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
Bento for Businesspartners with payroll and HR company Cast & Crew
PayActivannounces Walmart as Destination to Pick Up Cash-Based Earned Wages.
TechCrunch: Blockchain startup Blockchain to launch hardware wallet in partnership with Ledger.
Monetate and Bazaarvoicepartner on product recommendation strategies.
CLA selectsExpensify for its clients’ receipt tracking and expense reporting app.
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.
U.K. payment and loyalty app startup Yoyo Wallet entered into a major partnership agreement this week. The deal, worth $30 million, is with Greg Kidd’s investment firm Hard Yaka. Well-known in the fintech industry, Kidd was an early investor in Ripple, Square, Twitter, and Coinbase.
For its end of the deal, Yoyo will integrate its commerce API with Hard Yaka’s Global ID, a global user identification platform. Global ID helps users prove their identity via their electronic footprint. The tool’s identity token is a key feature to help users make purchases online and in-store; this commerce element is where Global ID will leverage Yoyo’s loyalty and purchasing app.
“Yoyo is the cornerstone to the global delivery of the Hard Yaka vision. We know about data – and our collaboration together will generate a boost to the Global ID movement that will shape the future of the global consumer market and disrupt the status quo,” said Yoyo chairman Alain Falys.
In praise of Yoyo’s secure and scalable platform, Hard Yaka founder and CEO Greg Kidd said, “Yoyo has a very sophisticated technology that includes a nimble application programming interface that makes it easy to integrate into the Yoyo Platform. This will enable users to pay for goods and services and receive loyalty rewards and other benefits through a mobile device – without compromising the security of the consumer or giving up more private details than necessary.”
Yoyo was founded in 2013 and processes more than two million transactions per month for its more than 800,000 users. The company recently demoed retailer-specific bank card loyalty solution at FinovateEurope 2018. Yoyo has raised $30.3 million from Metro Group, Touchstone Innovations, Woodford, and Firestarter. This summer, the company launched a new feature that allows users to order ahead. Weeks later, Yoyo announced it exceeded one million users on its platform.
It’s time for last-minute preparations for FinovateAsia, which will be held next week on October 29 and 30 in Hong Kong. And it’s not just the presenters and speakers who need to be prepared, it’s also you, our audience. Still don’t have your ticket? Register today to be part of the crowd.
To help you get ready for all of the newest themes and trends that will be presented next week, we’ve created this word cloud that offers a visual on the hottest topics of this year’s show:
As for logistical details, here is all you need to know:
Who
We’ve gathered dozens of innovative fintech companies to demo their latest technology on stage. Check out our full list of demoing companies and read through our Sneak Peek blog series for an inside look at what the companies will demo on stage.
We’ll also be joined by industry experts and thought leaders to discuss the latest trends impacting banks and fintechs today. Preview our full list of speakers and take a look at our agenda for more information on session topics.
Where
We’ll be at the Hong Kong Convention Centre located at 1 Expo Drive, Wan Chai, Hong Kong. Please use the Harbour Road entrance at the Harbour Road Cafe when entering the venue and proceed to rooms S221s on level two.
When
Registration opens at 8 am on October 29 and the opening keynote presentation will begin at 8:45 am. Plan to come early and enjoy some tea and a continental breakfast before the session begins.
Emailagelaunches RapidRisk Score fraud detection solution for risk analysis.
Tinkoff Banklaunches Tinkoff Mortgage mobile application for its mortgage customers and partners.
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.
Financial wellness platform DoubleNet Payannounced this week it has agreed to be acquired by Purchasing Power, an Atlanta-based voluntary benefit provider for employers. The financial terms of the deal, which closed on September 28, were not disclosed.
DoubleNet Pay was founded in 2013 on the principle of paying yourself first. The company’s platform helped users account for bills and savings goals before using their income on discretionary spending. Every time its users received a paycheck, DoubleNet Pay automatically separated the funds into three different accounts– savings, bills, and spending– to help users achieve financial freedom.
