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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
U.S. Bank has agreed to acquire San Francisco, California-based expense and travel management company TravelBank. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but one outlet, Skift, has said that the deal was valued at $200 million.
“We are focused on giving businesses more confidence, control, and convenience in managing payments and expenses,” U.S. Bank Vice Chair of Payment Services Shailesh Kotwal said. “TravelBank will help us accelerate these efforts.”
Founded in 2016, TravelBank offers an all-in-one solution for expense and travel management. Relying on a single platform, reporting model, and subscription price, TravelBank helps employees and businesses control and track expenses, automate traditionally manual processes, streamline both approvals and reporting, and remain compliant. With more than 20,000 customers, TravelBank claims to have reduced business travel spending by its clients by 30% on average, while simultaneously boosting employee morale with a user-friendly design and a travel rewards program. Ahead of this week’s acquisition, the company had raised $35 million in funding from investors including Dreamers VC and DCM Ventures.
“We created TravelBank to provide a single experience for expense reporting and travel management,” co-founder and CEO of TravelBank Duke Chung explained. “Our combined offering with U.S. Bank will be the most comprehensive expense, travel, and payment management solution in the industry.”
Skift further reported that Chung will “move over to the bank” post-acquisition, while TravelBank will continue to support its existing clients.
The acquisition is the fruit of a partnership between the two companies that extends back to September of 2020. In the fall of last year, U.S. Bank integrated TravelBank’s travel and expense management platform into its U.S. Bank Instant Card. The collaboration enabled program administrators to issue Instant Cards directly from their expense management platforms.
With nearly 70,000 employees and $567 billon in assets, U.S. Bancorp is the parent company of U.S. Bank National Association. Headquartered in Minneapolis, the bank serves millions of customers, both in the U.S. and around the world, with a variety of services including consumer and business banking, payments, corporate and commercial banking, wealth management, and investments.
U.S. Bank demonstrated its Card-as-a-Service (CaaS) solution at FinovateFall 2021 in September. The technology enables companies to leverage API integration to extend corporate credit digitally and create a custom virtual payment experience in their ecosystem.
Bank software innovator ebankIT and worldwide money transfer platform Wise (formerly Transferwise) announced today that Wise’s international money transfer service will be the first solution of its kind to be made available on the ebankIT platform marketplace. Relied upon by financial institutions to build up their digital banking service options, the marketplace will enable these firms to add the money transfer service to their offerings without having to integrate it separately on their own.
“We believe in a better future for banking with true omnichannel capabilities – and international transfers are an essential part of this,” ebankIT CEO Renato Oliveira said. “By bringing together Wise, ebankIT, and our clients, we are changing international transfers for everyday people across the world. We’re delighted to offer Wise platform to our clients, so they can instantly tap into Wise’s world-leading infrastructure.”
Wise Platform has 12 distribution partners and 18 banks in 11 countries using the technology, along with seven enterprises. The company notes that 40% of its transfers are delivered in less than 20 seconds, and Wise charges no hidden fees by way of exchange rate mark-ups or other calculations. On average, Wise’s international money transfers are as much as eight times less expensive than those offered by traditional money service firms and other providers.
“For too long, international transfers have been slow, inconvenient, and blighted by traditional providers charging high, hidden fees,” Wise Head of Product Steve Naudé said. “It’s time for change. We aim to set a new global standard for international transfers across the industry. We’re thrilled to be working with ebankIT, a company that shares our vision. Together, along with ebankIT’s network of banks and financial institutions, we can help drag international transfers into the twenty-first century.”
Rebranding as Wise in February, the company formerly known as Transferwise has been a Finovate alum since its appearance on stage at FinovateEurope in 2013. In the years since, the London-based company has reached more than eight million customers worldwide and transfers more than $7.5 billion in customer funds every month. Wise’s technology currently comes pre-integrated in a number of core banking platforms including those from Temenos, Mambu, and Thought Machine.
The company went public on the London Stock Exchange this summer, earning a market valuation of $11 billion. Last month, Wise announced an integration with The Orchard, a subsidiary of Sony Music that specializes in music distribution and artist services. The partnership offers the company a more streamlined way for music labels to make royalty payments to musicians in multiple countries and currencies.
