Author: David Penn

The Best of Finovate Global 2022: Embedded Finance, the Data Economy, and Open Banking

The Best of Finovate Global 2022: Embedded Finance, the Data Economy, and Open Banking
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Finovate Global

This week’s edition of Finovate Global showcases some of the fintech founders and CEOs we’ve had the good fortune to interview this year. From embedded finance to the emerging data economy to the connection between open banking and serving the world’s un- and underbanked, fintech innovators in developing economies continue to deliver for both their local communities as well as for consumers around the world.

Finovate Global Egypt: Cartona CEO and Co-founder Mahmoud Talaat

Cartona embraces the vision of a cashless society, investing in embedded finance and payments. We offer pay after four days or pay in four equal installments every 7-10 days. We have made sure our product is easy to use and seamlessly integrated into the ‘check-out’ section for ordering, with collection being all digital or through our supplier network.

Providing retailers with this technology-integrated financial solution not only boosts financial inclusion but also enables them to grow their business and provide customers with essential products at affordable prices. To supplement our core ordering business, embedded finance is what we believe is a key challenge and we see a clear need for it by retailers in the industry.

Read the rest of our interview with Mahmoud Talaat of Cartona.

Finovate Global Finland: Building a Strong Data Economy with ReceiptHero’s Chris Moore

We are surrounded by data in our daily lives, most of it is unstructured and in hard to reach places. Receipts printed on paper are just that: unstructured and, as a customer, it’s hard to apply that purchase data to good use. Part of my opening remarks at FinovateEurope was that we are showered by amazing digital payment innovations and sadly the post purchase experience has mainly been left to stay in the analog world.

Purchase data is core to building a strong data economy, as this data has so far been siloed and in a format that is hard to receive in real-time. It’s not really been leveraged or valued as it should be. ReceiptHero is breaking down those silos and enabling a world where a consumer can have this data instantly in their banking app or in an approved service where the data is used to better the customer experience. 

Read the rest of our conversation with Chris Moore of ReceiptHero.

Finovate Global UAE: Abdulla Almoayed of Tarabut Gateway on Open Banking in the MENA Region

MENA’s young and tech-savvy population is still underbanked, and a driving factor behind Open Banking’s growth are companies and regulators who are keen to facilitate this huge opportunity in a responsible manner.

Moreover, banks in the region understand the benefits that Open Banking brings to their institutions. Open Banking enables them to stay relevant and to compete in today’s banking sector by providing enhanced digital offerings and customer-centricity.

Tarabut Gateway acts as the matchmaker between service providers and customers, creating a competitive fintech ecosystem where users receive the best, personalized products, and services.

Read the rest of our interview with Abdulla Almoayed of Tarabut Gateway.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Ghana-based fintech Bezo Money raised $750,000 in new funding.
  • TechCabal featured an interview with Ibrahima Kourouma, co-founder of Paylia and payments platform for African merchants and consumers.
  • The first graduates the new fintech-focused journalism training program sponsored by pan-African banking organization Ecobank Group and AMA Academy were announced this week.

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Egyptian fintech PayMint teamed up with Egypt’s Commodities Exchange
  • The central bank of the UAE announced plans to launch an Instant Payment Platform in 2023.
  • Israel-based fintech Nilus that helps companies better monitor their payment data raised $8.6 million in seed funding.

Central and Southern Asia

  • India’s Cashfree Payments launched its Buy Now, Pay Later offering.
  • Akhtar Fuiou Technologies (AFT), a fintech headquartered in Pakistan, secured approval from the country’s central bank to begin pilot operations for an Electronic Money Institution license.
  • J.P. Morgan made a strategic investment in India-based payment solutions provider, In-Solutions Global (ISG).

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • TechCrunch profiled Mexican lending startup Aviva.
  • Chilean fintech Destacame secured $10 million in Series B funding.
  • Crypto.com became the first cryptocurrency exchange to be granted a Payment Institution License from Brazil’s central bank.

Asia-Pacific

Photo by Valentin Antonucci

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How Financial Services Firms Can Set Themselves Up for Innovation Success

How Financial Services Firms Can Set Themselves Up for Innovation Success
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: InterSystems, Sponsored

This is a sponsored post from Tim FitzGerald, EMEA Financial Services Sales Manager, InterSystems.

Innovation undoubtably will help firms keep up with market volatility, changing customer demands, and the competition – not just today, but in the future. This is reflected in the thoughts of financial services leaders themselves as almost three-quarters (73%) believe innovation is vital to their survival as a business. Yet, despite widespread recognition of the critical nature of innovation, financial services firms are facing difficulties in successfully executing their innovation initiatives.

In particular, firms cite skills gaps and integrating disparate data sets as significant barriers to innovation. With the uncertainty and upheaval of the last few years showing no signs of slowing down as we head into 2023, finding ways to better leverage their people and data to further innovation, therefore, must be front of mind.

Obtaining a 360-degree view

Data has a vital role to play in innovation initiatives. Being able to access and use accurate, real-time data from all business units to obtain a holistic 360-degree view of the enterprise and its customers will enable firms to better identify and respond to growth opportunities, address challenges in an agile manner, and make more informed, in the moment decisions. This requires firms to address the data integration challenges they are currently facing and connect their myriad data and application silos.

One way of doing this is by adopting a smart data fabric which accesses, transforms, and harmonizes data from multiple sources, on demand, to make it usable and actionable for a wide variety of business applications. Ideal for complex data environments, the smart data fabric eliminates delays which lead to errors, missed opportunities, and decisions based on stale or incomplete data.

This approach allows existing legacy applications and data to remain in place, thereby enabling firms to maximize the value from their previous technology investments, including existing data lakes and data warehouses, without having to “rip-and-replace” any of their existing technology.

By obtaining this instant insight into their organization and customers, financial services firms will be able to make better, more accurate decisions to drive innovation, improve customer experiences, and get ahead of the curve.

Power to the people

Implementing new technology alone is not enough to help firms overcome the barriers that are currently standing in the way of successful innovation. People also have a significant part to play in innovation initiatives, so giving them the capabilities to conquer current skills gaps and to use data effectively to drive innovation are also key. Firms can achieve this by implementing a holistic innovation strategy which brings together all the critical elements required for successful innovation – people, processes, and technology – and identifies how to empower business users with data.

