Author: Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz)

Pinwheel Launches Product to Leverage Real-Time Consumer Earnings Data

Pinwheel Launches Product to Leverage Real-Time Consumer Earnings Data
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • Payroll data company Pinwheel launched a tool called the Pinwheel Earnings Stream.
  • The new product offers data on past, current, and projected income.
  • According to Pinwheel, the data is most useful for earned wage access (EWA) offerings, but can also be used for financial wellness tools, underwriting, and more.

Income and employment data innovator Pinwheel announced its newest launch today. The company unveiled the Pinwheel Earnings Stream, a tool that offers up-to-date historical, current, and projected income data.

Pinwheel leverages machine learning and pay stub data to determine net earned wages for any work completed to create an accurate view of accrued and projected earnings. Earnings Stream uses analytics and intelligence to help make sense of this data.

Earnings Stream offers organizations three main benefits: accrued earnings, which shows wages a customer has earned so far in the current pay period; projected earnings, which estimates the earnings a customer will have by the end of the current pay period; and pay dates, a list of a customer’s projected pay dates.

By leveraging the projected earnings information from Earnings Stream, organizations can efficiently deploy an earned wage access (EWA) strategy. According to Pinwheel, Earnings Stream has other use cases, as well, including “financial wellness tools, educational services, cash flow underwriting, and so much more.”

“We developed Earnings Stream to support our customers’ strategies to answer the consumer demand for EWA services, while they have long wanted to offer these products, it’s been nearly impossible to execute at scale throughout the fintech industry at large,” said Pinwheel Co-Founder and CEO Kurtis Lin. “EWA is a unique product because it benefits all parties. Consumers are excited about meaningful liquidity, financial institutions are happy to acquire customers, and employers are pleased to see their workers have less financial stress. I’m proud of our team for developing what we believe will be one of the fintech industry’s keys to building truly impactful EWA products.

Founded in 2018, Pinwheel aims to create a fairer financial system with its API that connects to more than 1,600 payroll platforms and more than 40 time and attendance platforms. In all, the system covers 80% of U.S. workers and more than 1.5 million employers. 

The New York-based company aims to offer fintechs the data needed to create financial tools for underserved populations, without taking on additional risk. “Many of our customers are working on exciting use cases that we’re excited to see hit the market soon,” said Lin.

Photo by Min An

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Square Taps Visa for Instant Transfers in Canada

Square Taps Visa for Instant Transfers in Canada
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, VISA
  • Visa is expanding its integration with Square’s instant transfer feature into Canada.
  • Square’s Canadian merchant clients can access their funds in real time, instead of waiting for the next business day.
  • Instant transfers are enabled by Visa Direct, a VisaNet processing capability that facilitates real-time delivery of funds.

One of the themes at FinovateFall earlier this month was how organizations can leverage real time data. When it comes to the movement of money, timing is everything. So it’s no surprise to see Visa’s announcement this week that it will expand its integration with Square’s instant transfer feature into Canada.

Under the new integration, Square’s Canadian merchant clients can now access their funds faster than the next business day. When they link an eligible debit card, Square’s Canada-based merchant clients can transfer funds instantly to an external bank account.

Used for rapid merchant settlement, Square’s instant transfers are enabled by Visa Direct, a VisaNet processing capability that facilitates real-time funds delivery directly to bank accounts. As a result, businesses experience increased cash flow, which can be a major pain point, especially for small businesses.

“Cash flow management and more immediate access to funds is critical for small businesses to survive and thrive in a rapidly evolving payments ecosystem,” said Visa Canada’s VP and Head of New Payments Jim Filice. “Together with Square, we’re committed to supporting Canadian small businesses and helping to identify solutions that can benefit them by delivering fast, reliable and secure access to funds.”

Photo by Laura Tancredi

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Which Fintech Trend Should We Be Paying Attention To?

Which Fintech Trend Should We Be Paying Attention To?
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2022, Julie's Column, Thought Leadership

Fintech is a broad industry, and with the breadth of its sub-sectors comes a large range of trends that change year after year. But with all of the new, hot trends to follow, it’s impossible for banks and fintechs to focus on everything at once.

