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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
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.
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.
Identitii is now a ‘Co-Sell Ready’ partner for Microsoft.
Feedzailaunches tools to help banks offer account opening solutions with fraud prevention.
Bankingblocks leveragesFive Degrees’Matrix solution as its digital core banking platform.
Eurobank Group selectsTemenos‘ T24 Transact for its subsidiaries.
InsuritasLaunches Tucson Federal Insurance Agency for Tucson FCU.
Former Mastercard executive David Yates joinsYoyo as chairman.
AlphaPointnames 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.
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 demoedSafeChat 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.
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.
Citrix Analytics and Ping Identitypartner to enable contextual access.
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.
Password management platform Dashlane is riding the momentum of the $30 million it raised last month. Today, the New York-based company more than tripled its last investment, pulling in a $110 million Series D round.
The investment also more than doubles Dashlane’s previous funding total, boosting it to $211 million. Sequoia Capital led the round, with existing investors Rho Ventures, FirstMark Capital, and Bessemer Venture Partners also participating.
However, as CEO Emmanuel Schalit made clear in a blog post, “Dashlane’s ultimate success will not be measured by how much money we raise, but by our ability to empower people and businesses around the world to take control of their digital lives.” Dashlane is best known for its B2C offering that autogenerates secure passwords, as well as its form auto-filling function and digital wallet that securely stores users’ credit card information for fast online purchases. The company will use today’s investment to enhance its core product, add new capabilities, and build its brand to become synonymous with password security.
Schalit said that Dashlane is only “scratching the surface” of securing digital identities. “Billions of people and millions of businesses around the world feel the pain of digital identity – from breaches to stolen identities and the nuisance of remembering passwords. Few are even aware that there is a better way, and we are going to change that,” he said.
In addition to its B2C offerings, Dashlane also provides solutions that help businesses seamlessly onboard staff with new accounts, and has a partner program to allow brands to co-brand Dashlane’s identity manager as a service. The company’s partners include Visa, Intel, and yubico.
“While most people are not aware of the magnitude of these issues, an entire economy is booming and growing in sophistication around harvesting and weaponizing stolen credentials, with participation from nation-states and cybercriminals,” said Sequoia Partner Jim Goetz, who will join the company’s board of directors. “We believe this category has the potential to one day surpass anti-virus in size, and we are excited to partner with the emerging market leader as they create and grow the category.”
Dashlane also announced it has recruited Joy Howard (pictured), former CMO at Lyft, as its Chief Marketing Officer. Howard, who is slated to begin her role at Dashlane in August, will oversee the company’s global marketing initiatives. She brings to Dashlane her experience gained from leadership positions at Sonos, Patagonia, Nike, and Coca-Cola.
Since it was founded in 2009, Dashlane has amassed 11+ million users from 180 countries across the globe. The company demoed its password manager and keyboard-less ecommerce transaction technology at FinovateEurope 2013.
Plaid, a provider of APIs for financial infrastructure, announced its expansion into the U.K. this week. The move makes a lot of sense– an open banking fintech is launching in the motherland of open banking.
“We’re building a financial network that will deliver on the promise of open banking with the best in both local expertise and global opportunity,” Keith Grose, International Lead at Plaid said in a blog post.
The U.K. is Plaid’s second international market after launching in Canada last year. The expansion overseas initiates the San Francisco-based company’s more comprehensive launch into Europe as a whole.
Plaid elected to launch in the U.K. because, as some have argued, the region is the fintech capital of the globe. More than 1,600 fintech companies have come out of the U.K. and that number is projected to double in the next ten years.
Today’s news is as much about Plaid launching in the U.K. as it is about opening up the possibility for its client applications to do business in the region, as well. Venmo, Robinhood, Coinbase and Acorns all use Plaid to connect to their customers’ U.S. bank accounts, and can now more easily expand into Europe using existing integrations.
Plaid, which was granted its AISP license from the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority last October, currently offers five of its products in the U.K.:
Auth, an account authentication tool
Balance, which pulls account balance information in real-time
Identity, which leverages bank data to verify consumer identity
Transactions, which pulls bank statement data across banks
Assets, a verification of assets tool
Missing from this list is Plaid’s Income product, a tool that validates a consumer’s income and verifies direct deposit data.
At FinDEVr San Fransisco 2014, the company’s founder, Zach Perret gave a presentation about leveraging the Plaid API for financial infrastructure. Plaid has raised $310 million since it was founded in 2013. After the company’s most recent investment last year, TechCrunch estimated Plaid to be valued at $2.65 billion.