By putting data directly into the hands of business users, firms will be able to mitigate some of the impacts of skills gaps and help people to actively contribute to innovation initiatives. Self-service analytics capabilities embedded within smart data fabrics will provide immense value here. These capabilities will enable business users to freely explore the data, ask ad hoc questions, and drill down via additional queries based on initial findings.

In doing so, not only will firms be able to leverage their data more fully, but also they will be able to mitigate the impact of skills gaps by empowering employees to read and interpret data and make the data-driven decisions needed for successful innovation. This also will reduce reliance on IT teams to surface and interpret data, while avoiding the need for business users to learn a whole host of new skills and tools.

New year, new approach

As firms look to 2023, likely with a mix of excitement and trepidation about what the year may bring, ensuring they address the barriers currently standing in the way of innovation success is essential to help them respond to whatever comes next. By addressing issues with data integration and skills gaps head on, financial services organizations will be able to make more effective use of both their data and people to drive forward innovation initiatives.

Arming themselves with a clear innovation strategy and a team of empowered and data-enabled employees will give firms the capabilities overcome any challenges that may arise, but also critically, to grow their offering, future-proof their organization, and meet changing customer demand. Ultimately, adopting this approach will help firms to set themselves up for long-term innovation success, not just for 2023, but beyond.

Photo by Pixabay

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FinovateEurope’s Alumni Alley: Relevant Rewards, Data Driven Banking, and Innovations in Digital Billpay

FinovateEurope’s Alumni Alley: Relevant Rewards, Data Driven Banking, and Innovations in Digital Billpay
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: AcceptEmail, Alumni News, Cardlytics, D3 Banking, FinovateEurope 2023, Lodo Software

Many of Finovate’s most storied alumni made their Finovate debuts at our European conference, FinovateEurope. Next year at FinovateEurope (March 14 through 15) we will feature the event’s alums in a special showcase called Alumni Alley. For those companies that first demoed their innovations at FinovateEurope, Alumni Alley is a great opportunity to show the world their latest innovations and accomplishments.

Is Alumni Alley for you? Visit our Alumni Alley hub today and find out!

This week, we shine a light on another set of three companies that made their first Finovate appearances at our first FinovateEurope conference in 2011: a digital advertising platform for banks, an innovator in data-driven digital banking, and an e-billing/billpay pioneer.

Cardlytics Delivering Relevant Rewards Before it was Cool

Cardlytics was a young company when it made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in London in 2011. The Atlanta, Georgia-based firm already had gained significant traction for its technology: a transaction marketing platform that helped banks and retailers offer rewards to customers based on their individual buying behavior. During its demo, Cardlytics noted that its technology reached tens of millions of consumers via hundreds of retailers in the U.S. who were leveraging the platform to deliver what have now become table stakes in the loyalty and rewards business: precise targeting and highly relevant offers. Cardlytics returned to the FinovateEurope stage a year later, earning a Best of Show award for its latest loyalty management solution.

From a company with 100 employees and more than $27 million in funding in 2011, Cardlytics has grown into a leading advertising platform for banks and other financial institutions. The company boasts more than 184 million bank customers on its platform and more than $650 million in customer rewards paid. Cardlytics went public in 2018, and currently trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker CDLX. The company has a market capitalization of more than $169 million.

Scott Grimes and Lynne Laube, Cardlytics’ first and second CEOs, demonstrating the company’s technology at FinovateEurope.

“We delivered solid double-digit growth despite the serious challenges present in the economy,” Cardlytics CEO Karim Temsamani said in November when the company shared Q3 financials. “While the economy may be uncertain, I believe there is inherent resiliency in platforms that prove return on ad spend, and I am positive we can grow profitably.” Temsamani joined the company as CEO this summer, taking over from co-founder Lynne Laube who is retiring from the leadership post. Temsamani comes to Cardlytics from Stripe, where he worked as Head of Global Partnerships and, before that, Head of Banking and Financial Products.

Lodo Software, D3 Technology, and the Road from PFM to Data Driven Digital Banking

These days, the idea of fintechs coming from places other than Silicon Valley is increasingly commonplace. But in 2011, there was something more than a little novel about the fintech innovation that was coming out of places like Omaha, Nebraska – courtesy of startups like Lodo Software.

Making its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2011, Lodo Software demoed a cross-selling solution that helped banks leverage the data gathered by the PFM component of the platform to personalize offers and marketing campaigns. The product, OurCashFlow, organized and analyzed customer data to ensure that financial institutions are sending the right messages to the right customers at the right time. The platform’s messages and notifications are scheduled within the platform and are delivered to customers via their PFM dashboard.

D3 Technology CEO Mark Vipond demoing the company’s technology at FinovateEurope 2011 in London.

Lodo Software rebranded as D3 Technology in 2014 in a move that CEO Mark Vipond said reflected “the company’s evolution from a personal financial management software provider to the creator of one of the market’s only true omnichannel, data driven digital banking solution.” The company created D3 Banking to help financial institutions deliver a consistent, personalized, banking experience anywhere, at any time, and on any device. Five years later, in the summer of 2019 , fellow Finovate alum NCR announced that it would acquire the company.

“NCR is a great fit for D3 and the timing is right for us to combine forces to create a powerful digital transformation platform for large financial institutions,” Vipond said when the acquisition was announced. “This transaction enables us to capitalize on new market opportunities and bring top-tier capabilities to our mutual and future clients.”

AcceptEasy: A Pioneer in E-Billing and Billpay via Email

Enabling secure and straightforward e-billing and payments via email was the innovation championed by Netherlands-based fintech AcceptEmail at FinovateEurope in 2011. Founded in 2006 and launching its solution less than a year later, AcceptEmail offered a three-click process for customers to pay bills directly from their email accounts without requiring manual data entry and re(entry). The company’s technology brings convenience to the billpay process for consumers and helps billers realize lower DSO (days sales outstanding) due to more customers paying their bills faster as well as less collection activity. The platform also supports credit management (notifications and reminders) as well as smart SEPA Direct Debit notifications.

AcceptEmail (now AcceptEasy) CEO Peter Kwakernaak introducing his company to Finovate audiences at FinovateEurope 2011.

