Author: Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz)

FinovateAsia Sneak Peek: WeInvest

FinovateAsia Sneak Peek: WeInvest
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateAsia 2016, FinovateAsia 2016 Sneak Peek, WeInvest

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A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateAsia on 8 Nov 2016 in Hong Kong. Pick up your tickets today and save your spot.

WeInvest’s end-to-end robo-advisery platform on mobile and web is backed by a robust middle-to-back-office platform, global investment strategies and execution, and custody with Pershing, BNY Mellon.

Features:

  • AUM-based fee structure. Pay as you scale.
  • Mutiple asset classes, currencies, brokers and custodians supported
  • Investment strategies App Store to gain access to the best global strategies

Why it’s great
Asia’s first platform-as-a-service robo-adviser can help you launch your version in three months with an investment of less than US$150,000.

Presentersscreen-shot-2016-10-11-at-1-17-59-pm

Bhaskar Prabhakara, CEO
Prabhakara has over 14 years’ consulting experience with various banks, brokerages and asset-management firms across India, Middle East, United States, and London. He graduated from IIT Madras and has an MBA from IIM, Ahmedabad.
LinkedIn

Aananth Solaiyappan, CTO screen-shot-2016-10-11-at-1-18-12-pm
Solaiyappan is changing wealth management and investing through technology in Asia with a passion for design-led innovation and the transformative power of fintech in Asia. He formerly worked for Stanchart, Amazon, Oracle, and Sequoia.
LinkedIn

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Fintech Favorites

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Aire, Akamai, IBM, Jack Henry, MasterCard, Misys, Sberbank, Thomson Reuters, Uncategorized, Venmo, VISA

Featured

  • U.K.-based challenger bank Atom opens to the public. The bank’s iPhone and iPad app is built on the Unity gaming platform and is the only way to access the mobile-only bank. Atom has a customer service team equipped with AI and machine learning, and has bolstered its security using voice and face biometric login. Atom Bank is the first of a handful of U.K. challenger banks set to launch this year, including Mondo, Starling Bank, and Tandem. Atom is headquartered in Durham and is already valued at almost $190 million. Check out Business Insider’s coverage.

Deals

  • Akamai (FEU 15) acquires Soha Systems, which offers secure access as a service for enterprises. This matches well with Akamai’s aim to offer cloud-based services to enterprises, and places it in a good position for a potential acquisition. See our coverage.
  • Jack Henry & Associates (FF 15) collaborates with Visa (FDSV 14) to accelerate P2P payments to debit cards. This may help banks compete with other services that have sped up settlement times, such as Zelle (formerly clearXchange) and Venmo (FS 13). See the press release.

Milestones

  • IBM (FF 16) announced a $200 million investment for a new global headquarters for its Watson IoT business. The headquarters will be located in Munich and is one of IBM’s largest-ever investments in Europe. This move is part of a $3 billion initiative to bring Watson’s computing expertise into the world of IoT. See IBM at FinDEVr Silicon Valley, 18/19 Oct 2016. See VentureBeat’s coverage here.
  • Banking Technology reported that Misys (FEU 15) is preparing to issue an IPO in Nov 2016 with a $6.9 billion float. Advisory firm Moelis will be overseeing the move. Misys was delisted from the London Stock Exchange in 2012 when it merged with Turaz. Misys CEO Nadeem Sayed says going public is a “logical step in our evolution.” See Banking Technology’s coverage.
  • Aire (FEU 15) raised $2 million. Along with the funding announcement, the alternative credit-scoring platform announced it is now authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the U.K.’s financial regulator. This places it on a more level playing field to compete with the big three credit bureaus. See our coverage.

Tech

  • Thomson Reuters (FF 12) unveils blockchain-dev platform, BlockOne ID. Built for Ethereum, BlockOne ID is an experimental framework in which app owners can manage access to their blockchain contracts in a controlled environment. See Banking Tech’s coverage.

