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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Currencycloud launched a new tool called WeekendFX.
The new tool enables clients to offer competitive FX rates on weekends when markets are closed.
Currencycloud is launching WeekendFX in partnership with Visa, which acquired Currencycloud last July.
Visa’s Currencycloudlaunched a new tool this week called WeekendFX. The new offering will do just as it sounds– enable clients to offer competitive FX rates around the clock, even on weekends.
In the new digital economy, businesses are always on, operating after business hours and on weekends. However, businesses face increased risks and cost when they arrange cross-border payments on weekends because of the fluctuations subject to occur between when the trading desks close on Friday afternoon and when they open for the week on Monday morning.
Currencycloud is launching WeekendFX in partnership with its parent company Visa to help remove the risk, complexity, and cost to support cross-border payments outside of traditional operating hours. WeekendFX enables Currencycloud clients to offer a competitive fixed FX rate over the weekend and will settle at the same rate on Monday morning when the market opens.
“This is a massive step in overcoming business issues of operating 24/7,” said Partners & Enterprise Co-Founder and VP Steve Lemon. “Together with Visa we now enable our clients to execute FX transactions over the weekend in exactly the same way, using a standardized API and workflow as they would during the week. Therefore, their customers can continue to operate their businesses and execute FX conversions in exactly the same way too.”
Money transfer and payments firm Swinto and aviation business connectivity startup Tuvoli piloted the new trading tool, and ANNA Money will go live with the technology shortly.
Founded in 2012, Currencycloud facilitates cross-border, multi-currency transactions. The London-based company has processed more than $100 billion to over 180 countries for bank and fintech clients including Starling Bank, Revolut, Penta, and Lunar.
In July of last year, Visa snapped up Currencycloud in a deal that valued the company at $963 million. Last October, the company partnered with Plaid, embedding Plaid’s Payment Initiation Services into its own solution to allow customers to fund their accounts without ever leaving the platform.
Glia recently raised a $45 million Series D investment round.
The round values the company at over $1 billion, making it a fintech unicorn.
Glia said the funds “will be heavily allocated toward research and development.”
Digital customer service tools provider Glia is now valued at over $1 billion, making it fintech’s newest unicorn. The company announced earlier this week it closed a $45 million Series D investment, bringing its total funding to $152 million.
Insight Partners led the round, which saw contributions from existing investor Wildcat Capital Management and new investor RingCentral Ventures. Glia will “heavily allocate” the funds into research and development, investing in advanced AI, analytics, messaging, voice, and video capabilities. The company, which has offices in New York and Estonia, also plans to boost international expansion.
“The future of customer service is digital, and those that have yet to take steps to modernize their support and engagement strategies are already behind,” said Glia Co-Founder and CEO Dan Michaeli. “We’re thrilled by our investors’ confidence reflected in the round’s valuation, recognizing that we’ve only scratched the surface of what Glia can accomplish. Our rapid growth and successful relationships with financial services companies of all types demonstrates the urgent need for Digital Customer Service. As we build upon a decade of innovation, this capital will further extend our reach and help even more businesses across the globe reimagine how they connect with customers digitally.”
Glia was founded in 2012 as SaleMove. The company seeks to reinvent how businesses support their customers in a digital world– an imperative tool in today’s digital-first economy. Specifically, Glia offers digital communication choices, on-screen collaboration, and AI-enabled assistance tools. The company has 250 clients across the globe, including banks, credit unions, insurance companies, and other financial institutions.
Glia has won 10 Best of Show Awards– an impressive feat. Check out the company’s latest award-winning demo from spring of last year.
Investing app Acorns now enables users to invest in bitcoin.
Users can invest up to 5% of their Acorns portfolio in the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF.
Acorns plans to add other cryptocurrencies in the future.
Millennials have been crowding around crypto investing, and micro investment platform Acorns has taken notice. The California-based company launched an option this week that will enable its 4.6 million subscribers to add bitcoin to their investment portfolios.
“We’ve always been open-minded and flexible to the idea that as other asset classes mature and become something that we can deliver to customers, we would love to include that in the appropriate way,” said Acorns Chief Investment Officer Seth Wunder in an interview with CoinDesk. “Cryptocurrency, specifically bitcoin, in our opinion has gotten to that place where it’s an acceptable piece of people’s portfolios.”
Acorns was founded in 2012 to offer an approachable way for young investors to start investing. The company’s platform automatically invests users’ spare change and allows them to deposits as low as $5 into its five ETF diversified portfolios. Starting today, users can opt to invest up to 5% of their Acorns portfolio in the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, a futures fund that debuted on the New York Stock Exchange last year.
