Trusona Launches #NoPasswords for Salesforce

Trusona Launches #NoPasswords for Salesforce

Ending the Password Paradigm is near the top of everyone’s technology wish list. This helps explain the enthusiasm for companies like cybersecurity specialist Trusona. During his Best of Show winning demonstration at FinovateFall 2016, company founder and CEO Ori Eisen, led an entertaining introduction to a world without passwords.

“You’re going to see the quickest demo of the day. If you blink you might miss it. For that reason, I’m going to do it a few times,” Eisen said. He then showed – seven times in seven minutes – how the company’s Trusona Essential solution enabled frictionless, password-free login. Using the free mobile app, Eisen demonstrated how the camera on a smartphone could be used to scan a unique QR code generated from a Trusona-secured website. After scanning the QR code the user receives a notification which, when confirmed, grants access.

“Why do we need passwords?,” Eisen asked the Finovate audience. “All these breaches and malware are trying to steal passwords because they are static. If we turn every interaction into dynamic, there is nothing to steal.”

Pictured: Trusona CEO and founder Ori Eisen demonstrating the Trusona Essential service of the  Trusona Cloud Identity Suite at FinovateFall 2016.

This week we learned that Trusona’s #NoPasswords revolution has been brought to the shores of Salesforce. The company unveiled Trusona for Salesforce on Thursday, a new, free app that will accelerate the authentication process for professionals at the more than 100,000 companies that use Salesforce every day.  “From our #NoPasswords Essential solutions, through the world’s first and only insured Elite solution that delivers NIST Level 4 (four-factor) authentication, we are working to expand our technology to fit the security needs of all organizations,” Eisen said. He added, “We are excited to now offer Trusona for Salesforce as yet another tool to rid the world of passwords and provide secure identity authentication.”

Much like the demonstration of Trusona Essential at FinovateFall, Trusona for Salesforce provides users with a unique QR code that is scanned and tapped to log-in. Once integrated by a company’s Salesforce administrator, anyone with a Salesforce account at the company can access the technology. Trusona for Salesforce is currently available on a free, trial basis for 14 days and will cost users $10 a year afterward.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, Trusona demonstrated its Cloud Identity Suite at FinovateFall 2016. The technology provides three levels of service (see below) that enable Trusona to provide secure authentication for everything from basic daily login to more sensitive environments including SWIFT wires, HNW individual accounts, critical infrastructure logins, and healthcare records. All three solutions – and Trusona for Salesforce – leverage Trusona’s TruSanAR anti-replay technology, specifically designed to prevent session replay attacks.

Essential

  • Proves identity via email verification
  • Provides free, two-factor authentication

Executive

  • Proves identity via remote driver’s license and/or passport scanning
  • Provides three-factor authentication designed for account openings, wire transfers, system administrator logins

Elite

  • Proves identity via multiple forms of ID, including driver’s license and ePassport.
  • Provides four-factor authentication for critical and sensitive assets that is insured by A+ rated insurance carrier at up to $1 million per transaction

Trusona has raised $8 million in funding and includes Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers among its investors. The company added Karen Dayan as Chief Marketing Officer in April, the same month Eisen was named to the One World Identity (OWI) Top 100 Identity Leaders for 2017. The company began the year winning Info Security’s Products Guide Global Excellence Award for Tomorrow’s Technology Today.

KPMG Acquires Fintech Collaboration Specialist, Matchi

KPMG Acquires Fintech Collaboration Specialist, Matchi

Fintech matchmaker Matchi has made a major match of its own: The Hong Kong-based company agreed to an acquisition by KPMG this week. Terms of the deal were not immediately available.

Calling the combination of the two entities a “powerful fintech resource,” Matchi CEO David Milligan said that the acquisition will help Match “fulfill the promise of collaboration between financial institutions and fintech firms, which can ultimately benefit all consumers.” Global co-leader of Fintech for KPMG International, Ian Pollari called Matchi’s curated approach” as very different from the “fintech databases that merely provide lists.” He added “It is designed to identify, match, and enable collaboration with the most innovative fintechs and solutions to address specific issues being faced by financial institutions.”