The company was acquired by Serrala in February 2020 for an undisclosed amount and announced a rebrand to AcceptEasy. The rebranding was designed to reflect the fact that the company had evolved beyond email to become a bill service provider that enables payments in all digital channels. “The flexibility and architecture of our technology is perfect for all sorts of transactional messaging,” AcceptEasy CEO Peter Kwakernaak explained. “The payment moment is becoming a personalized and interactive contact moment .. (it) is one of the most important steps in the customer journey.” He added, “Our services make it possible for enterprises to provide consumers and small businesses an optimized brand experience and save costs in the process.

Photo by Nikita Khandelwal

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Verification Platform Sumsub Partners with French Money Transfer Firm Tempo

Verification Platform Sumsub Partners with French Money Transfer Firm Tempo
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Sumsub
  • London-based regtech Sumsub has partnered with Paris-based money transfer company Tempo.
  • The partnership will help Tempo enhance its user identity verification operations and reduce fraud in line with French regulations.
  • Sumsub made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2020 in Berlin, Germany.

London-based regtech Sumsub – which stands for Sum & Substance – has teamed up with Paris-based money transfer company Tempo. The partnership will enable the French fintech to leverage Sumsub’s technology to verify user identities and secure customer data in line with KYC and AML regulations. Tempo will benefit from access to a range of KYC services and the partnership already has enabled Tempo to meet AML compliance requirements as established by French regulators.

“We are glad to offer our all-in-one verification platform to global digital payments providers like Tempo, making money transfers more accessible to people worldwide,” Sumsub CEO and co-founder Andrew Sever said. “With Sumsub’s KYC. KYB, transaction monitoring and AML solutions, it’s easier for businesses to expand to international markets and increase their client base while staying fully compliant with regulations and ensuring bulletproof fraud protection.”

Sumsub made its Finovate debut two years ago at FinovateEurope 2020 in Berlin, Germany. At the conference, the company demoed its KYC/AML Checks and Risk Management Toolkit, which enables businesses to accelerate verification, and lower costs by as much as 6x, as well as detect and eliminate digital fraud. The company offers global coverage of more than 200 markets and combines best-in-class technology with human legal expertise to enable Sumsub to help companies in diverse regulatory regimes.

In a statement, Tempo France CEO Alla Zhedik highlighted the fact that Tempo is licensed by the Bank of France. “This imposes strict compliance obligations,” Zhedik said. “And that is where KYC plays a great role and is also why the joint project with Sumsub is so important for us.” Zhedik added that the partnership not only helped minimize fraud and money laundering risks, but also gives Tempo “access to the most advanced customer data processing solutions.”

With more than 2,000 customers in verticals ranging from fintech and digital assets to transportation and gaming, Sumsub claims to have achieved some of the highest conversion rates in the industry, reaching more than 91% in the U.S., and more than 95% in the U.K. The company said that is is able to verify users in less than 50 seconds on average.

Sumsub’s partnership news comes one month after the company announced that it was joining Brazilian fintech association, ABFintechs. Also in November, Sumsub reported that Markor Technology, provider of B2B and B2C technology solutions for iGaming operators, had selected Sumsub to provide enhanced verification and fraud protection.

Photo by Elina Sazonova

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Glia Partners with Jack Henry to Bring Innovations in Digital Customer Service to Banks and Credit Unions

Glia Partners with Jack Henry to Bring Innovations in Digital Customer Service to Banks and Credit Unions
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Glia, Jack Henry
  • Glia and Jack Henry announced a partnership this week that will integrate Glia’s Digital Customer Service into Jack Henry’s Banno digital banking platform.
  • The integration will enable a wider number of banks and credit unions to interact with their customers via digital channels such as voice and video banking.
  • Glia and Jack Henry are both Finovate alums. Jack Henry made its Finovate debut in 2010. Glia has won Best of Show at Finovate conferences six times.

A newly announced partnership between a pair Finovate alums will bring some of the latest innovations in digital customer service to more bank and credit union customers. Digital Customer Service specialist Glia announced this week that its technology is now available via Jack Henry’s Banno Digital Platform.

The integration will give financial institutions using the platform the ability to engage customers across all digital channels – from SMS and chat to voice and video banking. Glia’s acquisition of fellow Finovate alum Finn AI in June adds innovative virtual assistance technology to Glia’s offering – technology that will now be available to banks and credit unions on Jack Henry’s platform. The integration was facilitated by the Banno Digital Toolkit, which uses the same set of APIs upon which the Banno Digital Platform is built.

“Glia is making Digital Customer Service accessible to a growing number of banks and credit unions, empowering them with powerful tools to digitalize and transform customer service,” Glia SVP of Alliances Steve Kaish said. “Our integration with Jack Henry accelerates that mission, allowing more institutions to facilitate digital-first engagements within the digital domain.”

A six-time Finovate Best of Show winner, Glia most recently demoed its Digital Customer Service technology at FinovateSpring last year. At the conference, Glia showed how its latest innovation automatically connects customer inbound calls to the customer’s associated online browsing sessions to give customer service representatives context when handling the customer query. This helps improve the quality of the session, making it easy for the representative to collaborate online with the caller via features like co-browsing, screensharing, and one- or two-way video. This, according to Kaish, will help “community institutions create competitive advantage” versus their national and international rivals.

Founded in 2012, Glia is headquartered in New York City. Daniel Michaeli is CEO and co-founder.

With more than 9,000 customers in the U.S., Jack Henry offers banks and credit unions an ecosystem of innovative financial services solutions, as well as the ability to integrate with leading fintechs. Headquartered in Monett, Missouri, and founded in 1976, the company made its Finovate debut in 2010 and has since grown into a major technology and payment services company with $1.7 billion in revenue for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2021. Jack Henry is a publicly traded entity on the Nasdaq under the ticker “JKHY,” and has a market capitalization of $13 billion.

A Finovate alum since 2010, Jack Henry & Associates was featured in Computerworld’s “Best Places to Work in IT” list for 2023. This week, the company announced that it was adding automated policy management technology to its Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) Suite. David Foss is President and CEO.

