Author: David Penn

Regtech Copla Raises €6 Million in Series A Funding

Regtech Copla Raises €6 Million in Series A Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Copla, Funding
  • Lithuanian regtech Copla has raised €6 million ($7.1 million USD) in Series A funding for its AI-powered compliance automation platform.
  • Iron Wolf Capital led the round, which featured participation from Operator Stack and existing investors Specialist VC, SuperHero Capital, FirstPick, NGL Ventures, and Loggerhead Partners.
  • Founded in 2023, Copla made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025 in London.

Copla, a regtech headquartered in Lithuania that offers an AI-powered compliance automation platform, has secured €6 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Iron Wolf Capital. Operator Stack and existing investors Specialist VC, SuperHero Capital, FirstPick, NGL Ventures, and Loggerhead Partners also participated in the funding. Copla, which made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025, will use the capital to further build out its product, add talent to its team, and expand into markets beyond the European Union.

In a statement, the company noted that regulations are becoming increasingly complicated and operational. From the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) to the EU Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AI Act) to the Cyber Resilience Act, there are a range of new compliance obligations that regulated firms throughout the European Union will have to deal with starting this year. Copla’s platform specializes in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) compliance, transforming the mandates of regulations like DORA and the EU AI Act into guided, evidence-based workflows. The technology converts regulatory requirements into specific tasks, tracks execution on a continuous basis, and automatically records all evidence to ensure that the operations are audit-ready. In a recognition that not all regulatory processes are best automated, Copla also offers hands-on support via in-house and fractional CISO services, as well as a network of partner providers across Europe to assist with audits, risk decisions, and interactions with regulators.

“Regulation is getting sharper, but most compliance is still stuck in spreadsheets,” Copla Co-founder and CEO Aurimas Bakas said. “We built Copla so compliance stays current by default, and so companies can grow with confidence instead of audit anxiety. This round gives us the momentum to make Copla the default compliance execution layer for regulated finance in Europe and beyond.”

To this end, one initiative announced along with the company’s funding was Copla Bridge, a new platform layer that will help partners, consultants, and multi-entity organizations manage compliance issues across companies from a single, unified view. Copla Bridge is designed to help organizations that must centralize compliance across subsidiaries, regulated entities, or a group structure, a major challenge for most organizations that do not have the requisite tooling and infrastructure.

Founded in 2023 and headquartered in Vilnius, Lithuania, Copla made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025. At the conference, the company showed how it combines three of its solutions—CoreGuardian, an AI-driven CoPilot, and VendorGuard—to provide comprehensive cybersecurity and compliance. CoreGuardian ensures compliance with key frameworks such as DORA. Copla’s CoPilot engages users individually via Slack and Teams to provide real-time education, assessments, and alerts. VendorGuard streamlines vendor management, providing risk assessments, incident planning, and prioritization.

Photo by Maksim Shutov on Unsplash

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Finovate Celebrates Black and African-American History Month

Finovate Celebrates Black and African-American History Month
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, Diversity in Fintech

February is Black and African-American History Month. As the month draws to a close, we wanted to take a moment to recognize and celebrate the Black and African-American executives, founders, and analysts who have shared their ideas, insights, and experiences with Finovate audiences in 2025.

From the keynote podium to the demo stage, these Black and African-American fintech, banking, and financial services professionals are a reflection of the growing diversity and inclusion that continues to shape and transform our industry today.

Erin Estelle—SVP, Chief Marketing Officer—Valley Strong Credit Union

Estelle participated in FinovateSpring 2025, sharing her insights as part of our Power Panel on the Customer Experience Revolution.

Estelle brings more than 15 years of experience in strategic marketing and brand management, leveraging innovative data-driven strategies to drive growth, engagement, and retention. At Valley Strong Credit Union, Estelle oversees digital marketing, consumer insights, communications, public relations, field marketing, and community outreach.

Based in Bakersfield, California, Valley Strong Credit Union offers checking and savings accounts, credit cards, personal and auto loans, mortgage and home loans, investing and retirement services, and more to 35,000+ members.

Nate Gibbons—Chief Experience Officer—QuickFi

Gibbons co-led the live demonstration of QuickFi’s self-service, embedded finance platform for business equipment financing at FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego. The demo showed how QuickFi can enable borrowers to quickly complete onboarding, authentication, credit underwriting, and document signing on a highly secure lending platform.

A regular conference speaker and strategist as well as Chief Experience Officer at QuickFi, Gibbons was previously an executive with First American Equipment Finance. He has an MBA from the Simon Business School at the University of Rochester, and earned the Blue Ladder Award for extraordinary achievement from the City National Bank.

A Finovate alum since 2021, QuickFi has won Best of Show on three separate occasions, most recently at FinovateSpring 2024. The company offers an embedded finance platform for secured commercial equipment financing, enabling business borrowers to initiate and complete equipment financing in minutes.

Deola Habeeb—Head of Global Tech Operations—Vanguard

Habeeb joined Finovate at FinovateEurope 2025 to share her thoughts and experiences as part of our Women in Fintech panel.

Head of Global Tech Operations for Vanguard, Habeeb is a technology leader, entrepreneur, investor, and strategist with more than two decades of experience building enterprise operations and driving business growth. Habeeb combines technical acumen and business acuity across professional services, engineering, and business operations.

Vanguard is one of the largest investment management companies in the world. The firm offers investments, advice, and retirement services to tens of millions of individual investors directly, through workplace programs, and via financial intermediaries.

Christopher Hollins—Head of Global Product Sales and Delivery—SVB, a Division of First Citizens Bank

Hollins most recently spoke at FinovateSpring 2025 as part of our Power Panel on balancing the balance sheet and winning the battle for deposits.

Head of Global Product Sales and Delivery at SVB, a division of First Citizens Bank, Hollins is instrumental in transforming the platform’s solution delivery model to ensure that SVB’s Commercial Bank innovation economy clients can access the best partners and solutions to solve their business challenges.

