Author: Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz)

Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Coinbase, FamZoo, Jumio, Moven, Temenos, UNPay, Yandex

On Finovate.com

  • Yandex.Money Moves Mobile Wallet Forward with Moven Enterprise.

Around the web

  • Jumio won gold award for Security Software Enterprise Product of the Year at the 2018 Best in Biz Awards
  • FamZoo redesigns card to make it more teen friendly.
  • Coindesk reports: Coinbase Quietly Opened Its OTC Crypto Trading Desk This Month.

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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BlackRock to Acquire Equity Stake in Envestnet

BlackRock to Acquire Equity Stake in Envestnet
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Envestnet, Mergers & Acquisitions

Wealthtech companies Envestnet and BlackRock have entered into a strategic partnership agreement in which Envestnet will integrate BlackRock’s Digital Wealth technologies into its platform. On the financial side of the deal, BlackRock will take a 4.9% equity stake in Envestnet in a stock transaction totaling $123 million.

“Envestnet is uniquely positioned to create the premier financial wellness network. Integrating BlackRock Digital Wealth offerings into the Envestnet platform represents an industry milestone, advancing advisors’ ability to help investors meet their financial goals,” said Bill Crager, president of Envestnet.

BlackRock launched its Digital Wealth services last October to merge its wealthtech offerings. The services iRetire, BlackRock Advisor Center and FutureAdvisor, which BlackRock acquired in 2015, will all be integrated into the Envestnet platform. Venu Krishnamurthy, global head of digital wealth for BlackRock, said that BlackRock will deliver its Digital Wealth solutions to Envestnet in a “modern, highly integrated way.” The new technologies will help advisors “scale their business and build better portfolios,” he added.

In addition to the stock transaction, Envestnet will offer BlackRock the option to purchase 470,000 shares of Envestnet common stock at $65.16 per share for up to four years from the date of issue. The agreement is expected to close before the end of this year.

Envestnet | Yodlee showcased its predictive financial wellness and intelligence solution at FinovateFall 2018. In September, Envestnet unveiled a new developer experience that delivers enhanced data that spans 18,000 global sources, as well as updated tools that aim to speed up the developer experience. Adding to that effort, the company recruited Sebastien Taveau, former chief developer evangelist for Mastercard, as its vice president of Developer Experience.

Envestnet was founded in 1999 and acquired Yodlee in 2015 for $660 million. Envestnet | Yodlee is a public company listed on NYSE under the ticker ENV. It has a market capitalization of $2.52 billion.

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BBVA Brings on Onur Genç as New CEO

BBVA Brings on Onur Genç as New CEO
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: BBVA

BBVA appointed a new CEO this week, hiring Onur Genç (pictured below) to take the place of Carlos Torres Vila who served as BBVA Group CEO since May of 2015. Torres Vila’s tenure at BBVA extends back 10 years, beginning in 2008 when he first worked as the Group’s head of strategy and corporate development. He will transition as BBVA’s Chairman after stepping down from his role as CEO.

Genç will be coming to the company from Birmingham, Alabama-based BBVA Compass where he was CEO and U.S. country manager. He will begin his new role on December 31, 2018.

“Onur has had an extremely positive impact in our operations in the U.S. and in Turkey, and now that contribution will be extended to the whole Group,” Torres Vila said. “The Board has selected Onur as he is the ideal CEO to continue pushing forward our strategy and boosting our transformation throughout all our franchises, generating value for all our stakeholders: shareholders, employees, customers and the overall society.”

Previous to his role at BBVA Compass, Genç worked for Garanti Payment Systems for six years– first as EVP of retail banking and then as deputy CEO.

BBVA demoed its market sentiment analysis tool at Finovate Europe 2013 in London and presented its initial APIs to an audience of developers at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016. Earlier this month, the bank launched a new venture called Upturn that aims to simplify the credit report error dispute process.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: BBVA, Check Point, Ellie Mae, Envestnet, Mambu, Payfone, Revolut

On Finovate.com

  • BlackRock to Acquire Equity Stake in Envestnet.
  • BBVA Brings on Onur Genç as New CEO.

