Tyfone Inks Strategic Partnership with Star One Credit Union to Boost Instant Payments

Tyfone Inks Strategic Partnership with Star One Credit Union to Boost Instant Payments
  • Digital banking solutions provider Tyfone has inked a strategic partnership with Star One Credit Union.
  • Tyfone will help Star One CU implement its instant payments solution.
  • Headquartered in Portland, Oregon, Tyfone made its Finovate debut in 2008.

Digital banking solutions provider Tyfone has forged a strategic partnership with Silicon Valley-based Star One Credit Union. Tyfone, a Finovate alum since 2008, will help the FedNow certified-credit union implement its new, instant payments solution.

“Today’s consumers and businesses not only want quick, simple, and instant ways to facilitate payments, but they expect a unified, consistent user experience,” Tyfone CEO Dr. Siva Narendra said. “Our partnership with Star One Credit Union allows us to build a solution that aligns with financial institutions’ unique needs and ensures greater accessibility. Our goal is to help scale this service and unlock the tremendous potential instant payments offers financial institutions and account holders.”

Tyfone’s technology helps financial institutions regardless of size connect directly to the FedNow Service for credit transfer send and receive message sets. The new solution developed by Star One Credit Union, in partnership with Tyfone, will integrate the core processing systems of FIs and leverage Tyfone’s open APIs to enable connectivity to payment originators and digital banking providers. The solution, combined with participation in the FedNow Service, will empower account holders to send and receive payments any time, any where, and have full and immediate access to transferred funds.

“Together with Tyfone, we are advancing instant payments adoption in the United States and helping to fulfill the end-to-end instant payment ecosystem,” Star One Credit Union VP of Remote Services Minai Gupta said. “We look forward to working with Tyfone’s team to create a solution for financial institutions of all sizes, regardless of what payment providers or digital banking platform they use.”

To date, more than 100 community financial institutions in the U.S. have adopted Tyfone’s platform and technology. For its part, Star One Credit Union is one of the largest FIs in Silicon Valley with more than 123,000 members. Launched more than 60 years ago, Star One CU today has assets of more than $10.2 billion. The financial institution offers membership to employees of some of Silicon Valley’s most notable companies such as Lockheed Martin and Juniper Networks.

Founded in 2004, Tyfone made its Finovate debut in 2008. This April, the company announced a “significant investment” from Demopolis Equity Partners and a merger with digital banking provider Cubus Solutions. In a statement, Tyfone’s Narendra discussed the transaction in the context of enabling financial institutions of different sizes to provide their customers with equally compelling digital experiences.

“Today success in digital banking – in fact, success in any financial technology – is all about engaged digital experiences and the ability to scale,” Narendra said. “That means scaling up to power digital growth for larger institutions and scaling down to facilitate the smaller one stay relevant.”


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Virtusa Partners with Payments Consultancy and Technology Provider Icon Solutions

Virtusa Partners with Payments Consultancy and Technology Provider Icon Solutions
  • Payment consultancy and technology provider Icon Solutions announced a strategic partnership with Virtusa Corporation.
  • The partnership combines Virtusa’s payments implementation expertise with Icon Solutions’ Icon Payments Framework (IPF).
  • Icon Solutions made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2017.

U.K.-based Icon Solutions announced a strategic partnership with data strategy, data engineering, and IT services and solutions provider Virtusa Corporation. The collaboration will bring Virtusa’s payments implementation expertise to Icon Solutions’ Icon Payments Framework (IPF).

The goal of the partnership is to create an ecosystem in which banks and other financial institutions can achieve their payment transformation objectives. Icon’s IPF offers a low-code, cloud-native, open-source framework that empowers FIs to build their own payment processing solutions. IPF’s software development kit and optional modules give financial institutions the ability to take advantage of Icon’s payment strategy and architecture without the danger of being “locked-in” to a given vendor’s technology.

“Icon is committed to empowering banks to regain control of their payments and transform with confidence,” Icon Solutions Sales Director Liam Jeffs said. “With Virtusa, we are expanding our partner network to provide even more rich, collaborative opportunities to equip global banks with unique infrastructure that both streamlines their payments processing capabilities and helps them grow revenue streams.”