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Financeit’s Fresh $17 Million to Fund TD Financing Acquisition

Financeit’s Fresh $17 Million to Fund TD Financing Acquisition
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinanceIt, Funding

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Today, Financeit pulled in a $17 million venture funding round that was led by new investors Pritzker family business interests advised by The Pritzker Organization and DNS Capital. Existing investors also contributed. The new installment boosts the Canada-based company’s total funding to more than $38 million since it was established in 2011.

This comes less than a month after Financeit announced the acquisition of TD Bank Group’s indirect home improvement financing assets. Today’s installment will be used to fund the $339 million transaction, which included the purchase of more than 800 merchant dealer agreements. Once things have settled from the deal, Financeit will be servicing 45,000 existing TD consumer loans.

The secondary purpose of today’s round will be to “support the ongoing needs of the company as it continues its rapid growth.” In a press release, Michael Garrity, founder and CEO of Financeit, said, “As more merchants embrace the benefits of offering cloud and mobile-based financing options to their customers, Financeit expects to increase its sizable signature in this market. We continue to focus on innovation for our merchant partners and market growth through both organic tactics and acquisition.” The company has already increased its lending activity in the home improvement industry by almost 2X since 2015.

Last month, Financeit made headlines when it recruited Ian Hanning, the CFO from Capital One Canada. Earlier this fall the company debuted its direct-to-consumer financing platform, Financeit Direct, which enables consumers to apply for funds via their mobile device. At FinovateFall 2014, Financeit made its U.S. debut in conjunction with FIS.

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FinDEVr Preview: NuData Security

FinDEVr Preview: NuData Security
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinDEVr 2016 Silicon Valley, FinDEVr 2016 Silicon Valley Preview, NuData Security

FinDEVr PreviewsFinDEVrSV16-withdate highlight companies presenting new developer tools, platforms, and integrations at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, October 18 & 19. Tickets are on sale now. Visit our registration page and save your spot today.

NuData Security will be demonstrating its flagship product NuDetect, a behavioral biometrics platform that monitors behavioral interactions. The platform accurately verifies identity based on unconscious natural behaviors in real-time. It can detect most forms of account-based, automated, anomalous, and fraudulent online behavior even when valid credentials are presented.

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Why it’s a must-see
See how to verify users in real-time before a transaction—even when the correct credentials are presented—identify higher risk activities, and leverage an extensive behavioral network. Behavioral biometrics offers financial institutions the balance between real security and a great customer experience. NuData supports new account creation, ATO, and automated use-cases.

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FinDEVr Preview: Digital Business Art

FinDEVr Preview: Digital Business Art
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Digital Business Art, FinDEVr 2016 Silicon Valley, FinDEVr 2016 Silicon Valley Preview

FinDEVr PreviewsFinDEVrSV16-withdate highlight companies presenting new developer tools, platforms, and integrations at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, October 18 & 19. Tickets are on sale now. Visit our registration page and save your spot today.

Digital Business Art will present its Digital Banking Platform (DBP). The main virtue of the product is its ability to ensure 99.99% of a bank’s front-end-system availability, regardless of the state of the bank’s back-end system. This means that a bank’s client services will be permanently available and will not depend on its internal processes.

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Why it’s a must-see
This innovative platform is built to ease the life of a bank’s IT department and its specialists, and to ensure seamless functioning of the business. DBP delivers an agile, flexible system-orchestration, impressive performance, and lower cost. This allows banks to focus on customers and products, rather than waste a huge budget on expensive infrastructure.

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FinDEVr Preview: Cognitect

FinDEVr Preview: Cognitect
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Cognitect, FinDEVr 2016 Silicon Valley, FinDEVr 2016 Silicon Valley Preview

FinDEVr PreviewsFinDEVrSV16-withdate highlight companies presenting new developer tools, platforms, and integrations at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, October 18 & 19. Tickets are on sale now. Visit our registration page and save your spot today.

Cognitect will introduce you to Datomic, its immutable database that never forgets. It’s naturally distributed, built for modern architectures, and it scales with your data—without sacrificing your existing storage investments. The company will share how Datomic’s built-in history has been used in fintech to more effectively manage critical data.