Around the web

  • Check Point Software integrates with New Amazon Web Services Security Hub.
  • Revolut to launch in Singapore and Japan.
  • Payfone to extend Anti-SIM Swap fraud technology to 35 markets in 2019.
  • Mambu now powering Lendico Switzerland.
  • Dan Madden to join Ellie Mae as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

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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Roostify Powers TD Bank’s Digital Mortgage Experience

Roostify Powers TD Bank’s Digital Mortgage Experience
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Roostify

The mortgagetech sector saw another large partnership this week, as TD Bank partnered with Roostify to offer customers a digital mortgage lending experience.

“By leveraging Roostify for TD’s Digital Mortgage, we’re able to provide borrowers with online capabilities in addition to face-to-face guidance and support. This is the game changer for today’s buyers – digital when they want to handle it on their own, and human when they need the help,” said Rick Bechtel, head of mortgage banking at TD Bank.

Through the partnership, TD Bank is leveraging Roostify’s DecisionBuilder lead tool to allow customers to explore which loan products they qualify for and shop for the one the suits their needs. After finding a suitable loan option, they can apply for the loan in minutes. The entire process– from application to the closing of the loan– is completely digital.

To amplify the human element and further personalize the borrowing experience, TD Bank is leveraging Roostify’s bi-directional integration with its CRM application. The movement of data helps TD Bank’s loan officers better manage their leads and process applications to close, spending more time connecting with borrowers.

“The new TD Bank Digital Mortgage improves the lending process for both consumers buying a home, and loan officers managing their clients,” said Rajesh Bhat, CEO and co-founder of Roostify. “Since the experience is built on Roostify’s API-based platform, it provides the flexibility to meet TD Bank’s business needs right now and in the future.”

Roostify presented at FinovateSpring 2016 where the company demoed account aggregation capabilities for asset verification, as well as integrations with TurboTax and Equifax. Last month, the company partnered with Ellie Mae to launch a bi-directional integration with the mortgage expert, enabling the seamless passage of information between the two platforms.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Bill.com, Bitbond, Gro Solutions, InComm, Insuritas, iQuantifi, Kony, Lighter Capital, Modo Payments, MX, Roostify, Sezzle, Signicat, Trustly

On Finovate.com

  • Roostify Powers TD Bank’s Digital Mortgage Experience.

Around the web

  • iQuantifi launches RoboPlanner roboadvisory tool for millennials.
  • Nummo selects MX to power user account aggregation.
  • Signicat digitizes in-store signing of credit agreements for Resurs Bank retail partners.
  • Kony helps PSECU deliver an updated digital banking application to enhance the digital user experience.
  • InComm partners with Japanese pharmacy chain Welcia to launch four mobile barcode payment solutions in its stores.
  • Sezzle adds ShipStation as client.
  • Ocurrency interviews Radoslav Albrecht, Founder & CEO of Bitbond.
  • Insuritas partners with Sound Community Bank to launch bank-owned digital insurance agency platform.
  • Bill.com partners with First National Bank of Omaha (FNBO) to offer enhanced digital business payments solutions.
  • Lighter Capital’s investment in Springboard Retail reaches $1.1 million.
  • Provident Bank chooses Gro Solutions to boost mobile-first user-experience and drive account growth.

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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Modo Receives $13 Million Investment

Modo Receives $13 Million Investment
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Modo Payments

Payments technology company Modo has just boosted its total funding to $16 million. This comes after today’s successful completion of a $13 million Series A funding round.

Investors include Deutsche Bank– whose participation was announced in August– as well as new and existing strategic and angel investors. Modo will use the funding to grow its team and expand on its offerings.

Deutsche Bank will leverage Modo’s technology to boost its digital business-to-business and business-to-consumer payments and extend its payment capabilities into non-traditional channels such as the mobile wallets and peer-to-peer networks of Alipay, Paypal, M-Pesa, and WeChat.

Rick Striano, managing director of digital product development at Deutsche Bank said the bank is committed to bringing continued innovation to its customers. He anticipates that partnering with Modo and other fintechs will enable the bank to accomplish that goal faster. “We believe Modo has developed a compelling proposition to address the needs of an evolving payments landscape and increasingly digital economy. We are proud to add them to our list of partners,” said Striano.