Founded in 2009, Icon Solutions made its Finovate debut in 2017 at FinovateEurope. At the conference, the company showed how its technology helped institutions in the U.K. adopt and deploy instant payments. Via its IPF platform and its team of advisors, Icon Solutions enabled financial institutions that did not have the budgets and platforms of their larger rivals to successfully upgrade their payments technology and transition to instant payments.

Since then, the company has grown 20% year-on-year. The firm also has partnered with financial institutions such as BNP Paribas, Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide, and HSBC. Tier 1 banks around the world use Icon Solutions’ IPF to accelerate their payment transformations and introduce instant payments to their customers.

Last month, Icon Solutions appointed Donal Fleming as its new Chief Technology Officer. Fleming brings more than 25 years of experience in the banking and financial services industry to the company. He previously served as CTO for Credit Benchmark and payments company Modulr.

Virtusa was founded in 1996. The company serves businesses in life sciences and health care, as well as in banking and financial services. Virtusa has more than 220 clients, and operates in more than 25 countries. Baring Private Equity Asia acquired the Massachusetts-based firm in 2020 in an all-cash deal valued at $2 billion. Virtusa co-founder Kris Canekeratne is Chairman and CEO.


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Finovate Global Colombia: Innovations in Payments Security and the Blockchain

Finovate Global Colombia: Innovations in Payments Security and the Blockchain

This week’s edition of Finovate Global looks at recent fintech news from Colombia.

The largest Spanish-speaking country in South America, Colombia is located in the northwest corner of the continent. With a population of more than 52 million, Colombia has the third largest economy in South America and the fourth largest in Latin America. More than 11 million people live in the country’s capital city of Bogota.

Earlier this year, the Colombian government indicated its support for open banking and open finance. Specifically, the government included the establishment of an open banking scheme as part of its National Development Plan. The fact that the current government endorsed an initiative that began with the previous administration was seen as an especially constructive sign for the future of open banking and open finance in Colombia.

One way to keep up with fintech news from Colombia is via Colombia Fintech. With information in both Spanish and English, Colombia Fintech is an association of fintech companies based in Colombia. The association provides news on Colombian fintechs, updates on relevant developments on the government and regulatory front, as well as opportunities for networking. Colombia Fintech counts more than 240 members in its community. The association was formed in 2016.

As for recent Colombian fintech news, Bogota-based payments and data security company Intexus announced a partnership with security software company Entrust this week. Intexus will use Entrust’s digital card and instant issuance technology to support its card-as-a-service solution. The partnership is designed to enable banks and credit unions in Latin America to benefit from a unified payment card program.

“We have long been in the digital era and today’s consumers are accustomed to having resources at their fingertips instantaneously,” Intexus CEO David Rojas said. “Our partnership with Entrust allows us to simplify payment enablement for our bank and credit union customers throughout Latin America so they can focus on building relationships with their cardholders and members.”

Intexus serves clients in eight Latin American countries and issues more than 100,000 cards a month. The company was founded in 1997. Entrust provides solutions to help businesses offer trusted experiences for identity, payments, and data. Founded in 1969, the company has been a Finovate alum since 2015 when it presented its technology as part of our developers conference, FinDEVr SiliconValley.

Speaking of partnerships between Finovate alums and Colombian financial interests, we also learned this week that Ripple has entered into a new collaboration with the country’s central bank. As reported in CoinDesk, Banco de la República will test the effectiveness of Ripple’s CBDC platform to enhance Colombia’s high-value payments system. The pilot is being conducted in partnership with the country’s Ministry for the Information and Communications Technologies (MinTIC). Spanish blockchain company Peersyst Technology is also participating.

The goal of the project is to demonstrate the platform’s ability to improve the speed and reduce costs for large scale, wholesale payments, RTGS systems and similar operations, Joe Vollono, a director of CBDC business development at Ripple indicated. The project is scheduled to continue through the end of the year, and is being conducted in a controlled environment without compromising public resources.

