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Fall is coming, and with the changing of the season comes an increase in activity in the fintech world as organizations work to launch their latest initiatives before the end of the year.
Fortunately, our friends at FintechFutures have asked all the right questions in their latest video interview series. The clips below cover the current economic climate, fintech trends, and future industry technologies. These are all worth watching as you prepare your fourth quarter initiatives.
Digital banking and payments solutions company Fiserv has partnered with consumer-permissioned data company Akoya this week. Under the agreement, the two will facilitate financial data sharing among banks, their end customers, and the third party apps the customers engage with.
Fiserv will have API access to consumer data from Akoya’s network of financial institutions and brokerage firms, while Akoya will utilize Fiserv’s AllData Connect to access consumer data from more than 2,800 financial institutions.
“Fiserv and Akoya are empowering consumers to share their data by creating a broader and more secure data access network,” said Fiserv President of Digital Payments Matt Wilcox. “Direct access to data facilitates more integrated digital experiences for consumers and improves the security of the financial ecosystem.”
Akoya’s APIs can create secure, permissioned access to consumers’ account data across Fiserv’s client base of banks, fintechs, and merchants. This free flow of information across the network can help reduce risk related to account opening, funding, and account-to-account transfers. On the merchant side, consumers can opt to transact using a Pay by Bank option in which consumers link their bank account to the merchant’s wallet or app to make direct payments to the merchant.
Ultimately, the partnership will help consumers choose what financial data from their bank they want to share with third party providers.
“This will help consumers manage exactly who they give their data to and understand how their data will be accessed and used,” said Akoya CEO Paul LaRusso. “100% of Akoya’s traffic to financial institutions goes through APIs. Akoya doesn’t ask for consumers’ passwords, and it doesn’t screen-scrape. All consumers deserve this protection and control.”
In the U.S., where open banking regulations do not exist, partnerships like these are key to empowering consumers with control over their financial data. In addition to helping end customers, this open structure also creates efficiencies by empowering organizations with more data, reduces fraud by eliminating screen scraping, and reduces errors that come with manual data entry.
Founded in 1984, Fiserv’s solutions are used in nearly six million merchant locations and almost 10,000 financial insitution clients. The company powers 12,000 financial transactions each second. Fiserv is listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker FI and has a market capitalization of $73.6 billion.
Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve (Fed) rather quietly released a letter that addresses what it is calling the “creation of novel activities.” Signed by Michael S. Gibson, the Board’s Director of the Division of Supervision and Regulation, the letter is titled, Creation of Novel Activities Supervision Program.
If you’re a fintech or a bank, the contents of the letter will likely apply to you. Here are 7 highlights of the newly created program.
The letter applies to all banking organizations supervised by the Fed, including those with $10 billion or less in consolidated assets. Organizations will receive a written notice from the Fed if their activities will be subject to examination. Those who are still in the exploration phase will be “routinely monitored” for active engagement.
The program will focus on activities related to crypto-assets, distributed ledger technology (DLT), and what the Fed is calling “complex, technology-driven partnerships with nonbanks” that deliver financial services to end customers.
The letter explains that the Fed will “enhance supervision” over the following categories:
The program will leverage existing supervisory processes and will use the Fed’s existing supervisory teams instead of creating a new portfolio to monitor activity. The supervision will be risk-based, meaning that the intensity of the scrutiny will vary based on each firm’s engagement in novel activities mentioned above.
The Fed is seeking to strengthen its existing oversight of banks’ third party fintech partnerships. In the letter, Gibson reasons that innovation can lead to rapid change in banks and in the financial system in general, and that it has the potential to generate risks that can impact banks’ safety and soundness. “Given the novelty of these activities,” he states, “they may create unique questions around their permissibility, may not be sufficiently addressed by existing supervisory approaches, and may raise concerns for the broader financial system.”
The Fed explained that it will continue to “build upon and enhance” its technical expertise to stay abreast of fintech trends, the risk associated with the trends, and appropriate controls to manage risk. In addition to increased supervision, the letter explains that the program will help shape supervisory approaches and create guidance for banking organizations engaging in the use of these “novel” technologies.
