lease agreements, read and structure them into smart contracts, enable renter payments, collect security deposits, and authorize recurring monthly payments. Renters could pay using credit cards, ACH, cash deposits at a branch, or deposit tokens.” Nichols explained how these funds could then be routed automatically to the property management company, which would take its share before forwarding the balance to the property owner. He pointed out that this process reduces credit risk for banks and removes the burden and potential error of the many intermediate manual processes. Nichols also noted that this was an opportunity for banks—and not just the largest institutions, either. “Agentic capabilities are making it easier than ever for smaller institutions to adapt,” he said.
“We believe banks will play a more central role in this future, often through partnerships with fintechs,” Nichols concluded. “Banks can help commercial customers move from analog sales processes to more agent-driven systems … Banks can help businesses become discoverable, move customers through the sales funnel, and handle both onboarding and follow-up processes.”
In last week’s Finovate Weekly newsletter, I shared some thoughts on what fintechs might hope for from President Trump’s summit meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping. While the meeting does not appear to have delivered anything of substance from a fintech or financial services perspective, Trump did sign an Executive Order (EO) shortly after returning from Beijing that actually has plenty for fintechs and financial services companies to think about—if not cheer for.
Let’s take a look at five top takeaways from the EO, titled Integrating Financial Technology Innovation into Regulatory Frameworks.
From containment to enablement
The executive order directs Federal financial regulators to review existing policies to “facilitate innovation and greater competition in the provision of financial services.” Even more directly, the order calls upon regulators to “take steps to encourage innovation by, and growth of, fintech firms and federally regulated institutions of all sizes.”
The “fintechs and friends” framing of the executive order is in and of itself telling. After years of trying to strike a balance between the needs of incumbent banks and financial services providers and insurgent fintech innovators, the EO suggests a potential shift from “containment” of fintech innovation to outright enablement.
More access to Fed payment rails
Operationally speaking, some of the biggest news in the EO might be the way it directs the Federal Reserve to review its approach to granting payment accounts and services. This includes potentially expanding access to Fed payment rails for fintechs and nonbanks. Practically speaking, this could incentivize easier access to Fed payment infrastructure, Fedwire, and settlement services typically reserved for bank intermediaries.
The EO criticizes “regulations, guidance, and policies” that it referred to as “relics of a time when financial services where predominantly provided in brick-and-mortar-centric settings.” While this potentially refers to a fairly broad range of existing directives, the tone clearly indicates a willingness to overhaul or at least revisit rules that fail to reflect our increasingly mobile, digital, and even agentic contemporary financial landscape.
Building better bank-fintech partnerships
The EO is also critical of “rules governing financial institution’s third-party risk management” which it claims unfairly favors incumbents “at the expense of innovators.” As such, the order directs regulators to examine supervisory practices, application processes, and guidance that may “unduly impede fintech firms from entering into partnerships with federally regulated institutions.”
This could positively impact opportunities for Banking-as-a-Service companies as well as sponsor bank relationships, charter applications, and more, potentially reducing some of the challenges and complexity brought on by regulatory uncertainty with regard to partnerships between banks and fintechs.
Crypto and stablecoins move toward the mainstream
With the passage of the GENIUS Act, it is clear that the administration is seeking to support, if not encourage, innovation in the digital asset space. This week’s executive order underscores that support, noting that President Trump signed an Executive Order in his first week in office that was designed to “secure” the United States’ position as the global leader in the “digital asset economy,” as well as to establish additional regulatory clarity and guidance for digital assets. Other EOs are also referenced, including the one in March 2025 that established the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and US Digital Asset Stockpile.
Specifically, this week’s executive order directs the Federal government to “update its outdated regulations to allow integration of digital assets and other novel financial technology into traditional financial services and payment systems.” Clearly and increasingly, the Trump administration sees digital assets, blockchain technology, and stablecoins as key components of US financial system infrastructure rather than as niche products, isolated technologies, or speculative instruments.
A win for regulated fintechs?
