Author: David Penn

Mortgagetech Roostify Integrates Indecomm’s IncomeGenius; Appoints New COO Nadia Aziz

Mortgagetech Roostify Integrates Indecomm’s IncomeGenius; Appoints New COO Nadia Aziz
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Roostify
  • Roostify announced a partnership with Indecomm that will integrate Indecomm’s IncomeGenius technology into Roostify’s Roostify Beyond platform.
  • The integration will make it easier for Roostify to calculate income for self-employed borrowers.
  • A Finovate alum since 2014, Roostify also announced this week the appointment of Nadia Aziz as its new Chief Operating Officer.

A new partnership with intelligent automation solutions company Indecomm will bring automated income calculation technology to Roostify’s data intelligence solution Roostify Beyond. A Finovate alum since its debut at FinovateSpring 2014, Roostify will integrate Indecomm’s IncomeGenius solution, which will add to its current income calculation capabilities – especially when it comes to income calculations for self-employed borrowers.

“Improving loan assembly and processing costs, and timeframes is an imperative for all lenders in today’s environment,” Roostify co-founder and CEO Rajesh Bhat said. “Roostify Beyond already incorporates income calculation and analysis for the most common employment scenarios. With the integration of IncomeGenius, we can now simplify and automate calculations for self-employed borrowers, an increasingly important use case as the gig economy expands.”

IncomeGenius leverages standardized rules and algorithms to minimize the risks associated with manual data entry. IncomeGenius doubles productivity at loan set-up, reduces time spent on income calculations by 60%, and guarantees 100% compliance with audit requirements, including a complete audit trail. Courtesy of the integration, Roostify Beyond’s Analysis Assistant will send self-employment documentation and data to IncomeGenius, which generates a thorough, self-employment income analysis and GSE worksheet – in accordance with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guidelines. IncomeGenius then returns the information to the Roostify Beyond platform for presentation in the interactive Analysis Assistant dashboard.

Roostify launched its Beyond platform near the end of 2021. The latest iteration of the company’s Roostify Document Intelligence (RDI) Service, Roostify Beyond integrates RDI at the start of the lending process, providing borrowers with instant alerts if they upload documentation that is incorrect or illegible without having to engage with a human representative. Roostify Beyond also has data extraction capabilities that allow lenders to highlight data discrepancies, automatically create tasks, and publish document classification and validated information to the loan origination system (LOS).

“When we launched RDI a couple of months ago, we were excited to use data to propel the industry forward,” Bhat said in December when Roostify Beyond was introduced. “Data empowers lenders to spend less time in systems and more time with customers, and we are truly happy to provide our customers with this experience.”

Founded in 2012, Roostify most recently demonstrated its technology on the Finovate stage in 2018. In the years since, the company has grown into a mortgagetech leader that helps lenders process more than $50 billion in loans each month. The San Francisco, California-based company counts more than 250 financial institutions as clients and has 150+ employees.

This week Roostify introduced its new Chief Operating Officer, Nadia Aziz. With a focus on home lending, Aziz brings more than 20 years of financial services and fintech experience to Roostify’s C-suite. Before joining Roostify, Aziz was General Manager of Opendoor Home Loans, a digital lending platform for residential real estate.

“Roostify’s goal is to provide lenders with the tools and capabilities they need to deliver an exceptional experience for their customers while ensuring they achieve their business objectives by digitizing the loan origination process,” Aziz said in a statement. “I am excited to help Roostify on this mission and expand our impact on the industry by transforming the home lending journey.”

Photo by Scott Webb

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Best of Show: The Finovate Podcast’s Greg Palmer Chats with the Faves from FinovateSpring

Best of Show: The Finovate Podcast’s Greg Palmer Chats with the Faves from FinovateSpring
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Array, Best of Show, FinGoal, FinovateSpring 2022, Horizn, Keep Financial Technology, Podcasting, QuickFi, Spave

Join Finovate VP and Host of the Finovate Podcast Greg Palmer as he shares his video conversations with companies that earned Best of Show honors at FinovateSpring in May.

Greg Palmer talks with Rob Frohwein, co-founder of Keep Financial, which won Best of Show honors at FinovateSpring 2022. Demo video.

“What Keep does is it enables employers to implement what we call ‘investing cash plans’ which is a new compensation technique that enables an employer to issue what’s essentially a retention bonus, but that cash is provided on the front end of some period of time … There’s an ongoing obligation of the employee to stick around the company for whatever the vesting period is and, once they hit that vesting period or vesting periods along the way, that portion, or all of the debt that they owe for getting that retention bonus up front, disappears.”

Greg Palmer chats with Susan Sarensen Langer, CEO of Spave, which won Best of Show at FinovateSpring 2022. Demo video.

