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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Finovate alums raised more than $1.2 billion in equity funding in 2023. The total funding for the year reflects the continued slowdown in fintech funding that began in 2022.
In the fourth quarter of 2023, eleven Finovate alums raised more than $307 million in equity funding. Note, however, that this sum does not include the equity portion of the investment secured by SumUp, for example. The quarterly total also does not include the investment received by Icon Solutions, the amount of which was undisclosed.
Previous Quarterly Comparisons
Q4 2022: More than $380 million raised by 15 alums
Q4 2021: More than $1.2 billion raised by seven alums
Q4 2020: More than $472 million raised by 17 alums
Q4 2019: More than $876 million raised by 21 alums
Q4 2018: More than $800 million raised by 19 alums
Nevertheless, the fourth quarter alumni fundraising total approximates that of both last year’s Q4 and the final quarter of 2020.
Top Quarterly Equity Investments
Adlumin: $70 million
Paysend: $65 million
Scalable Capital: $64.7 million
Three investments in the fourth quarter of 2023 stood out among the others: Adlumin, Paysend, and Scalable Capital all announced fundraisings of more than $60 million in Q4. Also noteworthy was the $40 million raised by Stash in October.
Combined, the top three quarterly equity investments from our alums represent more than 65% of the total alum funding haul for Q4 2023.
Here is our detailed alum funding report for Q4 2023.
If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the fourth quarter of 2023, and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at research@finovate.com. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum not included.
Digital conversations platform Eltropy announced a partnership with Magnifi Financial.
The two companies will work to build and launch Generative AI-based solutions for employees, customers, and members of community financial institutions.
Eltropy most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2022 in New York.
Digital conversations platform Eltropy and Magnifi Financial are working together to launch Generative AI solutions to enhance employee training and improve the customer/member experience. Eltropy’s Generative AI tools are powered by large language models (LLMs) that are specifically designed for community financial institutions (CFIs). These tools have enabled CFIs to bring new efficiency to their operations and greater personalization to the products and services they offer. Speaking about the partnership in a statement, Magnifi Financial SVP for IT and Digital Brad Shafton highlighted the fact that Eltropy’s technology is especially geared toward the needs of community financial institutions.
“What sets Eltropy apart is not just their technology but also their dedication to understanding the credit union industry and their commitment to community financial institutions like ours,” Shafton said. “They continue to evolve, and that’s why we consider them a long-term partner, including for AI.”
Magnifi will deploy Eltropy’s technology in a number of ways, including enhancing the firm’s mortgage and lending operations. Additionally, Eltropy’s ChatGRT-style Employee Assistants enable customer-facing financial services workers – from contact center agents to tellers – to access vetted, verified customer data. The technology also automates tasks like e-mail response generation, using natural conversational language.
To this end, Eltropy co-founder and CEO Ashish Garg said that solutions based on Generative AI have the potential to provide credit unions and community banks with new “innovative ways to thrive.” Garg added, “Eltrophy’s generative AI tools are empowering forward-thinking CFIs to achieve this by accelerating and enhancing employee knowledge training, improving the member experience and ultimately fueling growth.”
Eltropy made its most recent Finovate appearance last year at FinovateFall 2022. The company’s partnership with Magnifi Financial follows news of a collaboration with fellow Finovate alum Jack Henry from earlier this month, and an integration with Fiserv’s full-service account processing platform Portico in November. In August, Eltropy teamed up with yet another Finovate alum, Alkami, to enhance digital conversations for financial institutions.
Headquartered in Milpitas, California, Eltropy has raised $25 million in funding. The company includes K1 Investment Management and Curql among its investors.
Payments solutions company Allied Payment Network has partnered with MY CREDIT UNION of Bloomington, Minnesota.
The partnership will integrate Allied’s payment technology with the credit union’s Ultracs digital banking platform.
Headquartered in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Allied Payment Network made its Finovate debut in 2013.
Payments solutions provider Allied Payment Network will integrate its technology with MY CREDIT UNION’s Ultracs digital banking platform courtesy of a new partnership.