Based in Santa Clara, California, SVB provides commercial and private banking services to founders, entrepreneurs, and companies in the technology, life science, private equity, venture capital, and related industries. The bank specializes in serving the unique needs of clients in dynamic, transformative businesses, providing deep sector expertise, insights, and connections.

Priscilla O-Iyari—Regional Marketing and Communications Outreach Officer—FACE Coalition

O-Iyari, in her recent capacity with FACE Coalition, joined FinovateSpring 2025 as part of our Executive Briefing on Financial Inclusion: “How can banks capture the huge growth opportunity offered by this new customer base?”

With more than 14 years of experience developing and executing strategies that have built successful brands in industries ranging from financial services to healthcare, O-Iyari came to Finovate via her role at FACE Coalition where she connected Black entrepreneurs with funding sources, human resources, and other support to help them scale their businesses and facilitate generational wealth creation.

O-Iyari is currently Associate Marketing Manager with TD where she is responsible for global brand management, education, and governance for the TD enterprise across countries and lines of business.

Mary Joseph—Senior Vice President, Strategic Investments, Treasury & Trade Solutions—Citi

Joseph participated in our Investor All Stars panel at FinovateFall 2025, discussing the current outlook for the market, valuations, and the future of financial services.

Focusing on opportunities that enhance Treasury and Trade Solutions and expand Citi’s technology ecosystem, Joseph leads the bank’s global investments in fintech and B2B SaaS startups. She brings expertise from her tenure in fintech and M&A advisory from within Citi’s Investment Banking group and as an investor at venture capital firm, GreenHouse Capital.

Citi provides financial services that enable growth and economic progress, safeguarding assets, lending money, making payments, and ensuring access to the capital markets. The institution does business in more than 180 countries and jurisdictions, serving corporations, governments, investors, institutions, and individuals.

Tobiloba Oyetoke—Chief Executive Officer—Bitpowr Technologies

Oyetoke introduced his company, Bitpowr Technologies, to Finovate audiences a year ago as part of FinovateEurope 2025 in London.

Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Delaware, Bitpowr Technologies helps businesses and developers manage digital asset operations and build financial products. The company provides modular, critical infrastructure to issue digital wallets and process global payments safely and securely, while meeting regulatory requirements.

At the conference, Oyetoke demonstrated Bitpowr’s latest solution, Powr Finance, which enables fintechs and companies to offer embedded stablecoin banking, payments, digital wallets, and card products in a safe and compliant way.

Photo by Monstera Production

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What Do Community Bankers Want? What Do Community Banks Need?

What Do Community Bankers Want? What Do Community Banks Need?
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Report series, Thought Leadership

What is the state of community banking in the US today? How are community banks evolving and transforming at a time of both potential opportunity and unprecedented challenge and competition?

Success stories about how community banks across the country are taking advantage of new technologies like generative AI and embedded finance will be a major part of the conversation later this year at FinovateSpring, May 5 through May 7, in San Diego.

With that in mind, today we’re taking a look at the findings from the 2025 CSBS Annual Survey of Community Banks that was unveiled at the Community Banking Research Conference last fall.

Rising competition from within and without the community

The competitive challenge from nonbanks remains a major concern for community banks throughout the US. Especially in areas such as payment services and wealth management, these fintech competitors have effectively leveraged enabling technologies like AI and embedded finance to create digital platforms able to attract customers, especially younger customers who are digitally native and have fewer ties to the traditional banking system. Nonbanks without a physical presence, for example, produced a 7% year-over-year change in competitiveness in payment services, according to the community bankers surveyed.

That said, nonbanks still trail other community banks as the biggest competition in seven out of nine product and service categories. Community banks identified local regional banks as their main competitors in payment services and nonbanks as their primary rivals in wealth management and retirement services.

The battle over deposits continues to be a significant challenge for most banks and financial institutions, and community banks are no different. While transaction deposit levels have stabilized in recent years, competition from nonbank institutions has grown, especially among those nonbanks that are out-of-market. This has compelled community bankers to adjust their pricing strategies based on local market rates; the survey noted that the number of community bankers that said that they “always” responded to rate changes increased by more than 38% to represent a quarter of all survey participants.

Fraud and financial crime remain paramount concerns

In terms of internal risks, community bankers cited cybercrime as a top issue by far all others. Both credit and debit card fraud are the most common types of fraud reported in terms of dollar losses, with check fraud, identity theft, and account takeover also among the chief challenges. The survey noted that these financial crimes—card fraud, check fraud, and identity theft with account takeover—represent the lion’s share of both total fraud cases and dollar losses.

To this point, the community bankers surveyed indicated that they were putting resources to work combatting fraud and financial crime. After safety and soundness practices, money laundering and consumer protection standards maintenance accounted for the second and third largest commitments of total compliance expenses.

“We continue to put more resources into cybersecurity and technology risk,” one respondent noted, “which has grown rapidly as part of our cost structure. We’ve invested heavily in systems and processes and added staff to review outputs to protect customers and prevent fraud. Fraud is not yet a large loss item for us, but it could be.”

E-signatures and remote deposit over AI and BaaS

For all the talk of AI and stablecoins, the technologies that are moving the needle for many community banks are more pedestrian and practical than one might imagine. Technologies viewed as “extremely” or “very” important included such solutions as e-signature, remote deposit capture (RDC), and integrated loan processing systems. At the bottom of the list of priorities? Interactive teller machines (ITMs) and fintech partnerships for Banking-as-Service were deemed “not at all important” by more than 50% and nearly 40% of respondents, respectively.

Asked to look forward over the next five years, the responses from the community bankers are similarly grounded. The top response by far, with more than 75% of respondents in agreement, was that the expansion of mobile banking services will be the most promising opportunity for their bank in the next half decade. Fully integrated loan processing systems came in second at just over 61% with cloud-based core systems at more than 53%. AI? As a tool for enhancing customer interactions, AI technology earned less than half the number of respondents. Partnerships with fintechs? For digital transformation, about a third. For BaaS, about a fifth.

