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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Finovate Podcast host Greg Palmer wrapped up a year’s worth of fintech conversations with this handful of episodes featuring Finovate Best of Show winners, innovative bankers, and insightful venture capitalists.
“What you should understand about our fund is that it’s all B2B. There are four themes that we specifically focus on – the key one is modernizing financial institutions. And whether that’s banks or insurers or asset managers or wealth managers, I think it’s all about bringing the technology, the digitalization, and more to these institutions to increase their competitiveness.”
Michael Ruttledge, Chief Information Officer and Head of Technology Services, Citizens Bank
“We set out a bold vision to modernize the technology platforms and infrastructure through something we called Next Generation Technology Strategy. What I’m most excited about are some of the key critical businesses we have been able to enable. We’ve done a tremendous job moving to the cloud; we partner with both AWS and Azure and, with AWS, we’ve actually built a platform that’s really been able to unleash developers.”
Melanie Pickett, Head of Asset Owners, Americas, Northern Trust
“I joined Northern Trust specifically to launch a fintech within the bank called Front Office Solutions, where we serve the world’s largest and most complex endowments, foundations, family offices, and pensions, and help them with the very complex portfolios that they’re managing and some of the very complex data management challenges that they have.”
Neepa Patel, Founder and CEO, Themis
Finovate podcast host Greg Palmer talks with Themis founder and CEO Neepa Patel on expecting more from your compliance department. Episode 153.
“Themis is a collaboration tech platform. Think of something like Airtable or Jira or Monday, but specifically created for governance, risk, and compliance workflows. Our modules represent different workflows that your company is already doing, but are probably doing it in the most inefficient way possible. We’ve brought all those tools that you’re using (and) put that information into one holistic view so that you get a better sense of what’s going on with compliance in your company.”
Don Shafer, Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist, Quilo
Finovate’s Greg Palmer talks with Quilo co-founder and Chief Evangelist Don Shafer about the company’s transformative approach to funding loans. Episode 152.
“We need(ed) to build a platform that would enable a banker or credit union to provide all of their customers (with) a way to get a loan quickly. And so with Quilo, we’ve timed it over and over. If you’re already a customer of a bank or a member of a credit union, you can get your phone and apply, go through approvals and get funded, and have the money show up in your debit card in less than 70 seconds.”
Earnix, an Israel-based company that provides insurers and banks with real-time, dynamic pricing and rating solutions, introduced a new Chief Executive Officer this week. Robin Gilthorpe will take over the top spot at the firm effective February 1st, replacing outgoing CEO Udi Ziv, who served as Earnix’s CEO for six years.
“Today’s end-customer demands unparalleled experience, alongside highly personalized and customizable solutions,” Gilthorpe said in a statement. “Earnix solutions serve as the go-to platform for financial services companies to address the growing demands of the world’s leading financial and insurance companies.”
Gilthorpe is a finance and insurance industry veteran with more than 25 years of experience at firms such as TIBCO, Vertexone, and Watersmart Software. He was most recently Chief Operating Officer at insurtech company Salty where he helped generate a “nine-figure outcome” in the firm’s sale to CDK Global.
Founded in 2001, Earnix made its Finovate debut in 2016 at FinovateSpring in San Francisco. In the years since then, the company has forged partnerships with companies like AI cloud platform DataRobot, cloud insurance software company Majesco and, last fall, J.D. Power. Also last fall, Earnix unveiled its Underwrite-It solution which helps businesses build and manage rules and decision logic to enhance decision-making during the underwriting process.
Earnix has raised more than $100 million in funding. The company includes Insight Partners, Israel Growth Partners, and Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) among its investors.
The seed funding round was led by Team8 and featured participation from ZIM Integrated Shipping Services. ZIM also was the entity behind the $100 million credit facility 40Seas received this week. The agreement comes with an option to extend the credit facility to $200 million.
40Seas leverages AI and data analytics to determine creditworthiness, and offers flexible payment arrangements to provide small importers and exporters, freight forwarders, and sourcing agencies with critical working capital. The company made its soft launch in October of last year and says that it already has financed transactions for “dozens of SMEs.”
