This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.
Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Interviews with Best of Show winners and an update from the venture capital world were the conversations Finovate VP Greg Palmer shared with listeners of the Finovate podcast during the month of October. Palmer interviewed CEOs from three FinovateFall’s Best of Show winners – Debbie, Stratyfy, and Lemonade LXP last month – and checked in with Decien Capital’s Dan Kimerling on the state of fintech funding.
Finovate VP Greg Palmer talks with Debbie CEO Frida Liebowitz on the importance of offering a more effective, human-centric debt recovery solution. Episode 151.
Our mission with Debbie is to help people break the behavioral cycle of debt for good. We are building the first rewards platform for debt payoff that is entirely behavioral driven. We reward people for building up better habits, paying off debt, and eventually making their way to long term debt freedom.
What we do at Stratyfy is help credit and risk teams better assess risk through what we say is real transparency. We also have a real focus on driving greater financial inclusion, and doing that by helping financial institutions provide greater access to fairly priced financial products to a wider group of individuals than historically have had that access in the past.
John Findlay, CEO, Lemonade LXP
Greg Palmer catches up with Lemonade LXP CEO John Findlay to discuss boosting digital adoption through intelligent, front-line training. Episode 149.
Lemonade is a digital growth platform that helps financial institutions and fintechs maximize the ROI on their technology investments. There are two sides to our platform. One side is a learning experience platform that is designed to turn frontline staff into digital experts so they can promote and support your technology. And then the other side is a digital enablement or digital adoption platform.
Dan Kimerling, Founder and Managing Partner, Deciens Capital
Deciens Capital founder and managing partner Dan Kimerling provides a VC perspective on inclusion-based opportunity in conversation with podcast host Greg Palmer. Episode 148.
What I would say is we haven’t seen a slow down in the level of entrepreneurial behavior and activity. It seems, broadly speaking, like people are excited to start new businesses and, if you go back to at least the 1970s, there seems to be relatively little relationship between macroeconomic behavior and entrepreneurial dynamism.
Business software company Quadient and process automation solutions company Esker have partnered with the French government via a joint subsidiary NCS.
The partnership is designed to help businesses comply with new regulations governing the issuance and receipt of invoices between VAT taxpayers.
Quadient most recently demoed its technology at FinovateEurope 2018 in London.
Business software company Quadient and process automation solutions company Esker have announced a new partnership with the French government. Via their joint subsidiary NCS, Quadient and Esker will help ensure that businesses are able to comply with upcoming French tax regulations, specifically with regard to electronic invoice receipt and transmission.
The new legislation applies to invoices exchanged between VAT taxpayers, mandating that these invoices must be transmitted in either a structured data format (UBL, UNCEFACT CII) or hybrid format (Factur-X). Rollout of the new regulations begins in the summer of 2024 and continues through January 1, 2026. At that point all micro, small, and medium-sized businesses will be expected to comply.
“The widespread implementation of electronic invoicing over the next three years is a major challenge for the four million companies in France,” Quadient Chief Strategy and Product Officer for Intelligent Document Automation Nicolas de Beco said. “As a major player in the electronic document management market for small and medium-sized businesses, we look forward to our continued partnership with Esker, in which we join forces and expertise to offer businesses straightforward and efficient invoicing process automation.”
Beyond ensuring compliance with impending regulatory changes, the partnership between Quadient and Esker will bring a variety of benefits to French businesses. The list of complimentary services ranges from centralized workflow management and business process automation to invoice archiving, payment reconciliation, and reporting. The interoperability of these services with other business platforms and solutions will give French companies greater capacity to improve operations, pursue digital transformation, and enhance their cash management.
“As long-standing partners, our two companies have demonstrated their ability to work together to deliver innovative solutions that benefit thousands of businesses in France today,” Esker COO Emmanuel Olivier said.
Headquartered in France and founded in 1992, Quadient most recently demoed its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateEurope 2018. The company’s partnership news with Esker and the French government comes just weeks after Quadient launched its Parcel Pending smart parcel lockers in Ireland to help modernize the residential property market in the country.
According to LexisNexis’ recent True Cost of Fraud Study, which looks at fraud trends in the financial services and lending sectors of the U.S. and Canada, the cost of fraud has grown significantly as the global pandemic has ebbed. The report noted that every dollar of fraud currently costs financial services companies in the U.S. $4.00, up from $3.25 in 2019 and $3.64 in 2020. The picture for lenders is even worse. In fact, the report notes that fraudsters have been especially aggressive in the mortgage lending business, sending mortgage lending fraud costs up by more than 23% since 2020.
