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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
FinovateAsia Digital is less than two weeks away. If you are headquartered in the APAC region, do business in the region, or would simply like to know more about the fintech trends in one of the most technologically innovative parts of the world, then FinovateAsia Digital, held on the 22nd and 23rd of this month, deserves a space on your fintech calendar. Visit our FinovateAsia Digital hub to register and pick up your ticket today.
Last week we previewed some of the major themes that our distinguished speakers and panelists will cover at this year’s conference. Below, we introduce our main stage keynote addresses and speakers to give you an even better sense of what we’ve got in store later this month at the show.
Reshaping the future of digital banking – stories of success
Investigates how a leading digital player is shaking things up, working differently, and building financial services in new and innovative ways. With Keng Swee Koh, Executive Director and Head of Wealth Management, DBS
Enabling a Data-Driven Enterprise
Reveals what top analysts are calling “the future of data management,” and how it is being used to streamline both compliance initiatives and accelerate strategic business initiatives at top financial services firms. With Joe Lichetenberg, Global Head of Product and Industry Marketing, InterSystems
Shaping the Future of Payments
Examines the core trends that are fundamentally transforming global payment systems. Shows how banks will embrace more and more digital payment trends and introduce multiple options for clients to make payments when, where, and how they choose. With Jeremy Balkin, Managing Director, Global Head of FinTech and Innovation, JPMorgan Wholesale Payments
Brand Intimacy & Fintech: Creating Stronger Brands through Emotional Science
Reveals the financial services, technology, and telecom findings of MBLM’s Brand Intimacy COVID Study and also discuss brand intimacy’s positive correlation with financial performance. Demonstrates how to build better connections with customers and the power of brand intimacy: the emotional science behind the bonds we form with the brands we love. With Mario Natarelli, Co-Author, Brand Intimacy, A New Marketing Paradigm
Transparency and trust: How to reach, engage and retain customers post-COVID-19
Explores how large incumbents and fintechs have managed COVID responses, and how a strategy of transparency has benefited companies in increasing consumer trust. Explains who are the winners and losers in the fight for authenticity, and how you can educate your users to enhance reputation and loyalty. With Araminta Robertson, Marketing Consultant, Mint Studios
In a round led by Tencent, digital wealth management platform Scalable Capital has locked in more than $183 million (€150 million) in Series E funding. The new capital brings the company’s total funding to more than $317 million (€260 million) and gives the Munich, Germany-based firm a valuation of $1.4 billion – making the firm Germany’s, and fintech’s, latest unicorn. Scalable Capital said that the financing will help the company add to its workforce, as well as help support expansion into European markets like France, Italy, and Spain.
“We see huge demand to invest money in the capital markets instead of leaving it in bank accounts,” Scalable Capital co-CEO and co-founder Florian Prucker said. “Our clients can access fully managed globally diversified ETF portfolios and – in the same app – self directed trading in shares, ETFs, crypto currencies, and funds. We also provide a market-leading offering of ETF, stocks, and crypto monthly savings plans. We are planning to launch derivatives trading next.”
Having Tencent as an investor, according to Scalable Capital co-CEO and co-founder Erik Podzuweit, will also help the company improve its appeal to millennial customers who have become increasingly comfortable investing via their smartphones.
A Finovate alum since 2016, Scalable Capital offers banks, insurers, and corporate clients a digital wealth management platform that support automated investing and rebalancing. With customers ranging from ING to Openbank (Santander’s digital bank) to Siemans Financial Services, Scalable Capital provides globally diversified, cost-efficient ETF portfolios that are personalized to the investor’s risk profile.
Scalable Capital currently has more than $5 billion in assets under management. In the wake of this week’s funding, the company plans to add cryptocurrencies to its product portfolio, open a new office in Berlin, and double its workforce this year to 400.
Scalable Capital began the year with a pivot: the company announced in January that it would continue its direct to consumer business in Germany and Austria, but will limit its operations in the U.K. to its B2B business. The cost of customer acquisition was cited as one of the challenges to the company’s retail ambitions in the U.K. and, as such, Scalable Capital decided to focus on expansion and development with its German platform and its B2C and wealth businesses.
Also this year, Scalable Capital announced the appointment of new Chief Strategy Officer Dirk Urmoneit. Urmoneit comes to the company after holding senior positions at index provider Solactive AG and investment banks J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs.