From the wave of fintechs seeking bank charters to the increased regulatory clarity provided by recent executive orders, fintechs could be on the precipice of a “best of both worlds” scenario: a financial services industry that feels deregulated and more opportunity-rich due to what mighr actually be greater regulation and guidance. While there remains much to be seen in terms of how fintechs and nonbanks take advantage of this changing regulatory environment—from pursuing bank charters to more aggressively pursuing embedded and open finance technologies—it does seem clear that the US is positioning itself to be more competitive in a shifting, global fintech and financial services landscape
Embedded payments infrastructure company NMI has acquired account-to-account (A2A) payment infrastructure innovator Dwolla.
The acquisition creates a combined entity that will process nearly $700 billion in annual transaction volume and will fortify NMI’s status as a major embedded money movement infrastructure firm.
Dwolla has been a Finovate alum since 2011, winning Best of Show honors in its appearances at FinovateSpring 2011 and FinovateSpring 2012.
Embedded payments infrastructure company NMI has acquired account-to-account (A2A) payment infrastructure provider Dwolla. The acquisition combines NMI’s payment acceptance, channel distribution, onboarding, and merchant lifecycle management with Dwolla’s capabilities in account-to-account infrastructure, real-time payments, open banking, and many-to-many funds flow. NMI will benefit from additional payment acceptance, orchestration, and money movement capabilities, enabling its ISO, ISV, and SaaS platform clients to accept, manage, and move money across a greater number of rails and use cases via a single infrastructure provider.
“This acquisition is a continuation of our strategy to build the most robust, white-label, embedded payments platform for our channel and enterprise partners,” NMI CEO Steve Pinado said. “Dwolla gives us modern, API-first, A2A infrastructure that strengthens our ability to help businesses accept, manage, and move money across more uses cases and more rails.” Pinado also noted that the acquisition will enable NMI to be a player in the emerging generation of money movement technologies and solutions including agentic payments and stablecoin-enabled settlement.
The acquisition creates a combined entity that will processes nearly $700 billion in annual transaction volume and fortify NMI’s status as a major embedded money movement infrastructure firm. NMI currently supports more than 6,000 technology partners with its modular, white-label platform, enabling them to provide seamless, scalable payment experiences across online, in-app, brick-and-mortar, mobile, and unattended channels. Courtesy of the Dwolla acquisition, NMI’s partners will be able to build on NMI’s capabilities to offer bank and real-time payments, and other sophisticated payment flows such as marketplace seller payouts, loan disbursements, payroll, supplier payments, and more. This will enable these companies to serve firms in industries ranging from insurance and lending to property management and healthcare.
In a statement, Dwolla CEO Dave Glaser noted how Dwolla has helped companies operate bank payments at scale thanks to an API-first infrastructure layer that unifies ACH and real-time rails while standardizing status, exception handling, and reporting. He also outlined how he thinks the combination of Dwolla and NMI will improve the payments process for businesses. “By joining NMI, we can bring those capabilities to a broader ecosystem of partners, while giving Dwolla customers access to NMI’s omnichannel payment acceptance capabilities through a single, flexible, white-label platform. Together, we can help software companies, payment professionals, and fintech innovators deliver more ways to pay and move money with less complexity.”
Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa, Dwolla has been a Finovate alum since winning Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2011. A pioneer in peer-to-peer (P2P) and account-to-account (A2A) payments, Dwolla was among the first fintechs to offer lower-cost money transfers, direct ACH connectivity, and a developer-friendly, API-first strategy that enabled companies to embed payment capabilities into their platforms. Ahead of its time then, Dwolla has since benefitted from a surge in interest in account-to-account payments and embedded finance, facilitating more than 126 million transactions a year with an annual transaction value of more than $82 billion.
Schaumburg, Illinois-based NMI was founded in 2000. The company offers a modular payment acceptance platform and gateway that enables SaaS platforms, ISOs, banks, and other financial institutions to leverage payments to boost growth, drive loyalty, and develop new revenue streams. NMI’s technology serves more than 1.2 million active merchants, more than 235,000 connected devices, and features 150+ processor connections to give its partners flexibility to design the payment experiences that best suit their unique needs and business models. Dwolla is NMI’s most recent acquisition, having acquired Sphere Commercial Division in 2023 and Finovate alum Agreement Express in 2022.
Eisen, a fintech that specializes in end-to-end escheatment and unclaimed property compliance automation, has secured $18.5 million in funding. The capital comes in the form of a $10 million Series A led by MissionOG and a previously unannounced $8.5 seed round led by Index Ventures. Cowboy Ventures, First Round Capital, Homebrew, and Restive Ventures also participated in the investment.