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports that small businesses represent more than 40% of all cross-border trade volume. Nevertheless, compared to large, multinational corporations, SMEs are “seven times more likely to be denied trade financing,” according to the World Trade Organization. Among the obstacles to these firms are siloed banking jurisdictions, working capital constraints, legacy processes, and more. To this end, 40Seas helps exporters get paid as quickly as possible and gives importers payment options that enable them to grow their businesses without incurring sizable additional debt.
“Given today’s harsh macroeconomic conditions, now more than ever, SMEs need easy access to financing to have the best chance of survival,” 40Seas co-founder and CEO Eyal Moldovan said.
40Seas is headquartered in Tel Aviv and has offices in New York City, Toronto, and Shenzhen.
Last month CTech published a short list of what it called the “five most promising early-stage fintech startups” in Israel. The list was based on the opinions of “prominent investors in the Israeli market” and looked at both “business potential” and “managerial depth.”
The businesses represented included travel insurance (Faye), an automated accounting platform (Trullion), a compliance platform (Sedric), a loan exchange for SMEs (Lama AI), and a payments workflow automation company (Nilus). Combined, the five companies have raised more than $47 million in funding from investors including Viola Ventures, F2, Third Point Ventures, Greycroft, Homeward Ventures, StageOne, Foundational Capital, and Bessemer Venture Partners.
We’ll keep an eye on these and other innovative fintechs that are helping build Israel’s unique fintech ecosystem.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
What are the biggest obstacles to digital transformation in banking and financial services? For Leda Glyptis, self-described “recovering banker” and author of the new book, Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition, the fault lies not in the stars, but in bankers themselves.
Fortunately, Glyptis sees bankers as the solution, as well.
“For years I have been blogging and speaking about how the biggest obstacle to progress inside banks is people. And that the only hope for change are also people,” Glyptis told Fintech Futures as the date of the world premier of her book was announced earlier this month. “What is so often approached as a technology journey often falls down or triumphs around the humans that keep on keeping on, the dreamers, the builders, the plumbers, and the storytellers of banking transformation.”
Leda Glyptis will discuss her experiences and insights as a veteran of the banking business in an afternoon keynote address on Day One of FinovateEurope, March 14 through 15 in London. Titled “The Problem With Digital Transformation is You,” Glyptis will discuss the human and structural obstacles to digital transformation with a focus on the kind of mentality and leadership bankers need to embrace in order to bring about the changes in banking and financial services that consumers increasingly demand.
For Glyptis, there is no reason – and no time – to wait for the rise of a younger, more digitally-native generation to do the work of transforming financial services. The time to act is now, and the ones to act are bankers — with “grit, determination and energy to drive change,” Glyptis insists. “Like us.”
Bankers Like Us will be available for pre-order on Friday, January 20th, and is expected to ship after February 10th. This provides plenty of time to get your copy of the book ahead of Glyptis’ keynote at FinovateEurope in March. At the event, after Glyptis’ afternoon keynote address, we will also host a special Networking Break & Book Signing with the author.
In addition to her work as an author, Glyptis is the Chief Client Officer at 10x Banking, a cloud-native core banking platform provider based in London. She is also a Non-Executive Director at leading U.K. cash deposit platform, Flagstone. Glyptis has a PhD in Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and shares her thoughts on banking and financial services as a columnist – and “resident thought provocateur” – with Fintech Futures. Her latest columns have tackled topics such as the importance of preparation, the role of pain in learning, and the challenge of maintaining the courage of convictions.
Be sure to visit our FinovateEurope 2023 hub to save your spot at our upcoming fintech conference, March 14 through 15 – featuring author Leda Glyptis’ keynote address on the afternoon of Day One.
Card issuing platform Marqeta launched its new web push provisioning solution.
The new offering will enable consumers to pay for products directly from their mobile wallets without having to first download a mobile app – that may be rarely used again.
The web push provisioning solution was inspired in part during Marqeta’s Hack Week event back in October 2021.
Modern card issuing platform Marqetalaunched its new web push provisioning product this week. The new offering will reduce friction at the point-of-sale by enabling users to pay for purchases directly from their mobile wallets without having to download a mobile app first.
The new web push provisioning product is designed to address a major pain point for consumers: having to download an app – that may be rarely, if ever, used again – in order to complete a given transaction. Marqeta’s solution can help boost conversion rates by eliminating this requirement and thus streamlining the customer experience. Combined with Marqeta’s instant issuance capabilities, this week’s announcement reinforces and adds to the company’s leadership in the payment card tokenization space.
