Author: David Penn

Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BanQu, Fiserv, Insuritas, Trustly, Zooz

Around the web

  • The largest bank in the Philippines, BDO Unibank, reups with Fiserv.
  • Customers of PayU gain access to payments services from Zooz courtesy of new partnership.
  • Let’s Talk Payments interviews BanQu co-founder, Ashish Gadnis.
  • Insuritas partners with Constellation to Monetize Online Banking 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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Quisk’s Blockchain Buy-in Boosts Security, Improves Access to Transaction Data

Quisk’s Blockchain Buy-in Boosts Security, Improves Access to Transaction Data
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Quisk

When the going gets tough, the tough go blockchain.

That’s the takeaway from the news that payment network platform Quisk will store its transaction ledgers on a private blockchain. The blockchain layer will work with Quisk’s existing platform and APIs to give banks easy access to transaction data such as merchant settlement and bank reconciliation via their own backend systems.

“We are excited to be leveraging the tremendous power of Blockchain technology to propagate trust among our customer banks,” Quisk CTO Praveen Amancheria said. “This technology eliminates barriers, giving banks the ability to easily and securely access their transaction data.” Amancheria called blockchain “the next internet for the financial industry” and added that “the tools to retrieve data from (the) Blockchain will soon be as ubiquitous as web browsers.”

Pictured (left to right): Quisk CTO Praveen Amancheria and CMO Dan Glessner demonstrating the Quisk digital services platform at FinovateFall 2015.

Quisk has developed a technology, digital cash, that enables banks to take advantage of the 85% of all retail transactions worldwide that are still cash-based. “Banks make nothing when cash is used,” Quisk CMO Dan Glessner explained during the company’s demo at FinovateFall. “We enable banks to create a new type of account, and to monetize the digital cash transactions.” Quisk partners with issuing and acquiring banks to create what Amancheria called an “open interoperable payment network.” He said: “we have a very ambitious goal: we want to do for cash what Visa and Mastercard have done for credit.”

Users of the new accounts can access their money using their smartphone and a PIN. The platform supports 14 different transaction types including P2P and P2M (person-to-merchant), and works with incumbent POS systems. As part of the company’s Finovate demo, Glessner and Amancheria showed how a consumer could make a purchase without cash, debit or credit card, or even the physical smartphone itself simply using his moible phone number and PIN. Moreoever, as Amancheria reminded the banks in the audience, “if Dan had paid with cash, the banks would have made zero. But because Dan used Quisk, banks have the opportunity to make money off of this digital cash transaction.” Amancheria also highlighted the digital loyalty and rewards opportunities available to merchants using the Quisk platform, as well.

Pictured: Quisk CTO Praveen Amancheria during his presentation at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2015.

Glessner and Amancheria underscored how the technology was especially beneficial in helping banks work with underserved communities. Because the technology works with both smartphone and feature phones, and on all types of mobile network operator services, Amancheria said, “banks can reach out to the widest possible market segment and acquire new types of customers … those who have mobile phones but no bank accounts.”

Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Quisk demonstrated its platform at FinovateFall 2015. The company also participated in our developers conference, discussing the technology behind its digital services platform at FinDEVr 2015 Silicon Valley. Last year, Quisk deployed its technology at National Commercial Bank Jamaica Limited (NCB) and with Network International in UAE. The company has raised $5 million in funding and includes Acadia Woods Partners and Plug and Play among its investors.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Agreement Express, Expensify, Misys, Moven, NuData Security, OurCrowd, Quisk, Zopa

On Finovate.com

  • Expensify Exceeds 35,000 Customers.
  • Quisk’s Blockchain Buy-in Boosts Security, Improves Access to Transaction Data.

Around the web

  • Alternative investment intelligence provider Crowdsurfer adds data from P2P innovator, Zopa.
  • Misys introduces FusionCapital Regulatory Reporting to help banks comply with the MiFID II.
  • NuData wins CNP 2017 Customer Choice Award for Best Identity Verification/Authentication Solution
  • Agreement Express opens its new office in the City of London as part of their expansion strategy.
  • Developed in partnership with Moven Enterprise, Westpac New Zealand’s budget-tracking app, CashNav wins CANSTAR 2017 Innovation Excellence Award.
  • Customers of National Australia Bank (NAB) gain direct access to equity crowdfunding platform OurCrowd courtesy of new collaboration.