A Finovate Best of Show winner in 2019, ebankIT was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Porto, Portugal. The company’s core-agnostic Omnichannel Digital Banking platform was recognized last year in both Gartner’s Market Guide for Multichannel Digital Banking Solutions and its Market Guide for Digital Banking Platforms. In partnership with Celero, a Canada-based solutions integrator for credit unions and other financial institutions, ebankIT’s technology this year has powered digital transformations at institutions such as Swan Valley Credit Union, 1st Choice Savings and Credit Union, and Entegra Credit Union.
BM Technologies (formerly known as Bank Mobile) has agreed to merge with Seattle-based community lender First Sound Bank for $23 million. The combined entity will be called BMTX Bank and will serve customers across the country digitally while maintaining a community banking division that will continue serving customers in the greater Seattle market.
“This is a thrilling milestone for BM Technologies and is a major step forward in executing our vision to create a disruptive FinTech bank that combines the best of financial technology with a strong and compliant FDIC-insured institution,” BM Technologies, Chair, Founder, and CEO Luvleen Sidhu said.
BMTX will pay up to $7.22 in cash for each share of First Sound Bank common stock, which amounts to approximately $23 million. Subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions, the strategic merger is slated to close in the second half of 2022. The deal is expected to add significantly to the combined company’s revenue, EBITDA, and earnings trajectory over the next one to three years. Sidhu said that the strategic merger will enable BMTX Bank to offer a variety of new services including direct to consumer and small business operations, marketplace lending, robo-advisory, and blockchain-based payment systems.
“As one of the largest digital banking platforms in the country with approximately 2 million accounts, this merger allows BMTX to lead a new wave of financial innovation by enhancing its focus on technology, inclusion, easy-to-use products, and customer education with the mission of creating ‘customers for life,'” Sidhu explained.
Sidhu will serve as Chair and CEO of BMTX Bank, and will be directly responsible for digital banking initiatives. First Sound Bank President and CEO Marty Steele will serve as COO of BMTX Bank and will lead the company’s community banking division.
“As a local bank, we remain committed to our community and are excited about the opportunity to leverage BMTX’s innovative digital banking technology, Banking-as-a-Service business model, low-cost deposit funding, and better access to the capital markets in order to scale our SBA, commercial and private banking, mortgage, and other business lines,” Steele said.
Founded in 2004 with the largest initial capital base of any de novo bank in the Pacific Northwest at the time, First Sound Bank provides commercial banking services for SMEs, not-for-profit organizations, entrepreneurs, and professional service firms in the Puget Sound region. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, First Sound Bank has approximately $150 million in assets.
Formerly known as Bank Mobile, BM Technologies was launched in 2015 with a goal of providing a simple, affordable, and financially empowering, digital-first banking experience. The company went public via SPAC at the beginning of the year, listing on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker BMTX. BM Technologies currently has a market capitalization of $145 million.
The company’s strategic merger announcement comes on the heels of BM Technologies’ Q3 results. Among the quarter’s highlights, BM Technologies reported that serviced deposits topped $2 billion for the first time. The company also earned recognition in the 2021 Finovate Awards in September, winning Best Fintech Partnership courtesy of its collaboration with T-Mobile.
To learn more about BM Technologies, check out our Fireside Chat with Luvleen Sidhu from FinovateFall 2021 in New York.
Three headlines in the cryptocurrency space this week show how seriously Big Tech, Big Fintech, and the world’s largest financial services companies are taking the rise of digital assets. And while each of the three companies listed below varies in the degree to which it is embracing our increasingly crypto-friendly future, their continued interest in the space suggests that the pace of adoption of digital assets – and the proliferation of use cases – is only likely to grow in the months and years to come.
The report is based largely on an interview that Apple CEO Tim Cook had with Aaron Ross Sorkin as part of the DealBook Online Summit sponsored by The New York Times. That said, those looking for a firm commitment from Apple in Cook’s conversation with Sorkin will be disappointed; while Cook expressed interest in cryptocurrencies from a “personal point of view … for awhile” and admitted that he believed that it was “reasonable to own (cryptocurrencies) as part of a diversified portfolio,” the idea of Apple accepting cryptocurrencies as payment for Apple products and services remains just that – an idea. Cook also expressed skepticism toward the notion of Apple investing in cryptocurrencies as part of a corporate investment strategy.
