Author: Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz)

Cardlytics Becomes the First Fintech to Go Public in 2018

Cardlytics Becomes the First Fintech to Go Public in 2018
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Cardlytics

Cardlytics, which originally filed plans to go public on January 12, has made its IPO official today. On the NASDAQ this morning, the data-driven marketing company issued 5.4 million shares under the ticker symbol CDLX. The offering is expected to close on February 13, 2018, subject to closing conditions.

To celebrate this momentous event in the company’s 10-year history, Cardlytics CEO and Co-Founder Scott Grimes and COO and Co-Founder Lynne Laube, rang the opening bell on NASDAQ this morning. Grimes said, “We believe becoming a publicly-listed company on the NASDAQ will help Cardlytics continue to strengthen our partnerships with banks, drive meaningful consumer engagement, and help brands make their marketing more relevant and measurable through our Purchase Intelligence platform.”

In an analysis on Seeking Alpha, Gary Alexander noted that the market cap of $273 million places Cardlytics “on the small extreme of the IPO spectrum.” However, he added that because Cardlytics is the first fintech– and even the first technology company– to go public this year, “it’s bound to get attention for signaling appetite in the IPO markets.”

Atlanta-based Cardlytics, which launched in the heart of the Great Recession, has raised a total of $203 million and counts ITC Holding Co., Kinetic Ventures, Canaan Partners, Polaris Venture Partners, and TTV Capital among its investors. In the nine months ending in September 2017, the company logged losses of $16 million on sales of $91 million.

Cardlytics leverages algorithms and machine learning to normalize raw purchase data and make it useful for marketers. The company offers solutions for both marketers and banks, including:

  • Insights: helps marketers make better business decisions across marketing, store operations, and real estate planning by viewing into customers’ actual purchase behavior.
  • Measure: leverages sales data to help marketers measure and optimize their marketing strategies
  • Purchase Intelligence: allows marketers to advertise within a native banking environment to capture new clients with the use of loyalty and rewards

At FinovateFall 2013, Cardlytics demoed its geolocation application, a solution that sends bank customers ads and offers based on their location. Last month, the company appointed Sathish Gaddipati as Chief Technology Officer. Most recently, Cardlytics earned a spot on the Tech Tribune’s list of the 10 Best Tech Startups in Atlanta.

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TSYS Tech Backs J.P. Morgan’s Commercial Virtual Card Issuance

TSYS Tech Backs J.P. Morgan’s Commercial Virtual Card Issuance
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: TSYS

Global payments provider TSYS announced this week that J.P. Morgan will leverage the fintech’s Virtual Payment Precept (VPP) to broaden its virtual card solution.

TSYS’ VPP is a commercial card solution that enables issuers to generate secure, virtual, single-use account information in real-time, offering a more flexible and faster card issuance program that gives more control over account and transaction parameters. J.P. Morgan will use VPP to issue cards on both Visa and Mastercard networks.

“Virtual cards are a vital component of our clients’ payments strategy and business operations and this will continue to power our clients’ and suppliers’ growth,” said Naney Pandit, Head of Commercial Card Product at J.P. Morgan.

VPP technology allows businesses to set limits on what each account can be used for. And virtual cards replace static account numbers on physical cards that are vulnerable of being compromised. These two factors help reduce risk and improve operational efficiency.

TSYS demoed its Spend Controls feature at FinovateEurope 2013 in London. Last December, the company extended its agreement with Capital One to continue providing processing services for the bank’s North American clients. That same month, TSYS closed its acquisition of payment technology company Cayan for $1.05 billion.

TSYS was founded in 1983 and has 11,500 employees across offices in 13 countries. In 2016, the company processed 25.5 billion transactions, generating $4.2 billion in revenue. TSYS is a publicly traded company (NYSE: TSS).

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Who’s Up for Analyst All Stars?

Who’s Up for Analyst All Stars?
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateEurope 2018

Finovate was built on the foundation of live fintech demos. And there’s plenty to love about the live demo-only, fintech-speed-dating model, but I’ve become increasingly fond of Finovate’s incorporation of the analyst speed-dating session that takes place in the days following the demos.