The report also highlights the problem of identity: the challenge financial institutions have when it comes to identity verification and the rise of identity fraud as “a significant percent of fraud losses at the point of funds distribution.” Both banks and mortgage lenders surveyed also noted the difficult tasks of enhancing fraud detection while simultaneously keeping the customer experience as friction-free as possible.
Lastly, LexisNexis Risk Solutions Director of Fraud and Identity Christopher Schnieper pointed to the elephant in the room when it comes to fraud-fighting in general: the opposition is tough.
“It is difficult for even the best trained professional to detect the increasingly sophisticated crime occurring in the remote digital channels without the aid of solutions that detect digital behaviors, anomalies, device risk, and synthetic identities,” Schnieper said.
What can we learn from the findings of the LexisNexis team, as well as from other analysts and researchers who have pointed to the growing challenges we face when it comes to fraud and cybercrime in financial services?
Three Key Takeaways from the Current State of Fraudtech
Evolving threats demand continuous innovation
Innovation in fraud fighting is driven significantly by antagonistic competition, a “disloyal opposition” to borrow from the language of political science. The competition in fraudtech is not just between businesses and individuals all working to build better mousetraps. This competitive arena also includes actors whose goal, to extend the metaphor, is to help mice avoid being entrapped in the first place. This makes fraudtech an especially “rubber meets the road” part of fintech in which innovation is more than a way to gain market share, it is an existential requirement.
In a recent Experian webinar sponsored by Finovate, Experian’s Kathleen Peters and Prism Data’s Brian Duke underscored the importance of thinking of fraud “as a business.” And as a business, fraudsters will aggressively seek out new markets of opportunity, focusing particularly on areas where there are new, sizable streams of capital flowing. Think about the amount of fraud that accompanied both the housing boom in the late aughts. Think about the fraud uncovered as part of the unprecedented financial response to an unprecedented global health crisis. Think of what is currently taking place with the various meltdowns in the crypto space. Understanding fraud as a business not only helps fraud fighters better combat criminal activity, it also helps fraud fighters get a sense of where fraudsters might strike next.
Tech-enabled human talent to the forefront
In fraud-fighting, there is no debate on the importance of using technology to enhance and support human talent and insight. While there are some instances in which actual human activity is replaced by technology, much of this replacement is of manual, mundane, or routine tasks that are undesirable as work, and often error-prone compared to automated interventions. On the other side, AI and machine learning give human agents fast, rich data they can leverage alongside their own intellect and experience in the field to make superior judgements compared to technological or human actors alone.
Jody Bhagat, President of Americas at Personetics, used the term “Digital Plus Human” in a Mastermind Keynote at FinovateFall earlier this year. “Digital Plus Human” describes what Bhagat called a “sweet spot” between an all-tech versus all-human approach for midsized banks. This is a worthwhile concept that fraud fighters have embraced. The blending of human intelligence with AI, for example, to suss out bias inadvertently created by allegedly color- or gender-blind algorithms, is one instance of the digital plus human concept at work. Relying on human instinct to ferret out more complex identity challenges highlighted by technical tools is another key component of contemporary fraud fighting strategies.
Innovation in identity is key to better security
Lastly, it is increasingly clear that identity is the key to better security. In some ways, the more we can solve the identity issue, the easier it will be for us to solve and resolve security issues. Part of this lies in understanding identity as an access or action-specific factor, rather than a static representation of an individual in the physical, non-digital world. In other words, the interaction between a user and the user’s mobile device may tell more about the authenticity of the individual than a street address or even a social security number. This helps us understand the specific – and more precise – data requirements needed when it comes to establishing identity in digital contexts.
Here, companies like Trulioo are doing important work in helping financial institutions leverage digital identity to make the onboarding process a better and safer experience for the customer and business alike. Other firms, such as Instnt, are introducing innovations such as continuous identity assurance and portable KYC.
Good news for fintech startups in developing markets! Quona Capital recently announced that it has closed its latest fintech fund, its third, at $332 million. The venture capital firm, which specializes in emerging markets, noted that the amount raised topped its target of $250 million. The new fund, Fund III, will be focused on companies that are developing technologies that expand access to financial services for consumers and businesses in regions ranging from Latin America and India to Southeast Asia, MENA, and Africa.