What do community bankers want from fintechs?

The 2025 CSBS Annual Survey is a rich source of information and insight into the thinking of community bankers in the US right now. For fintechs looking to work with these institutions, either as partners or vendors, the survey offers a number of takeaways that can help make those connections fruitful for both fintechs and community banks.

Boosting deposit growth—Fintechs can support community banks in boosting deposit growth by offering tools such as personalized savings plans and competitive interest rate management solutions. Enhanced customer engagement platforms that heavily incentivize deposit loyalty can also be valuable. Fintechs can also provide community banks with analytics to help them identify and respond to deposit trends.

Scalable loan management technology—Making the process of loan origination, underwriting, and servicing easier for community banks is key to helping them win against competition in key financing areas such as small business, agriculture, and commercial real estate. This is also where AI-powered solutions can have a dramatically positive impact. Streamlining processes, improving applicant review, and enhancing the customer experience in lending overall are areas where fintechs have a significant track record of success and can greatly benefit community banks.

Operational efficiency and compliance—It is true for most businesses and community banks are no exception. Enabling technologies are making manual tasks increasingly unnecessary, as automation and agentic AI transform legacy workflows into smooth operational processes free of human error. These technologies are also making it easier for institutions—including community banks—to be more aware of their regulatory responsibilities and to be better able to act quickly and completely to ensure compliance. Fintechs specializing in compliance management tools and services can be key allies for community banks at a time of significant regulatory change and uncertainty.

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

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Jump Raises $80 Million to Leverage AI to Automate Financial Advisory Workflows

Jump Raises $80 Million to Leverage AI to Automate Financial Advisory Workflows
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Funding, Jump
  • AI solutions provider for financial advisors Jump has raised $80 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Insight Partners.
  • The investment will help Jump scale its technology, which automates a range of tasks for financial advisors, from an AI assistant to a comprehensive intelligence and AI orchestration layer for modern financial advisory firms.
  • Founded in 2023 and headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, Jump made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2025 in New York. Parker Ence is Founder and CEO.

In a round led by Insight Partners, AI solutions provider for financial advisors Jump has secured $80 million in Series B funding. The round also included participation from new investors F-Prime, Allianz Life Ventures (the venture capital arm of Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America), TIAA Ventures, and Peterson Partners. Also involved in the round were existing investors Battery Ventures, Sorenson Capital, Pelion Venture Partners, and Citi Ventures, as well as angel investors Hans Tung, Ryan Anderson, and Aaron Skonnard.

“In less than two years since launch, we’ve grown from zero to more than 27,000 advisors—making Jump the fastest-growing wealthtech software application in industry history,” the company noted in a statement. “We are now adding more than 2,000 new advisors each month across RIAs, independent broker-dealers, and global financial institutions.”

This week’s investment takes Jump’s total capital raised to $105 million, following the company’s $20 million Series A round led by Battery Ventures in 2025. The company will use the funds to power its next phase of growth, specifically expanding the platform from an AI meeting assistant for financial advisors to a comprehensive intelligence and AI orchestration layer tailored for modern financial advisory firms.

Jump exists at the nexus of a structural shift in the wealth management industry as advisory firms explore integrating AI into the way their advisors prepare, engage, document, analyze, and scale. Starting with using AI to reduce the amount of manual work that advisors do, Jump is evolving into a platform that integrates intelligent, agentic workflows and enterprise controls to comprehensively support modern financial advisory firms. With a focus on reducing operational friction, deep workflow integration, and configurable compliance, Jump’s new funding will enable the company to help advisors proactively identify risks, discover new growth opportunities, and advise on next best actions based on analysis of client conversations and investment flows.

“An enterprise RIA recently shared that Jump ranked number one among more than 40 AI pilots they ran last year in terms of delivering real advisor impact and measurable ROI for the firm,” Jump CEO and Co-Founder Parker Ence said. “They saw not only Jump’s usual one to two hours saved per advisor per day, but also a meaningful increase in their overall organic growth rate.” Ence added that the funding will help the company “invest aggressively in product research and development” as the firm accelerates its vision “for an AI-native operating system.”

Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, Jump made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2025. At the conference, the company showed how its AI-powered meeting assistant for financial advisors automates meeting prep, note-taking, follow-up, and other client management tasks. Reportedly saving advisors up to 20 hours per week, Jump’s technology puts meeting administration on AI autopilot and provides AI-powered actionable growth insights, while exceeding enterprise scalability and compliance requirements.

Photo by Kirill Lazarev

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Finovate Global East Africa: Investing in Digital Banks, Delivering on Instant Payments, and More!

Finovate Global East Africa: Investing in Digital Banks, Delivering on Instant Payments, and More!
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, Salt Edge, Temenos, VISA

This week’s edition of Finovate Global focuses on fintech developments in countries located in and around East Africa.

Digital banking secures investment in Zambia

Zambian digital banking platform Lupiya has raised $11.25 million in Series A funding. The round—nearly two years in the making—was led by IDF Capital’s Alitheia IDF Fund, and featured participation from INOKS Capital and KfW DEG, a German development finance institution. Lupiya will use the capital to bolster the digital bank’s technology infrastructure, grow its product range, and enter southern and east African markets beyond Zambia’s borders.

Founded by Evelyn Chilomo Kaingu (CEO) and Muchu Kaingu (CTO) in 2016, Lupiya serves unbanked and underbanked communities in Zambia with credit products and digital payment services via its Lupiya Pay offering. The company has partnered with Mastercard to access payment rails to enable digital transactions and is part of the card network’s financial inclusion strategy. Previous investors in the firm include Enygma Ventures, which contributed $1 million to the company’s coffers. Lupiya has opened an additional funding round this year—alongside its Series A—dedicated to scaling its lending business, enhancing its embedded finance offerings, and bringing Lupiya Pay to new markets.