“Financial institutions like MY CREDIT UNION serve a critical role in their communities,” Allied Payment Network CEO Geoff Knapp said. “Their members aren’t just numbers; they’re neighbors and friends. They are allies for their community and we’re proud to be an ally for them.”
Headquartered in Bloomington, Minnesota, MY CREDIT UNION specializes in providing its members with financial wellness and banking solutions that “educate, empower, and engage.” Founded in 1957, MY CREDIT UNION has $380 million in assets, and serves its members via four branches as well as online.
MY CREDIT UNION President Greg Worthen credited Allied Payment Network for being a “community-focused organization.” He noted that this factor, among others, is what helped seal the deal. “With the combination of two, state-of-the-art platforms like Ultracs and Allied,” he said, “we’re confident we’ll be able to give our members the superior mobile-first experience they expect.”
Fort Wayne, Indiana-based Allied Payment Network made its Finovate debut in 2013 at FinovateSpring. Since then, the company has grown into a major paytech leader with 500 bank and credit union customers. Allied Payment Network offers a real-time, open-network payments model, and features a broad range of online and mobile solutions. These products and services include online billpay, P2P fund transfer, PicturePay, BizPay, PortalPay, A2A fund transfer, and Vault, a digital document storage solution.
In 2022, the company processed $3.6 billion in payment volume. This year, Allied Payment Network has forged partnerships with fellow Finovate alum Q2 in May, First Farmers Bank & Trust and Central Payments in June, Washington-based Commencement Bank and South Carolina-based United Community in September, and marketing firm Murphy & Company in October. The company also made a pair of C-suite hires in 2023. Allied began the year adding Kathi Klawitter as Chief Operating Officer. In July, the company introduced new Chief Information Security Officer James Dixon.
Allied Payment Network has raised more than $8 million in funding. The company includes Plymouth Growth among its investors.
Enabling technologies continue to fuel innovation in fintech and financial services. But what are regulatory bodies doing to ensure safety for consumers and fair competition for businesses?
Here are some of the areas where regulators could make themselves felt by the fintech industry in 2024.
AI: From the EU’s AI Act to Executive Orders in the U.S.
Whether its the boardrooms of Silicon Valley or the halls of Congress, the call for regulating AI technology is only getting louder. As we enter 2024, the focus on AI-based regulations in the U.S. will come from the Executive Order signed by President Biden in October. This order, called the Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence, builds on the administration’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights from last year. The order lists eight guiding principles for the responsible development and use of AI – including the importance of U.S. leadership in this field as well as both support for American workers and protections for American consumers.
The order also set out a series of regulatory requirements that range from establishing AI safety and security standards to the importance of fostering innovation to concerns about human rights and equity. In their review of the executive order, Foley & Lardner analysts Millendorf, Allen, Moore, Barrett, and Zhang note that while it could set the stage for “potentially rigorous regulation,” the order also makes it clear that “the administration is not shy about their desire to promote competition.”
Meanwhile in Europe, we soon will have the chance to see the implementation of the European Union’s enactment of the AI Act. Unlike policy in the U.S., the EU’s AI Act is set to become law early next year. The AI Act comes two years after the EU first proposed a regulatory framework for AI and will mandate new restrictions on the use of the technology. This will include greater transparency on how data is used. The Act also categorizes AI technologies in terms of risk, recognizing everything from “unacceptable risk” systems that involve cognitive behavioral manipulation or social scoring, to limited risk systems such as image generating or manipulating technologies.
There has been some criticism of the EU’s AI Act – for example, French President Emmanuel Macron expressed concern that the legislation could stifle innovation. But with final details hammered out this week, a new comprehensive framework for regulating artificial intelligence will be among the first big technology headlines of the new year.
Buy Now, Pay Later, Regulate Someday?
According to research from Lafferty, the international Buy Now, Pay Later market will top $532 billion in 2024. And observers of the Buy Now, Pay Later phenomenon – supporters and critics – have known for some time that tougher regulations were coming to the industry. The only question was when.
Is the answer, “next year”? In the U.S., the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been studying the BNPL industry since at least late 2021. As such, the CFPB has recognized a number of key benefits BNPL provides relative to traditional credit products, especially with regard to the absence of interest payments, ease of access, and simple repayment structure. At the same time, the agency has also acknowledged a number of potential issues: discrete consumer harms, data harvesting, and overextension.