The Fed is making it clear that the lack of regulation for fintechs and the Wild West environment of the crypto realm is a thing of the past. This means that fintechs– especially those engaged in crypto– will need to be ready to answer not only to banks, but also to the Federal Reserve. On the flip side, banks will need to be ready to ask a lot more questions before engaging with fintechs, formalize partnership processes, and document all that they can regarding potential risk.
Questions about the letter can be sent via the Federal Reserve’s website..
B2B payment tool Koverly is jumping on the buy now, pay later (BNPL) trend this week with the launch of its newest tool. The Massachusetts-based company unveiled KoverlyPay, a new B2B BNPL tool that offers a free, 30-day extension on FX payments.
Koverly clients can use KoverlyPay to extend payments over four, eight, or 12 fixed weekly installments. Businesses can apply for the financing using KoverlyPay, which is integrated into the point-of-sale, at checkout and receive a decision within 24 hours. Once a business is approved, they do not have to repay their purchase for the first 30 days. After the initial 30 days, for both FX and local payments, businesses pay as low as 1.5% interest per month.
“Inventory is the lifeblood for importing businesses, and it is directly impacted by cash flow,” said Koverly CEO Igor Ostrovsky. “Our KoverlyPay offering for FX transactions is designed to give businesses enough extra working capital to unlock at least one additional inventory turn per year. For a typical importing business, this can boost annual profitability by 50% to 100%. This is a game changer for global trade.”
As growth in the B2C BNPL space begins to slow, interest in B2B BNPL has seen growth. Melio, Allianz Trade, Yapily, and others have recently launched B2B BNPL tools. Banks have started implementing stricter small business lending practices, and we can expect to see small businesses pursue working capital via alternatives channels such as BNPL expand.
Koverly combines foreign exchange and credit into its invoicing, billpay, and accounting tools. The company, which currently processes $200 million a year in both domestic and international payments, launched global payment capabilities last summer. Today, global payments account for 50% of the company’s volume.
Since it was founded in 2021, Koverly has received $7.6 million in Seed funding from Vinyl Capital, One Way Ventures, and Accomplice.
Late-stage VC funding has been down in 2023, but business finance automation platform Ramp is bucking that trend today. The New York-based company has announced the closure of a $300 million round of Series D funding.
The investment boosts the company’s total funding to $1.7 billion. With the increase in capital, however, comes a decrease in valuation. The company’s current valuation now sits at $5.8 billion, 28% lower than the company’s $8.1 billion valuation reported last year.
Today’s Series D round comes from new investor Sands Capital, along with existing investors Thrive Capital, General Catalyst, and Founders Fund. Ramp will use the funds to fuel product development and accelerate its expansion into adjacent categories.
“In the last year alone, we’ve expanded Ramp’s offerings to become the only platform in the market that’s designed to save businesses time and money,” said Ramp CEO Eric Glyman. “Our mission is to help our customers build healthier businesses and this funding will help us execute against our goal to continue expanding the Ramp platform to better serve customers. At Ramp, we succeed when our customers can run their business more efficiently.”
Ramp offers its 15,000 clients access to its suite of payment cards, expense management tools, accounts payable offerings, procurement solutions, working capital, and more. Among Ramp’s recent client wins are Anduril, Poshmark, and Virgin Voyages.
Next month, Ramp plans to debut Ramp Plus, a new set of procurement tools to help finance teams with procurement-related tasks. To support this growth, the company also plans to boost its hiring efforts “significantly” and “across all functions.”
If you’re in fintech, then you’re most likely a numbers person. You like to see the metrics, the data, and the quantitative side of things. So we’ve assembled the data surrounding this year’s FinovateFall event to offer a numerical picture of what you can expect at the show, which is taking place September 11 through 13 in New York City. Tickets are still available at a discounted rate.
This year marks the 14th FinovateFall we’ve held in New York City. Time flies when you’re having fun!
We’ll offer 15 networking sessions across the three-day event to ensure you have time to mingle and make meaningful connections.
Finovate is known for live demos. This year, we’ll feature 59 (and counting) companies demo their technology live on stage.
27 of our demoing companies are new-to-Finovate.