“Growing familiarity with digital wallets created demand for a solution that enables Marqeta customers to quickly and easily provision virtual cards and digital wallet tokens from the web for use with both Apple Pay and Google Pay,” Marqeta Chief Product Officer Simon Khalaf explained. “Our web push provisioning product meets that need and helps enable our customers to deliver a streamlined checkout experience to their end users.”
Marqeta’s offering comes as consumer adoption of digital wallets continues to show strength. According to Juniper Research, global digital wallet transactions are expected to grow 60% by 2026. Additionally, 71% of U.S. consumers in 2022 say that they have used a mobile wallet in the previous 12 months compared to 64% in 2020. Nevertheless, 75% of consumers admit to having abandoned a transaction after being prompted to download a mobile app in order to complete the purchase.
Marqeta’s web push provisioning solution, currently in beta and expected to be generally available later this year, was specifically designed to address this problem. The technology has its origins in a Hack Week event from last year, as members of Marqeta’s team realized the value of enabling brands to provision tokens from a mobile web browser. Built in partnership with both Apple and Google, the web push provisioning technology has been deployed by Bread Financial, which praised the way the product enabled the company to “offer flexible payment options that will keep the merchant’s brand at the forefront a deliver a better experience for the customer,” according to Bread Financial EVP and Chief Commercial Officer Val Greer.
An alumni of Finovate’s developer conference, FinDEVr SiliconValley 2016, Marqeta today is certified to operate in 40 countries around the world. Last fall, the company announced the launch of its Marqeta for Banking offering, which brought new banking capabilities to the company’s card issuing platform. Marqeta has forged partnerships in recent months with Raiffeisen Centrobank to power the institution’s new digital banking brand for customers in Poland and Romania – and with Blockchain.com, to power the cryptocurrency platform’s crypto-based Visa Card.
Headquartered in Oakland, California, Marqeta was founded in 2010. The firm is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ under the ticker MQ, and has a market capitalization of $3.4 billion. Jason Gardner is CEO.
Mastercard and upSWOT announced an open banking partnership this week.
The collaboration will enable upSWOT’s small business customers to access actionable insights and more readily secure financing.
upSWOT made its Finovate debut in 2020 and returned to the Finovate stage in 2022 for FinovateFall.
A collaboration between Mastercard and North Carolina-based fintech upSWOT will help banks better serve their small business clients by providing them with actionable insights and easier access to capital. Courtesy of Mastercard’s open banking platform and services delivered via its subsidiary Finicity, the partnership will bring open banking capabilities to upSWOT’s platform. This will enable SMEs on upSWOT’s platform to connect owner-permissioned financial data to 200 API-enabled apps, providing services such as accounting, payroll, e-commerce, CRM, and more.
“SMBs have long been accepted as the engines of economic growth and development but at times are underserved,” upSWOT CEO Dmitry Norenko said. “We believe that fintech innovation can dramatically reshape the success of SMBs.”
In a statement, upSWOT and Mastercard said that they will promote the new joint offering to their customers and to U.S. banks. The new features of the combined solution include:
Credit Boost: Enables businesses to share data with credit bureaus to potentially increase credit scores
Insights: Analyzes multiple data streams to suggest actions businesses can take to improve operations and profitability
Cash Flow Forecasts: Provides visibility into expected cash flows using sensitivity analysis and modeling
Bank reconciliation, cash management, business valuation, funding access, and ecommerce performance are also part of the new solution’s feature set.
“We are excited to partner with upSWOT to make it easier for financial institutions to offer their small business customers the ability to benefit from their financial data to make decisions, demonstrate their ability to manage a loan, and run their businesses more efficiently,” Mastercard EVP of U.S. Open Banking Andy Sheehan said.
Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Charlotte, upSWOT made its Finovate debut at our all-digital conference in 2020. The company returned to the Finovate stage last September for FinovateFall. Since then, the company has announced partnerships with Standard Chartered (SC) to launch a pilot project in Singapore and with fellow Finovate alum Cion Digital to bring embedded finance tools to more SMEs.
upSWOT has raised more than $5 million in funding from investors including Common Ocean Ventures.
