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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
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.
Which presidential candidate will be better for fintech over the next four years?
Of all the issues roiling the presidential campaign in 2024, it is safe to say that the future of fintech is not among the top two or three. Nevertheless, it is also safe to say that the fintech industry under a Trump administration will face different challenges and opportunities than it would under a Harris administration.
Let’s first look at how the policies of Republican candidate Donald Trump might impact fintech and financial services more broadly.
“The Crypto President”
Whether or not “they” are calling Donald Trump “The Crypto President,” the man who once called Bitcoin “a scam” has since had a change of heart when it comes to cryptocurrencies.
The now-famous quote — “You know, they call me the crypto President …” — comes from an ad the former president ran in August marketing his fourth series of non-fungible token (NFT) digital trading cards. Earlier this year, Trump suggested creating a “strategic national bitcoin stockpile” with the goal of ensuring that America is the “crypto capital of the planet.”
While not prominently noted on the Trump campaign’s website, the Republican party platform with regards to digital assets includes a reference to the opposing party’s “unlawful and unAmerican Crypto crackdown” on the one hand and opposition to “the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency” on the other. The party, whose positions are likely identical to those of the former commander-in-chief, also pledges to defend the right of American citizens to mine Bitcoin and to self-custody of their digital assets.
Republican re-deregulation
The idea of a Republican president embracing deregulation in general has been baked into voter perceptions of the party since the 1980s, at least. And as Jamie Dimon, Chair and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, rails against regulators (“if you’re in a knife fight you better damn well bring a knife,” he recently told attendees at the American Bankers Association Convention), the question is whether the Trump administration is likely to supply Mr. Dimon with the silverware he seeks.
Looking again to the RNC platform, the most specific reference to deregulation is a pledge to “reinstate President Trump’s Deregulation Policies” as part of the former president’s plan to “Cut Costly and Burdensome Regulations.” If past is prologue, then Trump’s signing of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act in 2018 could provide some clues. Here, we find initiatives to expand access to mortgage credit, incentivize capital formation, and provide additional protections for student borrowers.
Do tax cuts + tariffs = inflation?
Aside from tax cuts, the most noteworthy element of Trump’s economic plan is his embrace of tariffs on goods manufactured outside of the United States. In fact, the former president has gone so far as to suggest that the income tax be eliminated in favor of his new, tariff-based approach to funding government operations.
And while this is extremely unlikely, the combination of Trump’s tax cut proposals and his enthusiastic attitude toward tariffs could ironically pave the way for an economy that is more vulnerable to inflation. This could lead, ultimately, to higher interest rates and tighter monetary policy compared to where the American economy is at the end of 2024.
You don’t have to be a long-time, fintech veteran to remember the devastating impact that higher borrowing costs can have on the startup community — or its financiers. And it is hard not to fear that a “double-dip” resumption of these conditions could leave startups and their backers in an even more constrained and risk-averse position than they have been this year.
Now let’s look at how the policies of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and how they might impact the fintech industry.
From big banks to junk fees
A story in today’s Washington Post highlights Vice President Kamala Harris’s tenure as California attorney general and her role in strengthening a “multibillion dollar mortgage settlement” with major banks in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis. Not only is this a significant component of Harris’s resume, it is also a tale she eagerly tells while on the campaign trail.
It is worth noting that, for all the fighting words, most observers expect the Vice President to be more business-friendly than the notoriously pro-labor current President. Nevertheless, it is easy to see a Democratic administration looking to fortify and even extend a range of consumer protections in financial services.
That said, the emphasis from the campaign is less about bashing the big banks and more about addressing the smaller annoyances of everyday consumer life. Under the banner of ‘Lower costs by protecting consumers from fees and fraud,’ for example, the Harris campaign pledges to ban junk fees across the board and make it easier to cancel unwanted subscriptions.
Economies of opportunity
The Harris campaign has touted its concept of an “Opportunity Economy,” in which the federal government plays an active role in helping individuals, families, small businesses, and communities maximize their ability to thrive in a capitalist economy. This includes launching a small business expansion fund that leverages low- or zero-interest loans to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses and create jobs. This “Opportunity Economy” also mandates that the federal government commit to allocating a third of its contracts to small businesses, reducing the number of excessive occupational licensing requirements, and helping small businesses cut bureaucratic red tape and file taxes more easily.”