Apple’s relationship with cryptocurrencies has been cautious, to say the least. Back in 2014, Apple removed a number of Bitcoin wallets from its App Store, including one trading and storage app with 120,000 users, and another wallet app from Coinbase. More recently, there has been some softening of Apple’s stance, with Apple Pay VP Jennifer Bailey conceding the the company is “watching” the space and sees “interesting long-term potential” in digital currencies just a few years ago.
It’s worth noting that Apple’s reputation in technology is less as a first-mover and more that of a technology enhancer that often comes along and does a better job at innovations initiated by others. So the idea that Apple’s approach to embracing cryptocurrencies would be similarly slow-rolling is consistent with how the company has long operated. Nevertheless, Apple Pay’s fintech rivals – such as PayPal, Square, and Stripe – have been far more eager to pursue opportunities in crypto. Add to this the fact that Google Pay has teamed up with digital asset marketplace Bakkt in a deal that will enable users to spend Bakkt Card crypto funds directly from their Google Pay accounts. Together, it seems much more likely that a closer relationship between cryptocurrencies and Apple Pay is a question of “when” rather than “if.” As interest in digital currencies accelerate, and the solutions and services from these crypto-friendly fintechs become more widespread and even mainstream, it is hard to imagine Apple Pay remaining on the sidelines.
Revolut Takes Steps Toward Building a Cryptocurrency Exchange – The rumor that aspiring super app Revolut is looking to build a cryptocurrency exchange hinges largely on a job posting at LinkedIn. According to reports, Revolut wants to hire an individual with at least seven years experience in technology and in building order matching engines to lead a technical team to “architect and built Revolut Crypto Exchange.”
The crypto exchange would further establish Revolut as a leading player in the cryptocurrency space and potentially enable the company to diversify its services and create new cash flow, which could help Revolut establish another reliable revenue source going forward. The exchange news also follows reports that Revolut was looking into launching its own crypto token. And while Revolut has not commented on what it has referred to as a “mere rumor”, the report, first shared by Coindesk earlier this fall, does bolster the notion that Revolut is deepening its commitment to digital assets – a space the company has enjoined aggressively since introducing in-app cryptocurrency trading functionality in 2018.
In April of this year, Revolut added 11 new crypto tokens to its platform. The following month, the company launched its public beta for Bitcoin withdrawals. “I said before that 2021 would be the year of crypto and Revolut is here to deliver on that promise,” company Head of Crypto Edward Cooper announced in June when the company revealed that it would add Dogecoin to its current cryptocurrencies offerings for traders. “One of the most popular user requests over the past couple of months has been to add Dogecoin and we have answered the call!”
Revolut has more than 16 million customers around the world, and conducts more than 150 million transactions a month on its platform.
Mastercard Introduces Crypto-Linked Cards for the APAC Region – Also this week, Mastercard announced that it has secured partnerships with a trio of cryptocurrency companies – Amber, Bitkum, and Coinjar – who will issue crypto-funded Mastercard payment cards. The collaboration represents the first APAC-based cryptocurrency service providers (Amber and Bitkum are based in Thailand, Coinjar is headquartered in Australia) to join Mastercard’s Crypto Card Program, an initiative designed to enable companies to offer secure payment cards that meet regulatory requirements with regards to cryptocurrencies.
“Cryptocurrencies are many things to people – an investment, a disruptive technology, or a unique financial tool,” Mastercard EVP for Digital and Emerging Partnerships and New Payment Flows in the Asia Pacific region Rama Sridhar said. “As interest and attention surges from all quarters, their real-world applications are now emerging beyond the speculative. In collaboration with these partners that adhere to the same core principles that Mastercard does – that any digital currency must offer stability, regulatory compliance, and consumer protection – Mastercard is expanding what’s possible with cryptocurrencies to give people even greater choice and flexibility in how they pay.”
Mastercard’s APAC announcement comes on the heels of news that the company will enable the banks and merchants on its payment network to integrate cryptocurrency offerings into their products. The new arrangement comes courtesy of a partnership with Bakkt and will empower bitcoin wallet providers as well as issuers of credit and debit cards that offer rewards in crypto and enable digital assets to be spent. Also benefitting from Mastercard’s plan are those companies that offer loyalty programs that allow points from travel or hotel stays to be converted in to cryptocurrencies.
“Mastercard is committed to offering a wide range of payment solutions that deliver more choice, value, and impact every day,” Mastercard EVP for Digital Partnerships Sherri Haymond said. “Together with Bakkt and grounded by our principled approach to innovation, we’ll not only empower our partners to offer a dynamic mix of digital assets options, but also deliver differentiated and relevant consumer experiences.”