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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AutoGravity Brings its Auto Loan Financing Solution to the Garden State

AutoGravity Brings its Auto Loan Financing Solution to the Garden State
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: AutoGravity

“You from Jersey?” If so, buying a car in your home state just got a lot easier.

AutoGravity, the Best of Show winning fintech that has pioneered car shopping and financing by smartphone, is now an option for auto loan borrowers in New Jersey. Via digitization and an engaging, smartphone-based user experience, AutoGravity’s solution is “transforming how people buy and lease cars by decreasing the financing time from hours to minutes for car shoppers,” according to CEO Andy Hinrichs.

With more than 400,000 downloads since its launch last summer, AutoGravity provides car shoppers with up to four financing offers on new and used cars from thousands of dealerships. The four-step process – choose a car, find a dealer, search for financing, select a lender – leverages AutoGravity’s unique partnerships with banks, lenders, and dealerships to provide users with a “single, convenient digital marketplace,” Hinrichs said. Available on iOS and Android, as well as online, AutoGravity is free to download and use, and is now available in 49 states in the U.S. (Nevada is the exception).

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Irvine, California, AutoGravity demonstrated its car shopping app at FinovateFall 2016, winning Best of Show.  AutoGravity also presented “A Digital Marketplace for the Auto Financing Space” at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016 last fall. The company has raised $50 million in funding, and includes Daimler Financial Services among its investors. Winner of the 2017 North American Frost & Sullivan Entrepreneurial Company of the Year award, AutoGravity added to its financing options earlier this year courtesy of a partnership with Westlake Financial Services in February and another with First Investors Financial Services in January. Read our Finovate Debut profile on AutoGravity featuring an interview with company CMO, Serge Vartanov.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: AutoGravity, Bluefin Payment Systems, Coinbase, Misys, NetGuardians, Roostify, Symbiont

On Finovate.com

  • AutoGravity Brings its Auto Loan Financing Solution to the Garden State.

Around the web

  • Roostify names Sandeep Aji as Vice President of Products.
  • Symbiont partners with PrivateMarket.io to build alternative investment marketplace for closed-end funds.
  • Myanmar-based AYA Bank (Ayeyarwady Bank) chooses core banking technology from Misys.
  • NetGuardians wins spot in Euro Banking Association’s EBAday 2017 conference.
  • Clients of Nodus Technologies gain access to PCI-validated P2PE technology courtesy of new partnership with Bluefin Payment Systems.
  • Wall Street Journal reports Coinbase meeting with investors over a new round of funding that would lead to a billion dollar valuation.

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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Zopa Receives $41 Million Investment to Support Challenger Bank Launch

Zopa Receives $41 Million Investment to Support Challenger Bank Launch
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Zopa

P2P lending pioneer Zopa just picked up $41 million (£32 million) in new funding that will go a long way toward helping the company prepare for the roll-out of its challenger bank later this year. “This investment gives us additional resources to continue our growth, support the launch of our next generation bank, and bring our award-winning products to even more people in the U.K.,” Zopa CEO Jaidev Janardana said. The round was led by Wadhawan Global Capital of India and European venture capital fund, Northzone. Zopa’s total funding stands at more than $111 million.

The investment arrives less than a month after Zopa earned full authorization for P2P lending from the FCA. This authorization was a necessary step for the company to launch its Innovative Finance ISAs, a new investment product with target returns of 6.1% that is scheduled to be available by mid-June. In May, Zopa also previewed Zopa Core, a P2P investment product with target returns of 3.9%. The solution is slated to debut in December and replace some of the company’s other offerings.

One small step toward offering IFISAs is also one giant leap toward Zopa’s goal of building a challenger bank. Last fall Zopa announced plans to launch a challenger bank that would complement the company’s P2P lending business by providing a broader range of financial services products – including FSCS-protected savings accounts and IFISAs. “We believe we are uniquely placed to re-define what people should be able to expect from personal finance products in the 21st century,” Janardana wrote, announcing the news of “next generation bank” at the Zopa blog in November.

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Zopa made its Finovate debut in 2008. Over the past year, the company has enabled more than $1 billion (£800m) in personal loans in the U.K. In January, Zopa became the first P2P lender in Europe to top £2 billion ($2.5 billion) in loans facilitated.

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KeyBank Acquires HelloWallet from Morningstar

KeyBank Acquires HelloWallet from Morningstar
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: HelloWallet

In a deal announced late on Wednesday, KeyBank will acquire personal finance software provider, HelloWallet, from Morningstar, which purchased the company for more than $52 million in 2014. Terms of the deal were not immediately available; the 36 employees of the company that will join KeyBank will continue to work from offices in Washington, D.C. and Chicago.