This move comes four years after Acorn competitor Robinhood launched Bitcoin and Ethereum trading on its platform. Robinhood, a stock brokerage startup that was founded in 2013, enables its users to buy and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Dogecoin. Acorns plans to add other cryptocurrencies in the future, but there is no word on exact timing.
Earlier this month, Acorns closed a $300 million funding round led by private equity firm TPG. The investment valued Acorns at close to $2 billion. Noah Kerner is CEO.
This is a sponsored blog post by Nick Kerigan, Head of Innovation, Swift.
Working with Clearstream, Northern Trust, SETL and others, SWIFT plans experiments in 2022 to explore how it can support interoperability in the development of the tokenized asset market.
Relative to cryptocurrencies and stablecoins, the current market capitalization of tokenized assets is small, but momentum for these digital assets is expected to accelerate rapidly in the coming years. By some estimates, volumes could reach some 24 trillion USD by 2027.
Tokenization can be applied to stocks and bonds, but also to illiquid assets, including commodities, property or even art. For example, a share or bond with a high value per unit (say over $500) can be divided into digital pieces that each have ownership and value. This increases the liquidity of the overall asset, and accessibility, by enabling a wider demographic of people to invest in assets that may historically have been unavailable to them.
Banks and securities firms are responding to tokenization by developing services − including fractionalization, a process whereby assets are broken into smaller value digital tokens − amongst other digital asset servicing capabilities, such as private key safekeeping. Financial market infrastructures also are embracing tokenization by supporting the full lifecycle of digital securities.
As interest increases, SWIFT is exploring how it can enable and improve interoperability between participants and systems during the transactional lifecycle of tokenized assets. To this end, SWIFT plans a series of experiments throughout 2022 leveraging its trusted role as a central platform to explore the issuance, delivery versus payment (DVP), and redemption processes, to support a frictionless and seamless tokenized asset market. These experiments will use both established forms of payment and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
Asset tokenization − a trend and challenge for securities markets
Over the coming decade, tokenized and traditional assets will likely co-exist, and this poses potential challenges. One major risk is that a variety of technologies, platforms and regulatory environments will create a thicket of connections for securities market participants. This could result in inefficiencies and fragmentation, as well as rising costs and risks across the industry.
SWIFT is uniquely placed to help solve this challenge. As a neutral, global cooperative with a strong focus on ensuring interoperability and setting standards for the industry, we are able to interconnect market participants and simplify operations by completing activities centrally that otherwise would be performed bilaterally between institutions. This role relies on SWIFT’s strong identity and security frameworks, alongside our unparalleled reach and record of reliability.
With this in mind, we are looking at how we can support both traditional and tokenized assets flows, with a focus on regulated assets only. We would not become a crypto-custodian nor perform direct settlement of tokenized assets as a financial market infrastructure would. Rather, we see our role as helping to connect all entities as efficiently as possible and enabling our customers to provide better services to their end-users.
Collaborative innovation in action
SWIFT, Clearstream, Northern Trust, SETL and other industry participants are exploring the feasibility and benefits of SWIFT as an interconnector, linking up multiple tokenization platforms and various cash-leg payment types. This will build on SWIFT’s successes in achieving interoperability for CBDCs outlined in our whitepaper published last year.
In the experiments, Clearstream and Northern Trust, alongside other industry players, will represent key parts of the tokenized − and traditional − asset ecosystem, including securities market infrastructures, as well a local and global custodians. SETL and Northern Trust will support SWIFT and the participants in the integration between the various DLT environments and with transaction orchestrations using their respective capabilities. Results of the experiments will be shared with the financial community afterwards.
“As a neutral cooperative with a reach across 11,500 institutions in more than 200 countries, and oversight by central banks globally, SWIFT is uniquely placed to engage closely in the future of securities,” says Thomas Zschach, Chief Innovation Officer, SWIFT. “We look forward to this set of new experiments and innovating collaboratively with market participants on the emerging trend of tokenized assets.”
“Our vision for instant and frictionless transactions not only applies to traditional securities instruments but also to new asset classes as well,” adds Vikesh Patel, Head of Securities Strategy, SWIFT. “The insights from this exercise with leading capital markets participants will help us define and prioritize the concrete steps required to enable seamless processes for tokenized assets.”
