Author: David Penn

Socure and Middesk Forge Industry-First Integrated KYB/KYC Verification Solution

Socure and Middesk Forge Industry-First Integrated KYB/KYC Verification Solution
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Socure
  • Identity verification and fraud solution provider Socure is teaming up with business verification and identity platform Middesk.
  • The partnership is the first instance in which two Know Your Business (KYB) and Know Your Customer (KYC0 innovators have created an integrated, end-to-end business verification solution.
  • Socure, a Finovate alum since 2013, has raised more than $646 million in funding.

Digital identity verification and fraud solutions provider Socure announced an industry-first partnership this week with business verification and identity platform Middesk. The integration combines Socure’s real-time, predictive analytics identity verification and fraud prevention solution with Middesk’s business entity verification technology to enhance the ability of B2B companies to accurately verify their customers. The collaboration marks the first time that two innovators in the Know Your Business (KYB) and Know Your Customer (KYC) space have created an integrated solution for end-to-end business verification.

“With our partnership, B2B companies will achieve an incremental lift in their business due to Socure’s industry-leading accuracy and coverage of our identity verification and fraud risk prediction solutions,” Socure CEO and founder Johnny Ayers said. “This accuracy leads to the auto-approval of more good consumers and creates increased conversion rates and a higher assurance of onboarding trustworthy business customers.”

The integration will help B2B companies verify not only the details of new business customers such as name, address, and tax ID, but also the personal details for that business’ beneficial owners. The addition of Socure’s digital identity verification and fraud platform will ease and streamline the process through which Middesk customers can authenticate the associated beneficial owners of the businesses they register and onboard. The partnership could be a major boon for businesses in regulated industries – including banks, financial services companies, and insurance companies – that require a high degree of business identity verification. The collaboration also should prove helpful to entities such as B2B marketplaces that serve gig economy businesses and entrepreneurs who often have smaller or more incomplete data footprints that can make KYB more challenging.

Middesk co-founder and CEO Kyle Mack said that the partnership would help Middesk customers who are eager to tackle the issues of identity verification. “Customers can now leverage the Socure integration to validate personal attributes of beneficial owners,” Mack said. “Additionally, Socure delivers key risk insights that determine the likelihood that someone’s identity is legitimate, and applicants are who they claim to be, which provides even more value to our customers in uncertain, but growing market conditions.”

Founded in 2012 and making its Finovate debut a year later at FinovateFall, Socure has grown into a leading identity verification solution provider. With more than 1,000 financial institutions, government agencies, and enterprises using on the company’s verification technology, Socure reported in May that it had reached record customer growth of 236%, and currently includes companies such as EarnUp and fellow Finovate alum Sezzle among its financial services clients. Also in May, Socure introduced new Chief Financial Officer Krish Venkataraman.

“I’ve long had the sense that, no matter what type of business you’re in, solving for identity verification was critical to operating in the next phase of the internet,” Venkataraman said when his appointment was announced. “What’s really becoming clear is that the line of demarcation between a real identity and how that identity operates in the digital world no longer exists. A person’s identity is how they access everything they want and need to do, and today, those things almost all happen online.” Venkataraman called Socure “the identity verification layer for the Internet.”

Headquartered in New York City, Socure has raised more than $646 million in funding. The company’s investors include Accel, T. Rowe Price, and ff Venture Capital.

Photo by Pixabay

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Eight Alums Raised More Than $984 Million in Q2 2022

Eight Alums Raised More Than $984 Million in Q2 2022
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Allied Payment Network, Altro, Autobooks, Backbase, Chekk, Crowdz, David's column, Funding, Fundings, Quarterly Funding, SumUp, Thought Machine

We may have missed an alum or two. But with the second quarter of 2022 in the books, here’s a look at our Finovate alumni funding for April, May, and June of this year.

As of our current count, eight Finovate alums have raised more than $984 million in Q2 of 2022. Of the eight alums that received funding in the quarter just ended, two – Allied Payment Network and Chekk – did not disclose the total amount of their investments.

Two of the quarter’s biggest investments were received in June, giving that month the lion’s share of capital raised by Finovate alums in the second quarter of the year.

Previous quarterly comparisons

  • Q2 2021: More than $2.8 billion raised by 14 alums
  • Q2 2020: More than $975 million raised by 15 alums
  • Q2 2019: More than $1.8 billion raised by 29 alums
  • Q2 2018: More than $1.5 billion raised by 25 alums
  • Q2 2017: More than $726 million raised by 25 alums

As we noted last year around this time, it is not unusual for second quarters to produce more moderate funding numbers compared to other quarters. And, as with last year, April proved to be an especially “cruel” month for fintech funding – at least as measured by our alums – with only FinovateEurope alum and relative newcomer Crowdz reporting funding that month.

