Author: David Penn

Onfido Teams Up with Bank Millennium to Bring Innovations in Identity Verification to Customer Onboarding

Onfido Teams Up with Bank Millennium to Bring Innovations in Identity Verification to Customer Onboarding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Onfido
  • Identity verification company Onfido partnered with Bank Millennium Poland to bring automated identity verification to its onboarding process.
  • Bank Millennium Poland was named “Best Digital Bank in Poland” in 2021 by Global Finance Magazine.
  • Onfido also announced that it was joining the digital ID program launched by The Investing and Savings Alliance (TISA).

Identity verification and authentication innovator Onfido bookended the weekend with two appearances in the fintech headlines. The company announced that it has teamed up with Poland’s Bank Millennium to automate the identity verification component of the bank’s customer onboarding process.

“Poland is seeing fast acceleration of the digitization of financial service offerings, and we’re very happy to be partnering with one of the most innovative banks in the Central Eastern Europe region,” SVP of EMEA at Onfido Oliver Krebs said. “We pride ourselves on delivering access to online services that both detect and prevent fraudulent attempts while enabling the business to scale and meet regulatory requirements.”

The partnership will enable Bank Millennium to enhance its online customer journey with an onboarding process that is quicker, simpler, and easier for customers. New users will be able to sign up with Bank Millennium with just a photograph of their government-issued identification document (ID) and a selfie video. Onfido’s AI-powered identity verification technology first ensures that the ID is legitimate, and then matches the image on the ID with the image in the selfie video. This makes sure that the individual is the legitimate owner of the ID and is physically present. By leveraging Onfido’s technology, the institution will enable new customers to onboard with the bank from any location, at any time via a fully-compliant digital experience.

“We wanted to make our process even more user-friendly and accessible on most devices, and that is why we choose to work with Onfido,” Director of the Electronic Banking Department at Bank Millennium Halina Karpińska said. “We based the changes on a detailed analysis of our onboarding flow, we also looked at best market standards and, as always, we took into account the opinions of users. Now new customers finish the process already logged in to the application, with an active account that they can immediately use.”

Bank Milllennium Poland was founded in 1989 as Bank Inicjatyw Gospodarczych BIG SA. Part of the Millennium Group since 2003, the institution offers a wide range of banking solutions for private customers, SMEs, and enterprises alike. Last year, the bank was named Poland’s Best Digital Bank by Global Finance Magazine.

To start this week, Onfido announced that it has signed on to a digital ID program for financial services sponsored by The Investing and Savings Alliance (TISA). The program is designed to develop digital identities for consumers that will enable them to create and reuse identities when working with financial institutions. Already signed up for the program are a variety of companies including a handful of Finovate alums such as Signicat, Daon, and MoneyHub. Also involved in the digital identity plan are Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest, and Barclays

“TISA’s vision to create a resuable digital ID that meets all relevant regulatory requirements, such as know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML), and also help consumers securely prove their identity to U.K. financial services is admirable,” Onfido Global Director of Public Policy Matthew Peake said in a statement.

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in London, Onfido made its Finovate debut in 2018 at FinovateEurope. The company’s technology has helped firms deliver a 12x year-over-year improvement in fully-automated performance, as well as delivered 95% of its identity verification checks in less than 10 seconds and a 10x lower false acceptance rate.

This spring, Onfido announced a partnership with Tesco Bank. Co-founder Husayn Kassai is Onfido CEO.

Photo by Jade

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Mexican Digital Bank Klar Raises $70 Million in Equity Funding; Argentina’s Ualá Earns Approval to Acquire Wilobank

Mexican Digital Bank Klar Raises $70 Million in Equity Funding; Argentina’s Ualá Earns Approval to Acquire Wilobank
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Dorsum, Finovate Global

Klar, arguably the largest digital bank in Mexico, secured $70 million in equity funding this week. The investment – led by existing investor General Atlantic and featuring participation from Prosus Ventures, Quona Capital, Mouro, IFC, Acrew, and Endeavor Catalyst – gives the company a valuation of $500 million. Klar has raised more than $150 million in equity funding since its founding in 2019. The sum represents the largest amount raised by a Mexican neobank to date.

“Since its inception, Klar has aimed to empower millions of consumers across Mexico with simple and transparent offerings that enable them to live better lives,” Klar CEO and co-founder Stefan Möller said. “We see an opportunity to provide bespoke solutions to Mexican consumers who are eager to adopt technology, and who are not adequately served by anachronistic institutions.”

In addition to the equity investment, Klar received $20 million in venture debt funding from WTI.

Klar offers financial services consumers a wide range of solutions, including credit, mobile payments, rewards programs, loans, early wage access, and BNPL. The largest digital finance platform in Mexico, Klar has added 1.4 million customers in the last 12 months, reported revenue gains of 7x and transaction volume increases of 4x year over year.

