Author: David Penn

savedroid Announces ICO Launch, New Equity Funding

savedroid Announces ICO Launch, New Equity Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: savedroid

 

AI savings technology innovator savedroid is leveraging the booming interest in crypto currencies to raise capital: both crypto and conventional.

On the crypto-fundraising side, savedroid announced the beginning of its ICO in February. The company noted that the pre-sale of the savedroid token featured more than 3,800 backers and sold out within seven hours.

“savedroid’s vision to connect the technical crypto world with the average user by leveraging the latest technology to provide easy access to crypto currencies has convinced me,” said crypto entrepreneur Dennis Weidner, an investor in savedroid. “Given their track record and the experience of the management team I want to support the successful scaling of the business model with my investment and thereby realize my dream of a unique and independent crypto ecosystem.”

On the more conventional fundraising side, savedroid announced a new equity investment of ($1.84 million) €1.5 million from the Investment and Economic Development Bank of Rheinland-Pfalz (ISB), Weidner, serial fintech investor Alfred Schorno, and others. The new funding will be used to help grow the savedroid’s technology and operations to better support crypto saving and investing. The company’s total capital stands at more than $4.29 million (€3.5 million.)

“savedroid offers a convincing and globally scalable business model,” Schorno said. “Their AI-based app enables users to successfully overcome their weaker self and consistently save money, which is a very strong value proposition.”

Founded in 2015, and headquartered in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, savedroid demonstrated its algorithm-based savings technology at FinovateSpring 2016, simultaneously injecting a new term, “smooves,” into the fintech lexicon. By turning everyday activities into automated savings opportunities, savedroid’s app enables users to improve their lifestyle and their savings at the same time. savedroid founder and CEO Dr. Yassin Hankir discussed his company’s technology and the future of savings technology in our feature on savings tech last spring.

The company’s recent embrace of crypto currencies is designed to democratize cryptocurrency savings and investment by providing ready access to cryptocurrency-based savings and investment plans including portfolios, futures, and ICOs. savedroid anticipates making its cryptocurrency-based savings plans available in mid-2018, with switching and credit card payments added in 2019, and smart investments in crypto-based portfolios, derivatives, and ICOs to be integrated in 2020.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Blackhawk Network, EVRY, Finastra, FIS

On Finovate.com

  • Blackhawk Network Acquired by Silver Lake, P2 Capital Partners in $3.5 Billion Deal.

Around the web

  • FIS partners with Australia’s ME Bank to serve as card platform provider.
  • Finastra launches Future of Banking Center of Excellence at Cyberport in Hong Kong.
  • Swedbank Norway and EVRY renew core banking contract.

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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Fintech News from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)

Fintech News from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateMiddleEast 2018

Image by Tamer Fahmy

As Finovate prepares for its first conference in the Middle East, here’s a round up of recent fintech news and need-to-knows from the MENA region. Learn more about how to join us in Dubai in February for FinovateMiddleEast.

  • Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) and Bahrain Economic Development Board (EDB) forge fintech cooperation agreement, the first of its kind for the MENA region.
  • Batelco and Arab Financial Services launch new digital mobile wallet and payment solution, bWallet.
  • Egyptian fintech Moneyfellows raises $600,000 in new funding in round led by Dubai Angel Investors and 500 Startups.

MENA Fintech Fact:

  • Jordan’s Central Bank reports online payments through online bill payment service eFAWATEER.com increased by 5x in 2017, topping JD3.3 billion ($4.6 billion)
  • Islamic bank Kuwait Finance House-Bahrian (KFH) organizes FinTech Training Program.
  • Emirates NBD announces plans to introduce battery-powered smart payments cards developed by U.S.-based fintech Dynamics.

Thought Leadership – Writing about trends in global Islamic finance in Daily Fintech, Arunkumar Krishnakumar asks:  “Would the digitization drive overcome a lack of standards?”

Although the Fintech Fever hit the West over the last few years, the uptake to digitization in the Islamic Finance world has been relatively slow. Over the last year or so, this trend has been changing, and 2018 is expected to be the year when Islamic Fintech players will start emerging across the world and not just in the Islamic countries.

  • Ethereum-based blockchain venture studio ConsenSys opens office in Dubai Design District.
  • Fintech News Middle East lists its 9 Fintech Startups in the Middle East to Watch in 2018.
  • Worldpay teams up with payments provider iyzico to aide in expansion into Turkish market.

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Blooom: Fighting Fraud in the World of the 401(k)

Blooom: Fighting Fraud in the World of the 401(k)
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: blooom

If the idea of a hacker getting access to your bank account is scary, imagine learning that a cybercriminal has hacked into your 401(k).