“Since our earliest days, Quona has been dedicated to expanding the frontiers of financial inclusion – investing with conviction in markets and technology-enabled models improving access and quality of financial services for the masses,” Quona co-founding managing partner Monica Brand Engel said in a statement. “Our prior fund performance, robust pipeline of inclusive fintechs, and growing LP interest in our offerings are ringing endorsements of our view on the prospects of impact-oriented venture investing in emerging markets.”
With aggregate capital of more than $745 million, Fund II is the firm’s third fund since Quona Capital was launched in 2015. Those contributing to the fund as investors include global asset managers, insurance companies, both investment and commercial banks, endowments, foundations, family offices, and more. And while many of the investors in Fund III have invested in Quona Capital funds previously, the new fund did receive capital from 20 new investors, as well.
According to Quona Capital, the startups in its portfolio have served nearly nine million small and medium-sized businesses and over 30 million retail customers. Quona Capital startups have raised nearly $4 billion in capital and generated more than $800 million in revenues. Among these firms are India-based consumer lending company ZestMoney, Southeast Asia-based fintech marketplace ula, and long-time international remittance firm and long-time Finovate alum Azimo – which was acquired by Papaya Global earlier this year.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Central and Southern Asia
Indian neobank ZikZuk acquired tax e-filing platform TaxSpanner.
National Bank of Pakistan turned to Finastra to enhance its trade finance operations.
Lentra, a fintech based in India, secured $60 million in Series B funding for its loans-as-a-service business for banks.
Latin America and the Caribbean
AstroPay introduced its Mastercard prepaid card in Brazil.
Mexico-based B2B payments company Mendel raised $60 million in new funding.
Brazil’s Agrolend, which provides credit to the country’s farmers, secured $27 million in Series B funding.
Asia-Pacific
Ant Group introduced its Buy Now, Pay later offering in Hong Kong.
Vietnam-based Sacombank partnered with Temenos to enhance digital banking.
Philippines-based neobank Tonik unveiled its all-digital lending products, Flex Loan and Big Loan.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Nigerian fintech Paga unveiled its Visa-branded card this week.
Pan-African paytech Cellulant secured a Payment Systems Operator license from the National Bank of Uganda
Samsung South Africa launched its digital wallet, Samsung Wallet.
Central and Eastern Europe
Polish fintech Ramp locked in $70 million in Series B funding to build payment rails for cryptocurrency investors.
Co-investment platform for European startups SeedBlink secured licensing from the Romanian Financial Supervisory Authority (ASF).
Genome, an Electronic Money Institution based in Lithuania, partnered with Entrust to simplify digital payments.
Middle East and Northern Africa
UAE-based Wio Bank went live with Mambu’s cloud-native banking platform.
Pyppl, a financial services platform based in the UAE, raised $20 million in Series B funding.
Saudi Arabia’s central bank presented its open banking framework.
San Francisco, California-based digital bank Varo has added popular money transfer solution Zelle to its mobile banking app.
The integration will bring safe and secure money transfer capabilities to Varo’s more than six million accountholders.
Founded in 2015, Varo Bank is the first neobank to offer Zelle to its customers.
All-digital Varo Bank announced this week that it will offer money transfer solution Zelle in its mobile banking app. Varo is the first financial institution of its kind to offer Zelle in its app without having to partner with a bank. A safe way to send and receive money from friends, family, and trusted small businesses, Zelle has more than 150 million current users who access the technology via their banking apps.
“Adding Zelle to our product lineup is our bank charter in action,” Varo Bank founder and CEO Colin Walsh said. “We are excited to welcome millions of Americans to access Varo’s full range of benefits on our modern, secure, digital banking platform that now includes the ability to quickly send and receive money.”
Customers who have made a qualifying direct deposit in the last 31 days are eligible to enroll in Zelle at Varo. Additionally, those customers that have made any Zelle transaction in their Varo Bank account before November 3, 2022 are grandfathered into the program and will also be eligible to enroll in Zelle at Varo.
“Varo Bank customers will now have a way to send money to friends, family, and others they trust, whether they need to pay back a friend for dinner, split the cost of rent with a roommate, or pitch in for a group gift,” Early Warning Services Chief Product Officer Kash Baghaei said. Early Warning Services is the network operator of Zelle.
The addition of Zelle is part of Varo Bank’s effort to reimagine banking by giving customers the tools they need to become financially resilient and enhance their financial well-being. Other examples of these solutions include the company’s Varo Believe, a secured card to help consumers build credit, and Varo Advance, which enables users to borrow up to $100 with no interest and a simple fee based on the amount of the advance that tops out at $5.