The Vice President’s plan does target startups specifically, setting a goal of 25 million new business applications over the next four years, and a tenfold expansion of the startup expense deduction from $5,000 to $50,000. Additionally, Harris’s campaign calls for an “America Forward” tax credit designed to incentivize investment and job creation in “key strategic industries” as well as “scaling up and making permanent” the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource. The latter is a shared research infrastructure that provides startups and researchers with access to computing power, data, and analytics tools to support innovation in AI.
Housing and the “sandwich generation”
Two areas of the Vice President’s agenda — the pledge to build more housing and the goal of making both day care and elder care easier and more affordable for caregivers — could have interesting impacts on financial services and fintech. The former, which includes a plan to build three million additional homes and provide $25,000 in down payment assistance, could send a jolt through the financial services industry that would impact bankers, lenders, and mortgagetechs alike. The campaign is also championing tax credits to encourage homebuilders to build affordable homes and a Neighborhood Homes Tax Credit, which supports “investment in homes that would otherwise be too costly or difficult to develop or rehabilitate.”
The latter proposal — to ease the financial burden of Americans who are caring for both young children and elder parents — does not make a prominent appearance in the Harris campaign’s website. But those who have heard the Vice President speak in recent weeks are familiar with the challenge, which she describes as the fate of the “sandwich generation.” The Harris campaign has suggested a number of remedies — from Medicare expansion to boosting the pay of homecare workers. What is interesting from a fintech perspective is the idea that resources devoted to eldercare in particular could draw attention to the work of fintech innovators from Golden, to Eversafe, to Bereev that specialize in providing financial services to seniors and those who are caring for them.
Many of these plans from the Harris campaign will require the approval of a Congress that could easily remain split between the two parties. While that may limit the scope of even the successful initiatives, it would provide the kind of balance (or, if you prefer, gridlock) that has often accompanied strong economies. And that, in itself, would be a good thing not a bad thing for fintech and financial services.
Halloween is right around the corner. But have no fear of being out of the loop when it comes to the latest in fintech news — Finovate’s Fintech Rundown has you covered!
Deposit and loan origination software solutions provider Amountintroduces its AI Policy Optimizer to enhance credit, pricing, and fraud policy management.
Cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrency exchange Bitstampsecures a MiFID Multilateral Trading Facility (MFF) license.
Digital banking
U.K.-based banking group Lloydsunveils new Link pay capability in its mobile banking app.
The round also featured participation from Icehouse Ventures, K1W1, NZ Fintech Fund, and Hard Yaka, a venture capital firm based in the U.S. Emerge will use the capital to support adding talent in marketing, sales, and product development. The company will also use the funds to accelerate its go-to-market strategy, including offering banking services to startups.
“Emerge was built to help Kiwi businesses do more, faster, better,” Emerge Co-founder Jovan Pavlicevic said. “In just a few minutes, you’ve opened as many Emerge accounts as you need, with features better than the banks, and team cards ready to go.”
A digital-first banking alternative, Emerge offers companies a single platform to manage their business finances. Emerge’s technology simplifies expense tracking, enables the creation of debit cards — including an unlimited number of virtual cards — and allows users to make and receive payments with a New Zealand business banking account backed by ANZ. Emerge provides bookkeeping and reporting tools and makes it easier for companies to track and manage their finances with a centralized view of their data. The company has also launched a service called EmergePay that converts a smartphone into a payment terminal.
Emerge evolved from a children’s financial literacy app called SquareOne that Pavlicevic and co-founder Jamie Jermain founded in 2020. Emerge was developed in January 2024, as the company shifted its focus toward providing banking services for SMEs, with the ultimate goal of becoming a neobank.
Headquartered in Auckland, Emerge was named to the Forbes Asia “Top 100 to Watch” in August.
FirstCape deploys wealthtech from InvestCloud
New Zealand’s largest wealth advice and asset management company, FirstCape, has partnered with InvestCloud to enhance the wealth management experience for advisors and clients alike. The deployment will help FirstCape increase the efficiency of its advisors, as well as provide a single platform for client engagement, experience, and advice at scale.
