Author: Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz)

Minna Technologies Raises $6.3 Million

Minna Technologies Raises $6.3 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Minna Technologies

Subscription management tool for online banks Minna Technologies just announced it has received a $6.3 million (€5.6 million) investment, bringing its total funding to almost $9 million.

Zenith Group led the round, followed by Visa and existing investor Swedbank. Minna will use the funds to increase its presence in Europe. To support these plans, the company will bolster its team and open a new office in Europe.

“This investment round makes it possible for us to scale up and execute on our European expansion plans. As many European banks have started to embrace FinTech partnerships, we have seen a dramatic increase in the interest of our subscription management platform,” said Minna CEO and Cofounder Joakim Sjöblom. “Our current bank partnerships have proved that subscription management is well received by banking customers and that it is an essential part of digital banking.”

Founded in 2014, Minna originally began as a consumer-facing app for subscription management, then launched as a bank-integrated platform in 2016. Since then, the company has helped consumers save more than $33.5 million in unwanted subscriptions. The company is partnered with several top-tier banks across Europe, including Swedbank and Danske bank, and has a pilot agreement with OP bank.

Sjöblom demoed Minna at FinovateEurope 2019 in London. The company is headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden and has 34 employees. In 2017, the company’s revenues totaled $536,000.

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Currencycloud to Power Cross Border Payments for Fellow Fintech

Currencycloud to Power Cross Border Payments for Fellow Fintech
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Currency Cloud

International payments platform Currencycloud announced this week it has teamed up with WireBarley to fuel the Seoul-based company’s international growth.

WireBarley, an AsiaPac remittance services company, has expanded its services from Asia to Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong. Today, with the support of Currencycloud, WireBarley will provide cross-border remittance services to the U.S. market.

Currencycloud offers APIs to help businesses accept, pay, and convert foreign currencies while managing balances, notifications, permissions, and reporting. The company’s clients, which include fellow Finovate alums Azimo, Klarna, Revolut, and Fidor, can make domestic and international payments in 35 currencies to 180+ countries.

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in London, Currencycloud has raised just over $68 million in eight rounds of funding. The company most recently appeard at FinovateFall 2016 where it debuted its Payment Engine. 

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Akamai, Currency Cloud, Dwolla, Jumio, Kabbage, Lighter Capital, Minna Technologies

On Finovate.com

  • Jumio Teams Up with TruNarrative to Fight Financial Crime.
  • Currencycloud to Power Cross Border Payments for Fellow Fintech.
  • Minna Technologies Raises $6.3 Million.

Around the web

  • Dwolla introduces Labels to help application owners customize how funds are allocated.
  • Akamai launches Enterprise Defender to help customers secure all enterprise applications and users.
  • Kabbage to power loans for Azlo small business clients.
  • Lighter Capital has financed more than $150 million in 500+ rounds of revenue-based financing to over 300 startups.

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.

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Yseop Pairs Up with Larsen & Toubro Infotech

Yseop Pairs Up with Larsen & Toubro Infotech
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Yseop

Natural language generation (NLG) expert Yseop teamed up with technology consulting and digital solutions company Larsen & Toubro Infotech (LTI).

Yseop CEO Emmanuel Walckenaer said that the deal “significantly advances” the company’s NLG efforts while expanding its global reach.

Founded in 1997 as a subsidiary of India-based Larsen & Toubro Limited, LTI has operations in more than 30 countries. Through today’s partnership, LTI will provide Yseop’s NLG technology as part of its global project delivery services, offering the intelligent automation solution to more than 300 clients.

Harsh Naidu, Chief Business Officer of Banking and Financial Services at LTI said, “We are excited to partner with YSEOP to foster NLG adoption across a wide spectrum of use cases in banking, financial services, and other sectors. Our customers demand unprecedented experience of intelligent automation which we will be able to deliver by leveraging YSEOP’s unique NLG approach.”

