Finovate Global Canada: Mortgagetech, Real-Time Payments, and Top Investment Trends

Finovate Global Canada: Mortgagetech, Real-Time Payments, and Top Investment Trends
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, NCR Corporation, Ripple

This week’s edition of Finovate Global showcases recent fintech news from Canada.

Royal Bank of Canada acquires mortgagetech Pinch Financial

The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has acquired Toronto-based mortgagetech Pinch Financial. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but the move is designed to accelerate the decisioning process for mortgage borrowers throughout the country.

“This acquisition helps us deliver on our commitment to bring the best solutions to clients on their path to home ownership,” RBC SVP of Home Equity Financing Janet Boyle said in a statement. “Pinch’s technology will help us accelerate our digital roadmap to deliver a quicker, more streamlined mortgage experience for Canadians.”

Founded in 2016, Pinch Financial offers banks, lenders, and other financial services providers a platform that allows them to verify data and automate mortgage applications. The company’s technology verifies identity, income, assets, liabilities, source of the down payment, and creditworthiness to establish whether a borrower meets the requirements—from TDS and FICO to LTV and net worth—for rate and underwriting eligibility.

RBC already plays a major role in Canada’s mortgage market. The acquisition of Pinch Financial will help the bank serve customers who prefer to apply for home loans online instead of in-person at a branch.

“We started Pinch to make mortgages more relevant and familiar for digital-first consumers—making the qualification process faster, simpler, and more transparent for borrowers,” Pinch Financial CEO Andrew Wells said. “This acquisition gives us the opportunity to bring our technology to more Canadians while being part of a team that shares our vision for innovation in financial services.”

Canada’s largest bank by market capitalization and assets—and one of the largest banks in the world—RBC serves more than 19 million clients in Canada, the US, and 27 other countries. Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, and boasting more than 101,000 employees, RBC reported total assets of $1.9 trillion CAD as of October 31, 2025. Dave McKay is President and CEO.

Wealthsimple becomes first Canadian fintech to join SWIFT

Canadian fintech Wealthsimple has secured a big “first” and a big “second” this week. The firm became the first Canadian fintech and the second non-bank fintech in the world to become a member of the SWIFT global financial messaging network. The company is currently completing final technical integration and security certification ahead of a full launch with clients expected later this spring.

“Many Canadians rely on international wire transfers, and yet to date, the experience has been clunky and expensive. We want to fix that,” Wealthsimple VP of Payment Strategy Hanna Zaidi said. “Our SWIFT membership is going to unlock faster, simpler, and more transparent international money transfers for the more than three million Canadians who trust Wealthsimple.”

SWIFT’s international messaging network serves 11,000 financial institutions around the world, facilitating trillions of dollars in payment volume. SWIFT makes the sending and receiving of international money transfers more seamless and efficient, while also providing end-to-end tracking visibility with real-time status updates.

Wealthsimple’s SWIFT membership is part of the company’s overall strategy to lower costs and boost efficiency for money movement in Canada. Wealthsimple also announced that it will be an early adopter of the country’s pending Real-Time Rail (RTR) payment system, making its clients among the first to benefit from instant money movement between institutions.

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Wealthsimple offers a wide range of financial products and services, including managed investing, do-it-yourself trading, cryptocurrency, tax filing, spending, and saving. The company serves more than three million Canadians and has more than $100 billion in assets under administration. Co-founder Michael Katchen is CEO.

KPMG: Canada fintech investment “moderated” in 2025

The bad news is that investment in Canadian fintech slowed in 2025. The good news is that this moderating pace comes on the heels of record highs notched in 2024.

KPMG International recently unveiled its Pulse of Fintech H2’25 and FY25 report. The document depicts a fintech investment landscape in Canada that has returned to more historic levels, with “sustained interest in later-stage companies, platform acquisitions, and strategically important fintech subsectors such as artificial intelligence and digital assets.”

Specifically, the comparison is $2.4 billion across 113 deals in 2025 versus $9.9 billion across 161 deals in 2024. The report notes that much of the deal value in 2024 came from two sizable transactions: Nuvei’s $6.3 billion public-to-private buyout and Plusgrade’s $1 billion private equity deal. In 2025, the two largest investments in Canadian fintech were the $898 million private equity buyout of Converge Technology Solutions and Wealthsimple’s $536 million equity raise.