“Varo Advance was created to meet the short term credit needs of millions of Americans, and it continues our commitment to provide customers the strongest possible foundation for their financial success, with instant availability and low, transparent pricing,” Walsh said.
Launched in 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, California ,Varo Bank offers an all-digital alternative for financial services consumers. The institution provides a bank account with no credit check, no minimum balance required, no monthly fees, and no overdraft fees. Accountholders have access to more than 55,000 fee-free, Allpoint ATMs in locations like Target, CVS, and Safeway. Varo Bank cardholders can get up to 6% cashback when they use their Varo Bank debit or Varo Believe card at select brands.
One of the areas of fintech that has benefitted significantly from the rise of enabling technologies like AI and machine learning is compliance. From reducing the role of manual labor via automation to streamlining complex processes to make rules easier for companies to follow, both regtech firms and compliance teams alike play a major role in ensuring the fintech innovations we enjoy are safe, do what they say they’ll do, and are as available to as many eligible consumers as possible.
We caught up with Sarah Murray, who leads the Deposit Product Team at Compliance Systems. She talked about the impact technology is having on the field of compliance, and discussed the key challenges that Compliance Systems is helping its 1,800 financial institution clients overcome.
How did you get started in fintech? What has led you to where you are today in your career?
Sarah Murray: Before fintech, I was practicing law in private practice, and I just knew I was ready to be out of the courtroom and do something different with my legal career. I started at Compliance Systems eight years ago as a product specialist and counsel; now I am happy to have led the product team for the last five years. I love my job because no two days are the same. I never thought I would spend some days researching legal topics and reviewing regulations, and other days reviewing code and testing software, but I love the challenge each day brings.
Tell us about the work you do for Compliance Systems.
Murray: I lead our deposit product team at Compliance Systems, which consists of attorneys, business analysts, software developers, and quality control specialists who all work toward the common goal of delivering compliant and innovative products to our 1,800 financial institution clients. I love the mixture of technology with the law and getting to keep my legal hat that I went to school for by delivering compliance solutions through technology to our clients.
What are your thoughts on the way technology is helping companies keep up with the changing regulatory environment?
Murray: Overall, I think it’s the job of technology to streamline and simplify, regardless of which industry we’re talking about. In the case of fintech and regulatory compliance, that means automating repetitive and high-risk compliance processes. It also means demystifying regulations where we can for the benefit of the consumers that those regulations are intended to protect.
Our proprietary research engine tool enables us to provide proactive and update-to-date compliance, and our team is constantly monitoring and tracking what is happening in the legal and regulatory spaces in real-time to ensure we can deliver timely compliance solutions to our clients. Our software provides updates through our cloud-hosted solutions, and our compliance safety net tool also provides interactive features that help our clients complete compliant transactions and provide a better level of customer service.
How has this evolved and how do you see it continuing to evolve leading into 2023?
Murray: The market has evolved through financial institutions rethinking compliance and needing to deliver a solution that meets their customers [and] members where they are: on their phones. We deliver compliance in a way that makes sense in a mobile-first environment and develop content with that in mind. This model isn’t necessarily what financial institutions are used to, but it is what customers [and] members strongly prefer: easily navigable, mobile-friendly content.
Financial institutions are telling us they want a single, streamlined approach for a customer, regardless of the channel (e.g. whether it be in branch or online). So, we’ve created a solution that satisfies the requests of both parties. You can open accounts through the same process as you would in a branch location, but on a mobile device with ease.
What challenges are you hearing in conversations with clients? What technologies are resonating most?
Murray: Our Simplicity Mobile, a mobile-first account opening solution, has been highly successful because it has helped address some of the main pain points for our clients. They communicated that they are looking to have a more streamlined, efficient, and consumer-friendly workflow to open accounts and to reduce friction in that process to avoid abandonment. This solution completed that challenge by offering native HTML content that a financial institution can include within their account opening workflow, and by supporting “click to sign” functionality.
Another challenge we are hearing from clients involves their treasury management solutions. Treasury management operations are a vital component of a bank or credit union’s commercial services, but the content needed to properly document this business can require costly outside counsel or consume internal resources that put a strain on operations. Also, financial institutions are looking for a better, more streamlined way to sign up their customers for their treasury services. They don’t want to have to create and maintain separate contracts for each treasury service and are looking to avoid inundating customers with multiple contracts and documents.