Paris, France-based Yseop offers an AI platform that powers human-like interactions in customer support, sales, and reporting applications. The company demoed its Augmented Analyst last week at FinovateSpring. The demo video will be available soon.

Previously, Yseop demonstrated its business intelligence solution that turns data into written reports at FinovateFall 2015. The company has raised $3.4 million since it was founded 2007. Last month, Yseop announced that the solution it created for Société Générale won the award for most innovative initiative of the year at the 2019 Digital Finance Awards.

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TransUnion Acquires TruSignal

TransUnion Acquires TruSignal
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, TransUnion

Risk management and credit reporting agency TransUnion is boosting its marketing expertise this week with the acquisition of TruSignal. Financial terms of the deal, which marks TransUnion’s 15th acquisition, were undisclosed.

TruSignal is a target marketing specialist that offers businesses optimization, monetization, and targeting solutions that leverage AI-powered predictive scoring. TransUnion said that combining TruSignal’s capabilities with its in-house technology will help it operate at scale while still allowing people to have personalized interactions with companies in real-time.

TransUnion President and CEO Chris Cartwright said that TruSignal’s marketing solutions will allow the firm to “rapidly and flexibly serve the evolving digital marketing ecosystem.” Matt Spiegel, EVP of digital marketing solutions and head of media at TransUnion added, “Our history of leveraging data to develop rich insights and products, combined with TruSignal’s industry-leading rapid modeling and technology platform, has the potential to be a critical part of shaping the future of the industry and how consumers will experience the brands they engage with.”

Having access to TruSignal’s technology will help TransUnion enhance its marketing products, building on the partnership the company formed last month with Tru Optik. TransUnion’s marketing offerings currently include audience segmentation for digital marketing, customer acquisition, and customer engagement tools.

Founded in 1968, TransUnion has office locations at its headquarters in Chicago, as well as in Hong Kong, Mumbai, Toronto, Johannesburg, Colombia, and Brazil. At FinovateFall 2016, TransUnion showcased Prama, a suite of analytics tools that helps lenders gain market intelligence and act on insights to drive growth and build a risk policy. TransUnion is a public company with a market capitalization of $12.3 billion, trading on the NYSE under the ticker “TRU.”

Last month the company led a $24 million funding round for digital identity authentication provider Payfone. A few days prior to that announcement, TransUnion completed the sale of U.K. credit reporting service Noddle to fellow Finovate alum Credit Karma.

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BioCatch Brings on New Chief Revenue Officer

BioCatch Brings on New Chief Revenue Officer
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: BioCatch

Behavioral biometrics expert BioCatch brought on a new team member today. The company appointed Bill Sytsma as Chief Revenue Officer.

Bill Sytsma

Sytsma is a 20-year veteran of the software and security industry. Most recently, he served as a vice president of sales at ThreatMetrix. In addition to that role, Sytsma has worked at Emulex, iPass, Aveksa, Lumigent Technologies, and EMC.

“As we accelerate our plans for growth, Bill is the ideal person to lead the effort,” said BioCatch CEO Howard Edelstein. “He has vast experience as well as a proven ability to scale global sales efforts, secure new client relationships and drive revenue, exactly what is needed to enhance the results generated by our seasoned and talented team to date.”

The appointment of Sytsma is the latest in a recent string of C-level appointments for Israel-based BioCatch. Last year, the company named Gadi Mazor COO and Paul Mattison CFO.

BioCatch’s technology works by embedding what the company calls Invisible Challenges into online and mobile user experiences. The challenges are a set of subtle tests that the user subconsciously responds to. The user’s responses help to distinguish themselves over a fraudulent person or bot without interrupting the user experience.