San Mateo, California-based txtsmarter, an intelligent communications surveillance service for text and social channel communications, has forged a partnership with GuideCX, a client onboarding software company. GuideCX will streamline the onboarding process for txtsmarter customers as the company expands across the country.
“Txtsmarter is growing at such a high rate that transparency and accountability during the onboarding process are a must for their customers,” GuideCX founder and CEO Peter Ord said. “Their one-day onbording has set a new level for GuideCX as we continue to perfect our process and show people everywhere why our technology can make all the difference for their businesses moving forward.”
txtsmarter made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateWest and returned to the Finovate stage this fall for FinovateFall in New York. The company offers a SaaS platform that enables employees and customers in regulated industries to use native communications apps such as iMessage, WhatsApp, Android, and WeChat/WeCom. txtsmarter’s platform provides effective capture, encryption, and archiving of text and social media messages, immediately identifying any inappropriate communication or potentially fraudulent activity.
Founded in 2014, txtsmarter includes one of the largest financial institutions in the world and a major U.S. sports league among its customers. The company began the year with the announcement that it had entered a strategic partnership with compliance technology and data analytics firm, Steeleye. The collaboration will combine txtsmarter’s message capture and archiving service with Steeleye’s advanced communications surveillance solution.
“Via our partnership with SteelEye, we offer our clients a 360-degree archiving and surveillance service, supplying real-time access to previously inaccessible data,” txtsmarter President and CEO Nuri Otus said. “Only txtsmarter can capture native iMessage and Android SMS/MMS messages providing a full view of all communications – which is necessary for full compliance and to avoid huge sanctions. We all know the real conversations happen via text.”
Sometimes at Finovate, the first time is the charm.
Detroit, Michigan-based fintech Autobooks, which helps small businesses send digital invoices and accept online payments via their financial institution partner, took home Best of Show honors in its Finovate debut in September. The company, co-founded by Steve Robert (CEO) and Aaron Schmid (CIO), impressed our audiences with its embedded solution that gives small businesses an e-commerce platform that is fully integrated into their current digital banking system.
Autobooks shared the stage with partner TD Bank, which offers Autobooks’ suite of tools as part of its TD Online Banking solution. TD Bank Head of Corporate Products and Services Jo Jagadish noted that the partnership has “increased relationship depth with our SMBs by 26%” and represented what Jagadish referred to as a complete reimagining of the bank’s small business checking experience.
“Small businesses are an enormous and diverse group with one thing in common,” Robert explained, “how they get paid is in a state of transition. Financial institutions must invest in digital-first experiences to meet SMBs where they, and their customers, are.” One advantage Autobooks provides is the fact that its technology is embedded into the customer’s existing banking channels, helping financial institutions build and fortify their relationships with their small and micro-business customers.
In the weeks since Autobooks’ Best of Show winning demo at FinovateFall, the company has announced a partnership with Central Trust Bank. Headquartered in Jefferson City, Missouri, the $20 billion state-chartered trust company will embed Autobooks’ technology into its digital banking platform. In addition to giving the bank’s business customers the ability to send digital invoices and accept online payments, the integration will also provide cash flow management, accounting, and financial reporting tools.
“We’re dedicated to providing innovative solutions to our customers, and the tools to make banking as easy as possible,” Central Trust Bank SVP of Commercial Banking Services Arlene Vogel said. “We believe partnering with Autobooks will allow for business customers to optimize payments for their business, ultimately helping their business succeed.”
Central Trust Bank has more than 250 locations in 78 communities in Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Carolina, Colorado, and Iowa. The bank was founded in 1902.
Also last month, Autobooks announced that it had expanded its partnership with TD Bank to add invoicing to TD Bank’s TD Business Simple Checking offering. The bank’s business customers will now be able to accept credit card and electronic payments that settle directly into their TD account. This will enhance cash flow and liquidity, and will make it that much easier for small and micro-businesses to get paid faster. The collaboration marks TD Bank as one of the first major financial institutions to offer integrated invoicing as part of its digital banking solution.
“Probably the greatest pain point for small businesses is actually getting paid for the services they provide,” Jagadish said. “The new tool will make things easier, faster, and enable our small business customers to get paid, almost immediately in most instances, when the process previously could take up to a week or longer.”