Purchasing Power, however, was most interested in DoubleNet Pay’s Workplace offering, a feature for businesses to help their employees gain financial security. As Richard Carrano, Purchasing Power CEO, explained, “This investment enables us to take a significant next step in our mission to provide expanded financial wellness products and services that will fill gaps not addressed by traditional employee benefit providers.” Purchasing Power will rebrand the service to fit into its existing offerings.
“We are excited that the DoubleNet Pay platform will be able to help Purchasing Power’s millions of eligible employees set proactive short-term savings goals and take care of monthly bill obligations automatically,” said Brian Cosgray, founder and CEO of DoubleNet Pay. “We have known the Purchasing Power leadership team for many years and are impressed with its passion for helping to improve the financial well-being of their customers.”
At FinovateSpring 2015, DoubleNetPay showed off how it takes the stress out of personal financial management. Last year, the Georgia-based company partnered with T. Rowe Price to integrate its online cash flow management tool into T. Rowe Price’s Retire With Confidence Program. Before its exit, the company had raised $4 million from Fuqua Investments and TTV Capital.
Wealthtech innovator Wealthfront unveiled this week its plans to launch a freemium version of its online roboadvisory service. The California-based company will open its Path financial planning tool for free to U.S. users.
Users new to Wealthfront can sync their existing financial accounts with Path, an automated financial planning solution launched in 2017, that offers an interactive experience for users to explore different scenarios that may help them reach their goals. By syncing their own accounts with Path, users can gain a better understanding of their current wealth management habits and create a personalized retirement plan for the future. Wealthfront will allow freemium users to sync not only traditional bank account information but also brokerage account and home value data. As is the case with most freemium services, Wealthfront’s goal with the new offering is to transition clients of the free service to its managed plans.
In an interview with Reuters, Wealthfront Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Dan Carroll said, “We don’t believe that financial advice should be for the ultra wealthy and it should be behind the paywall.” The company’s management fees are on the low end of the industry, however. Wealthfront charges a transparent advisory fee of 0.25% and a fund fee that ranges from 0.07% to 0.16%. “We were gratified when we looked at the data, that clients that engage with the engine do save more,” Carroll added.
The freemium service is slated to launch by the end of this year.
Wealthfront stands a little taller now in comparison to competitor Betterment, which is still limited to paid, managed plans. To its benefit, however, Betterment offers optional access to licensed financial experts who provide a human touch to an otherwise strictly algorithmic investing approach. Personal Capital, which offers both a freemium model and access to a team of financial advisors, remains a step above both.
Wealthfront debuted as KaChing at FinovateSpring 2009. The company started 2018 with a capital raise of $75 million and the launch of its home ownership planning tool. Earlier this week, Wealthfront announced it teamed up with Intuit to leverage data from account holders’ TurboTax returns to create a smoother onboarding experience for new clients and offer more personalized services to existing clients, based on their detailed tax return data.
Temenosannounces new Hybrid Pooling cash management solution for corporate banking.
ClearBank selectsFeaturespace for real-time fraud and AML detection.
Insuritaspartners with Northwest Bank to launch bank-owned digital insurance agency platform.
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.
In a fintech-techfin world, it is usually banks that acquire technology from fintech companies, and not the other way around. However, this week, enterprise application company Kony is changing that narrative. The Texas-based company announced it is acquiring the assets of Pivotus, the innovation subsidiary of Umpqua Bank parent company, Umpqua Holdings. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Umpqua launched Pivotus in 2015 to serve as an environment where it could quickly develop, test, and deploy new banking solutions for Umpqua. Cort O’Haver, Umpqua Holdings president and CEO, said, “As the speed of technological change continues to accelerate, it’s important that we’re able to make the most of our strategy and size by developing a network of partnerships that can accelerate our pace of differentiation. Finding a smart home for Pivotus—with the capital, technical expertise, and customer focus —is important for Umpqua moving forward, and Kony is a terrific partner.”
