Author: David Penn

Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bluefin, Cardlytics, Coinbase, EZBOB, Hydrogen, Mitek, NCR Corporation, PaySend, Sberbank, ThetaRay, Unison

On Finovate.com

  • Paysend Seals Deal on $20 Million Financing.
  • ezbob Lands Undisclosed Investment from Honeycomb Investment Trust.
  • New Investment Takes ThetaRay’s Total Capital to More than $60 Million.

Around the web

  • Cryptocurrency trading platform DXE chooses Mobile Verify from Mitek for automated ID verification.
  • Delano.lu profiles developer platform Hydrogen, recognized last month as the 2018 fintech startup of the year by KPMG Luxembourg and Luxembourg House of Financial Technology.
  • Benzinga interviews Unison CEO Thomas Sponholtz in the wake of the company’s $40 million Series B round.
  • Hypepotamus features Cardlytics post-IPO, interviews CEO Scott Grimes.
  • Bluefin and NCR expand POS payment security to provide PCI-Validated Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE).

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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Additiv Partners with Orange Business Services to Bring Digital Wealth Management to FIs

Additiv Partners with Orange Business Services to Bring Digital Wealth Management to FIs
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: additiv

European robo advisor additiv its leveraging is relationship with Orange Business Services to make its cloud-based digital wealth management technology available to banks and other FIs. Offered as a SaaS solution, additiv’s wealth management as-a-service technology features out-of-the-box solutions including robo advisory, portfolio management, and client and advisory dashboards.

“By partnering with Orange Business Services we can provide financial institutions with a fast and highly-secure way of tapping into this new market opportunity, while improving the end-client experience and reducing operating costs,” explained additiv CEO and founder, Michael Stemmle.

Michael Stemmle, CEO and founder of additiv, demonstrating the company’s cloud-based robo advisor at FinovateAsia 2017.

Stemmle added that the joint platform will give FIs access to the company’s Digital Financial Suite, as well as its global ecosystem of partners who offer a range of additional services including client administration, execution and custody services with access to 35,000 FIs across eight asset classes.”

The new solution will be introduced in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific on dedicated Orange cloud platforms. Orange Business Services is the B2B division of the Orange Group, the first mobile operator to make contactless cash payments available in Europe. The company launched its Orange Money solution in 2008, linking a mobile account with an Orange mobile number to support the cash needs of customers in the Middle East and Africa. Last year, the Orange Group launched Orange Bank in France.

“Our highly-secure cloud platform is providing additiv with a smart and efficient way for financial institutions to plug in a game-changing range of products and map the entire data journey to provide valuable customer insight,” CEO of Orange Business Services, Helmut Reisinger said. “It will make digital wealth management easier and more convenient, which will undoubtedly broaden the appeal of wealth management.”

Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, and founded in 1998, additiv demonstrated its configurable, cloud-based robo advisor at FinovateAsia 2017. A provider of digital financial and wealth management solutions to banks, insurers, wealth, and asset managers in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, additiv has more than 15 existing deployments of its technology.

Additiv has raised $21 million (CHF 21 million) in funding courtesy of an investment from Switzerland’s BZ Bank last spring.

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Ohpen Teams Up with Dutch Savings Bank LeasePlan

Ohpen Teams Up with Dutch Savings Bank LeasePlan
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Ohpen

LeasePlan Bank, the online savings bank based in the Netherlands, has chosen Ohpen to upgrade its whole core cloud banking engine, Pieter Aartsen and Angelique Schouten, global board members at Ohpen, told Henry Villar of FinTech Futures.

The bank will do a full-stack upgrade of its core engine and all other tech, which moves away from Oracle FSS’s Flexcube, an on-premises system onto Ohpen’s cloud-native engine.

This move will cover both the Dutch and German operations of the bank. Although the bank is headquartered in the Netherlands, a part of its client base is based in Germany.

The partnership was effective as of the 27th of June, but the team will officially start the implementation on the 4th of July. During the implementation, the bank’s whole system, bar the website, will be provided by Ohpen’s tech. For the bank it is the retail savings and deposits IT infrastructure, which is what LeasePlan Bank specialises in.

“Migrating LeasePlan Bank’s customers to the Ohpen core banking platform will reduce the complexity of their savings and deposits IT architecture and make LeasePlan Bank more agile,” said Aartsen.

