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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
We may still be enduring the absence of in-person networking, but there are a handful of ways to stimulate casual banter among conference participants.
At FinovateSpring, taking place digitally May 10 through May 13, we are making it as easy as possible for attendees and speakers to engage with each other through interactive roundtable sessions, networking “rooms” and a digital cafe.
One avenue we’ve found particularly useful to bring a personal element to the demo presentations is our curated set of 25-in-5 videos. In these videos, our team asks 25 rapid-fire questions in under five minutes to the demo companies at FinovateSpring.
My favorite part of these videos is that they bring a human element to each demo company. That’s because we ask the presenters off-beat questions that help you get to know them on a more personal level.
All of the 25-in-5 interview videos will be available as exclusive, on-demand content within the FinovateSpring Digital event platform. If you’re registered, keep an eye out for early access to schedule meetings and curate your event-day agenda with the sessions that most interest you.
And don’t worry about missing out. There’s still time to register, and with no need to buy a plane ticket and book a hotel room, FinovateSpring is more accessible than ever.
Today brings yet another indication that QR codes are back in style. Fiservannounced it is partnering with PayPal to enable businesses to use QR codes to offer touch-free payments at the point of sale.
Through the partnership, small and mid-sized businesses using Fiserv’s Clover point of sale and large enterprises leveraging the company’s Carat commerce ecosystem will be able to accept payment via PayPal and Venmo through QR codes at the point of sale.
“With consumer preference shifting towards touch-free interactions, it’s critical that businesses are able to connect physical and digital commerce,” said Fiserv’s Head of Global Business Solutions Devin McGranahan. “By enabling consumers to pay digitally via a QR code and popular digital wallets like PayPal and Venmo, businesses are providing added convenience and choice as in-person shopping, dining and entertainment experiences resume.”
As shown in the video above, the QR codes make the touch-free payment process relatively frictionless. Nonetheless, there is one catch– users must have a PayPal or Venmo account and mobile app.
Consumers may be willing to endure the extra friction, however, as people have become more likely to try out new digital technologies in the wake of the pandemic.
Fiserv’s announcement comes about a month after the company agreed to acquire payment processing and payment acceptance startup Pineapple Payments.
Founded in 1984 and headquartered in Wisconsin, Fiserv’s technologies serve nearly six million merchants across the globe. Frank Bisignano is president and CEO.
When it comes to European wealthtech companies, Nutmeg is the original gangster. The London-based company was founded in 2011 and demoed at FinovateEurope a year later in 2012.
Today, the company reached a milestone, topping almost $4.2 billion (£3 billion) in assets under management. The news comes after the company experienced a 72% year-on-year growth in assets under management in the first three months of this year.
Nutmeg has seen a 53% increase in the number of investors on its platform over the past year, and now counts 130,000 investors total.
The growth spurt can be attributed to a few things. First, the company brought on a new CEO, Neil Alexander, after taking a $30+ million loss in 2019. Another big factor in Nutmeg’s recent growth is the increased interest in investing during a low interest rate environment.
“While the last year has been financially difficult for many people, we have also seen many new and existing clients who have been fortunate enough to have more disposable income as a result of reduced expenditure on leisure, hospitality, commuting and holidays,” said Alexander. “Nutmeg has been a beneficiary of this shift, welcoming tens of thousands of seasoned investors wanting to take advantage of a digital-first wealth management service, along with first-time investors looking for the support they receive from our wealth services team in helping them to achieve their financial goals.”
Nutmeg offers ISAs, pensions, and general investment accounts. The firm offers a range of investment options including fully managed, fixed allocation, socially responsible. Earlier this year, Nutmeg partnered with J.P. Morgan Asset Management to offer a new investment option, Smart Alpha.
Smart Alpha combines Nutmeg’s core investment principles, ETF experience, and fractional investment expertise with J.P. Morgan’s in-house, multi-asset knowledge to provide investors a globally diversified, dynamic portfolio.