That’s the kind of anxiety independent robo advisor blooom is guarding against with the introduction of its new Suspicious Activity Alerts feature. The technology continuously monitors user’s 401(k), 403(b), and similar employer-sponsored retirements accounts for withdrawals or loans. If suspicious activity is detected, the solution sends the customer an alert by text message.

“The 401(k) is often a person’s single largest financial asset,” blooom CEO and co-founder Chris Costello said. “bloom is committed to safeguarding your right to retire. Whether it’s exposing and minimizing hidden investment fees or identifying suspicious activity, blooom serves one person: the individual.”

Founded in 2013, blooom demonstrated its robo advisory platform at FinovateFall 2014. Geared specifically for the employer-sponsored retirement market, Blooom provides free 401(k) analysis and charges a flat fee of $10 a month for basic 401(k) management and monitoring – including the Suspicious Activity Alerts feature. Additional 401(k)s can be added for $7.50 per month. Blooom automatically rebalances and adjusts the investment allocation based on the user’s general investment preferences (i.e., stock vs. bond mix) and goals (i.e., time-until-retirement). The company also offers access to human financial professionals to provide planning advice beyond the 401(k).

Blooom’s approach seems to be working. The company announced last fall that it surpassed the $1 billion assets under management milestone, doing so faster than any other independent robo advisor including both Betterment and Wealthfront. In a blog post discussing the milestone, Costello pointed to the application of readily available technology to the often-overlooked world of employer-sponsored retirement accounts as key to blooom’s growth and success.

“There has been ‘off-the-shelf’ technology that has existed for upwards of 10 years that can automate things like the construction of a portfolio allocation, rebalancing a portfolio, and even tax-loss harvesting,” Costello wrote. “But nothing existed to perform this kind of automation when it comes to the 401(k) space – where accounts are spread out over dozens and dozens of different financial institutions. Until now.”

With more than $13 million in total funding, blooom includes QED Investors, Industry Ventures, Commerce Ventures, Allianz Life Insurance, TTV Capital, and Nationwide Insurance among its investors. The company is based in Overland Park, Kansas.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: AutoGravity, blooom, Lendio, SynapseFi

On Finovate.com

  • Blooom: Fighting Fraud in the World of the 401(k).

Around the web

  • Forbes looks at how AutoGravity is “building the Expedia of car buying and financing.”
  • Lendio earns spot on Entrepreneur’s Franchise 500.
  • SynapseFi announces support for interchange processing for debit and credit card transactions.

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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Gusto Partners with Accounting Platform Aplos

Gusto Partners with Accounting Platform Aplos
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Gusto

Accounting software provider Aplos has teamed up with payroll processing specialist Gusto to offer an integrated, back office financial and HR solution for Aplos’s nonprofit and faith-based organization client base.

“We are thrilled to expand our support of nonprofits by partnering with Aplos,” Gusto Head of Partnership Development Mike Triantos said. “Gusto and Aplos share the same vision by making it simpler to manage nonprofits and churches so they can focus on their core mission.”

The strategic partnership between the two companies will enable Aplos customers to import Gusto payroll runs into their accounting without requiring a manual export/import process. The cloud-based solution calculates, pays, and files federal, state and local payroll taxes, and manages W2, 1099, and new hire forms. In a statement, Aplos CEO Tim Goetz pointed out that Gusto was even able to factor in pastoral housing allowances and other more esoteric church financing arrangements

“When you are trying to change the world you don’t want to get stuck doing paperwork,” Goetz said. “This partnership with Gusto eliminates countless hours of administrative time.” He added that nine out of ten Aplos customers preferred Gusto over other payroll solutions. “I truly believe our nonprofit and church customers will feel this partnership makes their jobs easier so they can put their focus back on their mission.”

Founded in 2011 as ZenPayroll, the company demonstrated its payroll processing technology at FinovateSpring 2014. Rebranding as Gusto a year later, the San Francisco, California-based fintech has since partnered with firms like Capital One, raised more than $176 million in funding, and now serves more than 40,000 companies across the U.S. Gusto was named to CB Insights’ Fintech 250 list in June, and was featured in Business Insider as one of “3 startups to bet your careers on in 2017” last January.

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Kreditech Leverages Mambu’s Banking Technology for Expansion to Indian Market

Kreditech Leverages Mambu’s Banking Technology for Expansion to Indian Market
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Kreditech, Mambu

Kreditech has selected Mambu’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) banking engine for its push into India’s lending market, reports Antony Peyton of Banking Technology (Finovate’s sister publication.)