Our delivery model ensures that our clients will always be in compliance and our technology delivers the configurability needed for a treasury management solution, as many aren’t looking for a “one size fits all” fix. Our solution helps minimize operational and compliance risks for our clients while also providing a central hub for all compliance-related updates and content within our solution. Furthermore, our solution offers one master services agreement for treasury services to help improve a customer’s enrollment experience.
Are there any tips you would like to share on providing strong leadership in a male-dominated industry?
Murray: A few tips I have are to be passionate about what you do and work with integrity; work hard to deliver what you say you will do when you say you will do it; don’t be afraid to challenge the status quo and be an advocate for yourself and others. A big thing at Compliance Systems is that we believe in reinvesting in our products based on what we have learned from our clients and the industry. I would say it is important to have that mentality yourself as you grow. Learn from mistakes. Learn from what works. Learn from your colleagues and clients. Together as an industry, we can elevate the banking experience for all.
Wells Fargo launched a new small dollar digital financial solution called Flex Loan this week.
The new offering provides loans of $250 and $500, with a flat fee of $12 and $20, respectively.
Available in selected markets now, Flex Loan will be available nationwide by the end of the year.
Certainty, simplicity, and clarity are among the virtues of Wells Fargo’s new small dollar digital financing solution, Flex Loan. The new product is a digital, small dollar loan of either $250 or $500 with a flat fee of $12 or $20, respectively. Available only in select markets now, Flex Loans will be introduced across the U.S. by year’s end. Wells Fargo indicated that Flex Loan is part of the financial services company’s efforts to help customers meet short-term cash needs and avoid potential overdrafts.
“What makes Flex Loan different from other payment options is its certainty of approval for eligible customers, the simplicity of obtaining funds in minutes, and clarity around how much it will cost to pay for things like holiday gifts, travel, or an unexpected home or car repair expense,” Head of Personal Lending and Retail Services for Wells Fargo Abeer Bhatia said.
Eligible customers will see the Flex Loan offer in their Wells Fargo mobile banking apps. Once customers take out a Flex Loan and establish their repayment plan (four equal monthly installments), the funds are available in customers’ Wells Fargo account within seconds. Customers can then use the funds via their Wells Fargo debit cards for payments or purchases. There are no applications, late charges, or interest fees.
Flex Loan joins a trio of options announced by Wells Fargo in January that are designed to help customers better manage short-term cash needs. These options are: Early Pay Day, Extra Day Grace Period, and Clear Access Banking. Early Pay Day gives Wells Fargo customers access to eligible direct deposits up to two days in advance. Extra Day Grace Period adds an extra business day to make deposits to avoid overdraft fees. Clear Access Banking offers customers a checkless banking account with no overdraft fees.
With $1.9 trillion in assets, Wells Fargo & Company provides financial services to one in three U.S. households and more than 10% of U.S. small businesses. Wells Fargo is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker WFC, and has a market capitalization of $176 billion. Charles W. Scharf has been CEO of the bank since 2019.
The fallout over the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX continues. On Friday, the embattled company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, noting that it had in excess of 100,000 creditors – before amending its filing days later to report that the number of creditors might be more than one million.
While 2022 has been a dark year for a number of cryptocurrency companies, none have suffered as FTX has. With a valuation of $32 billion and more than one million users, FTX was the third largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume last year. But all of this came crashing down earlier this month. When rival Binance learned that FTX partner Alameda Research had much of its assets in FTX’s token FTT, Binance began selling its holdings of FTT. This resulted in more selling, in what some observers have called the equivalent of a bank run, which demolished the value of FTT and created a serious liquidity crisis for FTX. An aborted plan by Binance to buy FTX gave the company few alternatives to the bankruptcy declaration it made late last week.
What’s next? The FTX crisis has reached the recrimination stage, with even the company’s performance coach weighing in. (You can read Dr. Lerner’s response to rather lurid allegations about the behavior of the company’s senior executives. Spoiler: he refers to the company’s Bahamas headquarters as a “pretty tame place”). A sizeable swathe of celebrities – from NFL star quarterback Tom Brady to supermodel Gisele Bundchen- who served as brand ambassadors for FTX are also finding themselves under scrutiny – and worse.
And speaking of scrutiny, it appears as if the FBI is in discussions with the Bahamian authorities on extraditing FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried to the United States for questioning.
Et tu, BlockFi?
Is cryptocurrency lender BlockFi now endangered due to the crisis at FTX? Media reports from The Wall Street Journal indicate that the company, launched in 2017 and headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey, may be considering bankruptcy.