On the consumption side of personal finance, managing credit is one of the most important aspects of financial wellness. And for more than a decade, Credit Sesame has been among the more innovative companies in this space. From its origins as a hub for financial planning tools, insights into credit scoring, and advice on smart borrowing, Credit Sesame has grown into a leader in the financial wellness industry with new solutions like its Sesame Cash debit account, which topped one million customers less than a year after emerging from its beta launch.
“With Sesame Cash and features like real-time cash back rewards and rewards for improving their credit score,” Credit Sesame GM and Head of Global Banking Miro Pavletic explained when the solution was introduced last September, “we are helping customers put more money back in their pocket than any other digital banking service. Whether you’re looking to buy groceries or debating where to grab takeout, we can connect you with the brands you love and give you cash back instantly,” Pavletic said.
The $51 million in new funding the company raised this week is a testament both to the journey Credit Sesame has been on since its launch in 2010, as well as the potential the firm has to continue to play a leading role in helping millions of consumers better understand and manage their finances.
“Creating access to better credit and finance is critical for financial prosperity for consumers in our country, and it’s enlightening to see major banks and the federal government also taking action,” Credit Sesame CEO Adrian Nazari said. “The impacts of the past year have only made those needs greater, and through our recent acquisition and fundraising, we are proud to be expanding our platform offerings and leading the charge in opening more doors to financial inclusion and wellness for all.”
The company sees its current mission as closing the “credit chasm,” which it believes limits economic opportunities for more than 44 million “credit invisible” Americans. Part of this effort includes Credit Sesame’s decision to acquire Zingo, a transaction that was completed recently. A fintech company headquartered in Portland, Oregon, Zingo helps renters improve their credit scores via timely rent payments. With almost 80% of its 15 million members renting, rather than owning, a home, Credit Sesame expects the acquisition to represent a “significant growth opportunity for the company” while enhancing “financial inclusion for its customers.” Credit Sesame anticipates integrating Zingo’s rent reporting technology into its financial wellness platform over the summer.
Looking out over the balance of 2021, Credit Sesame appears to be taking a page from Zingo’s book by launching a new feature that will enable consumers to use their cash to help them improve their credit rating. Requiring no credit check, the new solution will allow Credit Sesame customers to leverage their cash and credit together to help build a strong financial foundation and create a path toward better financial health.
Multiple-time Finovate Best of Show winner Glia and Conversational AI specialist Posh Technologies have teamed up to bring new customer engagement options to TwinStar Credit Union.
“The financial institutions that provide customers and members with a strategic blend of human touch and AI will have high retention and acquisition rates,” Glia co-founder and CEO Dan Michaeli said. “By partnering with Glia and Posh, TwinStar offers members a seamless support network where no duplication is required. It’s a faster, better member experience that alleviates the frustrations associated with typical support lines. Easy communication with financial support is a cornerstone to service and long-lasting relationships.”
Courtesy of this partnership, TwinStar CU will offer a seamless digital chat experience available directly from its website and mobile app that features both automated and live member support. The automated chatbot solution will be able to respond to basic queries regarding branch hours, ATM locations, routing numbers, and similar information. More complex inquiries will be transferred to human contact center agents via Glia’s live chat feature, creating a more efficient experience for both members and support teams.
Member service will not be limited to live chat, either. Once live agents are engaged, members will be able choose the communication channel of their choice – messaging, video banking, or voice – as well as toggle between communication options and take advantage of support tools like co-browsing. The result is “faster and better service to our members in a multitude of ways” according to Scott Daukas, TwinStar Chief Strategy Officer. “We are thrilled to offer this great service to our members,” he said.
Headquartered in Washington State, TwinStar CU serves more than 135,000 members in Washington and Oregon, and manages $1.8 billion in assets. The institution traces its origins back to 1937, when teachers at Olympia High School who were struggling to secure loans on their meager salaries joined together to form the Thurston County Teacher Credit Union. The institution’s first branch, a classroom at the high school made available four days a week, was opened in 1950. The credit union became TwinStar in 2006.
Boston, Massachusetts-based Posh Technologies was spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2018. The company specializes in creating intelligent chatbots and interactive voice response (“conversational IVR”) phonebots and includes financial institutions like the State Department FCU and Finovate alum Mr. Cooper among its customers. Posh has picked up non-equity backing from MassChallenge and FinTech Sandbox.