Eisen innovates in an often-overlooked area of financial services: escheatment and the recovery of unclaimed property. State law requires that abandoned funds eventually be turned over to the government in a legal process called escheatment. While each state has its own rules regarding dormancy periods, notice requirements, and remittance deadlines, the concept of escheatment is designed to help protect consumers when financial institutions lose track of them. Nevertheless, the process of retrieving those assets can be both complex and cumbersome. As such, it is little surprise that more than 30 million Americans have unclaimed property in state custody, with states holding a combined $70 billion in consumer assets: from retirement accounts and life insurance proceeds to forgotten savings accounts and emergency funds. Out of all of this, only $4.5 billion was returned to owners in 2024.
In response, Eisen’s technology streamlines the compliance lifecycle from dormancy tracking and due diligence through to state reporting, remittance, and audit defense. The company offers a Tax Compliance Suite to support 1099 filing, TIN matching, and B-notice handling, as well as disbursement services. This reflects the firm’s evolution beyond improving the escheatment process and a recognition that many of the same issues that plague escheatment also impact other compliance operations.
“We started with escheatment because the gap there is the widest, but the same operational pattern shows up across the compliance stack,” Eisen Co-founder and CEO Allen Osgood wrote in a blog post announcing the investment. “Eisen’s platform now covers escheatment, disbursement, and 1099 reporting. Operational teams use Eisen to replace manual work and prevent dormant-account risk. Executives use it to reduce regulatory exposure, retain customer assets, and protect customer trust.”
Last year, Eisen prevented more than 31% of at-risk assets from being lost to state custody. The company monitors nearly $16 billion in balances across tens of millions of accounts at firms including Adyen, Binance.US, BitGo, and PeoplesBank. Eisen’s platform integrates state-by-state requirements directly into account operations, enabling financial institutions to identify dormancy risk earlier, reduce manual compliance work, and keep more customer assets in customer accounts.
“Every dollar in state custody represents a real person who never expected their money to disappear,” Osgood added. “The rules governing dormant assets weren’t built for crypto wallets, fintech platforms, or digital-first banking. Most institutions are sitting on 5x to 10x more liability than they realize. Eisen prevents that loss before it happens.”
Founded in 2021, Eisen made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2024 and returned to the Finovate stage earlier this year at FinovateSpring 2026 in San Diego. At the conference, the company demonstrated its Eisen Dashboard, a real-time compliance command center that features account-level detail views with state-specific rules, eligibility and due diligence tracking by reporting year, a disbursement hub with daily reconciliation and fraud protection, and an outreach hub to manage owner communications. Eisen is headquartered in New York.
This month marks the launch of a new series of interviews with companies that recently made their debuts on the Finovate stage. I had a great opportunity earlier this month to catch up with a number of companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Diego, and am looking forward to introducing our blog readers to these innovative fintechs!
First up, we checked in with Joe Steuter, Partner and Chief of Client Strategy with Intention.ly. Founded in 2021 and headquartered in King of Prussia, Intention.ly is a growth consultancy and marketing agency for financial services companies. At FinovateSpring this year, Intention.y demoed its Advisor Brand Builder platform that enables breakaway advisors, fast-evolving firms, and acquiring enterprises to build professional, high-impact grand identities and brand stories.
What problem does Intention.ly solve and who does it solve it for?
Joe Steuter: Intention.ly helps financial services firms grow by solving one of the industry’s most persistent challenges: brand differentiation. Beyond that, the challenge of differentiation with speed to market and thoughtful measurement to trace ROI to marketing efforts. Advisors, RIAs, enterprises, fintechs, bank managers, insurance reps, and asset managers are all competing in a market that can feel like a sea of sameness, where firms often sound alike, look alike, and struggle to clearly articulate why they are different.
That problem becomes especially acute for financial advisors and advisor enterprises. Building a strong brand has traditionally required a long, labor-intensive process with an outside partner that may not deeply understand the financial services industry. The alternative is often a fast, templated website build or brand message that saves time but leaves firms looking, sounding, and positioning themselves like everyone else.