That said, this year’s Q2 haul surpassed that of two of the previous five second quarters – and with significantly fewer alums participating.

Top Equity Investments

  • SumUp: $624 million
  • ThoughtMachine: $160 million
  • Backbase: $122 million

The top equity investment for the quarter was far and away the $624 million raised by London-based e-commerce innovator SumUp. In fact, all three of the top equity investments in Q2 of 2022 were greater than the largest investment in the previous quarter. SumUp’s massive capital infusion rivals all Finovate alum investments since NuBank raised $750 million in the second quarter of 2021.

Backbase’s fundraising of $122 million was notable because it was the first time the company had sought outside capital in its nearly 20 years of existence.

Here is our detailed alum funding report for Q2 2022.

April: $10 million raised by one alum

May: More than $178 million raised by three alums

June: More than $796 million raised by four alums

If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the second quarter of 2022 and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at [email protected]. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum not included.

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Arkose Labs Integrates with Ping Identity to Better Defend Against Bot and Human-Led Fraud Attacks

Arkose Labs Integrates with Ping Identity to Better Defend Against Bot and Human-Led Fraud Attacks
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Arkose Labs, Daily news, Ping Identity
  • Finovate Best of Show winner Arkose Labs announced an integration with Ping Identity.
  • The partnership will combine Arkose’s Fraud Deterrence Platform with Ping Identity’s PingOne DaVinci no-code identity orchestration service.
  • Arkose Labs made its Finovate debut in 2019. Ping Identity has been a Finovate alum since its appearance at FinovateEurope in 2012.

Fraud deterrence and account security specialist Arkose Labs announced an integration with fellow Finovate alum Ping Identity. Arkose Labs will leverage Ping Identity’s no-code identity orchestration service, PingOne DaVinci, to create an additional level of protection against both bot and human-led fraud attacks.

The integration blends Ping Identity’s identity and access management (IAM) technology with the Arkose Fraud Deterrence Platform. The combined offering will enable enterprise clients to better identify authorized users sooner, reducing friction during account registration and log in. The technology also reduces emphasis on multi-factor authentication, creating an even more seamless experience for users.

“Arkose Labs is very excited to integrate our leading fraud detection and protection platform into DaVinci,” Arkose Labs Chief Product Officer Ashish Jain said. “Together with Ping we are providing a best-in-class experience to end users while helping to protect a company’s digital environment from malicious attacks.”

The Arkose Labs/Ping Identity partnership comes as the number of active fraudsters has grown by 10x since 2019 – according to the Arkose Global Network. Additionally, Arkose noted that consumer, account-based fraud still represents almost 33% of all cybercrime losses. Firms that have embraced Arkose Labs’ technology have seen their ability to improve bot detection by 90% or more and an improvement in authorized user throughput of 70% or more.

Partnering with Ping Identity should only enhance Arkose’s ability to help its customers defend themselves against cyberfraud. Companies that have teamed up to use PingIdentity’s PingOne DaVinci solutions – via Ping Identity’s Global Technology Partner Program – have been able to deliver protected user experiences in industries ranging from finance and e-commerce to gaming and consumer technology.

“Ping Identity is committed to expanding our technology partner ecosystem to deliver better, more frictionless customer experiences,” Ping Identity SVP of Product Management Loren Russon said. “Our partnership with Arkose Labs leverages PingOne DaVinci’s seamless orchestration to ensure dynamic user journeys are delivered quickly and efficiently at every stage of the user journey.”

Arkose Labs won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2019. The company returned to the Finovate stage two years later for FinovateFall where it demonstrated its Fraud and Abuse Prevention Platform. Headquartered in San Francisco, California and founded in 2017, Arkose Labs has raised more than $106 million in funding from investors including the SoftBank Vision Fund, the Sony Innovation Fund, and PayPal Ventures.

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Finovate Global U.K. Edition: Dynamic Planner Secures Investment from FPE Capital; Starling Bank Reaches Profitability

Finovate Global U.K. Edition: Dynamic Planner Secures Investment from FPE Capital; Starling Bank Reaches Profitability
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Dynamic Planner, Feedzai, FICO, Finovate Global

Dynamic Planner, a risk-based financial planning firn based in the U.K., has secured what the company is calling a “significant investment” from private equity growth firm FPE Capital. Terms of the investment were not disclosed, but the additional funding is designed to help accelerate Dynamic Planner’s expansion plans in the U.K. and Europe.