Most recently winning Best of Show honors at FinovateSpring last month, Glia announced a partnership with credit union service organization, Members Access Processing (MAP) in May, as well. In March, the company announced a collaboration with AI-powered virtual assistant solution provider Abe.ai. With more than 200 banks, credit unions, insurance companies, and other financial institutions as its partners, Glia began the year with news that BCU, a $4.2 billion credit union based in Illinois, had selected its Digital Member Service platform to better engage its 294,000 members.
“The world is rapidly becoming more visual and traditional financial services are too complicated, or so costly that they become inaccessible,” Melissa Pancoast, CEO and founder of The Beans, said. “The Beans is designed to empower all people to make Visual Financial Plans effortlessly, and our growing community in Atlanta is evidence of the widespread need that we are addressing.”
A former math teacher who later became a researcher at the University of Oxford, Pancoast developed Visual Financial Planning as a way for people to create easy-to-follow financial plans that help them manage both their spending and savings – and avoid the high levels of stress that often accompanies financial planning efforts. Features of the app include the ability to create personalized visual financial plans, automated transaction labelling for expense tracking, and real-time support and alerts to inform users of account balances, Safe to Spend amounts, and more. Pancoast has said that she hopes that those working in what she called “the caring class” of teachers, health care workers, and others – people with jobs that often are especially and consistently stressful – will be first among those who take advantage of The Beans’ solution.
The Beans made fintech headlines in recent days on news that the company, which turns four this year, secured its first seed funding last week. The $2 million investment was led by Percursor Ventures and featured participation from Swing Ventures, Relay Ventures, Oxford Angel Fund, and One Planet. The fundraising added to the $1.4 million in pre-seed capital the company has raised over the course of two previous rounds.
In addition to offering an app, The Beans has hosted free financial wellness workshops for more than 30 schools and organizations in the Atlanta area. And organizations like the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, and the United Nations, have worked to bring the benefits of Visual Financial Planning to millions of families around the world.
“I used The Beans’ recommendations on how to divide up my money and was able to bring my Sheltered expenses (rent, utilities, subscriptions, and savings) down to 60% of my income, including some savings for a big trip I have planned this year,” an Atlanta public school teacher Veronica Karwoski said. “I’m less stressed about everyday expenses and I’m making progress toward the life I want to live.”
London-based payments optimization company Ixaris has agreed to be acquired by Nium, a global payments platform based in Singapore. Terms of the purchase were not immediately available. The acquisition is expected to be finalized in Q3 of this year.
Founded in 2002 by Alex Mifsud, Ixaris made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in 2010. In the years since, Ixaris has focused its technology on optimizing payments for the travel sector, offering flexible payment and funding options to help airlines and online travel agents lower fees, earn rebates, and streamline the reconciliation process. Ixaris issued more than 10 million virtual cards in 2019 and, since inception, has processed 24 million transactions for a total payment volume of $7 billion (£5 billion). The issuer of Europe’s first virtual prepaid card in 2003, Ixaris has served more than 200 customers in more than 40 countries to date.
Ixaris Group CEO Mark Anthony Spiteri underscored the importance of – and opportunity in – payment optimization in the travel industry. “As part of the Nium family, we can offer the broadest portfolio of virtual card offerings to travel businesses across the globe,” Spiteri said. “All aspects of our company, from our technologies to our people, perfectly complement Nium and we look forward to increasing our geographic footprint to new regions, including the United States.”
Spiteri took over as CEO of Ixaris in May 2020. He wrote in a blog post at the company’s website that the combination of Ixaris’ virtual card issuance capabilities with Nium’s single API connection to the world’s payment infrastructure will provide “an even broader suite of payment services” for customers of both companies.
To this end, the timing of the acquisition could turn out to be especially auspicious. Spiteri noted that the post-COVID resumption of international travel, a sector he valued at $326 billion (£230 billion), should create major opportunities for his company. “As international travel takes off again in 2021, and the industry ramps up investment in solutions to improve front-end travel experiences and back-end processes,” he said, “we are ready to continue to drive its revolution.”
With more than 130 million customers, Singapore’s Nium is an international B2B payments platform that enables banks, payment providers, travel companies, and other businesses to collect and disburse funds in local currencies in 100+ countries, as well as issue virtual and physical cards globally. A member of the CB Insights Fintech 250, Nium was founded in 2015 by Michael Bermingham and Prajit Nanu.
