Lighter Capital Launches New Financing Options

Lighter Capital Launches New Financing Options

Startup financing company Lighter Capital is broadening its horizons this week. The Seattle-based company announced it is now offering a more diverse set of financing options to fuel entrepreneurs with working capital.

Now, in addition to its flagship, revenue-based financing option that has provided $150 million to over 300 startups in more than 500 rounds of financing, Lighter Capital offers lines of credit and term loans. Similar to the revenue-based financing option, the Lighter Line of Credit and Lighter Term Loan are non-dilutive, meaning startups don’t have to give up equity, or offer board seats.

“Evaluating small startups and providing small loans requires a sophisticated technology platform and data science,” Lighter Capital CEO BJ Lackland told GeekWire. “Our fintech lending platform pulls in 6,500 data points through APIs, creates projections that are 97 percent accurate on average, and automates much of the funding process.”

The new offerings are called the Lighter Line of Credit and the Lighter Term Loan. The Lighter Line of Credit is a revolving working capital line that enables startups to draw and return capital numerous times to even out their cash needs. The Lighter Term Loan provides startups growth capital with predictable payments and offers them the right to get additional capital for a period of time.

The two new credit offerings are meant to complement revenue-based financing. Startups can combine all options for a total of $3 million.

Founded in 2010, Lighter Capital most recently demoed at FinovateFall 2013 where it showcased loan analysis and monitoring tools. Last year, the company launched a new Client Perks Program and increased its funding limit to $3 million.

Credit Agricole Plans $17 Billion Tech Investment in Four Years

Credit Agricole Plans $17 Billion Tech Investment in Four Years

Credit Agricole, the French bank for the agricultural sector, has allocated $16.9 billion (€15 billion) for technological transformation for “greater efficiency,” reports Henry Vilar of Fintech Futures, Finovate’s sister publication.

This capital will be invested over the next four years, aiming to achieve a data-centric architecture in 90% of the group by 2022, as well as $338 million (€300 million) “in increased IT efficiency.”

The group aims to have the totality of its IT staff trained in new technologies at the “new IT university.” This is part of the plan to retrain its staff to be able to handle the new technologies that the financial group aims to test and implement throughout its business lines.

A document issued by the bank says that “100% of emerging technologies” will be tested for new services. That’s right, all of them.

The bank forecasted a very slow level of profit growth for the next four years, as it faces low interest rates and a potential deterioration in its loan portfolio.

In its previous plan, Credit Agricole had targeted a 10% increase in net profit from 2016 until this year but managed to deliver that a year ahead of schedule. The bank reported a 25% profit increase over the two years to 2018.

The bank expects an annual net profit of roughly over $5.6 billion (€5 billion) in 2022, according to its report.

Founded in 1885, Credit Agricole demoed its in-house app store at FinovateEurope 2013.

BanQu Closes Extension on Series A Round

BanQu Closes Extension on Series A Round

Blockchain-based identity startup BanQu announced it closed an extension of its Series A round today. The funds come from Anheuser-Busch InBev’s venture arm ZX Ventures. The amount of the funding was undisclosed but adds to the company’s previous funding total of $2.6 million.

“After BanQu’s outstanding pilot performance in our 100+ Accelerator, we are pleased to solidify the partnership with Ashish, Jeff, and the entire team at BanQu through an equity investment,” said Tony Milikin, Chief Sustainability and Procurement Officer at AB InBev. “Together, we are working to improve access to modern banking for thousands of farmers in underserved rural markets, driving inclusive growth and contributing to our own 2025 Sustainability Goal as well as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.”

Minnesota-based BanQu won Best of Show at FinovateSpring 2016 for its blockchain-as-a-service company that aims to lift people out of extreme poverty by connecting them with global supply chains, brands, organizations, and governments. The company connects the unbanked population to the global economy via a distributed ledger of financial and personal records using blockchain technology. Once users create a transaction history on the BanQu blockchain, they create a trackable personal history that serves as a form of identity, providing a baseline for them to participate in the global economy.

BanQu originally launched its partnership with AB InBev in August of last year after piloting its identity technology with 2,000+ cassava farmers in Zambia. Since then, the company has rolled out programs in Uganda and India, and is planning efforts in Brazil.

“ABInBev has been an incredible partner to BanQu over the past year, and together we have innovated and scaled the BanQu platform across multiple countries and thousands of farmers. Farmers at the world’s “last mile,” traditionally excluded from the global economy and lacking a verifiable economic identity, are now visible, financially empowered, and connected in the global supply chain of AB InBev,” said BanQu Co-Founder and CEO Ashish Gadnis. “The ZX investment takes this partnership to a whole new level of commitment on both sides. It cements our core shared vision of making the world a better place while being good business stewards.”