Lupiya was one of the first companies to earn approval from the Security Exchange Commission in Zambia to offer investments through peer-to-peer lending. Launching this service in-country in 2022, Lupiya expanded operations to Tanzania the following year. Lupiya offers personal loans including collateral-backed loans and salary advances, as well as business financing, invoice discounting, and agriloans. Customers can use Lupiya to send and receive funds via mobile money, P2P, or bank accounts.

According to the World Bank, Zambia’s financial inclusion rate has improved significantly in recent years, climbing from 59.3% in 2015 to 69.4% in 2020. Regional disparities are significant, however, with Lusaka Province, home to the capital city, Lusaka, having a financial inclusion rate of more than 87%, with more rural areas having inclusion rates of approximately 40%. The landlocked country shares borders with the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, and Tanzania.

Ethiopia goes live with instant payments

Instant payments are sweeping the globe—and now businesses, communities, and banks throughout Ethiopia will be able to leverage the technology to provide centralized automated reconciliation, new card and e-wallet services, and more.

In partnership with the National Bank of Ethiopia, the country’s national switch EthSwitch has launched Ethiopia’s National Instant Payment System. Powered by BPC’s SmartVista platform, the system was officially introduced in December 2025, and now connects 32 banks, 12 MFIs, three PSOs, and three PIIs. The unveiling of EthioPay-IPS will enable EthSwitch to offer banks and other financial institutions modern payment rails capable of delivering faster and more economical payment transactions. These include account-to-account and wallet-to-wallet transfers, payments with interoperable QR codes, as well as requests-to-pay and alias-based payments that allow users to transfer funds using a simple identifier.

BPC’s SmartVista suite is a modular payment processing solution for banks, financial institutions, payment service providers, and fintechs. The technology combines banking, commerce, and mobility platforms to facilitate digital banking, payment processing, ATM and switching, fraud management, financial inclusion, and more. Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Switzerland, BPC has more than 500 customers across 140 countries.

Established in 2011, EthSwitch is a share company owned by Ethiopia’s private and public banks, as well as the National Bank of Ethiopia, MFIs, PIIs, and PSOs. The organization has a mandate to support the modernization of Ethiopia’s payment system and to enhance financial inclusion throughout the country. This includes EthSwitch’s 2016 initiative to enable the interoperability of ATMs and POS terminals operated by the nation’s banks.

“Our goal is to provide simple, affordable, secure, and efficient digital payment infrastructure to every retail payment provider and through them, to every Ethiopian,” EthSwitch Chief Portfolio Officer Abeneazer Wondwossen said. “With SmartVista, we have built an interoperable nationwide ecosystem for instant payments that is locally governed, future-ready, and open to innovation. This launch is a point of pride for Ethiopia and a milestone for our financial sector.”

Kayko Raises $1.2 million to help SMEs in Rwanda

Kayko, which offers a small business financial management platform for companies in Rwanda, has secured $1.2 million in seed funding. Participating in the investment were Burrow Capital, the Luxembourg Development Agency, and Hanga Ignite by BRD and develoPPP Ventures. The company, founded in 2021 by brothers Crepin and Kevin Kayisire, will use the capital to fortify its infrastructure, expand its data capabilities, and build credit scoring and lending tools based on real transaction data.

Kayko serves more than 8,500 Rwandan SMEs with bookkeeping, inventory, and tax support. The fintech helps boost SME access to credit in a country in which many businesses have incomplete or informal financial records that make it difficult to secure financing or to scale operations. For these and other small businesses, Kayko provides a point-of-sale and business management system that helps them process sales, track expenses, and accept payments, while turning everyday business activity into structured financial data for analysis and insights.

Kayko’s funding news coincides with the Kigali-based fintech securing an Electronic Money Issuer (EMI) license from the National Bank of Rwanda (NBR). “With this license, we move from planning to execution,” Crepin Kayisire said in a statement on the company’s LinkedIn page. “We can now operate regulated payments, merchant wallets, and data-driven financial services that improve access to financing for small businesses.”

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • South African crypto platform Luno introduced crypto and tokenized stock bundle.
  • Blockchain infrastructure provider Binance and African mobile network operator Africell announced a collaboration to boost blockchain education and digital asset literacy across Africa.
  • Ethiopia’s national switch, EthSwitch, launched the country’s National Instant Payment System, in partnership with the National Bank of Ethiopia and powered by BPC’s SmartVista platform.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • The Bank of Lithuania supplemented the electronic money institution (EMI) license for TransferGo Lithuania, enabling the fintech to expand beyond money transfers and payment account services.
  • Open banking solutions provider Salt Edge and financial management platform NoCFO teamed up to bring Pay by Bank to SMEs in Germany and Finland.
  • UK-based fintech Unlimit opened a new global research and development center in Belgrade, Serbia.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Uruguayan fintech dLocal partnered with online English-language platform Open English to introduce a new payment method, Bre-B, for students in Colombia
  • Visa inked a deal to acquire Argentinian payment companies Prisma Medios de Pago and Newpay from private equity firm Advent International.
  • Peru’s Banco de la Microempresa selected Temenos SaaS to modernize its core banking infrastructure.

Asia-Pacific

Photo by Aron Marinelli on Unsplash

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Metropolitan Commercial Bank Forges Partnership with Finzly

Metropolitan Commercial Bank Forges Partnership with Finzly
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Finzly
  • Metropolitan Commercial Bank has partnered with Finzly for its cloud-native, API-first payment platform.
  • The deployment will consolidate all payment rails—ACH, wires, and real-time payments—on a single system via a modular approach that will enable the bank to phase out legacy operations over time.
  • Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Finzly is a two-time Finovate Best of Show winner.

New York City-based Metropolitan Commercial Bank has called it quits. The full-service commercial bank has retired its legacy ACH mainframe in favor of a new cloud-native, API-first payment platform courtesy of two-time Finovate Best of Show winner Finzly.