KeyBank’s interest in HelloWallet extends back to at least 2015 when the company announced an exclusive partnership that made KeyBank the only bank with access to HelloWallet’s personal finance platform. Positive reviews from customers, including KeyBank research indicating customers using HelloWallet’s solutions were expressing greater financial confidence, encouraged the two firms to deepen their relationship, culminating in this week’s acquisition announcement. “We are thrilled to bring the HelloWallet team to KeyBank so they can join us on our clients’ journey toward financial wellness one step at a time,” KeyBank Community Bank co-president Dennis Devine said.

Pictured: HelloWallet founder and Chief Innovation Officer Matt Fellowes demonstrating Retirement Explorer at FinovateFall 2015.

The Best of Show winner from FinovateFall was a busy innovator while under the Morningstar umbrella. The company began the year with the release of version 5.0 of its personal finance app, providing improved navigation and a streamlined dashboard. In December, HelloWallet launched its free student-loan and retirement savings calculator and, last August, the company unveiled its Flexible Budgets feature that helps users make longer-term planning decisions, and better prepare for larger, infrequent expenses. We featured HelloWallet in our look at advice-only savings technologies in March.

Founded in 2009 by Matt Fellowes, HelloWallet demoed its Retirement Explorer solution at FinovateFall 2015. A specialist in providing employer-based financial wellness solutions, the company raised more than $15 million in funding from four investors before being acquired by Morningstar. For its part, Morningstar insisted that its decision to sell HelloWallet was consistent with its long-term strategy and was not a reflection on its commitment to providing personal finance solutions for its customers. “Morningstar has significantly enhanced its overall capability set since the acquisition of HelloWallet more than three years ago,” Morningstar President of Retirement Solutions Brock Johnson said, “and we will continue to incorporate many of the financial wellness best practices into our broad-based solutions.”

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Econiq, HelloWallet, MaxMyInterest, QuantConnect, Scalable Capital, SumUp, Tuition.io, Zopa

On Finovate.com

  • KeyBank Acquires HelloWallet from Morningstar.
  • Zopa Receives $41 Million Investment to Support Challenger Bank Launch.

Around the web

  • Scalable Capital wins Financial Innovation of the Year from the Online Personal Wealth Awards.
  • MaxMyInterest introduces 1.31% preferred rate courtesy of new partnership with UFB Direct.
  • SumUp announces availability in more than 1,500 retail locations throughout Europe.
  • Tuition.io Awarded ISO 27001 Certification.
  • Econiq models conversation behaviors of top-performing employees to enrich the omnichannel customer experience for banks and insurers.
  • OANDA teams up with QuantConnect to launch new algo trading portal.

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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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: authenticID, Expensify, GMC Software Technology, IBM, Insuritas, Jumio, Markit, Misys, NuCypher, Signicat, Trizic, TSYS, Twilio, Vera, Xero

On Finovate.com

  • Signicat Launches Mobile Authentication.
  • 3 Steps to Take During the Countdown to GDPR and PSD2.

On FinDEVr.com

Around the web

  • NuCypher earns finalist spot in BBVA Open Talent 2017. Join NuCypher at FinDEVr London, Jun 12 & 13.
  • TSYS enables tokenization across its North American commercial card platforms.
  • Catholic Vantage Financial ($98M) hires Insuritas to deploy and manage their insurance agency solution.
  • AuthenticID enhances CatfishAIR Identity Platform to support real-time identity authorization for CNP transactions.
  • Vera announces support for multi-factor authentication solutions from Duo Security, RSA SecureID, and fellow Finovate alum, Twilio.
  • Amsterdam Trade Bank (ATB) to streamline banking, treasury, and finance operations in partnership with Misys.
  • Cisco and IBM team up on security.
  • Glenmede taps IHS Markit for data management.
  • GMC Software launches Business Partner Track for Partner Advantage Program
  • Expensify exceeds 35,000 global customers, adding Xero, HappyFresh, GoCardless, and Adroll as clients
  • Jumio announces expansion into new Shoreditch U.K. headquarters.
  • Steve Lewczyk joins Trizic as new Chief Revenue Officer.

