Finovate Alumni News

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.

Bento for Business Raises $9 Million in New Funding

Bento for Business Raises $9 Million in New 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.

Social Savings Specialist InSpirAVE Offers Early Access to Platform

Social Savings Specialist InSpirAVE Offers Early Access to Platform

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.

DefenseStorm Selected by NAFCU as Preferred Cloud-Based Cybersecurity Partner 

DefenseStorm Selected by NAFCU as Preferred Cloud-Based Cybersecurity Partner 

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).

Finovate Alumni News

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.

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

BizEquity Brings its Valuation-as-a-Service Solution to 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.

Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World

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

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

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

Around the web

  • FICO to offer free cybersecurity ratings to companies via its FICO Enterprise Security Score Portrait solution.
  • NICE Actimize covers P2P payments within its Fraud Essentials Cloud solution.
  • Global Debt Registry launches its loan registry on the IBM Blockchain Platform.
  • Harmonic Fund Services goes live with loan servicing technology, Fusion Loan IQ, from Finastra.
  • Gro Solutions names digital consulting firm Xtensifi as a certified development partner.
  • Kony accepted as a member in Jack Henry’s Symitar Vendor Integration Program.
  • NIIT Technologies ranked number one in ‘Business Understanding’ by clients in the 2018 UK IT Outsourcing Study.
  • 3rd-eyes selected for Swiss National Fintech Team.

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.

Munnypot Picks Up Investment from Livingbridge

Munnypot Picks Up Investment from Livingbridge

Robo advisory platform Munnypot began the month announcing a new relationship with business process management specialist Capita. Now the U.K.-based FinovateMiddleEast alum is ending the month with news of a major new investment from private equity firm, Livingbridge.

The amount of the investment was not disclosed. Livingbridge typically invests equity of as much as $6.6 million (£5 million). Munnypot said it will use the funds to further develop its robo advisory solution.

“We are delighted with Livingbridge’s investment which will enable us to scale up our business and further develop our offer for consumers,” Munnypot CEO Andrew Fay said.

Munnypot CEO demonstrating the company’s robo advisor platform at FinovateMiddleEast 2018.

Munnypot provides automated financial investment services for as little as £25 a month and/or a single £250 investment. The platform leverages chatbot technology to encourage investors to maximize annual ISA allowances, and monitors fund performance against goal-based objectives. If performance is out of line, Munnypot automatically suggests alternatives for the investor to consider.

“We are excited to be supporting Munnypot in the early stages of their development,” Livingbridge investment director Steve Cordiner said. “The robo advisor sector has grown quickly in recent years and Munnypot has a strong proposition; delivering low cost and affordable advice to consumers.”

Munnypot’s funding news comes just weeks after the company announced a strategic “scaling” partnership with Capita, which took a minority stake in the robo advisor. Via this partnership, Munnypot will help Capita develop solutions for wealth management companies. Earlier this year, Munnypot reported that it would power the robo advisor platform for Jyske Bank in Denmark. The deal represented the company’s first European white label partnership.

“We know, first hand, the time and resources required to build a robust online investment advice proposition,” Fay said in a statement accompanying the partnership announcement. “For most firms, partnering is the best and most efficient route to developing an innovative, client-engaging service.”

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Crawley, U.K., Munnypot demonstrated its goal-based, online investment advice solution at the inaugural FinovateMiddleEast conference earlier this year. Unlike many robo advisors that seek customers from among the mass affluent, Munnypot is designed for those who traditionally have not been able to access financial advice, as well as investors looking for a cost-competitive alternative to other advisory services.

Five Degrees and BillPro Launch New European Cross Border Banking Service

Five Degrees and BillPro Launch New European Cross Border Banking Service

Dutch digital banking technology provider Five Degrees has teamed up with BillPro, an international business payments solutions specialist. Together, the two companies will launch a new cross-border banking service in Europe with Five Degrees’ core banking solution Matrix at the center.

“We are very happy to unite forces with BillPro, a leading provider of payment solutions in Europe and beyond,” Five Degrees CEO Martijn Hohmann said. “As a result, we are able to expand our customer base and enhance our position in the European market for Digital Banking platforms. Through this partnership, we can shape our idea of marketplace banking even more.”

Five Degrees Director of Sales Santosh Radhakrishnan and Prospery Product Owner Andrew Trythall demonstrating the company’s wealth management solution at FinovateEurope 2018.

BillPro will use Matrix as its core digital banking platform, and will offer it to its partners as an additional service option. The partnership will enable Five Degrees to expand its presence in the European market and give BillPro the ability to launch new banking services for its international business clients and support fintechs as they develop their own innovative solutions.