It’s a good week to be a fintech in Latin America. Uruguay-based fintech dLocal made its Nasdaq debut, raising more than $617 million in an IPO that gave the firm a valuation of $6 billion. The company, founded five years ago, offers a payments platform that enhances the ability of global merchants to operate in emerging markets. With customers ranging from Amazon.com to Uber, dlocal will use the capital from the IPO to add new features to its platform as well as enter new markets, according to an interview with Reuters.
Also this week, Latin American open finance API platform Belvo announced that it had secured $43 million in Series A funding. The round featured participation from new and existing investors – including investment angels like David Vélez, founder and CEO of Brazilian fintech Nubank. Belvo will use the new capital to “scale and enhance” its data enrichment solutions in particular, as well as launch its bank-to-bank payment initiation offering in both Mexico and Brazil. Adding to its 70-person workforce is also part of the company’s plans, with a goal of doubling headcount by the end of the year and “hiring more than 50 engineers in Mexico and Brazil in the coming months.”
Elsewhere in Latin America, Mexican payment gateway Prosa is reportedly considering a sale that could bring the company a valuation of more than $1 billion. The firm is one of the region’s biggest payment processors, facilitating more than 4.5 billion transactions in 2020. Also this week, EVO Payments announced that it had agreed to acquire Chilean e-commerce payment gateway Pago Fácil.
As Angela Strange and Matthieu Hafemeister noted this spring in their report Latin America’s Fintech Boom, “there is an enormous amount of untapped opportunity in Latin America for financial services of all types.” The authors cite five reasons to be optimistic about the demand for financial services, factors ranging from the region’s size to the opportunity to replace largely cash-based systems, as well as four reasons why Latin American fintech may be at a “tipping point.”
“As is often the case,” the authors wrote, ” growth appears gradual for a long while, then happens suddenly, seemingly all at once. Latin America is currently experiencing an explosion in fintech activity, and this is just the beginning.”
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Pakistani fintech Tag raised $5.5 million in pre-seed funding; the company also announced that it will join the Summer 2021 cohort of the Y Combinator accelerator.
Digital trust and identity verification innovator Socure announced today that it has received a strategic investment from Capital One Ventures, Capital One Financial Corporation’s venture capital division. The amount of the investment was not disclosed, but it adds to the $196 million the company has raised to date. This sum includes a $100 million Series D round in March, which gave Socure more than a billion dollar valuation.
The company plans to use the additional financing to fuel its expansion across a range of verticals including financial services, healthcare, e-commerce, on-demand services and online gaming. Named one of America’s Best Startup Employers by Forbes for the past two years in a row, Socure will also use the funding to help add to its workforce.
“We are thrilled to add Capital One to our expanding roster of strategic investors. We were fortunate to have met the venture as well as fraud and identity teams early on in Socure’s journey,” Socure co-founder and CEO Johnny Ayers said. “We admired their focus and discipline as a data science and analytics-driven company and channeled that as we built Socure.”
A Finovate alum since 2013, Socure offers a real-time predictive analytics platform that applies artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques with trusted online/offline data intelligence from email, phone, address, IP, device, velocity, and the broader internet to verify identities in real time. Socure’s ID+ product suite offers passive identity verification and fraud detection solutions in addition to a physical document verification solution, DocV, which provides enterprises with the ability to verify the authenticity of government-issued IDs while accurately associating that ID document with other, relevant PII. The addition of DocV gave the platform the ability to provide a wider range of identity verification methods all in a single, integrated solution and API. Socure notes that it achieves fraud capture rates of 90%, increases in auto enrollment by up to 94%, and an 8x to 10x reduction in false positives.
Synctera has raised $33 million in Series A funding to fuel its mission to make it easier for community banks and fintechs to work together. The round, which brought the company’s total funding to more than $46 million, featured new strategic investors such as Mastercard, as well as executives from Finovate alums like Marqeta, Feedzai, and Socure. These backers were joined by several of Synctera’s existing investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Diagram Ventures, Portage Ventures, SciFi Ventures, and Scribble Ventures.
“Since launch, Synctera has formed one of the best teams in the industry,” company CEO and co-founder Peter Hazlehurst said in a statement. “Bringing on a group of investors with deep industry expertise will help us meet rapidly increasing demand in our next stage of growth.”
Synctera helps community banks and fintechs achieve partnership banking at scale. The company’s platform streamlines day-to-day reconciliation, operations, and regulatory compliance for banks, while enabling fintechs to launch their solutions faster and with greater flexibility thanks to its one-stop-shop API. Part of the growing trend toward embedded finance and banking-as-a-service, Synctera will use the new capital to further build its software engineering team to speed the development of its product roadmap, as well as bolster sales and marketing efforts to help grow market share and expand internationally.
