Author: David Penn

Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Agreement Express, Banno, Blackhawk Network, Bluescape, Braintree, CrowdFlower, Featurespace, FutureVault, Handle Financial, Infosys, Jack Henry, Kony, PayNearMe, PayPal, Pendo Systems, Top Image Systems, Vipera, wipro

On Finovate.com

  • Vipera Acquires SoftTelecom for $1.5 Million
  • FutureVault Appoints John D. Orr as New CEO.
  • Handle Financial’s PayNearMe Partners with Blackhawk Network.

Around the web

  • CrowdFlower earns Gartner “Cool Vendor” status for Information Innovation and Governance.
  • Braintree surpasses one billion transactions per quarter milestone.
  • Infosys wins three out of seven Catalyst Awards at TM forum Live.
  • Baidu and PayPal announce strategic partnership.
  • International Air Transport Association chooses fraud prevention technology from Featurespace.
  • Top Image Systems announces eFlow AP 5.2 integration with SAP S/4HANA.
  • Wipro and Compuware partner to launch mainframe center of excellence.
  • Agreement Express ranked among top 100 technology companies in British Columbia by Business in Vancouver.
  • SearchUnifiedCommunications features Bluescape in its look at use cases for digital collaborative whiteboards.
  • Pendo Systems announces trio of new hires to support a “banner year” for the company.
  • Central Bankshares now uses Jack Henry’s Banno for online banking.
  • UN Migration Agency Selects Kony to Accelerate Digital Strategy to Reach More Migrants.

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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Symbiont Announces Strategic Investment from Medici Ventures

Symbiont Announces Strategic Investment from Medici Ventures
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Symbiont

Two months ago, Symbiont announced an undisclosed strategic investment from China’s Hundsun Technologies. At the time, Symbiont CEO Mark Smith called the investment “a clear vote of confidence” from a “strong partner in Asia.”

Last week we learned that the votes of confidence are still coming in. Blockchain technology investor Medici Ventures has teamed up with Symbiont, providing strategic investment to the company and announcing a collaboration involving both Medici and its parent company Overstock.com. The partnership will enable Medici Ventures to become the first company to register corporate ownership shares using the blockchain.

Pledging to deliver “best-in-class investor transparency,” Jonathan Johnson, President of Medici Ventures and Overstock.com Director, said, “We also anticipate using blockchain to administer Medici Ventures’ fund interests from inception, thereby providing our investors with end-to-end recordkeeping on a blockchain and administration of investor interests using smart contracts.”

Pictured: Adam Krellenstein, Symbiont CTO and co-founder, discussing “Distributed Ledgers and Smart Contracts,” during his presentation at FinDEVr New York 2016.

Symbiont’s Smith highlighted investor interests as a major use case for his company’s technology. “Management of fund interests is a logical extension of Symbiont’s Smart Securities capabilities,” he said, “and we welcome a partner that is equally committed to the principle of ensuring accuracy of shareholder records at all times during a company’s life cycle.”

The issue was explained in more detail by Overstock CEO and founder Patrick Byrne. He called the process of signing over personal ownership of shares received in the IPO process “a Faustian bargain” for entrepreneurs. He praised Delaware for pioneering registration of ownership shares using blockchain technology. “Delaware is giving entrepreneurs a path to retaining direct ownership of their shares after their IPOs, Byrne said. “Thanks to Delaware, accuracy in securities ownership records can be achieved.”

Symbiont’s blockchain-based technology enables easy-to-understand modeling of complex financial instruments and fully digitizing those instruments into a distributed ledger. The company’s Smart Security technology avoids error-prone manual processes and tampering while increasing transparency, reducing risks, and enabling participants to share ledger statuses and updates. The technology also helps companies save on back and middle office costs.

Founded in 2015, Symbiont is based in New York City. The company is an alum of our developer’s conference, having presented “Distributed Ledgers and Smart Contracts” at FinDEVr New York 2016.

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Layer’s New Messaging Design System Helps Create Perfect Conversational Experiences

Layer’s New Messaging Design System Helps Create Perfect Conversational Experiences
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Layer

Customer engagement has been a big theme on the Finovate blog this month. As our recent guest features from SaleMove (Enhancing the Customer Experience in Financial Services) and SuiteBox (Top Five Trends in Customer Engagement Technology) attest, technologies that enable better communication between businesses and customers are among the most promising areas of innovation in fintech.