The jury is still out on whether or not January is officially Financial Wellness Month. But savings platform Plinqitisn’t waiting around for any verdict. The Ann Arbor, Michigan-based fintech announced this week that it has partnered with SUMA Federal Credit Union to help give the institution’s 7,000+ members the resources they need to become better savers.
The partnership will enable SUMA FCU’s members to access tools such as Plinqit’s Build Skills solution. Build Skills provides users with content that helps them build their personal finance awareness and savings skills, and then pays them for learning new skills. In turn, the funds earned from learning more about financial wellness can help propel users toward their Plinqit savings goals. SUMA FCU members will be able to access the functionality via SUMA FCU’s digital banking platform, thanks to Plinqit’s integration with Jack Henry’sBanno Digital Toolkit.
SUMA FCU expects the new technology will help attract new members to the credit union as well as enhance the banking experience for existing members. The institution serves communities in Yonkers and Spring Valley, New York, as well as New Haven and Stamford, Connecticut. Both regions feature sizable populations of Ukrainian immigrants and parishioners of St. Michael’s Archangel Ukrainian Catholic Church. Established more than 55 years ago, SUMA FCU has more than $400 million in assets today.
“Credit unions are known for having strong relationships with their member base and SUMA Federal Credit Union has exemplified this for decades,” Plinqit CEO and founder Kathleen Craig said. She highlighted SUMA FCU’s support of local institutions, including churches, Ukrainian youth groups, and other cultural organizations. “Plinqit is proud to partner with an institution that consistently strives to make a meaningful impact in its community,” Craig said.
Plinqit made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2019 in New York. At the conference, Plinqit demoed its Build Skills offering – “created by Millennials for Millennials” – which aligns data, behavior, and incentives to make savings goals easier to set and attain. Last year, the company secured $5 million in Series A funding. The round, co-led by Fintop Capital of Nashville, Tennessee, and JAM FINTOP of New York, took Plinqit’s total funding to nearly $10 million.
Plinqit’s partnership announcement comes just a week after the company released its latest State of Savings Report. This survey, which measures top savings priorities for consumers, showed that 43% of consumers are actively contributing to an emergency fund for both short-term and long-term potential expenses. “While the price increases for everyday necessities leave many U.S. households with financial stress, consumers remain focused on building up their emergency savings even in these trying times,” Craig said. “Providing tools to help them be successful in their savings goal is critical for financial institutions.”
KYC/KYB specialist Kyckr has agreed to be acquired by tech entrepreneur and billionaire Richard White.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Kyckr is an alum of our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, where the company presented “Corporate Identity on the Blockchain.”
Kyckr, a technology company that provides corporations with authoritative real-time data on potential and existing customers and suppliers, has agreed to be acquired by Richard White, an Australian technology entrepreneur. White, who founded Australian technology company WiseTech Global in 1994, will acquire the company via his personal investment vehicle RealWise KYK AV Pty Ltd. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
“The Kyckr team is delighted to have the strategic guidance, support, and vision that successful tech-entrepreneur and founder Richard White provides,” Kyckr CEO Ian Henderson said. “We are embarking upon an exciting evolution of our powerful offering to broaden its scope by building an integrated global software solution to enable businesses to navigate the highly complex and dynamic compliance and counterparty risk challenges that they face in an increasingly interconnected and digital marketplace.”
Kyckr specializes in providing businesses with real-time access to aggregated corporate Know Your Customer/Know Your Business (KYC/KYB) and Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) data from more than 300 company registries and primary sources worldwide. This reach enables Kyckr to conduct real-time due diligence on more than 120 million companies around the globe. White noted that this capacity was especially important in a world with ever-expanding compliance laws and regulations on one hand and innovative financial criminals on the other. He described the contemporary challenge of KYC/KYB compliance as “increasingly high-risk, complex, time-consuming, and costly.”
White’s WiseTech Global bills itself as the “operating system for global logistics.” In a statement, White compared Kyckr’s ability to automate manual processes and aggregate data from real-time sources to the way WiseTech’s CargoWise solution has replaced legacy logistics systems with integrated technology. Both solutions, White indicated, are designed to “drive productivity, reduce compliance risk, and facilitate planning, visualization, and control.”
A Finovate alum since its appearance at our developers conference FinDEVr SiliconValley in 2016, Kyckr has raised more than $18 million in funding to date. The company maintains offices in the U.K., Ireland, and Australia.