The report notes that investment activity in the sector picked up in the second half of 2025, especially with regard to gains in average deal value. Dubie Cunningham, a partner in KPMG Canada’s Banking and Capital Markets Practice specializing in fintech, indicated that she believed the strength in the second half of 2025 augured well for strength in 2026. “The investment appetite for Canadian fintechs will continue to grow in 2026, as investors prioritize quality, scale, and strategic fit, signaling a market that is maturing and aligning more closely with long-term value creation,” Cunningham said.

Read the full KPMG report for much more.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Pakistan-based digital banking platform Zindigi unveiled what it is billing as the country’s first “fintech credit card.”
  • Indian fintech Cred secured approval from the country’s central bank to operate as a payment aggregator.
  • IBS Intelligence looked at how fintech innovation in India is evolving from transaction rails to financial data rails.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

  • Cross-border payments platform Neema forged a partnership with China’s Alipay.
  • NCR Voyix agreed to sell its bank technology business in Japan to NTT Data.
  • An analysis of the Australian fintech sector by Deloitte Access Economics and FinTech Australia reported that the sector could grow to $71 billion in value by 2035.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Kenya and Rwanda inked an agreement that could enable digital payments companies licensed in one country to operate in the other.
  • South African fintech PayInc and First Capital Bank Botswana teamed up to launch instant cross-border payments.
  • The Fintech Times analyzed the fintech ecosystem of West African country, Burkina Faso.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Part of Estonia’s Iute Group, IuteBank has begun operating as a regulated bank in Ukraine.
  • Lithuanian fintech PAYSTRAX announced an major expansion to its team, adding up to 150 new specialists.
  • Czech fintech Flowpay acquired Berlin, Germany-based SME financing firm Tapline.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Israel-based fintech Datarails launched a new solution to help companies reduce contract and subscription waste.
  • Kaspersky and UAE fintech Codebase teamed up to enhance digital banking security.
  • Moroccan fintech WafR secured $4 million in seed funding in a round co-led by LoftyInc Capital.

Photo by Guillaume Jaillet on Unsplash

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Tempo’s Payments Infrastructure and Protocol Goes Live

Tempo’s Payments Infrastructure and Protocol Goes Live
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • Tempo has launched its Mainnet and Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) to support AI-driven commerce, combining blockchain infrastructure with a standardized way for agents to initiate and manage payments across rails.
  • The protocol also introduces “session-based” transactions that remove the need for traditional checkout flows and enable real-time, pay-per-use models.
  • As agentic commerce and stablecoin adoption grow, Tempo is positioning itself at the forefront of development.

Payments blockchain Tempo unveiled its Mainnet this week, alongside a new payments standard designed for AI-driven commerce. Tempo Mainnet focuses on serving needs specifically in the payments space, offering instant settlement, low fees, and high throughput for transactions across the globe.

In addition to the Tempo Mainnet infrastructure, the company also released its Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), an open standard for agentic payments. MPP is payment agnostic and is able to work with stablecoins, cards, Affirm, Klarna, and other payment methods. While Tempo Mainnet provides the underlying blockchain infrastructure for settlement, MPP acts as the coordination layer that enables agents to initiate and manage payments across different networks and payment methods.

“We decided to launch MPP as an open standard so that machine payments can work consistently across services and payment rails,” the company said in a blog post announcement.

MPP provides a standardized way for AI agents and services to initiate, authorize, and settle payments programmatically. While traditional platforms build their own billing and checkout flow, MPP allows a service to request payment from an agent, which can then approve the transaction and complete it instantly from its wallet.

The protocol also introduces “sessions,” which enable continuous, streaming payments that allow agents to pay incrementally for usage (such as in an API call) without requiring a separate transaction each time. Because it brings the payment logic into a shared standard, MPP enables agents to transact across different services and payment methods.

Creating a standardized approach to agent-led payments is increasingly important as developments and interest in agentic payments, combined with the increased use of stablecoins, skyrocket. Traditional checkout flows and billing systems are too slow and fragmented to handle a future in which AI agents purchase services, access data, and execute workflows autonomously. Tempo’s standardized way of enabling machines to request and settle payments across rails positions the company on the leading edge of agentic commerce.

Tempo, which has been trialing MPP since December of 2025, leverages partnerships with Anthropic, DoorDash, Mastercard, Nubank, OpenAI, Ramp, Revolut, Shopify, Standard Chartered, and Visa to bring global payments, cross-border remittances, embedded finance, and tokenized deposits use cases.