Previous to co-founding Autobooks, both Robert and Schmid were executives with another Finovate alum, Billhighway. Robert served as Chief Information Officer, while Schmid was Chief Product Officer. The company was acquired by BluePay in 2016.
“With this additional capital, we will substantially increase our level of commercial velocity and intensity in solving complex customer and societal problems, while maintaining our Day 0 founder’s mentality and continuing to attract the market’s best product, data science, and engineering minds to join our already incredibly talented team,” Socure founder and CEO Johnny Ayers said.
The Series E was led by Accel – along with funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates. New investors Bain Capital Ventures and Tiger Global joined existing investors Commerce Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, and Sorenson Ventures in the round, as well. Socure’s total equity funding stands at $647 million.
The investment gives Socure the highest valuation of any private company in the identity verification market. The company’s identity verification and fraud-fighting platform Socure ID+ has gained meaningful traction in the enterprise, with four of the five largest banks and seven of the 10 largest credit card issuers embracing the technology. Add to this a host of major fintechs, Buy Now Pay Later firms, investment management companies, and crypto exchanges. Socure has enjoyed 5x year-over-year bookings growth, more than 2x year-over-year customer growth, and five consecutive quarters of record year-over-year revenue growth.
Additionally, Socure achieved a net retention rate of 179% which the company said was due to “near-zero attrition” as Socure’s enterprise customers deployed multiple Socure solutions across divisions at an increasing rate. The result has been to make Socure an all-in-one platform for fraud prevention, KYC, AML, and document verification in the enterprise.
“When you’re a market leader, you move from attacking and replacing the incumbents repeatedly as you earn your seat at the table to truly being a strategic partner to many of the best companies in the world,” Ayers said.
Socure will use the new capital to further invest in product innovation, enter new markets such as telehealth, gaming, e-commerce marketplaces, and the public sector, and add talent to the Socure team – especially in the areas of product development, data science, and engineering. The company also will use the investment to enhance both its customer consortium data and automated ID+ platform to address payment and first party fraud as effectively as it currently combats third party and synthetic fraud.
Founded in 2012 and making its Finovate debut a year later at FinovateFall, Socure has had a busy autumn in 2021, launching new fraud prevention solutions and adding a new Chief People Officer in September, plus reaching a 750 customer milestone early in October. Also in October, Socure announced a major commitment to deliver identity verification solutions to the public sector market, appointing Matt Thompson as its new General Manager of Public Sector Solutions.
“Many agencies lack the industry experience required to effectively manage identity verification and reduce fraud losses in the midst of accelerated digital transformation due to the pandemic,” Thompson explained. “Furthermore, the gaps within legacy identity solutions were exposed leaving numerous eligible people waiting extended periods of time for their benefits while enabling fraudsters to manipulate these same benefits at an unprecedented level. We are committed to solving this challenge for government agencies.”
What are the latest signs that fintech is leaning in to support the cause of sustainability?
I’ve always been struck by the lack of optimism in response to the challenge of climate change. One of the Champagne Executive Boardroom sessions at FinovateFall in September discussed the way that financial services companies and fintechs were responding to climate change. And while the beginning of the conversation was predictably focused on constraints (political, social, and cultural), it was heartening to see the second half of the session. That’s because the panelists shifted toward a closer look at the opportunities that many in fintech and financial services firms were beginning to embrace – particularly by empowering customers and members.
With COP26 in the headlines over the past several days, we’ve seen an uptick in this “opportunities-instead-of-constraints” conversation in the fintech community. Here is a look at a few of the more interesting developments of late.
Standard Chartered partners with Starling Bank to help investors go green – Expected to launch next year, Standard Chartered’s Shoal platform will enable customers to financially support the environmental causes they believe in. The shortlist will include projects in areas such as renewable energy, clean water, and community development. Customers will receive both an update on the projects they helped fund as well as a “competitive” rate of return.
SC Ventures, Standard Chartered’s innovation arm which is behind Shoal, noted today that the first offering from the platform will be a savings account, and that the platform will be added to the Starling Bank’s Starling Marketplace “in due course.” Courtesy of the partnership between Standard Chartered and Starling Bank, the new platform will be powered by Starling’s BaaS technology and API. This will enable Shoal to emphasize front-end issues like customer acquisition and service, while Starling Bank manages what CEO Anne Boden called “the technical and regulatory demands behind the scenes.”