As noted in The Paypers coverage of the announcement, Ripple previously partnered with Colombia last year to put land titles on the blockchain as part of a land redistribution program. Peersyst Technology was also a part of this initiative to permanently store and authenticate property titles on Ripple’s public blockchain.

Founded in 2012, Ripple made its Finovate debut as OpenCoin at FinovateSpring the following year. Rebranded as Ripple in 2015, the company has since grown into an innovative payment protocol and exchange network. Use cases of the company’s technology range from cross-border payments to crypto liquidity to CBDCs. Ripple’s customers include Novatti, Modulr, and Siam Commercial Bank. Chris Larsen is CEO.


Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Ripple announced a collaboration with the Central Bank of Colombia
  • Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions teamed up with Brazil-based banking and payments software company Pismo.
  • Security software company Entrust partnered with Colombia’s Intexus to enhance payments for banks in Latin America.

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

  • PKO Bank Polski unveiled a new system of valued-added services (VAS).
  • Austrian fintech Vipaso (Vienna Payment Solutions) teamed up with Visa to launch a new app, ViennaPay.
  • France’s Market Pay agreed to acquire Poland-based payments technology company Novelpay.

Middle East and Northern Africa


Photo by Santiago Boada

Innovation, Opportunity, and Ethics: The Role of Generative AI in Financial Services

Innovation, Opportunity, and Ethics: The Role of Generative AI in Financial Services

What is the role of Generative AI in financial services? It seems as if every week another fintech or financial services company is announcing that it is integrating ChatGPT – among the most popular Generative AI applications – into its products. This week alone Avalara announced that it is launching a sales tax calculator plugin for ChatGPT, and cryptocurrency exchange Bybit reported that it is integrating ChatGPT into its trading tools.

As part of our Streamly Future of Finance Series, we asked Rocio Wu, Principal at F-Prime Capital and a recent speaker at FinovateSpring, for her thoughts on the role of Generative AI in financial services. What unique services will Generative AI make possible? Are banks ready to take advantage of what Generative AI has to offer? And what are the ethical concerns about the use of Generative AI in financial services? Wu discusses all this and more in her Streamly Future of Finance Q&A: “The three main categories of Generative AI innovation in financial services.”

Check out more insightful analysis from our Streamly Future of Finance series. And for more on Generative AI, be sure to watch Bain Capital Ventures Partner Sarah Hinkfuss on why it is important for financial services to pay attention to Generative AI.

Canadian Wealth Management Startup OneVest Raises $17 Million in Series A

Canadian Wealth Management Startup OneVest Raises $17 Million in Series A
  • Canadian wealth-as-a-service platform OneVest raised $12.8 million (CAD $17 million) in Series A funding this week.
  • The company’s technology provides financial institutions with a modular, scalable solution that enables them to launch new wealth management services in weeks.
  • The funding takes OneVest’s total capital raised to $18 million (CAD $24 million).

OneVest, a wealth-as-a-service platform for financial institutions, raised $12.8 million (CAD $17 million) in Series A funding this week. The investment takes the Calgary, Canada-based company’s total capital raised to $18 million (CAD $24 million). OneVest will use the funding to accelerate growth and expand into the U.S. market. The capital will also enable the company to add to its team in multiple areas, including enterprise sales, business operations, product, and engineering.

OMERS Ventures led the round. Existing investors Luge Capital, Panache Ventures, AAF Management, and FJ Labs participated, as well. The Series A also featured new investors Fin Capital, Pivot Investment Partners, and Deloitte Ventures.

“We’ve built OneVest as a durable, highly scalable platform that can shape the future of wealth management,” OneVest co-founder and CEO Amar Ahluwalia explained. He underscored the challenge of delivering “exceptional” financial experiences while meeting the expectations of customers, financial advisors, and regulators alike. “The ability to implement a modern service with all the required compliance requirements built in, is compelling,” Ahluwalia said.