Klar plans to use the fresh capital to enhance its platform, explore strategic acquisitions, pursue new distribution channels, and “invest in its team and talent.”

In other Latin American fintech news, we learned that Argentina’s Ualá has won approval from the country’s central bank to acquire Wilobank, Argentina’s first digital bank.

The deal was first announced in 2021, and this week’s decision will enable the transaction to close as early as next week, according to Bloomberg. The deal will also make Wilobank founder Eduardo Eurnekian a minority stakeholder in Ualá.

“The acquisition of Wilobank will significantly expand the value proposition of the Ualá ecosystem, offering better credit and collection tools not only for individuals but also for entrepreneurs,” Ualá founder and CEO Pierpaolo Barbieri said. “It is a crucial step so that more and more people can access simpler, more accessible and transparent financial products.”

Ualá’s acquisition will enable the $2.5 billion Argentinian fintech to accelerate growth and reach more customers. Especially attractive as new potential clients are pensioners and government welfare recipients who receive government payments via savings accounts that can only be provided by banks. Ualá has five million accounts – four million in Argentina – on the region. Wilobank has more than 250,000 savings accounts and has issued more than 113,000 debit cards.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Photo by Genaro Servín

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Backbase Secures $128 Million Investment from Motive Partners

Backbase Secures $128 Million Investment from Motive Partners
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Backbase, Daily news, Funding
  • Backbase raised $128 million (€120 million) in growth equity funding this week.
  • The round was led by private equity firm Motive Partners, and gave the company a valuation of $2.6 billion (€2.5 billion).
  • Backbase’s Engagement Banking Platform enables banks and credit unions to leverage a cloud-based platform to offer bank customers seamless digital experiences.

Engagement banking platform Backbase secured $128 million (€120 million) in growth equity funding from private equity firm Motive Partners. The investment gives the company, which made its most recent Finovate appearance at FinovateFall 2021, a valuation of $2.6 billion (€2.5 billion). The funding also marks Backbase’s first-ever funding event since its founding in 2003.

“Today is a major milestone for more than 2,000 Backbasers and 150 customers around the world, to celebrate the incredible progress we made,” Backbase founder and CEO Jouk Pleiter said in a statement. “With this partnership, we’re even better equipped to drive our Engagement Banking vision to the next level.”

The investment from the “founder-friendly” firm will enable Backbase to commit more resources to its Engagement Banking solution, helping power the company’s mission to “re-architect” banking in a customer-focused way. Backbase’s technology gives banks and credit unions the ability to move away from disconnected, point and channel solutions. Instead, with Backbase’s cloud-based platform, financial institutions can build frictionless customer journeys across all stages of the customer lifecycle from onboarding and servicing to lending and expanding wallet share.

With more than 150 financial institutions around the world using its technology, Backbase gives banks and credit unions the ability to quickly digitize and transform their customer-facing operations to meet the expectations of increasingly digitally-savvy banking customers. At its most recent Finovate appearance last fall, Backbase demonstrated a customer onboarding solution that consolidated a customer’s finances via direct deposit, billl pay auto linking, and debit card account opening. The technology showed how financial institutions can get key insights into their customers and empower them to take more control over their financial lives.

“Backbase’s proven track record of entrepreneurship and organic growth will continue,” Jouk said. “Our formula is simple: focus on the needs of our customers and empower highly skilled teams to deliver. We’re changing a big industry, which is hard work. Having critical mass and market momentum allows us to stay laser-focused. Together we’re making it happen.”

Founded in 2003, three-time Finovate Best of Show winner Backbase maintains a global headquarters in Amsterdam.

Photo by SevenStorm JUHASZIMRUS

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Women in Fintech: Leveraging New Technologies to Expand Access to Financial Advice

Women in Fintech: Leveraging New Technologies to Expand Access to Financial Advice
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Diversity in Fintech, Women in Fintech

How does technology help financial advisors do their jobs better? What does it mean to be “customer-focused” when it comes to financial health? And how does an organization successfully pursue a commitment to financial inclusion as a company, while simultaneously supporting and reinforcing a commitment to diversity, equality, and inclusion within a company?

We talked with Christina Walls, Chief Marketing Officer of intelliflo, about intelliflo’s evolution into a comprehensive digital investment platform. We also discussed the firm’s determination to help its clients leverage technology to reach more customers from more diverse backgrounds and investment sophistication levels. Toward the end of our conversation, we talked about the key role of equality in the diversity and inclusion conversation, and what can be done to bring more women into leadership roles within fintech and financial services.

Why was intelliflo formed a year ago? What is the strategy behind the combined company brand?