Advisor Brand Builder (ABB) was created by Intention.ly to eliminate that tradeoff. It gives advisors and enterprises a faster, smarter way to build authentic, differentiated brands grounded in who they are, who they serve, and why they matter.
More broadly, Intention.ly solves growth challenges for financial services companies by combining strategy, brand, marketing, technology, content, and execution. We help firms move from ambiguity to clarity, from disconnected marketing efforts to cohesive growth systems, and from generic positioning to a brand presence that can actually support business development.
How does Intention.ly solve this problem better than other companies?
Steuter: Intention.ly solves this problem differently because we combine deep financial services expertise with technology, creative strategy, and execution. We are not a generalist agency learning the industry from the outside. Our team has spent decades building brands, shaping narratives, and helping financial services firms differentiate in a highly complex, highly regulated, and often highly commoditized market.
Advisor Brand Builder, which was the experience shown to the crowd at FinovateSpring 2026, is a strong example of how we approach innovation. The traditional branding process can take months or even years, especially when multiple stakeholders, decision-makers, and rounds of discovery are involved. ABB condenses that process into a guided, AI-backed experience that can build a brand foundation in weeks.
But speed is only part of the story. ABB is not just an automated template. It combines guided discovery, industry-specific intelligence, AI-assisted brand development, and human expertise from strategists, writers, designers, and marketers. The result is faster, but still substantive.
The platform captures the advisor’s authentic story, creates messaging and visual identity, builds a cohesive brand guide, generates assets, and extends that foundation into digital presence and website direction.
That combination of executional speed with truly differentiated campaigns and messaging is where our team stands out. We help firms move faster without sacrificing authenticity, quality, or differentiation. And in an industry that is evolving at a faster pace than ever before, this couldn’t be more crucial to a firm’s growth.
Who are Intention.ly’s primary customers? How do you reach them?
Steuter: Intention.ly’s primary customers are growth-minded financial services firms. That includes independent RIAs, breakaway advisors, hybrid firms, broker-dealers, custodians, asset managers, fintechs, banks, large insurance companies, and innovative enterprises that support advisor communities.
With Advisor Brand Builder specifically, we are solving for both individual advisor firms and the enterprises that serve them. For an advisor or breakaway team, ABB provides a faster path to a credible, differentiated brand, complete with messaging, visual identity, brand assets, and website direction. For larger enterprises, ABB creates a scalable way to support many advisors without forcing every firm through a slow, custom, one-off branding process.
We reach our customers through a combination of relationships, industry presence, referrals, thought leadership, partnerships, events, and direct engagement with firms that are actively trying to grow. Because Intention.ly is deeply embedded in the financial industry, many of our conversations begin with trust and shared context.
The firms that come to us are usually facing a transition point: launching, rebranding, going independent, entering a new market, scaling advisor support, or trying to create a more modern growth engine. Our value is helping them move from intention to execution with clarity, speed, and confidence.
Can you tell us about a favorite implementation of your technology, or a particularly valuable partnership experience?
Steuter: One recent example is Brick by Brick Wealth Management, a firm moving from a large wirehouse environment into the independent space. That kind of transition requires much more than a new name or logo. The team needed to create a complete brand identity, clarify its value proposition, reframe the value they brought to clients, develop a differentiated story, and launch a digital presence that could support the next stage of the business.
Through Advisor Brand Builder, we helped bring that work together in roughly six weeks. The process started with the concept for the firm’s name and evolved into a full brand story, visual identity, messaging system, brand assets, and website presence.
What made the implementation special was the balance between speed and authenticity. Brick by Brick needed to move quickly, but they also needed a brand that felt real, personal, and credible. ABB allowed us to capture the firm’s underlying story and translate it into something polished, differentiated, and usable.
That is exactly the kind of moment Advisor Brand Builder was built for. We’ve taken more than 25 firms of every size through this system, and it often works most effectively when advisors need to make a major business move, but they cannot afford to spend months stuck in an identity crisis. They need a brand that gives them clarity, confidence, and momentum.
What in your background gave you the confidence to respond to this challenge?