We’re hosting 177 speakers on stage. Those 177 fintech experts will discuss a wide range of fintech topics in demos, keynote presentations, panels, and more.
37 investor organizations are taking part in our Startup Booster Program.
40 of the top 50 banks in the U.S. are attending.
More than 350 banks and financial institutions will be represented.
The number of miles from JFK International Airport to Marriott Marquis Times Square. We’ll see you there!
It only takes 78 seconds to watch a clip highlighting everything you need to succeed at this year’s event:
Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash
Brazil-based payments technology player Dock announced this week it has selected risk management tool provider Feedzai to provide new fraud prevention tools for Dock customers.
Founded in 2014, Dock offers card issuing and core banking services to help organizations bring new card digital payments and banking services to their existing operations. The company’s microservices architecture can be tailored to suit a multitude of rules, and can operate in any country, currency and banking system. The company counts 70 million active accounts and powers over seven billion transactions each year.
By partnering with Feedzai, Dock is giving its clients access to Feedzai’s RiskOps Platform, a tool that helps uncover criminal activity by standardizing processes. Feedzai launched RiskOps in 2021 to tackle fraud, money laundering, compliance, and enhance risk policies. The platform’s Financial Intelligence Network (FIN) database contains over one trillion data points, sessions, and profiles of good and bad actors. Dock also plans to integrate Feedzai’s behavioral biometrics module as well as money laundering prevention tools to offer customers a view of risks in real-time.
“We are providing our customers with another cloud-first technology solution that delivers a personalized approach to cyber threat detection and assessment, based on machine learning models and supported by Dock’s expertise,” said Dock Risk Director Armando Junior. “This partnership is aligned with our Latin American expansion strategy. The new feature makes it possible for us to understand even better the needs of our customers throughout the region.”
Feedzai was founded in 2011. The company offers tools ranging from KYC, AML, watchlist screening, transaction fraud monitoring, and more to help companies fight fraud in more than 190 countries. In 2021, Feedzai was valued at more than one billion dollars after receiving a $200 million funding round that boosted its total funding to $277 million. There is no word on an updated valuation.
In an industry focused on the customer, engagement solutions providers are poised for growth. Perhaps that’s why digital engagement solutions provider Micronotes received a $2 million extension to its Series C round today.
Today’s funds come from BankTech Ventures and add to Micronotes’ $5.5 million investment led by Experian Ventures with participation from existing investors. Closing the Series C round brings The Massachusetts-based company’s total funding to $23.3 million.
“We’re thrilled to partner with BankTech Ventures,” said Micronotes Founder and CEO Devon Kinkead. “This strategic investment will help us accelerate our growth in the community banking sector and help more communities get a lot more out of their banking relationships.”
Micronotes was founded in 2008 and is privately held. The company leverages AI, big data, and machine learning technologies to help financial institutions use their data to better engage their customers, foster involvement, and ultimately build new revenue.
In the dynamic realm of financial advisory, the voice of experience is vital in understanding the present landscape. We recently spoke with intelliflo Vice President of Customer Management Lisa Jacobs on the challenges, opportunities, and trends in the advisory space.
Jacobs brings her 15+ years of experience to our conversation that sheds light on how firms can overcome labor shortages, resource constraints, constantly changing technology, and volatile regulations in the financial advice space. She also addresses how advisors can balance and manage the ongoing high-tech vs. high-touch approach.
Lisa Jacobs: We recently surveyed over 400 financial advisors and found that 80% of them believe more people are seeking advice and can’t find or access that help. This is both an enormous challenge and opportunity. Even though more people are seeking professional guidance, advisors across the board are stretched thin, making it nearly impossible to take on new clients without additional support. This prohibits advisors from growing their revenue and supporting more people, leaving many without the help they need. intelliflo was formed to bridge the advice gap; we’re committed to providing the tools and solutions to help advisors widen access to financial advice.
Jacobs: Modern technology has the power to help advisors address these resource restraints. In just about every industry, technology yields efficiencies, but the best tech also increases your customer’s satisfaction, too. In our industry, this is becoming known as a hybrid advice strategy – a flexible model in which clients in earlier stages of the financial advice journey are primarily served via digital channels and tools, and technology adds more to the customer experience for top clients with better outcomes.