“We formed FirstCape with a stated intention of enhancing our client offering,” FirstCape CEO Malcolm Jackson said. “Integrating InvestCloud’s tools that streamline portfolio management and order execution is part of delivering on that promise. We continue to be focused on providing a complete suite of services tailored to every client’s unique needs at whatever stage of their investment life cycle.”
With more than 120 advisors and more than $30.3 billion (NZ $50 billion) in assets under management, FirstCape was forged earlier this year through the combination of four entities: JBWere NZ, Jarden Wealth, Harbour Asset Management, and BNZ Investment Services. The company has already deployed two InvestCloud solutions: Portfolio Manager and Order Capture. Portfolio Manager enables advisors to manage client portfolios with deeper insights that lead to tailored investment proposals. Order Capture provides a seamless interface for trading across asset classes, boosting operational efficiency by enabling advisors to act faster in response to client needs.
“We are thrilled to see the tangible success of our partnership with FirstCape as they embark on this modular digital transformation,” InvestCloud President of Digital Wealth International Christine Mar Ciriani said. “By leveraging our full suite of innovative front-office solutions, we are helping FirstCape create a robust digital backbone that will drive their growth, streamline advisor efficiency, and elevate client experiences.”
A global wealthtech company, InvestCloud serves wealth and asset managers, wirehouses, banks, RIAs, and insurers. InvestCloud’s clients represent more than 40% of the $132 trillion in total assets globally. A provider of digital wealth management and financial planning solutions since 2010, InvestCloud was named a CNBC “World’s Top Fintech Company” earlier this year. The firm is headquartered in West Hollywood, California.
International payments specialist Ebury arrives in New Zealand
Ebury, a specialist in international payments and collections, opened new offices in New Zealand this week. The move is designed to help the company provide a range of services to SMEs in the country, including cash management strategy and foreign exchange risk management.
“At Ebury, we embrace the complexity and risk of daily cross-border payments that enable business growth, in a way that traditional banks do not, or cannot,” Ebury Managing Director for APAC, Rick Roache said. “We make the sophisticated products and services that banks typically reserve for their biggest clients accessible to SMEs.”
The New Zealand office represents Ebury’s 40th office worldwide, and comes six years after Ebury expanded to neighboring Australia. The move to New Zealand also supports the company’s presence in nearby Shanghai and Shenzhen in China.
“Right now there are few options for SMEs looking for cross-border payment solutions and local advice in New Zealand,” Roache added, “so we’re really excited to bring our innovative technology platform into the market supported by a ‘boots on the ground’ team that differentiates us from other providers.”
Headquartered in London and founded in 2009 by a pair of Spanish engineers, Ebury serves primarily SMEs and mid-cap companies with payments, collections, and foreign exchange services in more than 130 currencies. Santander acquired a minority stake in the company for $459 million (£350 million) in 2020, and added to its stake two years later. With more than 1,700 employees across 25 countries, Ebury is reportedly preparing for an IPO in 2025 that would value the company at as much as $2.2 billion (£2 billion).
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Warburg Pincus acquired a minority stake in Brazilian accounting-based fintech Contabilizei for $125 million.
PXP Financial teamed up with Latin American payments platform Kushki.
Brazilian paytech Barte raised $8 million in Series A funding in a round led by AlleyCorp.
Asia-Pacific
Singapore-based finance platform for businesses, Aspire, secured in-principal approval for the Major Payment Institution license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
Bank of Hangzhou teamed up with Malaysia’s Maybank to support Chinese businesses as they expand operations in Southeast Asia.
Vietnamese private bank VPBank partnered with customer engagement platform CleverTap.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Somalia’s Premier Bank has teamed up with Mastercard and Tappy Technologies to launch Tap2Pay, a tokenized-passive payment wearable.
Fintech provider Flutterwave partnered with 9jahotel.com to launch a point-of-sale system to enhance hotel management in Nigeria.
Nigerian cryptocurrency exchange Yellow Card secured $33 million in Series C funding.
Central and Eastern Europe
Romanian payment service Pago secured $2.5 million (€2.3 million) to fuel expansion.
Budapest, Hungary-based B2B payment solutions provider, PastPay, raised $13 million (€12 million) in Series A funding.
Fingular, a neobank based in Singapore, launched a new digital lending business in Bangladesh.