We have some big ideas for the future of the payments industry, and having these world class investors in our corner puts us that much closer to our goal of reducing friction in payments for everyone,” said Modo CEO Bruce Parker, who founded Modo in 2010. “Completing our Series A is a great way to confirm that we’ve built something great, and this is just the beginning of our growth phase,” he added.

Instead of integrating its solutions, Modo focuses on interoperability. The company exchanges payment data across platforms on behalf of banks, payment networks, and providers, enabling them to store, share, and track payment event data. Modo presented at FinovateFall 2016, where it showcased its Modo Digital Payments Hub. In the past year, the company’s transaction volume has grown 7x. In August, Modo partnered with Etihad to create a loyalty solution as a part of the FinTech Abu Dhabi Innovation Challenge.

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Welcome to Day 2 of FinovateAfrica

Welcome to Day 2 of FinovateAfrica
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateAfrica 2018

We’re back with more demos and even more content for the second day of FinovateAfrica. Doors open at 8:15 this morning at the Westin Cape Town, South Africa, where we’ll be serving up breakfast and networking opportunities until the first session begins just before 9:00.

Visit our website for a full, interactive agenda, or get a quick glance at what to expect below:

8:15 to 8:55 Registration, breakfast, and networking

8:55 to 9:30 Using gamification and behavioral economics to reward customers

9:30 to 10:25 Demo session

10:25 to 11:00 Intermission, networking, and refreshments

11:00 to 12:40 Breakout streams

  • Emerging trends
  • Putting the end user first
  • Data and the customer experience
  • Financial inclusion

12:40 to 13:45 Lunch and networking

13:45 to 14:45 Breakout streams

  • Emerging trends
  • Putting the end user first
  • Data and the customer experience
  • Financial inclusion

14:45 to 15:20 Intermission, networking, and refreshments

15:20 to 15:50 MNOs and the mobile money network

15:50 to 16:20 VC Panel

16:20 to 16:45 Open banking and APIs

16:45 to 16:55 Best of Show awards

16:55 to 17:55 Reception and networking

Thanks to everyone for attending, demoing, speaking, and sponsoring the first ever FinovateAfrica conference! We truly would not be here without you. We’re looking forward to seeing you at another Finovate event in the future– come see us at one of our 2019 shows:

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EVRY Lands 7-Year Deal Worth $77 Million

EVRY Lands 7-Year Deal Worth $77 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: EVRY

Swedish clearing house Bankgirot is outsourcing its IT operations to Nordic tech vendor Evry in a seven-year deal worth $77.1 million (SEK 700 million), writes Tanya Andreasyan of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

Evry says the agreement “will enable Bankgirot to adopt a more dynamic delivery organization and will modernize its technical infrastructure.” The vendor will take responsibility for Bankgirot’s platform operations and will enable the delivery of “simple and efficient payments.” It adds that it “beat strong international competition” to win this contract. The contract can be renewed for up to four years (two years at a time) and also involves 30+ employees of Bankgirot being offered new positions at Evry.

Per Hove, Evry’s new CEO (he was promoted from EVP and head of Evry Norway earlier this month), says his company is pleased Bankgirot “has shown trust” in Evry. “With Evry, we get a strong partner with deep technical and commercial insight that will help us provide quality and efficiency,” explained Bankgirot CEO Jeanette Jäger.

Bankgirot has been operating for nearly 60 years, and processes about six million transactions worth $7.5 billion (SEK 68 billion) daily. It is also behind several fintech and paytech projects in Sweden, including Autogiro, e-invoices, and real-time payments that enable Swish.

Norway-based Evry claims 10,000+ customers across the private and public sectors. “Every day more than five million people in the Nordic region use solutions delivered by Evry,” the company says. The company reported turnover of $1.5 billion (NOK 12.6 billion) in 2017 and has 8,500 employees across nine countries. Among its recent projects is implementing digital workplace services for Norway’s Sparebank 1 Alliance and enabling Google Pay for Norway’s challenger bank Monobank. It has also recently renewed its agreement with DNB for card fraud prevention solutions.