Photo by Yan Krukov

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Bridging the Empathy Gap with Human-Centered AI: Our Conversation with Uday Akkaraju, CEO of BOND.AI

Bridging the Empathy Gap with Human-Centered AI: Our Conversation with Uday Akkaraju, CEO of BOND.AI
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bond.AI, CEO Interview, Speaker series

One of the more compelling presentations at FinovateFall this year was the keynote address from BOND.AI CEO Uday Akkaraju. Titled “Why the Future of Finance is Beyond Finance, And How to Get There,” Akkaraju’s discussion looked at the wave of digital transformation in financial services and asked “is there a radically smarter path to profitability while staying relevant to customer expectations?”

We pick up on this conversation in today’s extended interview with the BOND.AI CEO. Akkaraju has leveraged his background in interaction design and cognitive science to help make machine intelligence more empathetic and human-oriented. The result is the world’s first Empathy Engine for finance – a technology that helps bridge the gap between consumers struggling to meet their financial needs and banks that are eager to engage these consumers with new technologies that offer greater personalization and effectiveness.

Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, BOND.AI won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2018. We talked with the company’s CEO about the how the company is helping financial institutions better serve their customers, as well as what to expect from BOND.AI in 2023.

You recently spoke at FinovateFall on Why the Future of Finance is Beyond Finance. Can you tell us a little bit about what you shared with our audience in that keynote?

Uday Akkaraju: It was my pleasure to be asked to speak again at FinovateFall this year. A lot has changed since I spoke last time in 2018! And a lot has changed for the better in terms of banking.

The pandemic spurred investments in technology and digital channels to reach customers—a benefit for the banking and fintech industry. However, we must now utilize opportunities accelerated by the pandemic to create a future of better financial health for everyone.

I wanted to use my keynote speech to highlight the “Empathy Gap” between what customers need and what banks can offer today, especially given the fast-changing economic environment. For me, it’s essential we discuss how fintech can help bridge the communication gap between banks and customers. Banks need to strategically implement discourse analysis tools with measurable KPIs to ensure they don’t return to past mistakes.

That’s where human-centered AI comes in. In this case, AI is our chatbot-powered Empathy Engine that can converse with customers via an app to get a deeper understanding of their needs. Through conversation, banks can grow their revenue using customers’ contextual information. With more customer data, individual banks can meet and even predict an individual’s needs, improving financial health as they tailor their products and services as a result. Of course, conversational data is only a part of it. You still need the bank data – otherwise, you only get half the truth.

BOND.AI won Best of Show at FinovateFall 2018 with a live demo of its Empathy Engine. You’ve also talked about something you call the “Empathy Gap.” For the uninitiated, what does the “empathy gap” mean?

Akkaraju: The Empathy Engine is our main vehicle for closing the gap between customer needs and a bank’s inability to meet those needs, which we’ve labeled the “Empathy Gap.” We quantify this gap between what banks offer and what individuals need to be worth roughly $34.2 trillion. I like to say the only thing that changes faster than technology is consumer expectations. Unfortunately, banks’ inability to keep up with those expectations leaves them with a lot of money left on the table for them and a lot of lost opportunities for consumers.

The Empathy Engine helps banks to better communicate with and service consumers to close this “Empathy Gap.” We use its ability to talk directly to customers and deliver personalized service at scale. This aids banks in seeing a holistic picture of each individual and better meeting their financial needs.

The main point of my presentation, though, was to make it clear it’s not going to be possible for one fintech or financial institution to close that gap alone. That’s why we created The BOND Network, to connect banks, employers, and fintechs and make it a true network—not just a marketplace—to balance the needs of all three stakeholders.

How does BOND.AI’s Empathy Engine flow from this?

Akkaraju: We launched the world’s first Empathy Engine for finance in 2018. It’s designed to bridge what the consumer needs against what the bank can offer to give a holistic view of customers, including their needs, strengths, weaknesses, and potential.

Right now, for customer segmentation, banks only consider financial data, and that information remains too broad. It fails to keep up with fast-changing consumer expectations or recognize an individual’s circumstantial information. Segmentation should consider both financial and non-financial data to be effective and offer a hyper-personalized approach that talks directly to the customer.

The BOND.AI Empathy Engine was developed in response to this insight. Instead of considering massive amounts of data with lots of noise, the engine moves to a small-data approach, where segmentation happens based on actual and observed behavior rather than traditional correlations and predictors.

Who is BOND.AI’s primary market and how do those customers use your technology?

Akkaraju: Our primary market is currently made up of financial institutions to whom we provide a white-label solution for insights, analytics, and customer communication. These are our core customers, and they are also members and contributors to The BOND Network.

We also have employers on the network who provide our mobile app to their employees as a financial benefit. At this point, we have 28 employers bringing about 300,000 employees into the network, which is set to grow next year.

What makes BOND.AI’s technology unique in the way it solves problems for your customers?

Akkaraju: Our Empathy Engine is the first-of-our-kind, human-centered technology focused on increasing the financial health of institutions and individual consumers. It also powers The BOND Network, which nurtures an ecosystem of financial institutions, fintechs, employers, and employees that all benefit. The engine identifies stakeholder needs and connects the dots to fulfill those needs, thus making this a network rather than a marketplace.

This is how our efforts move ‘beyond finance’. We believe to bridge the Empathy Gap it will take collaborative action to understand people as more than just transactional data and talk to them instead to establish their needs and situational context. With AI tools, we can speak directly to customers from the comfort of their own home or on the go with our mobile app. This intimacy builds trust and strengthens the customer’s relationship with their bank, so people feel able to share their problems.

The best part? Insights are there for everyone across the network to see how they can further close the Empathy Gap.

I think some would be surprised to learn that BOND.AI has headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas. What does Little Rock offer a company like BOND.AI?

Akkaraju: There’s a lot we feel Little Rock can offer us, which is why we moved here! We were previously based in New York but chose Little Rock strategically for both the company and our employees. The work-life balance is good here. There’s also barely any commute considering most places can be reached in 20 minutes. That’s ideal for a fast-growing start-up where time is money.

There has been a move away from the coast, but tier-two cities are also getting a little cramped. People are happy to explore other options at this point, and Little Rock is an interesting place where both company and employee dollars stretch further.