As part of the funding announcement, Syncetera also announced that it would endorse the diversity commitment from the Cap Table Coalition by allocating 10% of all funding rounds to traditionally marginalized investors.
“For this next chapter—and to put action behind Synctera’s values—we pledge to reserve 10% of this round and all future rounds to diverse investors, allowing for more representation and collaboration to further innovate the industry,” Hazlehurst said.
Emerging from stealth last year, Synctera has already secured customers in Coastal Community Bank and ONE Finance, as well as Tennessee-based Lineage Bank. The company has also partnered with money management and financial wellness platform for women, Ellevest. Check out our conversation with Hazlehurst on the Finovate Podcast with host Greg Palmer from last month.
Courtesy of an investment round led by Accel Partners, subscription management specialist turned personal finance company Truebill has secured $45 million in new funding. The Series D round – which featured participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Cota Capital, and Eldridge Industries – takes the six-year old company’s total financing to $85 million.
“With this new capital, we’re transforming Truebill into an all-in-one, holistic platform that makes it easy for members to not only manage subscriptions and spending, but also optimize their savings and make informed decisions to improve their financial health,” company co-founder and CEO Haroon Mokhtarzada said. “More than 10,000 members sign up for Truebill every day seeking to better understand and improve their finances.”
Truebill’s PFM solution offers budgeting and autopilot savings tools, as well as insights into spending and credit scores. The app, available in both iOS and Android, also supports pay advance and bill negotiation, giving users further tools for managing cash flow and controlling costs.
Headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland after being founded in San Francisco in 2011, Truebill has more than 100 employees and plans to use the new capital to help add to its workforce. The company is looking to bring on new talent in data science, machine learning, engineering, and marketing, as well as in customer service to help support Truebill’s growth.
With two million active users and revenues that have grown 3x since March 2020, Truebill is one of the companies that has been able to leverage the social discontents of the global pandemic into greater business for its services. Despite its expansion into the PFM space, Truebill has benefitted from the emergence of “power subscribers” that have 10+ recurring payments. The company currently profits from a user with an average of 17 subscriptions – down from an average of 21 during the worst of the pandemic last spring – and a monthly subscription bill of $145 a month.
How are banks and fintechs leveraging the lessons learned during the global health crisis to provide consumers and businesses with financial products that do an even better job than before of addressing their needs? And when it comes to innovation in technology and financial services, is disruption or collaboration dictating the pace of change?
To talk about these and other issues, we caught up with Andrea Zand, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of FISPAN. Headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, FISPAN made its Finovate debut in 2017, demonstrating its cloud-based platform that leverages APIs to enable banks to deliver new business banking solutions to their corporate customers.
How are the banks you work with doing now – a little over one year after the onset of the pandemic?
Andrea Zand: Open-banking infrastructure and data sharing are helping banks and governments around the world better respond to the recovery post-pandemic. We are starting to see evidence that governments are beginning to use open banking data to help inform their pandemic responses and help small businesses. The banks we work with are feeling positive about the recovery going into 2021.
In what ways should banks expect customer behavior to change and how should they respond?
Zand: We’ve already seen that the pandemic has sped up innovation in financial services. Customers are getting more and more comfortable doing their personal banking online, and business banking customers are also turning to digital banking platforms as an alternative to in-person branch visits. Banks are struggling to keep up with this rapid shift in the types of online service offerings their clients are demanding.
Because of this, banks are looking to deploy innovations that will have an immediate impact on the client experience. This is where we see a huge opportunity with embedded banking. By embedding the banking experience inside the platforms that business customers use to run their businesses (such as ERPs or accounting software), banks are able to easily provide their business clients with a more automated and streamlined treasury management process. The banks that are ahead of the curve and partnering with fintechs like us are beginning to better understand how their customers use their products in context, allowing them to innovate smarter and faster.
Technology has moved too fast for the banks to build those capabilities themselves. The best way for B2B banks to manage the impact of rapidly evolving customer expectations is to partner with agile, innovative fintech services.
Connecting with their clients as much as possible and understanding their needs will be essential in driving the agenda for the new capabilities the banks should be focusing on. Leveraging tech and automation will manage and rise to customer expectations while still allowing for more face time during this transition period to explore and understand customers’ needs and wants.
What are some of the other challenges that banks will encounter as the recovery picks up steam – and how will FISPAN help them?