BioCatch has raised $41.6 million since it was founded in 2011. At FinovateFall 2014, the company’s cofounder Uri Rivner demoed how some of the Invisible Challenges work.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Artivest, BioCatch, Blend, Crypterium, Holvi, Interactions, Kabbage, NIIT Technologies, Pendo Systems, Plaid, Ripple, Salt Edge, Signifyd, TransUnion, Yseop

On Finovate

  • Holvi Expands to Five New European Markets.
  • Artivest Inks Deal with Institutional Investment Manager LaSalle.
  • BioCatch Brings on New Chief Revenue Officer.
  • Yseop Pairs Up with Larsen & Toubro Infotech.

Around the web

  • Inc. names Blend, Kabbage, Lendio, Plaid, Pendo, Signifyd, and Ripple among the best places to work.
  • Alt Coin Magazine interviews Steven Parker, Crypterium CEO.
  • Interactions‘ IVA was named the top virtual assistant in Speech Technology Magazine’s 2019 People’s Choice Awards.
  • Salt Edge Open Banking API now supports eIDAS PSD2 certificates.
  • NIIT Technologies launches Cognitive Service Desk Audit, a tool to help applications understand and interpret user needs through natural communication.

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.

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Fintech OS Raises $1.2 Million

Fintech OS Raises $1.2 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Fintech OS, Funding

Digital transformation expert Fintech OS landed $1.2 million (€1.1 million) in a post-seed investment round this week. The round, which brings the company’s total funding to $3 million (€2.7 million), was led by GapMinder VC. LAUNCHub Ventures, Gecad Ventures, and private investors also contributed.

Fintech OS will use the funds to expand its international presence. “This new investment round allows us to quickly deploy commercial teams in three strategic territories: U.K., Benelux and DACH,” said Teodor Blidăruş, FintechOS CEO. “Meanwhile, we’re going ahead full-throttle to further integrate AI technology within the FintechOS platform, because intelligent processing of massive amounts of data and quick customization of financial instruments are critical components for the whole financial industry.”

Founded in 2014, Fintech OS helps banks launch new technologies by offering them low-code solutions that facilitate fast and inexpensive deployment of new products and services. At FinovateEurope 2018, Blidăruş demoed how the company uses AI to facilitate financial services companies’ digital transformation.

By the end of this year, the company plans to have secured $9 million to $11.2 million (€8 million to €10 million) in Series A funding. Also in 2019, the company anticipates expanding its workforce to 70 employees and plans to see over 4X year-over-year growth in annual recurring revenue from licenses. Additionally, Blidăruş said, Fintech OS will be “announcing a technological revolution” in the third quarter of 2019.

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Neustar Helps TELUS Fight Caller ID Spoofing

Neustar Helps TELUS Fight Caller ID Spoofing
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Neustar

Data services company Neustar has joined forces with TELUS this week to fight caller ID spoofing. The Canadian telecommunications company recently finalized a test of Neustar’s Certified Caller software suite.

The trial was done per the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) mandate that telecommunications service providers deploy caller ID authentication and verification for voice over internet (VoIP) calls to reduce illegal caller ID spoofing. TELUS tested Neustar’s Certified Caller in its NFV lab environment using the STIR/SHAKEN protocol.

STIR, which stands for Secure Telephony Identity Revisited, is a set of technical standards to certify the identity of originating calls. SHAKEN, which stands for Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs, is a framework that focuses on implementing STIR within IP-based service provider networks. The industry sees STIR/SHAKEN as the most feasible measure of trust in the phone number and name displayed during an incoming call.

“We fully support the adoption of STIR/SHAKEN as a means to restore trust in calls,” said Neustar General Manager and Vice President of Caller ID Solutions James Garvert. “Neustar’s Certified Caller is a full STIR/SHAKEN solution that enables service providers to meet the standards to authenticate and verify the caller telephone identity between originating and terminating carriers and detect and warn subscribers of spoofing.”

Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Virginia, Neustar combines identity and data to offer businesses a range of marketing, risk, communications, security, and registry services. Among the company’s clients are Google, Tesco, Ticketmaster, Allstate, and Pinterest.