Dynamic Planner CEO Ben Goss praised FPE Capital for not only for backing successful software companies in the past and helping them scale their businesses, but also for sharing values that Dynamic Planner holds dear. “They also share our vision for solving our industry’s major challenges through technology such as process digitization, customer experience, investing sustainably for future generations, and omni-channel financial planning in a post-pandemic world,” Goss said.

Making its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in London earlier this year, Dynamic Planner offers a single platform that enables financial advisory firms to match clients with investment portfolios that meet their individual needs and goals. The company’s technology provides client profiling to ensure that client preferences are accurately assessed and reflected in the portfolio composition process. Dynamic Planner also offers whole-of-market fund research, cash flow modeling, and pre-populated reports to make it easier for advisors to provide holistic, compliant investment portfolio reviews and reports. Via its SaaS platform, Dynamic Planner serves nearly 40% of wealth advice firms in the U.K., and more than 150 asset managers representing $300 billion (£250 billion) in assets. The company is on pace to surpass $12 million (£10 million) in annual recurring license revenues in 2022.

In addition to making its first appearance on the Finovate stage earlier this year, Dynamic Planner also launched its Client Access solution. Unveiled in March, the new offering leverages psychometric risk and sustainability profiling to make remote financial advice more precise and engaging.

“While remote advice is here to stay, it can be a challenge for advisors to make the process engaging or easy to understand for clients, as well as build deep relationships which ultimately result in better outcomes,” Dynamic Planner Sales & Marketing Director Yasmina Siadatan explained. Siadatan called the new solution “a fundamental piece of the hybrid advice puzzle.”

Headquartered in Reading, Berkshire, Dynamic Planner was founded in 2003. The company was named “Adviser Technology Provider of the Year” at the Money Marketing Awards in 2021 and, that same year, won top honors as the “Leading Independent Planning Tool Provider” at the Schroders U.K. Platform Awards.

Speaking of fintech in the U.K., a hearty congratulations to Starling Bank, the pioneering U.K.-based digital bank launched in 2014 by CEO Anne Boden. The bank announced this week that it had achieved its first full year of profitability, delivering a pre-tax profit of $38.4 million (£32.1 million). The news represents a major milestone for the company, which produced a pre-tax loss of $37.7 million (£31.5 million) the previous year.

“With our first full year of profitability, we’ve placed ourselves firmly in a category of one,” Boden said in a statement. “As an innovative digital bank with a sustainable business model and a strong balance sheet, we are generating our own capital and we stand apart from both the old banks and other challengers.”

A fully-licensed and regulated bank, Starling Bank offers personal, business, joint, euro and dollar current accounts, as well as a card for youth. Headquartered in London and maintaining offices in Southampton, Cardiff, and Dublin, Starling Bank also offers a B2B banking-as-a-service and software-as-a-service proposition, leveraging the same proprietary technology Starling uses to power its own operations.

Earlier this month, Starling Bank unveiled its Bills Manager solution for small businesses. The new feature gives small businesses greater flexibility when making Direct Debit or standing orders by taking funds from money set aside in one of their available Savings Spaces rather than from the business’ main account. The solution helps small businesses streamline their finances by making budget forecasting and cost management easier. Bills Manager seamlessly integrates with popular accounting platforms such as Xero and FreeAgent – both of which are available via the Starling Marketplace – as well as with Starling’s own bookkeeping solution I.

“Our small business customers requested this feature, so we’ve delivered,” Starling Bank Chief Banking Officer Helen Bierton said. “Uptake of Bills Manager has been strong among our personal current account customers and we’re confident it will help hundreds of thousands of small businesses better manage their money, too.”

Check out our conversation with Starling’s Boden moments after she delivered her keynote address at FinovateSpring in May.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

  • Malaysia-based Bank Islam launched its cloud-native, digital banking offering, Be U.
  • Bangladesh’s BRAC Bank announced a partnership with TerraPay to enable faster cross-border payments.
  • Al Rajhi Bank Malaysia partnered with financial risk management platform Feedzai.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Sudan-based fintech Bloom secured $6.5 million in seed funding.
  • Israel’s Open-Finance.ai teamed up with FICO, combining open banking with real-time credit assessment to improve the originations process.
  • Saudi Arabia-based fintech FOODICS inked strategic partnership with Alinma Bank.

