Author: David Penn

Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: AutoGravity, Coinbase, Efigence, Icon Solutions, Infosys, Realty Mogul, Roostify

On Finovate.com

  • Roostify Celebrates Growth, Role of External Developers on its Platform.
  • Emirates NBD Enlists Efigence for UX/UI Makeover.

Around the web

  • Icon Solutions initiates functional testing between the Instant Payments Framework and EBA Clearing’s RT1 platform.
  • Infosys to acquire product design and CX specialist, Brilliant Basics.
  • TechCrunch: Coinbase to provide support for Bitcoin Bash in 2018.
  • RealtyMogul.com celebrates the first anniversary of the first crowdfunded REIT, MogulREIT 1.
  • AutoGravity announces reaching 500,000 download milestone for its app.

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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Huntington National Bank Chooses PFM, BFM Solutions from Barcelona-Based Strands

Huntington National Bank Chooses PFM, BFM Solutions from Barcelona-Based Strands
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Strands

Columbus, Ohio-based Huntington National Bank will offer personal finance management (PFM) and business financial management (BFM) solutions from Spanish fintech, Strands. “We are pushing the envelope and delivering a product that will align seamlessly to Huntington’s brand and unique digital banking experience,” Strands CEO Erik Brieva said.

For Strands the partnership is both an opportunity to expand in the North American market as well as a chance to further demonstrate its technology’s difference from traditional PFMs. Strands’ technology combines machine learning, Big Data, and a streamlined UI to provide a personalized, data-driven banking experience used by more than 600 banks including BBVA, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of Montreal. Payments and Channels Director for Huntington Mark Sheehan, called Strands a ‘leader” in the industry and said the partnership would enable the bank to bring “new, customer-centric, digital banking solutions” to its customers and further separate its offerings from those of its competitors. Huntington National Bank has $101 billion in assets, a network of nearly 1,000 branches, and more than 1,800 ATMs in eight states in the midwest.

Founded in 2004 and based in Barcelona, Spain, Strands demonstrated its Business Financial Management solution at FinovateFall 2016. The company has more than 600 product implementations, with 100 million users in 36 countries. Strands has raised $55 million in funding, and includes Debaeque, Dalbergia, Indigo Investment Corporation, and Sequel Venture Partners among its investors. This spring, Strands announced it would provide the PFM technology for the digital banking service launched by Commercial Bank of Africa, the largest bank in Kenya. In December, the company inked a PFM implementation deal with major Colombian bank, Davivienda.

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Kabbage Collects $250 Million Investment from SoftBank

Kabbage Collects $250 Million Investment from SoftBank
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Kabbage

Online small business lender Kabbage has raised $250 million in funding from Japan’s SoftBank Group. The capital, which takes Kabbage’s total funding to more than $488 million, will be used to support new lending products for small businesses, as well as “explor(ing) non-lending products and services” for its customers. The partnership with SoftBank will also likely help as Kabbage looks to expand beyond North America and Europe to markets in Asia.

Kabbage co-founder and CEO Rob Frohwein praised SoftBank’s “scale, global reach, relationships, and unparalleled expertise in building transformative industry leaders.” He emphasized Kabbage’s goal of using “real-time and persistent access to data” to give small businesses a range of financial services and said the partnership with SoftBank would “accelerate” the process. SoftBank Managing Director David Thevenon added, “We invested in Kabbage because their unique automated lending platform leverages open data networks and best positions them to empower small businesses around the world.”

Kabbage uses data generated from a wide range of business activity to help provide small businesses with the funding they need to grow. The company offers a line of credit of up to $150,000, with six and 12-month terms, and provides funding decisions within minutes. Kabbage loans have no origination fees or prepayment penalties, and funds can be accessed online, using Kabbage’s mobile app, or with the Kabbage Card.

Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Kabbage demonstrated its Kabbage Card small business line of credit at FinovateSpring 2015. The company was named to CB Insights’ Fintech 250 list in June, and voted one of the best places to work in the U.S. last year, Kabbage surpassed a major milestone in April, topping $3 billion in funding to more than 100,000 small business customers. The company drives automated lending for three of the biggest 50 global banks by asset size: ING, Santander, and Scotiabank, and maintains 1.5 million live connections to customer data.