Why? According to reports, BlockFi admitted that while it did not keep the majority of its assets at FTX, the firm did have deposits on the company’s platform, as well as an undrawn line of credit from FTX “and obligations that FTX owed it.” BlockFi has suspended customer withdrawals in the wake of the FTX collapse, is limiting platform activity, and also is reportedly planning to layoff an unspecified number of workers.
BlockFi has not responded to the reporting from The Wall Street Journal at this time. A message at the company’s website reads: “BlockFi is not able to operate business as usual. We have limited platform activity, including pausing client withdrawals as allowed under our Terms. We request that clients not deposit to BlockFi Wallet or Interest Accounts at this time.”
Anthony Pompliano Makes Crypto’s Case
Entrepreneur and investor Anthony Pompliano was interviewed on CNBC’s Overtime program Tuesday afternoon. Asked about the FTX situation, Pompliano made an impassioned case for the future of cryptocurrencies. Pompliano also argued that the American market-based system is the only place where this kind of innovation – and accountability – is possible.
Pompliano runs investment firm Pomp Investments. He was formerly co-founder and partner with Morgan Creek Digital Assets, and Managing Partner with Full Tilt Capital. Pompliano also was a Product Manager at Facebook where he led the growth team for Facebook Pages, and helped launch solutions including AMBER Alerts and Voter Registration. He is the author of a daily email newsletter of business, finance, and Bitcoin called “Pomp Letter.”
Plug and Play Launches Crypto Program
At a time when so many are down on cryptocurrencies, it may be reassuring to hear news that innovation platform Plug and Play is keeping the faith.
In collaboration with founding partners Visa, AllianceBlock, The INX Digital Company, IGT, and Franklin Templeton, Plug and Play has launched its new Crypto and Digital Assets program in Silicon Valley. The goal of the program is to help startups around the world that are innovating in the crypto and digital asset spaces to connect with the program’s aforementioned founding partners to help them pilot their solutions. The program has four main focus areas: stablecoin adoption, decentralized finance, crypto economics, and enterprise blockchain.
“Not only will this unique partnership offer deeper connections on the West Coast and Silicon Valley, but it will also allow us to put our leadership and expertise to work as we advise companies on the benefits of participating in the rapidly growing ecosystem of blockchain, tokenization, and cryptocurrency,” INX Chief Business Officer Douglas Borthwick said.
Companies interested in participating in the Plug and Play Crypto and Digital Assets program are being encouraged to apply.
Binance Battles On
With its decision to acquire FTX now a thing of the past, blockchain company Binance is back to focusing on its own organic growth.
The company announced at midweek that it has secured a license from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM). This license — a Financial Services Permission (FSP) — will enable Binance to offer digital and virtual asset custody services to professional clients that meet the FSRA’s conditions for FSP.
“Obtaining this license is a pivotal step in the growth of Binance in Abu Dhabi, and a reflection of the city’s progressive stance on virtual assets,” Binance (AD) Senior Executive Officer Dominic Longman said. “We are excited to continue to strengthen our symbiotic relationship with ADGM and the city of Abu Dhabi and look forward to providing institutional investors with a secure and reliable platform for their virtual asset activities.”
ADGM’s FSRA issued its virtual asset regulatory framework in 2018. ADGM Chairman Ahmed Jasim Al Zaabi said that the framework is a core part of ADGM’s goal of supporting fintech innovation in the financial sector and “reinforcing the UAE’s status as a rapidly accelerating global crypto marketplace, with Abu Dhabi and the ADGM as the engine room powering this growth.”
Finovate has held two fintech conferences in the UAE in recent years: an inaugural event in 2018 and a second conference the following year in 2019. Read more about fintech in developing economies in our weekly Finovate Global column, published on Fridays.
Virtual card and spend management platform Extend announced a partnership with Bank of the West.
The collaboration will enable small and medium-sized businesses to take advantage of virtual card technology to enhance spend management.
Extend made its Finovate debut three years ago at FinovateSpring 2019, demoing its platform, app, and APIs.
Virtual card and spend management innovator Extend has teamed up with Bank of the West. The collaboration will enable Bank of the West’s small and medium-sized business clients to leverage Extend’s technology to create and control digital company cards and enhance spend management.
Bank of the West cardholders will be able to sign up for Extend in a process that does not require any technical integration. After enrolling their commercial cards, SME users can access Extend online or through a mobile device to create unique virtual cards; send virtual cards to workers, vendors, suppliers, and others directly from the application; attach purchase orders and receipts to transactions; and manage recurring expenses and subscriptions. Companies will be able to provide employees with a budget for issuing virtual cards, and virtual cards can be approved, modified, or canceled at any time.
