Author: David Penn

Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BehavioSec, Kantox, Memento, nCino, Pindrop Security, Ping Identity, Ripple, Urban FT, Zenmonics

On Finovate.com

  • East vs. East: A Comparison of Regional Fintech Trends.
  • BehavioSec Brings Behavioral Biometrics to Identity Management Specialist Crossmatch.
  • Memento Partners with Islandsbanki to Add Money Pool Feature to Digital Wallet.

Around the web

  • Quid looks at Salesforce Ignite’s implementation of its data visualization technology.
  • NBC News features Ping Identity chief information security officer Robb Reck with tips on being safe on Cyber Monday.
  • Zenmonics’ digital account opening technology wins endorsement from American Bankers Association.
  • BAI Banking Strategies podcast interviews nCino CMO Jonathan Rowe.
  • Business Insider features Pindrop and Ripple in roster of startups that will boom in 2018 – as selected by leading VCs.
  • PYMNTS.com interviews Urban FT co-founder Kasey Kaplan.
  • Kantox boosts currency portfolio from 35 to 92, adding markets in Latin America and Asia.

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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De Volksbank Migrates More than 120,000 Investment Accounts to Ohpen

De Volksbank Migrates More than 120,000 Investment Accounts to Ohpen
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Ohpen

De Volksbank, a retail and SME bank in the Netherlands, has migrated over 122,000 investment accounts to Ohpen’s core banking platform, reports Tanya Andreasyan of Banking Technology, Finovate’s sister publication.

Ohpen says the bank “has now completely and seamlessly integrated its investment services into its internet banking environments” using the vendor’s API.

“All investment processes – from the opening and maintenance of an investment account, to order execution and portfolio management – from the different internet banking environments of ASN Bank, BLG Wonen, RegioBank and SNS [de Volksbank’s brands] are managed in Ohpen’s core banking platform,” the vendor states.

Alexander Baas, COO at de Volksbank, describes the migration as “smooth”.

De Volksbank carries multiple brands with a single back office and IT organisation. The product range consists of three core product groups: payments, mortgages and savings. De Volksbank has a balance sheet total of €62 billion and about 3,500 employees.

Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Ohpen demonstrated its core banking platform at FinovateFall 2012. The company picked up an investment of $17 million earlier this year in a Series B round led by Amerborgh. Chris Zadeh is founder and CEO.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FICO, Revolut, Yoyo

Around the web

  • Revolut reaches one million customer milestone.
  • Starling Bank partners with Yoyo Wallet, enabling cardholders to earn loyalty points when paying with the challenger bank.
  • African Bank to deploy new technology from FICO to centralize credit decision management.

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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BankBazaar CEO Honored at India FinTech Awards 2017

BankBazaar CEO Honored at India FinTech Awards 2017
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BankBazaar

Adhil Shetty, CEO of BankBazaar, was recognized by the India FinTech Awards 2017 earlier this month. Shetty was named Fintech Leader of the Year at the event, which featured more than 200 attendees, more than 40 speakers, and 20 shortlisted startups from six countries.

“Today, paperless, presenceless transactions are becoming the face of digital finance,” Shetty said. “It is heartening to see our vision of paperless access to all financial products for every Indian being accepted and validated not just by our customers and partners but also by the industry experts at IFTA 2017.”

Sponsored by the India FinTech forum, which seeks to highlight the growing fintech community in India and ensure its role in driving fintech innovation worldwide, the India FinTech Awards is the largest, demo-based, fintech event in India. This year’s presentation included product demonstrations by 20 companies, with the winner earning a spot on stage at the Paris Fintech Forum in January 2018.

BankBazaar CEO Adhil Shetty receiving an award for Fintech Leader of the Year at the India FinTech Awards 2017.

This year’s top honors went to ZestMoney, which was awarded Fintech Startup of the Year, and its CEO and co-founder Lizzie Chapman, who was recognized as Woman Leader in Fintech. Chapman called the Startup of the Year award “recognition of the hard work we have put into building a product and platform that completely changes the way people access credit in this market.”

ZestMoney enables consumers to pay using digital EMI (equated monthly installment), avoiding the need for credit cards and credit scores. Headquartered in Bangalore, India and founded in 2015, the company has raised more than $8 million in funding and includes PayU and Omidyar Network among its investors.

Kickstart Accelerator and YES Fintech won the Accelerator of the Year award.  Also honored at the event was InstaReM, a cross-border remittance and money transfer startup founded in 2014, that participated in our FinovateAsia Startup Showcase earlier this month. InstaReM was recognized as a Fintech Rising Star at IFTA 2017, along with fellow contestants Niki.ai and Zeta. Finovate alum FixNix also participated in the competition.