Greenlight, a company that provides financial services technology for kids, announced today it has landed $260 million in funding. Today’s investment nearly doubles the Georgia-based company’s valuation, boosting it up to $260 million.
The Series D round, which brings Greenlight’s total funding to more than $550 million, was led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from existing investors TTV Capital, Canapi Ventures, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, BOND, Fin VC, Goodwater Capital. New investors Wellington Management, Owl Ventures, and LionTree Partners also participated. Andreessen Horowitz General Partner David George will join Greenlight’s board of directors.
As for Greenlight’s valuation, the company saw an increase from $1.2 billion to $2.3 billion over the course of six months.
Greenlight will use today’s funds to add more services to its platform, increase its distribution partnerships, and expand to more geographies to ultimately reach more families. Additionally, the company will use the investment to increase its human resources, with a plan to add 300 employees over the next two years.
“Our vision at Greenlight is to create a world where every child grows up to be financially healthy and happy,” said Greenlight Co-founder and CEO Tim Sheehan. “Today’s financing will enable us to bring even more value to families as we continue to introduce new innovative products that shine a light on the world of money.”
Founded in 2014, Greenlight offers a money management platform for families that helps three million parents and kids gain skills to manage their earnings, savings, spending, giving, and learn to invest via a debit card, companion app, and educational resources.
Greenlight has struck a chord with its family-based finances approach. In the past year, the company has more than tripled its year-over-year revenue, more than doubled its users, and doubled its workforce. Earlier this year, Greenlight launched a new products, Greenlight Max, which helps kids research and invest in stocks with parental approval.
“The demand for Greenlight’s family finance solution continues to grow,” said Greenlight Co-founder and President Johnson Cook. “With the support of our investors, we look forward to empowering even more parents to raise financially-smart kids.”
We’re four and a half months into 2021, and we’re already starting to see the fintech and banking industries shake off the 2020 mindset.
That’s not to say that companies have left behind their digital agendas that took precedence last year. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Banks and fintechs have transitioned to apply the lessons they learned amid the massive growth period last year into new initiatives.
So what new frontiers does the industry have its eye on? I took an early look at some of the trends beginning to emerge at our upcoming FinovateSpring conference, taking place digitally May 10 through 13.
Here are the top three themes from the discussion sessions:
Embedded finance and banking-as-a-service These two intertwined trends have exploded in the past year. Embedded finance and the concept’s predecessor, banking-as-a-service, are helping non-banking companies leverage fintech to offer financial services to their clients. Food delivery, ridesharing, and big tech companies have all benefitted from offering their customers a form of banking services.
Increased customer awareness and demand are tipping the scales on these tandem trends this spring, rising them to the top. Thanks to the pandemic driving much of our everyday lives into the online realm, customers have realized the convenience that comes from being able to combine banking tasks with everyday activities.
The ESG initiative Technologies and products that tackle environmental, social, and governance (or ESG) issues are nothing new. However, over the course of the first half of this year we’ve seen more fintech and banking players getting in on the action.
Both new and incumbent players have heard consumers’ cries for a more sustainable approach to managing their financial lives. To meet this demand, companies are doing everything from making carbon neutral pledges, to offering wooden payment cards, to using customer deposits to fund sustainable initiatives and donating profits to reforestation efforts.
CBDCs and digital currencies While central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, should have been on banks’ radars last year, the global pandemic took precedence. Today, while the industry is still working on reimagining the digital experience, there has been more space to think about operating in a future where CBDCs and other digital currencies are commonplace.
There are currently six countries piloting CBDCs, while many others have made key developments in implementing a formal release of CBDCs. The U.S. has stated that it will not race other countries to the finish line of launching its own CBDC. The country has still signaled some progress toward its own digital currency, however, which has turned the attention of many in the fintech space.
In addition to these, experts will be discussing themes from previous years, including customer experience, AI, digital transformation, and faster payments – as well as fringe topics such as quantum computing.
Taking a look at content from the developer-focused track, FinDEVr, we’ll see an in-depth look at the technology behind open banking, customer onboarding, lending-as-a-service, and customer experience and design. FinDEVr will take place on May 13.
Check out more information on how you can save on tickets to both FinovateSpring and FinDEVr, held May 10 through 13 in Central Standard Time.
After the world went digital last year, the digital identity crisis began taking on new life. Most fintech players are involved in digital identity in some way, and Experian is no exception.
We recently spoke with Eric Haller, Experian’s Executive Vice President and General Manager of Identity, Fraud & DataLabs, to get an idea of how digital identity is changing.
In the interview below, Haller offers his expert opinion and shares how enabling technologies such as AI and the blockchain are impacting how firms think about digital identity.
Digital identity has been on the radar of financial services firms since the dawn of online services. How has this past year of digital acceleration changed how firms approach digital identity?
Eric Haller: The pandemic has shifted segments of the population to the web that weren’t as engaged online as they were prior to the pandemic. For this segment, shopping “face to face” felt safer in many ways. But with a biological threat surfacing, the risks of shopping in the physical world traded places for online risks. All of a sudden, online services seemed much safer.
This plays out in our research where we saw a 20% increase in online shopping this past year with 43% of consumers believing they will even increase their online activity over the next year. And with this shift, 55% of consumers say security is their top priority in a digital experience.
Tell us about the role that AI plays in enhancing digital identity verification for banks.
Haller: To validate someone’s digital identity, literally hundreds of data elements are evaluated to assess whether an individual is a bot, an imposter or the person they claim to be. And all this data is collected, analyzed, and acted on in milliseconds. AI allows for these complicated links and behaviors to be tied together in a variety of ways quickly, efficiently, and accurately to assign the correct conclusion to each customer.
If everything goes well for a legitimate customer, the experience is smooth sailing and both the consumer and merchant conduct “fraud free” business. Most often, there is no fraud. It only happens a very small percentage of the time. But it’s important that if it is a bot or an imposter, that the models in place are precise.
The blockchain seems like a valuable enabling technology when it comes to proving identity. Is this an idea you’ve seen gain popularity? Or is it more of just a fad?
Haller: The portability of a trusted identity in a digital ecosystem integrated with a blockchain could serve a lot of value for consumers and businesses. But it requires quite a bit of effort to get both those that want to share their identity and those willing to invest in accepting it participating in it.
If there were a lot of businesses that would accept a particular blockchain based ID, consumers would put in the effort to have on and use it. If there were a lot of consumers with it, businesses would put in the effort to invest and accept it.
Which side grows with scale first? There are many chasing this ideal. I wouldn’t characterize it as a fad — just very ambitious and challenging to achieve.
This is a guest post written by Dr. Anette Broløs of Broløs Consult and Dr. Erin B. Taylor of Finthropology.
Finances have long been considered a man’s domain. Women’s economic power is, however, growing along with growing equality in education, changing family patterns, and more focus on gender diversity.
With growing economic power, the market potential to serve women with suitable financial solutions is growing, too. During the last 5 to 10 years, there has been rapid growth in the number of organizations offering female-focused financial services. Yet Oliver Wyman estimates that companies are missing out on $700 billion in profit by not catering to the female market.[1]
What can we do to tap into the female financial market?
This question is at the center of two reports we published in the last year asking why women might need or want their own financial services.[2] How does women’s behaviour differ from that of men? What kinds of features might women need in financial services that are different to those for everyone? And is there anything special about serving women, or is it just part of the broader trend towards developing client-centric solutions?
Figure 1: What goes into designing financial services for women?
In the first report, Female Finance: Digital, Mobile, Networked (2020), we explored solutions for women in-depth and presented an analysis of what makes financial solutions ‘female.’ In the second report we studied the characteristics of 102 organizations offering financial services to women, comparing them with external statistics and reports.
We found that there are– at least for now– definite differences between what men and women look for in financial services. In Figure 1 we provide an overview of what makes a product or service targeted at women: looking at design, features, values, and delivery.
We also found that many providers offer “traditional” services (savings, investment, credit, etc.) embedded in other services such as advice, impact solutions, education, mentorship, and networks. Women seem to value these integrated services more than men because they provide a more personal and social approach to finances. Interestingly, there are an increasing number of networks, associations, and NGOs that offer services like learning and networks without actually offering traditional financial services— a new development in the market.
The values of companies that focus on women are also different from those catering to a broader market. The latter tend to focus on “value for money,” whereas the female-focused organizations focus on culture, empowerment, creativity, and freedom.
And so, providing female-focused financial services isn’t just about improving messaging or offering ‘wrap around’ services on existing offers. The majority of organizations that we studied designed their services for women from the outset, and many of them were founded— and led— by women. Many founders come with a solid background in financial services.
So, what can fintechs and incumbent financial service providers do to tap into this important market?
We find that two elements are at the core of successfully reaching this market. [3] The most important is to develop a holistic understanding of customer needs. Women look for assistance to achieve financial health and wellbeing for themselves and their families, and so they prefer solutions that fit into their real life, rather than just considering factors like risk and return.
This means, for example, that investment services for women should not only focus on helping them get the highest profit possible, but also on investing in education, a better life, and security for women and their families.
Offering services to women also means going beyond questions of financial literacy. Good financial services for women will help them to gain control over economic decisions in both the short and long term.
Another important element to understand is how digital solutions can support the provision of holistic services. Women are avid users of integrated, easy-to-access solutions.
A good place to start is to invest in better understanding the female market and its characteristics. This may be assisted by connecting with other organizations to share best practices and create co-learning opportunities.[4]
Another important focal point is the generation of reliable data and insights. To assist with this, companies can collect sex-disaggregated data on customers to shed insights into gender differences in product and service use. They can also take the time to research female customers’ behaviour and user experience, including their life contexts, needs, and preferences.
Companies can adapt the innovation and development process to be more customer-focused and less technology-driven. They can introduce customer knowledge into innovation and put co-creation at the centre of the process.
We encourage organizations to develop holistic value propositions that integrate financial offerings into everyday activities, as well as personal networks and communities. As part of this, they can communicate with women in ways that speak to their life contexts, and which are inclusive rather than exclusive.
When developing services for women it is also important to have an appropriately diverse team to research and design them. Companies can work on internal organizational diversity, including capitalizing on team diversity to reduce the risk of unconscious biases entering into service design. This may be assisted by partnering with fintechs that are already experienced in providing services for women.
This is a simple enough recipe that also fits the general trend towards customization, so there is really no excuse not to get started.
[1] Oliver Wyman. 2020. Women in Financial Services 2020. May
[2] Anette Broløs and Erin B. Taylor. 2020. Female Finance: Digital, Mobile, Networked. EWPN and Keen Innovation and Erin B. Taylor and Anette Broløs. 2021 Female Finance in Figures. EWPN, Keen Innovation and Bank Cler.
[3] We decided to focus on the general findings and perspectives here. There are many important learnings to put to use in developing services for women-led SME’s and particularly to the economic access and development in poorer economies.
[4] We take inspiration from the Financial Alliance for Women. In their October 2020 report they indicate a number of ways to push forward: 1) Collecting sex disaggregated data; 2) Understanding women’s realities, needs and preferences; 3) Working with gender biases; 4) Developing holistic value propositions; 5) Setting these in marketing that appeals to women.
The news is abuzz with excitement about Coinbase’s IPO. The San Francisco-based digital currency platform began trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker COIN for $381 per share today and closed out the day at just over $328 per share.
It’s always exciting when a fintech company goes public, but there are a few reasons why Coinbase’s debut is particularly compelling:
Legitimacy
Coinbase’s listing helps legitimize cryptocurrency in general. Many everyday consumers consider cryptocurrency as a medium of exchange for fraudsters and bad actors on the dark web. This will shift, however, to placing digital currencies in a more positive light and consumers will begin to understand the true benefits of crypto– a tool for faster payments, a way to lower fees, and an agent for a more inclusive financial system.
Sets the stage
The Coinbase IPO sets a precedent for others in the cryptocurrency industry to go public. Digital currency wallets and crypto marketplaces are closely tied to the price of cryptocurrencies, which have historically been extremely volatile.
Despite the uncertainty, Coinbase has proven to be profitable. According to the New York Times, Coinbase made $730 million to $800 million in net profit on $1.8 billion in revenue in the first quarter of this year. The company’s performance in the public eye will dictate the moves of others in the cryptocurrency industry, including bitcoin exchange Kraken, which is considering a public listing next year.
Ready for CBDCs?
One effect we may see come from Coinbase’s move into the public eye is its potential to prime the U.S. market for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). This reflects back to the first discussion point about offering a sense of legitimacy to the cryptocurrency realm.
The U.S. hasn’t taken any formal actions toward the launch of its own digital currency. However, multiple other nations, including China, Brazil, and Russia, have recently made announcements regarding their own nations’ CBDCs. Bringing cryptocurrency into the realm of traditional finance helps ready the everyday U.S. consumer for the eventual proliferation of digital currencies.
An increase in demand
Will Coinbase’s exposure outside the cryptocurrency space increase the number of people holding digital currencies?
Ben Weiss, CEO of crypto ATM provider CoinFlip answers it this way, “While it is hard for us to know if more people will get into crypto just because Coinbase is trading publicly, we know for sure that at least people who were too scared of the volatility of bitcoin can now take a more traditional approach by buying Coinbase stock. There will definitely be a lot of these people and hopefully this is a gateway for them to get into bitcoin over time.”
While Finovate is all about demoing the newest fintech, we’re also into discussing it.
At this year’s FinovateSpring conference, which will be held digitally on May 10 through May 13 in Central Standard Time, we’re hosting hours of discussions on the hottest topics in banking and fintech. Thinking of joining us? There’s still time to buy your ticket before the price increases on April 20.
Here’s a highlight of some of the topics you can expect:
Neobanks vs Traditional Banks
A look at who has the advantage and how neobanks will find a path to profitability
Embedded Finance & Banking As A Service: A Game-Changing Opportunity For Incumbents?
A discussion of how banks can leverage open finance
Fintech, ESG & Climate Change: How Financial Services Companies Can Play A Key Role Helping Clients On Their ESG & Climate Change Journeys
A look into how banks should act on the explosive ESG trend as it transcends investing into everyday finances
The ABC Of CBDCs: Why Central Bank Digital Currency Initiatives Are A Gamechanger
CBDC initiatives are moving fast. Here’s what you need to know.
Buy Now Pay Later: A Great Product For Customers Or A Debt Trap?
Experts debate the pros and cons of buy now, pay later schemes.
Seven in Seven
7 Expert Speakers Have Just 7 Minutes to Tackle Critical Issues Facing Financial Institutions & Fintechs.
Analyst All Stars
Alyson Clarke, Principal Analyst at Forrester; Daniel Latimore, Chief Research Officer at Celent; and Jacob Jegher, President of Javelin Strategy & Research discuss the top trends in fintech and banking.
Want to see more? Check out the full agenda on the FinovateSpring event page.
Alternative banking services company SoFi unveiled a new product last month that will enable eligible members to participate in upcoming IPOs.
The tool will sit within SoFi Invest, a suite of investment tools that offers automated investment services, retirement accounts, a cryptocurrency wallet, and more.
Here’s how it works- users with at least $3,000 in their Active Invest accounts can select the IPOs they’d like to participate in by submitting an indication of interest. Once the IPO is live, investors will receive a notification asking to confirm their order and secure their shares.
If you’re a fintech veteran, this concept may sound familiar. There have been a handful of companies that have opened up IPO participation for retail investors, which are generally excluded from IPOs since they don’t generate the same revenues as institutional investors or high net worth individuals.
The first fintech to offer IPO access to retail investors was Loyal3, which was founded in 2008. The company launched a social IPO platform in 2014 that partnered with pre-IPO companies to enable them to include consumers, employees, partners, and fans in their IPO. Investors were required to purchase a minimum of $100 in stock but were not charged a fee. Loyal3, however, may have been ahead of its time. The company closed its doors in 2017.
Linqto, which recently demonstrated its platform at FinovateWest 2020, allows accredited investors to invest in pre-IPO unicorns. The company requires investment minimums ranging from $5,000 to $10,000. Among the companies currently available to investors are Impossible Foods, Ripple, and Nerd Wallet.
Yet another fintech in this arena is MarketX, a cross-border marketplace that allows investors to browse deals and invest in pre-IPO companies across the globe. MarketX currently offers investors access to pre-IPO companies in the U.S., China, Singapore, Indonesia, India, the UAE, and more. While MarketX advertises to accredited retail investors, the company requires a minimum of $50,000, a figure that is much higher than others working in this space.
With higher minimums and accredited investor restrictions, the IPO investment offerings from Loyal3, Linqto, and MarketX aren’t as accessible as SoFi’s proposed IPO investment tool. Stock trading app Robinhood, however, is also rumored to be entering this space with an offering that will compete on the same level as SoFi.
Reuters reported last month that Robinhood plans to democratize IPO investing by enabling its users to buy into IPOs. According to the news source, Robinhood is allowing its users to buy into its own IPO (which is slated for later this year) and will then use the technology it built to create a more general IPO investment tool for its 13 million users.
SoFi showcased at FinDEVr New York 2017 in a presentation about leveraging bank authentication. FinDEVr will be returning to the Finovate lineup with its own stage at this year’s FinovateSpring digital event. Check out the event page to learn more.
Small business financial services platform Hatch unveiled its funding total today. The California-based company has pulled in $20 million in two funding rounds since it was founded in 2018.
The first investment, a Seed round that closed in January 2019, totaled $5 million. The company’s Series A round closed in February of last year, totaling $14 million.
Hatch’s investors include Kleiner Perkins, Foundation Capital, and SVB.
Hatch offers small businesses a line of credit and a business checking account which it launched this January. The checking accounts come with a Mastercard debit card and allow Hatch’s 4,000 business users to send money through ACH, billpay, or via digital checks from the Hatch dashboard. Additional features include overdraft protection and cashback rewards.
Because Hatch uses machine learning to complete KYC, KYB, and OFAC compliance checks, businesses can get approved for a checking account in under five minutes. Accounts cost $10 per month and feature a transparent fee structure.
Founded by Thomson Nguyen, Hatch has a team of 48 people, 40 of which were brought on in the past year during the pandemic.
Mortgagetech innovator Better.com recently landed a $500 million investment from Japan-based Softbank, bringing the company’s total funding to over $900 million.
According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the news, Softbank is buying shares from existing Better investors, a list which includes Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Kleiner Perkins.
With the new round, experts estimate Better’s valuation to be around $6 billion. This is a significant jump from the company’s most recent valuation, which sat at around $4 billion after Better closed a funding round in November of last year.
Better was founded with the goal of reengineering the mortgage process. The company streamlines mortgage originations by taking the entire process online. Better also offers Better Real Estate, which matches buyers with real estate agents; Better Settlement Services, which offers title insurance; and Better Cover, a home insurance marketplace.
The new investment comes at a time of significant growth for Better. Inspired by low interest rates, more consumers have been refinancing their properties. The Wall Street Journal reports that because of this increase in demand, Better lent out $25 billion in loans in 2020 and has extended $14 billion in loans the first quarter of this year.
Better saw $800 million in revenue last year and is expected to go public by the end of 2021. Founded in 2014, the company is headquartered in New York City. Vishal Garg is CEO.