Ohpen has been gaining traction over the last few years. Knab, a challenger bank subsidiary of Aegon, moved to Ohpen’s core from Sopra Banking Software’s system. Aegon is also a customer of Ohpen.

Former Delta Lloyd Bank, which was taken over by Nationale Nederlanden (NN) Group last year, also made the jump onto Ohpen’s tech, alongside NN Bank. On the way out are Temenos with its T24 system and Able (a local banking software provider).

When asked about the reason for this momentum, Schouten cited Ohpen’s “power of one” motto.

“We have one core banking engine running in the cloud, one code base, one version of our platform for all countries. The fact that it’s one solution and cloud-based means that it is faster, more reliable and we can release our new software to all clients at the same time, which happens every month,” she told us.

Aartsen added: “We were the first ones going all-in cloud, fully cloud natives and programmed a whole new bank from scratch and have been running it in the cloud and offering it as a SaaS for nine years now. This means that our tech is now future-proof, and we can adapt it in the future without the deployment demands of on-premise architecture.”

Ohpen demonstrated its core banking platform at FinovateFall 2012. Earlier this year, Ohpen raised $31 million in a Series C round led by PE firm Amerborgh, which took the company’s total equity capital to $50 million. Chris Zadeh is founder and CEO.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: additiv, Efigence, Finicity, MapD, Neener Analytics, Ohpen, Open Bank Project, Temenos, TransUnion, YellowDog, Zopa

On Finovate

  • Additiv Partners with Orange Business to Bring Digital Wealth Management to FIs.
  • Zopa’s Record Lending Figures Suggest a Healthy U.K. P2P Lending Sector.

Around the web

  • Iraq’s Banque Liban-Francaise completes upgrade to Temenos’ T24 core banking system.
  • P2P lender Zopa announces 40% revenue growth and a return to profitability.
  • Ohpen signs LeasePlan Bank as its latest customer.
  • Efigence implements technological side of Alior Bank open banking project.
  • Open Bank Project collaborates with Citizens Bank hackathon.
  • The World Economic Forum names Neener Analytics as a Technology for Integrity 2018.
  • YellowDog wins Business Innovation Award at inaugural Best New Business Awards.
  • Finicity forges data sharing agreement with USAA.
  • MapD debuts MapD 4.0 for interactive location intelligence at scale.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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Inspire FCU to Deploy Core Banking Solutions from NYMBUS

Inspire FCU to Deploy Core Banking Solutions from NYMBUS
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: NYMBUS

Inspire FCU, a 15,000-member financial institution founded in 1936 that serves the community of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, is making the move to NYMBUS.

“In order to deliver the enhanced experience and competitive, digital financial products our members ask for, it was clear our legacy core was setting us up to fail,” President and CEO of Inspire FCU Jim Merrill said. He faulted the inflexibility of their legacy system, praising NYMBUS’s advanced core, digital, and payment solutions as an ideal replacement. And not just of the credit union’s legacy system, either.

“Inspire will eliminate 15 technology vendors after we convert to NYMBUS,” Merrill said, referring to the large number of different vendors the credit union had been relying on, which complicated workflows and detracted from the Inspire’s member experience. “And, we will deliver a much more intuitive user experience to better compete with larger financial institutions and new fintech companies that have entered the market.”

Inspire will take advantage of NYMBUS’ full suite of advanced banking solutions including SmartCore, NYMBUS’ turnkey core banking platform; SmartDigital; NYMBUS’ internet and mobile banking suite; and SmartPayments, which will manage the authorizations and transactions for Inspire’s debit card program while providing real-time fraud protection.

“Today’s financial institutions risk extinction if they don’t adapt to the disruption of digital innovation,” David Mitchell, President of NYMBUS said. “Inspire has recognized the scale of this disruption and embraced a digital-first view of banking.”

Based in Miami Beach, Florida, NYMBUS demonstrated its core banking technology at FinovateSpring 2016. Last month, NYMBUS completed a four-month conversion process for Surety Bank ($111 million in assets). In April, the core banking technology innovator unveiled its SmartLaunch solution that makes it easier for banks to build turnkey digital banking solutions in 90 days.