Neustar demoed its marketing solution at FinovateSpring 2016. Earlier this year, the company acquired fraud solutions provider TrustID. Neustar is a public company, listed on the NYSE under the ticker “NSR.” The company has a market capitalization of $1.87 billion. Charles Gottdiener is president and CEO.

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Fintech Illustrated

Fintech Illustrated
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateSpring 2019

If you had to draw fintech, what would it look like? For our audience at FinovateSpring last week, it might look similar to the illustrations below.

Check out sketches that cover the highlights from 10 sessions at last week’s show (there’s a lot to unpack, so click on the image to open it in a new tab).

A huge thanks to Giselle Chow Consulting (gisellechow.com) for the composition and use of the images!

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masterQueue Closes First Round of Funding

masterQueue Closes First Round of Funding
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Intellaegis

Debt collection solutions company Intellaegis, which does business under the name masterQueue, is marking its first round of funding today. The amount of the investment is undisclosed.

“To this point, we’d been self-funded by the founders and two strategic Angel investors,” said Co-Founder and CFO Perla Lewis. “This allowed us to double staff and increase our year over year Q1 revenue from 2018 to 2019 by eighty percent.”

The company has also brought on Lance Suder, a former entrepreneur and Stanford grad, as its Director of Operations. “As masterQueue makes contacting customers easy, efficient and compliant, I’m proud to join their seasoned team, and we’re excited to have found an investor that shares our vision and passion,” said Suder.

masterQueue’s debt collections tools help recapture delinquent loans by gathering, organizing, and tracking big data from dozens of data aggregators to find customer assets. The resulting workflow facilitates compliant debt collection, skip tracing, and repossession efforts.

Debt collection technology is one of the lesser-heralded sub-sectors of fintech. Perhaps startups are hesitant to enter the space because of its associations with loan sharks. We have, however, seen a handful of successful entrants in the space, including TrueAccord, collectAI, and Global Debt Registry.

Headquartered in California, Intellaegis demonstrated masterQueue’s debt collection workflow at FinovateSpring 2011. John Lewis is president and CEO.

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The ID Co. Lands $2 Million

The ID Co. Lands $2 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, MiiCard, The ID Co.

Bank data expert The ID Co. boosted its funding total to $11 million this week after closing on $2 million (£1.5 million). Headline investors in today’s round are Amadeus Capital Partners and SixThirty.

The company, which already has clients in 30 countries, said the funding will fuel further global growth. CEO James Varga said, “We are hiring fast and entering new markets and geographies across the globe. The recent launch of DirectID Insights and Income Verification means that we are in an excellent place to capitalise on the need for greater efficiency in lending practices to reflect borrowers’ expectations.”

The ID Co. has two main branches, DirectID, its B2B offering, and NoMo, its B2C product launched last fall. DirectID’s product lineup includes Insights, a dashboard that displays data to assist underwriters in lending decisions, and Income Verification, a tool that combines real time data with six algorithms to offer a clear picture of clients’ income. In addition, the company offers an onboarding solution, a categories and classifications engine, and a bank account validation tool.

James Varga, CEO (right), and Lazaro Campos, Chairman

The ID Co. was prepared for the onset of the U.K.’s Open Banking mandate well before it came into play last January. Atul Kamra, Managing Partner of SixThirty said, “James and The ID Co. team have gotten a real nice head start here, and are well positioned to take advantage from the regulatory tail winds afforded by Open Banking.”

Varga added, “The financial world is being fundamentally changed through Open Banking. It improves our understanding of each individual, allowing us to move away from traditional credit reference agencies.” Varga last demonstrated miiCard’s identity as a service capabilities at FinovateFall 2013.

Launched as miiCard in 2011, the company pivoted to The ID Co. in 2016. Within the last year, the company has launched its Open Banking API, released its NoMo consumer cashflow tracking app, and unveiled its Income Verification solution.

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