“Spave is all about helping realize financial wholeness and more balance in their life. You can think of Spave as a number of apps altogether. It’s Mint. It’s Acorns. It’s Digit. It’s United Way. It’s Venmo. All in one. We want people to be able to use their spending, so Spave is all based on people’s spending … (That) spending ignites micro amounts that we call “spavings”. So you can either round up spare change, you can apply a percent, you can spave now and do a one-time donation or one-time savings (set-aside) … We’re helping people decide how they’re going to save for their future, give to the causes that they care about and live a more balanced whole life.”

Greg Palmer interviews Nathan Gibbons, Chief Operating Officer at QuickFi, one of the companies that won Best of Show at FinovateSpring 2022. Demo video.

“QuickFi is a business financing platform that really is meant to serve banks and manufacturers. It enables them to offer their business customers a secure, completely digital way of applying for an consummating lower rate term loans in a matter of minutes instead of days or weeks. (This is) because the platform is 100% digital and self-service. It really allows banks and manufacturers to close more loans and more sales faster and much more cost-effectively.”

Greg Palmer talks with Leigh Gross, SVP of Sales and Revenue with Array. FinovateSpring 2022 Best of Show winner. Demo video.

“We’re an innovation platform that helps banks, credit unions, and other fintechs offer cutting-edge financial tools to their customers. For example, we offer credit and identity protection solutions, personal privacy components that we allow our partners to easily embed within their experience so they can offer these services directly to their customers.”

Greg Palmer chats with Ariam Sium, VP of Product with Fingoal. FinovateSpring 2022 Best of Show winner. Demo video.

“We build insights and data infrastructure for financial institutions. The fintech space has a lot left to be desired when it comes to serving actual human beings. And that’s really where (Fingoal) shines. When it comes to our insights, it’s the personalization that actually makes them worth anything. And when it comes to our technical solutions for our clients … at the end of the day we’re improving the overall user experience. It’s also nice that it happens to save the financial institutions money and time.”

Greg Palmer catches up with Janice Diner, CEO, and Steve Frook, SVP of Global Sales with Horizn, which won Best of Show honors at FinovateSpring 2022. Demo video.

“We solve quite a few business problems (for financial institutions). But the three that Steve probably will talk about a little later is reduce the cost to serve digital customers, increase the number of fully-digital customers, drive mass adoption of new products and features. We do this by educating both customers and employees across the full bank ecosystem: retail banking, business banking, wealth management, insurance, just to name a few.”

Stay tuned for more videos from Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast’s Conversations with Best of Show winners.

Photo by Abet Llacer

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Location Identity Leader Incognia Secures $15.5 Million to Help Fight Identity Fraud

Location Identity Leader Incognia Secures $15.5 Million to Help Fight Identity Fraud
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, Incognia
  • Mobile fraud prevention specialist Incognia, which made its Finovate debut in May at FinovateSpring, has raised $15.5 million in Series A funding.
  • The capital will be used to help fuel the company’s growth; Incognia currently has 200 million mobile users in more than 20 countries worldwide.
  • Incognia leverages location and motion sensors to create a unique “location footprint” for trusted users that rivals other authentication methods in accuracy.

In a round led by Point72 Ventures, mobile identity company Incognia has secured $15.5 million in Series A funding to help fight identity fraud. The investment will help fuel the Palo Alto, California-based company’s continued growth, building on the 200 million mobile users in more than 20 countries currently protected by Incognia’s technology.

“Today’s authentication and fraud detection solutions aren’t working for the user, or for businesses, and the market is looking for more innovative technologies,” Incognia founder and CEO André Ferraz said. “Incognia is pushing the frontier of identity assurance and authentication to deliver increased security with minimal user friction.”

Incognia leverages location signals and motion sensors on an individual’s mobile device to help combat identity fraud. The technology creates a privacy-first location identity that is unique to each user and acts like a “location fingerprint” that effectively differentiates trusted users from fraudulent ones. The company says that its solution, which can be deployed in industries ranging from fintech and crypto to gaming and social media, is 10x more accurate than FaceID in terms of uniquely identifying users. Further, Incognia notes that the technology has a false acceptance rate of less than 1 in 17 million.

“We’re emerging as the global location identity leader, effectively combating the increasing fraud on mobile around the world,” Ferraz added. “We’re dedicated to enabling our customers to deliver frictionless mobile experiences without compromising security and privacy.”

Incognia made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022 in May. At the conference, the company demonstrated how its frictionless fraud prevention solution for mobile apps combats identity fraud without bringing additional friction to the authentication process. The technology’s zero-factor authentication requires no action from the user in order to provide a highly accurate risk assessment with low false acceptance rates.

Founded in 2020, Incognia also recently introduced its new location-based liveness spoofing detection solution module. The offering prevents biometric liveness spoofing during the onboarding process. This particular form of fraud is often used by cybercriminals to create “money mule” accounts for money laundering – as innovative fraudsters have turned to liveness spoofing to get around selfie-based liveness detection algorithms. The challenge of liveness spoofing has become even greater with the availability of cheap – or even free – deepfake video technology. Incognia’s location-based liveness spoofing detection module is designed to prevent these deepfake attacks in real-time.