Central and Southern Asia

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DeepTarget Helps Banks and Credit Unions Personalize Customer Communications

DeepTarget Helps Banks and Credit Unions Personalize Customer Communications
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, DeepTarget
  • Financial services digital marketing innovator DeepTarget has launched its 3D Story on the Go product extension to its Digital Experience Platform (DXP).
  • The new solution enables banks and credit unions to add immersive and adaptive user experiences to email, SMS, and social media marketing campaigns.
  • Alabama-based DeepTarget made its Finovate debut at FinovateWest 2020.

DeepTarget has unveiled the new 3D Story On the Go product extension to its Digital Experience Platform (DXP). The new addition leverages consumer and business intelligence, as well as AI, to help banks and credit unions personalize customer communications and launch more effective marketing campaigns via email, SMS, and social media.

“Today’s consumers are digital users first and expect their financial institutions to deliver seamless, personalized, relevant experiences,” DeepTarget CEO Preetha Pulusani said. “As much as personalization is a growing expectation for consumers, achieving it is a growing challenge for many financial institutions, especially in understanding how and when to leverage consumer data.”

DeepTarget’s 3D Story On the Go enables banks and credit unions to boost engagement through some of the most widely-used channels by creating immersive and adaptive, prismatic user experiences. These AI-powered and insights-based, visually appealing experiences can be used for onboarding new customers, sending personalized offers and promotions, product announcements, and more. Crane Credit Union VP of Marketing Michael Hostetler highlighted the way DeepTarget’s technology has brought additional value to its email marketing efforts. “We use email extensively to communicate with our members based on DeepTarget’s AI-based predictive campaigns,” Hostetler said. “With 3D Story On the Go, it will be great to easily deliver a new, elevated level of AI-based personalized experience to our members.”

Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama, DeepTarget made its Finovate debut at FinovateWest in 2020. At the event, the company demoed its 3D StoryTeller solution which brings an innovative, 3D user experience to DeepTarget’s Digital Experience Platform. The new offering helps financial institutions take advantage of social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat.

The introduction of 3D Story On the Go comes weeks after DeepTarget announced that MDT Credit Union, a credit union service organization (CUSO), would offer the DeepTarget integration into the Banno Digital Platform to its credit union customers. MDT President and CEO Larry Nichols underscored the importance of the digital experience to credit unions and their members, noting that DeepTarget’s technology helps them “maintain their differentiators – human connection, empathy, and exceptional service – within the digital network.”

Photo by Maksim Goncharenok

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Embracing Change and Innovation: A Conversation with Starling Bank Founder and CEO Anne Boden

Embracing Change and Innovation: A Conversation with Starling Bank Founder and CEO Anne Boden
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: CEO Interview, Interview, Speaker series

If there were a Challenger Bank Hall of Fame, then rest assured that Anne Boden, who founded U.K.-based Starling Bank in 2014 and is the challenger bank’s CEO, would be prominently featured therein. As we learned in our conversation with Ms. Boden, her inspiration for founding the U.K.’s first digital bank was driven by both the opportunities presented by new technologies as well as a banking industry that was still significantly shell-shocked from the Great Financial Crisis of 2007 and 2008.

Headquartered in London, Starling Bank now has more than three million accounts and four different account types. Voted Britain’s “Best Current Account” five years in a row, Starling Bank maintains offices in Cardiff and Southampton, as well as London, and still has zero brick-and-mortar branches. Starling Bank secured its banking license from the Bank of England in 2016, launched its first mobile personal current account in 2017, and introduced the country’s first digital business bank account in 2018.

And just this week, Starling Bank celebrated its first full year of profitability, turning a profit of $38.3 million (£32 million) for the last financial year.

Below are a few excerpts from our conversation with Ms. Boden at FinovateSpring in San Francisco in May.

On the decision to launch a fully-digital challenger bank

(T)he banking sector, back in 2014, was still looking backwards. They were still looking at the financial crisis, trying to repair their balance sheets, trying to repair their financials, and they weren’t really looking forward about what they could do to improve customer experience or customer satisfaction. I went around the world, talking to big banks and talking to technology companies and asking what they were doing. I came to the decision in 2014: wouldn’t it be great to start a new bank? Wouldn’t it be great to have a new bank with all new technology, a different way of engaging with customers, being fair to customers? And here we are in 2022 and things have gone from strength to strength.

On the challenge and opportunity of digital transformation in financial services

Organizations have become far more fixated on minimizing the risk of change. “Let’s do small projects around the core. Let’s not change the core. Let’s make big decisions at the senior level. Don’t empower people.” But in order for big banks to be more successful and compete with the new startups such as Starling, they have to have new technology, but above all a culture of being prepared to change. I am trying to empower people – the CTOs, the CIOs – to knock on the door of the CEO and say: “We can be better. We can embark upon technology projects. And we can compete with the new guys.”