 

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Fidor Bank, invoiceASAP, Kabbage, MasterCard, PayPal, payworks, Strands

On Finovate.com

  • Kabbage Collects $250 Million Investment from SoftBank.
  • Huntington National Bank Chooses PFM, BFM Solutions from Barcelona-based Strands.

Around the web

  • Mastercard and Paypal deepen Asia Pacific partnership.
  • GlobalOnePay teams up with InvoiceASAP to improve electronic invoicing for SMEs.
  • Fidor Bank launches fintech education program in Singapore.

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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nCino Inks 100th Customer in Pacific Western Bank

nCino Inks 100th Customer in Pacific Western Bank
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: nCino

With all due respects to customers #99 and #101-to-be, congratulations to $21 billion asset Pacific Western Bank for being the 100th FI to deploy the Bank Operating System developed by cloud-banking innovator, nCino. Mark Christian, Operations and Systems Group EVP for Pacific Western credited the relationship between nCino and the bank’s Square 1 division for helping turn the firm into a customer. “The nCino team is knowledgeable, innovative, and responsive,” Christian said, “which combine to make them a valuable new partner to our enterprise.”

nCino EVP of Sales for the Americas Josh Glover pointed to the scalability, security, and cloud-based technology of the company’s solution as reasons why more and more banks like Pacific Western are choosing nCino’s Bank Operating System. “(The technology) will allow the bank to continue to grow efficiently without compromising credit quality or the overall borrower experience,” Glover said.

Built on Salesforce.com, nCino’s Bank Operating System gives banks the ability to centralize data and reporting across divisions on a single, unified platform. The technology combines a number of key services – from CRM, loan origination, workflow, content and business process management to customer engagement and instant reporting – in one secure location, improving both oversight and visibility. “With nCino, your customers get a transparent, digitally-optimized process, quick access to capital, and a true valued long-term relationship with your financial institution,” CMO Jonathan Rowe said during the company’s live demo at FinovateEurope earlier this year. He added, “(And) financial institutions achieve increased loan growth while lowering costs and increasing productivity and maintaining the highest levels of safety and soundness.”

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, nCino demonstrated its Bank Operating System at FinovateEurope 2017. The company recorded its first European customer last month when U.K.-based OakNorth Bank announced it would deploy nCino’s platform. Also in June, nCino expanded the credit analysis functionality of its solution, streamlining the underwriting process for customers. The company announced partnerships with Great Southern Bank and CrossFirst Bank in May, with North State Bank in April, and with Valley National Bank in March. nCino has raised more than $79 million in funding and includes Insight Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures, and Wellington Management among its investors. Pierre Naudé is CEO.

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Conversational AI Comes to USAA Courtesy of Clinc

Conversational AI Comes to USAA Courtesy of Clinc
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Clinc

Clinc’s newly-announced integration with the Alexa skill of USAA will give the 12 million members of the financial service provider access to what the Clinc calls the “first, fully-conversational, AI banking solution.”

“With absolutely no rules or commands to learn, USAA members will enjoy an unexpected, delightful experience that actually feels like an intelligent human interaction,” Clinc CEO Jason Mars explained. “Clinc’s unique approach to conversational AI removes restrictions so consumers can focus on their finances and speak naturally,” he said.

Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Clinc won Best of Show for its demonstration of Finie, a live personal assistant for mobile banking. Finie was an example of the kind of solution that can be built from Clinc’s conversational AI platform. The company’s technology leverages natural language processing, machine learning, and deep neural networks to identify and recognize context, sentiment, and word structure. This enables Clinc to develop solutions that answer users’ follow-up questions, for example, and create technologies that learn and add to their knowledge over time.

USAA members can begin using the solution by registering the USAA skill with Amazon, and syncing their accounts through USAA. Members can also take advantage of a voice PIN option for additional security. Sign up at USAALabs.com.

Pictured: Clinc co-founder and CEO Jason Mars during his live demo of Clinc’s personal assistant for mobile banking technology at FinovateFall 2016.

