Author: Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz)

CoverHound to Help Intelligent Customers to Shop Around for Renter’s Insurance

CoverHound to Help Intelligent Customers to Shop Around for Renter’s Insurance
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: CoverHound

Online insurance marketplace CoverHound announced a partnership with Intellirent, a rental marketing and tenant screening platform.

The partnership will enable renters whose landlords use the Intellirent software suite to access instant quotes on renter’s insurance leveraging CoverHound’s insurance marketplace. CoverHound offers renters transparency across policies while Intellirent benefits from the simplicity of a single partnership.

“The majority of real estate professionals using our service require their renters to maintain an insurance policy,” said Corey Eckert, founder of Intellirent. “By partnering with CoverHound, we can eliminate the hassle of insurance shopping for renters while providing these agents with a streamlined process they can share with their new tenants.”

CoverHound VP of Product and Personal Lines, Kelli Broin, explained that the partnership will help renters get insurance to protect what matters to them. She added, “Our streamlined process enables renters to compare quotes online and easily purchase the coverage that’s right for them.”

CoverHound was founded in 2010 to offer an insurance marketplace where consumers can shop around for auto, homeowners, renters, and life insurance. In 2016, the company expanded to offer insurance for small businesses, providing a range of insurance options including worker’s compensation, liability, cyber insurance, and more.

At FinovateFall 2013, CoverHound CEO and founder Basil Enan and CMO Keith Moore demoed the company’s mobile app. Last fall, CoverHound expanded its network of partners and insurance carriers. The company works with top carriers including Chubb, Liberty Mutual, Hiscox, Progressive, biBerk, Safeco, Nationwide, Mercury, and Hartford Steam Boiler.

Headquartered in California, CoverHound has raised a total of $56 million.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: AlphaPoint, Coinbase, Entrust Datacard, Five Degrees, Flywire, Insuritas, Q2 Holdings, Yoyo

On Finovate.com

  • Flywire Raises $100 Million for Global Expansion.
  • Five Degrees Acquires Icelandic IT Software Company Libra.
  • Yoyo Tops One Million User Milestone.
  • Coinbase Enables European Customers to Buy Virtual Gift Cards with Crypto.

Around the web

  • The Motley Fool interviews Q2 Holdings CEO Matt Flake.
  • AlphaPoint hires Kristin Boggiano as Chief Legal Officer.
  • Entrust Datacard unveils TruCredential 7.5 software that enables tablet and mobile-based capture and issuance of ID cards.
  • America’s Credit Union partners with Insuritas to launch member owned insurance agency.

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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Flywire Raises $100 Million for Global Expansion

Flywire Raises $100 Million for Global Expansion
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Flywire, Funding

Global payment and receivables company Flywire closed on $100 million in funding to facilitate foreign currency payments. The Series D round brings the company’s total funding to $143 million.

The financing was led by Singapore-based Temasek. Bain Capital Ventures and F-Prime Capital also contributed. While Flywire declined to disclose its new valuation, Forbes noted that the amount is significantly higher than Flywire’s 2015 valuation of $100 million, but falls short of $1 billion.

Flywire, which is headquartered in Boston and has operations in the U.K., China, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and Spain, will use the funds to advance its technology and expand geographically. The company also plans to invest in marketing by cross-selling its existing client base to new cross-border payment solutions for healthcare and business.

Flywire originally launched as peerTransfer in 2011, when the company set out to facilitate international tuition payments at colleges and universities. While this flagship market makes up 80% of Flywire’s revenue, the company has since rebranded and expanded to tackle international payments for healthcare and businesses. Flywire’s platform processes billions of dollars in payments every year in over 120 different local currencies, connecting more than 1,400 businesses and universities with their customers.

At FinovateSpring 2011, the company presented its original tuition payment platform. In June, Flywire partnered with UnionPay International to provide Chinese students and patients with discounted foreign exchange rates on cross-border tuition and healthcare payments. A few weeks earlier, EY named Flywire CEO Mike Massaro a finalist for Entrepreneur of the Year.

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Five Degrees Acquires Icelandic IT Software Company Libra

Five Degrees Acquires Icelandic IT Software Company Libra
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Five Degrees, Mergers & Acquisitions

Banking technology company Five Degrees is expanding its geographic footprint today with the acquisition of Iceland-based Libra, a core banking technology firm.

The purchase is expected to boost Amsterdam-based Five Degrees’ global footprint and will bring additional expertise in securities and loans to Five Degrees’ clients, ultimately offering a more robust digital transformation experience. The integration of Libra into Five Degrees helps the company offer banks a more efficient, less expensive way to replace their outdated core system.

Martijn Hohmann, CEO of Five Degrees, described Libra as “a very strong player” in Iceland’s financial market. He added that the integration of the two companies will help banks “transfer smoothly to ‘digital’ and to benefit from increased flexibility and reduced costs.”