The California-based company also revealed plans to introduce more features designed to support enterprise payment workloads, and disclosed it will have “more to share” in the coming months.

Photo by KATRIN BOLOVTSOVA

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Express Wages Brings Earned Wage Access to Good Hands Home Care

Express Wages Brings Earned Wage Access to Good Hands Home Care
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Express Wages
  • Earned wage access provider Express Wages has partnered with Good Hands Home Care to give employees advanced access to their earned income.
  • Express Wages facilitates payday advances of up to $200 a day. Money transfer options include a no-fee Visa Prepaid card, and repayment is managed systematically via the Express Wages app and company payroll platform.
  • Memphis, Tennessee-based Express Wages made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego.

A new partnership between earned wage access provider Express Wages and Good Hands Home Care will give caregivers and administrative staff access to a portion of their earned income in advance of their scheduled payday.

“We’re proud to partner with Good Hands Home Care,” Express Wages Founder and CEO Alfred Milan said. “Caregiving is deeply meaningful and important work, and strengthening financial stability plays a big role in helping care professionals stay focused on the people and families they serve.”

Express Wages offers a platform that provides employer-integrated, on-demand pay solutions. The company’s plug-and-play technology enables companies to give their employees immediate access to a portion of their earned wages before payday. For workers who are living paycheck-to-paycheck, this early access before payday can help them avoid high-interest predatory loans, unnecessary credit card debt, and overdraft penalties.

Employees can receive up to $200 a day via Express Wages payday advance, with money transfer options including a no-fee Visa Prepaid card. Next-day ACH transfers and instant transfers to debit cards are also available, with transaction fees of $3.95 and $4.95, respectively. Repayment is automatically deducted from the employee’s next paycheck via the app and payroll platform.

Companies using Express Wages can offer the service to employees without making any changes to payroll or experiencing negative impacts on cash flow. Built to ensure both easy integration and interoperability, Express Wages requires no software installation and connects with hundreds of human resources information systems including ADP, Gusto, QuickBooks, and more in a matter of a few days.

In its partnership announcement, Express Wages noted research from a 2025 Bankrate report that indicated that more than a third of Americans had to use funds from their emergency savings in the last year, with nearly one in five Americans having no emergency savings at all. These conditions are what can make consumers vulnerable to high-interest financing products at times of financial stress. In response, a growing number of companies such as Good Hands Home Care are leveraging solutions like earned wage access to give employees greater options when it comes to managing their finances.

“At Express Wages, we focus on building tools that benefit real working lives,” Milan said. “Earned wage access is about offering greater choice and control—giving people more ways to respond when unexpected expenses hit.”

Founded in 2023 and headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, Express Wages made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego. At the conference, the company showed how a new feature on its app delivers financial wellness experiences to help users improve their financial literacy.

Photo by Dulcey Lima on Unsplash

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How Gradient Labs is Thinking About the Shift to Agentic Banking

How Gradient Labs is Thinking About the Shift to Agentic Banking
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Speaker series

The agentic banking future brings a lot of uncertainty. While some experts predict the user interface will be visual, others imagine a screen-free, voice-based user experience.

At FinovateEurope 2026, we sat down with Dimitri Masin, CEO of Gradient Labs, to discuss the evolution from mobile-first banking to agentic banking, as well as how banks should think about the build vs. buy decision in the age of AI.

Masin contends that while banks have spent the last decade perfecting digital interfaces, a major operational challenge still remains: the complexity of customer operations.

“Even though fintechs have created amazing apps, the second half of the problem remains unsolved. These companies still require gigantic human organizations to power those accounts… and that’s the source of many bad customer experiences today,” said Masin.

According to Masin, we are now entering a second major transformation in banking in which AI agents can take on complex, nuanced workflows that traditional automation couldn’t handle.

“With traditional automation, you just can’t automate many of the things banks need to do—they require judgment and nuance…. Now, with advances in AI, you can automate those messy processes that were only doable by humans before,” he added.

Dimitri Masin has spent more than a decade in fintech and banking, including early experience at Monzo, where he helped scale customer operations. His work focuses on applying AI to automate complex financial workflows and improve operational efficiency.

Founded in 2023, London-based Gradient Labs enables banks to embed AI agents directly into their systems to automate customer operations and complex workflows. By moving beyond rule-based automation, the company helps financial institutions reduce operational burden, improve customer experience, and prepare for an AI-first future.