Financial institutions can integrate and configure the different components of the platform based on the needs of their customers. The solution provides intuitive interfaces for investors and advisors, data aggregation, a reliable book of record, and a comprehensive portfolio management engine. Institutions can leverage the platform to automate and streamline administrative and middle office operations, as well. The technology is designed to enable banks and other FIs to launch customized, wealth management offerings in weeks, rather than years.

Ahluwalia, Jakob Pizzera (COO), and Nathan Di Lucca (CTO) founded OneVest in 2021. The company provides solutions for fintechs, banks and credit unions, wealth managers, insurance companies, dealers and custodians, and asset managers.


Photo by Juman Salem

Sumsub Unveils Full-Cycle Verification Platform

Sumsub Unveils Full-Cycle Verification Platform
  • Identity verification innovator Sumsub introduced a new full-cycle identity verification solution this week.
  • The new offering addresses new trends in identity verification – including the rise of deepfakes and synthetic fraud.
  • Headquartered in London, Sumsub made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2020 in Berlin, Germany.

Identity verification specialist Sumsub launched a new full-cycle identity verification solution this week. The new offering, according to company co-founder and CEO, Andrew Sever, is designed to address accelerating fraud threats. This includes what Sever indicated was “an alarming 70% of fraud activity” taking place after the KYC stage.

Broadly speaking, the new platform is a response to four trends in identity verification: the increase in global fraud, the trend toward non-document verification and digital IDs, tightening regulations in a number of industries, and the democratization of AI technology and innovation. This latter development has created a new challenge in the form of deepfakes and synthetic fraud.

Sumsub’s new offering combines user and business verification, transaction monitoring, fraud prevention, and case management solutions into a single, unified dashboard. The technology enables users to orchestrate identity verification flows and offers unlimited customization. The AI-enabled platform monitors and analyzes data at every stage to identify potentially suspicious behavior.

“The new platform is the unique solution to an equation with three variables, conversion, anti-fraud, and compliance, many leaders in the verification industry struggled to solve until today,” Sumsub co-founder and CTO Vyacheslav Zholudev explained. Zholudev noted that Sumsub provides the highest pass rates across emerging and developed countries, and is among the few providers to openly share conversion rates. “It’s crucial that Sumsub breaks down borders for businesses by bringing top-notch customer experiences customized to different jurisdictions.”

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in London, SumSub stands for “Sum & Substance.” The company made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2020 in Berlin, Germany. At the conference, the company demoed its KYC/AML checks and risk management toolkit. The toolkit helps business convert more customers, verify more customers faster, lower costs, and identify fraud.

SumSub prevents more than 50,000 fraud attempts every month, covering 220+ countries and territories. The company raised $30 million in Series B funding in December of last year. The round was led by Flint Capital.


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Alloy and Astra Team Up to Streamline Onboarding and Enable Faster Payments

Alloy and Astra Team Up to Streamline Onboarding and Enable Faster Payments
  • Payments infrastructure company Astra and identity risk management innovator Alloy announced a new partnership this week.
  • The partnership will combine Astra’s advanced payment transfer technology with Alloy’s identity decisioning platform.
  • New York-based Alloy introduced itself to Finovate audiences at FinDEVr Silicon Valley in 2016.

A newly announced partnership combines identity risk management and advanced payment transfer technology to both streamline onboarding and give businesses new ways to send money to their customers.

Faster payments infrastructure company Astra and identity risk management innovator Alloy shared news of their collaboration today. The two companies will work together to streamline the onboarding process and give customers the ability to deploy Astra’s advanced payment transfer technology in their products.

“With Alloy’s identity risk solutions, businesses can confidently onboard verified customers,” Astra co-founder and CEO Gil Akos said. “Paired with Astra’s best-in-class payment technology, more product owners and consumers can leverage accelerated settlement of funds.”

Astra’s platform helps businesses create and offer debit transfers and Visa Direct payments. Partnering with Alloy will make it easier for businesses to quickly and securely onboard new customers and begin offering debit transfer services, Alloy VP of Strategic Alliances Brian Bender explained, “without taking on additional risk.”