“As fraudsters advance their techniques to trick liveness detection tools, it is critical that there is a solution on the market that can successfully combat the use of deepfakes at onboarding,” Ferraz said.

Photo by Pixabay

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Newcomer Lokyata Integrates its Credit Decisioning Technology with Infinity Software

Finovate Newcomer Lokyata Integrates its Credit Decisioning Technology with Infinity Software
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Lokyata, Startups
  • Lokyata, a credit decisioning specialist, announced a partnership with Infinity Software.
  • The integration will make Lokyata’s BankAnalyze solution available to Infinity Software’s financial services customers.
  • Lokyata, founded in 2017, made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring earlier this year.

Just over a month after making its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022 in San Francisco, California, credit decision solutions provider Lokyata has announced that its real-time, automated credit decisioning tool, BankAnalyze, is now integrated with Infinity Software’s loan management software platform.

Courtesy of the API-enabled integration with Lokyata, Infinity Solutions will give its customers the ability to access key loan decision information. This includes customer-permissioned bank statement analysis such as average monthly net income, minimum balance, average monthly loan payments, and insufficient funds (NSF) notification histories. The integration will also enable lenders to configure both auto-fund and auto-deny rules to bring additional streamlining to the loan decisioning experience.

“At Lokyata, we are always looking to work with innovators in the market and Infinity Software is demonstrating the value of scalable, modern technology in an evolving lending ecosystem,” Lokyata CTO Steve Bireley said. “Increasingly, lenders are looking for ways to responsibly help more consumers gain access to credit, and through tools like BankAnalyze and Infinity Software’s platform, more lenders are successfully meeting that goal.”

With 20 years of experience providing lending solutions and other tools to direct-to-consumer lenders, Infinity Software has helped more than 700 businesses enhance their lending processes. The company uses a configurable loan product engine that gives lenders access to advanced accounting and reporting, as well as a built-in collections suite and access controls. Infinity Software offers a wide range of services to lenders, ranging from website design to optimized loan agreements to automated underwriting waterfalls, as well as a number of additional consumer loan solutions.

“Infinity has worked with hundreds of vendors to meet the needs of lenders in our space,” Infinity Software Director of Products Shannon Lee said. “Lokyata has proven to have a unique product that helps lenders better meet the needs of underserved borrowers and grow their business in a responsible and innovative way.”

Currently headquartered in Washington, D.C., Lokyata made its Finovate debut last month at FinovateSpring 2022. At the conference, Lokyata’s Bireley demoed the company’s BankAnalyze solution. The technology assesses the bank statements from a loan applicant and then provides an automated credit decision recommendation based on a combination of a weighted rules and a Lokyata score created in collaboration with the client. The company believes that using borrower-permissioned data is a major boon to the lending process, creating a more accurate, and up-to-date depiction of the borrower’s credit status. Moreover, Lokyata says that this approach “primes” near and subprime borrowers by making it easier for financial institutions to lend to “near prime” borrowers without taking on excessive risk.

Lokyata’s other products include ExcelRate, a lending and lead decision platform, and FraudBlock, a real-time identity verification and fraud intelligence solution for financial transactions. With $1.5 million in funding, Lokyata has scored more than 6.1 million loans impacting more than 240,000 customers. Founded in 2017, the company has raised $1.5 million in funding. Santosh Thiruthi is co-founder and CEO.

Photo by Diana Smykova

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Array and Alkami Technology Team Up to Help Banks Boost Digital Engagement

Array and Alkami Technology Team Up to Help Banks Boost Digital Engagement
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alkami Technology, Alumni News, Array, Daily news
  • Two Finovate alums – Alkami Technology and Array – have teamed up to help financial institutions offer credit and identity solutions to their customers.
  • The partnership makes three of Array’s signature solutions: My Credit Manager, ID Protect, and Offers Engine, available to a wider range of bank and credit union customers and members.
  • Alkami made its Finovate debut in 2009 as iThryv. Array won Best of Show at FinovateFall 2021 and again at FinovateSpring 2022.

A new partnership has been forged between digital banking solution provider Alkami Technology and financial enablement platform Array. The collaboration will bring a range of new solutions to Alkami clients that will help their customers and members better monitor their credit, benefit from anti-fraud identity monitoring, and access actionable, credit-based offers.

“Improving the digital-first banking experience is a top priority for banks and credit unions,” Alkami founder, Chief Strategy Officer, and Product Officer Stephen Bohanon said. “Our partnership with Array enables banks and credit unions to provide added-value products to account holders, which increases engagement and potentially revenue as well.”