There are also a lot of possibilities here for us as a start-up looking to connect with employers and their workers. Walmart’s headquarters is here, and many of its vendors are nearby. You don’t need to move to the city to find talent and opportunity. The next thing we’d like to do is start consciously investing in the local talent we think is out there to really prove that to people.

What can we expect from BOND.AI in 2023?

Akkaraju: In 2023 we’re excited for our app to be going direct-to-consumer via employers and expanding our partnerships for The BOND Network. We’ll be using these acquisitions to grow the company organically. These developments will also aid us in our mission to give the power of data back to the consumer and show banks what types of data they can leverage more effectively.

We want to focus on alternative wealth building, giving more people the tools they need to take control of their finances confidently. Budgeting is good, but it doesn’t fix the bottom line and, in many cases, more support is needed. We want to extend the possibilities of financial inclusion by giving everyone access to the tools used by high-net-worth individuals and sharing guidance on how to use them.

Photo by Tara Winstead

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FinovateEurope’s Alumni Alley: Innovations in SaaS Accounting, the Evolution of eDoc Delivery, and the Challenge of Digital Identity

FinovateEurope’s Alumni Alley: Innovations in SaaS Accounting, the Evolution of eDoc Delivery, and the Challenge of Digital Identity
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Direct ID, FinovateEurope 2023, MiiCard, Striata, Xero

Alumni Alley is the latest addition to our upcoming FinovateEurope conference in March. This new feature is exclusively for FinovateEurope alums, and will give these companies a unique opportunity to share their latest innovations in a special showcase at the event. Learn more about FinovateEurope’s Alumni Alley and see if it’s a fit for you!

This week we continue our commemoration of FinovateEurope’s earliest alums with a look at SaaS accounting platform innovator Xero, digital communications provider Striata, and digital identity pioneer miiCard – now DirectID.

Your Cloud Accounting Platform Hero, Xero

Believe it or not, there was once a debate about whether or not accounting technology truly qualified as fintech. Helping make the case were companies like Xero, a Wellington, New Zealand-based startup, founded in 2006, that was bringing its SaaS accounting solution to small businesses and their accountants around the world. When the company made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2011, the five-year old firm had raised $35 million and had 27,000 customers in 50 countries. Today, Xero is a cloud-based accounting powerhouse with more than $680 million in equity capital raised, and more than 3.5 million subscribers to its technology around the world.

Xero’s new CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy

Founded by Rod Drury, who was CEO of Xero until 2018, Xero offers small businesses the tools they need to manage many critical financial operations including accepting payments, billpay, inventory and project tracking, expense claim and invoice management, and more. A partnership with fellow Finovate alum Gusto enables Xero users to calculate pay and deductions, as well as make payroll payments to employees.

Earlier this month, Xero announced that Sukhinder Singh Cassidy had been appointed as the company’s new CEO. Cassidy will take the reins from Steve Vamos, who has served in the position for almost five years. Xero Chair David Thodey praised his new CEO as a “purpose-driven and human-centered leader who is passionate about supporting our customers and is committed to growing and nurturing Xero’s unique and vibrant culture.”

Striata Becomes Tilte: Beyond the Business of eDoc Delivery

The business of edocument delivery has changed significantly over the decade-plus since FinovateEurope 2011. But New York-based customer communications specialist Striata, which made its Finovate debut at our European event that year, has continued to innovate in this space, transforming complex customer communications systems and leveraging multi-factor authentication and encryption key management to ensure both security and compliance.

This helps explain why the company caught the eye of customer communications management (CCM) software and services company Doxim who, in 2020, acquired Striata for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition integrated Striata’s technology into Doxim’s CCM Platform, helping move the solution closer to Doxim’s goal of offering an “integrated SaaS CCM platform” that supports the entire omni-channel customer communications lifecycle.

Striata CEO Michael Wright introducing his company to audiences at FinovateEurope 2011.

“For over 20 years, Striata has been innovating in the CCM space by delivering digital-first solutions across multiple industries, channels, and devices,” Striata CEO Michael Wright said when the acquisition was announced. “As the world evolves into a digital community, a platform approach to scalable and secure yet personalized communications will be critical.”

In October, Striata underwent another transition as the firm’s South Africa team, under the leadership of Wright, launched Tilte.cx. The new venture is an IT services and consulting company that helps businesses enhance customer engagement via solutions ranging from digital communications and chat commerce to customer journey orchestration and data analysis.

Innovations in Digital Identity: from miiCard to DirectID

The FinovateEurope 2011 demo from Edinburgh-based miiCard (now DirectID) helped introduce many fintech observers to the challenges – and opportunities – in the field of trusted online identity.

Founded in 2010, miiCard appeared on the FinovateEurope stage with an identity-as-a-service solution that enabled users to prove that they “were who they said they were” online in minutes. The verification was as authentic as a physical passport or photo ID, establishing identity to level of assurance 3+, as well as meeting both KYC and AML compliance requirements.

Company founder and CEO James Varga introducing miiCard – now DirectID – at FinovateEurope 2011.

Founded by James Varga, who continues to serve as the company’s CEO, miiCard rebranded to The ID Co. in 2016. The move reflected the growth of the company’s B2B DirectID service, which, launched in 2014, provided an “all-in-one” embedded, integrated verification solution that was especially valuable for financial institutions processing high value transactions online.

“Our mission is to create a layer of trust online, a digital world where you can trust that people really are who they say they are,” Varga said when the rebrand was announced. “Our new company name represents who we are, and better reflects our mission to help solve one of the greatest challenges of our time.”

Four years later and the impact of DirectID on the company’s business was so profound that another rebrand was launched, this time naming the company after what had clearly been demonstrated to be the firm’s most accomplished solution. “The market has changed so much, and data has become such an important part of our offering, that this change in focus was required,” Varga explained in a blog post.

Since the latest rebrand, DirectID has forged partnerships with a wide range of companies including authentication company Trust Stamp and credit hire organization AX. More recently, DirectID teamed up with U.K. payments company ShieldPay and secured $3 million in new funding.