Matchi’s platform featured more than 700 curated fintech solutions as well as a 2,500+ company database of fintech innovators that FIs can collaborate and work with. FIs can search for specific companies or technologies, and take advantage of Matchi’s Innovation Challenge feature by issuing a specific business issue or problem on the platform and see what fintechs are interested in pursuing a solution. “Finding fintech companies who are pre-validated, helps to reduce risks and can accelerate time to market,” Pollari explained.

Founded in 2013, Matchi demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2014. The company has played matchmaker for more than 100 leading banks and insurance companies worldwide, helping firms deploy a variety of technologies ranging from next generation payments to the blockchain. Last month, Matchi teamed up with ATB Financial and KPMG Canada to run a customer onboarding innovation challenge for fintech companies.

 

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • KPMG Acquires Fintech Collaboration Specialist, Matchi.

Around the web

  • Misys introduces cloud-based, retail banking platform for German market.
  • Xero announces new partnership with Capital One to give SMEs more control over their data.
  • Zopa wins full FCA authorization for P2P lending.
  • Ohio-based Apple Creek Bank chooses core account processing and back office solutions from Fiserv.

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.

PayU Investment in Kreditech Marks Largest Funding for a German Fintech

PayU Investment in Kreditech Marks Largest Funding for a German Fintech

In a funding round led by online payment service provider, PayU, Germany’s Kreditech has raised $120 million (€110 million). The investment is the largest equity investment in a German fintech company to date. Kreditech CEO Alexander Graubner-Müller said his company was looking forward to bringing “point-of-sale finance” to markets where “reliable credit risk assessment” is lacking. Graubner-Müller added “Teaming up with PayU provides underbanked customers new possibilities and supports our mission of providing financial freedom through technology.”

In addition the record-setting nature of the funding, the partnership between Kreditech and PayU also represents what the company called in a press release: “the first such strategic cooperation pact between a payment service provider and a technology driven consumer finance company.” Pointing to its commitment to bring credit and financial services to the underbanked, PayU CEO Laurent le Moal said his company’s “substantial investment” in Kreditech will “help to bring pioneering machine learning and AI technology to the many high growth markets around the world that need better access to financial services.”

Pictured (left to right): Co-founders Sebastian Diemer and Alexander Graubner-Müller demonstrating Kreditech’s platform at FinovateSpring 2014.

This week’s funding adds to the $10.4 million Kreditech raised in a round led by Japan-based Rakuten last December. With total capital of more than $280 million, the Hamburg-based online lender has earned a valuation of between $325 million and $540 million, according to an estimate in TechCrunch.

Kreditech has processed more than four million loan applications via its subsidiaries, leveraging its API-driven, lending-as-a-service approach to make it easy for partners to integrate and custom-fit a variety of consumer finance solutions. These include loan application and credit risk management products, e-signature and customer service, loan refinancing, processing, and collections. The company is active in more than five markets around the world – including Russia, Mexico, Spain, and Poland, where Kreditech and PayU recently completed an $11 million (€10 million), 12-month pilot program.

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, Kreditech demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2014. Named to H2 Ventures and KPMG’s Fintech 100 in 2016, the company added a pair of new board members last month: former Vanquis Bank CEO Michael Lenora and OneSavings Bank CEO Andy Golding.

FinDEVr APIntelligence

FinDEVr APIntelligence

Our first developers conference in the U.K. is just over a month away. If APIs and SDKs are just a few of your favorite fintech acronyms, then join us for two days of developer-focused presentations, demonstrations, and conversations at FinDEVr 2017 London, June 12 and 13. Stop by our registration page today and save your spot.

FinDEVr 2017 London is a part of London Tech Week, which runs from June 12 to June 16.