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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NetGuardians Raises More than $8 Million in Series C

NetGuardians Raises More than $8 Million in Series C
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, NetGuardians

With an infusion of $8.7 (CHF 8.5) million in new capital, Swiss anti-fraud specialist NetGuardians now has more than $14 million in total funding. The Series C round was led by Swisscom Ventures and Freemont Management, and the company says the financing will help fuel the company’s “continued global expansion,” support additional investment in its anti-fraud platform, and add talent to the NetGuardians team.

“This collaboration with Swisscom represents recognition from a leader in this Swiss market,” NetGuardians’ Chief Operating Officer Raffael Maio said. “We are thrilled that they are recognizing our success and our potential. The investment will help us double the headcount in the coming 18 months.” Andreas Pages of Swisscom’s Business Unit Fintech highlighted NetGuardians’ technology as the kind of “agile and compelling software” that will improve risk mitigation for FIs. “Their highly innovative technology is changing the way to fight financial crime,” Pages said.

Pictured (left to right): NetGuardians Digital Marketing Manager Mine Fornerod and Regional Director for Asia, Eric Margaryan demonstrating FraudGuardian at FinovateAsia 2016.

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland, NetGuardians made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia in Hong Kong last fall.  At the conference, Digital Marketing Manager Mine Fornerod and Regional Director for Asia Eric Margaryan demonstrated FraudGuardian, a solution that leverages dynamic profiling, pattern-based intelligence, and predictive analytics to provide real-time fraud detection. For the demonstration, Fornerod and Margaryan set the scene of a risk manager who had received a violation alert from FraudGuardian via SMS, and then showed how the technology was able to track down the source of a series of fraudulent transactions. “Thanks to our ground-breaking, unique, holistic approach, you can actually correlate all these user behaviors and really identify the fraudsters with 100% reliability and prevent fraud in real-time,” Fornerod said.

Named to Planet Compliance’s inaugural RegTech Top 100 Power list this spring, NetGuardians partnered with Swiss academic institution, HEIG-VD to use machine learning and AI to build new, fraud-fighting technologies in February and, in January, announced that Keystone Bank in Nigeria would deploy its FraudGuardian technology. With FIs in more than 14 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, NetGuardians has gained 20 new clients and opened offices in Singapore and Kenya in the past year and a half.

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SuperMoney Brings a Kayak-Like UX to the Online Borrowing Process

SuperMoney Brings a Kayak-Like UX to the Online Borrowing Process
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Debuts, SuperMoney

What is SuperMoney? CEO Miron Lulic urges you to think of the “serendipity” of real-time offers provided on platforms like airline fare aggregator Kayak, and imagine the same user experience in financial services. “SuperMoney guides our users to loan offers that are in their best interest,” Lulic said at the beginning of the company’s FinovateSpring demo earlier this year.

And “best interest” is key. As the company’s Managing Partner Harry Langenberg pointed out, SuperMoney is taking the same approach to loan comparison that “won Google the search engine wars.” He explained, “rather than ranking results based on payout, Google’s algorithms presented results based on relevance. Similarly, we believe that by representing the best fiduciary interests of our borrowers, that SuperMoney will become the number one site that consumers trust when searching for a personal loan.”

Pictured: SuperMoney Managing Partner Harry Langenberg demonstrating the Supermoney loan offer comparison tool at FinovateSpring 2017.

Langenberg demonstrated how prospective borrowers enter some basic personal information (type of loan desired, the loan amount, credit score estimate, education level, employment status, home type and location, military status if any) at the SuperMoney website. “All of this data that we are collecting is matched against a database of attributes that we have for every one of our lenders,” Langenberg said. “That way we’re able to filter out any of the results that don’t necessarily match to their underwriting interests.”

Lenders on the platform do a “soft pull” so as not to impact the borrower’s credit score and in moments the borrower is presented with a set of prequalified and/or preapproved loan offers. “Users can easily compare their APRs, loan amounts, payments, even their total repayment costs, origination fees, and other details for the loan,” Lulic said. The platform enables borrowers to search from among the offers using a wide variety of criteria – such as payment-for-payment affordability – and each loan offer also features user reviews which Lulic said “provides a qualitative dimension that users can consider in their loan search.”

SuperMoney also hosts a wealth of personal financial information on topics ranging from auto insurance and business credit cards to tax planning and wealth management. The website features more than 11,000 expert and consumer advice columns and reviews. Expansion into other verticals beyond personal loans is also in the plans for the company. “We will soon be launching our auto loan offer engine, followed by our mortgage offer engine, and eventually our insurance offer engines,” Langenberg said. For now, the company is partnering with lenders to help them better serve customers they are not able to work with (“turn-downs”) by sending them to SuperMoney.

