This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.
Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Voleo to participate in Google’s Digital Strategy program to boost user acquisition on its social trading application.
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.
Worldline and Trapeze deliver a hands-free payment solution for public transport.
Sberbank to Open First Branch in McDonald’s Restaurant.
James Hale appointed Head of Product at alternative investing firm Artivest.
Finastranamed2019 Microsoft Alliance Global ISV Partner of the Year.
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.
Synapse, a San Francisco-based fintech startup, has raised $33 million in a series B round led by a16z, with participation from existing investors Trinity and Core and unnamed individual investors, including 9Yards Capital, reports Henry Vilar of Fintech Futures, Finovate’s sister publication.
This brings the start-up’s total raised to $50 million, following a $17 million series A round in September 2018. Synapse says it has over three million clients using its cloud-based tools, with 10,000 new signups and five million API requests every day.
In total, Synapse says it has facilitated more than $10 billion in transactions to date. The company reports facilitating more than $2 billion as automated clearing house (ACH) and $40 million in payment card transactions for over 100 companies so far this year.
Synapse provides payment, deposit, lending, and investment products as APIs to financial technology companies, which in turn launch consumer-facing financial services.
The fintech plans to build direct processor integrations with both Mastercard and Visa, which it expects will speed up API calls around card issuance and open up features like just-in-time funding and dynamic spending controls.
The company also intends to launch a brokerage account product and to enhance its loan origination and servicing API. This will make it easier for developers to apply for a warehouse line of credit and add automated text and phone loan collection support.
Toward the end of this year, the goal is to launch services in Europe and Canada, starting with payments, deposits, and debit card issuance. Lending and investment products will follow.
The firm plans a chatbot platform to answer customer questions, along with self-servicing tools for developers, a seed investing program. Synapse will also improve its security tools, including its ID verification and video authentication stack, add-ons around duplicate profile detection, and fraud and transaction monitoring.
“After 2019, our goal is to add support for two key markets each year, plus one underserved market, where we will build consumer-facing products until developer ecosystems are built,” said cofounder and CEO, Sankaet Pathak.
As a part of the series B, a16z’s Angela Strange and Michael Hoffmeyer, director at the Crews Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Memphis, have joined Synapse’s board of directors.
Founded in 2015, Synapse demoed its white label loan issuance at FinovateSpring last year. The tool originates and services unsecured consumer and business loans while providing customizable decisioning, automated compliance, smart notifications, and an origination and servicing UI.
With the launch of the PayPal eCommerce PlatformPayPalannounced this week, the alternative finance provider will be helping small businesses gain access to ecommerce tools typically reserved for larger businesses.
In the company’s blog post announcement, COO Bill Ready said, “The PayPal Commerce Platform is designed to meet the specific needs of marketplaces, e-commerce solution providers, crowdfunding platforms and more by bringing together the most comprehensive set of technologies, tools, services, and financing for businesses of all sizes around the globe.”
With the new tool, businesses can access PayPal’s 277+ million active users. They can also operate on a more global scale, leveraging PayPal’s capability to accept more than 100 currencies. Perhaps most notably, however, the PayPal eCommerce Platform takes care of two headaches– compliance and security. Changing regulatory compliance mandates and constantly evolving security standards can make it difficult for businesses to keep up. PayPal’s eCommerce Platform meets demands regulators across 200+ markets and provides AI-powered fraud detection tools.
Previously, these tools were reserved for leading platforms such as BigCommerce, Facebook Marketplace, Instagram, Lightspeed, and Yahoo! Small Business. PayPal eCommerce Platform enables more businesses, and ultimately more people, to participate in the digital economy. “We want to help more businesses get started, grow and thrive in today’s complex digital world. It’s that simple,” said Ready.
This week’s launch may have something to do with the company’s back-to-back acquisitions made last year. Last June PayPal purchased merchant payout platform HyperWallet for $400 million and just weeks later acquired fraud prevention and risk management specialist Simility for $120 million.
PayPal Commerce Platform is available in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The company hopes to expand it to more than 40 markets by the end of this year.
PayPal was founded in 1998 and has a market capitalization of $134.6 billion. The company showcased its Instant Account Creation feature at FinovateFall 2012.
Paysendannounces expanding network and latest funding round.
Tinkoffannounces the launch of Tinkoff Capital management company.
Entrust Datacardcompletes acquisition of nCipher Security.
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.
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, 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.
Blockchain-based identity startup BanQuannounced 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.
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.
Robotic process automation (RPA) specialist WorkFusionpartnered 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 demoedActive 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.
Identity verification company Truliooannounced 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.
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.