Steuter: My confidence comes from the team I surround myself with and the more than two decades I’ve spent helping financial services firms and startups tell their story. Collectively, as an organization, our confidence comes from having spent decades inside the financial services industry, working directly on the same challenges our clients face. Our CEO, Kelly Waltrich, built the firm to respond to the challenge she saw as most prevalent in financial services: a lack of purpose-led strategy and growth driven by disciplined execution and measurable goals. Every member of our team carries that same extensive industry experience where they’re drawing on years of having built brands, shaped messaging, led marketing strategies, supported advisor growth, launched campaigns, guided firms through transitions, and helped financial services companies tell more compelling stories.
Advisor Brand Builder is just one product of that experience. We have seen firsthand how difficult it can be for advisors to differentiate themselves. Many firms have a powerful story, but they struggle to articulate it. Others know they need a more modern brand, but the traditional process feels too slow, too expensive, or too disconnected from the realities of their business.
Over time, we saw the same pattern again and again: advisors needed both strategic depth and speed. They needed industry expertise, not generic branding exercises. They needed a process that could uncover what made them different and turn it into messaging, design, assets, and a digital presence.
We were not starting from theory. We were translating years of real financial services brand-building experience into a more scalable, technology-enabled process.
Left to right: Joe Steuter, Partner, Chief of Client Strategy, Intention.ly, and Jamie Recio, Head of Social Media, Intention.ly
You recently opened new offices in Omaha, Nebraska. How does the opening of a Midwest hub drive Intention.ly’s mission?
Steuter: Opening a Midwest hub in Omaha is an strategic step in Intention.ly’s growth and mission. It was also a very personal endeavor for me, as I live in Omaha and understand just how much of a financial hub the city is to this industry. Omaha has a deep connection to financial services, wealth management, fintech, and advisor platforms, and it gives us a strong presence in a market with exceptional industry talent.
Our mission is to help financial services firms grow with more clarity, intention, and impact. To do that well, we need to stay close to the firms, advisors, platforms, and people shaping the future of the industry. Omaha gives us another center of gravity for that work, located in the middle of everywhere.
It also reflects a belief I’ve always held: innovation in financial services is not limited to the coasts. Some of the most important companies, platforms, and advisor communities in our space have been built right here. Having a hub that is centrally located allows us to deepen relationships, expand our team, and support clients from a place that understands the advisor ecosystem.
You demoed at FinovateSpring in May of this year. How was the experience?
Steuter: FinovateSpring was a great experience because it gave us the opportunity to show Advisor Brand Builder in action to an entirely new corner of the industry. The conference brought together firms in accounting, banking, credit unions, private capital, insurance tech, and other sectors outside our normal realm of exposure (wealth management). Branding can feel abstract when described conceptually, but the demo allowed us to walk the audience through the actual experience: guided discovery, AI-assisted brand development, messaging, visual identity, brand assets, and website direction.
The format was especially valuable because ABB is designed to solve a very specific tension in the market. We were able to demonstrate that there is a better path—one that provides speed without losing substance.
The demo also helped us tell the broader Intention.ly story. We are a branding and marketing growth engine design firm with decades of financial services experience, and ABB represents how we are turning that expertise into scalable technology.
The conversations after the demo were energizing. The feedback reinforced what we already believed: advisor differentiation is a real problem, enterprises need scalable ways to support it, and the market is ready for solutions that combine AI with human expertise.
What are your goals for Intention.ly?
Steuter: Our goal is to become the leading marketing and growth partner for the industry’s top 100 companies. We want to help ambitious firms build stronger brands, clearer strategies, better marketing systems, and more effective paths to sustainable growth.
For Advisor Brand Builder, our goal is to change the equation around advisor brand development. We believe advisors should not have to choose between a long, expensive branding engagement and a generic template that makes them look and sound like everyone else. ABB gives them another option: a guided, AI-backed, human-refined process that creates a differentiated brand foundation in weeks.
At the enterprise level, our goal is to make differentiated branding scalable—quite a contradiction traditionally. Large wealth management organizations need ways to support many advisors efficiently, but without stripping away individuality. ABB gives enterprises a framework for helping advisors show up with more clarity, consistency, and authenticity.
More broadly, Intention.ly is focused on helping financial services firms spend less time stuck in identity, messaging, and execution challenges, and more time earning new business. Stronger brands create more confidence. More confidence creates better growth conversations. And better growth conversations create stronger firms and better-served clients.