Photo by Alex Pham

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Salt Edge and ebankIT Team Up to Help Financial Institutions Maximize the Opportunity of Open Banking

Salt Edge and ebankIT Team Up to Help Financial Institutions Maximize the Opportunity of Open Banking
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, ebankIT, Salt Edge
  • A pair of Finovate alums — Salt Edge and ebankIT – have teamed up to help financial institutions leverage open banking to provide more services to customers.
  • The partnership will enable ebankIT’s bank and credit union clients to access accounts from more than 5,000 financial institutions.
  • Salt Edge is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. ebankIT is based in Porto, Portugal.

A newly announced partnership between Finovate alums ebankIT and Salt Edge will help financial services companies in Canada, Europe, and elsewhere to maximize the opportunity of open banking. The partnership will enable ebankIT to empower banks and credit unions to access accounts from more than 5,000 banks. At the same time, working with Salt Edge – an ISO 27001 certified company licensed as an AISP under PSD2 – will ensure that open banking compliance requirements across regions will be fulfilled.

“At ebankIT, we understand that Open Banking is the way forward when it comes to humanizing the digital banking experience for millions of end-users worldwide,” ebankIT Head of Sales HQ and Partnerships Pedro Leite said. “That’s why we believe that this partnership with Salt Edge will bring great benefits to our ecosystem of financial institutions.”

With its Omnichannel Digital Banking Platform, ebankIT helps financial institutions to make digital transformations, regardless of their size. Currently licensed to FIs in 11 countries, ebankIT’s platform enables banks and credit unions to offer customer experiences across all modern digital channels, from online and mobile to wearables and the metaverse. A Best of Show winner at FinovateFall in 2019, the Portugal-based company most recently demonstrated its technology this spring at FinovateEurope.

In addition to its partnership with Salt Edge, ebankIT has teamed up with other Finovate alums in 2022. In October, the company announced that it was working with multiple-time Finovate Best of Show winner MX to integrate MX’s Insights and Personal Financial Management (PFM) tools into its digital banking platform. Earlier this year, ebankIT announced a collaboration with another multiple-time Finovate Best of Show winner, Horizn. This pact is designed to help financial institutions smoothly launch new ebankIT platform deployments for both front-line employees and customers.

Salt Edge, which demoed its technology at a part of FinovateEurope in 2018 and 2019, was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The company offers both an open banking gateway – to help companies access account information, conduct payment initiation, and leverage data enrichment to turn raw data into actionable insights – as well as a PSD2 compliance hub. Salt Edge’s compliance hub provides a full-stack compliance solution for banks and electronic money institutions, strong, mobile customer authentication, and TPP verification.

“As two cutting-edge tech players pursuing to revolutionize the financial world, we strive to create innovative solutions that will improve financial services for both institutions and consumers,” Salt Edge Chief Growth Officer Alina Beleuta said. “By teaming up, we can double our forces to bring innovations to the financial landscape through seamless open banking solutions.”

Photo by Lisa Fotios

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Finovate Global Australia: CBA Launches Tech Hub, ANZ Plus Reaches 100K Customer Milestone, Aussie Regulators Target AMEX

Finovate Global Australia: CBA Launches Tech Hub, ANZ Plus Reaches 100K Customer Milestone, Aussie Regulators Target AMEX
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Finovate Global

Commonwealth Bank of Australia Launches Tech Hub in Brisbane

Over the summer, Australia’s Commonwealth Bank (CBA) unveiled its latest technology hub in Melbourne. This week, we learned that the financial institution’s hub-building game is still strong, with word that that CBA has established another technology hub, this time in the city of Brisbane.

The goal of the new hub, located in Brisbane’s central business district, is to help build the technology community in Queensland writ large. The bank is collaborating with The University of Queensland (UQ), Queensland University of Technology (QUT), and TAFE Queensland to enable students and graduates to participate in CBA’s Tech Associates and Graduate programs. The new hub will also create job opportunities for technology professionals including engineers, cyber specialists, and data scientists.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia Chief Information Officer Brendan Hopper pointed to COVID era trends as one reason why CBA has become especially interested in Queensland. “The COVID pandemic saw many of our technology professionals choose to relocate to Queensland to pursue a change of lifestyle,” Hopper explained. “By having the tech hub in Brisbane, our people based there will still have access to major technology employers like DBA and can make an impact in their work without having to relocate interstate.”

The technology hub in Brisbane is the third such opportunity CBA has launched this year. In February, the bank opened a technology hub in Adelaide.

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia is a multi-national institution with operations in Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., and the U.K. The financial institution, one of the four biggest banks in Australia (along with National Australia Bank (NAB), ANZ, and Westpac) was founded in 1911 by the Australian government and privatized in 1996. CBA had more than one trillion in total assets as of 2020.

ANZ’s Digital Bank Reaches 100,000 Customer Milestone

Speaking of Australia’s big banks, ANZ announced this week that its digital bank, ANZ Plus, has reached 100,000 customers, and more than two billion in deposits.

“New features, better security, along with a suite of tools and coaches to help people save more, combined with competitive rates are driving more people to ANZ Plus than ever before,” ANZ Managing Director of Design and Delivery Peter Dalton said. “(It) is the fastest growing new digital bank in Australia.”

Launched in March, ANZ Plus offers accountholders an everyday account that tracks spending, and a savings account with features to help users reach their financial goals. ANZ Plus offers 3.5% interest on savings for ANZ Save balances under $250,000; and charges neither monthly account fees nor withdrawal fees at major Australian bank ATMs. Additionally, ANZ Plus customers can schedule one-on-one sessions with a financial coach to help them uncover ways that they can enhance their financial wellness, including tips on spending less and saving more.

“We are continually adding new features to improve customer experience,” Dalton said, “and have begun piloting our digital home loan product with staff.”

Other features available on ANZ Plus include biometric logins for iOS users, as well as dynamic CVV, BPAY, pay to PayID, and the ability to join with an international passport.

ANZ – which stands for the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd – is the second biggest bank in Australia by assets. Headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria, ANZ was founded in 1970 as part of the largest bank merger in Australian history at the time. In the decades since then, ANZ has grown into a multinational banking and financial services entity with more than 51,000 workers, nine million customers worldwide, and more than one trillion in assets.

Australian Regulators Take AMEX to Court

While Australian banks are expanding opportunities for technology professionals and creating new resources for financial technology users, Australian regulators are cracking down on what they believe represents bad behavior on the part of one of financial services’ biggest players.