“ACH is the most complex of all payment rails, having evolved over more than 50 years,” Finzly Founder and CEO Booshan Rengachari said. “With this, MCB has completed one of the most comprehensive cloud-native payment modernizations in the US today—spanning ACH, wires, instant payments, and international payments on a single platform. It’s a testament to the team at MCB and their achievement in accomplishing what is a bellwether moment for ACH and the industry.”

Digital modernization continues to be a challenge for many institutions still relying on legacy infrastructure. In an effort to avoid the complexity of full ACH cloud modernization, many banks have elected to run a modern ACH platform alongside their legacy systems. The partnership between MCB and Finzly is unique because the bank is the first financial institution to adopt Finzly’s platform as its primary system, completely decommissioning its legacy ACH infrastructure.

Leveraging Finzly’s unified platform will consolidate all payment rails for MCB onto a single system, including ACH, wires, and real-time payments. The platform uses a modular approach that will allow the bank to phase out all legacy operations over time, simplifying operations, boosting resilience, and enabling MCB to provide efficient payment experiences for its corporate commercial clients.

MCB’s partnership with Finzly is part of the institution’s “Modern Banking in Motion” initiative, an infrastructure modernization project that reflects an industry-wide effort to find alternatives to aging payment infrastructures. Regulatory pressures such as new fraud monitoring requirements from Nacha coming into effect this spring—to say nothing of growing public demand for faster payments and real-time visibility—are bringing new urgency to the conversation on digital transformation in banking and payments. In their partnership statement, Finzly and MCB noted an American Banker webinar poll that indicated that 84% of financial institutions believe that the resilience of their current Fedwire and ACH infrastructure should be re-evaluated.

“Finzly has been a strong technology partner for Metropolitan Commercial Bank,” MCB Founder, President, and CEO Mark R. DeFazio said. “Their unified payment platform and modular transformation approach allowed us to retire legacy ACH and wire systems safely, launch real-time payments, and deliver a seamless experience to our clients. This migration has strengthened our operational resilience, improved straight-through processing, and positioned MCB to scale efficiently while continuing to innovate. This new platform will enable MCB to expand its payment business which will meaningfully add to NII and lower cost of deposits.”

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Finzly won Best of Show at FinovateWest 2020 and again at FinovateFall later that year. The company offers a digital, real-time, cloud-native operating system that features a payment hub that allows banks to centrally process ACH, FedWire, RTP, SWIFT, and FedNow payments. Last fall, Finzly unveiled its Agentic Galaxy offering, an intelligent fabric of deployable AI agents that helps banks and credit unions innovate faster and create more engaging customer experiences.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

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Sustainability, Quantum, and Cloud: Three Dogs That Did Not Bark at FinovateEurope 2026

Sustainability, Quantum, and Cloud: Three Dogs That Did Not Bark at FinovateEurope 2026
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateEurope 2026, List series

Great conferences are defined largely by what does happen: what themes are discussed, what trends generate the most passionate conversations. But great conferences are also defined by what doesn’t happen: by those topics and trends that have become exhausted, failed to live up to the hype in the first place, or simply aren’t ready for prime time.

Having just looked at some of the main topics of discussion at FinovateEurope, today we’re taking a quick tour through the pound to learn more about the dogs that did not bark at FinovateEurope 2026 last week.

Sustaining Sustainability in the Age of AI

Sustainability has been a stronger theme among fintech innovators in the UK and the EU compared to the US—and arguably all the more so given the fusillade of disincentives from the Trump Administration. Past Finovate conferences have showcased fintechs such as Connect Earth (UK), ecolytiq (Germany), and Little Blocks (India) that are helping institutions and individuals calculate their environmental impact; reduce carbon emissions via online marketplaces, and align their investing and banking preferences with their attitudes toward the environment.

While never a large fraction of the demoing companies at any given show, it was notable that no companies focused on sustainability on the demo stage. This likely reflects at least in part the shift in emphasis toward AI and blockchain-related innovations, especially as these innovations are increasingly moving from the experimental to real-world use cases. Even as these enabling technologies appear to be in their earliest stages, the fact that they already are responding to real problems in financial services makes them an especially attractive field for innovation compared to sustainability.

It is important to note that this does not necessarily mean that there has been a decline in interest in sustainability and climate-related fintech innovation. In fact, investment in climate-related fintech—and climatetech in general—increased from 2024 to 2025. Europe represented a significant amount of the $103 billion raised globally at 56%, with US-based funds contributing 16% toward the international total. But sustainability is increasingly being seen less as a standalone solution, and more as a cost-cutting feature to be integrated as in embedded finance or as part of a broader risk and data analytics package. Those looking for sustainability to return to the center stage will likely need to see the rise of stronger regulatory mandates such as those for stricter environmental financial disclosure or other incentives. Technological innovation alone may not do it.

Quantum Computing: Waiting for the Great Leap Forward?

While there was a sole presentation on quantum computing at FinovateEurope, the discussion of this technology still remains limited in most fintech forums. This is despite the conviction by analysts that quantum computing will make a significant impact on all technology—including financial technology—in the years to come. It is also interesting insofar as we are seeing emerging, enabling technologies in AI and the blockchain that continue to surprise detractors and outperform expectations when it comes to practical use cases. Why not quantum computing?

First, credit where credit is due: Day One of FinovateEurope featured Amal Nazar, Head of GTM at Wultra, a firm that provides post-quantum authentication solutions to financial institutions around the world. Nazar’s Special Address emphasized that it was important for banks and other financial institutions to transition to post-quantum cryptography in order to secure long-term digital operations. With regulators urging firms to complete this shift by 2030, it is clear that whatever conversations we are not yet having with regard to quantum computing will likely begin sooner than we think.