So the news that FinovateSpring 2017 alum Layer has released a new customer engagement-enabling solution is the latest reminder of the trend toward more and better engagement options for businesses. The San Francisco-based company launched its Conversation Design System earlier this month, giving enterprises new tools to quickly build and customize conversational experiences for their customers “in just minutes.”

Pictured (left to right): John Montgomery (COO) and Bill Hu (VP Sales) demonstrating Layer’s customer conversation platform at FinovateSpring 2017.

Layer’s technology leverages chatbot technology and data analytics to provide a wide range of businesses with a customer conversation platform that makes it easier to engage with consumers over the channel of their choice – especially mobile. Through a combination of AI and human participation, Layer’s platform enables financial professionals to provide advice, counseling, and customer service in a unified experience that is more convenient and less intrusive for the contemporary client. “From (our) vantage point, we have seen a dramatic shift in the way people, consumers and businesses alike, want to do business,” Layer’s John Montgomery said during his FinovateSpring presentation earlier this year. Pointing out that both the phone and email were becoming less popular modes of communication, Montgomery added that transitioning to a platform like Layer also gave benefits to businesses. “(This platform can) accelerate the time it takes to do a sales cycle, help you be more scalable in the delivery of services and ultimately lead to greater lifetime value,” he said.

VP of Product at Nordstrom Trunk Club Justin Hughes praised the way the technology helped them improve customer engagement. Calling Layer’s messaging technology “central to the shopping experience and critical to our conversation effectiveness,” Hughes credited Layer for helping the company become and and remain better connected with its customers.

Layer also announced seven new integrations including integrations with Front, Salesforce, and Zendesk. These add to the company’s previously announced IBM Watson and Microsoft integrations. “Today’s announcements unlock boundless potential for brands across all industries,” Layer CEO Ron Palmeri said. “Unlike messaging platforms that simply move text messages from point A to point B, Layer gives brands everything they need to build truly amazing, delightful customer experiences on essentially any channel,” he said.

Founded in 2013, Layer demonstrated its customer conversation platform at FinovateSpring 2017. With more than 1,000 customers including nerdwallet, Qapital, and snapswap, the company has raised more than $42 million in funding, including a $15 million Series B led by Greycroft Partners in February.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bill.com, GoodData, IBM, Layer, MaxMyInterest, MicroStrategy, Passport, TickSmith, Vantiv, Xero

On Finovate.com

  • IBM Launches Security Testing Services for IoT Developers.
  • TickSmith Lands $2 Million Investment from Illuminate Financial.
  • Layer’s New Messaging Design System Helps Create Perfect Conversational Experiences.

Around the web

  • Vantiv partners with Columbia Bank to provide new payment services to business customers.
  • Commerce Bank to offer AP and AR automated service, CashFlow Complete, powered by Bill.com.
  • Xero and Recurly team up in new integration that combines subscription management with cloud accounting.
  • Fintech Supercharger features an interview with Roman Stanek, Founder and CEO, GoodData.
  • BARC Score Data Discovery identifies MicroStrategy as a ‘Market Leader’ ranking #1 in “Platform Capabilities”
  • Chicago Tribune column on savvy saving highlights MaxMyInterest.
  • Village of Palos Park Introduces Passport’s Parking 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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Microblink’s Photopay Expands to New European Markets

Microblink’s Photopay Expands to New European Markets
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: microblink

Photopay, the payment receipt scanning solution from Best of Show winner Microblink, is now available in more countries including France, Norway, Spain, and Sweden. The news is the latest step in Microblink’s European expansion – begun four years ago – and brings the company’s data extraction technology to an even wider range of SME customers.

In a blog post discussing the news, Microblink pointed to the way Photopay improved the UX for banking app users. The company cited a case study with Erste Bank that realized a 100x increase in the number of mobile banking transactions and and 30x increase in mobile banking transactions as a share of all transactions. Erste Bank also reported an increase of 160% in the number of its mobile banking users. In addition, Microblink highlighted a European bank that credited Photopay for the high marks its mobile banking app received. “More than 40 renowned European banks have recognized the value photopay provides in terms of UX,” the blog authors wrote.