Christina Walls: What makes what we’re doing at intelliflo so exciting is how we’re addressing the challenges that financial advisors around the world have using technology to expand access to advice. That’s why our parent company, Invesco, combined five digital wealth companies into a single, API-driven platform – intelliflo – so we can offer financial advisors a holistic digital platform designed to serve investors throughout the entire advisory lifecycle. Our technology delivers the digital tools financial advisors need to better serve modern investors and widen access to financial advice.

What was your role in bringing together the five previously separate companies and modernizing the marketing function?

Walls: Validating the opportunity for five companies to come together as one new global brand, culture, and market proposition in the U.S., U.K., and Australia was the first step. Next, the marketing team built a modern, omni-channel marketing function that delivers against global and local business needs. We focused on training colleagues for new jobs and recruiting talent We also embedded new processes and a MarTech stack including sales enablement and CX/EX listening platforms that align with our modern, 360, digital CX/EX experience mindset versus traditional marketing funnel acquisition methodology.

Our new global brand is bold, personable, and challenges the status-quo. The experiences we deliver for all consumers of our brand – colleagues, clients, or partners – need to “feel” different. Every decision we made underpins our business purpose and strategy. The new marketing function was repositioned from previously reactive and tactical to a strategic, commercial, and customer-focused partner for the business.

What were some of your biggest challenges and successes during this project?

Walls: The biggest success is seeing our efforts help advisors grow and improve their clients’ financial health. Advisors are increasingly challenged to accomplish more with less resources; they need open, digital, and cloud-based technology to serve clients of all ages and sophistication levels. With intelliflo, advisors can meet clients where they are, including across digital channels, providing a personalized experience with greater collaboration and communication.

Since March 2021, we have seen increases across all marketing metrics. For example, one omni-channel solution campaign led to a 73% rise in sales YOY in January 2022.

The biggest challenge was planning and executing a new global brand launch during the pandemic and virtually building a new marketing function, business culture, and relationships. I’m so appreciative of the hard work of all my colleagues at intelliflo, who are passionate, proud, and dedicated to our business purpose; without them we wouldn’t be where we are now.

Why did you help intelliflo evolve from D&I to DEI?

Walls: In today’s world, diversity and inclusion can’t work without equality. Companies with D&I policies do a great job of recruiting people from diverse backgrounds, welcoming and celebrating those differences, and making them feel included in the organization, but with all evolution comes revolution.

At intelliflo, our culture relies on ensuring every colleague, regardless of their background, race, gender, etc. is included, has an equal share of voice, and is confident to challenge any level of seniority of the business for the greater good of delivering our business purpose – widening access to financial advice. We must all focus on equality; it is the critical bridge between diversity and inclusion.

As part of our newly created employee value proposition and DEI focus, we’ve recently formed a DEI ally network. We are dedicated to educating colleagues and building greater awareness for all colleagues, customers, clients, partners, industries, and communities, from the inside out.

What more do you think can be done to support women in fintech?

Walls: Progress has been made, but there’s still much work to be done. This isn’t just about delivering a gender metric. For the industry to change we need to highlight the value women bring, especially when it comes to diversity of thought. We should increase access to funding for women-led fintechs, hire more women at all levels of the business, widen access to professional networks in the industry, implement more policies, and continue reporting gender equality metrics, like the pay gap.

Male allies are also important. I’m fortunate to have many male allies at both intelliflo and Invesco and am personally dedicated to continuing the great work all genders have pushed forward in advocating women and removing biases for future generations to forge a gender equal world.

Gender is only one example of equality. Many other traditionally underrepresented groups also need a voice. We must hold ourselves and each other accountable to eradicate these biases and promote greater DEI for everyone.

Photo by George Milton

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Suze Orman’s New Startup SecureSave Raises $11 Million for its Workplace Emergency Savings Account

Suze Orman’s New Startup SecureSave Raises $11 Million for its Workplace Emergency Savings Account
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, Secure
  • SecureSave raised $11 million in strategic funding this week, taking its total capital raised to $14.7 million.
  • The Kirkland, Washington-based company offers workplace-based emergency savings accounts.
  • SecureSave made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateSpring.

SecureSave, a new workplace savings program provider that made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateSpring 2021, has secured $11 million in a strategic funding round led by Truist Ventures. Truist Ventures is the venture capital division of Truist Financial. Also participating in the round were Stearns Financial Services Inc. and cryptocurrency platform FTX.

The investment brings SecureSave’s total capital to $14.7 million. The new capital will be used to support partnership expansion as well as further development of the company’s flagship emergency savings solution.