Demo companies and the analysts both face a 7-minute time limit, but there are two major differences between the two sessions. First, while the companies demo specific fintech innovations, the analysts present on fintech themes and opportunities for the future. Second, the companies face a demo-only, no slides rule, but the analysts are allowed to use as many slides as they’d like in their 7-minute time slot.

Here’s a look at who will be facing the heat of the spotlight during our Analyst All Star session at FinovateEurope next month.

Ron van Wezel

Van Wezel is a senior analyst for Aite Group’s Retail Banking and Payments practice. His research covers market and regulatory trends in the payments space, with a focus on Europe. Aite Group is an independent research and advisory firm focused on business, technology, and regulatory issues and their impact on the financial services industry. Headquartered in Boston, Aite Group works with its clients as a partner, advisor, and catalyst, challenging their basic assumptions and ensuring they remain at the forefront of industry trends.

Kieran Hines

Hines is Head of Industries at Ovum, and leads a team of analysts that support clients across a range of verticals including financial services, retail, government, education, healthcare, and utilities. Hines’ personal research focus is payments, and he regularly produces research and advises customers on issues such as real-time payments, open banking, fraud/security, and vendor selection.

Michelle Evans

Evans is the Head of Digital Consumer Research at Euromonitor International. In her role, she oversees the firm’s research on the digital consumer, providing actionable insights and in-depth analyses into how technological advances are reshaping the way consumers browse and buy goods and services globally.  Recognized as a thought leader in digital commerce, she was named a Power Woman in Fintech by Innotribe in 2015, a Woman on Top in Tech by Asian Entrepreneur in 2016, and a Woman to Watch by Remodista in 2018. Leveraging her master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University, she has a reoccurring column in Forbes and is regularly quoted in publications globally.

Oliwia Berdak

Berdak joined Forrester Research in 2013 and leads Forrester’s coverage of digital disruption and digital innovation in financial services. She advises executive teams on their digital strategies and the impact of emerging technologies on their business. Prior to joining Forrester, Dr. Berdak held a number of research positions in business and academia, working with a variety of methodologies to deliver insight.

Zilvinas Bareisis

Bareisis researches and advises clients on consumer payments. He has a keen interest in payments innovation, and how the “perfect storm” of competitive, regulatory, and technology developments shapes consumer payments today and tomorrow. Bareisis has over 20 years of experience advising senior executives at the leading financial institutions and their technology and service providers. He joined Celent in April 2010 from Oliver Wyman.

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Entrust Datacard Teams with Gemalto

Entrust Datacard Teams with Gemalto
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Entrust Datacard

Identity authentication and secure card issuance company Entrust Datacard has formed a major partnership this week. The Minnesota-based company teamed with payment card supplier Gemalto to offer a SaaS-based instant issuance solution for U.S. banks.

The new offering pairs Entrust Datacard’s instant issuance technology with Gemalto’s SaaS platform, lowering the barrier to entry to create an easy-to-deploy instant issuance solution for any size financial institution. The technology gives banks complete control over the card issuance delivery process and, when they issue cards in the branch, they benefit from cost reductions not only in the form of savings on postage, but also from lowered overhead.

Here’s how it works: once a bank branch installs Entrust Datacard’s instant issuance printers they can personalize and print EMV cards on-demand. The issuance software is hosted and managed by Gemalto’s secure, cloud-based SaaS infrastructure.

In the press release, Karen Kaukol, Vice President of Instant Issuance at Entrust Datacard said, “With a SaaS-based instant issuance solution, we are able to not only provide financial institutions with the ability to instantly meet their customer’s needs, but do it in a manner that drives retention, and increases activation and usage rates, all while reducing the overhead expenses to the bank.”

Entrust Datacard was founded in 1969 and presented at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016. Jason Soroko, Security Technologies Manager, and Matt Rose, Technical Sales Consultant, spoke to the audience of developers on Safeguarding Your Banking Applications. With more than $600 million in annual revenue, Entrust Datacard has 2,000 colleagues working around the globe to serve customers in 150 countries. Last month, the company partnered with the government of Ghana to help it issue national identity cards to its citizens in real time.