Pictured: Microblink Co-Founder and SMD Izet Ždralović demonstrating BlinkReceipt at FinovateSpring 2017.

Photopay leverages optical character recognition technology (OCR) to capture data from payment slips and receipts, removing manual data entry – and the potential for error – from the process. Photopay also offers an automatic field-by-field scanning feature that makes it easy to more accurately extract data from unstructured sources including small business invoices. The real-time technology operates locally on the user’s mobile device and does not require an internet connection to work. Photopay is available as an SDK that can be easily integrated into existing banking apps and fully customized into a white-label solution that’s virtually invisible to the user.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in London, U.K., Microblink demonstrated its BlinkReceipt solution at FinovateSpring 2017, taking home Best of Show honors. Earlier this month, Zagrebačka banka, the largest bank in Croatia, announced that its mobile app would feature portrait and document scanning technology provided by Microblink. In addition to Photopay and BlinkReceipt, Microblink offers SDKs that add ID scanning (BlinkID), barcode scanning (pdf417), and general purpose data scanning (BlinkInput) to mobile apps. The company, which launched the popular, free Photo Math app in 2014, includes Cherubic Ventures among its investors. Damir Sabol is founder and CEO.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Configo, Daon, Experian, microblink, PayActiv, TESOBE, Unison, Vantiv, Veridium, Worldline, Yodlee

On Finovate.com

  • Microblink’s Photopay Expands to New European Markets.

Around the web

  • Daon and Experian talk about fighting fraud with biometric technology on CNBC’s Squawk Box.
  • Let’s Talk Payments interviews Yodlee’s Terry McKeown on managing credit risk.
  • Banking Exchange profiles alternative lender, PayActiv.
  • The Silicon Review features Vantiv Head of Product for Integrated Payments, Moin Moinuddin.
  • FintekNews sits down with Unison Co-CEOs Thomas Sponholtz and Jim Riccitelli to discuss shared real estate investing.
  • Tesobe organizes cross-industry payments hackathon in Australia – Aug 11 thru 13th.
  • CRN names Veridium on its list of 2017 Emerging Vendors.
  • Total and Worldline Partner with Africa-based InTouch to help deploy Guichet Unique, a digital solution for retail networks.

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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Klarna Announces Strategic Investment from Permira

Klarna Announces Strategic Investment from Permira
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Klarna

Less than a month after announcing strategic fundings from Visa and Brightfolk A/S, Klarna is back in the fintech headlines with news of a new strategic investment from a partnership advised by global investment firm, Permira. The partnership will acquire shares from a trio of existing shareholders – DST Global, General Atlantic, and Niklas Adalberth – in a transaction that will leave Adalberth as the only equity shareholder of the three. TechCrunch reports that the deal is worth between $225 million and $250 million, and estimates a valuation of $2.5 billion. They note further that Klarna has raised “somewhere in the region of $500 million in the last 7 weeks.”

Klarna CEO and co-founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski (pictured) put the new investment in the context of its recent brand new banking license, referring to the company’s growth from an innovator in enhancing the shopping experience to “a consumer-oriented and technology intensive bank.” Permira principal Andrew Young echoed Siemiatkowski’s sentiments, calling the company a “unique scale fintech innovator” for its work in e-commerce. “We see many vectors that will drive future success and with Sebastian, we look forward to supporting the company’s future organic, geographic, and acquisition growth strategies,” Young said.

Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, Klarna demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2012. The company provides payment solutions for 60 million consumers and 70,000 merchants transacting across borders. Participating in 18 markets around the world, Klarna supports direct payments, pay after delivery, and installment plans via a single-click “purchase experience” that gives shoppers a wider range of payment options. Founded in 2005 in Stockholm, Sweden, Klarna noted 50% growth in recorded transaction volumes in 2016 – including partnerships with 17,000 new merchants.

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New Investment Boosts Betterment Valuation to $800 Million

New Investment Boosts Betterment Valuation to $800 Million
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Betterment, Funding

It’s a Funding Friday here at Finovate! In addition to news of a strategic investment in Klarna, and new funding for credit scoring startup, Aire.com and DoubleNet Pay’s latest investment, we learn today that robo advisor Betterment is now that much closer to achieving unicorn status – courtesy of a $70 million investment from Sweden’s Kinnevik. The investment takes Betterment’s total capital to $275 million, and gives the robo advisor a valuation estimated at $800 million.