Denmark-based Subaio announced this week that it was teaming up with fellow Danish fintech – and fellow Finovate alum – Aiia. Subaio will leverage its partnership with Aiia to better assess creditworthiness for its new white label offering. The collaboration will streamline creditworthiness assessment through a combination of Aiia’s access to financial data and Subaio’s recurring payments detection technology.
“To create automation and a product that works for solid credit scoring across industries, we need as solid and deep quality of data as possible to label the transactions and categorize them afterwards,” Subaio Chief Commercial Officer Soren Nielsen said. “That’s why we chose Aiia to help us bring this next exciting step in the Subaio journey up to speed.”
In some ways, partnerships like this are being encouraged by regulatory decisions. The EU’s revised Consumer Credit Directive of 2021 mandates that financial services firms document customer income and recurring expenses before offering financing to help lower the number of non-performing loans.
“With Aiia, Subaio will be able to offer their customers a hassle-free, cost-efficient and data-driven solution to assess creditworthiness,” Aiia SMB & Fintech Director Tanya Slavova said. “With our high quality data in mind, this open banking empowerment will grant borrowers better loan assessments based on the accurate overview of the consumer’s actual financial situation.”
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Denmark, Subaio made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2020 in Berlin. At the conference, the company demoed its white label subscription management service, which gives customers a comprehensive overview of their recurring payments, helps them cancel unwanted subscriptions, and provides notifications to enable customers to avoid “subscription traps.” The company returned to the Finovate stage two years later for FinovateEurope 2022 in London with a demo of its automatic creditworthiness assessment solution.
Subaio has raised $4.9 million in funding from investors including Global PayTech Ventures. Thomas Laursen is CEO.
Making its Finovate debut at our all-digital FinovateEurope 2021 conference, Copenhagen, Denmark-based Aiia was launched in 2017. A leading open banking platform in Northern Europe, the company demoed its account-to-account payment services at FinovateEurope 2021, showing how the technology facilitates everything from one-off payments for ecommerce to bulk payments for SMEs using a single API. Aiia was acquired by Mastercard in the fall of 2021 for an undisclosed amount. Rune Mai is CEO and co-founder.
In other fintech news from the Nordics, Boost.ai, a Finovate alum from Norway, announced that it will bring its conversational AI technology to Nordic bank DNB. Specifically, DNB will use Boost.ai’s technology to automate more than half of the bank’s chat traffic with its Aino virtual agent. Aino presently automates upwards of 20% of the bank’s customer service requests. According to DNB, more than one million of its customers have interacted with Aino.
Boost.ai VP of EMEA Sanjeev Kumar praised DNB has “one of the many forward-thinking organizations that are reaping the benefits of embracing a conversational AI solution.” Kumar highlighted the fact that conversational AI helps free up staff to enable them to focus on higher-order and more complex customer service tasks. Headquartered in Oslo, DNB is the largest financial services group in Norway. DNB offers a full range of financial services, including loans and savings, insurance and pension products, as well as advisory services for both retail and corporate customers.
“Artificial intelligence is an important part of our digital strategy,” DNB SVP and Head of IT Emerging Technologies Jan Thomas Lerstein said. “In leveraging AI, our aim is to revitalize our value chains, creating better service for our customers and, of course, value for the bank.” Lerstein added that DNB is evaluating other AI-enabled solutions including voice APIs to help the bank reach “higher levels of personalization.”
Boost.ai made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in New York in 2019, demoing its virtual agent technology. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Sandnes, Norway, the company introduced a new CEO – Jerry Haywood – in the fall of 2022. Haywood took over the position from founder and previous CEO Lars Selsås, who will focus on product development and innovation going forward.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Middle East and Northern Africa
UAE-based Careem Pay teamed up with Lulu Exchange to offer international remittances.
American Express agreed to acquire Israel-based B2B payments automation company Nipendo.
Robinhood announced that its Robinhood Retirement offering was now available to all eligible customers.
The company, which offered a waitlist for interested customers in December, said that more than one million people have signed up for the new investment service.
Robinhood will provide a 1% match for every eligible dollar customers contribute to their Robinhood Retirement plan.
Robinhood, which gained notoriety in recent years as a platform for traders of meme stocks like AMC and Gamestop, announced this week that it is making its Robinhood Retirement offering available to all eligible customers. Unveiled via waitlist in December, the new IRA product offers a 1% match for every eligible dollar contributed – the first and only individual retirement account to do so, according to Robinhood.