Founded in 2015, Alloy introduced itself to Finovate audiences a year later at FinDEVr SiliconValley. The company’s automated identity decisioning platform provides access to 120+ data sources to enable companies to create automated workflows that verify customer information. The platform monitors transactions among accounts and flags suspicious behavior for further review. The technology also enhances the credit underwriting process, helping businesses make better credit decisions as well as accurate identity and customer information assessments.

Today, Alloy’s platform processes nearly one million identity decisions every day. The company also counts nearly 500 banks and fintechs as its customers. This spring, Alloy teamed up with fellow Finovate alum Kyckr to streamline KYB checks for companies operating outside the United States. In February, the company announced a partnership with loan origination solution provider Baker Hill – also a Finovate alum.

Alloy has raised more than $207 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. The New York-based firm includes Lightspeed Venture Partners and Avenir Growth Capital among its most recent investors.


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Belguim’s First Online Bank Partners with Infosys Finacle for Core Banking

Belguim’s First Online Bank Partners with Infosys Finacle for Core Banking

Keytrade Bank, the first online bank in Belgium, has turned to Infosys Finacle to modernize its core banking system. Courtesy of the partnership, Keytrade Bank will swap out its legacy platform in favor of the Infosys Finacle suite. This will help the financial institution boost efficiency, accelerate time-to-market for products, and provide a superior experience for customers.

Keytrade Bank CEO Thierry Ternier noted in a statement that the new technology would “future-proof” the institution, and enable Keytrade Bank to “tackle the challenges of a fast-moving environment.” Keytrade Bank will subscribe to Infosys Finacle suite in a SaaS mode on the Microsoft Azure public cloud. This will facilitate the bank’s ability to leverage Finacle’s open API repository on the cloud, enabling easy and seamless integration with ecosystem partners.

Keytrade Bank is part of Credit Mutuel Arkea, one of the largest banking groups in France. The institution offers both banking and investment services to its retail customers, stemming from its origins as an online brokerage. The bank offers a current account with a 0.05 bonus for every transaction, as well as a savings account and a trading account. Keytrade also provides investment plans for as little as 25 euros per month, online portfolio management, and an open architecture funds supermarket with more than 660 funds.

The deployment of core banking technology from Infosys Finacle will help further Keytrade Bank’s development into a full-fledged bank. Founded in 1998 as VMS-Keytrade, the institution secured its banking status in 2002 when it acquired RealBank. Keytrade Bank maintains an impressive array of trading tools, including its professional day-trading and trend trading platform, Keytrade Pro. The company’s partnership with Infosys Finacle gives it the opportunity to bring its banking business up to a comparable level of innovation and service.

“With Finacle, Keytrade Bank has a core banking solution that has proven itself around the world for accelerating innovation, driving automation and operational excellence, and helping deepen customer engagements,” Infosys Finacle Chief Business Officer and Global Head Sanat Rao said. “This collaboration marks yet another milestone in our expanding presence in Europe and underlines our commitment to helping European banks stay ahead in the digital age.”

Headquartered in Bangalore, India, Infosys Finacle has been a Finovate alum since 2009. In the years since, the company has grown into a major digital banking solution provider, and is now a part of EdgeVerve Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Infosys. The company offers solutions for a variety of banking needs including core banking, lending, digital engagement, payments, cash management, wealth management, treasury operations, the blockchain, and more. Banks in more than 100 countries use Finacle’s technology to help a billion people and millions of businesses improve the way they save, invest, borrow, and make payments.


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FIS Acquires Bond in Bid to Boost Embedded Finance Offerings

FIS Acquires Bond in Bid to Boost Embedded Finance Offerings
  • A number of sources are reporting that FIS has acquired Bond Financial Technologies for an undisclosed sum.
  • The acquisition was first reported by Fintech Business Weekly’s Jason Mikula, who subsequently shared an internal note from FIS describing the acquisition.
  • Neither company has commented publicly about the acquisition reports.