But not quite yet. Unlike AI and blockchain-based technologies like stablecoins, quantum computing is still significantly “pre-commercial,” meaning that while there is considerable investment interest, practical commercial applications in financial services have yet to materialize. There are a number of reasons for this, but essentially the issue is developmental (read: hardware) rather than software or regulation-related in the cases of AI and stablecoins, respectively. Arguably, when it comes to quantum computing, this technology as it applies to financial services is about where AI and stablecoins were seven to ten years ago: long on hype and promise, but short on use cases. Those use cases are developing; as Nazar’s presentation suggests, cryptography is one of the primary areas where we should anticipate quantum computing use cases emerging. But compared to AI and stablecoins, quantum computing may experience the “always a bridesmaid, never a bride” syndrome for a few more seasons, at least.

“Nobody Here But Us Cloud Companies …”

If you suspected that the inclusion of “cloud” as a theme that was underrepresented at FinovateEurope was little more than a ruse to talk about AI, then I confess to being guilty as charged. But the comparison between the “cloud revolution” and the “AI revolution” was one I heard from Finovate delegates and on-stage experts alike, and an interesting notion to add to this conversation on fintech trends.

No company demoing declared themselves a cloud company this year. That’s because, in a sense, they are all “cloud companies.” The ubiquity of cloud technology in fintech has rendered the descriptor almost obsolete. And increasingly something similar is happening with AI. While we did go through the obligatory period when companies felt the need to append “ai” to their names, we are nevertheless seeing an impressive urgency with which companies are seeking to leverage AI to improve efficiency for both their own workers as well as for their customers. Perhaps not since the early days of digital banking has as much attention been paid and innovation devoted to both sides of the customer experience at the same time.

What this means, as Senior Finovate analyst Julie Muhn remarked to me in the run-up to FinovateEurope this year, is that there is less and less a conversation about “AI,” and more and more a conversation about generative AI, or explainable AI, or agentic AI, or ethical AI … You get the point. The evolution in our way of talking about AI reflects nothing more than our growing understanding of the diverse ways AI technology can be deployed, as well as the myriad responsibilities involved in deploying it. So while we won’t stop hearing about “AI” anytime soon, we should be prepared for a new way of talking about the technology as our relationship to it evolves.

Photo by Anoir Chafik on Unsplash

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TreviPay Leverages AI to Help Businesses Anticipate Buyer Behavior

TreviPay Leverages AI to Help Businesses Anticipate Buyer Behavior
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, TreviPay
  • B2B payments platform TreviPay is introducing a new solution to help suppliers keep customers engaged and spot dormant buyers.
  • The new offering, TreviPay Growth Center, leverages transactional data, behavioral insights, and predictive insights to help businesses identify early signs of buyer dormancy, enabling teams to intervene with targeted outreach and new incentives.
  • Based in Kansas, TreviPay made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2022 in New York.

A new offering from B2B payments platform TreviPay will help companies identify buyer needs and trends, respond to buyer dormancy, and optimize critical steps in the order-to-cash (O2C) process. TreviPay’s Growth Center, located within the TreviPay Client Portal, features a range of customizable add-ons designed to help companies deepen buyer relationships and enhance engagement.

Many suppliers face challenges not just in acquiring new buyers, but in keeping current buyers engaged. The TreviPay Growth Center combines transactional data, behavioral insights, and predictive intelligence to enable customers to identify early signs of customer dormancy, allowing sales, operations, and finance teams to engage these buyers before any impact on revenue occurs.

“TreviPay’s network was built to help businesses grow,” TreviPay Chief Product and Technology Officer Dan Zimmerman said. “The Growth Center helps clients use predictive insights to spot changes in buyer behavior, re-engage customers, and measure the impact of incentives, without adding work for other teams. It’s part of how we deliver value clients can’t easily replicate and help protect long-term program performance.”

TreviPay’s Growth Center is the latest example of how AI is being used as an intelligence layer, anticipating risk, preventing revenue leakage, and fortifying buyer-supplier relationships. Growth Center offers buyer insights to help sellers understand purchasing trends and engagement signals. It provides predictive insights to help spot buyers that may be at risk of going dormant so that companies can engage them with targeted outreach and fresh incentives. The new offering also includes tools to support testing and iteration, empowering teams to improve campaign performance over time. It also features rebate management with easy-to-configure incentives and automated tracking and reporting.

TreviPay Growth Center is expected to be generally available in Q2 2026. The company noted that it is continuing to develop the technology, highlighting a recent pilot test with a US-based retailer during which TreviPay’s AI and machine learning models accurately predicted which buyers would go dormant. TreviPay reported that all of the tests resulted in new spending increases, including nearly 60 previously dormant buyers that made a combined $103,946 in purchases within eight days of outreach triggered by TreviPay’s predictive signals.

Founded in 1980 and headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, TreviPay made its debut at FinovateFall 2022. At the conference, the company demonstrated its Small Business Supplier Payments Network (SBSN), which enables banks to offer new products to their small business clients by leveraging the B2B trade credit market for small businesses.

TreviPay began 2026 with the launch of its Pay by Invoice solution that enables Visa issuers to leverage their Visa credentials for supplier payments. The collaboration combines TreviPay’s order-to-cash automation technology with Visa’s commercial payment capabilities to help issuers transition from disconnected B2B spending processes to strategic, issuer-financed, invoice-based transactions.

“For years, banks have been looking for a scalable way to capture the significant share of B2B payments still happening off-card,” TreviPay CEO Brandon Spear said. “TreviPay Pay by Invoice unlocks that opportunity. By integrating our order-to-cash automation with Visa’s network capabilities, issuing banks can now offer their commercial clients a modern credit solution that automates invoicing and delivers the flexibility we know business buyers expect.”

Photo by Alla Kemelmakher on Unsplash

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Bluefin and Basis Theory Offer Unified Token Strategy Across Digital and In-Person Payments

Bluefin and Basis Theory Offer Unified Token Strategy Across Digital and In-Person Payments
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Basis Theory, Bluefin
  • Payment and data security infrastructure company Bluefin and tokenization and vaulting platform Basis Theory have announced a strategic partnership.
  • The partnership will enable businesses to implement a unified token strategy to help them manage payment fragmentation between cloud-native tokenized platforms and in-person environments.
  • Bluefin made its Finovate debut at our developers conference FinDEVr SiliconValley. Basis Theory debuted at FinovateSpring 2022.