“Sustainability is one of the high conviction themes for SC Ventures as we explore different business models,” SC Ventures’ Alex Manson said. “With Shoal, we are creating a new venture to address the growing need of all retail clients for sustainable financial and non-financial products, starting with (the) U.K. and expanding to other markets over time.”
It’s also worth pointing out that Starling Bank recently announced a commitment to a one-third reduction in its carbon emissions by 2030. The firm added that it will also offset carbon emissions from its own operations and supply chain annually using March 2021 as a baseline. Starling’s three U.K.-based offices run on renewable energy and, earlier this year, the bank launched the first U.K. Mastercard debit card made from recycled plastic.
“Understanding our carbon emissions enables us to make targeted improvements as we continue to grow,” Starling Bank’s Boden said. “Climate change is one of the biggest challenges that we face globally, and Starling is 100% committed to playing its part in the fight against it, not just in the lead up to 2050, but starting right away.”
Starling Bank is also a founding member of the TechZero Charter. TechZero is a climate action group for technology companies that have committed to leveraging their technology and ingenuity to “accelerate progress to net zero.”
Climate management and accounting platform Persefoni secures $101 million in funding – On the other side of the Atlantic, word that SaaS climate technology company Persefoni has raised more than $100 million in equity capital has people wondering if the Series B round represents the biggest fundraising by a climate-tech company to date. Regardless of whether or not Persefoni is leading that charge, the company is clearly at the front lines of innovators using technology to help businesses calculate their carbon footprint in an auditable and compliant fashion.
The round was led by Prelude Ventures and The Rise Fund, and featured first-time participation from Clearvision Ventures, Parkway Ventures, Bain & Co., EDF Pulse Holding, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, The Ferrante Group, Alumni Ventures Group, and New Valley Ventures. A number of existing investors also participated in the round. The investment gives the Tempe, Arizona-based company a total equity funding of more than $114 million.
“Carbon and climate disclosures will be the biggest compliance market since the advent of Sarbanes Oxley and GDPR, but with even greater complexity,” Persefoni CEO and co-founder Kentaro Kawamori said. “The market is rife with data and software solutions that create new proprietary methodologies every day, and our customers are exhausted with that approach.” Kawamori added that his company’s extensive work with “industry standards setters and regulators” gives Persefoni an edge over other companies offering solutions in the space. “As disclosure requirements continue to accelerate,” Kawamori said, “every CEO, CFO, and Board Director is looking for a solution they know was purpose-built for the enterprise first – like Persefoni.”
Persefoni also announced that it has entered a strategic corporate partnership with Bain & Co. The “first-of-its-kind” collaboration will have the two firms developing dacarbonization solutions for both the private equity and institutional investing markets. The goal is to enable clients of Bain to “manage their carbon inventory with the same rigor and transparency as their financial metrics,” according to Torsten Lichtenau, global head of Bain & Co.’s Carbon Transition Impact Area.
With locations in Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska, Meridian Trust Federal Credit Union has announced a partnership with Scienaptic AI. The collaboration with the AI-powered credit decision platform provider will enable Meridian Trust FCU ($569 million in assets; 31,640 members) to enhance its underwriting capabilities to provide faster lending decisions and boost loan approvals.
“At Meridian Trust, we aim to provide our members and community with the best personal service, the highest quality financial products, and the best overall value for a lifetime,” Meridian Trust FCU Chief Lending Officer Michael Barnhardt Jr. said. “Scienaptic’s AI-driven credit decisioning platform will help ensure that our credit union has access to industry-leading underwriting capabilities to approve more loans for our members and further enhance their financial well-being.”
Founded in 2014 and headquartered in New York City, Scienaptic AI leverages both new data sources and new technologies to enable financial institutions to make more accurate decisions about whether and how much financing to provide to credit applicants. Many banks continue to struggle to systematically manage the growing volume of data required for sound credit decisioning. Moreover, the technology necessary to analyze this data requires complex, quantitative, predictive models (and professionals trained in understanding them). Additionally, many financial institutions lack the kind of scalable infrastructure that can handle the volume of data involved in credit-decisioning – and do so in a timely, compliant fashion.