At this point, much of the CFPB’s impact on BNPL has been minimal. And while some observers believe that regulation is inevitable, few see signs of any specific imminent changes to law or policy with regard to BNPL in the U.S. There has some concern at the state level, with state attorneys general voicing consumer protection warnings. But at this point, “study and recommend” seems to be the approach the agency is taking toward BNPL for the immediate future.
Unsurprisingly, the EU is significantly farther down the path toward regulating BNPL than the U.S. is. In September, policymakers revised their Consumer Credit Directive (CCD) which updated rules for consumer credit and roped in Buy Now Pay Later products for the first time. With regards to BNPL, the revised directive specifies the circumstances under which a given BNPL service falls under the CCD. It also mandates that those BNPL services that are within the scope of the CCD be “subject to license requirements and certain regulations regarding responsible lending.” The new stipulations in the CCD must be implemented into member state national law by the fall of 2025.
Will the Regulators Curtail Crypto’s Comeback?
The price of Bitcoin is up more than 148% year-to-date. Ethereum is up more than 90%. Even the lowly Dogecoin has gained more than 35% from the start of the year through mid-December. After a slow start, 2023 is turning out to be a great year for cryptocurrency asset prices.
So will the regulators show up to take away the punch bowl?
Once again, the EU is the first mover when it comes to major regulation of enabling technologies in fintech. Next year, the EU will implement the Markets in Crypto Assets regulation – also known as MiCA or MiCAR. The first instance of a regulatory body establishing a comprehensive set of regulations for cryptocurrencies, MiCA was established in June. The regulations set new rules for stablecoins, including e-money tokens; require authorization for certain types of services provided by companies deemed crypto-asset-service providers; and introduce new rules to prevent market abuse via unlawful disclosure, insider trading or other activities “that are likely to lead to disruption or manipulation of crypto-assets.”
In the U.S., 2023 seemed like the year when regulators were doing everything they could to make life miserable for the cryptocurrency business. But 2024 could bring better news for the industry in the form of rule changes like the one recently made by the Financial Account Standards Board (FASB). This rule change allows institutions to represent their crypto holdings at fair value beginning late in 2024. Under current accounting rules, cryptocurrencies suffer from something called impairment.
This occurs because of the imbalance between how cryptocurrencies are recorded when they lose value as opposed to when they regain value. According to one observer, TradeStation Head of Brokerage Solutions Anthony Rousseau, this change gives corporate treasurers a potential way to include cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin to their balance sheets as a reserve asset. And as we’ve seen with the emergence of crypto ETFs in 2023, institutional adoption of crypto is one of the key leading indicators for potentially greater adoption of crypto throughout society.
ERM announced that it will integrate its ESG screening engine, ESG Fusion, with data from SESAMm.
The integration will enable ESG Fusion to screen an additional 20 billion documents and four million sources for ESG-related adverse events.
Headquartered in France, SESAMm won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2022.
Sustainability advisory firm ERM announced a data partnership with Finovate Best of Show winner SESAMm. ERM will integrate data from SESAMm into its ESG screening engine, ESG Fusion. The result will boost the number of documents ESG Fusion screens for ESG-related adverse events by more than 20 billion and increase the number of sources by more than four million. The integration will also add to the engine’s coverage of languages, bringing ESG Fusion’s language coverage total to more than 100.
“A recurring challenge we see in the market is the capability to feed a state-of-the-art ESG methodology with extensive amounts of up-to-date raw data at pace and scale,” ESG Fusion Product Lead Marcel Leistenschneider explained. “Any informed ESG assessment must be built on as large a data foundation as possible. With this new partnership, we can confidently say that ‘if there is evidence on a company’s ESG performance out there, we will find it.”
ESG Fusion leverages AI to consume large amounts of unstructured data. Via a robust screening and analysis process, the engine transforms the data into an ESG Fusion report that is both intuitive and insightful. To ensure accountability, each report undergoes a review by an ERM expert before being distributed to customers. The new data capabilities from ERM’s partnership with SESAMm will enable ESG Fusion to reproduce “high-quality, outside-in-reports at scale on almost any company worldwide,” according to M&A Advisory Services Global Lead Andrew Radcliff.