“This new investment is a reflection of the rapid adoption and incredible customer demand we’re seeing for SecureSave’s unique emergency savings platform and underscores the industry and investor confidence in our vision,” SecureSave CEO and co-founder Devin Miller said. “Amidst the economic uncertainty over the last two years, companies both large and small recognize (that) an ESA is as critical as an 401(k) or an HSA and not just for retention or for recruiting, but also because poor financial health is impacting companies’ bottom line.”

Headquartered in Kirkland, Washington, and founded in 2020, SecureSave offers a new type of workplace savings program that helps workers build and maintain an emergency savings account. Emergency savings accounts are funded automatically through regular payroll deductions – as well as matching contributions from the employer – and ESA holders can instantly access their funds at any time. SecureSave’s ESA also offers bonuses to accountholders for reaching financial goals and savings targets. The company reported that the average SecureSave accountholder saves $103 per month in their account and tops $400 in savings within the first four month of opening their ESA.

“While the pandemic demonstrated why an emergency savings account was a necessity, the impact of the current inflationary environment is having on employees is bringing home this point even more,” SecureSave Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder Suze Orman said. “I could not be more proud for SecureSave to better meet the needs of those in financial distress by offering an employer matched emergency savings account.”

Photo by Joslyn Pickens

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Australian Open Banking Innovator Bud Raises $80 Million

Australian Open Banking Innovator Bud Raises $80 Million
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • Open banking platform Bud raised $80 million in Series B funding.
  • The investment adds to the $20 million Series A investment the U.K.-based company secured in 2019.
  • Bud brings expertise in data intelligence and machine learning to the open banking ecosystem.

Intelligent open banking platform Bud secured $80 million in Series B funding today. The round was led by Bellis Phantom Holdco, an indirect affiliate of investment funds managed by TDR Capital. The investment, which also featured participation from existing investors including Outward VC, brings the company’s total capital to more than $100 million – which includes a $20 million Series A round raised in 2019.

“Bud’s transactional intelligence services allow applications to become truly personalized for the first time,” Bud co-founder and CEO Ed Maslaveckas said. “For example, our lending customers can expect to see an increase of about 85% in capacity by combining open banking data with our AI capabilities in their affordability assessments.”

ANZ, Street UK, and TotallyMoney are among the companies that use Bud’s technology. While ANZ, Street UK, and TotallyMoney rely on Bud’s platform to automate affordability checks, other Bud clients – such as HSBC and Credit Karma – leverage Bud’s technology to help their customers better understand their own finances. The London, U.K.-based company plans to use the funds to build its client portfolio, further develop its models, and fuel international expansion.

To that last point, Maslaveckas told AltFi that he anticipated entering “two major new markets” by the end of 2022. Maslaveckas pointed to growing demand for Bud’s services, which leverage transactional AI models that help financial institutions personalize digital offerings and automate lending decisions.

Maslaveckas sees Bud as an emerging player in the open banking ecosystem, bringing innovations, data intelligence, and machine learning. He considers Bud as a fresh addition to a field that already has leading players such as Tink, Plaid, and TrueLayer that have demonstrated innovation in aggregation, connectivity, and payments.

“We are hugely excited by the potential of Bud,” TDR Capital Managing Partner Gary Lindsay said, “not only in the ability of its platform to truly harness the opportunities from open banking, but also in its far-reaching potential to help power other businesses we are invested in.”

Founded in 2015, Bud unveiled v2.0 of its Affordability API last month. The new solution helps clients take full advantage of Bud’s new Open Banking Affordability capabilities. The simplified API now enables customers to get started quickly without having to immediately think about customization options.

Photo by Ben Mack

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ACI Worldwide Unveils Mobile Engagement Platform to Empower Shopping-on-the-Go

ACI Worldwide Unveils Mobile Engagement Platform to Empower Shopping-on-the-Go
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Alumni News, Alumni profile, Daily news
  • ACI Worldwide unveiled its mobile engagement platform ACI Smart Engage this week.
  • The new solution relies on location, voice, and image recognition to enable consumers to purchase goods and services remotely with a single click.
  • The launch of ACI Smart Engage comes at the same time that ACI Worldwide announced a divestment of its business banking unit, ACI Digital Business Banking.

Real-time payments software company ACI Worldwide launched its mobile engagement platform ACI Smart Engage today. The solution leverages location, voice, and image recognition technology to enable merchants to offer their entire inventory of products and services directly to consumers’ smartphones. ACI Smart Engage combines geolocation with scannable media and audio tags inside a range of media types – including TV, print and radio advertisements, posters, magazines, catalogs, window displays, and more. Consumers can use the solution to instantly purchase products and services on-the-go with a single click.