On the present and future of Starling Bank

In the U.K. we’re very, very successful. We’ve built a whole new technology stack. We have a new banking license, three million customers, (and) we have something like eight percent of market share in business banking. That is huge. We’ve done in three years what some banks have done in 300. But that’s because we have this remarkable technology stack which we call Engine, and we have lots of banks around the world asking us if they can use Engine. We don’t plan to get a banking license in the States, but banks in the States will be able to use our Engine technology. So we’re going to be software-as-a-service, based on Engine, so lots of businesses around the world can have a bit of the Starling magic.

Check out the rest of our interview on FinovateTV.

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People Driven Credit Union Partners with Larky to Deliver Customized Push Notifications to Members

People Driven Credit Union Partners with Larky to Deliver Customized Push Notifications to Members
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Larky
  • Customer engagement and communications innovator Larky is partnering with People Driven Credit Union (PDCU).
  • The partnership will enable the Michigan-area credit union to deploy Larky’s nudge platform to send predictive communications and customized push notifications to its members.
  • A Finovate alum since 2014, Larky also recently teamed up with Michigan State University Federal Credit Union, which will also deploy the company’s nudge solution.

People Driven Credit Union (PDCU), a full-service financial institution based in Southfield, Michigan, has teamed up with customer engagement specialist Larky. The credit union will leverage Larky’s nudge solution to send predictive communications to its target audiences. The partnership also will enable PDCU to deploy customizable push notification campaigns to market branch projects and initiatives without requiring additional staff, time, or cost.

Once integrated into a financial institution’s mobile banking app, Larky’s nudge provides lock-screen alerts and/or location-based notifications to guide account holders toward relevant and useful financial information and opportunities such as promotions for loan offers. Larky’s nudge platform enables FIs to create, edit, manage, and deploy tailored, turnkey mobile push notification campaigns based on their specific marketing priorities. The result boosts app engagement and encourages use of the FI’s mobile banking app.

“Today’s credit union member is increasingly digital-first,” People Driven Credit Union VP of Marketing Dave Sullivan said. “They check and use their mobile devices far more than they walk into the branch of a credit union.” Sullivan added that this meant ensuring that PDCU provides a quality member experience via the mobile channel that meets member needs. “Larky’s nudge makes it possible for us to share relevant, timely messages with our members regardless of their location and better support them with choice of product or service as they move throughout their daily lives,” Sullivan said.

People Driven Credit Union was founded in 1928 as Detroit Federal Employees Credit Union. The institution changed its name to Peoples Trust Credit Union in 2005 and, in 2014, merged with Community-Driven Credit Union to become People Driven Credit Union. PDCU currently has assets of more than $342 million and more than 25,000 members in Genesee, Lapeer, Livingston, Macomb, Oakland, St. Clair, Washtenaw, and Wayne counties in Michigan.

Larky’s partnership with PDCU comes just a few months after the company announced that Michigan State University Federal Credit Union would deploy Larky’s nudge platform to provide tailored messaging to its 300,000+ members. In beta testing before the launch, Michigan State University FCU has experienced an aggregate tap rate of more than 16% for its nudge messages, with the test’s most successful message – the company’s satisfaction survey – earning a 12% completion rate.

“Mobile will continue to shape the future of banking,” Larky CEO and co-founder Gregg Hammerman said. “Credit union members are accustomed to – and often prefer – leveraging the mobile channel for everything from ordering a cup of coffee to securing flights abroad. This familiarity is also seen in the usage of push notifications, keeping members abreast of a transaction in progress. With the nudge platform, credit unions and other FI leaders can now bring this experience that is widely known and encountered in the retail environment to the banking industry.”

Founded in 2012, Larky is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

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MoEngage Leverages Personalization to Solve the Engagement Challenge for Brands

MoEngage Leverages Personalization to Solve the Engagement Challenge for Brands
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Funding, MoEngage

Insights-led customer engagement platform MoEngage made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2019 in New York. Three years later, the company returned to the Finovate stage for FinovateEurope 2022 in London. At this year’s conference, MoEngage demonstrated its full-stack solution featuring customer analytics, automated cross-channel engagement, and AI-driven personalization.

“71% of banking customers expect to receive personalized digital offers yet banks fail to do so because they have data silos,” MoEngage Senior Director Saket Toshniwal said during his demo at FinovateEurope in March. “We are here to solve that (problem), leveraging MoEngage.”