Evry demonstrated its PFM solution, Spendific, at FinovateEurope 2015. Earlier this year, the company teamed up with Handelsbanken to launch a wrist-based contacltess payments solution.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: AlphaPoint, EVRY, iSignthis, Klarna, Lendio, Shoeboxed, Thought Machine, Xsolla

On Finovate.com

  • EVRY Lands 7-Year Deal Worth $77 Million.

Around the web

  • Shoeboxed has processed 28+ million documents and receives upwards of 200,000 documents per month from customers through Magic Envelope since launching it in 2007
  • Entrepreneur features how Xsolla helps Fortnite game developers get paid.
  • Lendio recognized as a great place to work for third consecutive year.
  • AlphaPoint, facilitates issuance of digital pound sterling for London Block Exchange, a multi-cryptocurrency exchange.
  • Klarna enters global opportunity with Clas Ohlson partnership.
  • iSignthis receives Visa/Mastercard license.
  • Atom Bank partners with Thought Machine.

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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Ellie Mae Builds Data Lake on AWS

Ellie Mae Builds Data Lake on AWS
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Ellie Mae

Ellie Mae is moving its infrastructure to Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) cloud to rebuild its core applications and create new digital products for homebuyers, reports Antony Peyton of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

The firm will use the “breadth and depth” of AWS services, including compute, storage, database, serverless, and containers, for the loan process for its customers and partners. Ellie Mae built a company-wide data lake on AWS using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for digital lending.

Satheesh Ravala, SVP, cloud engineering and operations at Ellie Mae, said, “AWS gives us an unmatched set of cloud services and a highly reliable infrastructure to work with.”

The company uses AWS Lambda to run code without provisioning or managing servers, Elastic Container Service for Containers to develop micro services, and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) to decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications on AWS.

AWS states that it offers over 125 services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management within 19 regions around the world. These include the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the U.K.

Founded in 1997, Ellie Mae demonstrated Encompass Consumer Connect at FinovateSpring 2017. The online lead generation tool turns consumer interest into a mortgage application by letting the borrower complete an application, provide and receive information, and order services from a single platform. During the demo, presenter Jonas Moe, SVP of Market Strategy, demonstrated the company’s API by showing off an Alexa integration with Encompass Plus– asking questions such as, “What loans have rate lock expirations this week?” and “Search for a better rate.” Ellie Mae is headquartered in California. Jonathan Corr is president and CEO.

Last month, the company teamed up with fellow Finovate alum Roostify, creating a bi-directional integration between the two firms to increase efficiencies in the mortgage application process. In August, Ellie Mae partnered with First Data to enhance security of lending payments.

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Welcome to Day 1 of FinovateAfrica

Welcome to Day 1 of FinovateAfrica
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateAfrica 2018

Finovate’s very first appearance in Africa starts today and we are excited to have an amazing audience, along with demo companies and speakers, to share the experience with. Over the next two days, we’ll showcase the latest in fintech trends and products, as well as host multiple high-quality networking sessions at the The Westin Cape Town in South Africa. If you’re in the area, you won’t want to miss out. Tickets are still available.

You can find detailed agenda on the FinovateAfrica website, but here are the basics of what to expect today:

8:15 to 8:45 Registration, breakfast, and networking

8:45 to 9:30 Keynote address

9:30 to 10:25 Demo session

10:25 to 11:00 Intermission, networking, and refreshments

11:00 to 11:20 Challenger bank showcase

11:20 to 11:55 Trends in emerging social payments

11:55 to 12:15 Technology for rural farmers

12:15 to 13:30 Lunch and networking

13:30 to 15:30 Breakout streams

  • Banking
  • Payments
  • Regtech
  • New technologies

15:30 to 16:00 Intermission, networking, and refreshments

16:00 to 16:30 Overcoming challenges of collaboration

16:30 to 17:00 Closing keynote

17:00 to 18:00 Reception and networking

Thank you for joining us today for the first ever FinovateAfrica conference! We’ll see you again tomorrow; registration opens at 8:15 and the show begins at 8:55.

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