On FinDEVr.com

  • Symbiont Gains “Strong Partner in Asia” with Investment from Hundson Technologies.

Upcoming FinDEVr 2017 London alum news

  • Check Out Our Exclusive Interview with ISARA CEO, Scott Totzke.
  • Our latest FinDEVr Features Are Up. Meet Kontomatik and IdentityMind Global.

Alumni updates

  • Kontomatik earns top 50 spot in the 2017 Dutch FinTech Awards. Join Kontomatik in London for FinDEVr in June.
  • ACI Worldwide’s point-to-point encryption solution earns PCI P2PE compliance validation.
  • Thoma Bravo to Acquire Lexmark’s Kofax.
  • MapD partners with Continuum Analytics & H2O.ai, to form the GPU Open Analytics Initiative.
  • Thinking Capital to offer SMB financing options to TouchBistro POS clients.
  • Token Picks Up $18.5 Million to Help Banks Rise to Challenge of PSD2.
  • PayNearMe adds 8,000 CVS Pharmacy Stores to its network cash acceptance locations.
  • CardFlight unveils new line of mobile card readers to support secure EMV and NFC contactless payments.
  • Gartner recognizes OutSystems as a leader in enterprise high productivity application platform as a service technology.
  • Malauzai’s Vantiv Partnership to Leverage OnDot’s CardControl Tool.

Stay current on daily news from the fintech developer community! Follow FinDEVr on Twitter.

 

FinDEVr Alum Symbiont Scores Funding from China’s Hundsun Technologies

FinDEVr Alum Symbiont Scores Funding from China’s Hundsun Technologies

The amount of the investment was undisclosed. But blockchain startup and smart contracts specialist, Symbiont has picked up funding from China-based Hundsun Technologies. The investment in Symbiont is the first in the U.S. for the financial services software provider and the company, which is partly-owned by Alibaba founder, Jack Ma, will also add an observer to Symbiont’s board of directors. Symbiont CEO Mark Smith referred to the investment as a “clear vote of confidence for Symbiont” and called Hundsun Technologies a “strong partner in Asia.”

Symbiont’s innovation is a smart contracts platform that enables FIs to develop applications based on distributed ledger technology. Current use cases enabling the issuance, trading, and processing of corporate bonds, syndicated loans, and other low-liquidity financial instruments. Guan Xiaolan, executive president of Hundsun highlighted the company’s “superior, mature, and highly differentiated DLT stack,” as well as the technology’s high level of security. “Its smart contracts have a proven ability to automate complex business logic, such as highly tailored employee compensation waterfalls for private companies,” he added.

Pictured: Symbiont CTO and co-founder Adam Krellenstein during his presentation at FinDEVr New York 2016.

It has been almost a year since the State of Delaware partnered with Symbiont in a project called The Delaware Block Initiative designed to make it easier for state government and businesses to leverage blockchain technology. In an update published as part of the Delaware law series last month, Andrea Tinianow of the Delaware Blockchain Initiative and Caitlin Long of Symbiont noted that the “first milestone of DBI’s roadmap” – deploying distributed ledger technology at the state’s public archives – had been achieved. Underscoring the relevance of this initial effort, the two wrote: “By being the first to adopt the technology, the State will maintain its leadership in corporate registry services.”

Also this spring, Symbiont added Yale University computer science professor, Dr. Zhong Shao, to its Technical Advisory Board, and partnered with commodity services specialist, Orebits, who will use Symbiont’s smart contract technology to further develop their eponymous commodity-backed digital assets. The first digital assets, called “orebits,” were made available on Symbiont’s platform in March.

Symbiont was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in New York. Adam Krellenstein, CTO and co-founder of the company, presented “Distributed Ledgers and Smart Contracts” at FinDEVr New York 2016.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Bitbond Gains $5.4 Million Debt Commitment and Undisclosed Equity Investment.
  • PayU Investment in Kreditech Marks Largest Funding for a German Fintech.