That’s why our team set out at FinovateFall earlier this month to ask people from across the industry what trend we should be paying attention to. We received a large range of answers, but here were the top picks:

  • Fraud mitigation and security
  • Business intelligence
  • Money movement and payments
  • Consumer-permissioned data
  • Processing data using AI
  • Financial inclusion
  • Embedded payments and embedded banking
  • Detailed transparency in machine learning solutions
  • Customer obsession and customer experience

Check out the full video below, which includes explanations and reasonings behind each of these trends:

We have several people to thank for answering this very broad question, including Gregory Wright, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Experian; Derek Corcoran, SVP Financial Services Strategy at Woodridge Software; Estela Nagahashi, EVP and Chief Operating Officer at University Credit Union; Bill Harris, CEO of Nirvana Money; Craig McLaughlin, CEO of Finalytics; Rikard Bandebo, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer at VantageScore; Kathleen Pierce-Gilmore, Head of Global Payments at Silicon Valley Bank; Lora Kornhauser, Co-founder and CEO at Stratyfy; Vivek Bedi, Author of You, the Product; Steven Ramirez, CEO of Beyond the Arc; and Chad Rodgers, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Connexus Credit Union.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

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How to Move from a Product Focus to a Customer Focus: a Conversation with Vivek Bedi

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Speaker series

At FinovateFall earlier this month, I sat down with author Vivek Bedi who delivered a keynote presentation later that week, to gain some insights on the customer experience. Specifically, Bedi discussed how organizations can shift from a product focus to a customer focus.

See his answer below and watch the video in its entirety for more on how business leaders can make smart decisions and how the financial services industry can keep up with a continuously changing world.

We always talk about it, right? How do we actually do it? Being in product for 20 years, I’ve realized, “geez, the customer is so important.” And there are a few things I’m going to talk about tomorrow.

The first is how do we become customer obsessed? I know we say that term a lot, but how do we actually make that happen in practicality…. Nine out of ten times, we’re not even using our own product day in and day out. Somebody else is. So how do we become in their shoes? So it’s really important– when I say customer obsession– is how do we really become the customer; feel their challenges, feel their pains, and feel their struggle.

The second area [I’m going to focus on] is that all customers’ feedback matters. It is so easy for us to gravitate towards “the good.” The customers that are our cheerleaders saying that we’re doing a great job. What about the naysayers? I actually found myself obsessing over time on folks that don’t like my product. Why don’t they like it? Are they just grumpy, or is there something there that I’m missing? The point is really obsessing about all different parts of the product lifecycle.

To watch more video interviews from FinovateFall, check out FinovateTV on YouTube. And whether you were at the event in person or not, check out the highlights below:

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Taulia and Standard Chartered Team Up to Collaborate on Working Capital Finance

Taulia and Standard Chartered Team Up to Collaborate on Working Capital Finance
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Standard Chartered Bank, Taulia
  • Taulia and Standard Chartered signed a Memorandum of Understanding to collaborate on working capital finance solutions.
  • The partnership will initially focus on supply chain finance and dynamic discounting.
  • The agreement will offer Taulia access to Standard Chartered’s global client base.

Supply chain finance company Taulia has inked an agreement with Standard Chartered this week. The agreement comes in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate across a range of working capital finance solutions.

The two will begin by focusing on supply chain finance and dynamic discounting, two solutions that Taulia offers to buyers. Taulia will use its expertise in this area, combined with Standard Chartered’s global client base, to help clients build a more resilient and sustainable supply chain.

Ultimately, the partnership aims to enable suppliers to access working capital in a more efficient and cost effective manner.

“We are excited to work with Taulia to explore new and innovative ways to support our clients’ working capital needs, as well as extending the Bank’s leading sustainable trade expertise into their business network,” said Standard Chartered Global Head of Trade & Working Capital Kai Fehr. “Taulia’s footprint also complements that of the Bank, offering greater opportunities for us to support companies in the West with their supply chain flows into Asia, Africa and the Middle East.”

Taulia was founded in 2009 to help businesses improve their supply chains by providing financing options with flexible payment terms. Used by a network of two million organizations, the company’s tools help businesses accelerate payments and free up working capital. Taulia processes over $500 billion every year. Among Taulia’s clients are Airbus, AstraZeneca, Nissan and Vodafone.

Taulia was acquired by SAP earlier this year and today’s agreement marks the first MoU that Taulia has signed with a banking institution post-acquisition. Taulia anticipates that having the backing of SAP will help it access further opportunities across SAP’s ecosystem and deliver a differentiated experience for both buyers and suppliers.