Libra’s 40 employees will work alongside and collaborate with the Five Degrees workforce. The company’s CEO, Thordur Gislason, said that the acquisition enables the company to support clients with new technology, products and services. “Besides,” he added, “it creates opportunities to utilize our knowledge and experience in a larger market. We believe that our future plans have a great fit with the vision and strategy of Five Degrees.”

Founded in 2009, Five Degrees has raised a total of $11.6 million. At FinovateEurope earlier this year, the company showcased Prospery, its digital wealth management solution. Among Five Degrees’ partners are KPMG, Lexis Nexis, and Microsoft. Earlier this year, the company collaborated with BillPro to launch a cross-border banking service.

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Figure Eight Collaborating with Google Cloud on Machine Learning

Figure Eight Collaborating with Google Cloud on Machine Learning
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Figure Eight, Google Cloud Platform

AI data enrichment platform Figure Eight (formerly known as CrowdFlower) announced a collaboration this week with Google Cloud. Through the partnership, Figure Eight will serve as the data launch partner for Google Cloud AutoML, helping AutoML customers collect and prepare data and experiment with models.

Google Cloud’s AutoML is a set of machine learning tools that help developers leverage Google’s transfer learning and Neural Architecture Search technology to train machine learning models. These tools require developers to have little knowledge of machine learning and therefore allow for fast scalability.

To simplify the process for developers, Figure Eight will offer AutoML-specific templates to simplify the process of uploading training data to AutoML, as well as consultation services and guidance for developers. With these tools and resources, AutoML customers can create training data to train, test, and improve their machine learning models.

Figure Eight already provides training data to other Google teams, such as Jigsaw; the newly formed collaboration with AutoML is an extension of those capabilities. Figure Eight CEO Robin Bordoli said that the collaboration stems from a common mission of democratizing AI. “We’re excited companies can use the Figure Eight platform to create the necessary training data to deploy computer vision machine learning models faster, more effectively and at a larger scale without having to build an internal team of machine learning experts,” said Bordoli.

Founded in 2009 as CrowdFlower, the company rebranded to Figure Eight in April to refocus on AI and machine learning opportunities. At FinovateFall 2014, the company won Best of Show for its demonstration on how its crowdsourced workforce quickly collects, cleans, and labels financial transaction data to help banks curate a better customer experience. Headquartered in California, Figure Eight has raised $58 million from firms including K9 Ventures, Industry Ventures, Trinity Ventures, and Bessemer Venture Partners.

Google Cloud presented a talk titled Journey to Cloud: First Steps, Production and Machine Learning at FinDEVr New York 2017.

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Onfido to Secure Drivers for India’s Largest Rideshare Company

Onfido to Secure Drivers for India’s Largest Rideshare Company
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Onfido

Digital identity verification company Onfido partnered with India’s largest shared ride company Zoomcar last week. This marks Onfido’s sixth ridesharing partnership. The London-based company has also teamed up with Drivy, BlaBlaCar, EasyCar, Turo, and most recently, SnappCar.

Zoomcar’s mobile app allows users to rent cars and cycles by the hour, day, week, or month. Onfido will help Zoomcar quickly and securely verify a user’s identity. To rent a car, users take a selfie and a photograph of their ID document using their smartphone.

“Onfido is a fantastic partner to work with,” said Rajesh Bysani, CPO at Zoomcar. “Their mobile-first document and facial verification is helping us to achieve our core mission of convenient car rental, while improving the safety of our platform. It benefits everyone.”

Founded in 2012, Onfido leverages machine learning to offer biometrics-based fraud detection. The company’s Facial Check compares a photo on the user’s ID to their live selfie to ensure the customer is who they claim to be. Additional features include a document check, which ensures the user’s document has not been forged, digitally tampered with, lost, or stolen; as well as an identification record check, which cross-references a user’s details against global databases and credit reference agencies.

Onfido provides identity checks in 195 countries for 1,500 customers across the globe. At FinovateEurope, the company’s CEO and Co-Founder Husayn Kassai demoed how Onfido conducts a facial verification check with video. The company has received more than $30 million in funding from investors including Salesforce Ventures and Idinvest Partners.

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Continuity to Provide Compliance Tech for Affinity FCU

Continuity to Provide Compliance Tech for Affinity FCU
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Continuity Control

Compliance management solutions company Contiuity is making the banking industry more compliant through a new partnership with Affinity Federal Credit Union.

The New Jersey-based credit union, with $3.1 billion AUM, will implement Continuity’s RegAdvisor Pro and RegControls to make its compliance management more efficient. RegAdvisor Pro analyzes and summarizes regulatory changes; monitors the federal register for new issuances; and provides policy review, updates, and board approval using pre-built procedures. RegControls offers pre-built procedures for consumer compliance, BSA/AML, lending operations, deposit operations, and Community Reinvestment Act and Fair Lending compliance.