In addition to ESG-related adverse events and controversies, ESG Fusion also provides assessments of industry-inherent risk of any given company. The technology also offers an assessment of the company’s management performance with regards to ESG issues, particularly disclosures.
Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Paris, France, SESAMm made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2022 in London. At the conference, the company won Best of Show for its demo of TextReveal, an alternative data platform that leverages SESAMm’s Natural Language Processing powered engine to provide daily sentiment and ESG data mapped to public and private companies.
Earlier this year, SESAMm announced a partnership with Compass Financial Technologies to build a thematic index for cryptocurrencies. In July, the company announced that it was integrating Generative AI into its platform to enhance ESG risk mitigation. SESAMm has raised $54.5 million (€50.5 million) in funding, most recently securing $37.7 million (€35 million) as part of an overall $45.8 million (€42.5 million) Series B round. Sylvain Forté is co-founder and CEO.
Looking to demo your latest fintech innovation? Applications are now being accepted for demoing companies at FinovateEurope in London, February 27 and 28, 2024. Visit our FinovateEurope hub for more!
“Fired up and ready to go” is not just for political campaigns any more. According to a new survey from Ernst & Young, that sentiment aptly describes the attitude of a growing number of leaders in financial services when it comes to their eagerness to deploy artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI (GenAI).
How eager? According to Ernst & Young’s 2023 Financial Services GenAI Survey, “nearly all (99%) of the financial services leaders surveyed reported that their organizations were deploying artificial intelligence (AI) in some manner. All respondents said they are either already using, or planning to use, generative AI (GenAI) specifically within their organization.”
Given the popularity of AI and GenAI, overwhelmingly positive responses like these may not be surprising. The FOMO in this field is reminiscent of the dot-com gold rush of more than two decades ago. After all, are many of the companies appending “ai” to their names that much different from their predecessors who donned “.com” back in 1999? Today’s eagerness has a similarly fearlessness. In the EY survey, expressions of anxiety and skepticism about the potential impact of GenAI on their business were few at just over one in five. For what it’s worth, insurers were the most nervous; bankers the least.
Other color pops in the EY Survey included “feeling supportive and optimistic about using AI in their organization” (55%), seeing GenAI “as an overall benefit to financial services within 5 to 10 years” (77%), and believing AI will improve the customer and client experience (87%).
The survey did reveals discontents. And within these discontents are potential opportunities for fintechs, especially those involved in the “picks and shovels” of the AI gold rush. Respondents to the tune of 40% reported that there was a lack of proper data infrastructure for successful deployment of AI solutions. And with regards to technology infrastructure, the survey noted that 35% of respondents believed there were still significant barriers. EY Americas Financial Services Organization Advanced Analytics Leader Sameer Gupta spoke to this problem, noting that while “generative AI holds the potential to revolutionize a broad array of business functions … with each new wave of AI and analytic innovation, it becomes increasingly clear how important it is to have a tech stack with a solid foundation.” Gupta added that it is critical for legacy data and technology to be “unimpeachable” before introducing AI.
Another challenge is talent. The mainstream conversation on AI still orbits concerns about AI-induced job losses. But the real job challenge with regards to AI right now is finding enough people qualified to implement AI-based solutions. “Our data showed that 44% of leaders cited access to skilled resources as a barrier to AI implementation,” EY Americas Financial Services Accounts Managing Partner Michael Fox said, “but there’s only so many already skilled professionals in existence.”
Fortunately, leaders seem to be embracing an AI-enabled future, making it that much more likely that these challenges will be met and overcome. In our own informal surveys with financial professionals, we have learned that buy-in from leadership is seen as key – for everything from DEI initiatives to digital transformation. And it is no surprise that EY has a role to play in making sure this is clear to its financial institution partners. “We like to take an ‘innovation intelligence’ approach to putting artificial intelligence to work,” EY Americas Financial Services Innovation Leader David Kadio-Morokro explained. “Planning, education, and an agile test and learn strategy for implementation are imperative for those looking to make the most of AI’s potential benefits.”