Company facts

  • Founded in 2013
  • Headquartered in Santa Ana, California
  • Published more than 2,000 expert reviews and more than 9,000 consumer reviews
  • Generated more than one million clicks for its partners

We caught up with the SuperMoney team briefly at FinovateSpring during rehearsals and followed up with a few questions for company CEO Miron Lulic. Here are his responses.

Finovate: What problem does your technology solve? 

Miron Lulic: Within the personal loan industry alone, there are literally hundreds of lenders to choose from and all of them are different.  You can go from lender to lender to lender, filling out applications to try and find your best option, but that’s a ton of effort. Lending aggregators popped up to solve this problem by ‘matching’ borrowers with lenders. But the dirty little secret behind most loan aggregation websites is that they run on a ping tree model.

Ping trees chuck borrowers down a lead delivery waterfall that attempts to sell the lead to the highest bidder. If the highest bidding buyer rejects the lead, the system attempts to sell to the next buyer with the borrower ultimately being sold to whoever will pay the most for that lead. This ping tree model works quite well for the aggregating site, as it’s rigged to produce the highest payouts. But as you could probably surmise, the “matches” produced by ping trees seldom connect consumers with the loans that are most financially beneficial to the borrowers themselves.

Finovate: How does your solution solve the problem better? 

Lulic: When consumers shop for an airline ticket they expect real offers in real-time.  Well, we’ve brought that great Kayak-like comparison shopping experience to financial services. Our Loan Offer Engine transparently allows consumers to submit a single, soft-pull loan application to all the leading online lenders and returns real loan offers back. SuperMoney users can transparently discover the best option based on their needs and that serve their best interest.

Finovate: Who are your primary customers? 

Lulic: SuperMoney is a two-sided marketplace platform with consumers looking for financial services on one end and financial service providers on the other. On the financial services side, we have a wide array of financial verticals represented in our publicly accessible reviews website. Within the personal loan offer engine, we are currently partnered with leading marketplace lenders, direct lenders, and banks. We aim to extend the platform to integrate credit unions and other players in the ecosystem not currently represented. 

Finovate: What in your background gave you the confidence to tackle this challenge? 

Lulic: Our founding team is the same founding team that launched Optima Tax Relief in 2011 and grew it from nothing to the #3 Fastest Growing Company In America according to Inc. Magazine’s 2015 ranking. We also co-founded another Finovate alum named LoanNow which is a direct lending business. Our experience there opened our eyes up to many of the challenges consumers and businesses face related to financial services online. 

Finovate: What are some upcoming initiatives from SuperMoney that we can look forward to over the next few months? 

Lulic: We are soon launching the same great loan offer engine experience in the auto lending vertical and aiming to follow that up soon after with a mortgage version. Our goal is to extend the framework we developed into all lending-related verticals initially, and then to other financial services where consumers can benefit from apples-to-apples comparisons and transparency. 

Finovate: Where do you see SuperMoney a year or two from now?

Lulic: Our goal is simple. To build the brand consumers think of first whenever they need a financial service. We aim to get there within two years. 

Miron Lulic (CEO) and Harry Langenberg (Managing Partner) demonstrating the Supermoney Loan Comparison Tool at FinovateSpring 2017.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Backbase, eWise, Fiserv, NetGuardians, NF Innova, NIIT Technologies, Proactive Budget, Signicat, SuperMoney, TickSmith

On Finovate.com

  • NetGuardians Raises More than $8 Million in Series C.
  • SuperMoney Brings a Kayak-like UX to the Online Borrowing Experience.

On FinDEVr.com

  • Check out previews of upcoming FinDEVr London presentations:

Around the web

  • eWise integrates its Aegis data aggregation platform into Backbase’s Open Banking Marketplace.
  • TickSmith introduces new performance-tracking module, Marketplace Advanced Insights.
  • Bank of Sydney replaces its digital banking platform with DigitalAccess from Fiserv.
  • ProActive Budget launches Android app.
  • NF Innova named Market Leader in IDC MarketScape 2017 with iBanking Solution
  • NIIT Technologies appoints Sudhir Singh as CEO Designate
  • Signicat Launches MobileID to Satisfy PSD2 Requirements.

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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