Praising the “strong partnership” between his firm and Kinnevik, Betterment CEO Jon Stein said that the investment will enable the company to “continue to build products that put even more money back in our customers’ pockets. The Kinnevik-led round, an extension of Betterment’s Series E from last year, featured participation from existing Betterment investors, Bessemer Venture Partners, Francisco Partners, and Menlo Ventures.

Senior Investment Director for Kinnevik, Chris Bischoff explained the nature of the extended Series E, saying that his firm’s approach was to “(invest) over multiple rounds into high-performing technology-enabled companies.” He added, “after a year of investment, we saw additional opportunities for growth and proposed the financing to Betterment. We are excited about the opportunity to deepen our relationship.”

Betterment CTO Dustin Lucien during his presentation with Quovo co-founder and CTO Michael Del Monte (not pictured) at FinDEVr New York 2016.

The news from Betterment arrives on the heels of the company’s launch of its Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) Portfolio. SRI enables investors to grow their capital while avoiding investments in companies whose products, services, and overall corporate behavior are considered to have a “negative social impact.” Instead, as VP of Financial Advice and Planning Alex Benke explained at the Betterment blog, “companies deemed to have strong social responsibility practices, such as Microsoft, Google, Proctor & Gamble, Merck, CocaCola, Intel, Cisco, Disney, and IBM may make up a larger portion of the SRI portfolio.”

A year ago, Betterment celebrated more than $5 billion under management. Today, the robo advisor boasts of nearly $10 billion AUM. In addition to its fully-automated, algorithm-managed investment portfolio, Betterment unveiled a new hybrid robo advisory service in June that includes either annual or unlimited check-ins with Betterment’s team of certified financial planners. Stein told Bloomberg Markets the company would use the new capital to grow the hybrid service, in particular.

Founded in 2008 and based in New York City, New York, Betterment demonstrated the Multiple Goals feature of its platform at FinovateFall 2011. More recently, the robo advisor joined Quovo at FinDEVr New York 2016, where Betterment CTO Dustin Lucien and Quovo co-founder and CTO Michael Del Monte presented “The Power of Aggregation Demonstrated by Quovo and Betterment.” The firm was named to CB Insights Fintech 250 list last month – along with 43 of its fellow Finovate/FinDEVr alums. We featured the robo advisor in our look at Passive Investing in our Savings Tech Horizon series this spring.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Aire, Betterment, Dwolla, ID Analytics, Klarna, Neener Analytics, PayPal, Persistent Systems, Taulia, Tavant

On Finovate.com

  • Aire Pulls in $5 Million, Lands Partnerships with Zopa and Toyota Financial Services.
  • New Investment Boosts Betterment Valuation to $800 Million.
  • Klarna Announces Strategic Investment from Permira.

Around the web

  • PayPal extends partnership with JP Morgan Chase, providing greater payment options for consumers.
  • Taulia joins European E-invoicing Service Providers Association.
  • Persistent Systems agrees to acquires Swiss firm Parx Werk in deal valued at $16 million.
  • ID Analytics partners with Acxiom to strengthen risk assessment and combat fraud.
  • Dwolla adds Multi-User Feature to the Access API Dashboard.
  • Neener Analytics joins Plug&Play fintech accelerator.
  • Tavant selected by Fairway Independent Mortgage To Transform Its Digital Lending Experience.

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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LendKey Raises $13 Million in Equity and Debt Financing

LendKey Raises $13 Million in Equity and Debt Financing
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, LendKey

Lending-as-a-service specialist LendKey raised $13 million in Series C funding this week. The round consisted of both equity and debt financing ($8 million of the former, $5 million of the latter) and was led by Portland, Maine-based North Atlantic Capital. Also participating in the investment were existing investors DFJ, Gotham Ventures, TTV Capital, and Updata Partners.