NYMBUS has raised $28 million in funding, and includes Home Credit Group and Vensure Enterprises among its investors.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BlueVine, Coinbase, Hidden Levers, NCR Corporation, NYMBUS, ThreatMetrix, Veridium

On Finovate.com

  • Inspire FCU to Deploy Core Banking Solutions from NYMBUS.
  • Veridium’s $16.5 Million Series B Led by Michael Spencer.

Around the web

  • NCR and Advanced Fraud Solutions team up to fight check fraud at interactive teller machines (ITMs).
  • ThreatMetrix partners with Lumin Digital to improve security for online and mobile banking.
  • Bluefin to collaborate with NCR to provide merchants with fraud fighting solutions.
  • The dream of Coinbase is alive in Portland.
  • HiddenLevers moves HQ location from NYC to Atlanta suburb.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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Bento for Business Raises $9 Million in New Funding

Bento for Business Raises $9 Million in New Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bento for Business, Funding

In a round led by Edison Partners and featuring participation from current investor Comcast Ventures and new investor MissionOG, Bento for Business has raised $9 million in funding. The financial management solutions provider will use the capital to bolster its marketing and engineering efforts with new hires, and to expand the Bento for Business platform across payments, spend management, and business banking.

“Time and again, research says that poorly managed business spend is the single largest threat to the profits of small and midsize businesses in the U.S.,” Bento for Business founder and CEO Farhan Ahmad explained. “We solve this problem and bring our customers an intelligent financial management solution that stops unauthorized spending before it happens.”

The funding nearly doubles Bento for Business’ total capital to $18.5 million.

Bento for Business provides SME owners with a card-based digital spending management solution that enables employers to prevent unauthorized expenditures by controlling when, where, and how much their employees spend at the point of sale. The platform stops unapproved business spend before the purchase, saving time and money on returns and cancellations. The technology also has features like receipt upload and the ability to automatically sync Bento with popular accounting systems like Quickbooks to reduce the need for expense reports.

The company’s solutions include expense cards, API virtual cards, and ghost cards. Bento’s tiered levels of service range from a free program that supports up to two cards to its enterprise level offering with unlimited cards for $149 a month. Bento does not charge a setup fee and all paid programs (Team, Professional, and Enterprise) come with free, 60-day trials.

Bento for Business demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2015. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, the company was featured in Inc.com’s article 7 Cool Productivity Tools You Probably Haven’t Heard Of last month. Bento’s technology was also highlighted in CardRates.com in March, the same month the company launched its Business Fraud Risk Calculator. The calculator is a two-minute diagnostic test that identifies potential fraud risk factors at small businesses by asking questions about expense policies, receipt handling, and accounting systems.

In February, Finovate founder Jim Bruene featured Bento in his look at startup challenger banks with a small business focus. Last fall, the company unveiled a suite of new solutions, opened up its APIs, and announced a partnership with The Bancorp.

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Social Savings Specialist InSpirAVE Offers Early Access to Platform

Social Savings Specialist InSpirAVE Offers Early Access to Platform
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: inSpirAVE

Fresh off its successful return to SXSW and a run through INV Fintech’s annual event in San Francisco, social savings innovator InSpirAVE is offering early access to its platform. The company is coming out with what founder and CEO Om Kundu calls an “entirely new look and multi-screen experience” for its app that leverages friends and family to help consumers make planned purchases by “saving more, faster” rather than succumbing to debt, fees, and impulse.

The company shared a few peeks at the new user interface below. The new look embraces InSpirAVE’s social approach to making remarkably better savings and spending decisions. InSpirAVE, which has won critical acclaim from forums including American Banker and BAI, enables users to invite friends and family to comment on – and contribute to – purchases the user wants to make but cannot yet afford without credit.

Connected friends and family can nudge users toward better selection decisions. Think of it as Yelp powered by friends and family who can make the path-to-purchase more personalized – and in ways that even the best product reviewers cannot. This not only enables users to avoid resorting to credit and falling into debt, but equally helps moderate impulse buying – a common source of overspending.

Users can then create a tailored plan to purchase the item, using the platform to choose their desired savings completion date, establish an initial deposit, and the intelligent setup of  recurring contributions. The InSpirAVE platform allows users to visualize the progress they are making toward their savings goal, including interest earned, social gifting, intelligent transfers, and any applicable discounts from the retailer. And once the requisite funds are saved, the user can purchase the item directly through the InSpirAVE platform.