“Bank of the West is committed to optimizing B2B payments, and our relationship with Extend offers our clients an efficient, easy-to-use solution for better spend management,” Bank of the West Managing Director Dominique Fracchia said. “Using Extend and their Bank of the West cards, businesses can create, distribute, and manage virtual cards to pay vendors, empower employees, track spending, and more.”
The offering is designed to bring the benefits of virtual cards and spend management to small and medium-sized businesses. Extend’s technology helps SMEs manage vendor payments, reconciliation, and other tedious and manual – but essential – payment tasks. In addition to saving time and boosting efficiency, Extend’s solution also helps businesses obtain real-time insights into – as well as real-time control over – company card spending.
“With Extend, Bank of the West is delivering new spend management capabilities that ensure its clients don’t wonder who paid what, when, why, or to whom,” Extend CEO and co-founder Andrew Jamison said. “This is what clients need from payments technology today – the power to run their businesses better, with the support of their preferred financial partners.”
New York-based Extend made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring in 2019. The company demoed its virtual card distribution platform, its app – which instantly gives employees access to virtual cards – and its APIs that enable fintechs to take advantage of the technology. Founded in 2017, the company has raised $54 million in funding from investors including March Capital, Point72 Ventures, and FinTech Collective.
Bank of the West is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and has more than 600 branches and commercial banking offices in the midwest and western United States. A subsidiary of French banking group BNP Paribas, Bank of the West has more than $94 billion in assets and 1.7 million customers. Nandita Bakhshi is President and CEO.
Apiture, a digital banking solutions provider, launched its Data Engage solution this week.
The new offering helps financial institutions access data-driven insights into how their customers are using Apiture’s digital banking platform.
Data Engage was made possible courtesy of a partnership between Apiture and Pendo. Both companies are based in North Carolina and made their Finovate debuts this year.
Digital banking solutions provider and new Finovate alum Apitureintroduced its Data Engage solution this week. The technology, made possible courtesy of a partnership with fellow Finovate newcomer Pendo, will give banks and other financial institutions access to data-driven insights into how their customers are using Apiture’s digital banking platform. Data Engage further gives these firms tools to provide in-channel guidance and personalized messages to boost customer engagement. Pop-up messages, marketing notices, tutorials, and more are examples of the kinds of communications that can be leveraged to educate users and encourage adoption of new features.
The new offering is the first of four modules available from Apiture’s Data Intelligence solution. This technology gives users a variety of data analytics and benchmarking tools to help attract, retain, and cross-sell digital banking customers.
“With Data Engage, our clients can easily evaluate their users’ activities and enhance the online experience using no-code, highly intuitive tools that promote the expanded use of digital banking capabilities,” Apiture CEO Chris Babcock said.
Taking the Finovate stage for the first time at FinovateSpring in May, Pendo offers analytics, in-app guidance, and feedback capabilities to enable developers to create software that delivers better, more productive experiences for users. Based in Raleigh, North Carolina, Pendo claims that its “software that makes your software better” produces 15% decrease in support tickets, 30% more qualified leads, and a 5% reduction in customer churn.
“This partnership enables Apiture’s clients to harness data-driven intelligence,” Pendo co-founder and CEO Todd Olson said. “It maximizes user engagement with their digital banking solution. And the best part? It delivers a better user experience.”
Headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, Apiture made its Finovate debut in September at FinovateFall. At the conference, the company demoed its technology that can embed banking capabilities into the software of non-financial, third-party businesses. Apiture used the example of a travel agency that had embedded its technology to support basic banking tasks such as opening an account, viewing account balances, and transferring funds between accounts.
Apiture’s new product news comes in the wake of the company’s latest partnership announcement. In September, Apiture announced that Newtek Business Services Corporation had selected its digital banking platform to support the digital capabilities of Newtek Bank. Over the summer, Apiture reported that it had secured $29 million in funding in a round led by Live Oak Bank. The investment boosted the North Carolina-based fintech’s total funding to $69 million.
Founded in 2017 as a joint venture between First Data Corporation and Live Oak Bank, Apiture has more than 300 bank and credit union clients in the U.S. – and more than 300 employees of its own. With more than 40 core interfaces and over 200 fintech partners, Apiture’s digital banking platform has been praised by entities ranging from Javelin and IBS Intelligence to American Banker and Forbes.
Digital engagement solution provider Agent IQ has raised $10 million in Series A funding.