The good news for BankBazaar comes at the same time the company announced a series of new upgrades to its mobile app. These enhancements include gold, silver, and fuel rate trackers, as well as personalized graphs and visualizations to better see and understand expenses. The app, which has garnered more than one million downloads, will also aggregate a number of features onto a single interface for easier use. “Our mission has been to help consumers access the right financial products and make their financial journey simpler,” Rati Shetty, Chief Product Officer for BankBazaar told DataQuest.

Last month, BankBazaar announced closing a $30 million funding round led by Experian. The two companies have partnered to develop a Credit Score Tracker that gives Indian consumers a secure free credit score as well as educational information on how to use financial planning to improve credit scores.

“There is a natural synergy between the world’s largest information management company and one of the fasted growing fintech companies,” Shetty said. “The funds from this round will be used to further strengthen our position as the leader in secure, paperless access to loans, cards, and mutual funds.” The investment brings BankBazaar’s total funding to $110 million.

Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Chennai, India, BankBazaar demonstrated its Real Time Credit Processing Platform at FinovateAsia 2012 in Singapore.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, BankBazaar, Fiserv, PayPal, ThreatMetrix, TickSmith

On Finovate.com

  • BankBazaar CEO Honored at India FinTech Awards 2017.

Around the web

  • ACI Worldwide inks licensing agreement with Payworks.
  • PayPal introduces new Invoicing Extension for with Facebook Messenger.
  • Commercial Bank of Ceylon embraces digital banking solution from Fiserv.
  • ThreatMetrix boosts speed, improves accuracy and reliability with Winter 2018 release of its digital identity network.

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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SumUp Partners with BancoEstado to Boost Mobile Card Acceptance in Chile

SumUp Partners with BancoEstado to Boost Mobile Card Acceptance in Chile
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: SumUp

SMEs in Chile have just won a new ally when it comes to making it easier to accept mobile card payments. The country’s largest national bank, BancoEstado de Chile, has partnered with SumUp to launch a joint venture that will give Chilean businesses the ability to offer “anytime, anywhere” mobile card acceptance without fees or contracts.

The joint venture, branded Compraqui, will be based in Santiago de Chile and leverages SumUp’s success in developing mobile Point of Sale (mPOS) solutions for more than 30 markets in Europe and the Americas. The companies believe that the combination of SumUp’s technology and BancoEstado’s history of providing financial services to Chile’s SME community will boost the number of card acceptance points to 1.5 million in the next three years.

“This is a milestone for the small business sector in Chile,” SumUp CEO Daniel Klein said. “We truly disrupt the existing market for card acceptance through Compraqui’s unique offering. It represents each company’s strong commitment to provide business owners with easy access to card payment technology to ultimately increase their revenue.”

According to Gerente General of BancoEstado Jessica López Saffie, the need for card acceptance solutions in Chile for small businesses is significant. “Together we address more than 600,000 SMEs and 1.2 million sole proprietors who currently cannot accept card payments,” she said, adding that the bank chose SumUp as a partner after a careful examination of the competition.

“We ran a comprehensive selection process, evaluating many card acceptance solutions,” López Saffie said. “With a proven business model and a market-leading end-to-end card acceptance solution providing highest security standards, SumUp came out at the top of this process.”

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in the U.K., SumUp demonstrated its mPOS technology at FinovateEurope 2013. The company unveiled its new online payments suite this summer, which added the ability to accept payments via SMS; a Virtual Terminal to enable online, CNP transactions; as well as a set of APIs and SDKs for additional payment integrations.

SumUp has more than $100 million in annual revenue, processes more than 100,000 card transactions daily, and 2,000 new businesses joining its service every day. With more than $44 million in total funding, SumUp includes Life.SREDA and BBVA Ventures among its investors.

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Sensory Partners with Fujitsu to Bring Biometrics to Mizuho’s Mobile Banking

Sensory Partners with Fujitsu to Bring Biometrics to Mizuho’s Mobile Banking
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Sensory

Fujitsu has teamed with Silicon Valley-based Sensory to provide face biometric authentication for Mizuho’s mobile banking, reports Antony Peyton of Banking Technology (Finovate’s sister publication).

Mizuho is the first customer of the Fujitsu and Sensory partnership and it will be using TrulySecure. This solution’s features include the option to fuse voice and face biometrics recognition together; and it works with Android, iOS, Linux and other platforms.