“This pilot is designed to better replicate the interaction members would have with a USAA service representative on the phone, open new avenues to better serve our members and create more opportunities for our member service representatives to handle more complex member needs,” USAA Labs assistant vice president Darrius Jones said. “What we learn from this pilot will help shape how we view member service in years to come.”

San Antonio, Texas-based USAA has provided financial services to current and former members of the U.S. military and their families since 1922. USAA Labs, launched earlier this year, is designed to give USAA members both access to and opportunity to provide feedback on the firm’s newest technology innovations and exclusive pilot projects. As USAA Labs Strategic Innovations Manager Christee Kahn explained earlier this year in an interview at the USAA Money Matters blog: “(Members) will have the opportunity to vote on specific ideas and concepts developed by our business teams, join pilot programs, provide input and utilize new tools and products that USAA is testing.”

Founded in 2015 by University of Michigan professors Jason Mars (CEO), Lingjia Tang (CSO), Michael Laurenzano (CTO), and Johann Hauswald (Chief Architect), Clinc demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2016, winning Best of Show. The company raised $6 million in funding in February, boosting its total capital to $7.75 million. Mars participated in our spring webinar, How to Make it In the Fintech Industry: Three Success Stories, along with Jeff Cain, Director of the Envestnet | Yodlee incubator and Moven CTO Kumar Ampani. The company raised $6 million in funding in February, boosting its total capital to $7.75 million.

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Juvo Raises $40 Million in Round Led by NEA, Wing Venture Capital

Juvo Raises $40 Million in Round Led by NEA, Wing Venture Capital
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Juvo

In a round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Wing Venture Capital, mobile identity scoring specialist Juvo raised $40 million in new funding. The Series B, which featured participation from SignalFire and other existing investors, takes the company’s total funding to $54 million. Juvo will use the funds to drive global expansion, especially in Asia, Latin America, and Europe. The additional financing will also help Juvo grow its product offerings for the financially underserved.

“It has been an exciting ride to date, surrounded by passionate people who believe deeply in Juvo’s mission,” company CEO Steve Polsky said. “This new funding will allow Juvo to expand and deepen our product offerings as well as continue to build the best in class teams in data science, financial services, and consumer mobile services.” Managing general partner at NEA  Scott Sandell called Juvo a company that was “helping to shape the innovation economy” and credited the San Francisco-based firm for “addressing a vital global need while providing distinct value to its partners.” Founding partner of Wing Venture Capital Peter Wagner, who will join Juvo’s board of directors as part of the investment and whose firm has been involved with Juvo “since their earliest days”, praised the company’s “potent combination of data, the mobile platform and the cloud to bring the power of identity to massive untapped markets.”

Pictured: CEO and founder Steve Polski demonstrating Juvo Identity Scoring at FinovateFall 2016.

Juvo works by teaming up with mobile phone operators and financial institutions to enable members of underserved communities to build financial identities. The company’s technology uses credit algorithms based on advanced data science to find creditworthy individuals among what Polsky says are the “two billion underbanked people in the world – most of whom have a mobile phone” and to ensure their access to financial services. Juvo has been a beneficial partner, as well, helping its operators lower churn by 50% or more, increase average revenue per user (ARPU) by up to 15%, and realize an average increase in subscriber lifetime value of 65%.

Juvo demonstrated its identity scoring technology at FinovateFall 2016. Headquartered in San Francisco and founded in 2014, Juvo is currently operating in 25 countries on four continents. Named to CB Insight’s Fintech 250 list in June, Juvo added Prosper president Ron Suber as strategic advisor in May and, last fall, the company partnered with Cable & Wireless to bring mobile credit services to customers in the Caribbean.

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Klarna Unveils Free P2P Payment Service, Wavy

Klarna Unveils Free P2P Payment Service, Wavy
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Klarna

Is there a fintech company having a more impressive summer than Klarna? The e-commerce innovator has forged strategic partnerships with and secured investments from Brightfolk, Visa, and Permira in the past two months. In June, the company added a full banking license to its assets, making Klarna “one of Europe’s largest banks” in the words of CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski.