“With ACI Smart Engage, merchants can reach consumers through their smartphones no matter where they are and turn every interaction into an opportunity to sell,” ACI Worldwide head of merchant Debbie Guerra said. “ACI Smart Engage combines the in-store and online experience for consumers by reaching them on their smartphones through various media, including supermarket labels, restaurant menus, or window displays, and driving true mCommerce sales through embedded one-click payments. With ACI Smart Engage, merchants can make ‘window shopping’ a reality.”

Merchants can integrate ACI Smart Engage into their existing mobile apps using Smart Engage SDK APIs. The technology is a part of ACI Omni-Commerce, a secure omni-channel payment processing platform that supports the in-store, online, and mobile needs of modern merchants. ACI Omni-Commerce also offers consumers more of the kind of purchasing experiences they are looking for.

“Consumers are reaching for their smartphones to make informed buying decisions more than ever before,” Guerra added. “With Smart Engage, we enable merchants to reach those consumers at the right time, when they are most likely to make a purchase and then help them complete the purchase with a single click. It fosters direct engagement between merchants and their customers.”

ACI Worldwide’s launch of ACI Smart Engage comes as the company announced a decision to divest its corporate online banking solutions to middle market private equity firm, One Equity Partners. The move is part of ACI Worldwide’s “three-pillar strategy” which is designed to support value creation for shareholders via a focus on growth.

“Our efforts to accelerate organic growth are firmly on track, and we are now making progress on the third pillar, step-change value creation through M&A,” ACI Worldwide president and CEO Odilon Almeida said. “The divestment is in line with our commitment to continually review the company’s portfolio to maximize shareholder value.”

The transaction for ACI Digital Business Banking, as the technology is called, has been valued at $100 million. The deal is expected to close in Q3 of 2022.

A veteran of both Finovate and our developers conference FinDEVr, ACI Worldwide offers real-time payment solutions to help corporations process digital payments, enable omni-commerce, and manage fraud and risk. Founded in 1975 and headquartered in Miami, Florida, ACI Worldwide is partnered with 19 of the top 20 banks around the world, and works with 80,000 merchants directly and through PSPs. The company’s technology facilitates more than 225 billion consumer transactions a year.

With 2021 revenues of $1.4 billion, ACI Worldwide is a publicly-traded company (NASDAQ: ACIW) with a market capitalization of more than $3 billion.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska

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Aiia Launches New Payment Feature, Pay By Link

Aiia Launches New Payment Feature, Pay By Link
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Aiia, Alumni News, Daily news
  • Finovate newcomer Aiia launched its new payment technology, Pay by Link.
  • The new offering empowers businesses to make payments using a wide variety of common communication channels including email, PDF, SMS, and chat.
  • Aiia was acquired by Mastercard in the fall of 2021.

Leading Northern European open banking platform Aiia unveiled its new payment feature, Pay by Link. The new offering enables seamless payments for both businesses and consumers, using whatever channel they choose. These options include email, PDF, SMS, social media chat, and more.

“We’re in the process of transforming the entire way of paying bills,” Aiia CEO and co-founder Rune Mai said. “With a simple link, we make it effortlessly easy and secure to pay a bill on the go with a bank account without having to enter or remember payment details.”

Using the solution is straightforward: businesses provide Aiia with the necessary invoice information for a given payment and Aiia ensures that all vital information is visible on both the sender and receiver accounts. This lets businesses automate the payment reconciliation process, if they need to. Any company can issue a payment link for an invoice using customer-facing channels such as email, SMS, or even a physical letter.

“With Pay by Link, we give businesses the opportunity to accept and receive payments anywhere and reduce friction in the entire payment flow,” Mai added. “The new feature is bridging the opportunity gap between open banking and a wide range of businesses.”

Aiia’s open banking platform enables businesses to connect their applications to more than 3,000 banks in Europe to access financial data and offer seamless payments. The company made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateEurope 2021, demoing its technology that allows any company to make easy and cost-effective account-to-account payments with just a few lines of code. Since then, Aiia has forged partnerships with Swiss PFM startup keycount, Denmark-based IT services firm Netcompany, and Danske Bank U.K. Last fall, Mastercard announced that it had completed its acquisition of Aiia, a deal that was first reported in September.

Photo by Giallo

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German Neobroker Trade Republic Earns $5 Billion Valuation; Binance Labs Secures $500 Million to Fund Web3

German Neobroker Trade Republic Earns $5 Billion Valuation; Binance Labs Secures $500 Million to Fund Web3
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Buckzy Payments, Efigence, Finovate Global, Nubank, Temenos

European investment and savings platform Trade Republic has topped up its 2021 Series C round with an investment of €250 million led by the Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan. The funding gives Trade Republic a valuation of more than $5 billion (€5 billion), and will enable the company to “double down” on its product.