Baiju Bhatt, company co-founder and Chief Creative Officer said in a statement: “Systems are failing to catch up to the needs of how many people live and save (or don’t) … We see an opportunity to be a part of the solution, to build products that adapt to the way work and savings will evolve, and ensure people have the tools to control their financial future – just like the way we started.”
Robinhood claims that more than one million people have signed up for the new service via the company’s waitlist. A significant number of these individuals, according to Robinhood, are freelancers and members of the so-called “gig economy,” who often struggle to find solutions to help them prepare for retirement. Robinhood Retirement will enable customers to open multiple Robinhood brokerage accounts and earn a 1% match from Robinhood on eligible contribution dollars. Customers will be able to grow their earnings in tax-free or tax-deferred accounts, and can invest in both stocks and ETFs. The product’s Portfolio Builder feature helps customers build their own investment portfolio, use a custom recommended portfolio, or a combination of both – all without having to pay a commission. Robinhood added that the company plans to authorize options trading in retirement accounts as well – also with no commission or per-contract fees.
“In 2023, Robinhood remains a company fundamentally focused on the unmet needs of the next generations,” Bhatt noted in a blog post announcing the availability of Robinhood Retirement. “No matter how income is earned, we believe the impact of providing long term savings incentives are just as powerful today as they were for our parents’ generation.”
Founded in 2013 by Bhatt and Vlad Tenev, Robinhood offers commission-free trading of stocks, exchange-traded funds, and cryptocurrencies. With total assets of more than $19.7 billion and revenues of $1.8 billion – both as of 2021 – Robinhood boasts more than 22 million funded accounts and nearly 16 million monthly average users as of the spring of 2022. Robinhood is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ under the ticker HOOD. The firm has a market capitalization of $7.8 billion.
Our first Five Tales from the Crypto column of 2023 takes a look at cryptocurrency firms receiving funding, launching new payments solutions, and teaming up with e-commerce innovators to help bring cryptocurrencies and digital asset technology into the mainstream.
Tap Global Secures $3.7 Million in Funding
Cryptocurrency firm Tap Globalwent public this week in an IPO that raised $3.7 million (£3.1 million) for the Gibraltar-licensed firm. But don’t go looking on the NASDAQ for shares; the company is trading on a London-based alternative trading platform called the Aquis Stock Exchange. Aquis was founded in 2001 as a primary and secondary market for both equity and debt securities. Approximately 90 primary market securities are listed, with more than 600 names on Aquis’ secondary market.
Tap Global CEO David Carr addressed the controversy surrounding the company’s decision to go public at a time when cryptocurrency-related businesses are under additional scrutiny. “Our decision to list now raised some eyebrows, particularly in the wake of the FTX fallout,” Carr said. “But it is our focus on regulation and customer protection that sets us apart from less responsible operators.”
Tap Global shares were priced at $0.05 (4.5 pence). Nearly 69 million shares were listed. The listing was accomplished via a reverse takeover by Quetzal Capital and the company will trade under the ticker “TAP.”
With more than 100,000 registered users in more than 46 countries, Tap Global offers fiat banking and crypto settlement services. Users can purchase up to 26 different crypto assets on the Tap Global app and store them directly in the customer’s wallet. Fiat currencies such as the British pound, the Euro, and the U.S. dollar can also be stored. Tap Global leverages proprietary AI middleware to help users secure the best execution and pricing in real time.
Africa-based crypto exchange Yellow Cardintroduced a new payment feature this week called Yellow Pay. The new offering enables Yellow Card customers to send and receive money instantly via the Yellow Card crypto exchange platform with only a few taps on their phone. There are no additional charges for the service.
“This is more than just a money transfer service – it’s a powerful tool that will unlock new opportunities for people across Africa,” Yellow Card co-founder and CEO Chris Maurice said. “By enabling instant, low-cost transactions across borders, we are helping to create a more connected and dynamic Africa.”
Yellow Card enables users to buy and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT via bank transfer, mobile money, cards, or cash. In order to send funds, users simply require the recipient’s phone number. Fund recipients, as well as those looking to withdraw sent funds, must enroll in Yellow Pay.