Anthony Culligan, Chief Engineer at SETL, stated: “We are very pleased to be contributing to this important initiative. We see significant innovation in securities tokenization at the moment and these experiments have the potential to create broader accessibility and interoperability between the emerging networks.”
Keep an eye out for the results of our experiments – we’ll be publishing them later in 2022. In the meantime, to find out how your firm could collaborate with us, get in touch at innovate@swift.com. We can’t wait to hear from you.
Earned wage access (EWA) has seen rising popularity in the past couple of years. These tools, which help businesses send their employees wages as they earn them, instead of on a bi-weekly basis, benefit both businesses and their employees.
In today’s era of the Great Resignation, businesses across all sectors are struggling with employee retention. Offering a tool that provides employees their cash faster can serve as a competitive advantage. And for workers, especially those with uneven cashflow or who are living paycheck-to-paycheck, receiving a few hundred dollars even a few days early can make a difference and help them avoid predatory payday lenders.
While some of the earliest versions of this technology came out in 2013, multiple players across the globe have launched in the past few years. While many of the EWA companies we found are in the U.S., new startups have been cropping up across the globe. Additionally, existing players are starting to broaden their international reach.
As far as business model goes, the majority of the EWA companies market to employers. Two companies, PayActiv and EarnedCard, offer direct-to-consumer products, while Fincluziv takes a different route by marketing its white-label EWA tool to banks.
Here is a world tour of both established and new players in the EWA sector.
France
Fincluziv offers banks a software-as-a-service tool that automates EWA and small dollar loans to employees of select employers.
India
Refyne‘s technology integrates with employers’ payroll to offer both full-time and contracted employees with real-time access to pay they earned.
Indonesia
Wagely helps businesses offer employees to access earned but unpaid wages.
Gaji Gesa offers businesses a way to provide their employees with instant access to their earned wages. The company also offers a range of other payroll services.
Malaysia
Hari Gaji grants businesses the opportunity to allow their employees to advance a portion of their pay ahead of payday.
South Africa
Paymenow integrates with employers’ payroll systems to give employees real-time access to a percentage of their previously-earned wages.
Level Finance offers businesses a way to pay their employees their earned but unpaid income.
Spain
Payflow lets businesses provide their employees with instant access to their earned salary.
U.K.
FlexEarn empowers employers to give their employees access to the money they’ve earned as they earn it.
U.S.
Instant Financial helps businesses give their employees daily access to their earned pay.
Grit Financial allows businesses to offer their employees the option to collect their payment at the end of each shift.
Immediate Financial gives businesses a way to offer their employees access to their earned wages on a daily basis. It is free for the business but charges the employee a small fee for each withdrawal.
EarnedCard is a direct-to-consumer play. The company bypasses the employer and provides users a credit card that offers them early access to funds.
PayActiv has both direct-to-employer and direct-to-consumer offerings. The company offers employers a way to pay their employees early, while offering individual users a Visa debit card that loads their earned wages up to two days early.
The investment was led by private equity advisory firm Apax Digital and brings ClearBank’s total funding to $627 million.
ClearBank will use the funds to expand internationally, first in Europe, then into North America and Asia Pacific.
Clearing and embedded banking technology company ClearBankraised $230 million (£175 million) this week. The investment brings the U.K.-based company’s total funding to $627 million.
Funds advised by private equity advisory firm Apax Digital led the round. Existing investors CFFI UK Ventures and PPF Financial Holdings, also participated. ClearBank plans to use the investment to expand its client base in Europe and eventually into North America and Asia Pacific.
Launched in 2017, ClearBank is a regulated bank that manages transactions from beginning to end, starting with order transmission and including settlement, liquidity management, and clearing activities. The company counts 200 bank and fintech clients– including Tide, Coinbase, Chip, and Oaknorth Bank– that leverage its tools to power faster payments, clearing, and payments activities. In all, ClearBank facilitates 13 million accounts totaling almost $4 billion in assets.
One of the company’s primary offerings is embedded banking tools. ClearBank enables businesses and financial services companies to offer bank accounts with FSCS deposit protection, FX tools, and multi-currency accounts to their own clients. All of the company’s regulated services can be accessed via a single API.
“ClearBank is the first proven and fully regulated cloud-native clearing bank in the U.K. for over 250 years,” said ClearBank CEO Charles McManus. “Over the last five years we have demonstrated the success of our business model and through our work with leading financial service providers, helped to both unlock their potential and bring about positive and meaningful change for U.K. businesses and consumers.”