Conducted in August, the 2023 Financial Services GenAI Survey queried 300 financial professionals at the level of Executive or Managing Director or higher. All respondents worked at financial institutions with more than $2 billion in revenue. Organizations in banking, capital markets, insurance, wealth management, and asset management were surveyed, with 100 responses per sector collected.
SumUp has raised $306 million (€285 million) in combined equity and debt funding.
The round was led by Sixth Street Growth. Bain Capital Tech Opportunities, Fin Capital, and Liquidity Capital also participated in the investment.
The funding round does not change SumUp’s valuation which, as of June 2022, stood at $8.5 billion (€8 billion).
London-based fintech SumUp has secured $306 million (€285 million) in growth funding. The round was led by Sixth Street Growth and featured participation from Bain Capital Tech Opportunities, Fin Capital, and Liquidity Capital. The company will use the funding, which includes a combination of equity and debt, to support international expansion.
The round reportedly does not change the company’s most recent June 2022 valuation of $8.5 billion (€8 billion). It follows SumUp’s announcement of a $100 million credit facility from Victory Park Capital earlier this year.
In a statement, SumUp CFO Hermione McKee credited the merchants on the company’s platform – more than four million strong – for the company’s growth. “(It) is a direct result of the success of the traders we serve and would not be possible without the unwavering trust and support of the investor community,” McKee said. “This funding gives us additional firepower to pursue growth opportunities and accelerate products that empower small businesses.”
Founded in 2012, SumUp provides businesses of all sizes with affordable payment products and financial services. The company won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2013, and has since grown into a major payment solutions and point of sale systems provider active in 36 markets around the world. These markets include Australia, where SumUp launched in August.
More recently, the company introducedTap to Pay on iPhone for SumUp customers in both the U.K. and the Netherlands. This enables SumUp merchants to accept all types of contactless payments using only an iPhone and the SumUp iOS app. No additional hardware is required. SumUp sees the offering as ideal for new and smaller merchants looking to potentially scale their businesses and broaden payment options for customers. SumUp Senior Strategic Growth Manager Giovanni Barbieri underscored the technology’s ability to support financial inclusion. “I am especially pleased with the exceptional functionality of the product and the fact (that) it lowers barriers to entry, with the potential to fuel entrepreneurship.”
This spring, SumUp launched its multi-product subscription offering, SumUp One. The new solution amalgamates the company’s product suite in a single, unified solution for merchants. SumUp One initially launched in Italy and the U.K.
Intelligent compliance technology company Napier has teamed up with client lifecycle management platform KYC Portal.
The partnership wil help companies eliminate the problem of siloes in compliance operations by integrating know your customer (KYC) and compliance processes.
KYC Portal made its most recent Finovate appearance at FinovateEurope in 2019.
Intelligent compliance technology company Napier and client lifecycle management platform KYC Portal have announced a new partnership. The two companies will work together to help companies integrate know your customer (KYC) and compliance processes, removing the problem of siloes from compliance operations.
KYC Portal’s KYC Portal CLM is a Customer Due Diligence (CDD) and anti-money laundering (AML) orchestration platform. The solution works in real-time to automate, centralize, and simplify the due diligence process. KYC Portal CLM boosts efficiency with a dynamic workflow that reduces both risk exposure and the cost to maintain that risk. Integrating KYCP’s technology with Napier’s transaction monitoring module will provide faster, more accurate alerts to compliance professionals.
“KYC is the ability to know your customer, their activity, and whether it poses risk to your organization,” KYC Portal founder and CEO Kristoff Zammit Ciantar said. “With knowledge on the entire customer lifecycle, from onboarding and beyond, compliance teams are empowered to have a greater view on customer risk.”
Founded in 2008, KYC Portal most recently demoed its technology at FinovateEurope in London in 2019. At the conference, the company demoed its compliance solution that enables organizations to collate all data on subjects under review. This data resides in a single, centralized, secure repository with customizable parameters, rules, user rights, and collaborative functionality.
KYC Portal began the month with news that its platform had earned a spot on the RegTech 100 for 2024. Earlier this year, the Malta-based company announced an integration with global identity verification platform Shufti Pro. KYC Portal also announced this year a number of platform enhancements to make integration with third-party data sources easier.