Zand: Banks will continue to be challenged by continually changing customer expectations. They will also be challenged by the need to adapt to an open exchange of data that will happen as a result of the many new fintech upstarts that are creating new business models and finding ways to better meet these changing client demands.
FISPAN helps by collaborating with FIs to understand what will make their customers happier by joining forces across all levels of the product discovery and implementation phases. Getting in front of the customers and understanding their day-to-day ERP and accounting struggles is a large part of how we meet and overcome the challenges that have risen due to the digital shift during our global pandemic. More specifically, we enable banks to extend their service offering to their business clients by embedding commercial banking applications within the organization’s ERP or accounting software.
For those institutions that engaged in digital transformations, how do they make sure those efforts truly pay off?
Zand: Continue to be open to new ways of thinking and working with new partners. In partnering, serving, or investing in innovation by way of technology upstarts, financial institutions are able to position themselves for future growth and adaptation through real-time, easy access to products, services, data, and channels. Delivering a product or service that truly resonates with their customers and meets them where they are with the current challenges they face in a rapidly growing digital market.
What does collaboration between banks and fintechs look like in a post-COVID world?
Zand: Collaboration between banks, fintech, and other providers is becoming more important as the payments landscape is becoming more complex. Banks that are open to partnering have a competitive advantage because they can provide better services at scale. Not to mention that some banks are at risk of getting disintermediated by nonbank providers for some of these types of solutions. The time that bank partners spend helping integrate their banking services into different platforms is markedly less than the time it would take for the bank to develop it themselves. That same time investment from the bank also leads to countless saved hours for their business clients, increasing their value as a business bank.
What has been your biggest professional takeaway from 2020?
Zand: If 2020 taught me anything, it was to always remain flexible and open-minded. One of the big plans we had was to go to some in-person events and start to talk face to face with end-users and really understand what kinds of pain points they were experiencing with their treasury management process. All of our events were either canceled or transferred to digital. We were still able to get the information we needed from customer interviews and case studies, but it just goes to show that sometimes your best-laid plans aren’t going to be in the cards and you need to pivot quickly.
What are you looking forward to most in 2021? Where do you see the greatest opportunities?
Zand: Besides being able to see our bank clients and end-users face to face, in 2021 I am looking forward to watching banks, payments providers, and fintech companies launching services and solutions that can help small businesses across the country emerge from 2020. I think the greatest opportunity for economic recovery and success post-pandemic lies in banks being better able to serve their small business clients.
“China-backed and Africa-focused” is a way to describe much of the investment that has poured into sub-Saharan Africa in recent years. This week’s news that African-based fintech platform OPay is in the process of raising $400 million in new funding – giving the firm a valuation of $1.5 billion – is the latest example of this trend.
OPay is a mobile money platform launched in Nigeria by popular internet search engine Opera back in 2018. The funding report, which was published in The Information, noted that the capital would be used to fuel the company’s geographic expansion, having gone live in Egypt earlier this year. With Chinese investors maintaining a majority stake in the company, OPay had raised more than $170 million to date from investors including Sequoia Capital, IDG Capital, Source Code, GSR Ventures, Meituan-Dianping, and parent company Opera.
The company said that it processed $1.4 billion in payments in October alone, a sum that increased to $2 billion by December. Much of this can likely be attributed to COVID-19. In a country where cash is still king, the onset of the global pandemic made in-person, cash-based transactions problematic. Digital payment options like those provided by OPay have soared in popularity; Forbes took a look at the boom in Africa’s mobile money business back in December, noting investments in sub-Saharan payment innovators like Paystack (also of Nigeria) and Chipper Cash, a San Francisco based P2P payments company that serves customers in seven African countries.
That said, OPay is looking to leverage its pedigree as a payments solution to offer additional products including debit and credit cards. Earlier this month, OPay launched its USSD withdrawal service to make it easier for Nigerians to access cash at OPay merchant stores – without needing a debit card. Also this month, the company introduced version 4.0 of its super app. OPay 4.0 now makes it easier for users to connect with friends and family, add contacts, make quick payments for frequently used services, and more.
Interestingly, OPay is the most successful of the ventures Opera has tried to spin off. These efforts include ORide, a bicycle-sharing service that was shut down after the Nigerian government banned the business; a similarly shuttered bus-booking solution, OBus; a logistics delivery service OExpress; a B2B e-commerce platform OTrade; and a food delivery service called OFood.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