Matrix is an intelligent digital banking platform that supports customer onboarding, transactions, documents, and all customer interactions. The platform can be connected to legacy core banking systems, helping banks offer a broader range of customer-centric services including SME and retail lending, robo advisory and wealth management, as well as mortgages, FX trading, and current, savings, and deposit accounts.

“This will add significant value to both current and future clients as well as partners,” BillPro CEO Daria Rippingale said. “Our partnership with Five Degrees will enable BillPro to issue IBANs and Bank Accounts to people around the world.”

A member of the FinTech 50 and winner of the Banking & IT category at the Dutch Fintech Awards, Five Degrees has partnered with a variety of banks and fintechs including top three Netherlands consumer lender Credit Agricole Consumer Finance; robo advisor and fellow Finovate alum Munnypot; and GarantiBank, a European bank with more than $91 billion in assets.

At FinovateEurope 2018, Five Degrees demonstrated how Matrix served as an “orchestrating hub” for ABN AMBRO’s wealth management offering Prospery. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Five Degrees has raised more than $11 million (€10 million) in funding from investors including Karmijn Kapitaal and Velocity Capital.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Fiserv and InComm Partner for Cash Billpay.
  • Unison Raises $40 Million to Promote the American Dream.
  • Munnypot Picks Up Investment from Livingbridge.
  • Five Degrees and BillPro Launch New European Cross Border Banking Service.
  • The ROI of a Finovate Demo.

Around the web

  • Infosys Finacle partners with Santander UK to launch interbank cash management system.
  • Luxoft to use open source blockchain platform Corda from R3.
  • Texas Tech FCU to deploy hardware, software, and services from NCR as it overhauls its customer experience.
  • Fiserv makes its Prologue Credit Loss Manager and risk modeling tools available via the cloud.
  • PYMNTS.com features Best of Show-winning cybersecurity specialist, SpyCloud.
  • American Banker: U.K.’s Revolut teams with Russia’s Qiwi ahead of U.S. launch.
  • Bill.com surpasses $50 billion in business payments processed annually.
  • The Tech Tribune names nCino and Passport among the 10 best tech startups in North Carolina.

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.

Gusto Launches Flexible Pay, Turning Payday into Any Day

Gusto Launches Flexible Pay, Turning Payday into Any Day

Payroll, benefits, and HR technology innovator Gusto has unveiled a new solution called Flexible Pay that will enable workers in the U.S. to get paid outside of their employer’s standard payroll schedule. “The two-week pay schedule should no longer exist in today’s world.” Gusto co-founder and CEO Joshua Reeves said. “It’s a relic of calculating payroll taxes manually and was instituted in the U.S. almost 90 years ago. With modern technology, employees shouldn’t have to wait weeks to get paid.”

Eligible employers partnered with Gusto can begin offering Flexible Pay through the Gusto platform. The platform calculates, makes payments, and files all relevant taxes automatically, enabling eligible employers to use the solution without having to change either their current payroll schedules or debit frequency. Gusto noted in their announcement that solutions like Flexible Pay can help workers manage unexpected expenses without resorting to debt or payday lenders. Workers can set up direct deposit of earned wages via their Gusto account, and select their payday preference – even if it’s the next day. Currently available in Texas, Flexible Pay is expected to be available in other states over the course of 2018.

“Flexible Pay lets employees decide when they want to get paid for the work they’ve already done without additional cost to employers,” Reeves explained. “It’s the way we believe everyone will get paid in the future.”

Demonstrating its platform as ZenPayroll at FinovateSpring 2014, the company rebranded as Gusto in the fall of 2015, and announced the integration of health benefit and workers’ compensation management into its payroll offering. This provided businesses with a single unified service for both workers and employers. Gusto reports that 70% of its customers run payroll in five minutes or less, with 93% of them favorably comparing Gusto to traditional payroll service providers. The technology integrates with popular accounting platforms like Quickbooks, Xero, and TSheets, and the service is tiered to enable businesses of varying sizes to select the most cost- and feature-appropriate offering. This includes a freemium offering, HR Basics, launched this spring which gives small businesses a set of human resource tools for free, enabling them to manage worker vacation time and onboard new employees quicker.

Just a few weeks ago, Gusto introduced its own “Yelp for Accountants” partner directory to help SMEs find and hire accounting talent that specializes in the needs of small businesses. Named to the Forbes Fintech 50 for a second time earlier this year, Gusto began 2018 announcing a new partnership with accounting platform, Aplos.

Founded in 2011, Gusto serves more than 60,000 businesses in the U.S. and more than one percent of all U.S. employers. The company has raised more than $176 million in funding and includes CapitalG; General Catalyst; Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers; Emergence Capital Partners; and GV among its investors.