Looking to demo your latest fintech innovation? Applications are now being accepted for demoing companies at FinovateEurope in London, February 27 and 28, 2024. Visit our FinovateEurope hub for more!
Financial crime and AML specialist Refine Intelligence has raised $13 million in funding.
The round was led by Glilot Capital Partners and Fin Capital. The capital will be used to fuel international expansion.
Refine Intelligence made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope earlier this year in London.
Financial crime solution provider Refine Intelligence has secured an investment of $13 million. The funding round was led by Glilot Capital Partners of Tel Aviv, Israel, and FinCapital of San Francisco, California. Also participating in the round were SYN Ventures and Ground Up Ventures, among others. The company, which made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateEurope in London, will use the capital to help fuel international expansion.
“Banks used to have a superpower: knowing their customers’ life stories so they could provide personalized financial service,” Refine Intelligence CEO Uri Rivner said. “With banking increasingly done online and a significant drop in face-to-face interactions, banks’ understanding of customer behavior is limited.”
To this end, Rivner explained, Refine Intelligence helps banks better identify the false alarms that can be inadvertently triggered by otherwise legitimate customer activity. This strategy of helping banks “catch the good guys,” as Refine Intelligence puts it, enables financial fraud teams to focus on truly suspicious behavior.
The list of transactions that most often trigger false alarms is fairly alarming in its own right. According to Refine Intelligence, 64% of all AML alerts come from just five scenarios: payments for cash-intensive workers, gift giving or receiving, automobile purchases or sales, and payment for construction projects. Devoting resources to the false alarms that plague these transactions is a time-consuming and inefficient process that Refine Intelligence helps eliminate for banks.
Founded in 2033, Refine Intelligence made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateEurope in London. At the conference, the company demoed its Life Story Analytics solution. An anti-money laundering solution “designed for real life,” Life Story Analytics leverages AI to identify the “life story” behind any alert issued by the transaction monitoring system. The technology automatically explains the issue with the transaction in question to the fraud monitoring team. This enables teams to clear alerts faster, provide full explainability to regulators, lower caseload, and improve overall risk management. Refine Intelligence says the technology has produced a 90% reduction in time and resources devoted to managing alerts.
In addition to the company’s recent funding, Refine Intelligence was recognized this summer in the AI FinTech100. The roster highlights companies in financial services that are innovating in the field of AI.
Read our Finovate Global interview with Refine Intelligence CEO Uri Rivner. Long time fintech fans may recall that Uri Rivner previously founded behavioral biometrics company and Finovate alum, BioCatch.
Looking to demo your latest fintech innovation? Applications are now being accepted for demoing companies at FinovateEurope in London, February 27 and 28, 2024. Visit our FinovateEurope hub for more!
Qatar’s leading digital bank, Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB) has teamed up with Visa and sustainability-as-a-service innovator ecolytiq to help customers better understand the environmental impact of their financial activity.
“This partnership marks a monumental shift in the market,” ecolytiq co-founder and Managing Director Davis Lais said. “Climate engagement in banking is coming to Qatar.”
Courtesy of the partnership, QIB will integrate a new Carbon Emission Tracker feature into its mobile app. The tracker will help foster environmental awareness among banking customers and encourage climate-friendly spending behavior and consumption habits. The technology will also enable QIB to determine the carbon footprint created from its retail banking customers spending activity and use that data to refine both specific transactions as well as customer profiles.
Lais added, “Our innovative work with QIB and Visa is giving banking customers in Qatar more transparency and choice to live sustainably. We are proud to have been chosen to help QIB guide their customers through the complexity of the environmental crisis by making this a fundamental part of QIB’s banking experience. QIB has decided to embrace the future of banking by being a part of it.”
The new partnership follows the release of QIB’s third sustainability report. The report articulated the bank’s sustainability initiatives, noting progress in steps taken to manage climate-related risks. This includes QIB’s adoption of the Equator Principles, making ESG concerns a part of the bank’s risk management process.