BanQu currently has operations across 12 countries including Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Malawi, Somalia, South Africa, Syria, Uganda, United States, and Zambia. The company has plans for additional rollouts in China and Mexico later this year.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • $468 Million Raised by 20 Alums in Q1 of 2019
  • BanQu Closes Extension on Series A Round
  • Credit Agricole Plans $17 Billion Tech Investment in Four Years
  • Lighter Capital Launches New Financing Options

Around the web

  • Growjo names Coinbase, Plaid, and BlueVine fastest growing startups in California.
  • Ping Identity launches capabilities framework to help clients adopt a Zero Trust security strategy.
  • Sifted looks at Credit Karma’s entry into Europe.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Workfusion Brings Robotic Process Automation Global with New Partnership

Workfusion Brings Robotic Process Automation Global with New Partnership

Robotic process automation (RPA) specialist WorkFusion partnered with NEC Corporation this week to bring AI-fueled RPA to global markets.

Through the partnership, NEC will become a reseller of WorkFusion solutions around the world, starting with its home territory of Japan. The timing for the launch of WorkFusion’s RPA tools in Japan aligns with the country’s recent work reform legislation. In April, Japan implemented a reform designed to help improve employee well-being and productivity. Because of this, many firms are turning to automation and AI to minimize the amount of time workers spend doing repetitive work.

“We designed our platform with intelligence and analytics at the core, which allows businesses to overcome the challenges faced not only with manual repetitive work but with legacy RPA technologies, and deliver true business value,” said WorkFusion CEO Alex Lyashok. “We’re thrilled to work hand in hand with NEC to help businesses in Japan and throughout the world experience the transformative power of AI-driven RPA as they work to adapt to a changing workforce.”

As a part of the deal, WorkFusion worked with NEC to create cognitive bots that facilitate specific finance and accounting processes unique to Japan. The two taught WorkFusion’s Intelligent Automation Cloud software a wide range of business tasks. The software leveraged machine learning to become familiar with a wide range of tasks, and eventually began to independently carry out more tasks on its own.

Founded in 2010 and headquartered in New York, WorkFusion has a mission to help firms deal with the rapid rise of AI by reducing the complexity of the technology. The company helps customers exploit the AI opportunity by leveraging products that pair people with the power of robotic software. Specifically, use cases for WorkFusion’s AI-powered RPA include creating a more efficient account opening process, increasing loan booking accuracy, and automating rule-based processes in trade finance.

At FinovateFall 2014 WorkFusion demoed Active Learning Automation in New York. In April of this year the company unveiled its new AI-powered Intelligent Automation Cloud, along with a go-live program, to help companies automate operations beyond RPA or other existing technologies.

Trulioo Teams with Refinitiv for Financial Inclusion

Trulioo Teams with Refinitiv for Financial Inclusion

Identity verification company Trulioo announced this week it will be promoting financial inclusion across the globe via a new partnership with financial market data provider Refinitiv.

The two are hoping to foster financial inclusion by promoting access to digital identity solutions. By combining Trulioo’s GlobalGateway solution with Refinitiv’s risk intelligence, banks can verify billions of customers online while remaining compliant with AML and KYC regulations and ultimately reduce fraud.

“The combination of Refinitiv’s trusted data and compliance expertise and Trulioo’s identity verification capabilities and global coverage, will bring modernized KYC processes to thousands of financial institutions around the world, and in turn, help millions of underbanked gain access to the financial services they deserve,” said Stephen Ufford, CEO of Trulioo. “Both organizations share a common mission of supporting financial inclusion through the power of world-class data and technology.”

Trulioo’s GlobalGateway maintains information on more than 5 billion people. Combined with Trulioo’s Digital Identity Network, the GlobalGateway database enables organizations to run identity verification checks on a wide range of the global population.

Founded in 2011, Trulioo leverages 400 data sources to offer verification of 4.5 billion personal identities and 250 businesses in 80+ countries. The Canada-based company also offers a data exchange platform that allows data partners to provide access to consumer data for electronic identity verification purposes, allowing them to set bid prices for electronic ID verification on a region-by-region basis.

At FinovateSpring 2019, Trulioo’s Head of Growth, Anatoly Kvitnitsky, demonstrated GlobalGateway’s instant onboarding with EmbedID. EmbedID enables businesses to query Trulioo’s GlobalGateway API to instantly verify customers in multiple markets by embedding a snippet of code to their website.

Linxo Launches Real-Time Payment Card

Linxo Launches Real-Time Payment Card

Personal finance startup Linxo is launching its first payment card. The new, Visa-branded card will be available starting next year.