Among the solutions that will be made available to Alkami’s bank and credit union partners are Array’s My Credit Manager, ID Protect, and Offers Engine. My Credit Manager keeps users updated on changes to their credit score, enables them to explore different credit scenarios with a credit score simulator, allows them to conduct debt analysis, as well as see how different factors impact their credit score. With ID Protect, users can take advantage of a number of anti-fraud protections including identity and Dark Web monitoring, alerts, insurance, and restoration services in the event of identity theft. Array’s Offers Engine empowers banks and credit unions to better market their products and services to customers and members using targeted, actionable offers that are based on the individual’s actual credit circumstances.

“Today’s success formula for personal service includes a mix of in-branch experiences and digital tools that add value to account holders every time they log in,” Array co-founder and CEO Martin Toha explained. “Alkami and Array are making it easier than ever to help banks and credit unions deploy a consistent roadmap of innovative digital products for account holders.”

A Finovate alum since 2009, when it debuted at FinovateSpring as “iThryv,” Alkami has grown into a leading digital banking solution provider. The Plano, Texas-based fintech serves both retail and business customers with onboarding, engagement, and account servicing. Clients can enhance their use of the Alkami platform with upgrades and leverage both Alkami’s product suite, as well as integrated, third-party solutions to enhance and customize their experience. Alkami is a publicly-traded company on the NASDAQ under the ticker “ALKT,” and has a market capitalization of $1.3 billion.

Winning Best of Show honors in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall last September and again in its return to the Finovate stage last month for FinovateSpring, Array is a financial enablement platform that specializes in embeddable and white label solutions. Founded in 2020, the company enables its clients to boost end customer engagement by providing them with innovative credit and identity solutions that enhance the customer experience.

Array raised an undisclosed amount of funding in June 2021 from Operator Partners and the FIS FinTech Accelerator in Partnership with The Venture Center. The company is based in New York City.

Photo by Pixabay

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Backbase Supports Fintech Innovation in Bahrain; Compass Plus Boosts Digital Payments in Nigeria

Backbase Supports Fintech Innovation in Bahrain; Compass Plus Boosts Digital Payments in Nigeria
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Backbase, Compass Plus, Finovate Global

This week’s edition of Finovate Global takes a look at two Finovate alums that are helping support fintech innovation in the Middle East and Africa.

First up is engagement banking platform provider Backbase. The four-time Finovate Best of Show award-winning company announced this week that it has forged a new partnership with Bahrain FinTech Bay (BFB). The partnership comes under the auspices of BFB’s Venture Acceleration Platform, which seeks to boost the adoption of digital banking technology in the MENA region.

Head of Partners at Backbase Middle East Mehmet Cakal said, “This new collaboration with Bahrain FinTech Bay aligns with our continuous efforts to help banks in the region with a long-term digital strategy and support them with a holistic approach towards digital transformation, to be able to meet the demands and expectations of their customers in today’s age.”

Backbase is no stranger to the MENA fintech and financial services industry. The company, founded in 2003 and headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, has established partnerships with a number of key players in the region. This includes the National Bank of Bahrain, Banque Saudi Fransi, and the Kuwait International Bank. In fact, Backbase Middle East was awarded “Digital Banking Provider Of the Year” honors at the MEA Finance Banking Technology Summit and Awards last month.

Bahrain FinTech Bay, a leading finech hub in the region, promotes fintech innovation by incubating fintech initiatives via innovation labs, acceleration programs, curated activities, and educational opportunities. Founded in 2017, BFB launched its Venture Acceleration Platform in order to give emerging fintechs “a launch pad and bespoke go-to-market strategies” to help them scale their businesses and take advantage of opportunities in the MENA region. The platform provides those companies selected to participate in the accelerator with market intelligence, exposure to partners, as well as assistance in implementation and regional expansion.

“Our new partnership with Backbase will strengthen our mandate to bring cutting-edge technology offerings to banks and financial institutions in MENA,” Bahrain FinTech Bay CEO Bader Sater said. “Bahrain FinTech Bay is committed to providing curated opportunities for enterprises and supporting startups in the sector to accelerate their growth and expansion efforts across the region.”

Meanwhile, several hundred miles to the south and west, fellow Europe-based fintech Compass Plus is engaged in its own outreach to markets in developing economies. The U.K.-based company, a Finovate alum since 2012, announced this week that it is teaming up with Nigerian fintech Interswitch to help it enhance its payment processing capability.

Interswitch will leverage Compass Plus’ token-based, cloud-native, API-first open development payments platform, TranzAxis, to process Verve, Visa, and Mastercard credit card transactions. Six African banks already have been onboarded onto the new platform, which has enabled Sterling Bank of Nigeria to launch the country’s first Verve credit card.

“We are delighted to partner with Interswitch, one of the biggest processors in Africa,” Compass Plus MEA VP and Deputy Managing Director Adil Ahmed said. “Interswitch has always strived to drive positive change in the region, and now that they have TranzAxis to support their ambitions, they will continue to revolutionize Africa’s payment space in the region, further strengthen the Verve payments network, and manage their Visa and Mastercard credit card business more efficiently.”