To effectively embrace more digital tools, advisors are increasingly moving away from stand-along software tools that can’t integrate with other parts of their tech stack to avoid having to learn and log on to multiple systems. Many are seeking an all-in-one advisor experience to increase efficiencies and, in turn, provide a more unified client experience. If approached the right way, technology has the power to enable advisors to accomplish more with existing resources while simultaneously strengthening client relationships.
Jacobs: Technology can only be effective if it is easy to use and manage. Otherwise, it might act as more of a hindrance than a benefit. That same survey of advisors underpinned this idea, revealing that the top three biggest barriers to adopting new technology for advisors are integration challenges (57%), time to install (41%), and employee time and resources to manage the technology (38%).
When vetting the many providers and solutions available in the market, advisors should consider these common areas of friction, prioritizing technology that is open and easily integrated, is flexible (which often means cloud-based), and has proven, responsive service and support teams.
Changing regulation seems to be a pressing topic this year for the fintech industry at large. What is the best way for wealth management companies to stay ahead?
A strong way to stay on top of changing regulations and compliance mandates is to collaborate with resources such as peer groups, associations, and technology partners to discuss these issues and what needs to be altered in response. We also increasingly see firms rely on partnership models with third party vendors, looking to outsource key functions and support such as compliance. However, advisors must be sure their partners are thoroughly vetted and monitored on an ongoing basis; not all partners are created equal.
Jacobs: In addition to the continued rise of the hybrid advice model, the evolving role of the advisor is an important trend to watch. A wider skill set is increasingly expected from advisors, including the ability to provide comprehensive guidance around critical life events and situations that fall outside of the traditional financial advisory relationship. For instance, clients are more frequently asking which insurance plans and options are best for their unique scenarios. And as their parents age, Millennials are seeking guidance from advisors on long-term care and arrangement options. These conversations can be emotionally charged, and empathy will become a key trait for the modern advisor. This is another reason why advisors must determine how to strategically leverage technology to make time for higher-value conversations and plans.
Photo by Amy Hirschi on Unsplash
Agora Data, a company that helps buy here pay here (BHPH) car dealers offer in-house financing, secured $160 million in privately placed term financing this month. The round represents the fourth privately placed term financing the company has received since it was founded in 2017.
“Fueling Agora’s mission to enable any car dealer to be a finance company, this $160 million private term financing provides additional funding capacity and reiterates our commitment to our customers’ future growth,” said company CEO Steve Burke.
While there is no data on the amounts of the company’s previous three privately placed term financing rounds, Agora Data said that each of them performed better than projected. Today’s financing adds to the $100 million revolving credit facility the company received from Credit Suisse last September.
Founded in 2017, Agora Data’s Agora Capital helps car dealerships lend to non-prime customers. Lending to unattractive borrowers ultimately helps dealers sell more cars. To provide a competitive interest rate on these sub-prime loans, the company leverages AI to analyze over $350 billion in loan data. Agora Data also offers Agora Trade, a product that allows investors to buy a portfolio of seasoned auto loans at a lower rate of default.
Texas-based Agora Data targets the underbanked community and its strategy will likely fair well as the cost of living crisis, combined with a high interest rate environment, continues. Competitors in the auto financing space include CreditIQ, Creditas, Caribou (formerly known as MotoRefi), and others.
There is something poetic about a BNPL company receiving private equity funding in installments. One of the first BNPL players in the market, Splitit, has landed a $50 million investment from private equity firm Motive Partners. The funds, which will boost Splitit’s total funding to $325 million, will be paid out in two tranches.
For Splitit, which is a publicly traded company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) under the ticker SPT and also trades on the US OTCQX under tickers SPTTY and STTTF, today’s investment isn’t a straightforward transaction.
Splitit will receive the funds in two $25 million installments in exchange for the issuance of new preference shares. According to the release, Splitit will receive the first installment after two conditions have been met– first, when shareholders approve the company delisting from the ASX and second, after the company moves its incorporation site from Israel to the Cayman Islands. Splitit will receive the second $25 million after achieving certain performance milestones.