Founded in 2014, MoEngage enables hyper-personalization at scale across multiple channels including mobile, email, SMS, web, on-site and in-app messaging, and more. The MoEngage platform leverages AI-powered automation and optimization to enable brands to analyze behavior and serve consumers with personalized communications at every stage of engagement.

“Using MoEngage technology to create effective campaigns based on customers insight will increase your engagement, increase retention, and definitely increase your revenue,” Toshniwal said.

And while MoEngage’s return to the Finovate stage was certainly a big deal for the company, we’re willing to bet that the $77 million raised at the end of May represents an even bigger deal for the San Francisco, California-based firm. The Series E round, led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and B Capital, represents the third round of funding raised by MoEngage in the past year. The company secured $23.5 million in July 2021 and another $30 million in December of that year.

Also participating in the round were existing investors Steadview Capital, Multiples Alternative Asset Management, Eight Roads Ventures, and Matrix Partners India. MoEngage said in a statement that it would use the new capital to deepen its presence in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, as well as fuel its expansion into new markets in Latin America and Australia. The investment also will give MoEngage the ability to pursue strategic acquisitions that would extend the platform’s capabilities and bring greater value to users.

“Our rapid growth and the leadership position is a validation that consumer brands today are moving beyond campaign-centric tools and adopting an insights-led multi-channel approach to customer engagement,” MoEngage CEO and co-founder Raviteja Dodda said when the Series E was announced. “We now have over 1,200 customers in 35 countries and more than 650 employees across our offices in the U.S., U.K., Germany, UAE, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand.”

Photo by Rodolfo Clix

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Mastercard Forges Multi-Year Strategic Alliance with Quantum Computing Company D-Wave Systems

Mastercard Forges Multi-Year Strategic Alliance with Quantum Computing Company D-Wave Systems
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, MasterCard
  • Mastercard announced a multi-year strategic alliance with quantum computing leader D-Wave.
  • The partnership will explore applications for quantum computing technology in financial services.
  • D-Wave builds both annealing and gate-model quantum computers, the only firm in the world to do so.

Will quantum computing take the place of crypto in terms of the fintech zeitgeist?

Mastercard announced this week that it has forged a multi-year strategic alliance with D-Wave Systems, a leader in quantum computing systems, software, and services. The goal of the collaboration will be to accelerate the adoption of quantum-based computing solutions.

Specifically the partnership will seek to develop “quantum-hybrid” solutions to solve problems in consumer loyalty and rewards, cross-border settlement, and fraud management. The two companies will use D-Wave’s annealing quantum computers and quantum hybrid solvers through the Leap quantum cloud service to deliver real-time access to quantum applications powered by Mastercard’s network.

“People expect hyper-personalized experiences,” Mastercard Chief Innovation Officer Ken Moore said. “Quantum computing’s unique ability to analyze huge numbers of potential combinations can deliver optimal solutions that will improve efficiency and provide choice.” Moore said that the partnership will explore applications of quantum computing technology that offer “practical, real-world” solutions in financial services.

The world’s first commercial supplier of quantum computers, D-Wave is the only firm building both annealing quantum computers and gate-model quantum computers. D-Wave’s technology has been used to solve challenges in a wide range of fields including logistics, drug discovery, cybersecurity, and financial modeling. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, D-Wave has partnered with firms such as NEC Corporation, Volkswagen, Lockheed Martin, and the University of Southern California. PSP Investments, Goldman Sachs, and BDC Capital are among D-Wave’s investors.

“D-Wave and Mastercard have a shared vision of harnessing the power of technology to positively affect business and society,” D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz said. “This alliance supports that vision by delivering quantum innovation that will tackle increasingly complex problem sets across applications like loyalty programs, fraud management and anti-money laundering in financial services and, ultimately, unlock more value for customers.”

Photo by Antonio Friedemann

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The Conversation Continues: Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast Featuring Upstart, Alliant CU, and More!

The Conversation Continues: Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast Featuring Upstart, Alliant CU, and More!
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Podcasting

Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast have spent much of the first half of 2022 featuring Best of Show winners from FinovateEurope and FinovateSpring. Be sure to check out our podcast columns from the spring and summer for any Best of Show interviews you haven’t seen yet.

You also may not have caught some of the Finovate Podcast’s non-Best of Show coverage. Whether it’s talking with venture capitalists on the next big thing in fintech or checking in on credit unions that are partnering with innovative fintech startups, the Finovate Podcast remains one of the best ways to keep current with what counts in the ever-changing world of fintech innovation.