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Onfido to Power KYC for Arro Money

Onfido to Power KYC for Arro Money
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Onfido

Identity verification company Onfido announced today it will power real time identity verification and KYC checks for Arro Money, a financial services company that provides personal and business accounts.

Leveraging Onfido’s technology, Arro Money will provide financial services access to underbanked businesses. Onfido’s eKYC data and real-time verification for passports, ID cards, and drivers licenses from 160 countries offers fast due diligence checks that will offer Arro Money’s new clients access to its services in three minutes.

Director at Arro Money, Muhammad Asim said that through its partnership with Onfido the company can improve its customer service and eliminate excessive credit checks. “Ultimately,” Asim continued, “we are helping to improve accessibility and financial inclusion… by having this strong alliance with Onfido, our customers’ identification is verified securely, simply and, above all, quickly.” Arro Money has already onboarded 10,000 customers with advanced KYC checks and aims to acquire 50,000 more business accounts over the next 12 months.

Founded in 2012, Onfido leverages machine learning technology to validate a user’s identity document and compare it with their facial biometrics. To insure the validity of the documents, the company cross-references identities from 192 countries against international credit and watchlist databases.

Onfido has raised more than $60 million in funding from investors including Microsoft Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and Crunchfund. The company’s clients include ZipCar, Couchsurfing, Revolut, and Square. Onfido will demo its newest tech on stage, alongside dozens of other companies, at FinovateEurope next month. Register today to be a part of the audience.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Entrust Datacard, Expensify, FinanceIt, Fiserv, IdentityMind Global, Jumio, Lendio, LendStreet, Marqeta, NICE Systems, Onfido, Quid, Ripple, Soundpays, Xero

On Finovate.com

  • Onfido to Power KYC for Arro Money.
  • IdentityMind Global Introduces Anti-Fraud Solution for ICOs.
  • Entrust Datacard Teams with Gemalto.

Around the web

  • Fiserv sells 55% of Lending Solutions business to Warburg Pincus.
  • Lendio announces new Lendio franchise in New Hampshire’s Seacoast Region.
  • Financeit appoints Dante Tamburro as general counsel and Chief Compliance Officer.
  • Ripple to power instant payments to China courtesy of new partnership with LianLian International.
  • The Future Laboratory leverages technology from Quid to build its Trends of the Trends 2018 report.
  • Mint2Save reviews universal mobile wallet app, Soundpays.
  • Gartner recognizes NICE as a leader in Workforce Engagement Management for a second year in a row.
  • PYMNTS interviews Jumio Director of Product Management, Reinhard Hochrieser on the challenges of abandonment in online banking.
  • Expensify unveils website enhancements to improve credit card import, simplify billing currency section.
  • Lend Street Financial and Marqeta earn spots in The Tech Tribune’s list of the 10 Best Tech Startups in Oakland.
  • National Australia Bank (NAB) to allow business customers to make payments directly via Xero’s accounting platform rather than its own online banking site.

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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Personal Capital Launches Socially Responsible Investing

Personal Capital Launches Socially Responsible Investing
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Personal Capital

Wealth tech company Personal Capital is making it easier for investors to put their money in causes that are important to them with the launch of its Socially Responsible Personal Strategy today.

The New York-based company is offering clients the ability to select a personalized socially responsible investment strategy with the same pricing structure as the rest of its offerings– a single, flat fee. “There has been a surge of investor interest in aligning their money with their values,” said Craig Birk, Executive Vice President of Portfolio Management at Personal Capital.

Personal Capital has teamed with Sustainalytics to screen equity holdings in the U.S. for three factors– environmental, social, and governance (ESG)– to find the best companies in each group. Just like Personal Capital’s core portfolio offerings, the new Socially Responsible Personal Strategy offers exposure to all six major liquid asset classes and individual stocks and uses Personal Capital’s Smart Weighting methodology to balance exposure to size, style, and sectors within the U.S. equity asset class.