In response to this challenge, Scienaptic AI offers a platform that enables companies to run multiple champion challengers concurrently; merges credit models and strategies in a single, unified workflow; and supports the rapid deployment of new credit models and strategies. Scienaptic claims that its adaptive AI-based platform and pre-built APIs help deliver 15% to 40% more approvals and 10% to 25% fewer losses compared to traditional underwriting methods based on legacy technology. In addition to credit decisioning, Scienaptic’s technology can be leveraged for fraud prevention, financial forecasting, and collections, as well.
“We are pleased to be working with Meridian Trust to help support and strengthen the financing needs of its members,” Scienaptic President Pankaj Jain said. “Scienaptic’s platform will help Meridian Trust to grow their client base and to support the financial goals of its members by making faster credit decisions while minimizing risk.”
Of late, the Scienaptic AI has forged partnerships with Cooperative Teachers Credit Union, Gesa Credit Union and, earlier this month, Levo Credit Union. All of these credit unions have elected to leverage Scienaptic’s AI-powered credit decisioning platform to, in the words of Levo CU VP of Lending Steven Stofferahn, “enhance credit access for members and improve their financial well-being through smarter, faster credit decisions.”
Scienaptic AI has raised $9 million in funding. The company includes TVS Motor Singapore, Pramod Bhasin, and Salil Punalekar among its investors.
In a round led by Warburg Pincus, Insight Partners, and Bow Wave Capital Management, Philippines-based mobile payment company Mynt has secured $300 million in new funding. The investment, which also featured participation from Itai Tsiddon, Amplo Ventures, Globe Telecom, and Ayala Corporation, gives Mynt a valuation of more than $2 billion and solidifying the company’s status as the biggest technology unicorn based in the Philippines.
“We have been able to continuously expand by introducing game-changing innovations while improving our profitability profile,” Mynt president and CEO Martha Sazon. “We are excited about our new partnership with Warburg, Insight, Itali Tsiddon, and Amplo, as they each bring strategic value to our team in the pursuit of our vision towards finance for all.”
Owned by Philippine mobile operator Globe Telecom, Mynt is the company behind the GCash app. The popular solution enables customers to buy prepaid airtime; pay bills at more than 600 partner billers throughout the Philippines; send and receive money anywhere in the country; as well as access savings, credit, insurance, and investment products and services. GCash currently has more than 48 million users.
Most recently, Mynt has piloted a new cash loan offering, GLoan, that enables qualified borrowers to take out loans of up to PHP25,000 (approximately $500 USD) that can be repaid over 12 months. GLoan joins the company’s GCredit offering, which disburses more than PHP1 billion ($200 million USD) in loans every month and has disbursed PHP15 billion ($3 billion USD) as of June of this year. Mynt notes that its GCredit solution has the best repayment rates with the lowest number of past-due and non-performing loans locally. Unsurprisingly, Mynt is also looking to offer Buy Now Pay Later services “within the year” as well.
Mynt’s GCash is also one of the growing number of financial apps to incorporate pro-environmental functionality into its solution. The app has a feature, GForest, that serves as a gamified environmental stewardship program that enables users to convert points earned from using GCash into a virtual tree. These virtual trees are then planted as actual trees in specific locations in the Philippines. Mynt says that it has 8.7 million users of GForest within the GCash app.
Founded in 2015, Mynt has been recognized as a leader in the digital transformation of payments and other financial services in the Philippines during the COVID-19 pandemic. With nearly half the country’s population using its technology, Mynt is on pace to reach a gross transaction value of PHP3 trillion, more than triple of what was achieved last year. The company has reported peak daily app log-ins of 19 million and daily active transactions of 12 million.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
At a time of almost unprecedented financial liquidity, being able to separate the investment-worthy wheat from the chaff may be more important than ever. Additionally, knowledge of where the so-called “smart money” is investing within the growing field of fintech is an invaluable aid for those attempting to better understand where fintech is right now and where it is going. And for those within financial services, or in industries adjacent to it, who are looking to do business with innovative fintech companies, knowing where the most informed investors are putting their capital can be a great guide to identifying where some of the best opportunities to partner and form collaborations may be found.
This is what makes Finovate’s All-Star Investment Panel: Where the Smart Money is Investing in Fintech one of the biggest and most popular attractions at our events. At our upcoming conference in March, FinovateEurope, we’ve put together a star-studded panel of some of fintech’s most informed and accomplished investors to help you gain unique insights into which fintechs the “smart money” is betting on and why. Check out a sneak peek of our All-Star Investment Panel below.
