Author: Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz)

SocietyOne Has Facilitated $38 Million in Personal Loans in 2016

SocietyOne Has Facilitated $38 Million in Personal Loans in 2016
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: SocietyOne

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Australian P2P lender SocietyOne’s new CEO Jason Yetton disclosed some growth figures this week. The company told the Sydney Morning Herald that it has arranged $38 million ($50 million AUD) in personal loans on its platform so far this year.

This number is almost double the nearly $20 million the company facilitated in the latter half of 2015, and it is 10x the $3.8 million from the same period in 2015. As a result of this growth, the company’s portfolio of outstanding personal loans totals $76 million, which represents 0.5% of Australia’s $15 billion personal loans market.

In his interview with the Herald, Yetton said, “We readily admit that our current lending volume is still a small sum in the context of a $20 billion ($15 billion USD) personal loan market, which itself is one fifth of the overall consumer finance market in Australia.” He added that his point is that “we now have a solid base from which we can grow and meet our ambitious target of taking a 2% to 3% share of that $100 billion market by 2020 to 2021.”

SocietyOne’s returns average 10% for institutional and sophisticated investors. Since the company was founded in 2011, SocietyOne has lent an average of $15,000 to its borrower base of 5,000. Yetton, who took the reins as new CEO in March, plans to distribute loans to a “much wider range of borrowers.”

At FinovateAsia 2012, SocietyOne launched ClearMatch, a feature that allows investors to bid together at different interest rates and amounts against a single loan. Finovate returns to Asia this year: Hong Kong on November 8. The application deadline is fast approaching, so act soon to secure your spot on the FinovateAsia stage.

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PrivatBank’s Partnership with InComm Initiates Launch of Prepaid Products in Ukraine

PrivatBank’s Partnership with InComm Initiates Launch of Prepaid Products in Ukraine
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: InComm, PrivatBank

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PrivatBank and prepaid commerce company InComm partnered this week to launch prepaid products in Ukraine, where PrivatBank is headquartered.

The partnership will enable PrivatBank’s 25 million Ukrainian customers to purchase prepaid codes and top up their account with no additional fees. Clients can already use PrivatBank’s web interface, Privat24, to purchase prepaid codes. The 5.5 million clients who prefer the bank’s mobile interface will be able to purchase codes via the app later this month.

Currently, clients can use the account funds to add credit to video chat and voice-call applications. In a press release, the companies stated plans to expand the product line in the future, but did not indicate when.

At FinovateSpring 2014 PrivatBank launched an ATM that connects to Android phones via NFC, eliminating the need for buttons on the ATM itself. Founded in 1992, PrivatBank serves customers in Ukraine, Latvia, Portugal, Italy, Cyprus, and Georgia.

InComm SVP Thomas Cornelius presented at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2014 where he showed how the company’s Cashtie API provides rails for cash payments. If you’re interested in seeing more developer tools, FinDEVr is coming to Santa Clara on the 18th/19th of October. Early bird tickets expire soon, so register today to save your spot.

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Upserve’s New Square Partnership Offers Clients Access to Funding via Square Capital

Upserve’s New Square Partnership Offers Clients Access to Funding via Square Capital
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Swipely, Upserve

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When popular point-of-sale (POS) hardware and software company Square launched Square Capital in 2014, it joined the likes of OnDeck, CAN Capital, and Kabbage to provide working capital to small businesses. The company this week announced it has expanded Square Capital to non-Square customers through a partnership with Upserve (formerly Swipely).

Upserve, which processes credit-card payments for food-services businesses and provides performance analytics and management tools, will offer access to its 7,000 customers to Square. Expanding Square Capital through this partnership is key, since Upserve will offer Square access to client sales data to help Square make underwriting decisions. Square Capital’s loans are revenue-based; borrowers repay the loan by giving a fixed percentage of their daily sales.

In an interview with Bloomberg, head of Square Capital Jacqueline Reses said, “We think that the application of what we do is broader than just within Square’s ecosystem. … . So long as we believe that we have a data advantage in underwriting, and it’s relevant to our core business, you can see us extending beyond Square further.”