Founded in 1989, Compass Plus offers banks and financial services companies retail banking software and services to enable them to better respond to their customers’ banking needs. The company’s solutions address issues from card, account, and merchant management to card personalization, payment processing, and terminal driving to self-service channel management and both mobile and e-commerce. Compass Plus’ TranzAxis technology helps financial services companies develop and support cards, payments, transaction switching, and other retail banking activities.

Headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria, Interswitch began as a nationally-focused, transaction switching and processing firm. In the 20 years since then, the firm has grown into Africa’s leading integrated payments and digital commerce platform company with more than 900 full-time workers across Africa – 40% of whom are women. Named “Fintech of the Year” at the 2022 African Banker Awards last month, Interswitch also last month secured a strategic investment from LeapFrog Investments and Tana Africa Capital. The amount of the funding was not disclosed.

“The evolution of fintech in Nigeria and the broader sub-Saharan region has been driven by the need to solve challenges and barriers that exist within the traditional financial system,” Interswitch founder and Group Chief Executive Mitchell Elegbe said. “Interswitch was born from the need to develop solutions that match the unique needs of local customers and merchants.”

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Photo by Satheesh Cholakkal

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

The Key to Compliance: A Conversation with Justin Beals, CEO of Strike Graph

The Key to Compliance: A Conversation with Justin Beals, CEO of Strike Graph
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: CEO Interview, Interview, Speaker series

Innovation and regulation are the ying and yang of financial technology in many respects. To this end, we caught up with Justin Beals, co-founder and CEO of Strike Graph, to talk about the relationship between fintech innovation and fintech regulation, and why compliance is something that successful fintechs are taking seriously.

Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Strike Graph specializes in helping companies secure critical security compliance certifications. These are the certifications that can both impact revenue and reduce the time to close, as well as demonstrate the maturity of an organization.

Why banks and financial services companies need a compliance partner.

The challenge (for banks) is that the standards that you’re trying to meet can be complex. It’s important to not only have technology, but (also) a provider of that technology with intelligence about how to meet the standard so that you don’t essentially spin your wheels trying to do things that don’t necessarily make you more secure and don’t necessarily impact compliance.

So when revenue is on the line – and that’s what the challenge is here – being unable to represent a security posture that meets certain standards (means) you might not get that partnership, you might not get that contract … You really need to do it efficiently and effectively and be able to maintain it for a long period of time.

On the role an effective compliance partner can play to help financial services companies

I think one of the secrets about compliance practices is that if there’s some aspect of your business that isn’t applicable to the standard, you’re actually not required to be assessed to it. And so what’s really important is to customize your security posture according to the types of risk that your business is meeting in the marketplace, and then respond to those risks. Then, (you are) able to talk to the assessor and say, “hey, look, you know we don’t necessarily have this particular risk. It’s not something we solve for and therefore it’s not something we need to be assessed for.” That way you get through the compliance process as efficiently as possible.

On Strike Graph’s approach to helping financial services companies meet compliance obligations

The secret sauce at Strike Graph is that we have a very intelligent SaaS platform that helps our customers customize that particular security posture based upon the risks that are impacting their business.

This is impacting any B2B company that’s sharing data. And that’s really how we describe our marketplace. And, of course, fintech handles some of the most precious transactions and pieces of data, and they have a long history of things like PCI DSS where compliance is really important. So they really do understand the value of having a good compliance practice.

Check out the rest of our interview on FinovateTV.

Photo by Pixabay

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Payments Solution Provider SumUp Raises $624 Million at a Valuation of $8.5 Billion

Payments Solution Provider SumUp Raises $624 Million at a Valuation of $8.5 Billion
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, SumUp
  • E-commerce payments enabler SumUp raised $624 million (€590 million) in a combination of equity and debt financing this week.
  • The funding round was led by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities.
  • This week’s investment gives SumUp a valuation of $8.5 billion (€8 billion).

In a round led by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities – and featuring participation from funds managed by BlackRock, btov Partners, Centerbridge, Crestline, Fin Capital, and Sentinel Dome Partners – e-commerce payments innovator SumUp has secured an investment of $624 million (€590 million). The funding gives the London-based company a valuation of $8.5 billion (€8 billion). SumUp co-founder Marc-Alexander Christ said in a statement that the capital will “enable us to continue to build out our product ecosystem, expand into new markets, (and) pursue value-adding acquisitions.”

The funding was a 50/50 mix of debt and equity and includes SumUp’s first equity infusion since 2017. The company’s total funding stands at $1.6 billion – most of which is debt financing. SumUp secured €750 million in debt funding in 2021.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Christ called the company’s new valuation “true and fair”. This statement comes months after it was reported that SumUp was seeking an investment that would give the company a significantly higher valuation – to the tune of $21 billion (€20 billion). Christ suggested that the current valuation reflects “the price people put on the company in the worst of markets” and that SumUp’s valuation was unlikely to move any lower in the future.