The firm currently operates in Europe and Latin America and said it will expand into the sub-continent in early 2018, together with its partner PayU, a payments provider and a Mambu client in Latin America.

The engine will let Kreditech launch a short-term lending product tailored to local consumer and regulatory needs.

Alexander Graubner-Müller, CEO of Kreditech, said by using “alternative data and self-learning algorithms, we are able to evaluate consumers whose credit history is difficult for banks to gauge” – and it offers them “access to loans and thereby help them to gain economic independence”.

He added that Mambu’s cloud-native solution “easily integrates into our architecture, allowing us to quickly scale and adapt to market and consumer demands”.

The loan product is expected to go live in the first quarter of 2018, all data will be hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS) India.

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, Kreditech covers more than five markets, including Russia, Mexico, Spain and Poland. Up until now, the company says it has processed more than five million loan applications through its subsidiaries. Kreditech demonstrated its the effectiveness of its Kreditech algorithm that assesses client creditworthiness in less than a minute at FinovateSpring 2014.

A FinovateAsia alum, Mambu demonstrated its native cloud Saas banking application at our Singapore conference in 2013. Based in Berlin and founded in 2011, Mambu has forged partnerships with a number of FIs and fintechs in recent months including a deal with ABN Amro’s new fintech firm, New10 in October, and a deployment with German challenger bank, N26 announced in September.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Alfa-Bank, Featurespace, Gusto, ID.me, identitii, Klarna, PayStand, Realty Mogul, Ripple, Roostify, Scalable Capital, Truphone

On the web

  • Scalable Capital Launches in Switzerland.
  • Gusto Partners with Accounting Platform Aplos.
  • Alfa-Bank Collaborates with HashCash to Bring Domestic Payments to the Blockchain.
  • ID.me Powering Single-Sign On for VFW’s Digital Platforms

Around the web

  • ACI Worldwide announces its UP Merchant Payments solution now available as a cloud-based service.
  • Truphone, Featurespace and PayStand win spots on The Silicon Review’s 50 Smartest Companies list for 2017.
  • Bank Info Security features Nick Armstrong, CEO and founder of identitii.
  • Walmart Labs veteran Adnan Habib joins Roostify as VP of Engineering.
  • Realty Mogul appoints interim Chief Investment Officer Chris Fraley as its official CIO.
  • Klarna extends its partnership with ACI Worldwide.

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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TransferWise Brings New Multi-Currency Borderless Accounts with Debit Cards to Public

TransferWise Brings New Multi-Currency Borderless Accounts with Debit Cards to Public
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: TransferWise

 

TransferWise announced that the new multi-currency account it initially introduced to businesses last year will be rolled out to consumers in the first quarter of 2018. The borderless accounts enable users to hold and convert up to 28 currencies at the real exchange rate; get bank details instantly from the U.K., E.U., Australia, and the U.S.; and to receive money transferred from abroad in GBP, EUR, AUD, and USD for free.

They are also free to open and do not require an overseas address. New users get a British account number and sort code, a European IBAN, an Australian account number and BSB code, and an American account number and routing number. There is a small fee for converting across currencies and for cash withdrawals, but there are no charges for monthly setup or receiving fees.

“Multi-currency accounts have been available from banks at extortionate prices for years, but for the first time we’re bringing true, multi-country banking – with real bank details in key currencies – to any one who needs it,” said TransferWise co-founder and chairman Taavet Hinrikus.

TransferWise made borderless accounts available to business customers as of May of last year, but did not come with the debit card the 2018 offering will have. The company told TechCrunch that the accounts are best thought of as a “companion account that solves a couple of different but fundamental problems.” Business Insider suggested that the account and debit card combo from TransferWise will help the company serve what it called the “competitive travel money market” as well as a counter to the challenge of fintechs like Revolut and its low-fee foreign exchange card.

The news from TransferWise comes just a few months after the company’s successful $280 million Series E round led by Old Mutual Global Investors. This added to the company’s valuation, last reported at $1.1 billion in 2017. Founded in 2010 and headquartered in London, U.K., TransferWise demonstrated its platform at FinovateEurope 2013. The company was named to the European Fintech 100 in September, along with several of its fellow Finovate alums, and earned a spot on CB Insights Fintech 250 list. In July, TransferWise announced that co-founder Kristo Kaarmann would take over as CEO from Taavet Hinrikus, who transitioned to the role of chairman.

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Alkami Scores $70 Million in Series D Funding

Alkami Scores $70 Million in Series D Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alkami Technology, Funding

In a round led by General Atlantic, and featuring participation from current investors S3 Ventures and Argonaut Private Equity, digital banking solutions provider Alkami has raised $70 million in new funding. The Series D round, which represents a strategic investment in the company, takes Alkami’s total capital to more than $116 million.