This month, QIB was named “2023 Bank of the Year in Qatar” by The Banker magazine, a Financial Times publication. In accepting the award, QIB Group CEO Bassel Gamal referenced the banks efforts toward greater sustainability. “We have assumed a substantial role in championing the shift towards a more sustainable economy, incorporating ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) factors in our credit assessment and risk management processes, thus promoting sustainable practices among our corporate borrowers.”
Established in 1982, Doha, Qatar-based, QIB reported total assets of more than $4.6 billion (QAR 187 billion) this year. The bank has 23 branches, more than 170 ATMs, and approximately 36% of the total assets of domestic Sharia-compliant banks.
ecolytiq’s partnership with QIB is the fintech’s second big win in MENA in as many months. In November, ecolytiq – along with Visa – worked with Dubai-based Mashreq to facilitate the launch of the bank’s climate banking platform. The platform overlays carbon emissions calculations onto transaction data, and leverages advanced carbon footprint analytics to personalize climate insights.
Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Berlin, Germany, ecolytiq introduced itself to Finovate audiences at our developers conference, FinDEVR 2021. In addition to its bank partnerships, ecolytiq also has teamed up with a number of fintechs. These include partnerships with fellow Finovate alums Mambu in July and Tink in June. Mambu will make ecolytiq’s sustainability-as-a-service solution available via its marketplace that serves more than 100 million end users. The Tink partnership will embed ecolytiq’s carbon tracking services and other sustainability features into its open banking platform.
“Pairing open banking with sustainable banking is good news for financial institutions looking to make a difference,” ecolytiq co-founder and Managing Director Ulrich Pietsch said.
Treasury Prime, an embedded banking software platform, has signed a strategic partnership with fraud and risk management platform Effectiv.
Companies and FIs on Treasury Prime’s network will leverage Effectiv’s platform for transaction monitoring.
Effectiv made its Finovate debut in September at FinovateFall. The company is headquartered in San Francisco.
Embedded banking software platform Treasury Prime has forged a strategic partnership with fraud and risk management platform Effectiv. The new relationship will enable companies and FIs on Treasury Prime’s network to access transaction monitoring technology from Effectiv to reduce fraud and improve risk management.
Effectiv offers a no-code, fraud, risk, and compliance platform that helps FIs fight fraud at every point in the customer journey, from onboarding to real-time transaction monitoring. The platform identifies and monitors high-risk and high-value transactions for potentially anomalous or fraudulent behavior. This lowers the risk of financial loss for customers and the potential for reputational damage to institutions. Effectiv’s technology automates compliance and risk management, providing more than 80% reduction in manual review, and 58% reduction in fraud and risk management costs. Since inception, Effectiv has processed more than $41 billion in automated risk and fraud decisions.
“Over the past year, we’ve seen a rise in fraud with real-time payments,” Effectiv co-founder and CEO Ravi Sandepudi said. “As banks get ready to adopt FedNow and AI fraudsters increasingly get more sophisticated, it’s critical that fintechs and banks invest in technology that can improve their security posture.”
Effectiv made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateFall. At the conference, the company demoed how its unified fraud, risk, and automated compliance platform helps institutions safely facilitate high-risk and high-value transactions.
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Effectiv has raised more than $9 million in funding. This sum includes a $4.5 million seed round in July led by Better Tomorrow Ventures. Effectiv also used the funding announcement to preview its new biometric solution, DeviceIntel. The telemetrics and intelligence solution analyzes and identifies suspicious activity on user devices. Effectiv COO and co-founder Ritesh Arora referred to DeviceIntel as part of the company’s “holistic evaluation approach” to fighting fraud.
Interestingly, the team that founded Effectiv in 2021 previously launched fraud detection company Simility. Acquired by PayPal in 2018. Simility introduced itself to Finovate audiences as part of our developers conference series FinDEVr in 2017.
Founded in 2017, Treasury Prime offers a range of core banking solutions including accounts, payments infrastructure, and enhanced FDIC insurance. The San Francisco, California-based company also leverages its embedded banking software to facilitate connections between banks and enterprise partners, as well as offer a partnership marketplace. Chris Dean is co-founder and CEO.