“We are amid a transformation of pension systems in Europe,” Trade Republic co-founder Christian Hecker said. “The financing will help us to invest strongly into product innovation to empower millions of Europeans to put their money to work. Improving our valuation in the light of the current market environment is the true testament to our progress in the last twelve months and the large potential ahead.”

Trade Republic enables its more than one million European customers to invest in equities, cryptocurrencies, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), as well as fractional savings plans. With more than six billion euros in assets under management, Trade Republic offers investors the ability to invest in 9,000 stocks and ETFs; take advantage of 4,000 stock and ETF savings plans; and participate in more than 50 cryptocurrency-based savings plans. Trade Republic also provides access to 300,000 derivatives including warrant bonds, “knock-out products”, and factor certificates.

Trade Republic was founded in 2015 by Christian Hecker, Thomas Pischke, and Marco Cancellieri. The company is headquartered in Berlin, Germany.

Binance Labs, the venture capital arm of international cryptocurrency exchange Binance, has raised $500 million to invest in companies that are “building Web3”. The capital comes from VC firms DST Global and Breyer Capital, and featured participation from a variety of family offices and corporations which remained unnamed.

The new fund arrives at a time when cryptocurrrency prices are in a significant retreat. Binance Labs has suggested that the current weakness in digital asset prices might provide an opportunity for investment in companies involved in everything from NFTs to blockchain infrastructure. “The goal of the newly closed investment fund is to discover and support projects and founders with the potential to build and to lead Web3 across DeFi, NFTs, gaming, Metaverse, social, and more,” Binance Labs Executive Director of Investments and M&A Ken Li said.

The new fund will invest in projects in a wide range of development stages including incubation, early-stage venture, and late-stage growth. Binance Labs has invested in and incubated more than 100 projects from more than 25 countries. The firm’s portfolio includes companies such as blockchain research firm Dune Analytics, as well as blockchain networks such as Elrond, The Sandbox, and Polygon.

In other international fintech news, Canadian Finovate alum Buckzy Payments announced an expansion to the Netherlands and its plan to pursue an EMI (Electronic Money Institution) license. The company, which demoed its real-time cross border P2P payments solution at FinovateFall 2019, opened a new office in Amsterdam this summer. The firm also noted that an EMI license will enable members of the Buckzy Payment Network to leverage virtual account services and real-time payments across the Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA) of 36 European countries and territories.

“Europe is a mature, technologically advanced market that is also a hotbed of fintech innovation thanks to its adoption of open API technology,” Buckzy President and CEO Abdul Naushad said. “(This) has opened up the financial sector and created opportunities for innovative new companies to provide new products and services. More and more of our customers around the world want to send and receive real-time payments to and from Europe, and we are enabling them to do so.”

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Photo by energepic.com

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Klarna Partners with Marqeta to Launch its New Card

Klarna Partners with Marqeta to Launch its New Card
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Klarna, Marqeta
  • Marqeta announced a collaboration with fellow Finovate alum Klarna to power the company’s new payment card.
  • The new card will enable Klarna customers to use the company’s Pay in 4 payment option in physical stores.
  • This week’s partnership builds upon a relationship the two companies have enjoyed since 2018.

A pair of Finovate alums have teamed up to offer a new transparent alternative to traditional credit cards.

Modern card issuing platform Marqeta reported this week that it is working with banking, payments, and ecommerce platform Klarna to power Klarna’s new payment card. The card will bring Klarna’s Pay in 4 service to a physical Visa card, and builds on a payment card partnership between the two companies that extends back to 2018. Marqeta currently enables the creation of one-time cards on Klarna’s app. The new Klarna Card will give customers the same control, convenience, and flexibility when shopping in physical stores that they currently enjoy when using Klarna’s Pay in 4 at the point of sale or via the Klarna app.

“Our U.S. customer base is growing rapidly and we’ve seen tremendous demand for our new Klarna Card offering,” Klarna Chief Commercial Officer David Sykes said. “By expanding our partnership with Marqeta, we’re leveraging their payments expertise to provide our customers with an unmatched user experience that will ultimately help our business grow.”

This latest collaboration comes just months after the two companies expanded their partnership into 13 new European markets. Klarna will leverage Marqeta’s Just-in-Time Funding functionality to gain control over the full transaction flow, and use Marqeta’s technology and 300+ open APIs to deliver customizable experiences and support Klarna’s international expansion.

“Marqeta’s continued partnership with Klarna is a testament to all the payment experiences that our modern card issuing platform can enable,” said Marqeta CEO and founder Jason Gardner. “We’re proud to offer a flexible, scalable card platform that can meet the demands of such a rapidly-growing and innovative company like Klarna.