Kundu said that a growing number of people have signed up for early access to the InSpirAVE platform, as have a growing number of merchant partners. He pointed out that the technology transforms the retail experience into a win-win for both sides of the transaction.

“Consumers get to better exercise their savings muscles to fulfill their purchase goals” while retailers and FIs “gain access to a more engaged and expanded customer base,” he explained. Kundu added that InSpirAVE’s intelligent p2p savings and commerce platform also gives merchants the benefit of greater social exposure to drive sales of their larger-ticket product-categories.

Headquartered in New York and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, InSpirAVE demonstrated its Internet of Savings platform at FinovateFall 2016. Kundu participated in our roundtable on savingstech last spring. While the company isn’t launching the platform to the general public quite yet, it is offering early access to beta accounts on a limited basis.

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DefenseStorm Selected by NAFCU as Preferred Cloud-Based Cybersecurity Partner 

DefenseStorm Selected by NAFCU as Preferred Cloud-Based Cybersecurity Partner 
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: DefenseStorm

A trio of leading credit union CEOs representing the Preferred Partners program for NAFCU Services has selected DefenseStorm as the preferred partner for its cloud-based cybersecurity platform.

“With approximately 20 million cyber events occurring per day per financial institution, the volume and sophistication of today’s cyber threats are definitely challenging credit unions to maintain and prove ‘Cyber Safety and Soundness,’ DefenseStorm CEO Sean Feeney said. “For this reason, we are thrilled to partner with the NAFCU community, an organization that is entirely dedicated to the empowerment and betterment of credit unions.”

DefenseStorm CTO Sean Cassidy demonstrating the PatternScout anomaly detection engine at FinovateSpring 2017.

The combination of cybersecurity and compliance is what helped carry the day for DefenseStorm. The company’s GRID platform is a co-managed, cloud-based, compliance-automated solution that combines technology with human expertise in financial institution security and compliance. Built from the ground-up as a cloud-based solution, DefenseStorm’s platform provides durable, redundant, real-time service, making both analysis and remediation faster and more cost-effective. GRID features built-in FFIEC CAT and ACET compliance elements, and connects compliance policies to real-time alerts to make it easy for FIs to prove their compliance and security processes to regulators and examiners.

“We are proud to partner with DefenseStorm because they are so clearly dedicated to credit unions, and to providing them with real-time cyber safety and soundness,” NAFCU Service Corporation president Randy Salser said. “Their solutions are vital to the success, security, and stability of financial institutions.” A wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions (NAFCU), NAFCU Services fosters relationships between credit unions and industry partners from verticals including payments, risk management, and security.

With offices in Seattle, Washington and Atlanta, Georgia, DefenseStorm was founded in 2015 and has raised nearly $15 million in funding. In addition to demonstrating its PatternScout anomaly detection engine at FinovateSpring last year, the company’s CTO Sean Cassidy presented Cloud Security Fundamentals at our developers conference FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016.

This spring, DefenseStorm was named a Top 40 Innovative Technology Company by the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG). In February, the company announced a partnership with Florida-based American National Bank ($280 million in assets).

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Akamai, Bento for Business, Coinbase, DefenseStorm, Finastra, OneSpan, Payoneer, Ping Identity, Quadient, Ripple, Sensory, Temenos, Twilio

On Finovate.com

  • Bento for Business Raises $9 Million in New Funding.
  • Sensory’s Biometric Technology Now Powers Security for 24 Banking Apps.
  • DefenseStorm Selected by NAFCU as Preferred Cloud-Based Cybersecurity Partner

Around the web

  • Coventry Building Society to deploy Temenos T24 core banking platform for savings and mortgage servicing.
  • Finastra partners with Indonesian data center to bring IFRS 9 compliance capabilities to regional and medium-sized FIs in the country.
  • Akamai Technologies named a leader in Web Application Firewalls in The Forrester Wave’s Q2 2018 evaluation.
  • Payoneer partners with the Republic of Estonia’s e-Residency program to make cross-border payments easier for e-residents in India.
  • Twilio introduces a new developer-first, API-first partner program, Twilio Build.
  • Ping Identity forges strategic partnership with enterprise identity governance company, SailPoint Technologies.
  • Coinbase CEO follows Ripple’s lead on philanthropy.
  • Quadient teams with Quertum for software distribution in the Nordics and U.K.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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BizEquity Brings its Valuation-as-a-Service Solution to TD Bank

BizEquity Brings its Valuation-as-a-Service Solution to TD Bank
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BizEquity, TD Bank

BizEquity just signed its first – really big – bank.