TBC Bank Uzbekistan secured a $10 million line of credit from Switzerland’s responsAbility Investments AG. Read our Finovate Global interview with TBC Bank Uzbekistan’s Head of International Business Oliver Hughes.
One of the most popular use cases for AI in financial services is to leverage the technology to help companies deal with the challenge and opportunity of unstructured data.
In our latest Streamly interview from FinovateFall last month, Finovate VP and host Greg Palmer sits down with Perry Rotella, Managing Director of Financial Services at Box, to discuss the growth of unstructured data within financial institutions, the challenges these firms face in managing this data, and the role AI can play in helping them analyze unstructured data to enhance everything from personalization to compliance.
“Unstructured data really represents the vast majority of data in organizations. IDC did a study last year that found that 90% of an organization’s data is unstructured. And it’s been really challenging to extract insights out of that data at scale. What we’ve been finding working with customers is we can supercharge pulling insights out of that content, driving workflows for downstream processing, and really look across many documents to summarize and personalize communications with clients.”
The “Intelligent Content Cloud” company, Box offers a single platform that enables organizations to drive collaboration, manage the content lifecycle, secure critical content, and transform business workflows using enterprise AI. Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Redwood City, California, Box includes AstraZeneca, Morgan Stanley, and Nationwide among its customers.
In his role as Managing Director, Financial Services, Rotella provides leadership across product, marketing, business development, sales, and customer success teams. He is responsible for driving engagement with key strategic accounts, as well as customer satisfaction and retention.
Apex Fintech Solutions has agreed to acquire fintech design agency, FinTron. Terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.
The digital wealth management company will leverage FinTron’s technology to provide its customers with the ability to create customized user interfaces and experiences.
Apex Fintech Solutions’ subsidiary Apex Clearing made its Finovate debut at FinDEVr Silicon Valley in 2015.
Digital wealth management company Apex Fintech Solutions has agreed to acquire FinTron, a fintech design agency that creates high-end digital experiences for investors and advisors around the world.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed and the deal is subject to approval by FINRA. Once completed, the strategic acquisition will enable Apex’s customers to deliver customized user interfaces and experiences for brokerage platforms that are pre-integrated into the Apex platform. This will enable them to easily deploy turnkey investing experiences and front-ends from within their current digital footprint, powered by Apex’s custody platform.
“FinTron has revolutionized the process of launching a brokerage or wealth management platform,” Apex CEO Bill Capuzzi said. “Their innovative platform aligns perfectly with our mission to empower the next generation of investors through technology. This acquisition is a significant step in our journey to provide a fully integrated, digital-first platform that meets the diverse needs of our clients.”
Known for its white-label and embedded components, as well as its Software Development Kit (SDK) for mobile and web platforms, FinTron empowers brokerages and wealth management firms to embed self-directed and managed investing functionality into their offering. Apex will leverage its acquisition of FinTron to expand its services to clients ranging from financial advisors and fintech firms to neobanks, insurance companies, and retirement planning companies. In fact, FinTron’s technology already has been integrated into the company’s suite of services to streamline investment processes, enhance the user experience, and bring more advanced investment capabilities to a wider audience of investors.
“We are thrilled to join forces with Apex,” FinTron CEO and Founder Wilder Rumpf said. “Our shared vision of democratizing financial services and providing intuitive, powerful tools to investors will only be strengthened through this partnership. Together, we can make a significant impact on the financial futures of many.”
Headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, FinTron was founded in 2017. The company has raised more than $14 million in funding from investors including Connecticut Innovations and Sage Venture Partners. FinTron’s embedded wealth solutions help broker-dealers, community banks and credit unions, investment advisors, and fintechs lower CAPEX and time to market, capture engagement, and offer clients versatile digital wealth experiences.
Apex Fintech Solutions introduced itself to Finovate audiences at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley in 2015, via its subsidiary, Apex Clearing. Recently, the New York-based company launched its real-time cloud-native investment infrastructure, Apex Ascend, and announced a collaboration with wealth management solution provider YourStake. FinTron is Apex’s fourth acquisition; the firm purchased AdvisorArch, its third acquisition, in March of this year.
Payments credit union service organization (CUSO) Velera has turned to Arroweye Solutions for its dual interface debit and credit card portfolio.
The multi-year partnership will provide faster speed to market and change orders, as well as zero inventory to avoid having to manage stores of pre-printed cards.