A Finovate alum since 2012, Klarna now has more than 147 total active customers – 25 million in the U.S. – is active in 45 countries and facilitates two million transactions a day. Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, the company began the year with the launch of a physical payment card in the U.K. and, in March, announced the completion of its acquisition of comparison shopping service company PriceRunner. Sebastian Siemiatkowski is CEO.

Based in Oakland, California, Marqeta made its Finovate debut at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley, in 2016. In the years since, Marqeta has issued more than 500 million cards via its platform and processed more than $110 billion in volume in 2021. In addition to its partnership with Klarna, Marqeta also announced this week that it was joining Mastercard’s Network Enablement Partners Program in the Asia Pacific. The move will enhance Marqeta’s ability to offer its APAC customers a faster path to live issuance.

“As one of Mastercard’s first Network Enablement Partners to be onboarded in the Asia Pacific region, Marqeta is well-equipped to deliver card issuances in record time, and to help their fintech customers scale at speed across multiple geographies,” Mastercard SVP of Digital Customer Solutions APAC Ben Gilbey said.

Photo by Olya Kobruseva

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Sowing the Seeds: Tales from Crypto’s Course Correction

Sowing the Seeds: Tales from Crypto’s Course Correction
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news

Bruised but not broken, the cryptocurrency market has taken more than a few blows as the prices of leading digital assets – from Bitcoin to Ethereum – have declined significantly in recent months. This may have taken some of the steam out of many cryptocurrency ventures. But there is no sign that interest in cryptocurrencies has been lost in any critical way. Here are three headlines from this week’s news that remind us that, despite its recent fortunes, crypto remains a key part of innovation in fintech.

Leading digital asset exchange Binance announced the closure of a $500 million venture fund for investing in Web3 and blockchain-based technologies this week. The fund will be led by the company’s venture capital arm Binance and features the support of a number of global investors including DST Global Partners and Breyer Capital.

“In a Web3 environment, the connection between values, people, and economies, is essential, and if these three elements come together to build an ecosystem, that will accelerate the mass adoption of blockchain technology and crypto,” Binance CEO and founder Changpeng Zhao said.

Binance Labs has supported and incubated more than 100 firms from more than 25 countries since its inception in 2018. With an openness to projects ranging from incubation to early stage venture to late-stage growth, the fund anticipates supporting initiatives “with the potential to build and to lead Web3 across DeFi, NFTs, gaming, Metaverse, social, and more,” Zhao said.

Liminal, a digital asset wallet infrastructure company, announced receiving $4.7 million in seed funding this week. The round was led by Elevation Capital, and featured participation from a sizable number of investors. Among the company’s backers in this round were traditional investors like LD Capital and Nexux Ventures, crypto-based investors like CoinDCX and Hashed, and individual investors including Andreas Antonopoulos and Balaji Srinivasan. Liminal plans to use the capital to support both hiring and product development.

Founded in 2021 by serial entrepreneur Mahin Gupta, Liminal is the first digital wallet architecture to provide the multi-party computation (MPC) and multisignature (MultiSig) that help secure digital assets across different blockchains. A plug-and-play platform, Liminal has processed transactions over $2.5 billion and automated transactions valued at $400 million. The company currently secures approximately $50 million in assets.

“With Liminal, we solve the very real problem of securing and scaling digital assets where users have to use different wallets and infrastructure for different protocols,” Gupta said. “Our three layers provide key management, operational automation, and compliance for enterprises.”

Speaking of seed funding, digital asset startup Cloudwall Capital secured $6.3 million in seed funding this week. The company specializes in risk management in the cryptocurrency space.

The round was led by LocalGlobe and Illuminate Financial. Cloudwall will use the funding to increase the size of its team to 15 members by year’s end. The company will also leverage the new capital to support further development of its digital asset portfolio management platform, Serenity. Cloudwall anticipates being able to launch an early access program by this summer.

“Digital assets underwent explosive growth between 2020 and 2021, with almost five years of growth taking place overnight,” Cloudwall Capital co-founder and CEO Kyle Downey said. “Recent market gyrations have only increased the case for a digital asset platform to manage risk so that institutional investors have the tools and platforms to help manage their portfolios and risks.”

Serenity will combine risk management with research to provide investors with an overview of their assets and potential for volatility. A cloud-based platform, Serenity will enable them to review their portfolio holdings and examine historical data – including blockchain data and data from centralized exchanges. Investors will be able to use Serenity’s statistical and machine learning algorithms to run simulations and stress tests on their portfolios to see how they will react to different market conditions.

“It’s becoming clearer to institutional investors that they should invest in digital assets if they aren’t already, but they don’t have the tools to help them embrace this new market in a way they are used to,” Cloudwall Capital co-founder and COO Jia Yng Wee said. “We’re building Serenity to provide this solution and (to support) the careful growth of this industry.”