As for what’s next, McManus points to a more global future for his company. “The next challenge is delivering this innovation globally. To achieve this, we needed a strategic partner with the right cultural fit, sector expertise and geographic experience, something we found in Apax Digital.” Additionally, ClearBank plans to add products and services that will help its clients scale internationally. To do this, the company will add direct API-based access to interbank payment schemes, enhanced multi-currency accounts, and additional FX services.
ClearBank is at the center of the flourishing banking-as-a-service trend that has both fintech and non-fintech companies adding banking services to their existing offerings. The company has experienced burgeoning growth and was recognized by Deloitte as the fastest-growing tech company in its 2021 U.K. Technology Fast 50 awards. In other accolades, ClearBank received the Best Service Award at the 2021 Card & Payments Awards.
PayPal is boosting its humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.
The payments company is expanding upon its P2P money transfer services, waiving fees, and facilitating funds transfers to payments cards.
These efforts are being made in addition to the company’s Cash Pick-Up and Mobile Phone Reload tools.
Citizens across the globe have donated millions of dollars in aid to the people living in Ukraine since the Russia invasion last month. And financial services provider PayPal is paying attention. The San Francisco-based company announced three new moves yesterday that will help people living in the region access humanitarian funds.
Peer-to-peer payments expansion
PayPal is expanding upon its existing money transfer services. The company is enabling Ukrainian PayPal accountholders to send and receive peer-to-peer (P2P) payments in four currencies– USD, CAD, GBP, and EUR.
Waiving fees
PayPal is waiving its own fees until June 30 for customers sending funds to Ukrainian PayPal accounts or receiving funds into Ukrainian PayPal accounts. Additionally, PayPal’s international remittance service, Xoom, is waiving transaction fees sent to recipients in Ukraine.
Funds transfers
PayPal will allow Ukrainian accountholders to transfer funds from their Ukrainian PayPal Wallet to an eligible Mastercard or Visa debit or credit card. Once the transfer has taken place, the money will be available in the currency associated with the payment card.
In addition to these new efforts, PayPal also offers Cash Pick-Up, a feature that enables digital money transfers to be sent to be picked up at physical locations throughout Ukraine such as Oschadbank, Privatbank, and Ukrgasbank; and Mobile Phone Reload, a tool to reload mobile phone airtime at five telco carriers.
PayPal is among many other fintechs making technological efforts to stem the violence in Ukraine and bring aid the country’s citizens. And as Russia’s war crimes continue and the situation worsens, we expect to see more fintechs rise to the occasion.
Global payments platform Nium unveiled a new payments solution.
The new solution helps international banks increase the speed and reduce the cost of settling transactions to select U.S. brokerages.
Leveraging the tool, financial institutions can save up to 90% in settlement fees.
Global payments platform Niumunveiled a new payments solution that will help international banks increase the speed and reduce the cost of settling transactions to select U.S. brokerages. As a result, international financial institutions will be able to more easily invest in U.S. equities.
“AtNium, we are constantly seeking to empower growing businesses with global reach to move money in smart, fast, and safe ways,” said Nium Chief Revenue Officer Frederick Crosby. “Our new payments solution for FIs that send money to brokerages allows their retail customers to invest in U.S. equities – fast and simple.”
The new payments tool saves Nium clients up to 90% in settlement fees when compared to SWIFT. “Nium’s new solution dramatically lowers the expense of these transactions, allowing FIs to either share cost savings with their customers or re-invest profits in the business,” added Crosby.
Additionally, the tool increases the potential for new clients by leveraging Nium’s network, decreases investment friction for end users, and does not require Nium clients to undergo new technology integrations.
Nium’s new release comes at a good time. The new decade’s digital-first customers now not only expect to conduct most of their financial activity online, they also expect things to be near-instant. Additionally, retail investors have expressed an increased desire to invest in overseas markets.
Singapore-based Nium was founded in 2015. The company serves over 130 million end customers and helps businesses pay out in more than 100 currencies to over 190 countries– 85 of those in real time.
Open finance company Plaid and money management solutions provider Green Dot entered into a partnership this week.
Green Dot will help its GO2bank customers connect to more than 6,000 apps and services powered by Plaid.
The partnership leverages Plaid Exchange, the company’s open finance API solution.
Open finance expert Plaid and money management solutions provider Green Dot have teamed up this week. The two are tapping the power of open finance to offer GO2bank customers more seamless data connectivity among and between their financial apps.