Headquartered in Nevada, Arroweye made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2011.
Payments credit union service organization (CUSO) Velera has partnered with Arroweye Solutions to provide card production, personalization, and fulfillment for Velera’s dual interface debit and credit card portfolio.
The multi-year partnership announced this week will enable Arroweye to provide Velera and its financial institution partners with a variety of benefits for their card programs. These include fast speed to market and change orders; dynamic card personalization; zero inventory as cards are manufactured, personalized, and fulfilled as needed; quality materials, vertical or horizontal orientation, and other options.
“Supporting Velera’s card diversification strategy, Arroweye’s capabilities will help Velera enhance time to market and deliver a more seamless, frictionless card personalization experience to our financial institutions’ clients,” Velera SVP for Product Enablement & Growth, Cody Banks said. “We view Arroweye as a true financial services partner and look forward to integrating their suite of capabilities into our core offering.”
Arroweye CEO Dan Oswald praised Velera as a “premier fintech solutions provider for credit unions in North America.” Oswald added, “Arroweye’s solutions and capabilities align perfectly with Velera’s card issuance needs today and into the future, and we look forward to providing Arroweye’s best-in-class services to their financial institutions.”
Created via a merger between PSCU and Co-op Solutions earlier this year, Velera is both a premier payments credit union service organization (CUSO) and an integrated fintech solutions provider. Velera serves more than 4,000 financial institutions throughout North America, offering a product portfolio that features solutions for payment processing, fraud and risk management, data and analytics, digital banking, instant payments, strategic consulting, ATM and POS networks, and more. Charles E. Fagan III is President and CEO.
Founded in 2000, Arroweye Solutions made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2011. In the years since, the Henderson, Nevada-based company has grown into a leading card delivery firm, offering EMV, dual-interface, and magnetic stripe cards approved by Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, and UnionPay.
This year, Arroweye has formed partnerships with small business financial services platform Affinity Finance and professional banking services provider BankPro, a subsidiary of FxPro Group. The company has raised more than $76 million in funding according to Crunchbase, and includes Multiplier Capital and Landa Ventures among its investors.
The goal of the collaboration is for the bank to leverage Token.io’s open banking connectivity and infrastructure to enhance the customer experience and develop new, real-time payment solutions. Santander will first use Token.io’s infrastructure to enable direct payments from external bank accounts as an option for credit card repayments, creating a more seamless payment experience compared to both direct debit and manual bank transfer. These direct account-to-account payments for card repayments also support biometric Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) for payments made on mobile devices.
“We are thrilled to partner with Santander, a forward-thinking institution committed to driving open banking innovation and enhancing the experience of millions of customers,” Token.io CEO Todd Clyde said. “Token.io’s technology, combined with Santander’s dedication to exceptional service, will undoubtedly set new standards for how financial institutions leverage open banking to create innovative value propositions that meet the evolving needs of consumers and businesses.”
A subsidiary of Banco Santander, Santander UK has more than 14 million customers in the U.K. The bank offers mortgages, auto financing, unsecured loans, credit cards, banking, savings and investment accounts, as well as insurance products. In addition to using Token.io’s technology to support its A2A offering, Santander UK also plans to leverage the fintech’s infrastructure to enhance its real-time money movement capabilities for its retail banking customers.
This week’s news from Token.io comes just days after the U.K.-based fintech announced that it had expanded its partnership with global payments platform Ecommpay. The global payments platform added Token.io’s virtual accounts in four new markets — France, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Spain — to its Open Banking Advanced solution. The virtual accounts will enable e-commerce companies to get real-time settlement confirmation and make API-powered refunds or payouts, boosting both the speed and efficiency of transactions.
“Our partnership with Ecommpay continues to demonstrate the immense potential of open banking in transforming payment experiences and also highlights the opportunities that PSPs can realize when they embrace innovative, customer-centric solutions,” Clyde said.
Token.io made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2015 and returned to the Finovate stage two years later at FinovateEurope in London. The company provides direct connectivity to more than 567 million bank accounts in 20 markets. Token.io’s customers include HSBC, BNP Paribas, and Global Payments, as well as fellow Finovate alums Mastercard and ACI Worldwide. The company has raised $90 million in funding according to Crunchbase, most recently securing a Series C investment of $40 million in 2022.