The terms of the deal were not disclosed; however, Recode reported that since Upserve is advertising the loans on Square’s behalf, Upserve is likely benefiting from a cut of the referrals. This is Square Capital’s first expansion outside of its own customer base.

Founded in 2009, Upserve manages more than $800 billion in annual transaction volume and adds 200 to 250 restaurants to its customer base each month. The company demoed as Swipely at FinovateSpring 2012 and has raised more than $40 million.

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HelloWallet’s New Feature is a Budget Within a Budget

HelloWallet’s New Feature is a Budget Within a Budget
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: HelloWallet

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Goals-based saving tools have existed for quite some time, but what if the goal you’ve saved for isn’t just a one-time purchase? HelloWallet’s new feature, Flexible Budgets, launched this week to help users spend wisely over a longer time-period and to help plan for large, infrequent expenses.

The new tool is meant to be used in tandem with a regular monthly budget. Use cases include:

  • Track spending while on vacation
  • Plan for quarterly insurance payments
  • Track an annual clothing budget
  • Maintain a budget for a wedding (as someone who’s getting married in two weeks, I’m well aware of the importance of tracking expenses to make sure there’s enough left over to cut the final check for booze at the end of the reception!)

FlexibleBudget

This feature addresses a common complaint among budgeters who struggle with big-ticket, infrequent purchases. It essentially offers a way for users to set up a budget within a budget. The Flexible Budgets feature is now available in the HelloWallet app for iOS and will launch on Android later this year.

While the app would certainly come in handy as I finalize wedding expenditures, I won’t be able to use it any time soon. HelloWallet is only available as a B2B model aimed to help employers help their employees with financial health. The company’s current customers include: Salesforce, T. Rowe Price, Allstate, Vanguard, and more.

Matt Fellowes, founder of HelloWallet, gave a Best of Show-winning demonstration of Retirement Explorer at FinovateFall 2015. Retirement Explorer is a planning tool that allows users to model and save retirement scenarios. During the demo, Fellowes also announced it now allows banks to integrate HelloWallet’s financial wellness programs.

Two months ago, HelloWallet launched a savings and debt guidance tool to help users achieve their saving, spending, and debt-repayment goals. Founded in 2009, the company was purchased by Morningstar in 2014.

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Ethoca to Power Merchant Fraud Alerts for ACI Worldwide

Ethoca to Power Merchant Fraud Alerts for ACI Worldwide
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Ethoca

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Ethoca, a collaboration network for card issuers and merchants, landed a new client this week. The company has partnered with ACI Worldwide to integrate its flagship service, Ethoca Alerts, into ACI’s UP eCommerce Payments solution, making it globally available to payment service providers (PSPs).

Ethoca Alerts notifies PSPs, processors, acquirers and their merchant clients of issuer-confirmed fraud and customer-dispute data to help them bolster their existing fraud defenses. The protection against chargebacks passively takes place in the background. When a dispute occurs, Ethoca Alerts helps merchants resolve cardholder complaints before they go into the chargeback process and notifies them to stop the shipment of goods to fraudsters.

“Our integration with the ACI UP eCommerce Payments solution makes Ethoca Alerts easily available to more than 130 payment-service providers and thousands of their merchants,” says Ethoca CMO Keith Briscoe. “As we bring onboard more payment providers and top-tier merchants, the overall network effect increases. All participants, including Ethoca’s network of more than 545 card issuers, get more value by reducing fraud losses and eliminating more chargebacks.”

Toronto-based Ethoca was founded in 2005 and last presented at FinovateEurope 2016 in London. Earlier this year the company integrated Ethoca Alerts into the fraud-detection platform, Kount’s Kount Complete.

ACI Worldwide, which took the stage with MShift at FinovateFall 2011, powers electronic payments for more than 5,100 organizations, including 1,000+ financial institutions and intermediaries.