“We believe that all CFOs should focus on their cash strategy to ensure growth during these turbulent times and our partnership with Standard Chartered will deliver cash when and where it is needed, especially in emerging markets,” said SAP Head of Working Capital Management CoE and member of the Taulia Leadership Team Thomas Mehlkopf.

Photo by Tiger Lily

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Cinchy Launches Credit Union Edition of its Dataware Platform

Cinchy Launches Credit Union Edition of its Dataware Platform
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Cinchy, Daily news
  • Data firm Cinchy unveiled the Credit Union Edition of its Cinchy Dataware Platform today.
  • The solution is made specifically to help credit unions easily access and leverage their data without having to replace their core banking system.
  • Cinchy won Best of Show for its demo at FinovateFall 2019.

Data access and control firm Cinchy unveiled a credit union-specific solution today. The company is launching The Credit Union Edition of its Cinchy Dataware Platform to help credit unions extend the life of their core systems, avoiding the need to replace their existing core with a new one.

The new solution enables credit unions that are currently constrained by their core banking systems. Many of the outdated systems result in siloed data, which makes it difficult for the credit union to leverage their data to create better systems, an improved user experience, and cost savings.

Cinchy’s calls the capability “liberating data.” Today’s new launch enables credit unions to access their data in three ways. First, with real-time data from core banking system and applications without the need for copy-based integration. Second, with tools including auto-versioning, auto-backup, auto-protection, auto-correction, and auto-tracking. And third, with user accessibility that allows for instant collaboration.

“At Cinchy our goal is to enable organizations to save money by liberating and controlling their data in ways that were not previously possible,” said Cinchy CEO Dan DeMers. “Today we’re making this a reality for credit unions with the introduction of the Cinchy Dataware Platform Credit Union Edition.”

Founded in 2017, Cinchy leverages data fabric to help banks access data from apps and other silos and assemble it within an easy-to-access data network. Among the company’s clients are TD bank, Colliers International, AIS, and Natixis. Cinchy has been named a Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Company to Watch and a Top Growing Canadian Company by The Globe and Mail. The company most recently demoed at FinovateFall 2021 and won best of show for its demo at FinovateFall 2019.

Photo by Markus Spiske

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Nordigen to Provide Open Banking Data for Teenit

Nordigen to Provide Open Banking Data for Teenit
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Nordigen
  • Nordigen has been selected by Teenit, an Amsterdam-based PFM tool, to provide open banking services.
  • Nordigen will enable Teenit to securely connect to customers’ bank accounts to source transaction and account balance information.
  • “Open banking goes hand-in-hand with personal financial management tools as access to customer information enables PFMs to stay up-to-date with their suggestions and analytics,” said Nordigen CEO and Co-Founder Rolands Mesters.

Personal financial management (PFM) tool Teenit has selected Nordigen for open banking. The Amsterdam-based PFM company will offer its users an aggregate view of their finances, complete with insights and analysis on their spending and saving habits.

By integrating with Nordigen’s freemium offering, Teenit can securely connect to customers’ bank accounts to source real-time data on their transactions and savings account balances. With open connectivity to its users’ financial data, Teenit can better fulfill its mission of educating teenagers on money management.

“We wanted to serve education to young customers, no matter what bank they choose,” said Teenit CEO Tatiana Pastukhova. “The integration with Nordigen enables us to fulfill our purpose easily. With parents’ authorization, we are able to connect directly to young customer bank accounts anywhere in Europe, visualize for them their money flows in a teenager-friendly manner and analyze them to further personalize the offered educational content.”

Latvia-based Nordigen was founded in 2016. The company’s freemium model offers access to account information, such as the account holder’s name, bank account numbers, transactions, and account balances for free via bank APIs. Nordigen’s paid products include enriched, transaction-level information that helps make sense of raw transaction and account data.

“Financial literacy and education is incredibly important for all demographics, and starting to build a foundation of knowledge from a young age will be very beneficial for Teenit’s user base,” said Nordigen CEO and Co-Founder Rolands Mesters. “Open banking goes hand-in-hand with personal financial management tools as access to customer information enables PFMs to stay up-to-date with their suggestions and analytics.”

Nordigen was acquired by GoCardless earlier this year to deepen the bank payment company’s expertise in the open banking arena and enable it to become a banking-as-a-service provider.