Both FIS and Bond Financial Technologies are being discreet about the news. But a growing number of sources – from TechCrunch to Twitter – are reporting that FIS has acquired the embedded finance company for an undisclosed sum. The news broke on June 1 via a tweet from Fintech Business Weekly’s Jason Mikula. TechCrunch confirmed the story days later, citing unnamed sources. But neither FIS nor Bond has issued an official statement on the news. Mikula followed up his initial tweet with a tweet on Friday sharing an internal communication from FIS president of platform and enterprise products, Tarun Bhatnagar, that provided additional details.

What do we know? In his tweet, Bhatnagar said that FIS was “welcoming 30 Bond colleagues to the FIS team” and that Bond co-founder and CEO Roy Ng will stay on, reporting to Bhatnagar. Bhatnagar noted that the acquisition makes sense for FIS insofar as it brings both banking-as-a-service and embedded finance talent and experience to the company. Bhatnagar added that the acquisition will “close a gap” when it comes to FIS’ embedded finance capabilities, and accelerate time-to-market for the company’s new embedded finance projects.

Founded in 2019, Bond has raised $49 million in funding according to Crunchbase. The company’s embedded finance platform enables program management teams to build, launch, and operate their own financial products. Account verification solutions, deposit accounts, virtual and physical cards, and money movement tools are among the products that Bond’s technology helps companies create. With modern APIs and a robust integration layer, Bond simplifies the process of building and launching new products without having to partner with multiple institutions and vendors. Bond also manages the programs so that companies do not need to worry about securing banking licenses or staffing their own compliance teams.

Earlier this year, Bond announced a partnership with College Ave Student Loans. The collaboration will enable the private student loan provider, one of the top three in the U.S., to develop financial solutions for students and their families. Ng praised the company for its refinancing program and loan products for undergraduates, graduates, and parents, alike. “We look forward to partnering with College Ave to help millions of young adults build a strong financial future,” Ng said.

CardRates published an extensive profile of Bond and its founders at the beginning of the year.


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Finovate Global Germany: Sustainable Investing for Families and Embedded Lending for SMEs

Finovate Global Germany: Sustainable Investing for Families and Embedded Lending for SMEs

This week’s edition of Finovate Global takes a look at recent fintech developments in Germany.

German fintech Bling launched its SavingsTrees solution this week. The new offering helps German families invest sustainably starting with as little as €1 a month. The solution is offered in partnership with wealthtech Evergreen, and represents an evolution in Bling’s product line, expanding from its origins as a family money management educational app and prepaid card.

“Simplicity and sustainability were paramount in the development of our investment offering,” Bling CEO and co-founder Nils Feigenwinter explained. “We prioritize families in our product development to offer a tailored solution that meets their needs. Everyone underestimates the market potential of families, which is why banks have neglected this area for decades. With Bling, we are addressing this.”

Cost savings was one of the reasons why Bling reached out to Evergreen. Cost is also one of the main reasons why more than 80% of German parents do not invest in the country’s capital markets, according to Bling. The complexity of investing and a lack of knowledge about investment products also have contributed to this lack of participation. To this end, Bling leverages visualizations and explanations from finance experts to make the investment process easier to understand.

Funds invested in SavingsTrees are globally diversified and are allocated specifically to sustainable investments. Direct investments in sustainable projects and companies, are available, as are investments in funds that support sustainability initiatives.

Read more about Bling in this TechCrunch profile from December.


Banxware, an embedded lending technology provider headquartered in Germany, has teamed up with Netherlands-based Rabobank to help SMEs secure the financing they need in order to grow. Rabobank will take advantage of Banxware’s embedded lending solution, which enables businesses to apply for short-term financing in as little as 15 minutes. After approval, funds can be available in the borrower’s account within 24 hours.

“This partnership brings Embedded Financing products tailored to the need of SMEs to popular business platforms,” Banxware CEO Miriam Wohlfarth said. “Together with Rabobank we now provide the full financing supply chain, including funds and end-to-end loan management to bridge cash flow shortfalls before they become an issue.”

The deployment will let business founders and owners apply for financing in familiar, everyday digital environments such as e-commerce platforms and booking software. Each firm will focus initially on marketing the solution in their home markets of Germany and the Netherlands, respectively.