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Why it’s a must-see
Cognitect’s approach to auditability will change your world. Using Datomic, an immutable database that never forgets, you can query across all history, without any extra effort on your part. No more loss of valuable time and critical resources to answer basic questions. No more workarounds to understand the story of how your data got to now.

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FinDEVr Preview: Entrust Datacard

FinDEVr Preview: Entrust Datacard
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Entrust Datacard, FinDEVr 2016 Silicon Valley, FinDEVr 2016 Silicon Valley Preview

FinDEVr PreviewsFinDEVrSV16-withdate highlight companies presenting new developer tools, platforms, and integrations at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, October 18 & 19. Tickets are on sale now. Visit our registration page and save your spot today.

With Entrust Datacard you’ll learn how integrating second-factor authentication into banking applications using soft tokens and one-time passwords (OTPs) can safeguard your banking applications. Banks can leverage the security protection offered by Entrust Datacard without the need for a large investment in development resources.

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Why it’s a must-see

  1. Offers a simplified way to incorporate second-factor authentication into banking applications.
  2. Helps combat fraudulent transactions, especially card-not-present fraud, which is on the rise due to the move to EMV technology.
  3. Ability to leverage this technology without significant investment in resources.

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FinDEVr Preview: MX

FinDEVr Preview: MX
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinDEVr 2016 Silicon Valley, FinDEVr 2016 Silicon Valley Preview, MX

FinDEVr PreviewsFinDEVrSV16-withdate highlight companies presenting new developer tools, platforms, and integrations at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, October 18 & 19. Tickets are on sale now. Visit our registration page and save your spot today.

MX will be unveiling a next-generation financial API platform. The fintech community can benefit from advanced features and real-time, open-source solutions. This presentation will explore how to create call-back mechanisms and client-side libraries, including RubyGem and NodeJS.

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Why it’s a must-see
The company’s MX Atrium API gives you more than 30,000 connections to financial institutions. It also cleanses, categorizes, and classifies all transaction data with the greatest accuracy on the market—all with fintech-friendly pricing and no user limitations. Get access to the code in 30 seconds and see our world-class documentation for yourself.

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Akamai Acquires Soha Systems

Akamai Acquires Soha Systems
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Akamai, Mergers & Acquisitions

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With security emerging as one of the largest themes of our upcoming FinDEVr developers conference, it’s no surprise to see movement in that segment of the industry. Yesterday, cloud services provider Akamai acquired security company Soha Systems.

While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Akamai describes the purchase price as “immaterial” for the company. California-based Soha, which offers secure access-as-a-service for enterprises, has raised almost $10 million since it was founded in 2013. Under the acquisition, Akamai will use Soha’s services to extend its portfolio of Cloud Networking Solutions and to “simplify and improve remote and mobile access to enterprise resources, while at the same time minimize the exposed attack surface.” In a press release, Robert Blumofe, EVP, Platform, and GM, Enterprise and Carrier Division, said, “By adding Soha’s secure access technology to our cloud networking solutions, we believe we are well positioned to help our customers take full advantage of the key trends, cloud and mobile, driving enterprise computing.”

The deal comes less than a week after the company’s announcement of its acquisition of Concord Systems, an IoT company. In fact, Akamai has been on an acquisition spree of security companies; recent deals include Bloxx in November 2015 and Prolexic in 2013. According to TechCrunch, Akamai is bolstering its security to become more appealing to potential, large acquirers, such as Google or Microsoft.

Akamai presented at FinovateEurope 2015 in London where it debuted its Client Reputation Service, designed to help FIs forecast security issues and protect against DDoS attacks, web attackers, screen scrapers, and scanning tools. The company most recently released the Akamai Bot Manager to mitigate screen scraping, automated clicks, and illegitimate transactional activity.

Akamai was founded in 1998 and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dr. Tom Leighton is CEO.

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Payoneer Closes $180 Million Series E Round

Payoneer Closes $180 Million Series E Round
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Payoneer

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Global mass payout services provider Payoneer announced a $180 million round of funding today. The Series E round is from Technology Crossover Ventures, the same firm that has backed Facebook, Netflix, and Spotify.