In addition to the ESG factors, clients can use advanced customizations to exclude any stock or sector that they do not want to hold. In fact, 30% of Personal Capital portfolios do so. In total, the company manages more than $6.5 billion in assets and tracks over $500 billion for 1.6 million registered users. In the past 12 months, Personal Capital has nearly doubled its assets under management. At the end of last month, the company surpassed $6.5 billion in assets under management with an average client balance of more than $430,000.

Founded in 2009, Personal Capital debuted its One-Click Investment Proposals at FinovateSpring 2014. At FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, the company’s Ehsan Lavassani, Founding Engineer and Chief Engineering Officer, and Ravi Gundlapalli, Director of Frontend Engineering, gave a presentation titled, Data-Driven Account Opening. Last October, Personal Capital launched an education planning tool to help investors set aside money for the cost of college. Later that month, the company was named a Top 100 digital tech company in Colorado.

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Veridium to Power Biometrics for Nordea

Veridium to Power Biometrics for Nordea
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Veridium

Biometric authentication software company Veridium (formerly Hoyos Labs) has partnered with Nordea, the largest bank in the Nordic region, which will deploy the VeridiumID platform.

With around 11 million customers, 31,500 employees and 600 branch office locations, Nordea will use VeridiumID to replace tokens with biometric authentication for access to confidential and secure data. VeridiumID leverages biometric authentication that works in conjunction with a front-end mobile SDK that allows companies to embed biometrics into their mobile app. The bank considers this a critical first step in embracing multi-factor biometric authentication. VeridiumID’s software-only approach gives Nordea increased customization and scalability and offers increased security and ease-of-use at a lower cost.

And with the upcoming GDPR deadline, this comes at a good time for Nordea. The implementation of VeridiumID is part of Nordea’s strategy to improve how employees access data and accounts while meeting the new GDPR compliance demands. James Stickland, CEO of Veridium said, “With Veridium, Nordea will be able to take its first steps in advancing security for high privilege access and GDPR compliance.”

In addition to VeridiumID, Veridium offers VeridiumAD, which adds biometric authentication to Microsoft Active Directory environments, and 4 Fingers TouchlessID, which authenticates the user by capturing all four fingerprints at once using a rear-facing camera and LED flash.

Stickland most recently demoed VeridiumID with 4 Fingers TouchlessID at FinovateEurope 2017. The company first presented as Hoyos at FinovateSpring 2011, where it showcased its EyeLock solution. Last month, Veridium partnered with Walla to bring biometric authentication to sub-saharan Africa. Founded in 2015, the company has offices in the U.S., U.K., and Romania.

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FinovateEurope Sneak Peek: Electronic IDentification

FinovateEurope Sneak Peek: Electronic IDentification
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Electronic IDentification, FinovateEurope 2018, FinovateEurope 2018 Sneak Peek

A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateEurope on the 6 through 9 of March 2018 in London. Pick up your tickets today and save your spot.

Electronic IDentification’s VideoID is the first and only technology that combines video streaming with the most advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithm to identify people in just seconds from any device. The results are amazing: time-to-market goes from three weeks to only three minutes, customer conversion rate increases 60% and businesses have no more territory barriers to perform businesses.

Why it’s great
Its solution is fully compliant with most stringent regulations, such as European AML or eIDAS.

Presenter

Iván Nabalón, CEO
Nabalón is founder and CEO of eID, the company with the greatest growth in Europe in the identification industry. It has created a new category of identification services that combines video and AI.
LinkedIn

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Trunomi Closes $3.5 Million Round from CloudScale Capital

Trunomi Closes $3.5 Million Round from CloudScale Capital
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Trunomi

Consumer consent and data rights company Trunomi closed a $3.5 million round of funding today. This investment brings the Bermuda-based company’s total funding to $10.5 million.

Trunomi will use the funds to manage demand for its technologies and to continue its global expansion. And with the E.U. GDPR deadline coming up, the company will likely see a boost in banks and companies vying for its services, which helps businesses request, receive, and capture customer consent to the use of their personal data.