Cloudwall Capital was founded in 2021. The company is headquartered in New York City.

Photo by Binyamin Mellish

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Fintech and the LGBTQ Community: 3 Resources for Banking and Financial Wellness

Fintech and the LGBTQ Community: 3 Resources for Banking and Financial Wellness
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: List series

June is National Pride Month, a time to honor and celebrate the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) community. Many of the contributions to fintech and financial services from members of the LGBTQ community go unnoticed. But what can no longer be overlooked is the growing number of resources in the financial services industry that are designed to serve the unique needs of LGBTQ financial services consumers. To this end, we’re taking a look at three companies that are dedicated to making banking and financial wellness easier for those in the LGBTQ community.

Daylight

Calling itself “banking for you and your chosen familly,” Daylight may be the pre-eminent, dedicated banking solution provider for the LGBTQ community. Founded in 2020, by “queer millennials” Rob Curtis (CEO), Billie Simmons (COO), and Paul Barnes-Hoggett (CTO), Daylight enables individuals and families to access a range of key banking services without worrying about supporting companies or initiatives that are detrimental to the LGBTQ community.

What services does Daylight provide? Like other banking solutions providers, Daylight offers a deposit account – backed by MetaBank – an Apple and Google Pay-compatible debit card, and financial wellness solutions via mobile app. The app has a round-up feature to help incentivize and ease savings, as well as goal-setting tools to help users plan for both expected and unexpected financial commitments. Daylight can be used by any U.S. citizen, 18 years or older.

“Our community has $1 trillion (in) spending power in the U.S. and yet 53% of LGBT+ people struggle to maintain regular savings,” Daylight Operations Associate Peyton Swift wrote recently on the Daylight blog. “That’s high-key unacceptable. We’re done letting the system ignore us. We’re building Daylight around our unique needs: different timelines, different kinds of families, different goals, and different futures.”

Superbia

New York-based Superbia Services was founded in 2017 as a “profit for purpose” entity focused on developing community-based financial products. In 2020, the organization launched the Superbia Credit Union, the first LGBTQ-focused profit-for-purpose financial institution with a nationally-oriented membership. Located in Michigan, Superbia CU is the first new credit union to receive a state charter in more than 33 years.

“When operational, Superbia Credit Union will benefit members through tailored products and services, more favorable rates, and grants made regularly to organizations that help support and advance causes of the LGBTQ community,” a statement credited to Superbia CU read. Myles Meyers, founder and CEO of Superbia Services noted that, for all the gains made by the LGBTQ community in recent decades, there are still major issues of discrimination.

“In the same way a bakery can refuse a cake, one bank’s discrimination could lead to higher interest rates on homes, rejection of student loans, judgement on credit for health needs, outdated products and services for LGBTQ individuals and families, and lack of acceptance and understanding among traditional institutions,” Meyers said.

In addition to serving the national LGBTQ community with banking services – including credit cards – Superbia will offer its members both life and healthcare insurance that takes into account the unique needs of LGBTQ Americans. This includes providing coverage regardless of relationship status, gender identity, or preventative medications. Superbia has pledged to donate 10% of all revenue earned each year from its financial products and services to the Superbia Foundation.

Pandemic-related complications have slowed the regulatory approval process for many nascent financial institutions – including Superbia. According to Investopedia, the credit union had hoped to open its doors in the summer of 2021. The company hopes to begin operations soon.

Queer Money

Queer Money is not a fintech. But when it comes to financial wellness resources for the LGBTQ community, the Queer Money podcast is an option that deserves more attention. Created by David Auten and John Schneider, who launched their website, The Debt Free Guys, in 2013, Queer Money bills itself as the #1 gay podcast focused on the financial needs of the LGBTQ community.

Recent episodes of Queer Money have looked into the challenges of being an angel investor, answers to questions about “lesbian money,” savings strategies for low-wage workers, and social security issues for same-sex couples.

Sharing their story on their webpage, Auten and Schneider note that at one point the married couple found themselves embodying “the gay cliché of living fabulous but being fabulously broke.” From this point, the two financial professionals decided to “walk the talk”, overhauling their finances and using their personal and professional experiences to help “queer people (and allies) live fabulously not fabulously broke” via a combination of credit card debt reduction, entrepreneurship, and better savings and investing.

Auten’s background includes years as a Business Systems Analyst as well as an institutional broker/project manager. A graduate of the University of Colorado, Denver, Auten is also the co-author (with John Schneider) of 4: The Four Principles of a Debt-Free Life and is a nationally recognized expert on queer and straight personal finance. Schneider has experience as a financial services compliance analyst, and spent more than a decade with Charles Schwab in a variety of capacities including Senior Manager for Advisor Services Strategic Integration.

Photo by Markus Spiske

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