On FinDEVr.com

  • FinDEVr Alum Symbiont Scores Funding from China’s Hundsun Technologies.
  • Check out our latest FinDEVr APIntelligence.

Around the web

  • CSI globalVCard to integrate Visa Payables Automation into its paysystem Payables platform.
  • Kontomatik earns top 50 spot in the 2017 Dutch FinTech Awards. Join Kontomatik for FinDEVr London in June.
  • Australia-based forex broker Pepperstone to deploy Paydentity verification services from iSignthis.
  • Daon to integrate IdentityX platform with Experian’s fraud and identity platform, CrossCore.
  • ACI Worldwide’s point-to-point encryption solution earns PCI P2PE compliance validation.
  • Delaware’s Dover FCU to deploy core in-house processing technology from Jack Henry’s Symitar division.

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.

 

Vera Announces $15 Million Strategic Investment from Hasso Plattner

Vera Announces $15 Million Strategic Investment from Hasso Plattner

Data security specialist  Vera announced a strategic investment of $15 million today. The funding was led by Hasso Plattner Ventures (HP-Ventures), and featured the participation of Amplify Partners, Battery Ventures, Clear Venture Partners, Leslie Ventures, and Sutter Hill Ventures. The company’s total capital is now more than $50 million. Ajay Arora, CEO and co-founder of Vera said the investment will help fuel expansion particularly in Europe where new regulations on data security, specifically the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), are pending.

GDPR was enacted just over a year ago by the European Parliament and Council in an effort to improve data security for individuals in the EU. The scheduled implementation date of the GDPR is less than a month away on May 25th and observers like Gartner are warning that less than half of companies are will be fully compliant by the end of 2018, much less the end of May. “The GDPR will affect not only EU-based organizations, but many data controllers and processors outside the EU as well,” Gartner research director, Bart Willemsen said. He added that both the threat of “hefty fines” and what he called “the increasingly empowered position of individual data subjects” are pressuring companies to do a better job of protecting personal data.

Pictured: Vera CEO and co-founder Ajay Arora demonstrating Vera Security at FinovateSpring 2016.

And this is where companies like Vera come in. Vera’s technology innovates by securing the data itself. From files and Word documents to images and video, Vera enables companies to control access and the ability to manipulate data after it has left its traditional perimeter of control. During the company’s live demonstration at FinovateSpring, Vera’s Grant Shirk used a single click to secure a word document and an Excel spreadsheet after attaching them to an email. In addition to quickly establishing a variety of access permissions, Vera’s technology also enables digital watermarking, restrictions on the ability to edit (including cut and paste), and provides auditing and tracking.

Underscoring Vera’s uniqueness as its first cybersecurity investment, HP-Ventures General Partner, Yair Re’em credited the company’s “incredible momentum and hypergrowth in markets large and small” as well as Vera’s ability to “help protect and control data after a breach has happened.” He said: “The crumbling state of enterprise security has clearly demonstrated the need for a fundamental paradigm shift in cybersecurity.” Chris Rust, Clear Venture Partners co-founder and General Partner, added that Vera was “the driving force behind a positive and profound shift away from perimeter-based security and towards a more flexible and reliable data-centric model.” Rust will join Vera’s board of directors as part of the strategic investment.

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Vera demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2016. Earlier this year, the company launched its enterprise communications security solution, Vera for Mail. Last fall, Vera announced that Logica Capital Advisors had selected them to manage business information and internal collaboration files. The company has produced more than 4x revenue growth since launching publicly in 2015 and grown its Fortune 100 customer base by 5x. Vera won the 2017 SC Trust Award Winner for Best Cloud Computing Security in February and, in March, the company was named to CRN’s annual Security 100 list.

Digiliti Money Celebrates Rebrand by Ringing NASDAQ Closing Bell

Digiliti Money Celebrates Rebrand by Ringing NASDAQ Closing Bell

Digiliti Money, the company formerly known as Cachet Financial Solutions, rang the closing bell on the NASDAQ this afternoon.