A strategic partnership between Bluefin and Basis Theory will enable businesses to deploy a unified token strategy across environments. Spanning in-store, call center, online, and backend systems, the partnership aligns Bluefin’s PointConex platform with Basis Theory’s tokenization capabilities to securely and consistently capture, tokenize, and use sensitive payment data across channels. This will enable firms with hybrid and omnichannel payment methods to manage payment fragmentation between cloud-native tokenized platforms and in-person payment environments more effectively. Enterprises can implement the strategy without expanding PCI scope or introducing additional integration-related complexity.

“As organizations expand into hybrid payment experiences, PointConex provides a standardized way to secure in-person payment rails without adding new compliance or integration complexity,” Bluefin Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Ruston Miles said. “By aligning with modern, independent tokenization platforms like Basis Theory, we enable a consistent approach to protecting payment data across all channels while preserving flexibility and data ownership.”

Bluefin’s PointConex platform provides processor-agnostic, card-present orchestration with PCI-validated P2PE. The platform is designed as a no-code proxy instead of a gateway or API-based integration, and supports more than 125 certified devices across leading manufacturers. PointConex enables service providers to access certified in-person payment rails without interrupting existing workflows or increasing compliance burdens. Basis Theory’s platform securely captures and vaults sensitive payment data via modern APIs for enterprise companies and SaaS platforms. Through the strategic partnership, customers will be able to expand their digital token strategies into in-person payment environments, enabling them to participate in a future-ready payments architecture while maintaining control over their data.

“Our partnership helps merchants connect customer spending data across in-store and online channels,” Basis Theory CEO and Co-founder Colin Luce said. “Merchants gain a more consistent checkout experience, wherever customers choose to pay, while maintaining strong security and flexibility across their payment environments.”

Making its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022, Basis Theory demonstrated how its technology helps developers securely work with sensitive data. The company showed how its solution gives developers a secure and compliant environment to interact with their most sensitive data to conduct KYC, initiate bank transfers, or query the data without decrypting it.

Basis Theory’s partnership with Bluefin comes on the heels of the firm’s announcement that it has teamed up with Checkout.com in an alliance that will help merchants securely capture, store, use, and update payment data without adding additional compliance burdens with a broader PCI scope. Last fall, Basis Theory secured $33 million in funding in a round led by Costanoa Ventures, Stage 2 Capital, and Moneta VC.

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Bluefin introduced itself to Finovate audiences at our developers conference, FinDEVr SiliconValley 2014. In the more than a decade since then, the company has grown into an end-to-end payment infrastructure company with 35,000 clients across 60 countries and more than 300 integration partners.

Photo by Francesco Ungaro

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Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News

Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Backbase, Feedzai, Fintech Rundown, Jack Henry, Payoneer, Plaid, Temenos, VISA

We’re fresh off an outstanding FinovateEurope conference in London (meet our Best of Show winners!) and already gearing up for our Spring event in San Diego. In the meanwhile, here’s a look at some of the fintech headlines that have crossed the wire in recent days. Be sure to check back here at the Fintech Rundown all week long for updates!

Digital banking

Oklahoma-based Blue Sky Bank partners with Jack Henry, deploying the fintech’s Banno Digital Platform along with other integrated solutions.

The Bank of Beirut UK goes live with Temenos for core banking and payments.

Fraud prevention

RiskOps platform provider Feezdai and regtech Neterium collaborate to enhance transaction screening for instant payments

Licensed payment institution Paytently partners with SEON for advanced fraud prevention and anti-money laundering controls.

Mortgagetech and proptech

UAE-based protech innovator Rentify launched its rent-native infrastructure player, Rentify Pay.

Digital savings and mortgage platform Tembo secures £16 million in growth funding in a round the featured new investor Gresham House Ventures.

Open finance

Backbase and Plaid team up to bring open finance to AI-powered banking.

Insurtech

UK-based embedded insurance company Wrisk acquired real-time financial intelligence platform Atto to build an integrated embedded finance platform.

DeFi

Payoneer teams up with stablecoin infrastructure platform and Stripe company Bridge to support its launch of new embedded stablecoin capabilities.

Netherlands-based paytech and stablecoin issuer Quantoz teams up with Visa, enabling the firm to issue irtual Visa debit cards as serve as a BIN-sponsor for third-party fintechs and platforms.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

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FinovateEurope 2026 Best of Show Winners Announced!

FinovateEurope 2026 Best of Show Winners Announced!
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Best of Show, R34DY, Serene, Tweezr

London called—and our FinovateEurope 2026 demoing companies answered!

After a full day of live fintech demonstrations showcasing solutions for challenges in lending, payments, wealth management, and more, the attendees of FinovateEurope have made their decision as to which companies will receive Finovate’s highest honor: Best of Show.

As Finovate VP and Master of Ceremonies Greg Palmer noted, this year’s competition was as tough as it has ever been—which reflects well not just on the winners, but also on all the companies that demoed their latest innovations before our audience of fintech and financial services professionals from around the world. Nevertheless, as the saying goes, there can only be one (or, in this case, three)—and here they are: the winners of Best of Show for FinovateEurope 2026!

R34DY for its ABLEMENTS solution that enables rapid AI transformation, allowing banks to achieve faster delivery, lower IT costs and comprehensive differentiation via context-aware modernization.

Serene for its technology that transforms a compliance burden into sustainable growth, with insights that optimize collections, reduce arrears, empower front-line teams, and safely expand lending to underserved markets.

Tweezr for its solution that helps organizations transform and grow by accelerating TTM and increasing developer productivity for both legacy system maintenance and modernization (or even obviating modernization all together).