TD Bank has partnered with the online business valuation specialist to provide SMEs across the country with real-time insights into fair market, enterprise, and liquidation values based on current market conditions. Relationship managers at TD Bank will leverage BizEquity’s technology to produce detailed valuation and industry KPI reports, and then share them with business owners to help them create succession plans, formulate tax planning strategies, explore funding and M&A opportunities, and more.

“Without proper valuation knowledge, many of these business owners will not be adequately funded or have the right wealth or succession plans in place,” BizEquity founder and CEO Michael M. Carter said. “Together, we are helping to democratize this important knowledge for small and mid-size business owners from Maine to Florida.”

BizEquity, developer of Valuation-as-a-Service (VaaS) and the VaaS Business Valuation Cloud, enables companies to produce a customized valuation performance report that gives SME owners key insights into business valuation data as well as industry comparisons in 40 KPIs. BizEquity’s more than 500 financial services clients include KPMG, Mass Mutual Financial Group, and Mutual of Omaha; as well as fellow Finovate alums like Experian, Xero, and Equifax. TD Bank represents BizEquity’s first and only top-10 U.S. bank partner.

With headquarters in Wayne, Pennsylvania and offices in Tower Hamlets, London, Biz Equity was founded in 2010. The company began the year announcing an agreement with Windfall Data, in which the consumer financial data specialist will offer its wealth data on the BizEquity platform. Last month, BizEquity was honored at the FinTech Breakthrough Awards, earning the Innovation Award for Wealth Management.

BizEquity has raised $5.1 million in funding, courtesy of an investment from London-based venture capital firm, Frost Brooks. The company demonstrated its BizEquity One U.K. valuation-as-a-service technology at FinovateEurope 2015.

Based in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, TD Bank appeared with Moven at FinovateSpring 2016 for a live demonstration of the TD MySpend app. The app features a full integration of the Moven platform within TD Bank’s mobile banking ecosystem. Operating in the U.S. northeast and mid-Atlantic regions, as well as metropolitan D.C., the Carolinas, and Florida, TD Bank is a member of TD Bank Group and a subsidiary of The Toronto-Dominion Bank of Toronto, Canada.

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Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BLUERUSH, Finovate Global, MasterCard

As Finovate goes increasingly global, so does our coverage of financial technology. Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World is our weekly look at fintech innovation in developing economies in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Raiffeisen Bank Romania unveils eight fintech finalists for its Elevator Lab Challenge.
  • Alfa-Bank Belarus migrates to WAY4 platform from digital payments solutions provider OpenWay.
  • 150Sec.com takes a look at the graduating cohort of 19 fintech startups emerging from Latvia and Estonia accelerator programs.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) signs MoU with Astana Financial Services Authority.
  • Bahrain Development Bank (BDB) announces closing $100 million fundraising round for its Al Waha Fund of Funds.
  • Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) introduces its regulatory framework for spot crypto asset activities.

Latin America

  • BlueRush teams up with Kunder to forge partnership with Chilean pension fund leader, AFPHabitat.
  • Integrated Biometrics announces its 10-print fingerprint scanners have become the standard for financial service organizations in Mexico.
  • Argentine fintech Increase earns Best of the World award for its positive social and environmental impact.

Asia

  • MatchMove powers the first contactless prepaid Mastercard in South Asia
  • Singapore’s PayNow service to be extended to corporate customers with launch of PayNow Corporate later this summer.
  • Cambodia announces plans to build $70 million data center to support development of the country’s digital economy.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • IT News Africa’s 5 Most Innovative Startups in Kenya list features P2P micro lending marketplace Pezesha; SaaS mobile commerce platform, Sky.Garden; and FX and payment platform, BitPesa.
  • EcoFin Hebdo looks at the rise of insurtech in Africa. In French.
  • Online sports betting in Nigeria sees boost as popularity of digital payments agrows.

Top image designed by Freepik

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