Plaid began 2019 by acquiring its competitor Quovo in a $200 million deal. At FinovateSpring earlier this month bill payment platform doxoannounced it is leveraging Plaid to bring customers overdraft protection when paying their bills online. And last week, Plaid unveiled Plaid Direct, a lightweight integration that makes banks and fintechs a data source in the Plaid network, allowing end customers to enjoy open banking connectivity across financial service providers.
Biometric authentication specialist Fortress Identity has partnered with Visa this week. Under the agreement, Visa cardholders in Latin America and the Caribbean will have their transactions protected by means of Fortress Identity’s biometric technologies.
Fortress Identity will use voice prints, phone codes, as well as active and passive biometrics to authenticate users. “We want Visa cardholders to feel absolutely confident that their funds and personal data are safe whenever and wherever they use their Visa cards,” said Fortress Identity CEO Alessandro Chiarini.
“Multi-factor user authentication is critical in today’s interconnected commerce space, and verifying the identity of people attempting to access the network is key to reducing many types of fraud, including chargebacks,” said Eduardo Perez, SVP and Risk Officer for Visa Latin America and the Caribbean.
Fortress Identity will also collaborate with Visa technology partners including YellowPepper, a payment platform provider; NovoPayment, a banking as a service platform; and HST, an EMV vendor.
Founded in 2015, Fortress Identity leverages a suite of biometrics technologies to protect users in mobile iOS and Android applications, Microsoft Active Directory environments, and Citrix applications. The Miami, Florida-based company demoed its active and passive biometrics technology earlier this month at FinovateSpring. Fortress Identity has eight employees and has raised $3 million.
Global Treasure Bank (GTB) in Myanmar has implemented Infosys Finacle’score banking solution to power its retail and corporate operations, reports Jane Connolly of Fintech Futures, Finovate’s sister publication.
Finacle is understood to have replaced the Kastle core banking system from another India-based vendor, 3i Infotech.
Since the implementation, the bank says it has signed up nearly 75,000 new accounts of various types, with each onboarding process taking just minutes. It has also seen improved control and productivity in its 163 branches, thanks to built-in workflow engines.
GTB is now processing an average 300,000 mixed transactions per day and is benefiting from the “360-degree view of customer relationships and transactions” that Finacle provides.
“For over two decades, GTB has stayed true to our mission of comprehensive economic development of Myanmar through reliable, inclusive and convenient banking services,” said U KoKo Aung, CEO of GTB. “Today, to continue to abide by this commitment in an increasingly complex regulatory and competitive environment, we felt the need for a modern platform to power our banking strategy.”
Venkatramana Gosavi, senior vice-president and global head of sales at Infosys Finacle stated that the Myanmar banking industry is undergoing a transformation.
He added, “With Finacle, GTB has gained a strong foundation to boost agility and efficiency of operations, and significantly improve customer experience across channels.”
The implementation process was aided by ACE Data Systems, Finacle’s business partner in Myanmar.
Finacle, part of EdgeVerve Systems, a subsidiary of Infosys, showcased EdgeVerve Blockchain Framework for Financial Services at FinovateEurope 2017. At the start of 2018 Infosys teamed up with Tradeshift to help clients digitize supply chain management. At the start of this year, the company partnered with Qatar National Bank.
Banking technology vendor Temenos is partnering with UBX to deliver digital banking to millions of unbanked and underserved customers in the Philippines, reports Jane Connolly of Fintech Futures, Finovate’s sister publication.
The fintech subsidiary of UnionBank of the Philippines, UBX has developed a range of plug-and-play services to help rural banks reach customers in remote communities.
These include the blockchain-based i2i turnkey solution, which connects rural banks to each other and to the Philippines’ main financial networks.
Having partnered with Temenos, UBX can now offer core banking software to its partner financial institutions, through Temenos T24 Transact.
Temenos says its cloud-native, cloud-agnostic, API-first banking software will provide greater levels of agility and scalability for rural banks, cooperatives and microfinance institutions.
“At UBX, our mission is to build platforms that bring businesses and people together,” says John Januszczak, CEO of UBX. “As part of that, we provide access to needed technology and services while connecting communities.
“The rural banking community in the Philippines has been championing financial inclusion for decades. Temenos will help us provide the most tailored, innovative and advanced core banking solution to our rural banking customers.”
The partnership aims to deliver digital banking to millions of people over the next five years.
Founded in 1993, Temenos debuted its Connect Mobile Banking application at FinovateEurope 2015 in London. With clients in 145+ countries, Temenos employs more than 4,600 people in 63 offices. The company has a market capitalization of $12.5 billion.
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.