Agent IQ’s technology helps bankers develop more meaningful customer relationships by blending enabling technologies like AI with human talent, expertise, and empathy.
Agent IQ made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring and returned to the Finovate stage in September for FinovateFall.
In a round led by Mendon Venture Partners and featuring participation from Acronym VC, Sierra Ventures, and FNBO, digital engagement solution provider Agent IQ has raised $10 million in Series A funding. The investment, according to Crunchbase, takes the company’s total capital raised to $18.5 million.
Agent IQ CEO and co-founder Slaven Bilac said that the critical task of developing meaningful customer relationships can be lost in the drive toward the convenience and speed of digitalization. “Agent IQ exists to change this narrative,” Bilac said. He added that the company will “leverage this capital to lead community banking toward an environment where customers derive the same level of personal benefit through the digital channel as they traditionally did through the branch, while enabling banks and CUs to differentiate themselves with personal, seamless, and efficient service.”
Headquartered in San Francisco, California and founded in 2015, Agent IQ offers digital platforms that help their clients enhance customer relationships and customer satisfaction. Agent IQ’s solutions also help companies become more efficient, which leads to greater profitability and lower costs. With an approach that supports augmenting the human banker with technology rather than trying to replace human bankers with technology, Agent IQ effectively blends innovations like AI and machine learning with the critical customer engagement features of human empathy and creativity.
“The company is at the forefront of relationship banking,” Mendon Venture Partners Founding Partner John Clausen said, “helping banks engage customers in ways that they have come to demand.”
Agent IQ’s funding news comes just a few months after the company demoed its Lynq platform at FinovateFall in September. Lynq enables financial services consumer to choose and engage with a personal banker across all digital channels. The technology features configurable, built-in Augmented Intelligence that helps bankers better connect, engage, and support their customers. At the same time, the platform helps them become more efficient by automating typically mundane, manual tasks. Lynq offers video chat, AI-powered real-time insights, and messaging capabilities with the ability to translate real-time to more than 100 languages.
Agent IQ began the year with news that Texas-based Extracto Banks would deploy its Lynq digital assistant and chat service. This made Extracto Banks the first financial institution in Texas to partner with Agent IQ. The institution’s EVP and Chief of Strategic Design Chris Kincaid said that Agent IQ’s technology gave the bank “a transformational approach to meeting our customers where they are.”
Finastra has announced a strategic alliance with Ohio point-of-sale (PoS) financing and Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) company Jifiti.
The alliance will bring new PoS financing capabilities to financial institutions in Finastra’s Banking-as-a-Service ecosystem.
Finastra was formed via a merger between Finovate alum Misys and D+H in 2017.
Just last week we highlighted the state of Ohio as a place where innovation in fintech and insurtech was thriving. Today, we learn that financial software company and Finovate alum Finastra has inked a strategic alliance with one of Ohio’s fintech innovators: Columbus-based point of sale financing company and Buy Now, Pay Later platform Jifiti.
The collaboration will bring embedded financing capabilities to financial institutions in Finastra’s Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) ecosystem. These capabilities will enable banks to empower merchants with point-of-sale financing options such as Buy Now, Pay Later and split payments. Whether transacting online, in-store, or by call center, consumers will be able to access this expanded range of financing options. Jifiti’s platform will be pre-integrated with Finastra’s systems, making deployment easy for financial institutions currently using Finastra to power their core banking operations.
Finastra Senior Director for Solution Management, BaaS & Orchestration Jeanette Kescenovitz put the partnership in the context of the recent launch of Finastra’s BaaS embedded consumer lending offering. “We look forward to leveraging Jifiti’s best-in-class retail point-of-sale solution to give financial institutions a simple way to provide a seamless, embedded finance offering with a fully digital-first experience,” Kescenovitz said.
Jifiti offers a modular, white-label platform that supports a wide range of point-of-sale financing options. These options include installment loans, lines of credit, split payments, BNPL, and B2B financing. Founded in 2011, the company introduced its B2B Buy Now, Pay Later solution for banks, lenders, and merchants last month. The addition of the offering for business customers significantly enhanced the capabilities of Jifiti’s platform, enabling the technology to cover virtually all types of Buy Now, Pay Later options.
“The B2B market was the next logical step in our journey at Jifiti,” company CEO and co-founder Yaacov Martin said when the launch was announced. “We aim to give every customer the financing that best suits their needs. Now we can help our bank and merchant partners extend that same level of customization to their business customers through specialized B2B-embedded finance.”