A hearty congratulations to our trio of Best of Show winners and a profound thanks to all of the companies that demoed their latest fintech innovations on the Finovate stage this week. It seems as if each year the competition just gets tougher, and we salute those companies—from scholarship-winning startups to veteran incumbents—whose innovations bring greater personalization, security, and value to individuals, businesses, and communities.

Next up for Finovate is our event in sunny San Diego—FinovateSpring 2026—scheduled for May 5 through 7. We hope to see you there!

Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their three favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The three companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2025 conferences are below:
FinovateEurope 2015
FinovateSpring 2015
FinovateFall 2015
FinovateEurope 2016
FinovateSpring 2016
FinovateFall 2016
FinovateAsia 2016
FinovateEurope 2017
FinovateSpring 2017
FinovateFall 2017
FinovateAsia 2017
FinovateMiddleEast 2018
FinovateEurope 2018
FinovateSpring 2018
FinovateFall 2018
FinovateAsia 2018
FinovateAfrica 2018
FinovateEurope 2019
FinovateSpring 2019
FinovateFall 2019
FinovateAsia 2019
FinovateMiddleEast 2019
FinovateEurope 2020
FinovateFall 2020
FinovateWest 2020
FinovateEurope 2021
FinovateSpring 2021
FinovateFall 2021
FinovateEurope 2022
FinovateSpring 2022
FinovateFall 2022
FinovateEurope 2023
FinovateSpring 2023
FinovateFall 2023
FinovateEurope 2024
FinovateSpring 2024
FinovateFall 2024
FinovateEurope 2025
FinovateSpring 2025
FinovateFall 2025

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Finovate Global: Meet the International Alums of FinovateEurope 2026!

Finovate Global: Meet the International Alums of FinovateEurope 2026!
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

FinovateEurope 2026 is only days away!

With its home in London, it is no surprise that FinovateEurope often showcases the highest number of demoing companies headquartered outside of the United States. What’s especially interesting about this year’s cohort of FinovateEurope demoing companies, however, is the percentage of non-US companies compared to the total: more than 77% of this year’s demoers hail from countries other than the US. Check them out below and then join us next week for FinovateEurope 2026!

FinovateEurope 2026 kicks off at London’s Intercontinental 02—February 10 and 11. Tickets are still available. Visit our FinovateEurope 2026 hub to register and save your spot!

AAZZUR—Berlin, Germany

Founded in 2019, AAZZUR empowers brands to launch embedded finance solutions with a single integration, unlocking new revenue streams and enhancing customer engagement.

Candour Identity—Oulu, Finland

Founded in 2021, Candour Identity boosts onboarding conversions, reduces fraud losses, enables daily biometric use, and supports regulatory complaince to help instituions scale their digital offerings.

FINTRAC—London, England

Founded in 2024, FINTRAC automates workflows to deliver stronger controls, richer analytics, and lower costs across the model lifecycle. The company’s Model Ops platform helps banks and other financial institutions manage their most complex models and calculations.

Francis—London, England

Founded in 2025, Francis empowers financial institutions and fintechs to make the most of open finance by leveraging AI. The company’s technology turns fragmented financial data into actionable wealth insights.

Hagbad—United Kingdom

Founded in 2025, Hagbad digitizes trust-based savings, enabling compliant engagement, expanding customer reach and driving financial inclusion via regulated, culturally aligned financial infrastructure.

Intuitech—Budapest, Hungary

From simple workflows to complex cases such as commercial loans and mortgages, Intuitech delivers AI agents capable of automating over 90% of manual tasks, shortening approval times and lowering costs. The company was founded in 2018.

Keyless—London, England

Keyless replaces outdated multi-factor authentication (MFA) with biometrics, improving the user experience and saving millions. Founded in 2019, Keyless was acquired by fellow Finovate alum Ping Identity.

Maisa—Valencia, Spain

Maisa boosts business efficiency by automating end-to-end processes with traceability, hallucination-resistance, and governance, in regulated industries such as banking and financial services. Maisa was founded in 2024.

Mifundo—Tallinn, Estonia

Mifundo enables banks and other financial institutions to grow their business volume by up to 15% by enabling them to better serve foreign and cross-border customers throughout Europe. The company was founded in 2022.

MyPocketSkill—London, England

Founded in 2020, MyPocketSkill is a digital technology company at the nexus of fintech and edtech that offers solutions to help Gen Z to save, invest, and become more money savvy.

Neuralk AI—Paris, France

Founded in 2024, Neuralk AI makes predictive capability a viable option at every point where tabular data is available. The company’s technology delivers superior performance compared to traditional machine learning and large-language models.

Opentech—Rome, Italy

Opentech partners with banks and card issuers, supporting digital transformation with secure, compliant, and scalable payment solutions. The company combines UX design with software engineering via a co-design model that accelerates delivery while ensuring equality and reliability.

R34DY—Budapest, Hungary

Founded in 2019, R34DY offers an automated system, ABLEMENTS, that enables rapid AI transformation for banks, enabling them to deliver new products faster, lower IT costs, and differentiate themselves via context-aware modernization.

Sea.dev—London, England

Sea.dev provides embeddable AI for business lending. The company’s technology automates underwriting workflows, to enable credit analysts to focus on higher-value analysis, faster decision-making, and growth. Sea.dev was founded in 2024.

Serene—London, England

Founded in 2023, Serene combines behavioral insights, predictive intelligence, and financial data to enable institutions to identify and understand early signs of fraud, vulnerability, and financial stress.

Skill Studio AI—Dublin, Ireland

Founded in 2025, Skill Studio AI transforms training documents into engaging, AI-powered learning experiences. The company’s platform reduces training costs, accelerates compliance readiness, and scales globally.

Tweezr—Tel Avi, Israel and Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Tweezr empowers institutions to transform and grow by accelerating time-to-market and boosting developer productivity for both maintaining legacy systems as well as for modernization initiatives. The company was founded in 2024.

Photo by Lucas George Wendt on Unsplash

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