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Cortera’s Credit Exchange Now Gathers Insights from $1.2 Trillion in Purchases

Cortera’s Credit Exchange Now Gathers Insights from $1.2 Trillion in Purchases
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Cortera

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Business-to-business analytics provider Cortera reached a milestone this summer. The Florida-based company yesterday announced it has expanded the Cortera Credit Exchange database.

The Cortera Credit Exchange gathers information on the purchase and payment behavior on more than 10 million U.S. businesses. Between January and July 2016, this database increased by more than $170 billion in B2B purchases. This brings the database’s total annual purchase insights to $1.2 trillion.

Cortera leverages the purchase data to create analytics such as new customer risk-assessments, customer portfolio risk-monitoring, supplier risk management, customer segmentation, insurance underwriting, customer profitability modeling, and loan-default prediction.

Regarding the company’s future plans, Cortera CEO Jim Swift said, “we will continue to expand our data network aggressively and leverage our innovative platform to help customers solve business problems in new ways. We’re excited about the path we’re on.”

Since it was founded in 1993, Cortera has expanded its database to include hundreds of attributes to help businesses create statistical modeling and other analytics. The company demoed at FinovateSpring 2010 and recently appointed Bob Maguire as chief revenue officer.

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FinDEVr APIntelligence

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Braintree, CardFlight, Chain.com, Currency Cloud, FinDEVr APIntelligence, Finicity, Markit, NYMBUS, Temenos, Trulioo, Twilio, Xero

FinDEVrSV16-withdateOur FinDEVr New York developer showcase was a success! FinDEVr Silicon Valley will be held 18/19 October in Santa Clara. Early bird tickets expire soon so register today to save your spot!

On FinDEVr.com

  • First Wave of FinDEVr Silicon Valley Presenters Revealed

The latest from FinDEVr New York 2016 presenters

  • NYMBUS Raises $12 Million in Round Led by Vensure  Enterprises
  • Braintree, Finicity, and Twilio Take Top Honors at API World Awards
  • Markit enhances WSO software suite to offer new levels of automation for syndicated loan market.

Alumni updates

  • National Bank of Kuwait goes live with Temenos Treasury Trader.
  • CardFlight to Power EMV Mobile Processing for BluePay
  • Trulioo announces enhancements to the global AML watchlist capabilities of its GlobalGateway platform.
  • Chain announces new partnership with Initiative for Cryptocurrency and Contracts (IC3).
  • Fintech News Switzerland highlights Currency Cloud in a look at London’s top rising fintech stars.

Stay current on daily news from the fintech developer community! Follow FinDEVr on Twitter.

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Actiance Hires Former Credit Suisse Exec as CTO

Actiance Hires Former Credit Suisse Exec as CTO
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Actiance

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Screen Shot 2016-08-15 at 5.03.07 PMSocial media compliance company Actiance today announced it has appointed Anthony West (pictured) as CTO.

Prior to accepting the new position, West worked at Credit Suisse for more than 20 years where he oversaw all communications, collaboration, and electronic communications-compliance infrastructure services. He is now regarded as an “enterprise collaboration technology strategist,” and specializes in real-time communications platforms.

Actiance also brought on Neil Senior as VP of customer success. Prior to joining Actiance, Senior held roles at AVID Technology, EMC Corporation, and RSA. In his new role, Senior is responsible for “overseeing all professional services and customer-support teams as well as expanding service offerings to meet customer needs.”

The new appointments come two months after the company brought on Naresh Bansal as CFO.

Last month Actiance launched support to help bank clients compliantly engage customers and employees on Instagram. Founded in 1998, the company last presented at FinovateFall 2012 where it debuted Socialite. Actiance has raised almost $44 million from 7 investors since launching in 1998.

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FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Uniken

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Uniken
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2016, FinovateFall 2016 Sneak Peek, Uniken

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FF2016-Logo-wdate-largeA look at the companies demoing live to 1,500+ fintech professionals on 8/9 September 2016. Register today.

Uniken is a game-changing cybersecurity firm that makes connecting safe, simple, and scalable through a patented, relative-identity (REL-ID) and mutual authentication protocol (REL-IDverify). No VPN, SSL, or OTP required.