Linxo is positioning the card as a “real-time” payment card. This means that consumers will see instant notifications after they make a payment. Users will be able to manage their budget in real-time, since the expense will be immediately visible in the app.

“We are seeing users’ practices evolving quickly in two strong directions: firstly, the requirement for a very good user experience, and, secondly, the introduction of real-time as a new payment standard,” said Bruno Van Haetsdaele, Linxo cofounder. “So, we thought to ourselves: how can we offer the best money management experience and the best payment experience?”

Founded in 2010 and headquartered in France, Linxo offers its 2.8 million users a personal financial management app that aggregates all of their spending information across accounts. The app not only allows users to view and analyze their spending, it also helps them manage their finances by enabling them to transfer funds without logging into their bank account.

Linxo’s app will work in tandem with the new payment card by categorizing and monitoring expenses, offering a view of all the user’s accounts, and providing a budget forecast that predicts the user’s future balance based on their current spending. Some features, such as the budget forecast, are only available with Linxo Premium, a service available for $34 (€29.99) or $5 (€4.49) per month.

In addition to teaming up with Visa, Linxo is partnering with Natixis Payments, which will help the company build out the payment management system. Linxo selected Natixis Payments because it can help the company move the new payment card to market quickly. “We were attracted by the state-of-the-art offer and rapidity provided by the Xpollens solution which allows for the creation of a first card and payment account in just 100 days,” explained Van Haetsdaele. “On this basis, we can then co-build the best money and payment management mobile solution directly with our users. Our aim is to focus on our expertise: creating the best user experience.”

Van Haetsdaele demoed Linxo at the first FinovateEurope conference, which was held in 2011. The company has received a total of $26.2 million in funding, most recently in a 2017 venture round.

The Newest Trends in Middle Eastern Fintech

The Newest Trends in Middle Eastern Fintech

There are two great ways to get a sense of the newest regional trends in Middle Eastern fintech: 1) attend industry conferences 2) talk to accelerators. We’re 100% up-to-date on the first piece (FinovateMiddleEast is taking place November 20 and 21 in Dubai). And as far as accelerators go, we recently caught up with one of the newest fintech accelerators in the region, the DIFC FinTech Hive, to get a sense of the local fintech trends.

The Fintech Hive recently clued us in on what trends its mentorship partners in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia are currently interested in. The following are the top categories:

  • Credit scoring
  • Customer acquisition
  • Onboarding
  • Security
  • Data analytics

Additionally, the mentorship partners want to focus on insurtech-specific trends, including:

  • Data aggregation
  • Connectivity
  • Customer journey

This list comes from the accelerator’s 21 mentorship partners, which include financial institutions, insurance firms, and strategic partners. Specifically, the group’s partners include Finablr, Standard Chartered, Visa, AXA Gulf, AIG, Cigna Insurance Middle East S.A.L., and MetLife.

If you’re a startup interested in participating in the DIFC Fintech Hive accelerator, be sure to submit your application by June 10 for the next three-month program, which begins this September.

InComm Buys Hallmark Cards Subsidiary

InComm Buys Hallmark Cards Subsidiary

Prepaid payments company InComm has purchased Hallmark Business Connections, a subsidiary of Hallmark Cards that provides employee incentive programs. Terms of the deal were undisclosed.

Hallmark built Hallmark Business Connections as its business relationships unit. The subsidiary offers physical and digital greeting cards to promote employee engagement to celebrate career milestones, company achievements, workplace excellence, and personal growth. Hallmark Business Connections also sells customer engagement cards such as those for direct marketing, customer care, and member outreach.

Hallmark Business Connections customers, which include Wells Fargo, State Farm, and Zappos, span a range of industries. The company is headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, with offices in Minneapolis and Duluth, Minnesota.

“Hallmark Business Connections has built on the iconic Hallmark greeting card brand to empower companies with the means to create personalized incentive programs that recognize employees for dedication to their organization,” said Brooks Smith, CEO of InComm. “By combining this business with InComm’s existing loyalty and incentives solutions, we are able to offer an unprecedented level of technology and expertise that will help companies create the most engaging incentive programs possible.”

This is InComm’s ninth acquisition after buying digital lottery company Linq3 Technologies in March. The purchase helps solidify the Atlanta-based company’s expansion from stored value reward cards into more comprehensive incentives programs.

InComm offers more than 500,000 points of retail distribution with 1,000+ brand partners in more than 30 countries. The company debuted CorFire Mobile Commerce at FinovateFall 2011. More recently, InComm showed off the Cashtie API at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2014. In May, the company expanded into wearables by making its MyVanilla Prepaid Mastercard compatible with Fitbit Pay and Garmin Pay.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • BeSmartee Unveils New Mortgage TPO Platform.