We learned this week that the Australia Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is alleging that a pair of credit cards issued by the local unit of American Express and co-branded with retailer David Jones did not provide adequate explanations about how the cards actually work.

Specifically, regulators have filed a lawsuit claiming that customers were confused about whether they had applied for a loyalty card or a credit card. Further, the lawsuit charges that American Express did not limit distribution to customers that were exclusively interested in cards that enabled them to earn points and receive other benefits. Regulators assert that AMEX was aware of the issue as early as February, but failed to act until July.

“Product providers must monitor and review whether consumers are receiving products consistent with their needs and cannot bring a ‘set and forget mindset’ to product governance,” ASIC Deputy Chair Sarah Court said in a statement. “It is critical that providers respond to poor outcomes they identify by making changes.”

As of this time, neither AMEX nor the company that owns the David Jones department store chain have commented on the lawsuit.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Asia-Pacific

  • Tencent’s financial division, Tencent Financial Technology unveiled a new cross-border payments business, Tenpay Global.
  • Tonga Development Bank partnered with Europe-based payments platform BPC.
  • Al Rajhi Bank Malaysia launched a new digital offering, Rize.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • South African fintech Ukheshe secured new funding from DPI and Fireball Capital.
  • In a bid to boost digital payments, the Central Bank of Nigeria put a limit of $45 on daily ATM withdrawals.
  • Finclusion, a credit-based neobank based in the Republic of Mauritius, raised $2 million in equity financing and rebranded officially to “Fin.”

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Ukraine will be the first country to benefit from the new cross-border payments partnership forged between Mastercard and Paysend.
  • Deutsche Bank announced a partnership with NVIDIA to encourage the use of AI and machine learning in financial services.
  • German corporate financing platform FinCompare partnered with ING Germany.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • A pair of Egypt-based fintechs – consumer financing platform One Finance and BNPL provider ADVA One – announced a partnership this week.
  • Saudi Araban fintech Tweeq secured an e-money license from the kingdom’s central bank, SAMA.
  • bondIT, a fixed income investment technology company based in Israel and New York, raised $14 million in funding.

Central and Southern Asia

  • U.K.-based financial services platform Tide went live in India with its app and business account.
  • The State Bank of Pakistan announced that it is drafting legislation ahead of a planned CBDC launch in 2025.
  • SBM Bank India reported that it is pursuing funding to support the development of its BaaS platform.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Latin American cryptocurrency platform Bitso announced a partnership with remittance company Félix Pago to enable WhatsApp-based crypto-powered payments.
  • Brazil-based digital bank C6 partnered with Thought Machine for its core banking technology.
  • Argentine fintch Ualá to offer personal loans to customers in Mexico courtesy of a partnership with ABC Capital.

Photo by Steve Weir

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The Future of Instant Payments: Our Conversation with Bernadette Ksepka of FedNow

The Future of Instant Payments: Our Conversation with Bernadette Ksepka of FedNow
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateEurope 2023, Speaker series

What innovations are making their way to the payments space in the U.S.? How will the new FedNow Service impact the current payments infrastructure when it goes online in 2023? What can fintechs do to prepare themselves and get involved with a post-FedNow payments landscape?

This year at FinovateFall, we talked with Bernadette Ksepka, Assistant Vice President and Deputy Head of Product Development with the FedNow Service at the Federal Reserve System. With the launch of the FedNow Service drawing nearer, Ksepka helped put the challenges and opportunities in perspective.

On the promise of the FedNow Service

The Federal Reserve banks are developing an instant payment service for financial institutions of all sizes, across every community in the United States, to be able to offer safe and efficient instant payments to their customers, 24×7, 365 … Recipients of those funds are going to be able to have full access to that funding to be able to better manage their cash flow, to be able to make time-sensitive payments … In the back end, banks are going to be able to settle those transactions instantly instead of (in) hours or days. It will eliminate a lot of the liquidity and credit risk that exists today.

On the impact of FedNow on the payments landscape

The FedNow Service is going to modernize the U.S. payments infrastructure. It is really going to pave the way for a big change in the future of payments. It has been over 40 years since the Federal Reserve introduced a new payments rail, so we are super-excited that the FedNow Service is going to go live in the middle of next year.

On the innovation that FedNow may help unleash

The FedNow platform is use-case agnostic, so the possibilities are really endless. And as we’ve seen demand for instant payments grow, we’ve seen use cases expand and I think there are use cases out there that we are not even thinking about. For example, there’s a lot of energy around early wage access. Imagine an employer that can pay their employees at the end of the shift or at the end of the day instead of every two weeks. That makes that employer that much more competitive, especially in a really tight job market like we have today.

Check out the full interview with the Federal Reserve Systems’ Bernadette Ksepka on FinovateTV.

Photo by Fabrizio Verrecchia

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BondIT Secures $14 Million in Funding in Round Led by BNY Mellon

BondIT Secures $14 Million in Funding in Round Led by BNY Mellon
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, BondIT, Daily news, Funding
  • Fixed income technology innovator bondIT has raised $14 million in new funding.
  • The investment round was led by BNY Mellon and brings bondIT’s total equity capital to more than $32 million.
  • bondIT made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in 2016.

Credit analytics and fixed income technology company bondIT has raised $14 million in new funding. The strategic investment was led by BNY Mellon and featured the participation of existing investors, as well. BNY Mellon will join bondIT’s Board of Directors as part of the investment. Valuation information was not provided when the funding was announced but, according to Crunchbase, the funding brings bondIT’s total equity capital to more than $32 million.

“This investment will help us accelerate innovation and offer clients a unique holistic solution for fixed income investing,” bondIT founder and CEO Etai Ravid said. “As bond investors are keen to lock in higher yields, our versatile technology and data-driven approach can help them increase automation to improve efficiency and performance, and better mitigate risk.”