Photo by Ivan Samkov

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Agora Data Receives $100 Million Credit Facility

Agora Data Receives $100 Million Credit Facility
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • Agora Data received a $100 million revolving credit facility from Credit Suisse.
  • The company anticipates the funds will help it expand how it delivers capital to loan originators who offer in-house financing.
  • The news comes just under a year after Agora Data unveiled its reducing rate line of credit.

Auto lending technology company Agora Data announced today it received $100 million in financing. The funds come in the form of a revolving credit facility from Credit Suisse.

Agora Data, which helps non-prime borrowers obtain credit, anticipates the funds will help it expand how it delivers capital to loan originators who offer in-house financing solutions. The company offers auto dealers competitive financing and tools such as AI and machine learning modeling. Ultimately, Agora Data helps lenders build loan portfolios with high predictability and improved performance when lending to non-prime customers.

The company also offers AgoraInsights, a product that helps dealers maximize portfolio performance, reduce risk, and manage cashflow.

“This $100 million credit facility adds to Agora’s other capital strategies and is the latest of many strategic steps that support the expansion of our core mission to provide highly accurate loan performance data and low-cost capital to auto dealers who serve the non-prime buyer,” said Agora Data CEO Steve Burke.

Since the company was founded in 2017, Agora Data has closed multiple crowdsourced securitizations using its AI and machine learning algorithms. Last year, the company launched a reducing rate line of credit offering. The interest rate on this credit offering reduces over time, provides the borrower with the flexibility to draw cash as they need it, and does not charge origination or unused line fees.

Photo by Sarmad Mughal

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CNote Raises $7.25 Million in Series A Funding Round to Help Boost ESG Investing

CNote Raises $7.25 Million in Series A Funding Round to Help Boost ESG Investing
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • CNote closed $7.25 million in Series A funding.
  • The round was led by American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact.
  • The investment brings CNote’s total funding to almost $15.5 million.

Investment platform CNote raised $7.25 million today in a round that boosted the company’s total funds to almost $15.5 million.

The Series A round was led by American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact. Astia Fund, BankTech Ventures, Commerce Ventures, CityRock Venture Partners, and other investors also contributed. 

The company plans to use the funds to advance its technology, expand its sales team, and deepen its network of community financial institutions.

CNote was founded in 2016 to close the wealth gap by enabling investors to invest in an economy that works for all populations, especially those in underserved communities. Using the CNote platform, corporations, institutions, and individuals can invest in fixed-income and time deposit products that are vetted to help advance economic equality, racial justice, gender equity, and climate change adaptation. When an investor places funds into CNote, the company directs the money into deposit and loan products through its network of over 2,000 ESG-focused community financial institutions.

“We’re addressing a massive systemic problem with a market-friendly platform that has already been adopted by forward-thinking corporations and other institutions,” said CNote CEO and Founder Catherine Berman. “By pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into undercapitalized communities, CNote is activating corporate dollars for systemic change while minimizing risk.”

Seeing an investment in an ESG-focused company is not surprising, despite the current funding dry spell taking place across the fintech industry. End consumers are more hungry for ESG-related products than ever, and the industry has been struggling to keep up with demand in this arena. We can expect to see more funding go toward companies touting ESG missions in the latter half of this year.

Photo by David Alberto Carmona Coto

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Congrats to the 2022 Finovate Awards Winners!

Congrats to the 2022 Finovate Awards Winners!
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Finovate Awards

The 2022 Finovate Awards winners have been unveiled! At a gala dinner and ceremony, we celebrated the 23 winners.

The evening kicked off with cocktails, followed by dinner and entertainment. Below are the winning companies and individuals in each category, listed in alphabetical order.