Kony anticipates the acquisition will augment its Kony DBX digital banking applications. The company launched Kony DBX earlier this summer to help banks with their digital strategies. The new digital banking platform and application suite offers pre-built apps and a digital banking platform to help banks and credit unions deliver digital experiences across all customer channels with less friction.
As a part of the deal, Umpqua will help Kony to continue developing the PivotusEngage platform. Launched earlier this year, Engage helps banks offer a consistent user experience that maintains a human touch across multiple channels. After the acquisition is finalized, Kony will rename the tool Kony DBX Engage.
“Our partnership with Umpqua, combined with the talented Pivotus employees and the innovative technologies they’ve developed, is a landmark combination that will deliver high impact solutions for financial institutions around the globe,” said Thomas Hogan, chairman and CEO of Kony. “Umpqua is widely recognized for their innovative approach to leveraging digital to enhance and deepen the customer experience. The Pivotus team and assets will extend and accelerate Kony’s market leading portfolio for digital banking. We couldn’t be more proud or thrilled to join forces.”
Kony’s CTO, Bill Bodin and Product Marketing Manager, Antonio Sanchez, showcased the company’s digital banking platform at FinovateFall 2017. Earlier this fall, Kony integrated with Payveris’ cloud-based money movement technology. In October of last year, the company launched a new digital banking solution that leverages Daon’s biometric tools. Founded in 2007, Kony has raised more than $115 million.
After making its international debut earlier this year, Plaid, the provider of APIs for financial infrastructure, announced it has linked up with JPMorgan Chase to help the bank make a move toward open banking by enabling account holders to safely share their financial data with third party fintech applications.
Via a secure API, Plaid accesses consumers’ data to help them share their digital financial information with other fintech apps such as Robinhood, Acorns, and Venmo. The cooperation will also offer developers quality data they can use to build new products and services. To put clients in control, Chase has launched a new tool called Account Safe that brings users visibility into which applications are using their data and give them control over the use of their data.
In an announcement on its blog, Plaid stated that it believes today’s partnership “underscores the need for secure and reliable data in the fintech ecosystem.” It continued, “We firmly believe that collaboration with financial institutions is the best way to deliver on the promise to protect consumers and developers. We’re proud of the steps we are taking with Chase towards this reality.”
According to Business Insider, this news comes as Plaid is in talks with investors about a funding round that could raise the company’s valuation to $2 billion. To date, Plaid has raised $59.3 million from investors including Goldman Sachs Investment Partners and Spark Capital.
Plaid has 150+ employees and offers 6 products, including 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; and Income, a tool that validates a consumer’s income and verifies direct deposit data. Since it was founded in 2012, Plaid has analyzed more than 10 billion transactions.
At FinDEVr San Fransisco 2014, the company’s founder Zach Perret gave a presentation about leveraging the Plaid API for financial infrastructure. Earlier this year, Plaid was featured by both CNBC and Forbes. At the start of 2018, the company was honored on Forbes’ Fintech 50.
Klarnapairs up with Rancourt to let shoppers pay over time.
Credit Karmalaunches new personalized shopping experience.
Temenosramps up AI efforts to power its digital banking platform.
Feedzailaunches AI-powered Feedzai Genome to help users visualize and fight financial crime.
Jumiostays ahead of fraudsters with certified 3D liveness detection.
Cloverannounces additions to its Partner Portfolio with enhanced integrations with Nav, AP Intego Insurance Group, and Gusto.
Ayondoforms white label agreement with Phnom Penh Derivative Exchange to provide TradeHub for derivative brokers trading CFDs for PPDE’s clients in Cambodia.
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.
Three fintechs joined forces today to create a new credit scoring technology designed for thin-file customers. Experian, FICO, and Finicity are the triumvirate behind the new score, named the UltraFICO score.
The UltraFICO score leverages consumer-permissioned account data aggregated and distributed by Experian and Finicity. Unlike the traditional FICO score, which relies heavily on repayment data from users’ previous credit usage, UltraFICO looks at how responsibly consumers manage their finances. After gaining the user’s permission to access their bank statements, Finicity’s technology pulls consumer-contributed data from their checking, savings, and money market accounts, examining the length of time accounts have been open, frequency of activity, and saving data.