Around the web

  • Identitii is now a ‘Co-Sell Ready’ partner for Microsoft.
  • Feedzai launches tools to help banks offer account opening solutions with fraud prevention.
  • Bankingblocks leverages Five Degrees’ Matrix solution as its digital core banking platform.
  • Eurobank Group selects TemenosT24 Transact for its subsidiaries.
  • Insuritas Launches Tucson Federal Insurance Agency for Tucson FCU.
  • Former Mastercard executive David Yates joins Yoyo as chairman.
  • AlphaPoint names co-founder Igor Telyatnikov as its new CEO.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Biometrics Tech Firm ID R&D Receives $5.7 Million in Funding

Biometrics Tech Firm ID R&D Receives $5.7 Million in Funding

New York biometrics technology provider ID R&D has raised $5.7 million in Series A funding, reports Jane Connolly of Fintech Futures, Fintech’s sister publication.

The round was led by a new investor, GSR Ventures, with participation from an existing investor, Gagarin Capital. This is the New York-based company’s second investment; the first being a Seed round of an undisclosed amount raised in December of 2017.

The investment will be used to meet the increasing demand for its artificial intelligence (AI) based voice and behavioral solutions, along with voice and face anti-spoofing technologies. ID R&D will also be using it to add engineering staff and drive international sales.

“What we’ve consistently heard from our customers is that ID R&D’s technologies and solutions stand alone in offering a vastly simplified user experience that doesn’t sacrifice the security of authentication,” said ID R&D CEO, Alexey Khitrov.

The biometric tech provider aims to meet the demand from businesses for conversational interface (CI) and replace existing password and security question-based authentication processes with quicker, simpler voice and facial recognition solutions that require little or no involvement from the user.

The firm’s passive, anti-spoofing capabilities are designed to thwart fraudsters who attempt to access accounts using synthesized or recorded voices; or with photos, videos, or models of the real user’s face.

“With Grand View Research forecasting the speech and voice recognition market size to reach nearly $32 billion by 2025, businesses are racing to keep up with demand for authentication that works across multiple platforms and is as convenient as it is secure,” added Khitrov.

At FinovateFall 2018, Khitrov demoed SafeChat 2.0, an application that passively verifies a user’s identity throughout the conversation (typing or speaking) without asking a them to do anything special to authenticate themselves. In addition to SafeChat 2.0, the company offers IDVoice, a standalone version of ID R&D’s core voice biometric capability; IDSquared, a tool that validates the user by how they type their login credentials and by capturing their face at the same time; and IDBehave, a behavioral biometrics solution that creates a unique biometric template for each user.

ID R&D has seen rapid growth, doubling its sales contracts last year, growing its customer base by 25% in Q1 2019, doubling its staff, and opening a West Coast headquarters. The firm also added a major biometric integrator and a semiconductor company.

Bento for Business Hires on Two C-Level Appointees

Bento for Business Hires on Two C-Level Appointees

B2B payment solutions provider Bento for Business is boosting its leadership team this week. The company has appointed Paula Bachman as Chief Financial Officer and Tracy Hansen as Chief Marketing Officer.

The two will be the first to serve in these capacities, as both roles have been newly created to aid the company during its recent time of growth. Last year, the company’s year-over-year gross dollar volume increased by 3x.

“Paula and Tracy are experienced leaders and critical hires for Bento during this pivotal time in our growth trajectory. They each bring the knowledge and insights needed to progress Bento’s evolution,” said Farhan Ahmad, Bento CEO. “With the right team in place, we are now focused on making further innovations to our financial operating platform to deliver a full-stack payment solution with flexible funding options, built-in compliance, APIs, third-party integrations and more to meet the evolving needs of modern businesses.”

Paula Bachman

In her new role, Bachman (pictured right) will help Bento define new strategies, implement scalable business processes and systems, execute transactions with Bento’s investors and business partners, and lead the human resources group. Prior to Bento, Bachman worked at Networked Insights, a data analytics SaaS firm.

Tracy Hansen

As CMO, Hansen (pictured right) is charged with overseeing and managing Bento’s growth. She has worked at B2B companies including Tealium, NetApp, and CA Technologies, and was most recently CMO of Renaissance Learning, an education software company.

Bento offers an all-in-one platform to help small businesses manage their spending. The company also provides a variety of payment cards to offer businesses more control and visibility over their employees’ spending.

Founded in 2014, Bento demoed its platform at FinovateSpring 2015. The company is headquartered in San Francisco and Chicago. Last month, Bento formed a deal with Visa to include the company as an additional payment card in the Bento for Business platform.