Banxware’s partnership announcement follows news that the Berlin-based fintech had teamed up with liquidity management and financial planning company Agicap. Based in France, Agicap helps businesses automate, manage, and forecast their cash flows. Via its strategic partnership with Banxware, Agicap will add access to quick and tailored growth capital to its liquidity management offering.

“From now on, (SMEs) can not only see and manage their cash flows in a centered way, but they can also get new money when there are opportunities for growth,” Agicap Country Manager DE Stephan Krehl said.

Founded in 2020, Banxware is headquartered in Berlin. The company has raised $15 million (€14 million) in funding from investors including Varengold Bank and Element Ventures.


Finovate is proud to showcase fintech innovations from companies headquartered in Germany. This includes hosting our annual European fintech conference in Berlin in 2020.

Here’s a quick list of some of the Germany-based companies that have demoed their fintech innovations on the Finovate stage over the years.

  • aixigo
  • ayondo
  • Bitbond
  • BörseGo 
  • Cash Payment Solutions
  • Coconet
  • collectAI
  • Device Ident
  • Ecolytiq
  • figo
  • Fincite
  • FinTecSystems
  • Fintura
  • HAWK:AI
  • iBrokr
  • IND Group
  • Kreditech
  • Mambu
  • Modifi
  • NDGIT
  • Nextmarkets
  • Open Bank Project (OBP)
  • payever
  • Payworks
  • Pockets United
  • Risk Ident
  • Scalable Capital
  • Smartify.it
  • SOFORT
  • SwipeStox
  • TeamViewer
  • TESOBE
  • Vaamo
  • YUKKA Lab

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Egypt-based fintech Axis launched its new digital payments platform, AxisPay
  • Dubai Islamic Bank launched its DIB ‘alt’ product, a new digital umbrella brand for the bank’s digital offerings.
  • UAE-based B2B fintech solutions provider FOO introduced its prepaid travel card and white label digital wallet.

Central and Southern Asia

  • India-based digital lender Lentra raised $27 million in a Series B extension round.
  • BNE Intellinews profiled Uzbekistani SME lender, Oasis.
  • India’s PayU partnered with Visa and Yes Bank to launch its Business Payment Solution Provider program.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Argentina-based mobile banking company Uala launched a new saving account offering in Mexico.
  • Brazil’s Nubank reached one million accounts in Mexico milestone in one month.
  • Lanistar introduced crypto trading on its app for users in Brazil.

Asia-Pacific

  • Singapore-based B2B payment infrastructure platform Thunes raised $60 million in Series C funding.
  • International payments software provider OpenWay launched a second hub in Vietnam.
  • Wise platform inked its first Japanese partnership, teaming up with GMO Aozora Net Bank.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Nigerian fintech Flutterwave forged a partnership with account-to-account (A2A) payments company Token.io.
  • International payment solutions company Unlimit secured license to operate in Kenya two months after expanding to Nigeria.
  • Harvard Business Review asked and answered the question “What African Fintech Startups Can Teach Silicon Valley About Longevity?”

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Klarna brought its Pay in 3 offering to Romania this week.
  • German identity verification company IDnow added automated document liveness capabilities, financial risk checks, and more to its platform.
  • International development agency USAID partnered with Albanian business solutions provider CBS to launch, Lores Plus, a platform to help Albanian SMEs get access to financing.

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Alternative Bank and Payment Data Firm Ribbit Acquires ValidiFi

Alternative Bank and Payment Data Firm Ribbit Acquires ValidiFi
  • Alternative bank and payment data company RIBBIT has acquired risk mitigation and compliance solution provider ValidiFi.
  • The amount of the transaction was not immediately available.
  • ValidiFi made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in 2019.

ValidiFi founder and CEO Oscar DiVeroli noted the “commonality of entrepreneurial grit and innovation” among upsides of the newly-announced acquisition of his company by RIBBIT, an alternative bank and payment data provider.