It also has convolutional neural net technology running on the device – so it does not store biometric info in the cloud. In addition, TrulySecure’s “anti-spoofing approach” prevents unauthorized users from gaining access with photos or videos of enrolled users.

Michihiko Ejiri, VP of front digital service business division at Fujitsu, says working with Sensory has “allowed us to help our customers around the world improve the user experience provided by their apps by integrating face biometric authentication technologies into them”.

Left to right: Sensory’s Jeff Rogers (Vice President) and Todd Mozer (CEO and President) demonstrating TrulySecure at FinovateFall 2017.

Sensory reckons digital commerce and banking apps have moved toward mobile payment and wallet applications. In turn, this demand has created a need for fraud and theft prevention technology that is “frictionless to the end user”.

It also cites research from Markets and Markets that the global facial recognition market is expected to grow from $4.05 billion in 2017 to $7.76 billion by 2022, with banking, financial services, insurance, retail and healthcare being major growth areas.

“Supported by the rapid growth in adoption that our TrulySecure face recognition technology is seeing among banking apps, mobile phones, and more,” Sensory CEO Todd Mozer said, “our research has found that consumers prefer the user authentication experience offered by face biometrics.”  Mozer highlighted speed, accuracy, and convenience among the top reasons why customers appreciate Sensory’s technology.

Founded in 1994 and headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Sensory demonstrated its TrulySecure bank teller chatbot with biometrics solution at FinovateFall 2017. The company announced last month that its TrulyHandsFree voice control technology would serve as an Alexa trigger for Garmin Speak. And in September, the company’s TrulySecure facial recognition technology was added to LG’s flagship V30 smartphone, as well as LG’s Q6 and G6 models.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Diebold, Fenergo, SumUp

On Finovate.com

  • SumUp Partners with BancoEstado to Boost Mobile Card Acceptance in Chile.

Around the web

  • New software and cash recycling technology from Diebold Nixdorf to support an upgrade of 400 ATMs by Turkey’s VakifBank.
  • ACI Worldwide teams up with Zelle to bring real-time payments to FIs.
  • BNP Paribas to deploy Fenergo’s Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution.

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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Digital Experience Specialist Configo Launches Cloud Environment

Digital Experience Specialist Configo Launches Cloud Environment
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Configo

Less than one year after making its debut at FinovateEurope, digital sales and engagement specialist Configo is taking its technology to the cloud. The company is making its Live Experience Platform – which gives FIs the ability to create customer-centric, personalized digital experiences – available as a SaaS solution.

Until now, Configo’s platform was installed on-premise. The new cloud environment duplicates the on-premise platform, providing the same capture, tag, and trigger, code-free interface that allows FIs to add automated, contextual, personalized messages to their mobile banking apps to boost engagement and drive sales.

“It gives you total control of the whole mobile experience,” Configo CEO and co-founder Yosi Dahan said during his Finovate demo in February. “It makes your mobile application dynamic and allows you to provide different audiences with the right content in real-time.”

Left to right: Configo co-founders Natan Abramov (CTO) and Yosi Dahan (CEO) demonstrating Configo Live Experience at FinovateEurope 2017.

Configo’s Live Experience Platform enables FIs to launch in-app campaigns without the long R&D process. Dahan explained that having to write additional code and submit apps to the app stores every time an institution wants to add a task or make an update to an app can be time-consuming and costly. In contrast, Configo leverages their unique technology that enables the user to manipulate UI images themselves, making app updates easier and faster to complete.

The company has picked up some positive feedback from early adopters of the technology, including a pilot project with an online travel booking system that used the solution to support a campaign to up-sell customers to business class. E-commerce trials like these, Dahan suggested, were especially valuable during the development process. “You cannot get the same feedback when you work with financial institutions,” he said.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, Configo demonstrated its Live Mobile Experience at FinovateEurope 2017. The company introduced its Partner Program in July, and launched its Live App Editor in February. Check out our feature on Configo and find out how the company turns more than nine years of mobile app development experience into a platform that helps FIs get app changes to market faster.

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Jwaala Acquired by Alogent

Jwaala Acquired by Alogent
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Jwaala, Mergers & Acquisitions

 

U.S. firm Alogent has acquired a Texas-based digital banking tech vendor, Jwaala, for an undisclosed amount, reports Antony Peyton of Banking Technology (Finovate’s sister publication).

Alogent, which is based in the U.S. state of Georgia, said it will continue to support Jwaala’s collection of solutions, which will be marketed under the new name, Alogent Digital.