Affinity selected Continuity because of its “strong presence and reputation in the industry.” The credit union will use the new tools to analyze regulations, implement compliance actions, monitor activity, and create reports. Olivia Leach, compliance officer at Affinity, said, “Continuity’s technology takes the guess work out of compliance by helping us to easily determine how regulations impact us, and then supporting associated implementation and training actions. The platform assigns different tasks to the appropriate employee, boosting accountability and transparency of the overall compliance management process.”

Affinity has onboarded its marketing and PR, loan administration and consumer lending, and mortgage origination divisions to Continuity. “Compliance touches everything, which is why it’s a priority for us to maintain a strong and pervasive culture of compliance. Continuity provides employees with detailed steps for understanding and applying compliance management to their daily functions, making the entire process easier and delivering new levels of transparency,” added Leach.

Headquartered in Connecticut, Continuity’s solutions serve hundreds of financial institutions across the U.S. and its territories. The company debuted at FinovateSpring 2010. In addition to partnerships with Iberia Bank and Apple Bank announced earlier this year, Continuity received a Marcum Tech Top 40 Award in 2017.

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CardFlight Teams with BoomTown

CardFlight Teams with BoomTown
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: CardFlight

Mobile POS and payment technology company CardFlight is expanding its product reach this week after landing a distribution partnership with San Francisco-based Boomtown.

The partnership will enable Boomtown’s U.S.-based merchant acquirer and independent sales organization clients to offer CardFlight’s SwipeSimple payment acceptance solution to merchants. An EMV capable POS system, SwipeSimple is available as both a mobile or countertop register version and comes with back office reporting software to help businesses manage their inventory and operations. The SwipeSimple Register version (pictured right) was launched earlier this spring and offers paper receipt printing, advanced discounting options, and more.

In the press release, Boomtown CEO Alfred “Chip” Kahn IV said that CardFlight is a great partner “because their technology exceeds expectations by combining advanced features, reliability, and simplicity.” Some of those features include leveraging Bluetooth Low Energy to support EMV and contactless payments, offering an app that allows merchants to use their own device for mobile POS, and using a virtual terminal for card not present transactions.

CardFlight CEO and Founder Derek Webster added, “The partnership between Boomtown and CardFlight is natural, because Boomtown is the leader in providing remarkable support to SMBs, while CardFlight’s payment acceptance technology was made with the needs of SMBs in mind.”

Founded in 2013, CardFlight serves 10 of the top 30 merchant acquirers in the U.S., reaching tens of thousands of merchants across all 50 states. The New York-based company debuted its technology at FinovateSpring 2013, showing off the first iteration of its API/SDK. In May, CardFlight announced another distribution partnership with payment technology company Paya. CardFlight has raised a total of $6.6 million.

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OnDeck Scores $93 Million in Two Credit Facilities

OnDeck Scores $93 Million in Two Credit Facilities
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, On Deck Capital

Online small business lender OnDeck closed a pair of revolving credit facilities this week. The $93 million in asset-backed funds come from Credit Suisse, which contributed $55 million (AUD 75 million) to go to small businesses in Australia, and Crédit Agricole, which contributed $38 million (CAD50 million) for small business loans to Canadians.

“Securing cost-effective facilities that provide committed funding to support the loan growth of our international businesses reflects another step forward in the execution of our financing strategy,” said Ken Brause, Chief Financial Officer at OnDeck. “These two transactions provide additional capacity to support small businesses in Australia and Canada and help them to achieve their goals.”

OnDeck will use the Credit Suisse facility to refinance its loan book at a lower rate and to fund future small business loan originations. OnDeck will service the loans, which it will extend to OnDeck Australia and OnDeck Canada subsidiaries. The funds are expected to promote small business growth in Australia and Canada by burgeoning the amount of working capital available.

Both loans carry an initial weighted average interest rate of 5.6%. The Credit Suisse loan will mature in June 2020 while Crédit Agricole’s matures in June 2021. These credit facilities make a total of four funding events that the New York-based company has received this year, following a $100 million revolving credit facility and a $225 million securitization, both received in April.

Founded in 2007, OnDeck leverages its OnDeck Score that uses advanced analytics to make real-time lending decisions and deliver funds to small businesses in as little as 24 hours. Since launch, the company has deployed $8+ billion to customers in 700 different industries across the United States, Canada, and Australia. OnDeck demoed at FinovateSpring 2012 and gave a presentation at our developers conference, FinDEVr New York 2016.

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Equifax Acquires DataX to Promote Financial Inclusion

Equifax Acquires DataX to Promote Financial Inclusion
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Equifax, Mergers & Acquisitions

Consumer insights and credit scoring company Equifax made its 18th acquisition this week. The Georgia-based firm purchased credit reporting agency and alternative data provider DataX.