By comparison, today’s unveiling of Wavy, a new, free P2P payments service is a relatively more modest move. Available in iOS and Android as well as online, the free app enables users in more than 30 European markets to transfer Euros between friends and family. Users connect their bank or credit card accounts to Wavy, and make transfers by generating a payment link which can be delivered over social media or to another Wavy account. That said, recipients can receive and redeem payments via their bank accounts without having to sign up for the Wavy service.  Users can pay requests for payment with EU-issued credit cards or SOFORT Überweisung.

Wavy is the product of Klarna’s collaboration with the developers of P2P payment app Cookies, who joined Klarna late last year in the wake of Cookies’ filing for bankruptcy. At the time, Klarna praised the app for its combination of social features and user-friendly interface, and credited Cookies for being both one of the first PFM apps to focus on younger users as well as the first to bring “near-realtime” money transfers to Germany. Lamine Cheloufi, Cookies co-founder and current Product Director at Klarna, called Wavy “the most accessible peer-to-peer payment service in Europe.”

To that end, and taking stock of the crowded market for P2P payment options, TechCrunch’s Romain Dillet suggested that Wavy might get an initial boost from Klarna’s popularity in its native Sweden. But listening to Siemiatkowski, it almost seems as if Europe is just a first stop. “There are no borders in an online context, why should there be in payments?” Siemiatkowski said. “Klarna was founded with the goal to make online payments safe, simple, and smooth. Wavy is another step on that journey.”

Providing single-click purchase experiences that enable direct payments, pay after delivery, installment plans and more, Klarna demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2012. The company was founded in 2005 in Sweden, and is currently headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. Klarna’s solutions are used by more than 60 million consumers and more than 70,000 merchants in 18 markets globally.

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Alpharank Among Startups Graduating from VC Fintech Accelerator Empowered by FIS

Alpharank Among Startups Graduating from VC Fintech Accelerator Empowered by FIS
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alpharank

That set of mortarboards you might have noticed sailing through the air this week may have come from the celebrations of startups graduating from the VC Fintech Accelerator Empowered by FIS this week. The occasion was marked by the accelerator’s Demo Days Event during which all ten companies – two international startups and eight U.S.-based firms – presented their technologies before an audience of more than 350 investors and financial services professionals.

“These companies have demonstrated their capacity to bring world class solutions to solving problem and challenges in the FinTech space,” accelerator managing director, Wayne Miller said. Miller credited the companies for their proven ability to execute, “clearly validating their value proposition to enable banks to better serve their customers in the digital world.”

Among the ten companies in this year’s cohort was Finovate alum, Alpharank, which won Best of Show in its Finovate debut this spring. The company leverages the kind of social graph technology successfully pioneered by Facebook – and effectively used by telecoms like Sprint to reduce customer churn – to help financial services get new customers and retain current ones. Alpharank was also among the companies earning special recognition from attendees. Quoted in Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, FIS VP Jack Novielli highlighted the company for its ability to provide key banks with key insights into their customers. “As banks become more pointed in their marketing who do they best market to,” he told the Democrat Gazette.  How does the bank spend its marketing dollar wiser?”

Alpharank was founded in San Francisco, California. The company won Best of Show for its live demonstration of its Customer Influence Mapping technology, which enables banks and credit unions to turn their historic transaction data into predictive social graph data. The company includes 500 Startups, Malcolm CasSelle, Payment Ventures, Right Side Capital Management, and Tony VanBrackle among its investors. Brian Ley is CEO.

The ten companies selected this year were the top selections from an applicant pool of 295 applications from the U.S. and 39 other countries around the world.Making the cut along with Alpharank were:

  • Alto IRA
  • Bond.AI
  • eGiftify
  • Hedgehog
  • Omnetrium
  • Plinqit
  • Quotanda
  • WalletFi
  • Xplanr Analytics

Sponsored by Little Rock, Arkansas’ The Venture Center, the VC FinTech Accelerator provides a 12-week accelerator program for startups developing innovative technologies for the financial services industry. The program includes mentoring and training from financial services professionals from FIS and The Venture Center, as well as exposure to the program’s 30 financial institution partners. The Venture Center notes its member companies have created more than 445 jobs, more than $28 million in revenue, and raised $39 million in equity funding in the three years since its inception.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alpharank, Figo, FIS, Fiserv, Juvo, Klarna, Mambu, Trulioo

On Finovate.com

  • Alpharank Among Startups Graduating from VC Fintech Accelerator Empowered by FIS.
  • Juvo Raises $40 Million in Round Led by NEA, Wing Venture Capital.
  • Klarna Unveils Free P2P Payments Service, Wavy.