“Traditional financial institutions are now more than ever adapting to evolving customer needs to remain competitive and better reach millennials,” LendKey CEO and founder Vince Passione said, “LendKey empowers these institutions to compete in today’s lending market by digitizing their loan businesses.” This week’s investment boosts LendKey’s total capital to more than $27 million. Passione said the financing will help the company “meet the strong bank and credit union demand” for its services. LendKey plans to expand its regional office in Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as add talent in account development and sales.

Pictured (left to right): CEO and founder Vince Passione and CPO Strati Papgeorge demonstrating LendKey Marketplace at FinovateSpring 2015.

North Atlantic Capital Managing Director Mark Morrissette praised LendKey’s “impressive industry knowledge and background” and the way its technology solved “a real need for banks and credit unions.” LendKey’s white-label, lending-as-a-service model enables banks, credit unions, and alternative lenders to digitize their lending operations with a solution that manages the entire loan cycle. This includes demand generation, online decisioning, loan origination, and customer service. The company’s solutions help lenders conduct programs in private student loans, student loan refinancing, auto loans, and home improvement loans.

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in New York City, LendKey demonstrated its LendKey Marketplace at FinovateSpring 2015. With clients including Navy FCU, McGraw-Hill FCU, and WSFS Bank, LendKey has deployed more than $1.5 billion in capital to borrowers. This spring, LendKey presented its Student Loan Refinance Report, highlighting borrower trends in lending preferences and loan performance. Also this spring, LendKey earned a finalist spot in the 2017 Best of FinXTech Awards, along with fellow Finovate alums Roostify, Moven, and Green Dot.

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Top Five Trends in Customer Engagement Technology

Top Five Trends in Customer Engagement Technology
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Guest Post, SuiteBox

Guest post by Ian Dunbar, CEO of SuiteBox

—

Financial services businesses face many pressures – cost reduction, scalability, risk mitigation, compliance, and regulation. Technology is the solution, at least in part, to these pressures. However, technology adds to the friction or customer effort of engaging with the financial service. More effort = customer disengagement.

Cutting across fintech, there are rapid advances being made in technology that drives customer engagement. Here are some of the top themes in CETech – customer engagement technology – that are worth watching.

Social media delivering personalization (and profiling)

Social media, search history, and analytic tools leveraging our digital social footprint will become mainstream in building real time client profiles. This will enable financial services providers to engage with clients through highly-relevant personalized content and to leverage profiles to determine product suitability.

For example, being aware of changes in a client’s family situation (perhaps the death of a loved one or a divorce) may enable the proactive deployment of more effective financial strategies. Product designers can even leverage existing social media data to determine the risks associated with the delivery of a product or service. A life insurer can build an individual’s risk profile more accurately from social media data than from a questionnaire.

Artificial intelligence and cognitive learning

Conversational speech and facial expressions can be analyzed to determine customer emotions. Microsoft’s Emotion API, for example, can detect anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise from a voice stream and images.

Financial service providers can use cognitive tools to deliver their products in a more engaging manner. Meeting with a client in person, via video or on the telephone, can be analyzed in real time. Risk assessment for miss-selling, real timing adapting of what and how a product is presented, or even determining if client is misrepresenting information will all be possible.

The power of video

Most surveys continue to tell us that customers prefer meeting personally with their financial providers. However this can be costly and inconvenient. Do you or your clients want to spend time in traffic, battling for a parking spot, and suffering the stress of congested roads, for a personal meeting?

Of course not. So we use the phone as our primary non-physical meeting tool. But the problem with the phone is it doesn’t employ the power of sight. Eye contact is fundamental to human communication. We can tell a lot from a person’s eyes, what mood they are in, and their level of comfort. Avoiding eye contact with strangers is a common strategy to remain private, especially in situations of close proximity. Yet this is what we do in important telephone calls with our clients.

Biometrics gather momentum

Usernames and passwords are an enormous source of consumer frustration and customer effort. Fingerprint recognition of smartphones has led consumers to treat biometrics as mainstream. This will rapidly expand as biometrics allow a convergence between previously incompatible goals of enhanced security without customer effort.

Smarter virtual assistants

Natural language voice recognition combined with smart virtual assistants mean we will increasingly talk to our financial services websites or apps, rather than our fingers doing the work. Love or hate Siri, voice commands will be increasingly accepted as the norm.