“In an era of digital transformation, our clients, who consist of credit unions and banks in the U.S., count on Alkami to inspire and power their digital strategies through enhancing value, growth, service, efficiency and relationships,” Alkami CEO Mike Hansen said. He added that the strategic investment from General Atlantic will “accelerate the delivery of our world-class technology and innovative solutions to our clients, ensuring Alkami remains synonymous with digital transformation in finance.”

Alkami enables financial institutions to take advantage of the latest trends in online and mobile banking technology through its cloud-based digital banking platform. With more than 4.5 million users across its community bank and credit union client base, Alkami provides a unified solution that works across devices and channels to deliver retail and business banking services, billpay, PFM, marketing, and more.

As part of the strategic investment, Raph Osnoss and Gene Lockhart will join Alkami’s board of directors. Lockhart is a Special Advisor of General Atlantic and former President and CEO of MasterCard Worldwide. He is also Chairman and Managing Partner of MissionOG, a technology investor that also participated in Alkami’s Series D. Osnoss is Vice President of General Atlantic, and praised Alkami’s “vision, technology, client success, and business model” as well as the way the fintech helped FIs better engage with their customers.

“Digital banking needs are evolving along with consumer and business behaviors,” Osnoss said. “And we believe Alkami is at the center of this industry-wide shift.”

Plano, Texas-based Alkami made its first Finovate appearance in 2009 as iThryv. In November, the company was highlighted as the 13th fastest growing company in Dallas by Southern Methodist University’s Cox Dallas 100 and ranked 66th fastest growing company in North America by Deloitte’s 2017 Technology Fast 500. Alkami announced a deployment of its digital banking platform with Veridian Credit Union ($3.4 billion in assets) late last fall, and in August, the company inked a deal with Mountain America Credit Union ($6.7 billion in assets) to integrate its digital banking technology with Mountain America’s existing core system.

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Urban FT and Fortress Plus to Co-Market Digital Banking, Fraud Prevention to Community Banks

Urban FT and Fortress Plus to Co-Market Digital Banking, Fraud Prevention to Community Banks
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Urban FT

If you are a community bank or credit union, the new partnership between Urban FT and Connecticut-based Fortress Plus means it just got a lot easier to add digital banking services and state-of-the-art fraud protection at the same time.

Fortress Plus’s Rampart Intelligence Platform uses big data and behavior-based adaptive analytics to monitor and identify fraud in different channels and among different payment types. Urban FT provides a mobile banking solution that enables community banks to leverage proprietary technology to display information from traditional websites into their mobile websites and banking apps. The decision to work together, in the words of Urban FT CEO Richard Steggall, represents a shared “dedication to strengthening America’s community financial institutions.”

“Our agreement pulls together two key elements of what today’s smaller FIs need to combat the challenge of big banks and nonbanks – an easily implementable, cost-effective mobile banking solution offering exceptional UX and best-in-breed fraud prevention solutions that protect FIs from fraudsters who prey on them,” Steggall said.

“By co-marketing, we bring our respective best-in-breed solutions to more financial institutions that need and deserve the advantages we offer,” Fortress Plus President Jeff Whelton added, “(that is) big bank-grade quality that’s accessible and affordable for financial institutions of any size.”

Founded in 2013, New York-based Urban FT demonstrated its Urban FT Workshop at FinovateFall 2016. The workshop is a real-time, multi-tier mobile app management platform that gives FIs and FSOs the ability to design, brand, and launch mobile banking apps without coding. Available as a managed service, SaaS, online or via API, Urban FT’s technology is used by 10% of those U.S.-based FIs with assets of more than $25 million. The company acquired mobile banking technology company iParse in July of last year. In April, Urban FT partnered with technology service provider T-Cetra to make it easier for customers to top-up prepaid wireless service.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Baker Hill, Dynamics, eToro, Kapitall, Klarna, Kyckr, Motif Investing, Narrative Science, Taulia

On Finovate.com

  • Dynamics Leverages Sprint’s Wireless Network for New IoT Connected Card.
  • Kyckr Lands Global Payment Provider Client.

Around the web

  • Taulia announces milestone, accelerating $1 billion in invoices in a single day.
  • Klarna extends partnership with ACI Worldwide, now reaching 10 major markets including the U.S. and U.K.
  • Marquette Bank ($1.6 billion in assets) builds on existing relationship with Baker Hill by adding risk management, loan origination and other solutions.
  • Datanami highlights Narrative Science’s natural language processing tech.
  • Disruptor Daily names eToro, Motif, Kapitall among 9 companies to watch in 2018.

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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