For its part, Experian pulls the consumer’s credit information and will integrate the new model into lenders’ existing operational workflow. Alex Lintner, president of Experian’s Consumer Information Services, said that this project has offered the company “a new way to use consumer-permissioned data that allows lenders to make better decisions and helps consumers gain access to credit.”
Accessing the additional data not only offers lenders a more complete picture of the prospective borrower’s ability to repay, it also improves access to credit for Americans who are typically below lenders’ preferred credit score threshold. This especially applies to thin-file borrowers and those working on rebuilding their score after a financial crisis.
Jim Wehmann, FICO EVP of Scores, said that UltraFICO “empowers consumers to have greater control over the information that is being used in making credit risk decisions.” He added, “It also enables a deeper dialogue between the consumer and lenders to help both parties make better financial decisions.”
UltraFICO will be piloted in 2019 to test the new model and determine consumers’ willingness to share their financial data. The group plans to make the new model generally available to lenders in mid-2019.
Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, Experian most recently demoed its decisioning platform at FinovateFall 2018. The cloud-based platform enables organizations to combine data and analytics to improve the accuracy of their customer lending decisions. Earlier this year, Experian acquired U.K.-based ClearScore for $385 million.
Founded in 1956 as Fair Isaac Corporation, FICO presented “Rapidly Deliver Contextually-Powered Stream Processing” at FinDEVr New York 2016. Earlier this month, the company announced it will provide KYC and onboarding solutions for Belarus-based lender, Belgazprombank.
Utah-based Finicity demoed at FinovateFall 2017 where the company’s Co-founder and President of Data Services, Nick Thomas, showed how the company simplified access to its Verification of Income and Verification of Assets reports. Frequently in the headlines, Finicity announced last week it was selected as third-party service provider for Freddie Mac’s automated income and asset assessment solution, Loan Product Advisor. In September, the company aligned with intelligent process automation software provider Capsilon to modernize the mortgage origination process.
Open source API innovator, TESOBE’s Open Bank Project, announced it has teamed up with Red Hat this week. The two are collaborating on a new API specifically designed for banking and financial services companies.
The Open Bank Project will leverage Red Hat’s Fuse along with the North Carolina-based company’s rule engines to connect banking systems and offer interoperability among a variety of sources of bank data. This combination of the Open Bank Project’s and Red Hat’s open source technologies facilitates banking system connections while delivering a wider range of applications to end users.
TESOBE CEO and Founder of the Open Bank Project, Simon Redfern, said, “Red Hat and TESOBE share a strong commitment to open source and I’m excited to see these technologies working together. The collaboration we have today can offer a valuable opportunity for banks to help reap the benefits of Open Banking.”
Founded in 2005, the Open Bank Project is a pioneer in open banking, an initiative wherein banks open up their architecture via APIs. In addition to allowing third party applications and services to leverage consumer data, open banking helps financial services companies comply with the EU’s recently revised payment services directive, which was implemented in January of this year. For this reason, as Rich Feldmann, global director of financial services for RedHat, noted, “As open source continues to be a part of the financial services and banking industry, it is important to have standards and projects in place to help enable it to be used properly and remain compliant. This is why we are happy to collaborate with TESOBE’s Open Bank Project to help provide technology tools and guidance to enable success in open source banking.”
In addition to today’s Red Hat announcement, the Open Bank Project also divulged it will be working with Australian challenger bank, 86 400. The neobank will leverage the Open Bank Project’s APIs to standardize and harmonize its API design for more than 10,000 fintech developers.
Headquartered in Germany, TESOBE’s Open Bank Project demoed at FinovateFall 2018 last month, where Redfern showcased how banks can leverage APIs to drive innovation. Earlier this summer, the Open Bank Project teamed up with Citizens Bank to power the bank’s hackathon.