Get ready

Embed customer effort reducing measures and customer-centric design into your digital strategies. Embed the customer experience into user journeys using the latest engagement technologies. Create your own “Customer Experience Lab” to test the experience. There is no better time to put your customer back into the centre of your IT strategy.

Ian Dunbar is the CEO of SuiteBox. SuiteBox enables a permanently open digital workspace to be established between a host and participants of a meeting, allowing participants to meet via video or physically, share and collaborate on documents between the parties, digitally sign documents, establish evidence of identify & record the meeting for future reference. Headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand and founded in 2013, the company demonstrated its technology at FinovateEurope 2016.

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Innovation Acceleration: Incubators and Innovation Labs Driving Development in Fintech

Innovation Acceleration: Incubators and Innovation Labs Driving Development in Fintech
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2017

 

Post updated to present Showcase sponsor, Fintech71 and latest Showcase addition, FinTech Innovation Lab.

—

To prepare for our expanded FinovateFall conference in September, we’re taking a look at some of the new additions during Discussion Days September 13 and 14. Today, we’re previewing our Showcase of Accelerators, Incubators, and Innovation Labs on the 14th.

FinovateFall 2017’s showcase on accelerators, incubators, and innovation labs features demos from startups representing each of our accelerators, with the audience selecting the most innovative startup based on “biggest impact in startup ecosystem.” Here is a sampling of the accelerators and incubators whose startups will be represented during our showcase.

Fintech71

We lead off with our Showcase sponsor, Fintech71. One of the newest fintech accelerators to emerge on the scene, Fintech71’s goal is to attract fintech startups to Ohio and grow the innovation pipeline for the state’s private sector stakeholders. Backed by companies such as KeyBank, Progressive, and Fifth Third, Fintech 71 provides innovative entrepreneurs with a $100,000 investment for up to 6% equity, daily 1-on-1 mentor support, as well as access to participating companies and  “millennial talent” thanks to nearby Ohio State University.

 

Fintech71 will begin its inaugural class on September 10. Up to 12 startups will participate in the 10-week program, which will be based in Columbus, Ohio. “Ohio’s ranking as a Top 5 Fortune 500 and Top 5 Fortune 1000 headquarter destination is not without reason,” Fintech71 executive director Matt Armstead said, adding, “We aim to leverage Ohio’s tech-savvy talent, attractive cost of doing business, and established industry strength to make Ohio a global hotspot for fintech innovation and growth.

Citi Ventures

Citi Ventures is the “innovation engine” of Citi. The division invests in startups, supports new technologies, and tests new products and services in its Innovation Labs and businesses. Citi Ventures made its first investment in July 2010, and saw its first portfolio company exit (Silver Tail acquired by EMC) two years later. Citi Ventures launched its first fintech accelerator in Tel Aviv in 2013.

  • Founded in 2010 by Debby Hopkins
  • Headquartered in Palo Alto, California
  • Notable Startups: Linkable Networks (FF12), Ayasdi (FF14), Feedzai (FE14), Betterment (FF11), Chain (FD15), BlueVine (FF14), Plaid (FD14), Pindrop Security (FF12)

In 2017, Citi Ventures began the year appointing a new chief, Vanessa Colella, who was also named Chief Innovation Officer of Citi. Citi Ventures launched its Citi University Partnerships in Discovery program in February and in May, the venture capital arm of Citi leveraged the technology from portfolio company (and Finovate alum) Chain, to launch Citi Connect for Blockchain integrated with Nasdaq Linq.

FinTech Innovation Lab

Fintech Innovation Lab specializes in early and growth-stage fintech companies, helping these startups get access to some of the biggest financial services companies in the world. With programs in New York, Hong Kong; Dublin, Ireland; and London, the Lab’s alums have raised $530 million in VC funding since graduating from the accelerator program – more than $460 million from the New York lab alone. FinTech Innovation Lab is sponsored by Partnership Fund for New York City and Accenture.