Leveraging Plaid’s open finance API solution Plaid Exchange, Green Dot will help its GO2bank customers securely connect to more than 6,000 apps and services powered by Plaid. The move ultimately offers end users access to a wider range of financial tools, which is critical for underbanked consumers.
“Our focus at Green Dot is giving all people the power to bank seamlessly, affordably, and with confidence,” said Green Dot Chief Product Officer Abhijit Chaudhary. “Through this partnership with Plaid, we are enabling real change in the industry by delivering an on-ramp for consumers who can benefit from simple, secure access to digital solutions.”
Launched in 2021, GO2bank was created to help Americans living paycheck to paycheck. The digital bank aims to offer a seamless and affordable experience that provides users with tools to serve their unique needs. For example, GO2bank offers up to $200 overdraft protection, high-interest savings accounts, credit building tools, and early wage access.
GO2bank parent company Green Dot was founded in 1999 and has since served more than 33 million customers. The company considers itself a branchless bank with more than 90,000 retail distribution locations across the U.S. In addition to its direct-to-consumer model, Green Dot also offers banking-as-a-service that enables banks and fintechs to leverage its bank charter, APIs, and cash deposit network to build out their own offerings.
With $734 million in funding, Plaid helps 12,000+ FIs offer their customers access to third party financial services via a suite of APIs to connect consumers, financial institutions, and developers. The company also offers a suite of analytics products that provides further insights into transactions. Plaid was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
MeridianLink will leverage StreetShares’ Atlas Platform, an embeddable digital lending environment for banks.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Cloud-based software solutions firm MeridanLinkacquired small business lending technology provider StreetShares this week. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
StreetShares was founded in 2014 to serve as an alternative lending option for military veteran-owned small businesses. In 2019, the Virginia-based company pivoted, launching digital small business lending technology for banks and credit unions after piloting the offering with USAA in 2018.
The new tool, the Atlas Platform, enables banks to embed a digital business lending environment in 45 days or less. The platform enables community lenders to leverage their data to deliver a digital banking product experience to their small business customers. StreetShares built the platform specifically to serve the unique needs of small businesses and assist lenders with challenges such as underwriting.
“StreetShares’ commitment to providing lenders across the U.S. with state-of-the-art business lending capabilities, including business loans, automated decisioning, and business lines of credit, aligns with our focus on empowering more banks and credit unions to better serve consumers and communities,” said MeridianLink CEO Nicolaas Vlok. “Adding the StreetShares team, technology, and strong partnerships with organizations like Fiserv to the MeridianLink family will accelerate our small business lending capabilities and further strengthen our MeridianLink One platform.”
MeridianLink, which is owned by private equity firm Thoma Bravo, was founded in 1998 and offers cloud-based technology to its 1,900 financial institution clients. Nicolaas Vlock is CEO of the firm, which is listed publicly on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker MLNK and has a market capitalization of $1.47 billion.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateEurope on March 15 digitally and in London on March 22 and 23, 2022. Register today and save your spot.
SmartStream’sSmartStream Air is cloud native, behaves like a consumer app, requires no training or IT skillset to use, and is the fastest AI and machine learning data quality application available today.
Features
Web based, ready to go, no installation
AI delivers immediate results
Cloud native, fully SaaS compliant
Why it’s great
The first and fastest AI data quality application that outperforms matching rates of anything available on the market today.
Presenter
Jethro MacDonald, Product Manager MacDonald brings over 10 years of experience in the financial services industry and has worked across multiple trading platforms and regulatory reporting systems, with a focus on credit/equity derivatives. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateEurope on March 15 digitally and in London on March 22 and 23, 2022. Register today and save your spot.
Persistent Systems and Mambu will demo an intuitive solution that gives customers the ability to manage multiple financial accounts and enables seamless transfers to and from accounts using different currencies.
Features
Consolidated account balances from multiple accounts and currencies
Transfer of funds from one currency account to another
Transfer to third party accounts
Why it’s great
Customers are seeking digital wallets to hold and spend in different currencies. The Persistent solution and Mambu integration enables multi-currency wallets, quickly and globally.
Presenters
Rowhit Bhosale, Digital Banking Specialist at Persistent Systems Bhosale is a digital banking specialist with over 10 years experience working in the financial services sector, evangelizing and supporting transformative initiatives for the global enterprises. LinkedIn
Harjit Kang, Account Executive at Mambu Focusing on supporting financial organisations to break away from monolithic managed services and move towards a best of breed composable ecosystem. Having been an early joiner at Mambu, Kang has real life use cases of such journeys. LinkedIn