“Customer data rights and privacy are quickly becoming major issues of concern for companies, especially financial institutions, due to new regulations such as EU GDPR, U.K. Open Banking and marketing opportunities,” said Kim Perdikou, CloudScale Partner. “Trunomi enables businesses to comply with these new regulations by demonstrating compliance and accountability in customer data use and immutably proving the legal basis of processing. With Trunomi, businesses can empower their customers with control and transparency in how their data is used and turn regulation from a burden into a competitive advantage.”

“We are thrilled that CloudScale Capital Partners are part of this financing,” said Trunomi CEO Stuart Lacey. “CloudScale brings significant strength to our investor base, and its partners bring with them a wealth of industry connections with the largest players in the global customer and data markets.”

Founded in 2013, Trunomi has offices in Bermuda, Dublin, the U.K., and Silicon Valley. At FinovateEurope 2015 in London, Lacey launched TruMobile, a customer-focused “consent engine” that creates privacy policies to allow the sharing of consumer PII data across platforms. Last March, Trunomi was named to the RegTech top 100 power list. In December of 2016, the company began collaborating with FIS on the E.U. data protection rules.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Featurespace, Jumio, Personal Capital, Ripple, StreetShares, Trunomi, TSYS, Tuition.io, Veridium, Xero

On Finovate.com

  • Trunomi Closes $3.5 Million Round from CloudScale Capital.
  • Veridium to Power Biometrics for Nordea.
  • Personal Capital Launches Socially Responsible Investing.
  • Coupa Software Teams Up with Tuition.io.
  • Banco Santander to Leverage Ripple Tech to Offer Same Day Mobile International Payments.

Around the web

  • Lend Academy: StreetShares’ Unique Focus Gives Them an Edge in the Small Business Lending Market.
  • Jumio’s Q4 Revenues Up 96% Year-Over-Year.
  • Capital One UK’s use of TSYS Foresight Score with Featurespace wins TCP Award.
  • Xero announces ACH integration with Stripe.
  • Finance Monthly names ACI Worldwide Fraud Innovation Firm of the Year for its UP Payments Risk Management solution.

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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Blockchain Appoints New President and Chief Legal Officer

Blockchain Appoints New President and Chief Legal Officer
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Blockchain

Digital currency wallet Blockchain has appointed Marco Santori as its new president and chief legal officer. The role of President was formerly held by Blockchain co-founder Nicolas Cary, who has assumed the role of vice chairman.

Santori comes to the U.K.-based company from Cooley LLP, where he worked as a partner, leading the law firm’s global financial technology practice. During his tenure at Cooley, Santori built a digital assets-focused legal practice.

In his new role, Santori will build Blockchain’s compliance, legal, and corporate development teams and is charged with leading the team in bringing new products to market. “I’m honored and thrilled to join Blockchain, the leading provider for digital asset software,” said Santori. “It’s a compelling opportunity to contribute to a company that is not only achieving unparalleled business success, but also delivering on a powerful mission to create an inclusive financial system from which everyone can benefit.”

Santori’s new position at Blockchain seems to be a good fit for him– he currently serves as an advisor to the International Monetary Fund and is the Blockchain Ambassador for the State of Delaware. Additionally, he penned the “Simple Agreement for Future Tokens” (SAFT) Project Whitepaper, which set the standard for mitigating risks associated with Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs).

Blockchain CEO and co-founder Peter Smith said, “Marco has a breadth and depth of knowledge that is unmatched and I couldn’t think of a better person to focus entirely on our expansion efforts and strategy as we continue to serve our millions of users globally.”

Founded in 2011, Blockchain has more than 22 million wallets and has worked with its exchange partners to process 100+ million transactions in more than 140 countries in 20+ currencies. The company considers its wallet more secure than competitors Coinbase and Kraken because it does not offer an exchange. Instead, Blockchain’s wallet simply stores funds and has no visibility into users’ wallets.

Blockchain presented at FinDEVr San Francisco 2014. The company has offices in London, New York, and Brazil and has raised a total of $70 million, thanks in part to a $40 million Series B round raised last June. In August of last year, the company added ether to the list of currencies it supports.

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