  • Founded in 2012 by Maria Gotsch and Robert Gach
  • Headquartered in New York City, New York
  • Notable Startups: AlphaPoint (FE15), Atsora (FE14), BehavioSec (FF15), Big Data Scoring (FF15), BillGuard (FS12), bondIT (FF16), Dashlane (FE13), DeMystData (FA12), EverSafe (FF14), ForwardLane (FS16), Logical Glue (FE16), MaxMyInterest (FF14), Modelshop (FD17), Narrative Science (FF13), PhotoPay (FE15), RevolutionCredit (FF13), True Office (FE13), Uniken (FF16)

Last month, FinTech Innovation Lab celebrated its seventh anniversary, as a new class of startups – including Finovate/FinDEVr alums BehavioSec, DemystData, and Modelshop – demonstrated their technologies at the Lab’s annual Demo Days event. The occasion encouraged FinTech Innovation Lab co-founder Robert Gach to note that many of the technologies that have been seen at the Lab have anticipated trends ranging from big data analytics to the blockchain. “We expect this year’s innovations will experience a similar trajectory,” Gach said.

Omidyar Network RegTech Accelerator

Omidyar Network is an active impact investor that provides both financial and human capital to entrepreneurs in five main focus areas: education, emerging technology, governance and citizen engagement, property rights, and financial inclusion. The firm, launched by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, has a special interest in “entrepreneurs who share our commitment to advancing social good at the pace and scale the world needs today.”

  • Founded in 2004 by Pierre and Pam Omidyar
  • Headquartered in Redwood City, California
  • Notable Startups: Digi.me, Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (FA12), Lenddo, Prosper (FS09), RevolutionCredit (FF13), Tandem Bank

Earlier this year, Omidyar Network teamed up with Finovate alum Twilio as the firm launched its Impact Fund to support social impact programs. In February, Omidyar Network invested $2.9 million in an initiative to support the development of civic technology platforms in Latin America. In total, Omidyar Network has committed more than $900 million in for-profit investments and non-profit grants since inception.

Startupbootcamp NY

With partners including Mastercard, Santander, and Route 66 Ventures, Startupbootcamp NY provides fintech startups with seed funding, professional mentorship, New York City office space, and access to a worldwide network of fintech investors and businesses. The program’s areas of focus includes advanced analytics, blockchain technology, financial inclusion, identity & authentication, investments & personal finance, mobile security, P2P lending, and payments.

  • Founded in 2o1o by Alex Farcet, Carsten Kolbeck, Patrick de Zeeuw, and Ruud Hendriks
  • Headquartered in London, U.K.
  • Notable Startups: BankGuard (FE17), bondIT (FF16), Dragon Wealth Asia (FA13), investUP (FE16), InvoiceSharing (FE17), iproov (FE17)

An accelerator network with a global reach, Startupbootcamp sponsors events in more than 100 cities every year. It has more than 460 startups in its portfolio, more than 70% of which received funding. Startupbootcamp was named Best Accelerator 2014 in the European Tech Startup Awards. In addition to its fintech accelerators in New York, London, Singapore, and Mumbai, Startupbootcamp also provides programs in e-commerce (Amsterdam), insurance (London), and IoT (Barcelona).

Techstars

Since its inception, Techstars has accelerated more than 1,000 companies, with an active or acquired rate of 90%. The firm has provided $3.7 billion in total funding to startups with a total market capitalization of more than $9 billion. “We fund technology oriented companies, typically web-based or other software companies,” Techstars explains in an FAQ, “but we’ve funded companies that don’t quite fit that mold as well.”

  • Founded in 2006 by David Cohen, Brad Feld, David Brown, and Jared Polis
  • Headquartered in Boulder, Colorado
  • Notable Alums: Remitly, DigitalOcean, ImpulseSave (FF12), Realty Mogul, Good April (FS13), Market IQ (FF13), Bitfusion, Zighra (FF13), Robinhood,

Techstars just celebrated the 10th anniversary of its Techstars Startup Weekend. Also this month, Techstars announced the addition of more than 100 companies to its Worldwide Network. In June, Techstars teamed up with GINCO to launch the Techstars Dubai Accelerator, which opens this month and will begin its first class in January. Techstars introduced a new accelerator in Paris in March, partnering with venture capital firm, Partech Ventures.

The upcoming Showcase of Accelerators, Incubators, and Innovation Labs at FinovateFall will feature demos from each of our featured accelerators. To be a part of our Discussion Days audience at FinovateFall, be sure to register and save your spot at the show today.

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