Splitit’s board opted to agree to Motive Partners’ transaction terms for five reasons:
“Attracting a strategic investor of this calibre is a testament to the quality of our team and our unique, innovative offering– especially given difficult market conditions for raising capital,” said Splitit Managing Director and CEO Nandan Sheth. “This level of investment significantly strengthens our balance sheet, allowing the team to focus on our white-label product strategy, innovation, and our Tier One global distribution partners.”
Splitit was founded in 2012 under the name PayItSimple. The company’s Installments-as-a-Service offering allows merchants to add a white-labeled BNPL option embedded into their checkout flow. Splitit also offers a BNPL tool that works at the physical point-of-sale by pre-qualifying consumers with available credit on their credit card for the value of that available credit.
Earlier this year, Splitit partnered with Atlantic-Pacific Processing Systems to offer BNPL services to their merchants. The company also partnered with Visa to embed a BNPL solution within merchants’ existing credit card processes. Splitit also holds partnerships with Stripe, Shopify, and Alipay to act as an Installments-as-a-Service option for their merchant clients.
We are less than one month out from FinovateFall. In true Finovate fashion, we are hosting 52 companies to demo their technology live on stage. Most impressively, this year, 27 of the demoing companies are new to Finovate.
Because more than half of the FinovateFall demo companies are new to us, we figured they might be new to you, as well so we decided to make a formal introduction. You can check out all 27 companies below.
Agtools
Agtools offers supply chain market data and analytics for farmers and agriculture workers.
Alto Solutions
Alto Solutions provides an alternative asset investment platform.
Bits of Stock
Bits of Stock is a consumer rewards platform that drives loyalty through Stock Rewards.
Cashy
Cashy provides gamified consumer engagement for credit unions.
CD Valet
CD Valet is a nationwide marketplace connecting consumers with financial institutions to shop, compare, and open certificates of deposits.
Chimney
Chimney helps banks and credit unions launch modern financial tools that provide personalized answers to customers while generating more loans and deposits.
ClimateTrade
ClimateTrade is a climate-tech company that leverages blockchain technology to facilitate large-scale decarbonization efforts.
DataVisor
DataVisor delivers the world’s most sophisticated AI-powered solutions to keep companies and their customers safe from fraud and abuse.
Effectiv
Effectiv offers a fraud and compliance automation risk management platform for fintechs and community financial institutions.
EQUE
EQUE’s digital security helps banks and card issuers eliminate e-commerce fraud.
eself.ai
eSelf is creating the next generation of client-financial institution interaction, enabling human-like conversations and efficient personalization.
HappyNest
HappyNest is a mobile application for real estate investment.
Inscribe
Inscribe helps clients leverage automated manual document reviews to reduce fraud rates and credit losses while increasing customer win rates.
Jaid
Jaid is an AI-powered platform built to enable the intelligent automation of business communications getting to the right answer faster.
Kard
Kard offers rewards infrastructure for card issuers.
MacroMicro
MacroMicro offers macroeconomic investment information to help investors understand economic trends.
Mahalo Banking
Mahalo Banking provides secure, user-driven, digital banking and analytical solutions.
Regulo
Regulo offers face screening for effective compliance and fraud prevention.
SRM Key Moments
SRM Key Moments help financial institutions who are motivated to build more loyal customers and own the payment moment.
SupraFin
SupraFin is a pioneer in crypto investment and risk intelligence products, which help organizations assess risk and invest confidently in crypto.
Telesign
Telesign provides continuous trust to leading global enterprises by connecting, protecting, and defending their digital identities.
True Digital Group
True Digital Group offers products that serve as conduits in strengthening the relationships FIs have with technology, vendors, and each other.
Trustworthy
Trustworthy is an operating system that secures and organizes all family tasks in one place.
Union Credit
Union Credit’s marketplace for credit unions delivers firm credit approval and one-click loan activation to new members, embedded within their daily lives.
Uprise
Uprise provides AI-powered financial advisory for third party platforms.
Viffy
Viffy ties creator influence through to physical brick-and-mortar sales.
Zerobank Design Factory
Zerobank Design Factory develops and operates digital banking systems.
Be sure to keep an eye out for demo updates leading up to the event, which takes place September 11 through 13 in New York. Don’t miss your chance to register!