Features:

  • Seamless user experience for login, verification, and authentication
  • Multifactor authentication that’s behind-the-scenes and out-of-the-box
  • Significant reduction in attack surface (MITM, HEIST, etc.)

Why it’s great
Our innovative REL-IDverify product allows mobile, out-of-band authentication for any omnichannel transaction—all protected by the integrated REL-ID identity, authentication, and secure channel solution.

PresentersUnikenPresenter1

Bimal Gandhi, CEO
Gandhi has two decades of global experience across management consulting, technology, and financial services industries within the U.S., U.K. and India.
LinkedIn

UnikenPresenter2Robert Levine, Global VP Business Development
Levine is an established cyber security “insider” having built and exited two firms focused in the sub-field of identity and access management. He has 20 years of focused cyber-security experience.
LinkedIn

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FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Featurespace

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Featurespace
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Featurespace, FinovateFall 2016, FinovateFall 2016 Sneak Peek

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FF2016-Logo-wdate-largeA look at the companies demoing live to 1,500+ fintech professionals on 8/9 September 2016. Register today.

Featurespace is the world leader in adaptive behavioral analytics delivered via ARIC Fraud Hub, a real-time, machine learning, fraud management system that understands individual behaviors.

Features:

  • Monitor real-time digital customer behavior across the end-to-end lifecycle
  • Improve fraud detection during onboarding, account activity, transactions
  • Increase revenue acceptance from genuine customers by 70%

Why it’s great
ARIC Fraud Manager’s new In-Session Behavior online monitoring enables financial institutions to protect their customers across the end-to-end lifecycle, while accepting more revenue.

FeaturespacePresnter1

Presenter: Matt Mills, Commercial Director
Mills is responsible for the commercial team at Featurespace. He is the former global head of partnerships and innovation at Aurasma, where he previously worked with Martina King (Featurespace CEO).

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TransferWise Launches TransferWise for Business to the Public

TransferWise Launches TransferWise for Business to the Public
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: TransferWise

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Foreign currency-exchange platform TransferWise today announced it has released a new segment out of beta. The London-based company launched TransferWise for Business to the public, offering businesses access to international money transfers.

The beta test of the new offering began in May, just after the company closed a $26 million round. Since then, after working “closely with businesses to create a product that meets their needs,” TransferWise has helped business customers transfer more than $1.3 billion using the platform. According to the website: “Businesses can now use TransferWise to pay suppliers or employees overseas, request payments from customers, and transfer funds between their own accounts in different countries.”

Following its ethos, TransferWise does not charge businesses to sign up and there are no monthly fees. By leveraging the ability to transfer money within its network of banks, the company makes sending money abroad up to 7x cheaper than using a business bank account. For bulk overseas payments, TransferWise launched Mass Pay (not to be confused with Dwolla’s MassPay), a batch-payment solution that lets businesses send and track large numbers of payments. Mass Pay is available as an API or on the web interface, which allows for one-by-one or bulk file uploads via CSV.

TransferWise demoed at FinovateEurope 2013. The company, founded in 2010, now boasts 1 million customers and more than $116 million in funding.

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FinovateFall Sneak Peek: BondIT

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: BondIT
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: BondIT, FinovateFall 2016, FinovateFall 2016 Sneak Peek

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FF2016-Logo-wdate-largeA look at the companies demoing live to 1,500+ fintech professionals on 8/9 September 2016. Register today.

BondIT drives fixed-income sales by empowering advisers with data-driven recommendations generated by machine-learning algorithms. It is proven to increase revenues and client satisfaction.

Features:

  • Create algo-optimized, personalized portfolios instantly
  • Rebalance and improve portfolios with various optimization targets: sharp, yield, or risk
  • View advanced analytics and set intelligent alerts

Why it’s great
Optimization solutions for equities can, for the first time, be applied to bonds. BondIT is your way to harness powerful machine-learning to boost your sales!

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Presenter: Eran Nachshon, Chief Operating Officer
Nachshon served seven years as an IDF computer officer and seven years at Barclays as a trader and technology project manager. He holds an MBA from New York University.
LinkedIn

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