Around the web

  • Fiserv acquires mortgage tech solutions provider, PCLender.
  • Consorsbank picks technology from Germany’s figo to power its multibanking service.
  • PayU Colombia to deploy SaaS-based core banking technology from Mambu.
  • Trulioo’s GlobalGateway platform coverage extended to six Latin American countries.

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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Mexican Payment Processor Chooses Fraud Fighting Technology from Featurespace

Mexican Payment Processor Chooses Fraud Fighting Technology from Featurespace
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Featurespace

Cambridge, U.K.-based Featurespace will bring its adaptive behavioral analytic technology to Mercadotecnia Ideas y Tecnologia (Marketing, Ideas, and Technology) also known as MIT, a leading payments processing specialist based in Mexico. Featurespace’s technology will be used to provide real-time transaction monitoring for merchants to help stop fraud and reduce the number of chargebacks and false alerts.

“This is a great example of how our machine learning technology can be seamlessly integrated into systems across any geography,” Featurespace CEO Martina King said in a press release. MIT CEO Juan Carlos Viramontes added that Featurespace’s approach to fighting fraud using adaptive behavioral analytics was a major factor in choosing the company as a partner. “The growth in fraud, as well as the sophisticated forms that attacks take, forces payments ecosystem participants to seek innovative and disruptive solutions to reduce fraud and make manual process more efficient, without sacrificing customer experience” Viramontes said.

Pictured: Featurespace Commercial Director Matt Mills demonstrating the ARIC Fraud Manager at FinovateFall 2016.

MIT will leverage Featurespace’s ARIC platform to spot anomalous behavior in individual transactions, leading to better fraud detection, fewer false alerts, and higher transaction acceptance. The firm serves more than 17,000 merchants at more than 80,000 points of sale in Mexico. Founded in 2004, MIT has processed 500 million transactions since inception and currently facilitates 10 million transactions a month.

Discussing the origins of Featurespace during the company’s demo at last September at FinovateFall, Commercial Director Matt Mills highlighted a pair of two key breakthroughs in understanding human behavior and in anomaly detection at the cornerstone of the platform’s development. The combination of these two insights has led to a solution, he said, that is not only sensitive enough to spot credit card fraud, but is also able to identify patterns in behavior that distinguish a regular recreational slot machine player in a casino from the gambling addict two machines away. Mills added that the technology’s “deep understanding of behavior” enabled it to “spot subtle signals” that a response or behavior, for example, may have been given under duress.

Earlier this month, Featurespace and TSYS unveiled an anti-fraud solution, Foresight Score. A member of FinTechCity’s Fintech 50 for 2017, Featurespace teamed up with digital family banking solution goHenry in April, partnered with merchant payment solutions provider CashFlows in March, and in February began working with fellow Finovate alum Icon Solutions to bring greater fraud protection to Icon’s Instant Payment Framework. With customers including William Hill and fellow Finovate alum TSYS, Featurespace closed a successful venture round led by Nesta Ventures in June, bringing the company’s total capital to more than $22 million (£16.4 million).

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BBVA, DefenseStorm, Featurespace, Modo Payments, NICE Systems, Placecast, Revolut, Ripple, TIBCO Software, Vera, Vipera

On Finovate.com

  • Mexican Payment Processor Chooses Fraud Fighting Technology from Featurespace.
  • Ripple Unveils Expanded Suite of Offerings

Around the web

  • BBVA announces record product sales through digital channels in June.
  • Tennis star Andy Murray revealed to be among 40,000 Revolut users pre-registered for the company’s crowdfunding initiative.
  • DefenseStorm hires Bob Thibodeaux as Chief Information Security Officer.
  • Modo Payments goes dark in Monday “Unnouncement.” Affirms plans to refocus on payments after hiatus.
  • Mashreq deploys Vipera for mobile wallet.
  • NICE inContact introduces CXone cloud customer experience platform.

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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