A newly announced partnership between institutional payment orchestration platform Paydock and Australia’s Commonwealth Bank (CBA) will give merchants in Australia the ability to offer their customers a range of new payment options. This new flexibility comes courtesy of PowerBoard, which provides a dynamic payments experience to customers via API, without requiring businesses to make major changes to their existing payments infrastructure.
“Our partnership with CommBank sets a global precedent for financial institutions,” Paydock CEO and founder Rob Lincolne said. “It shows not only how banks can bring flexible payment strategies to customers in record time with payments orchestration, but also it establishes a new paradigm whereby banks can become more competitive and deliver more value by working with fintech players.”
PowerBoard will make it easier for CBA to deploy the latest payment methods, types, providers, and processors to merchants. CBA General Manager of Merchant Solutions Karen Last noted growing customer interest in new payment options. In a statement, she highlighted alternatives such as account-to-account payments, digital wallets, and Buy Now Pay Later as reasons to pursue the partnership with Paydock.
“PowerBoard makes it significantly easier for Australian merchants to offer choice to customers and manage their payments ecosystems, without all the costly integrations,” Last said.
Headquartered in London, Paydock also maintains an office in Sydney, Australia. The company has raised $31.8 million (£25 million) in funding according to Crunchbase. This capital came in the form of a Series A investment in May that was led by IAG Silverstripe.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia is one of the top 50 banks in the world. Founded in 1911, CBA became a fully private bank in 1996. The institution is part of the “big four” of Australian banks, along with the National Australia Bank (NAB), ANZ, and Westpac. CBA had total assets of 1.2 trillion AUD as of 2022.
Speaking of Commonwealth Bank, the institution also announced this week that Bendigo Bank and fraud monitoring firm Satoriwill pilot CBA’s NameCheck technology. Launched this spring, NameCheck is built to prevent scams and mistaken payments. According to the bank, the solution has prevented more than 10,000 scam payments and reduced mistaken payments by more than $100 million, to date.
“With scams and fraud costing Australians and businesses billions of dollars annually, it’s clear a whole of ecosystem response is needed to combat this problem,” CBA Group Executive Business Banking Mike Vacy-Lyle said. “We are proud to be able to extend our industry-leading technology to others and contribute to protecting more Australians against cyber criminals.”
NameCheck leverages advanced technology and CBA’s access to payment data to help establish the accuracy of account credentials. Bendigo Bank will integrate NameCheck into its Up app. Financial fraud monitoring company Satori will also take advantage of the technology.
“We are excited to work with CBA and extend the NameCheck service to our corporate customer base to complement the existing AI driven financial controls monitoring service driving operational efficiency and preventing fraud,” Satori Executive Director of Growth Mark Bookatz said.
Founded in 2002, Satori is headquartered in Sydney, Australia. The company has more than 200+ customers in the APAC region who rely on its automated transaction monitoring services. These firms include Afterpay, Qantas, and Volkswagen Group.
The Australian government’s plans to regulate Buy Now Pay Later services are having a hard time keeping up with public enthusiasm for the payment option.
This week, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) shared results of a survey that indicated a significant increase in use of Buy Now, Pay Later services. The specific demographic was individuals between the ages of 18 and 39. The survey showed that more than 40% of those in this cohort had used BNPL services in the past year. The survey, which had almost 1,000 participants, also noted an overall increase in the number of people using BNPL. Incorporating data from a Reserve Bank of Australia research paper from 2022, the RBA determined that there has been an increase of 8% in adult BNPL use since 2019.
Designing a regulatory framework for Buy Now Pay Later services in Australia has been on the government’s to-do list since the spring. The goal is to bring BNPL under the umbrella of existing credit regulations, including credit license requirements, and minimum standards on conduct, services, and products. This also includes mandating that BNPL companies conduct credit history checks. Overall the regulations, which will treat BNPL services as conventional lending products, are seen as among the toughest proposed.
But the rollout has hit a snag. The RBA has announced that the new regulatory framework for BNPL will arrive next year rather than at the end of 2023 as originally planned. The reason for the delay was “resourcing pressures” on the government’s legislation writing team. And while this will likely give New Zealand regional bragging rights over its larger neighbor when it comes to adoption of BNPL regulations, the impact of the delay on the Australian BNPL market should be slight.
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