“This new product feature not only makes it easier for family members to support each other across Africa with ease,” Maurice said, “but it also opens up the continent to more investment, access to credit, business grants, and generally will improve the ease of doing business.”
Yellow Card was founded in Nigeria in 2019. The company is currently active in 16 countries and, in September, announced that it had surpassed the one million user mark earlier in the year. Also in September, Yellow Card reported that it had received $40 million in Series B investment. The round was led by Polychain Capital, and featured participation from a number of investors including Valar Ventures, Third Prime, Sozo Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, and more. The funding took Yellow Card’s total funding to $57 million. Polychain Capital Partner Will Wolf praised the company as having “the best executing team on the continent.”
Nebeus Launches Visa-backed Debit Card
Back in Europe, cryptocurrency app Nebeuswent live with its Visa-backed Nebeus debit card. The Nebeus Card will enable users to spend directly from their Nebeus accounts, and will be available in markets throughout Europe.
“With this, Nebeus reaches another level of integration and offers a solid connection of everyday payments with superior crypto services,” Nebeus COO and Head of Product Michael Stroev said. “It is a significant accomplishment for us and the most recent illustration of the enormous complementarity between the current banking system and digital assets.” Stroev also noted that the company plans to add Apple Pay and Google Pay functionality as part of “upcoming development phases” of the card. Nebeus also plans to launch a line of credit to enable customers to make transactions without having to sell their cryptocurrency holdings. Stroev said the developments are part of the company’s determination to “contribute towards global financial inclusion.”
Headquartered in Barcelona, Nebeus is registered as a cryptocurrency custodian and a Virtual Assets Service Provider by the Bank of Spain. The company was founded in 2014.
Revelator Partners with Stripe on NFT Payments
Does anyone still care about NFTs? Digital IP infrastructure provider to music companies Revelator announced this week that it was teaming up with Stripe to help it launch a new NFT payment infrastructure. The new functionality would reside on top of Revelator’s digital music supply chain management services.
Revelator CEO and founder Bruno Guez said that the partnership between Stripe and Revelator would play a key role in encouraging those in the music industry who are “non-crypto natives” to learn about the opportunities in Web3. “This is a major step toward Revelator’s vision of onboarding more labels, artists, and fans onto Web3, to bring these promising digital assets to the mainstream of music fans,” Guez said.
Guez said that integrations like this are critical in lowering the technical barriers that currently exist between musicians, music fans, and music companies on one side and what Guez called “a thrilling new medium” on the other. The new NFT functionality will give Revelator Pro platform users the ability to create, sell, distribute, and manage NFTs from a single location. The Stripe integration will enable NFT buyers to set up an account and purchase NFTs with a single click.
Coinbase’s Armstrong: “Dark Times Weed Out Bad Companies”
If it’s always darkest before the dawn, then hopefully a new day is indeed ahead for Coinbase. The company struggled with challenging headlines this week as the sentiment around cryptocurrencies continues to be mixed, at best. On Tuesday, the brother of a former Coinbase product manager was sentenced to 10 months in prison for what is believed to be the first case of cryptocurrency-based insider trading. The same day, the company announced that it would reduce operating expenses by 25%, which included laying off approximately 20% of its workforce, representing some 950 employees.
In a blog post addressed to Coinbase employees, company co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong expressed optimism toward the future of cryptocurrencies. Despite the falling prices of Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies – as well as the “fallout from unscrupulous actors in the industry” – Armstrong wrote that he believed “recent events will ultimately end up benefiting Coinbase greatly.” He compared the current challenges faced by the cryptocurrency industry to the early days of the Internet and suggested that “the most important companies not only survive but thrive” in what he called “dark times.”
Coinbase made its Finovate debut in 2014 at FinovateSpring.
Spanish fintech Divilo partnered with financial crime prevention specialist ThetaRay.
Divilo will deploy ThetaRay’s SONAR platform, a SaaS-based AML transaction monitoring and sanctions list screening solution.
ThetaRay made its Finovate debut in 2015 at FinovateFall in New York.
A partnership between Spain-based fintech Divilo and ThetaRay will enable the B2B financial services provider to better defend itself against money laundering, sanctions violations, and other financial crimes. Divilo will deploy ThetaRay’s SaaS-based AML transaction monitoring and sanctions list screening platform, SONAR. The technology is capable of detecting the earliest indications of sophisticated money laundering activity infiltrating the domestic and cross-border payments process.