Announced last month, the rebrand for the cloud-based, mobile RDC and prepaid card solutions provider comes at what Digiliti Money CEO and chairman Jeff Mack called “an important inflection point in the company’s development.” Pointing to the company’s recent capital raise and NASDAQ listing, Mack said the rebrand not only better exemplifies the company’s past but also points toward Digiliti’s future “as a mobile money technology leader capitalizing on multi-billion-dollar end markets.” The company’s new NASDAQ stock exchange ticker is “DGLT” and went live on April 10th.

On Friday, the company announced that Fidelity Express, which provides money orders, walk-in billpay, and other point-of-sale financial services, has selected Digiliti’s Mobile Bill Pay solution for use at 5,000 locations in 19 states. Fidelity Express will take advantage of the Mobile Bill Pay’s image recognition technology to make it easier and faster to process payments from customers without the kind of errors that plague manual data entry.

Additionally, Digiliti has inked a deal with New Jersey-based Garden Savings FCU, which will deploy the company’s prepaid mobile banking platform to better serve its 25,000 members. Digiliti has also formed an agreement with Rebar Interactive Partners, who will leverage the company’s mobile prepaid banking technology. The company also bolstered its board of directors last month with the addition of Brittany McKinney, former president and CEO of Analysts International and a technology executive with more than 20 years of experience.

Founded in 2010 as Cachet Financial Solutions, the company demonstrated its Select Mobile Money solution at FinovateFall 2014. Select Mobile Money won Digiliti Money a PayBefore Award last month in the Outstanding White-Label Platform category.

$230 Million Raised by 20 Alums in Q1 2017

$230 Million Raised by 20 Alums in Q1 2017

The big story for fintech investment in the first few months of 2017 was uncertainty. Whether it was the upset election victory of Donald Trump in the U.S., or continued concerns in the aftermath of the Brexit vote in the U.K., it was clear that venture capital – like much of the rest of the world – was taking a wait-and-see approach to deploying capital in the fintech industry in the first quarter of this year.

While more upbeat on European investment trends, CB Insights took a more conservative tone toward funding to VC-backed fintechs in the U.S. and the world at large. The firm suggested that the Q1 2017 investment pace globally was off the 2016 mark by 18%, with the U.S. Q1 2017 pace off by 20%. (Europe, by contrast, was on pace to exceed 2016 by 57%.)

The Q1 funding slowdown was apparent in our review of alum funding for the first three months of the year. Finovate alums raised more than $230 million in the first quarter of 2017. The funding total is less than half that of the previous Q1, and out of line with recent $600 million+ first quarters. The number of alums funded was also on the low end, falling below the 23 alum mark from the first quarter of 2014.

That said, we would be remiss if we didn’t point out that SoFi, which became a FinDEVr alum in March, raised $500 million in funding in February. And while that keeps them from being included in – and dramatically boosting – our tally, it is reminder that fintech investors in the first quarter of 2017 may not have been as overcautious as the numbers suggest.

Previous Quarterly Comparisons

  • Q1 2016: $656 million raised by 32 alums
  • Q1 2015: $680 million raised by 29 alums
  • Q1 2014: $600 million raised by 23 alums

The biggest equity deal of the first quarter of 2017 was the $50 million raised by Kensho in February. Workfusion came in second, raising $35 million, and a trio of companies raised between $25 million and $20 million. The top 10 equity investment for Q1 2017 totaled more than $210 million, or more than 91% of the quarter’s total alum funding.

Top 10 Equity Investments

  1. Kensho: $50 million
  2. Workfusion: $35 million
  3. Currencycloud: $25 million
  4. Payfone: $23.5 million
  5. VATBox: $20 million
  6. NYMBUS: $16 million
  7. Qapital: $12 million
  8. Algomi: $10 million
  9. Dream Payments: $10 million
  10. blooom: $9.15 million

Here is our detailed alum funding report for Q1 2017.