Reported late last week, the acquisition will combine RIBBIT’s predictive analytics and data assets with ValidiFi’s verification and compliance solutions. The goal is to create the largest alternative database of bank and payment data in the market. “I’m excited about the enormous opportunity to bring these two dynamic, industry-leading companies together,” RIBBIT CEO Greg Rable said. “The combination of talented people, robust data, and best-in-class products makes this a win-win for our customers and for us.”

Existing investor ABS Capital supported RIBBIT in the acquisition, along with new investor MissionOG.

ValidiFi made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in 2019. At the conference, the company demoed its Payment Risk Optimizer (PRO) technology. PRO is a Platform-as-a-Service solution that scrubs payment files for ACH and card payments. The technology leverages proprietary payment instrument data services to assess the likelihood of a successful payment. PRO can be used to schedule recurring payments for customers, or to create a subscription service, on-demand marketplace, retail store, or gateway.

“Today there are 22 billion dollars of bank overdraft and NSF fees that are charged to merchants and to consumers each and every year,” ValidiFi Chief Operating Officer Jesse Berger said from the Finovate stage in September. “The PRO all but eliminates NSF overdraft fees to consumers and return fees to the merchants. It uses automated workflows and real-time AI source data from the banks directly to verify and validate how much funds are available in the bank account. The PRO solves that age-old question of whether or not a payment transaction will go through successfully.”

Founded in March 2015, ValidiFi is based in Sunrise, Florida. The company began 2023 as a Nacha Preferred Partner for Account Verification, earning the certification in January.


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Glean.ai Brings Automated Accruals Technology to its Intelligent AP Platform

Glean.ai Brings Automated Accruals Technology to its Intelligent AP Platform
  • Glean.ai has launched its Automated Accruals solution to help finance teams more accurately report costs.
  • The new offering is a feature of Glean.ai’s intelligent AP platform.
  • The company made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall in New York.

Spend management solutions company Glean.ai has announced new functionality for its Intelligent AP platform. The company recently unveiled its Automated Accruals technology, which will help companies more accurately report costs.

“Managing accruals manually in spreadsheets and over email is very time-consuming, error-prone, and can lead to an inaccurate reporting of expenses,” Glean.ai Growth Marketing Manager Spencer Campbell noted in a company blog post. Campbell wrote that reconciling accrued expenses is one of the “most time-consuming parts” of any accountant’s close process. “They have to determine which costs have been incurred by their company that have not been invoiced yet,” Campbell explained, “if invoices have been received for prior accruals, and if prior estimates of costs incurred were sufficient.”

To this problem, Glean.ai has introduced Automated Accruals as the latest feature on its spend management platform. The enhancement works by alerting users to potential accruals based on either past billing patterns or budget expectations. This enables finance teams to consult directly with vendors to determine if services were performed and to secure estimates for costs. From here, users can record the expense amount, record date, and reversal date for the accrual. Glean.ai’s technology automatically syncs the entries to the user’s general ledger, and also features real-time reporting to ensure transparency and a comprehensive view of all accrued expenses whether they are booked or reversed.

The addition of automated accruals, according to Glean.ai, is an example of the smart automation that drives the firm’s innovations. The company uses the phrase “Intelligent AP” to describe its approach to leveraging the data that flows AP and accounting to automate processes and empower decision-making.

Howard Katzenberg (CEO), Ankur Patel (Head of Data), and Alexander Jia (Head of Product) co-founded Glean.ai in 2020. The company demoed its technology in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in September of last year. At the conference, Katzenberg talked about how millions of small businesses inadvertently overspend when paying vendors. This occurs, Katzenberg said, due to errors or other costs that could be reduced or eliminated with greater scrutiny. “Fifteen percent of their cash is silently walking out the door,” he said. To this end, Glean.ai analyzes all of the business’ bills at the line item level. This enables the technology to track purchases, prices, and volumes, and deliver “timely, relevant, and actionable ways to save money.”

Katzenberg added, “There are many AP solutions that will help you pay your vendors quicker, but there are none that will help you pay your vendors less – until now.”

Glean.ai is headquartered in New York. The company has raised more than $10 million in funding from investors including Outpost Ventures and B Capital Group.


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