Drumroll please…

  • Best Alternative Investments Solution: CAIS
  • Best Back-Office / Core-Service Solution: Maxwell Financial Labs
  • Best BNPL Solution: Kueski Pay
  • Best Consumer Lending Solution: Wisetack
  • Best Customer Experience Solution: BTG
  • Best Digital Bank: UOB TMRW
  • Best Embedded Finance Solution: Grabango
  • Best Enterprise Payments Solution: Airbase
  • Best Financial Mobile App: UOB TMRW
  • Best Fintech Accelerator/Incubator: BMO InnoV8
  • Best Fintech Partnership: TAB Bank and Bumped
  • Best ID Management Solution: norbloc
  • Best Insurtech Solution: Parametrix
  • Best Mobile Payments Solution: Papara
  • Best RegTech Solution: Socure
  • Best SMB/SME Banking Solution: QuickFi
  • Best Wealth Management Solution: Titan
  • Excellence in Decentralized Finance: SoLo Funds
  • Excellence in Financial Inclusion: Gusto
  • Excellence in Sustainability: Oportun
  • Executive of the Year: Johnny Ayers, Socure
  • Innovator of the Year: Sarah Walker, RibbonHub
  • Top Emerging Fintech Company: Gr4vy

Each of these companies joins our Finovate Winners Circle.

Thanks to everyone for participating! We’re already looking forward to next September when we’ll once again host the awards in New York City. Nominations for the 2023 Finovate Awards will open in the spring of next year. If you’re interested, please email [email protected].

For more information on our judges and selection process, check out our blog post describing the awards.

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Business Spending Tool Pleo Taps Yapily for Open Banking Payments

Business Spending Tool Pleo Taps Yapily for Open Banking Payments
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • Small business spending solution Pleo and open banking provider Yapily have formed a partnership.
  • Under the agreement, Pleo will leverage Yapily Payments to enable account-to-account payments for its small business clients.
  • Pleo will begin rolling out the new service to its business clients in the Netherlands and France in the coming months.

Small business spending solution Pleo has teamed up with open banking provider Yapily this week.

Pleo is leveraging Yapily Payments, a tool that enables direct account-to-account payments. And because Yapily uses open banking, it does not use card rails, which ultimately cuts out middlemen and limits fees. Yapily covers 19 countries and has more than 1900 institutions integrated with its open banking infrastructure.

Pleo was founded in 2015 and enables small businesses to tackle invoices, issue reimbursements, give their employees payment cards for work-related expenses. The company’s spending solution offers small businesses control over employee spend and provides visibility into their expenses.

Yapily Payments will enable Pleo users to top up their Pleo account directly from their bank account. This direct connection offers two major benefits– it offers instant payments and decreases the risk of card fraud and human error. “Manual processes, settlement periods, and bottlenecks in cash flow are all avoidable obstacles,” said Pleo Chief Product Officer Olov Eriksson. “We want to enable our users to focus on what really matters: growing their business and empowering their people.”

Pleo will begin offering customers the new capability in a gradual rollout “over the coming months.” The service will be made available starting in the Netherlands and France. The bank account to-up capability is just the start of Pleo’s partnership with Yapily. Pleo also plans to leverage more of Yapily’s payments solutions in the future.

Yapily was founded in 2017 and offers API-based tools to enable the connection between banks and third party fintechs. Last month, the U.K.-based company launched Variable Recurring Payments, a tool that allows merchants and service providers to offer recurring payments of varying amounts without having to re-authenticate for each transaction.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto

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Credix Raises $11.3 Million for Decentralized Credit Marketplace

Credix Raises $11.3 Million for Decentralized Credit Marketplace
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • Decentralized credit platform Credix raised $11.25 million in funding.
  • The Series A round was led by Motive Partners and ParaFi Capital and boosts Credix’s total funding to $13.8 million.
  • Credix will use the funds to enhance platform development, increase staff, and integrate with Web3 projects.

Decentralized credit platform Credix raked in $11.25 million today. The Belgium-based company’s Series A funding round was led by Motive Partners and ParaFi Capital with contributions from Valor Capital, MGG Bayhawk Fund, Victory Park Capital, Circle Ventures, Fuse Capital, and Abra.

Credix will use the funds to boost platform development, increase staff, and integrate with Web3 projects.

The round follows Credix’s December 2021 Seed round and brings the company’s total funding to $13.8 million. Company CEO Thomas Bohner described the round as the “next major step” in bringing Credix’s protocol and platform for credit investing to investors.

Credix launched last year to develop a credit platform that matches institutional investors and fintech lenders, bridging DeFi and real-world assets. The company enables finfech companies and non-bank lenders to convert their receivables and real assets into investment capital. Credix leverages USDC and smart contracts to offer instant settlement and transparency. 

Since its launch, Credix has gone live in Brazil and has originated more than $23 million active loans in in the past six months. The company will launch in additional geographies “soon.”

Photo by Cup of Couple

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