SumUp won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2013 in London. In the years since, the company has grown to serve more than four million businesses with its payment solutions that range from card readers and point of sale solutions to business accounts and invoicing. The company began this year teaming up with Worldpay from FIS to support its global expansion efforts. SumUp will use Worldpay’s global acquiring services, including authorization, clearing and settlement, dispute management and data insights.

Also this year, SumUp announced a referral deal with Latin American and European e-commerce platform PrestaShop. The partnership gave “hundreds of thousands” of merchants on the PrestaShop platform access to SumUp’s product suite of payment solutions and business tools. Nearly 300,000 websites rely on PrestaShop’s technology, and the company sees its collaboration with SumUp as part of its strategy to enable more merchants to launch and scale their businesses.

“By partnering with PrestaShop, we will continue to expand our support for digital transformation of small businesses, by ensuring their products and services are also available online for their customers,” SumUp Head of Sales and Partnerships James Henry said. “Our partnership will enable merchants with a seamless and secure payment experience for all major credit and debit cards, an important tool in enabling small business success in today’s environment.”

Founded in 2012, SumUp is headquartered in London. Daniel Klein is founder and CEO.

Photo by Artem Beliaikin

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

DigiShares Receives Grant from Polymesh Association to Support Tokenization of Securities

DigiShares Receives Grant from Polymesh Association to Support Tokenization of Securities
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, DigiShares, Polymesh
  • Two Finovate newcomers – DigiShares and the Polymesh Network – have teamed up to promote the use of tokenization to create and manage securities.
  • The partnership comes in the form of a grant from the Polymesh Ecosystem Development Fund (EDF), a part of the not-for-profit Polymesh Association.
  • DigiShares is headquartered in Denmark and demoed its technology at FinovateSpring 2021; Polymesh is based in Switzerland and demoed its technology a year later at FinovateSpring 2022.

Digishares, a Danish white-label platform for tokenizing real estate, is the first company to receive a grant from the Polymesh Ecosystem Development Fund (EDF). The EDF is a creation of the Polymesh Association, which is a part of Polymath, the company behind the Polymesh Network. The Polymesh Network is an institutional-grade, permissioned blockchain for regulated assets that was featured in Polymath’s Finovate debut last month at FinovateSpring.

With $10 million in funding, the EDF is designed to financially support companies and projects that can bring value to the Polymesh ecosystem. DigiShares received its grant for integrating Polymesh and expanding the Polymesh ecosystem to DigiShares’ network of clients and partners. Additionally, DigiShares will facilitate the migration of its clients’ current ERC-1400 assets from Ethereum to Polymesh. DigiShares has supported ERC-1400 on Ethereum since 2019 and been an early supporter of Polymesh, as well, having joined the company’s partnership ecosystem back in January of 2021. The integration announced this week will allow issuers to DigiShares’ tokenization platform to create and manage security tokens on Polymesh.

“Polymath has been a long and trusted partner of DigiShares and we are proud to soon support the Polymesh blockchain,” DigiShares CEO Claus Skaaning said. “We believe that Polymesh has long term potential to lead the security token space.”

The grant award announcement arrives weeks after the Polymesh Association introduced its Ecosystem Development Fund, which itself follows the listing of Polymesh’s native token POLYX on Huobi, one of the largest cryptocurrency trading platforms in the world. The fund is a wager that financially backing businesses that can help promote wider adoption of Polymesh will prove an effective way to incentivize companies to build, integrate, and use the institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure.

“The Ecosystem Development Fund delivers two benefits to service providers,” Polymesh Association Head of Tokenization Graeme Moore said. “Successful applicants not only receive funding but they can also attract clients by adding a Polymesh integration to their roadmap.”

Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Aalborg, Denmark, DigiShares made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateSpring 2021. At the event, the company demonstrated its white-label tokenization platform for real estate, which adds both automation and liquidity to the property market. The DigiShares platform digitizes and automates both the financing and the corporate management aspects of real estate projects. The platform also provides a bulletin board marketplace that leverages blockchain technology and peer-to-peer trading without counterparty risk.

Among Finovate’s newest alums, Polymath demonstrated its Polymath Token Studio at FinovateSpring last month in San Francisco. The Token Studio is an interface that enables the user to create, issue, and manage blockchain-based securities. “Thanks to blockchain and tokenization we can reduce the costs of creating, issuing, and managing securities by over 90%,” Moore explained from the Finovate stage in May. “Banks, custodians, transfer agents, broker-dealers and these other service providers can give their clients new and fresh experiences, and we can create new securities and new financial instruments that previously weren’t possible.”

Polymath and the Polymesh Network are based in Zug, Switzerland. Vince Kadar is Polymath CEO.