Headquartered in New York and Herzliya, Israel, bondIT provides front office investment technology. The company leverages data science, explainable AI, and other advanced technologies to enable its customers to build, analyze, and manage investment portfolios. bondIT’s technology helps its clients accomplish in minutes what previously took hours or even days. Predictive credit analytics enable bondIT customers to anticipate potential changes in corporate credit risk and take advantage of potential investment opportunities before they manifest themselves in the market

“Collaborating with bondIT will allow us to deliver innovative digital solutions for fixed income investors by enabling investment professionals to explore new investment options more easily through the use of AI, further expanding their portfolio optimization capabilities for clients,” BNY Mellon MD John Goodheart said.

bondIT’s relationship with BNY Mellon extends back to 2021, when bondIT participated in BNY Mellon’s startup accelerator program. In the months since then, bondIT added David Curtis as Partner and Head of Global Client Business, and teamed up with MEAG, the asset manager of Munich Re and ERGO. The MEAG partnership, announced almost exactly one year ago, will digitize MEAG’s credit risk workflows. The Munich, Germany-based company will also use bondIT’s Scorable Credit Analytics to enhance its own credit research processes. A component of bondIT’s fixed income technology solutions suite, Scorable Credit Analytics analyzes more than 250 data points a day and translates raw data from a wide variety of financial and market data sources to provide actionable insights for investors.

“Working with bondIT is another important step in driving technological progress across our organization,” MEAG CIO of Public Markets Prashant Sharma said. “We aim to continuously increase the quality and efficiency of our investment process, and technology plays a crucial part in this.”

Photo by Pixabay

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FinovateEurope’s Alumni Alley: Fintech in the City of Bridges, Fraud Fighting Goes Dutch, and Making Stock Trading Social

FinovateEurope’s Alumni Alley: Fintech in the City of Bridges, Fraud Fighting Goes Dutch, and Making Stock Trading Social
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finantix, FinovateEurope 2023, Stocktwits

If your company has ever demoed its technology at FinovateEurope, then we’ve got an opportunity for you!

Alumni Alley is our special showcase exclusively for companies that have demoed on stage at FinovateEurope. Held in London at FinovateEurope, March 14-15, Alumni Alley highlights those FinovateEurope alums who are continuing to innovate in areas ranging from payments and lending to regtech and digital banking.

Visit our FinovateEurope Alumni Alley Showcase hub to learn more about this special conference feature for FinovateEurope alums.

Finantix: From Best of Show Winner to Private Banking Solution

Fintech might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Venice, Italy. But the so-called “City of Bridges” was the original home for Finantix, a fintech that emerged on the scene as a developer of software solutions to support client-facing employees in retail banking, wealth management, and financial advisory.

Demoing its Wealth Apps at FinovateEurope 2011, Finantix showed how its technology helped financial advisors move away from paper as their primary “support tool.” Instead Finantix’s technology leveraged tablets, including the iPad, to combine the simplicity of paper with the rich communication and graphic capabilities of new handheld technologies. The company’s offering enhanced all areas of customer engagement for financial advisors, from prospect coordination and client onboarding to client and portfolio management. FinovateEurope audiences were impressed, awarding the software company with a Best of Show award.

Alessandro Tonchia demonstrating Finantix Wealth Apps at FinovateEurope 2011.

Founded in 1994 and acquired by Motive Partners in 2018, Finantix today is the Private Banking Division of InvestCloud (Motive Partners purchased a majority stake in InvestCloud in 2021). InvestCloud offers a no-code software platform for digital transformation and commerce enablement within the financial industry.

In 2020, Finantix introduced new CEO Christine Ciriani. “I am delighted to take up this leadership position at Finantix,” Ciriani said when the appointment was announced. “With an award-winning product offering, our innovative client-first culture and very strong R&D, sales, and delivery teams, we are well positioned to capitalize on the investments made since Motive Partners acquired an interest in the company.”

BusinessForensics: Acquisition Bolsters Fight Against Financial Crime

Netherlands-based BusinessForensics was founded in 2008 and went live in 2010, just one year before the company demoed its technology at the inaugural FinovateEurope in London. A specialist in financial crime fighting, BusinessForensics offers businesses an integrated enterprise suite to help them manage risk, fraud, and compliance. Working with banks and insurance companies, as well as public organizations and government agencies, BusinessForensics helps companies spot fraudulent transactions with real-time monitoring of mission-critical operations. Fully integrated and customizable forensic case management and reporting give firms the ability to easily handle both exceptions and incidents.

More than a decade later, BusinessForensics’ offering, Client Risk Intelligence, consists of four modules – AML and sanctions surveillance, Know Your Customer/Customer Due Diligence (KYC/CDD), Fraud and Risk Surveillance, and Special Investigations – which combine to provide a 360 degree client risk profile.

BusinessForensics Rob van Eerden demonstrating the company’s technology at the first FinovateEurope in 2011.

BusinessForensics was acquired by Munich, Germany-based regtech cleversoft group in the fall of 2020. “To be able to fulfill the increasing regulatory demands (our customers) are confronted with, we wanted to initiate a cooperation with a larger regulatory compliance software provider and also to ignite further growth outside of the Netherlands,” BusinessForensics CEO Tames Rietdijk said. “With cleversoft we found a complimentary match that will help us reach these goals by leveraging their organizational maturity, their customer base, and provide our solutions in the DACH market.”

From 50k to Six Million: The Story of StockTwits

When StockTwits made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2011, the “community powered idea and information service” for investors and traders had just over 50,000 registered users. Today, the 14-year old company has more than six million registered users on what has become one of the largest social networks for investors and traders.

StockTwits was founded by Howard Lindzon and Soren Macbeth as a way to leverage the fast growing social media app known as Twitter to organize conversations between traders and investors about individual stocks. The company used “cashtags” with the ticker symbols of stocks (as in “$AAPL”) as a way to help index online analysis, opinions, and commentary about individual stocks, making it easier for investors and traders on apps like Twitter to source the information.

Ben Weiss, StockTwits VP of Business Development in 2011, demonstrating the company’s platform at FinovateEurope.

Last year, StockTwits secured $30 million in funding, giving the company a valuation of $210 million. This year, StockTwits launched its crypto trading platform and introduced functionality to enable individual investors and traders to buy and sell equities directly from the StockTwits platform.

“With the addition of equities trading to our existing crypto trading product, the StockTwits platform continues toward bringing a full suite of execution capabilities,” StockTwits CEO Rishi Khanna said when the equities trading functionality was unveiled earlier this year.

Photo by Recal Media

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