Dede Wakefield, Alogent CEO, described the acquisition as “the next major step forward in our mission to digitize and automate the financial services world”, with Jwaala’s platform bringing a “significant foundational set of capabilities”.

“We believe deeply in our unique approach to digital banking,” Jwaala founding partner and CTO Andrew Taylor added. “And we expect tremendous new growth opportunities as part of a company as agile, innovative, and dynamic as Alogent.”

As reported last year, U.S.-based banking software vendor, Jack Henry & Associates, shed its deposit automation business, Goldleaf Enterprise Payments (formerly Alogent Corporation).

The buyer was Battery Ventures, a US/Israeli venture capital and private equity firm. With that deal, the company regained its former name – Alogent.

In terms of Alogent’s current back office software, this focuses on electronically capturing, processing and analyzing check data and images, including those captured on mobile devices.

Its customers range from small community banks and startups to top tier banks, and it is the latter segment that will be the company’s key focus with the arrival of Battery Ventures.

Founded in 2006, Jwaala demonstrated its MoneyTracker PFM solution at FinovateSpring 2009. In August, the company announced that Alaska USA FCU with more than 625,000 members and more than $7 billion in assets would deploy Jwaala’s Ignite platform. The company began the year with news that United Nations FCU had picked Jwaala’s Ignite as its new digital banking platform.

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Backbase Omnichannel Banking Powers France’s Mobile-Only Orange Bank

Backbase Omnichannel Banking Powers France’s Mobile-Only Orange Bank
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Backbase

France’s latest mobile-only bank, Orange Bank, has gone live on Backbase’s Omnichannel Banking Platform, reports Antony Peyton of Banking Technology (Finovate’s sister publication).

Backbase said Orange is the only French bank to offer for free a service that provides real-time balances, mobile payments, and a virtual adviser that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Orange Bank was finally launched on 2 November after considerable delays.

Backbase CEO Jouk Pleiter demonstrating Your Everyday Bank at FinovateEurope 2017.

As Banking Technology reported in January 2016, Orange outlined its plans for a new bank. In April 2016, Orange made a significant stride in its mobile banking ambitions by acquiring a majority stake in financial services firm Groupama. At present, Orange owns 65% of the capital of Orange Bank and Groupama 35%.

However, there was a hitch in June, when Orange put the brakes on its plans after finding the proposition didn’t quite meet the standards.

In October, the drama appeared to be over as a spokesman for Orange said “the commercial launch will take place on 2 November,” confirming an earlier report by French newspaper La Tribune. They weren’t lying as it went live on that date.

In terms of the new bank, customers can subscribe directly from the mobile application, online, or in one of Orange’s 140 certified stores.

Naturally, Orange is looking to attract its 30 million customers in France to its new bank. In fact, it is present in 29 countries, and according to the group has a customer base of 263 million customers worldwide as of 31 December 2016, including 202 million mobile customers and 18 million fixed broadband customers.

Earlier this month, Orange Bank said it was getting its mobile payment and banking services underpinned by Wirecard.

The paytech vendor said it is providing “all the technical components integrated into the Orange Bank platform to manage their mobile payments”.

Backbase was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The company won a Best of Show award for its demo of Your Everyday Bank at FinovateEurope 2017, which showed how banks can leverage big data and artificial intelligence to create “next-generation customer journeys”. Earlier this year, Backbase partnered with fellow Finovate alum eWise, combining Backbase’s Open Banking Marketplace with eWise’s account aggregation technology.

Named to the European Fintech 100 and noted as a leader in digital banking solutions by Forrester, Backbase announced a partnership with Norway’s SSF Bank in June and a deal to power digital banking for Zensar Technologies in May. Jouk Pleiter is co-founder and CEO.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Avoka, BBVA, Configo, Doxo, Fiserv, Meniga, Realty Mogul, VISA

On Finovate.com

  • Digital Experience Specialist Configo Launches Cloud Environment.

Around the web

  • Spanish bank IberCaja deploys digital banking technology from Meniga.
  • Fiserv to help prepare European banks for transition to real-time payments.
  • BBVA and Samsung partner to bring iris scanning technology to smartphones.
  • VISA announces bank partnerships in preparation for Visa B2B Connect commercial launch in 2018.
  • Everest Group names billpay service specialist doxo to list of Top 40 FinTech Trailblazers.
  • FST Media interviews Avoka Chief Experience Officer Derek Corcoran.
  • RealtyMogul wins Gold Stevie Award for Company of the Year in the Consumer Services category.

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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