Photo by rovenimages.com

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Product Quality Innovator unitQ Unveils its Impact Analysis Tool

Product Quality Innovator unitQ Unveils its Impact Analysis Tool
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, unitQ
  • Less than a month after its FinovateSpring demo, unitQ has introduced its Impact Analysis tool.
  • The new offering helps businesses identify both important product quality issues in their app as well as the impact of fixing those issues.
  • Impact Analysis enables companies to improve their unitQ Scores, which enable businesses to accurately compare their app with rival apps in the same industry.

Product quality platform and Finovate newcomer unitQ recently launched its Impact Analysis tool. The new offering helps businesses recognize and address critical product quality issues and the impact of correcting them.

“With Impact Analysis, teams can learn what impacts fixing an issue might have on KPIs like 1-star reviews, support tickets, brand sentiment, and more – before taking action,” unitQ Product Manager Brett Caplan wrote on the company blog late last week.

UnitQ’s Impact Analysis tool works by automatically identifying user-generated issues that will have the greatest impact on product quality if fixed. These issues – which unitQ calls “Quality Monitors” – not only guide teams toward the most important product quality concerns, but also steer the team away from concerns that may seem significant, but may have a minimal or even adverse impact on an app’s unitQ Score, as well as its rating within its own marketplace (i.e., Apple App Store, Google Play Store, etc.).

The unitQ Score enables companies to compare their app’s quality — based on Apple App and Google Play stores rating and reviews – against that of other apps from the same industry. A companion assessment, the Internal unitQ Score includes everything evaluated in the unitQ Score, but also includes user feedback culled from social media such as Twitter and Reddit, as well as data from customer support and chatbot applications. The new Impact Analysis tool enables companies to see the impact of potential improvements and changes on both scores.

“A unitQ Score closer to 100 indicates a brand has few product quality issues overall,” Caplan explained. “It means that users enjoy the product, the experience is well-designed, easy to use, responsive – and is virtually free of bugs, broken flows, and operational mistakes. Higher scores equal better products, and more satisfied customers.”

The Impact Analysis tool is powered by the machine learning capabilities of the unitQ Monitor, which measures, analyzes, and visualizes the unstructured data of user feedback. The technology translates text from more than 70 languages, normalizes and removes personally-identifiable information (PII), enriches data with sentiment analysis, and appends with product metadata. By turning qualitative feedback into quantitative data, unitQ helps companies discover important insights that enable them to improve product quality.

Headquartered in Burlingame, California, unitQ most recently demoed its technology at FinovateSpring 2022 in May. The company was co-founded by Christian Wiklund (CEO) and Niklas Lindstrom (CTO) in 2018. Among the company’s customers are firms such as Chime, Current, and fellow Finovate alums Klarna and Nubank.

Photo by Pixabay

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Alums mmob and Dapi Join Mastercard’s Start Path Open Banking Program

Finovate Alums mmob and Dapi Join Mastercard’s Start Path Open Banking Program
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, DAPI, mmob
  • Mastercard will welcome five fintech startups to its inaugural Start Path Open Banking Program.
  • The initial cohort will feature two Finovate alums: UAE/San Francisco-based Dapi and mmob, a Best of Show winner from the U.K.
  • The new, open banking-oriented program will enable fintechs to leverage Mastercard’s open banking expertise and market insights to scale their businesses.

A pair of Finovate alums – one from the UAE and another headquartered in the U.K. – have earned spots in Mastercard’s new open banking-focused Start Path program. Dapi, an open banking API provider based in the UAE, and mmob, a U.K.-based embedded finance innovator, will join three other fintechs in Mastercard’s three-month program.

“Open banking is a natural progression of how Mastercard has always embraced innovation and consumer trust with equal measure, and how we’ve remained a trusted partner for our customers,” Mastercard EVP for Fintech & Segment Solutions Blake Rosenthal said. “We are thrilled to launch the Start Path Open Banking program and welcome five high-growth startups from around the world to collaborate with us and accelerate open banking innovation.”

Rounding out the inaugural class are Finantier, an open finance platform based in Indonesia; Mono, a fintech headquartered in Nigeria that helps businesses access financial data and facilitate payments; and U.S.-based Paywallet, which helps lenders and other financial services companies improve payment certainty.

Mastercard’s Start Path Open Banking program is designed to work with open banking startups as they scale their businesses and explore opportunities for co-innovation. The five companies selected for this year’s program have demonstrated “strong synergies” with Mastercard’s approach to technology and consumer choice, according to a statement. The companies will spend three months working with and learning from Mastercard’s open banking expertise and platforms via its wholly-owned subsidiaries – Finicity and Aiia – both of which are also Finovate alums.

Making its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope earlier this year, mmob won Best of Show for its Intelligent Partnerships Infrastructure, which enables businesses to build better digital experiences via embedded finance solutions. The company, founded in 2020 by Irfan Khan (CEO) ad Arsalaan Ahmed, serves both firms looking to embed new products as well as those who want to have their own products embedded into other solutions. mmob helps businesses integrate the kind of complimentary products and services that boost conversions and create new revenue streams.