January: More than $65 million raised by three alums

  • Dwolla: $6.85 million – post
  • Payfone: $23.5 million – post
  • Workfusion: $35 million – post

February: More than $107 million raised by 12 alums

  • Rippleshot: $2.6 million – post
  • AutoGravity: “double-digit million Euro investment” – post
  • Bitbond: $1.2 million – post
  • Blooom: $9.15 million – news
  • Clinc: $6 million – post
  • Kensho: $50 million – news
  • NYMBUS: $16 million – post
  • Pindrop Security: amount undisclosed – post
  • Qumram: $1.5 million – post
  • SecureKey: $800,000 – post
  • VATBox: $20 million – post
  • Venteny: undisclosed – news

March: More than $57 million raised by five alums

  • Algomi: $10 million – post
  • Currencycloud: $25 million – post
  • Dream Payments: $10 million – post
  • Qapital: $12 million – post
  • SWITCH: $400,000 – post

If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the first quarter of 2016, and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at [email protected]. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum not included.

Token Picks Up $18.5 Million to Help Banks Rise to Challenge of PSD2

Token Picks Up $18.5 Million to Help Banks Rise to Challenge of PSD2

With an investment of $15.7 million from Octopus Ventures, EQT Ventures, and OP Financial Group, open bank platform innovator Token has successfully completed its Series A financing. “Securing the backing from such world-class investors allows us to grow and execute faster in our mission to reinvent the world’s payment systems by providing common, secure access to all banks and a modern, bank-centric payment ecosystem,” Token founder and CEO Steve Kirsch said. The total raised in the Series A reached $18.5 million.

Token is leveraging its open banking platform to give financial institutions the ability to fully participate in the digitization of finance. Calling the company’s technology, “a true game-changer in the world of banking and financial services,” EQT Ventures partner and Token board member Andreas Thorstensson said: “Through a secure API, they are creating an open banking ecosystem, which creates possibilities for new revenue streams for its customers and a better user experience for consumers.

Pictured (left to right): Stefan Weiss (Head of APIs and Open Platforms at Fidor) and Marten Nelson (VP, Marketing, Token) demonstrating Token’s technology at FinovateEurope 2017.

In the company’s live demonstration at FinovateEurope earlier this year, Token co-founder and VP of Marketing Marten Nelson emphasized the relative speed and low cost of using Token as a PSD2 compliance solution. “It eliminates security mass breaches, reduces fraud and, perhaps best of all, it paves the way for revenue,” Nelson added. Joining Nelson on stage was Stefan Weiss, Head of APIs and Open Platforms at Fidor Bank who noted, “At Fidor, we believe that PSD2 and open banking is not a threat to banks, it is an opportunity. An opportunity to stay relevant.”

With programmable money, Token has developed a technology that “can transform the way the world transacts,” according to Octopus Ventures partner Simon Andrews. Programmable money uses tokenization and cryptography to enable parties to take advantage of a “vastly greater range of parameters … when exchanging value.” And value is defined as more than just money. Writing at the Token blog, Nelson explained: “Far more than conventional money – time, contracts, expertise, goods, services, and more can all be traded.” For FIs, this offers not just greater security and verification standards for their transactions, but the ability to use more efficient self-validating transactions that would reduce costs for FIs, as well. “The potential applications for self-validating transactions conducted using programmable money are practically limitless,” he wrote.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Token presented The Future of Payments Now at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2015. Earlier this month, the company announced a partnership with Finland-based OP Financial Group and, in January, Token teamed up with information technology consulting firm, VirtusaPolaris.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Signifyd Raises $56 Million to Fight eCommerce Chargebacks.
  • Token Picks Up $18.5 Million to Help Banks Rise to the Challenge of PSD2.

Around the web

  • Wipro signs on as founding member of Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA).
  • PayNearMe adds 8,000 CVS Pharmacy Stores to its network cash acceptance locations.
  • D3 Banking announces enhancements to its small business banking solution.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.