To this end, here’s a look at some of the recent Finovate podcasts you might have missed.

Find the Finovate podcast at Soundcloud and follow Greg Palmer on Twitter for the latest in programming news and updates.

Jeff Keltner, SVP of Business Development, Upstart

Host Greg Palmer talks with Upstart Senior Vice President of Business Development Jeff Keltner on why the universe of creditworthy customers is about to grow dramatically thanks to the combination of AI and lending. Episode 123.

I was trained as an engineer and spent my career at the intersection of business and the application of technologies – first at Google where we launched what is now Google Cloud and Workspace. Coming here to Upstart, we really felt like the application of modern technology, and particularly AI, to help lenders produce a better experience for borrowers and better credit decisioning outcomes that help both the institutions and the borrowers was something that really was “of the moment” to happen. That’s what we came here to do.

Rob Perrelli, Vice President of Partnership Development, Alliant Credit Union

Host Greg Palmer and Rob Perrelli, VP of Partnership Development at Alliant CU, discuss how to build successful partnerships and create advocates. Episode 122.

Prior to joining Alliant, I worked with fintechs mainly from a private label perspective to support our direct-to-consumer offering. So it was really interesting. At the time we developed that strategy, where we’d made the choice to go digital-first – even though we had a super-large net of branch representation in our geographies – we were pretty clear that partnerships with fintechs was the way to go forward as we offered new solutions to our customers. With Alliant, we are working with a number of different fintechs in the unsecured, solar, and home equity and improvement spaces to grow our reach nationally and introduce borrowers to Alliant membership and its many benefits.

William Crowder, Managing Partner, Aperture Venture Capital

Host Greg Palmer checks in with Aperture Venture Capital Managing Partner William Crowder for a VC perspective on security, ransomware attacks, and what we can do to be less vulnerable to cybercrime. Episode 121.

I am one of the founding partners of Aperture Venture Capital. We are a relatively-speaking new fund, with a focus on investing at the intersection of financial innovation and culture. If you think about where financial innovation and fintech meet diversity and the opportunities to build a more inclusive economy, then that’s where you’ll find us. We’re backed by some major corporations because we have a fairly unique model in terms of how we approach working with companies. We have folks who’ve invested in us, including FIS, Truist, PayPal, Bank of America, and a few others we have not yet announced publicly.

Amir Kabir, Partner, AV8 Ventures

Host Greg Palmer chats with Amir Kabir, Partner, AV8 Ventures, on what we need to know about embedded insurance and how insurtech will shape fintech in the coming years. Episode 120.

I am currently a partner at AV8 Ventures, which is an early stage fund in the Bay Area (that) started around three years ago. We are in our second fund with around $180 million – with a similarly sized first fund. We have four areas or sectors that we focus on – which, in part, have some overlap. One is enterprise, which incorporates SaaS and infrastructure software. The other one is a healthcare practice. The third one is kind of frontier tech. And the fourth one, which I’m leading, is the fintech and insurtech practice. We typically invest in seed to Series A, $1 million to $5 million – though we are flexible in that regard.

Alison Harwood, Vice Head of Marketplace Banking, Varengold

Host Greg Palmer catches up with Alison Harwood, Vice Head of Marketplace Banking at Varengold Bank, on the emergence of VC funding-as-a-service, Varengold’s new VC offering, and fintech trends for 2022. Episode 119.

In “marketplace banking,” we are working with fintech lenders across Europe to support their business through wholesale debt financing and through banking-as-a-service regulatory fronting business where we are supporting their launch into new markets under our banking license. One of the milestones for our business last year was putting together some retained profits (and) setting them aside to help service our clients more holistically, enabling us to subscribe for equity when they are coming up to a Series A (or) Series B funding.

Photo by Seej Nguyen

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Wealthtech Orion Advisor Solutions Acquires TownSquare Capital, Redtail Technology

Wealthtech Orion Advisor Solutions Acquires TownSquare Capital, Redtail Technology
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, Orion
  • Wealth management solutions provider Orion Advisor Solutions has closed two acquisitions in recent weeks.
  • The Omaha, Nebraska-based fintech closed its acquisition of CRM company Redtail Technology in June, and finished its acquisition of investment and trading platform TownSquare Capital in July. Terms were not disclosed about either transaction.
  • Orion Advisor Solutions made its Finovate debut in 2019 at FinovateFall, demonstrating its trading and rebalancing platform, Eclipse.

Wealthtech innovator Orion Advisor Solutions has recently closed a pair of acquisitions. Both deals are designed to help Orion expand its wealth management business and give financial advisors a “single-source solution to prospect, plan, invest, and achieve,” said Orion founder and CEO Eric Clarke.