The move is expected to promote financial inclusion for underbanked consumers by helping lenders expand access to credit. DataX’s alternative data stores complement Equifax’s core credit database, as well as specific services such as The Work Number, Equifax’s centralized repository of payroll data. Equifax will also benefit from DataX’s analytics and identity solutions, as well as credit reporting, ID verification, bank account verification, and custom risk services.

“Giving consumers fair access to credit has always been a key economic driver for upward mobility, and this acquisition will help more consumers gain access to credit and capital,” said Trey Loughran, president of United States Information Solutions at Equifax. “The combination of DataX’s data with Equifax’s unique and robust data assets will add more depth to consumer’s profiles and will help lenders expand borrowing options.”

As a part of the transition, the DataX brand and its 18 employees have been integrated into Equifax’s Banking and Lending Division. Other recent acquisitions in Equifax’s portfolio include ID Watchdog and Veda Advantage.

At FinovateFall 2011, Equifax showcased the benefits of the Equifax Complete features of its mobile app. Last week, the company teamed up with Thinking Capital to launch BillMarket, a solution that helps small businesses in Canada extend payment terms and increase their purchasing power. Earlier this year, Equifax appointed a new CTO, launched NeuroDecision technology for neural network modeling, and unveiled Lock & Alert, a service that helps consumers quickly lock and unlock their Equifax credit report.

Founded in 1899, Equifax is publicly traded on the NYSE under the ticker EFX. The company’s market cap sits at $15.2 billion.

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Azimo Adds 10 Countries for Nordic Users

Azimo Adds 10 Countries for Nordic Users
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Azimo

For international remittance platform Azimo, the world just became a bit more flat. That’s because the U.K.-based company recently expanded its services to allow customers to send money to 10 more countries.

Azimo users in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden can now send funds to bank accounts in Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Hungary. Other recently-added countries include the Philippines, Nigeria, China, and Poland.

The Nordic region is a strategic focus for Azimo. The purpose of the company’s recent $20 million in funding round from Rakuten Capital was to fuel Azimo’s growth in Nordic countries as well as in the broader European region. And the demand can be seen in the metrics– the number and volume of transfers from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have increased by more than 150% in the last year.

Founded in 2012, Azimo has raised a total of $66 million. The company debuted its global money transfer platform at FinovateEurope 2013 in London. The platform allows users to send money in the recipients’ local currency directly to their bank account. Last year, the company reported triple-digit growth.

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Tradeshift Collaborates with MakerDAO on Blockchain Payments

Tradeshift Collaborates with MakerDAO on Blockchain Payments
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Tradeshift

Supply chain payments company Tradeshift has always aimed to help businesses get paid faster. Today, it’s doubling down on that mission by partnering with MakerDAO to leverage the blockchain to speed up payments.

MakerDAO is the creator of Dai, a decentralized stablecoin based on the Ethereum blockchain, as well as the Dai Credit System. Through the partnership, Tradeshift will leverage MakerDAO’s credit system to create a supply chain liquidity marketplace. The marketplace aims to serve businesses, which can leverage transactions and digital assets on the Tradeshift platform to create short-term financing models; developers, who can build apps for investors; and investors, who benefit the tokenization of assets such as invoices made available on new financial apps.

As Tradeshift Co-Founder Gert Sylvest described, it was previously difficult for trade receivables to leverage the blockchain, since the market has tight margins that do not allow for the volatile fluctuations that come with settlement in digital currencies. The difference in the Dai Credit System, Sylvest explained, is that it is “a transparent and stable token that allows anyone to represent real-world currency settlements on the blockchain.”

The Dai maintains stability because it is an open smart contract platform that allows anyone to issue Dai against their assets, which are held as collateral. When users want to retrieve their collateral, they return the Dai currency they issued, plus a fee based on how much time they used it for. This removes the need for users to blindly trust a third party. MakerDAO’s video explains a bit more in-depth:

Rune Christensen, CEO of MakerDAO said that this partnership “proves the potential of the blockchain to level the economic playing field for businesses of all sizes around the globe.” He added that the collaboration offers “new options for investors by creating an entirely new class of investment vehicles with vetted risk, based on real world assets.”

Founded in 2010, Tradeshift helps business’ buyers and suppliers digitize and collaborate on their transactions using any supply chain app. At FinovateEurope 2012, Tradeshift demoed Instant Payments, which allows small businesses to receive payments instantly on the Tradeshift platform in exchange for a small interest rate.

The company’s business commerce platform connects more than 1.5 million companies across 190 countries. To date, the California-based company has processed more than half a trillion dollars in transaction value. Tradeshift has raised $432 million, including its most recent $250 million round from Goldman Sachs this spring which vaulted the company’s valuation up to $1.1 billion.

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