Rana Yared, General Partner, Balderton Capital: Yared joined Balderton Capital in 2020. She previously worked as a Partner at Goldman Sachs in their Principal Strategic Investments Group. Later, as part of GS Growth, Yared oversaw investments in financial technology and enterprise technology. Yared also oversaw the commercialization of Goldman Sachs’ technology assets in New York and London. LinkedIn
Aman Ghei, Partner, Finch Capital: Ghei led Finch’s investment into Twisto (sold to Zip) and sits on the board of AccountsIQ, Symmetrical, Lantum as well as being involved in the firm’s investments in Goodlord, TaxScouts and Squirro. Ghei’s experience ranges from Credit Suisse’s Technology team to Accel Partners in London to Facebook’s content distribution business in Europe. LinkedIn
Luis Valdich, Managing Director, Fintech Investing, Citi Ventures: Joining Citi Ventures in 2015, Valdich is responsible for fintech investing in both the U.S. and Europe, as well as in Latin America and Southeast Asia/India. Before Citi, Valdich founded and ran JPMorgan Chase’s Strategic Investments group for nearly eight years and invested in more than 30 companies. LinkedIn
Jay Wilson, Investment Director, AlbionVC: At AlbionVC, Wilson focuses on all aspects of technology, with a particular focus on how technology is redefining financial services from retail to institutional finance, and at every level of the IT stack including blockchain, AI and machine learning, predictive analytics, robotics, and the cloud. LinkedIn
The FinovateEurope 2022 Investor All-Star panel will be moderated by Sunaina Sinha Haldea, Global Head of Private Capital Advisory with Raymond James. Haldea founded placement agent and secondaries advisor Cebile Capital, which was acquired by Raymond James Financial in 2021. Also a prolific angel investor and non-executive director, Haldea’s leadership of Raymond James / Cebile Capital has enabled the firm to become one of the leading advisors in private equity and real assets.
FinovateEurope 2022 will be held in London, England from March 22 through March 23. Both in-person and digital all-access passes are available with big savings available to those attendees who register by November 19th. For more information, visit our FinovateEurope 2022 hub today.
Announced earlier this year, the merger between cross-border payments marketplace CurrencyFair and payment workflow automation platform Assembly Payments has secured regulatory approval. The merged company has also rebranded as Zai as part of a new focus on providing a wider set of integrated financial services to mid-market businesses and enterprise-level customers within and beyond the Australian market. The CurrencyFair brand will remain intact to serve consumers and small businesses with the kind of fast, affordable foreign exchange the company has offered for nearly a decade.
Paul Byrne, who served as CEO and President of Currencyfair for more than five years, will now serve as CEO and President of the new entity Zai. “Our vision with Zai is to boldly transform the future of financial services,” Byrne said in a statement. “The Australian market is very close to our hearts – both Assembly Payments and CurrencyFair were founded by Australian innovators.”
To underscore this point Byrne added that Zai was first to market with NPP, Australia’s New Payments Platform, and that the company planned to launch its new, real-time digital payments solution, PayTo, in the middle of next year. PayTo will enable merchants and businesses to initiate real-time payments from their customers’ bank accounts.
“Zai will continue our tradition of being customer-centric, solving problems and adding value around our five core capabilities,” Byrne said. These areas – payments, global payment accounts, partner ecosystem, lending and settlement, and services – represent major growth opportunities according to Byrne, in what he described as a “$2 trillion revenue market for payments.” In addition to expanding its presence in Australia, Zai plans to launch in the U.K., the U.S., and Asia in 2022 and to grow its workforce from 170 to 450 by 2025.
“We are already seeing the benefits of expansion as we forecast a second successive year of 60% growth in processing volume to $6.5 billion in 2021,” Byrne said.
Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland and launched in 2009, CurrencyFair has been a Finovate alum since 2012. Ahead of the merger with Assembly Payments, the company had securely exchanged the equivalent of €10 billion, enabling its customers to send money to more than 150 countries. The company had raised more than $24 million in funding before acquiring Assembly Payments, picking up an additional $35 million in funding from Standard Chartered afterward.
“By bringing together the complementary strengths of CurrencyFair and Assembly, we are supporting the merged company in offering the full range of payment services,” Standard Chartered group chief executive Bill Winters said earlier this year, “providing retail and corporate clients access to fast, high-volume domestic and cross-border payments.”