“We will be using the next three months to work with Mastercard’s teams, develop our product and introduce mmob’s solution to Mastercard’s global network,” mmob said in a statement.

In March, mmob secured $6.6 million (EUR 5.9 million) in funding. The investment came courtesy of angel investors, high net worth individuals, and banking executives. The funding will enable the company to expand in both the U.K., where it is headquartered, as well as in Malaysia. With partners including PensionBee, Anorak, Uinsure, and Superscript, mmob announced its latest partner, iwoca, back in September.

“As big banks reduce their risk appetite, we believe embedded finance is the future of SME lending,” iwoca Commercial Growth Director Colin Goldstein said when the partnership was announced last fall. “Mmob presents an exciting opportunity for us and a win-win for everyone involved in its ecosystem.”

Dapi, headquartered in the UAE, demonstrated its technology at FinovateMiddleEast in 2019. An infrastructure API technology company, Dapi facilitates connections between banks and fintechs across the Middle East. Founded in 2019 by Mohammad Aziz (CEO) and maintaining offices in San Francisco, California as well as the Middle East, the company offers both data aggregation and payment initiation services with a single integration.

“Dapi’s mission is to provide the building blocks for a thriving fintech ecosystem in emerging markets around the world,” Aziz said in an exclusive interview with Finovate. “Our API serves as the bridge between financial applications and banks, empowering developers to create digital wallets, budget trackers, investment applications, and more.”

In January 2021, Dapi raised $3 million in funding, bringing its total capital raised to $5.2 million courtesy of investors including the Pioneer Fund, Y Combinator, and BECO Capital. The company began the year partnering with NymCard, a banking-as-a-service provider headquartered in the UAE. The strategic agreement will enable end customers to top up their card accounts from any local bank account in real-time and at lower cost.

“We are very excited to have Dapi onboard,” NymCard VP of Strategic Partnerships Nabil Tabbara said. “Our strategic partnership with Dapi solves a major pain point for clients who are looking to build frictionless card programs. This is a big step forward for the region’s fintech ecosystem as we combine our effort to help them become more profitable.”

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Indonesian Fintech Flip Raises $55 Million; Visa Launches Crypto-Back Cards in LATAM

Indonesian Fintech Flip Raises $55 Million; Visa Launches Crypto-Back Cards in LATAM
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, MasterCard, Nordigen

Courtesy of Tencent, Block (formerly known as Square), and existing investor Insight Partners, Indonesian consumer payments platform Flip has secured a $55 million addition to its Series B round. Also involved in the funding were a handful of individual investors including Checkout.com CEO Guillaume Pousaz, DoorDash executive Gokul Rajaram, and former Venmo COO Michael Vaughan.

No updated valuation information was included in the funding announcement. The company has raised a total of $120 million since inception three years ago. Flip raised $48 million in Series B funding in December 2021.

Flip enables millions of Indonesians to access P2P payments with interbank transfers to more than 100 Indonesian banks. The company also offers international remittances, e-wallet top-ups, and business solutions for employee payroll, customer refunds, invoice and supplier payments, as well as international transfers. More than $12 billion in transactions a year are processed on Flip’s platform.

“The growth opportunity of the Indonesian digital economy is vast with its massive population and favorable demographics, Flip co-founder and CEO Rafi Putra Arriyan said. “We are laser-focused on helping millions of Indonesians, both individuals and businesses, execute various money transactions at a low cost through our platform.”

Flip plans to use the new capital to increase headcount, especially with regard to engineering and product development. The company also will invest in new products and technology development to both enhance quality of service and power further expansion.

Crypto may be a fighting word in El Salvador these days, which has hitched its economy to the fate of digital assets like nowhere else. But the move to bring cryptocurrency-based solutions to Latin America is still going strong. Visa announced late this week that it is launching the first crypto cards in Latin America – targeting Brazil and Argentina for the debut of its new products.

As reported in Crypto News and other media outlets that picked up the story from Expansión, Visa has partnered with a number of fintech companies in the region to issue cards that will enable users to receive cashback in Bitcoin when they make payments. In Argentina, Visa’s partners include cryptocurrency exchange Lemon Cash, which will offer 2% Bitcoin cashback Visa cards. Visa also has teamed up with Argentinian cryptocurrency trading platform Satoshi Tango and Crypto.com. In Brazil, Visa is working with Alterbank and Zro Bank.

“The cryptocurrency ecosystem continues to gain momentum in the region with increased investment, more consumer adoption, and more crypto-enabled use cases,” Visa SVP of Products and Innovation for Latin America and the Caribbean Romina Seltzer said. “We will continue to build on our strong strategy to build the future of crypto and payments for our customers, clients, partners, and consumers.”

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Photo by Artem Beliaikin

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook