This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.
Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
U.K.-based crowdfunding platform Seedrs reached a major milestone in recent weeks. The company surpassed $1.4 billion (£1 billion) in investments made on its platform.
This comes almost 12 years after the company was founded in 2009 by Carlos Silva and Jeff Lynn as a way for all types of investors to contribute equity funding to startups in Europe.
“We passed many milestones in 2020; from having hit 17 company exits to delivering over 27,000 investor exits on our secondary market,” said CEO Jeff Kelisky. “However, on Christmas Day we passed the £1 billion mark in platform investments.”
Of those 17 exits, seven ocurred in 2020 alone. In total, Seedrs has delivered over $5.5 million (£4 million) in returns to investors, not including profits received by investors on the Seedrs Secondary Market.
Seedrs’ most recent development is its Secondaries Solution that allows founders, employees, and early investors to receive secondary liquidity without having to wait for an IPO or exit event. As Seedrs Manager Josh Davey explained, “Now, I’m excited by the launch of our liquidity solutions for later-stage companies, which will further open up access to investing in pre-IPO companies for retail investors, while providing financial liquidity to some of the founders and employees that have built some of the startups that have come to define how we live in the 21st century.”
In 2016, Seedrs was cited as the most active investor in private companies in the U.K. In October of last year, Seedrs merged with fellow equity crowdfunding platform Crowdcube.
Corporate card and expense management platform Divvy is starting off the new year with new cash. The Utah-based company closed a $165 million series D investment, boosting its total funding to $417 million.
The new round also crowns Divvy with unicorn status; the company is now valued at $1.6 billion. New investors Hanaco, PayPal Ventures, Whale Rock, and Schonfeld participated, as well as previous backers NEA, Insight Venture Partners, Acrew, and Pelion.
Divvy will use the funds to “invest heavily in product development and engineering in order to accelerate [its] future roadmap.”
Divvy was founded in 2016 and offers free expense management software combined with corporate credit cards to provide its clients visibility and control over their budgets. Among the company’s clients are Noom, Solo Stove, Rhone, EyeCare Partners, the Utah Jazz, and the Atlanta Dream.
“The best in every vertical choose Divvy,” said Divvy CEO Blake Murray. “We’re not just building for tech startups—we help businesses across the country by providing the capital and financial software they need to thrive. We’re fortunate to be able to build for companies of all sizes and we’re grateful to everyone who has helped us get here.”
Because managing expenses is a key element in helping small businesses survive a financial crisis like the one brought on by COVID, Divvy is in the midst of a growth spurt. Since March of last year, the company has seen a 500% increase in monthly sign-ups.
According to TechCrunch, Divvy’s competitors in the space include Ramp, Teampay, and Airbase. Each of these startups has closed a major round of funding recently, indicating the expense management space is heating up. The fact that Divvy offers its software for free is likely to offer it a leg up over some of its other competitors.
“With its compelling free software, Divvy is poised to become a key part of the financial nervous system for businesses,” said Peter Sanborn, Vice President, head of corporate development at PayPal and managing partner of PayPal Ventures.
Venmo‘s new launch is making it easier for users to deposit their paper stimulus checks. The PayPal-owned company unveiled a new feature called Cash a Check that enables users to do just that– cash paper checks in the Venmo app.
Eligible users can take a picture of their check, Venmo reviews the check, and the funds are usually approved within seconds and available in the user’s account in a few minutes (though the company disclosed the approval may take up to an hour).
“We know that with health and safety top of mind for many, having a safe way to access stimulus payments is essential for many of our customers, especially those who are receiving paper checks and traditionally would have to visit a physical check-cashing location,” said Venmo SVP and CM Darrell Esch. “By introducing the Venmo Cash a Check feature, we are not only enabling our customers to access their money quickly and safely from the comfort of their own homes but are also waiving all fees for cashing government issued checks to ensure customers can use their stimulus funds to pay for the things they need most.”
Users should not expect to be able to deposit the check they received from their grandma for Christmas, however. The initial launch is limited to printed payroll and government checks. In fact, the launch seems to focus on helping users cash their stimulus checks.
As Esch noted, fees for depositing government-issued checks will be waived for a limited time, until Venmo has cashed a total of $400,000 in government-issued checks. After that point– and for printed payroll check deposits– users face a fee of 1% to 5%, depending on whether the signature is hand-signed or pre-printed.
The steep fees are owed to the risk associated with remote deposit check capture. In addition to the risk of fraud, Venmo now exposes itself to costly human errors, such as unintentional efforts to deposit a single check multiple times.
Today’s launch is the latest effort in a series of moves Venmo has recently made to compete with the rise in challenger banks. Last October, the company launched a credit card offering and, a few months earlier, unveiled a new tool to help micro-businesses accept payments.
The following is a guest post by Lily Tran, content writer for MoneyTap.
Southeast Asia is one of the fastest-growing fintech markets in the world. The expected market growth is estimated to be between $70 billion and $100 billion by 2020, outpacing the likes of the U.S., U.K. and China.
One of the contributing factors to this growth in this region is its insufficient financial inclusion. The World Bank data points to a lack of access to financial tools in southeast Asia. As per the data, in Indonesia, only 49% of adults have formal bank accounts; in Cambodia, the number is 22%, and in the Philippines and Vietnam, it’s 34% and 31%, respectively. The penetration of insurance and wealth management is also low.
This makes it difficult for people to save, borrow, and manage money easily. This has given a tremendous opportunity to fintech companies to offer innovative opportunities for unbanked consumers to take fintech services and improve their financial situation.
Investors are channelling funding into the region, with financial technologies as their primary investment. According to new data from CB Insights, fintech fundraising activity in southeast Asia grew by 143% year on year in 2018. Fintech investments in Southeast Asia increased by more than 30% through 2018 to reach approximately $6 billion.
An international finance company, Robocash Group, in its recent report released the names of the top five countries experiencing the fintech boom in southeast Asia. So let’s take a closer look:
1. Singapore
Singapore is at the forefront of the fintech boom, dominating the region’s fintech market for several years now. In 2017, 400 local fintechs raised a combined total of $229 million.
With an appetite to consume a range of fintech offerings, Singapore fetched more than 50% of all fintech deals made in the region between 2013 and 2016. The diversified fintech market includes fund transfers, cryptocurrency trading, peer-to-peer payments, investment apps, insurance services, money lending services, and crowdfunding platforms.
2. Indonesia
Indonesia is largely populated, but only over 50% of its population are active internet users. This means roughly 150 million people have the means to use fintech. 61% of Indonesia’s internet users have registered for mobile banking apps. And 11% of its population transact online to purchase items or pay bills. However, online payments increased to $313.6 million in 2018.
By the end of 2019, only 49% of Indonesia’s population had a bank account. Now, alternative payment platforms are rising in popularity. Peer-to-peer payment platforms make up over 30% of the all fintechs. Along with payment platforms, e-commerce is expected to push the market further forward.
3. The Philippines
2018 saw the Philippines’ central bank roll out plans to make at least a fifth of its transactions go digital within two years. The digital payment adoption was projected to increase by 20% by 2020.
The country has 71% active internet users and 65.5% unbanked. And fintech companies have emerged to bridge the gap. In 2017, $78 million in funds were raised, an increase of 13% from the year before. As mobile banking has diversified, 54% of the country’s internet users have at least one mobile banking app.
According to Singapore Fintech News, one-third of all fintech companies registered in 2018 were payment platforms, followed by alternative finance at 30%, and blockchain companies at 16%.
4. Vietnam
In Vietnam, the total transaction value in the personal finance sector has crossed the $1 billion mark. Further, this value is projected to show an annual growth rate of 38.4% resulting in a projected total amount of $4.5 billion by 2024.
According to a report, between 2017 and 2020 the number of fintech startups grew more than 179%, with payment apps leading the sector, consisting 31% of the total startups.
Along with payments, peer-to-peer lending was another field which grew rapidly during this phase. The government is planning to get more than 70% of its people over 15 years of age to own a bank account within a year’s time. In 2017 and 2018, only 31% of adults owned a bank account, and only 4.1% of its people owned a credit card. In the phase between 2010 and 2020, a vast number of personal loan apps emerged, some of which have become huge.
Like the other countries in the region, Vietnam’s unbanked population are turning to fintech for its sheer ease of financial transactions. Around 50% of the country’s internet users use mobile banking platforms, 39% make mobile payments, and 9.3% own some form of cryptocurrency.
5. Thailand
82% of Thailand’s population is on the internet, and 74% of them bank online. 47% of all internet users make mobile payments, and 71% of them use their phones to purchase goods online each month.
Even though such a massive number of people are active online, Thailand is not a very friendly market for fintech compared to other countries in the region. The country attracts fewer investments for fintech, but that said, it’s still experiencing the fintech boom as 10% of its internet users own some form of cryptocurrency. This makes Thailand the second country after South Africa in the world for crypto ownership.
Key Takeaways from Southeast Asia’s Fintech Boom
The most disruptive fintech sectors are payments and lending.
Fintech has changed the way people and businesses make payments, save their money, borrow, invest, and buy insurance products.
Fintech has given access to finance for poor people and people in remote areas, boosting the economy and stimulating demand. Fintech has made it easier for SMEs to get small loans and credits anytime to keep their business running.
Many economies have implemented regulatory sandboxes to motivate innovation in the fintech sector.
Lily Tran is a content writer, working for MoneyTap, who writes about all things finance. Her passion for credit, debt, loan and investment drives her to help readers get an insight about everyday finance.
The following is a guest blog post by Rutger van Faassen, Head of Product & Market Strategy for FBX at Informa Financial Intelligence.
Like many of you, I am still getting used to the virtual conference format. We all miss the in-person networking and engagement with conference participants; however, the saved travel time is an excellent perk. With the platform open for two weeks, I was able to get a couple of additional sessions in that I would have most likely missed in the pre-Covid world. I did find it challenging to keep 100% focused on the conference as my day to day business would find its way into my field of attention. After watching all the demos and many of the other sessions, here are my overall observations and key take-aways from the conference…
As Greg Palmer kicked-off the conference and set the stage for the event in the current environment, he mentioned a couple of things that I thought were insightful as a jump-off point. First, banks can move quickly if they need to (especially in the case of PPP). Second, customers can be much more flexible (taking advice from Financial Institutions). Third, banks that invested in digital were in a better position to deal with pandemic.
Not surprising, many of the companies providing demos at Finovate had an angle that fit in well with the current pandemic environment where remote engagement and digital journeys are extremely important.
Facilitate digital transformation for those left behind
A premier example of this is Zeta, who provides an App Integrated banking platform facilitating the consumer’s digital journey. Two features jumped out to me from this platform. First is the option for point-of-purchase financing while in browser journey – so you can get a loan for a product you want to buy on Amazon as you are browsing on your mobile device. Second is the Family Hub – to manage family financials within the App with a 60-day implementation timeline makes it a perfect fit in the current environment.
Similarly, Dan Michaeli, CEO & Co-Founder from Glia showed us how to provide better digital customer service by identifying digital body language (a new term for me!). The two features he showed us, ‘Co-Browsing’ and ‘Video Chat in App’, are crucial features in this new abnormal time where circumstances push us to engage remotely through digital channels.
As our device time has increased dramatically, it is crucial that the experience is pleasant and helpful to keep us engaged with our financial institutions. Q2 showed us how to deliver Dynamic Personalization to make the content and offers provided as relevant and engaging as possible.
Productfy demonstrated its secure platform for any company to launch fintech applications, financial products, or services in as little as 3 weeks. Great news for financial institutions who find themselves hopelessly behind in their digital transformation in a time where a digital journey is essential.
With a strong shift to online shopping, GoPointsLoyalty Group provides a platform (currently operational in Russia) to help set up and manage reward’s programs. It is a turnkey solution with various integration options to help financial institutions that are behind in their digital transformation get up and running with a proven platform.
Finzly, one of the “Best in Show” winners, provides a customer engagement engine that helps financial institutions – through a drag and drop interface – to set up customer onboarding flows at “fintech speed”. Another solution to help financial institutions that find themselves struggling during the pandemic due to a lack of digital customer journeys.
Enhance engagement with SMBs leveraging online tools
Another key group that has been impacted during the pandemic is small businesses. Any solution to help financial institutions help this segment garnered lots of attention. Monit offers a platform that provides value for both bankers and small businesses with relevant and actionable contextual offers based on the data gathered from the small business cashflow projections. Anything that helps small businesses preserve their most valuable resource, time, is a good idea in my book.
Like Monit, the UpSwot is focused on changing the way banks serve SMBs by first, being the Mint for business and second, combining analytics from different Apps SMBs use on one screen. It then allows the platform to provide notifications and a forecast for future financial cash flows. Even if a lender is not comfortable providing a loan at this point (by analyzing the data), they will help the SMB understand when they could qualify.
Deal with downsides of our digital world
Solving a very different challenge caused by the pandemic, a lack of in person networking opportunities, Momentifi created continued education sessions that provide an opportunity to connect with industry participants.
The Finovate format using demonstrations does an excellent job at giving the audience a clear idea how the solution solves for a particular use case. Instnt not only showed how their solution uses AI for KYC analysis, they also will put their money where their mouth is and will indemnify the user for losses due to fraud. In these strange and uncertain times, that is a strong commitment to their solution.
Given all new data privacy regulations that have come online, and the increasing awareness of consumers of their right for their data to be removed, one thing that stood out to me in the Ninth Wave demo was their seamless process to address this through the instant creation of a Digital certificate to confirm that data has been removed.
Side effects of a digital revolution are more space for innovation and new solutions. IM and Chat Message has eclipsed emails and calls resulting in financial institutions needing a solution to capture, populate, encrypt, and archive historically inaccessible messaging data in real time. Nuri Otus, txtsmarter CEO & Founder demonstrated how his platform provides a solution for this digital journey challenge.
As we get more and more digital, the risk of data breaches increases exponentially. Breach Clarity, another “Best of Show” winner, showed how their solution helps customers of financial institutions deal with these breaches with a score that lets a customer know how meaningful the breach is and then what action to take.
Support existing digital journeys with additional tools
The constant challenge of security of information has been amplified as most communication now happens remote through digital channels. Arnexa provides one tap secure message delivery which removes the friction of having to take several steps to get a secure message. Reducing friction is certainly on everyone’s 2020 bingo-card! In the same vein, CoConet was showcasing how to turn SlowBoarding into QuickBoarding as most new clients get onboarded digitally.
DeepTarget also provides a digital experience platform that aims for better customer engagement and increased sales. It is leveraging practices from social media by providing real human stories to enhance customer engagement. The platform lets you treat people differently at scale.
A key part of the engagement in a digital world is how you communicate with customers through different channels. LinkLiveBanking securely and seamlessly connects humans to their financial institutions through a full suite of communication services. Using different options like chatbots, the ability to transfer to the next available live agent and in-browser desktop sharing.
Tom Martin, CEO of Glance Networks, showed us how his platform helps deliver real human connections by allowing financial institution’s employees to join a customer within the App/Browser via video within the embedded securely of their own platform. With just one click, a video conference can be launched, and co-browsing can be established.
Financial health management
A theme that has come to the top of consumers priority list during the pandemic – in addition to their physical health – is their financial health. Planning for a financially healthy future is top of mind and having tools to provide consumers with insights certainly support this. Sheryl O’Connor, CEO of WealthConductor, showed us how their platform provides insight into future financials using a product agnostic approach (so not pushing any provider) with easy reports written at 8th grade level. The platform works both when planning for retirement as well as when entering retirement and will hopefully help to reduce the Bankruptcy rates which have recently doubled within retirees.
Facilitating easier shopping and payment journeys
In line with a key trend of making the payment and lending part of the sales cycle easier, Payever shared how its solution seamlessly integrates the process from shopping to payment and marketing to shipping.
VRAY offers an Omni-channel payment platform that provides simple and secure consumer experiences across different platforms. It lets consumers have subscriptions without giving out their credit card info… and the option to cancel any time. This shortens check out due to no need for client information (which makes them more comfortable) and reduces chargebacks.
Enhanced use of AI and ML
On day two of the conference, Deniz Kaya, Director of Product Management & Digital Channels at Fiserv, showed us how they are using conversational AI to power a Voice Assistant who still sounds a lot like a robot, but can understand complex questions and provide actionable insights and advice. During this pandemic where call center volumes are at record high, a voice assistant can reduce the pressure on the call center. Integration in a core platform will also give access to a wealth of data to help answer customer questions.
As the digital revolution is accelerating, financial institutions gather more and more data. DQLabs showed us a platform that manages data automatically using AI/ML to support a data strategy and improve customer experience. It helps profile and curate data and suggests ways to fix data errors like misspellings.
View into the future
One of the Keynotes by Strategic Futurist and TEDx Curator, Nancy Giordano, gave us an interesting perspective: that although we are going through lots of change, we are only one percent in. She discussed the four awakenings reshaping society and how we need to shift from Leadership to Leadering. One nugget of insight that made me smile (and which I am going to attempt) is the Harvard Business Review article about how telling an embarrassing story before doing a group brainstorm will result in a better outcome.
Conclusion
There were several other interesting panels and keynotes, but this is my quick summary of the conference. Overall, we had a great display of solutions that align very well with the challenges and opportunities we are facing during the pandemic. Lots of solutions for financial institutions who find themselves left behind in the digital acceleration and need help catching up. Additional tools for those who have already established a digital journey for their customers but want to enhance it and make life a little easier for everyone. Great news for Small Businesses, who have been hit the hardest during this pandemic, with support through new technology driven solutions. And how cool that technology can provide insights into our financial health and how to manage it! One way of doing that is using AI and ML to make all solutions better, faster, and more intuitive. In this new abnormal where we search for the best ways to adapt, I am pleased to conclude that doing Finovate virtually was a pleasant digital customer journey.
Rutger van Faassen brings more than two decades of experience in international retail lending to FBX and its clients. He has previously held roles at Nomis Solutions and ABN AMRO Bank.
AI-powered computer vision software innovator Microblinklanded $60 million in funding today. The investment marks the U.K.-based company’s first round of funding since it was founded in 2014.
Growth equity firm Silversmith Capital Partners led the round. Microblink plans to use the capital to accelerate product development, boost its go-to-market strategy, and expand its team.
“As enterprises increasingly move towards automation, we are excited to reinvest in our existing business and explore new ways our computer vision platform can solve pain points for companies across a variety of industries,” said Microblink CEO and Cofounder Darren Bassman. “We believe Silversmith is the perfect partner for us on the next leg of our journey.”
Microblink’s computer vision products help businesses and organizations across multiple sectors digitize documents, automate processes, and eliminate manual data entry. The company’s “hundreds of millions” of end customers use its technology to scan billions of documents each year to prove their digital identity by scanning their ID, make a payment online by scanning their credit card, and collect data about their purchases by scanning their receipts.
“Microblink’s world-class product and technology teams have unlocked real-world applications for artificial intelligence and machine learning,” said Silversmith General Partner, Sri Rao. “Customers leverage the platform to power experiences for millions of end users that require the ability to verify an ID, scan a receipt, or automate the capture of payment data from their device of choice. Microblink’s customer centricity and product leadership serve as a strong foundation from which to scale rapidly, and we are thrilled to support the company in this next phase of growth.”
As part of today’s deal, Rao will join Microblink’s board of directors, serving alongside Bassman and Microblink Cofounder Damir Sabol.
If you’re unfamiliar with blockchain-based payments company Sila, it’s worth checking out. The Oregon-based company has an API that offers what it calls Infrastructure-as-a-Service. Overall, Sila helps companies authenticate consumers via a partnership with Alloy, connect with consumer bank accounts via a partnership with Plaid, and move money via the blockchain.
So why is 2021 the breakout year for Sila? The answer can be found in two words: digital wallets.
The pandemic has changed how we think about in-person payments. Germ-riddled cash has fallen out of favor and consumers have adjusted their habits to seek out contactless transactions where possible. One side effect of this has been the uptick in digital wallet usage, both among consumers and merchants. According to Fast Company, mobile payments are expected to surpass both cash and credit card payments (based on transaction number) in 2020.
This has prompted even more investment in digital wallets, which used to be looked at as fintech’s tried-and-failed experiment of 2012. However, not only have PayPal and Google lined their digital wallet offerings with new tools, partnerships, and redesigns; individual retailers are getting in on the game, also. Convenience store 7-Eleven, for example, launched an in-app wallet earlier this month.
Here’s where Sila comes in. All three of its capabilities– authentication, bank account integration, and payments– come together to enable companies to create their own in-app, white-labeled digital wallet. While many food service chains have already launched digital wallets of their own, there is still much room for growth in the digital wallet space in 2021.
Sila was co-founded in 2018 by Shamir Karkal, one of the entrepreneurs who co-founded Simple in 2009. There, he was responsible for integrating the challenger bank’s system into BBVA after it was acquired by the mega bank in 2014 for $117 million. Karkal now serves as Sila CEO.
Sila raised $7.7 million earlier this year. The company’s clients range from startups to established businesses working in finance, insurance, real estate, and blockchain.
Fiserv made a key acquisition this week, snapping up digital card services platform Ondot Systems. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed but the agreement is set to be finalized in the first quarter of next year.
Fiserv is picking up Ondot to enhance its suite of tools that help banks offer digital-first, personalized offerings to their consumers.
“By combining Ondot and Fiserv capabilities at scale, we plan to provide our clients with a unified digital experience, spanning card-based payments, digital banking platforms, core banking, and merchant solutions, enabling them to deliver best-in-class solutions that continue to reduce friction for their customers,” said Fiserv President and CEO Frank Bisignano.
More specifically, Fiserv will use Ondot to help bank clients accelerate digital customer acquisition, drive digital commerce, increase card activation and usage, reduce service costs, and engage contextually.
The deal enhances Fiserv’s standing in the card payment space specifically. The Wisconsin-based company will now be able to help banks offer cardholders instant card issuance and usage, visibility into purchases through enriched transaction information, and actionable insights to help them make more informed spending decisions.
Fiserv’s bank clients will benefit from Ondot’s data enrichment that organizes and identifies transaction and merchant data to minimize chargebacks.
For Ondot, joining forces with Fiserv will offer the company a more global reach and will help it scale up faster. As Ondot President and CEO Vaduvur Bharghavan explained, “Joining with Fiserv will provide Ondot the opportunity to innovate and impact the industry on a global scale. We look forward to expanding the scope of our offerings as we integrate with Fiserv’s vast array of capabilities to continue providing high-quality digital solutions to consumers, merchants, acquirers, networks and card issuers.”
California-based Ondot was founded in 2011 and has raised $51 million. The company processes more than 1 billion transactions per month and provides digital capabilities for over 30 million cards. The company made news earlier this year when it partnered with CU Solutions Group, which agreed to become a reseller of Ondot’s CardApp.
Earlier this year banking technology company PlaidlaunchedPlaid Exchange, a new tool to facilitate open banking.
The new open finance platform offers banks a way to provide open banking connectivity to their clients while keeping their end customers’ data safe and giving them control of their data.
Plaid Exchange helps banks establish token-based API connectivity with the 2,600 third party apps in Plaid’s network. This single connection simplifies integration for banks, helping their clients connect with more third party providers securely. Plaid Exchange can help banks bring an API solution to market in 12 weeks.
A couple of weeks back, Plaid formed a key partnership to help it reach more banks to access the Plaid network. The company is working with Jack Henry & Associates to enable Plaid Exchange for banks on the Banno Digital Platform.
The deal helps Plaid reach more than 350 institutions currently using Jack Henry’s Banno Digital Platform. These financial institutions can benefit by offering their accountholders access to Plaid-powered fintech apps. Plaid has designed the integration process to be simple and Banno clients will be able to access the technology for free.
The deal with Jack Henry comes as an extension of the Plaid Exchange Partner Program, which is aimed to get banking platform providers, API management platforms, and software development companies on board to offer Plaid Exchange to their bank clients.
The network effects of the Plaid Exchange Partner Program will be a boon to the San Francisco-based company. That’s because the more banks Plaid partners with, the more attractive Plaid is to fintechs.
Plaid works with thousands of third-party fintech apps such as Transferwise, Betterment, and Venmo to connect with their users’ financial institutions. The company made headlines at the beginning of 2020 after it announced it had been acquired by Visa for $5.3 billion and made the news again after the U.S. Department of Justice filed a suit to block the acquisition last month.
Enterprise risk and banking fraud protection NetGuardians landed $19 million (chf 17 million) in funding this week.
The round, which is more than double each of the company’s previous rounds, brings the company’s total funding to $34.5 million (chf 30.6 million). Investors include NetGuardians client the Pictet Group, as well as private investment group ACE & Company.
NetGuardians will use the investment to help it meet rising demand for its fraud-mitigation software. Specifically, the company will strengthen its position in existing markets and further develop its SaaS subscription model.
“Since our first round of funding, we have been able to grow and strengthen our fraud-mitigation platform worldwide, serving institutions in more than 30 countries,” said NetGuardians Chief Strategy Officer Raffael Maio. “This latest round of funding will help us to reach more clients and explore new markets with our Collective AI technology provided as software-as-a-service.”
Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Switzerland, NetGuardians employs 90 people in its offices across Singapore, Kenya, and Poland.
We just closed out the final Finovate event of 2020, but that doesn’t mean we are taking things easy. In fact, the work is just beginning! Our team is heads-down, focusing on curating speakers and content for our events in 2021.
We have a full lineup (and then some) for next year. Here’s what we have slated and how you can participate. Mark your calendars!
We’ll also have a range of new digital offerings that we’ll be unveiling soon. These products are unique to Finovate and will provide more options for time-conscious consumers.
We’ll be announcing these initiatives next month so stay tuned!
Sweden-based open banking platform Tinkannounced it has closed an extension on the venture round it landed in January. The additional $103 million (€85 million) brings Tink’s total funding to almost $310 million.
According to CNBC, the investment boosts Tink’s valuation to $824 million.
The new round was co-led by new investor Eurazeo Growth and existing investor Dawn Capital. Other existing investors PayPal Ventures, HMI Capital, Heartcore, ABN AMRO Ventures, Poste Italiane, and Opera Tech Ventures also contributed.
Tink will use the new round to fuel its expansion and further develop its payment initiation technology. Company CEO and Co-founder Daniel Kjellén noted that Tink has seen an impressive amount of growth this year. “We significantly built out our bank connections across Europe, increasing coverage from 2,500 to 3,400 banks, and now serve more than 300 world-leading financial institutions,” he said. “We also doubled the fintech users on our platform to 8,000 and increased employees from 250 to 365, in 13 offices across Europe.”
This growth comes after Tink’s recent three key acquisitions, including Swedish credit decisioning firm Instantor, Spanish account aggregation provider Eurobits, and the aggregation platform of U.K. open banking pioneer, OpenWrks.
Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Stockholm, Tink has more than 350 employees and is currently serving its clients out of 13 local offices across Europe. The startup operates in Sweden, U.K., France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Belgium, Austria and the Netherlands. Tink most recently demoed at FinovateEurope 2019 where it showcased its API platform.