This new round doubles the New York-based company’s previous funding amount, bringing its new total to $270 million. Payoneer CEO Scott Galit said the company will use the funds for further expansion, as Payoneer receives 250,000 business applications per month. While Galit would not comment on Payoneer’s valuation, Business Insider estimates that it is “likely in the billions.”

Payoneer has 800 employees across the globe; it recently opened offices in India, Japan, and the Philippines. According to TechCrunch, today’s round is the company’s last before it will begin seeking an IPO.

At FinovateAsia 2013, Payoneer launched a commercial account that offers businesses the ability to receive funds from a global network. Payoneer’s money-transfer solutions process “many billions of dollars a year” in 150 currencies for small businesses and professionals. The money-transfer solutions enable clients to withdraw the money at their local bank account in their own currency. The company also facilitates mass payouts for businesses looking to transfer money internationally, a service that supports companies such as Newegg, Airbnb, and Fiverr.

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FinDEVr APIntelligence

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Bluefin Payment Systems, Braintree, Fidor Bank, FinDEVr APIntelligence, Hyperwallet, IBM, PayNearMe, PayPal, PwC, Temenos, Totum Wealth, UCX, Wisdom Design Associates, Xero

FinDEVrSV16-withdateOur FinDEVr New York developer showcase was a success! FinDEVr Silicon Valley will be held October 18 & 19 in Santa Clara. Register today to save your spot!

On FinDEVr.com

The latest from FinDEVr New York and upcoming Silicon Valley presenters

  • Fidor Bank teams up with Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank to launch first community based digital bank in the region.
  • PayPal promotes Braintree’s William Ready to chief operating officer.
  • PYMNTS.com talks with Hyperwallet VP Tomas Likar about the challenge of payments in the on-demand workforce.
  • IBM announces $200 million investment in its Watson IoT business in Munich. See IBM at FinDEVr Silicon Valley, October 18 & 19.

Alumni updates

  • Bank of Ireland to deploy UniversalSuite core banking solution from Temenos.
  • Xero Announces Improved Integration with PayPal
  • Bluefin Announces Issuance of Patent on Decryption as a Service
  • Kristina Campbell joins PayNearMe as chief financial officer.
  • Xero teams up with Barclays to improve access to transaction data for U.K. businesses.

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

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Two P2P Sharing-Economy Players Team Up—Airbnb and Zopa

Two P2P Sharing-Economy Players Team Up—Airbnb and Zopa
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Zopa

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While the concept of P2P lending is creative in and of itself, U.K.-based P2P lending pioneer Zopa is letting its creative roots show. Today the company partnered with Airbnb to help customers pay back their loan.

Here’s how it works, upon logging into their Zopa dashboard, borrowers click a link to sign up to become an Airbnb host. If they earn £500 from Airbnb within six months, they get £50 off their loan. If they earn £1,000 from Airbnb rentals, they get £100 off. U.K. hosts earn an average of £2,000 per year for renting their home for 46 nights, which means borrowers would need to rent out their homes around 18 times over the course of a year to take full advantage of Zopa’s offer.

screen-shot-2016-10-04-at-10-35-48-amWhile the partnership makes sense for Zopa—it’s a focused way to help borrowers increase their income—it seems unlikely that banks will make the same move. The risk and liability that come with the nature of the P2P sharing economy are native to both Airbnb and Zopa but do not mix well with a highly regulated bank.

Since it was founded in 2005, the company has already helped 54,000 borrowers finance home-improvement projects. The loan-repayment offer is only available to new Airbnb hosts who receive a quote from Zopa from 1 September 2016 to 1 September 2017 and are approved for a loan.

Zopa debuted at FinovateSpring 2008. Since then, the company has weathered the ups and downs of the financial crisis and the P2P lending industry itself. Earlier this year, Zopa revamped its product lineup, debuting Classic, Access, and Plus, which allows institutions to lend to higher-risk borrowers. In May, the company began offering auto loan refinancing, tapping into the used-car-financing market. Most recently, Zopa appointed Ronen Benchtrit as its CTO in an effort to grow its technology strategy.

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