At the beginning of the month, the Omaha, Nebraska-based company announced that it has completed its acquisition of investment and trading platform TownSquare Capital (TownSquare). Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but the acquisition will add $6 billion in turnkey asset management program (TAMP) assets to Orion’s wealth management platform.

Post-acquisition, TownSquare will continue to operate as a standalone entity, serving as an indirect subsidiary of Orion Advisor Solutions. Headquartered in Provo, Utah, and founded in 2016, TownSquare offers custom investment solutions for institutions, wealth advisors, accounting firms, high net worth individuals, and banks.

“Combining TownSquare with Orion’s wealth management and advisor technology capabilities brings tremendous value to financial advisors and their clients,” Orion Chief of OCIO Services Kurt Brown said. “With the full weight of Orion’s resources and relationships behind us, we can continue providing best-in-class investment strategies to the advisors and clients we serve.”

Orion’s TownSquare announcement comes just one month after the wealth management firm reported that it has completed the acquisition of web-based client relationship management (CRM) software company Redtail Technology. Announced this spring, the combination of the two firms will provide financial advisors with a range of technology and outsourced solutions to help them serve their clients better. Specifically, the integration of Redtail’s CRM technology into Orion’s open architecture will give advisors a foundational tech stack courtesy of an integrated “most-in-one” platform that is built around a CRM hub.

“Redtail joining Orion will greatly benefit financial advisors who seek an integrated suite of technology to grow their businesses,” Orion’s President of CRM Brian McLaughlin said. “We aim to solve some of advisors’ tech integration challenges by bringing together the technology pieces they need to be successful and freeing advisors up to spend more time engaging with their clients and prospects in meaningful ways.”

With Redtail on board, Orion gained insights into more than $3 trillion in assets under management. Before closing its deal with Redtail, the company had been serving 4.7 million technology accounts and supported more than 2,300 independent advisory firms representing $1.9 trillion in assets under administration and $60 billion of wealth management assets.

Founded in 1999, Orion Advisor Solutions made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2019. At the event, the company demoed its fully-integrated trading and rebalancing platform, Eclipse. The technology leverages ASTRO’s institutional-grade portfolio optimization engine to create custom Direct Indexing products, as well as provide advisors with client-specific overlays to strategies that feature custom ESG solutions.

Photo by Leonardo Rossatti

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Singapore’s TurnKey Lender Raises $10 Million in New Equity and Debt Funding

Singapore’s TurnKey Lender Raises $10 Million in New Equity and Debt Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, Funding, Turnkey Lender

Lending automation platform and decision management solution and services provider TurnKey Lender has secured $10 million in new funding. The amount raised represents a blend of both equity financing and debt. Led by OTB Ventures, the round featured participation from German development finance institution DEG and Vertex Ventures.

TurnKey Lender will use the additional capital to help expand its operations across North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. This will help the company take advantage of the growing embrace of embedded finance, especially embedded lending.

“We are pleased to have raised our latest level of funding and to continue partnering with great investors,” TurnKey Lender CEO and co-founder Dmitry Voronenko said. “This will turbocharge the next stage of growth. We believe that embedded lending will soon be part of any customer relationship globally.”

In addition to its fundraising news, TurnKey Lender announced that it had appointed a new chair for its board of directors, Christian Morales. Morales, who participated in this week’s funding round, brings 40 years of senior experience in leading technology companies. As chair, he will be involved in supporting a wide range of the company’s initiatives in terms of revenue growth, hiring, as well as both strategic and client relationships.

TurnKey Lender offers credit scoring, decision automation, and loan management for non-bank lenders. The company’s cloud-based technology is geared specifically toward small and medium-sized lending operations, enabling them to “compete with big banks without the big investment.” TurnKey Lender’s platform supports all stages of the loan lifecycle – from application processing and automated decision-making to collection and reporting. The solution also can be readily integrated into both internal and external data sources to provide automated data retrieval and processing. TurnKey Lender’s platform is compatible with a wide variety of lending products, including consumer, microfinance, payday, auto, mortgage, SME, and P2P loans.

Making its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia 2016, TurnKey Lender returned to the Finovate stage a year later for FinovateSpring in San Jose, California. In the years since, the company has grown into a leading fintech provider with 180 clients and 50 million end users in more than 50 countries. TurnKey Lender’s customers have enjoyed profitable revenue growth of as much as 50% and net retention rates of 126%. The company was founded in 2014.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Photo by Elle Hughes

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