“Our advanced AI solution also makes the entire process of transaction monitoring much more efficient and effective, while improving customer satisfaction, reducing compliance costs, and increasing risk coverage with safe and secure payments,” ThetaRay CEO Mark Gazit said.
SONAR leverages advanced AI, as well as proprietary and patented algorithms, to identify anomalies in data sets to detect potential cases of money laundering. SONAR delivers transaction monitoring with very low (“virtually no”) false positives, giving firms like Divilo the ability to provide trusted and reliable payment services to the SMEs and self-employed professionals it serves.
“Divilo is a fintech leader providing valuable and innovative payment solutions that are growing the global financial system,” Gazit said. “ThetaRay is thrilled to provide Divilo with technology that instills trust into cross-border payments, enabling revenue growth by opening doors to business with new customers and financial partners.”
Founded in 2020, Divilo offers a complete payments, collections, and accounting services for small businesses and freelancers. The company offers payments cards, facilitates money transfers and, offers technology to enable businesses and freelancers to manage payments through mobile devices courtesy of PINs or QR codes. In 2022, Divilo launched a new solution called Diveep that enables charging via mobile device simply by tapping a card or another mobile device.
“Divilo is on a mission to transform payments and collections by providing greater agility, a better user experience, high-security measures, transparency, and simplicity,” Divilo founder and CEO Juan Guruceta said. “Using ThetaRay’s AML solution, we will be able to grow our network of relationships and increase business internationally with the assurance that next-generation AI detection will provide enhanced coverage and highly accurate alerts to allow businesses to focus on what really matters.”
ThetaRay made its Finovate debut in 2015 at FinovateFall. In the years since then, the company has grown to support more than one billion users, and its platform monitors more than $15 trillion in transactions every year. ThetaRay closed out 2022 with a pair of partnership announcements, teaming up with mobile banking solution NOW Money and partnering with fintech platform Ontop, both in December.
Tax Status announced a partnership with authID this week.
The partnership will give Tax Status’ customers access to authID’s Human Factor Authentication (HFA) technology to better protect sensitive data and fight fraud.
Based in Texas, Tax Status made its Finovate debut last September at FinovateFall.
Tax Status, a Texas-based fintech company that offers a digital IRS account monitoring solution, has announced a partnership with identity authentication solutions company authID. The collaboration enables Tax Status to go live with the full range of authID’s identity authentication technologies, including authID’s Human Factor Authentication services (HFA). These resources will enable Tax Status’ enterprise partners to better protect sensitive tax data, as well as prevent password compromise and ensure secure account onboarding for new customers.
“authID’s innovative biometric authentication has proven to be a cut far above other identity management solutions,” Tax Status CEO and founder Charles Almond said. “We are proud to offer the most fortified fraud prevention and enterprise security technology on the market, without compromising on convenience and user experience.”
authID’s Human Factor Authentication enhances the online customer onboarding process by leveraging strong identity and document authentication to eliminate fraud. HFA relies on FIDO2 passwordless authentication that provides seamless login across devices. The technology also offers an unphishable authentication protocol of passkeys and device biometrics for high-risk transactions or transactions that mandate an audit trail.
“Our next-gen Verified platform, which prioritizes ethical, consent-based biometrics, provides Tax Status and their clients with a comprehensive fraud prevention solution and ‘unphishable’ authentication that is more secure than legacy MFA,” authID CEO Tom Thimot explained.
Founded in 2017 and based in Frisco, Texas, Tax Status made its Finovate debut last September at FinovateFall. At the conference, the company demoed its Tax Status Platform, a fully-automated IRS account monitoring solution that provides continuous access to official IRS financial data for use in real-time income, account status, and compliance verification. Tax Status works with companies in a wide range of verticals – from wealth management to lending to accounting – providing critical notifications and insights to help them make more informed decisions.
Tax Status ended 2022 with a partnership with Morningstar. The collaboration will enable Morningstar to offer Tax Status to enterprise wealth management firms and fintechs via Morningstar’s Dynamic Services APIs. By automating the collection and maintenance of client tax data – including income, social security tax withheld, and capital gains and losses – companies will be able to better apply this information to not only client onboarding, but also to investment and financial planning, as well.