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Five Innovators Transforming Financial Decisioning with Data and Analytics

Five Innovators Transforming Financial Decisioning with Data and Analytics
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateSpring 2026, FinovateSpring 2026 Demo Companies, List series

How can banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions transform the massive volumes of data they process every day into actionable insights that can drive better decision-making, identify inefficiencies, and engage more customers? How will technologies like AI specifically help financial institutions challenged by competition from non-bank rivals, ever-evolving consumer expectations, and regulatory uncertainty?

This year at FinovateSpring 2026, we are showcasing five innovative fintechs that will demonstrate their solutions to help banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions boost productivity, manage risk, and create compelling experiences for their customers and members.

Bloomfire

Bloomfire transforms financial organizations by centralizing knowledge, accelerating decision-making, ensuring regulatory compliance, reducing operational costs, and driving revenue growth through improved productivity.

Founded in 2011, Bloomfire is based in Austin, Texas.

ContexQ

ContexQ is a forensic Graph AI that detects fraud, money laundering, and hidden beneficial ownership by seeing the relationships every other AI misses.

Headquartered in Singapore, ContexQ was founded in 2024. The company’s technology resolves fragmented identities across more than one billion entities in 12+ languages, predicts emerging fraud patterns using Graph Transformers, and unifies risk and revenue intelligence in one graph.

Finalytics.ai

Finalytics.ai enables financial institutions to instantly unleash the power of AI by offering segment-of-one digital experiences for visitors informed by behavioral, transactional, and third-party data.

Founded in 2021, Finalytics.ai is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Socratix.ai

Socratix AI helps financial institutions cut fraud losses, reduce false positives, and scale operations without adding headcount—driving efficiency, trust, and stronger customer relationships.

Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Socratix AI was founded in 2025.

Whatfix

Whatfix is an AI-native digital adoption platform that helps banks and other financial institutions accelerate system adoption, enforce compliance, and achieve measurable outcomes across mission-critical workflows.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in San Jose, California, Whatfix offers technology that provides real-time contextual guidance powered by AI-driven ScreenSense, product analytics tied to workflow adherence and business outcomes, and mirror + AI roleplay for risk-free simulation and behavioral training.

Why banks should care

Managing risk, providing compelling personal experiences for customers, and keeping costs low are three paramount challenges for banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions in 2026. Fortunately, all three are areas where technologies such as automation, machine learning, and AI have proven their effectiveness in detecting fraud, customizing user journeys, and identifying workflow inefficiencies and bottlenecks.

Meeting these challenges by embracing fintech innovation is not only a way for banks to ensure regulatory compliance, stay ahead of fraudsters, and become more efficient—it also offers opportunities for specialization and differentiation within the field. At a time when more and more companies are adding financial services to their product mix, innovations that also help banks and credit unions stick out from the crowd are as valuable as ever.

If you are enjoying our preview of the companies demoing at FinovateSpring this year, then join us in San Diego on May 5 through May 7. Register today using this link and save 20%.

Photo by Markus Winkler

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Robinhood Ventures Invests in Stripe and ElevenLabs

Robinhood Ventures Invests in Stripe and ElevenLabs
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • Robinhood Ventures Fund I made early investments in Stripe and ElevenLabs, expanding its portfolio of private fintech and AI companies.
  • The fund, which began trading earlier this month on the New York Stock Exchange, gives retail investors access to private market opportunities traditionally reserved for institutional and accredited investors.
  • As part of its push to become a financial super app, Robinhood is building infrastructure to package and distribute private assets.

Robinhood Ventures’ first fund, Robinhood Ventures Fund I (RVI), announced it has closed investments in Stripe and ElevenLabs, just days after the fund began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol RVI.

Last week, RVI purchased $14.6 million of Class B common stock of Stripe in secondary transactions, and days later bought $20 million of Series D preferred stock of ElevenLabs in a primary transaction. Founded in 2010, Stripe enables businesses to accept payments, manage billing, and embed financial services into digital platforms. UK-based ElevenLabs is an AI research and product company focused on audio, voice, and realistic speech.

Robinhood launched Robinhood Ventures to enable its users to invest in private companies. The portfolio now includes Airwallex, Boom, Databricks, ElevenLabs, Mercor, Oura, Ramp, Revolut, and Stripe. Robinhood plans to add more private companies in the future.

“We’re excited to add Stripe and ElevenLabs to Robinhood Ventures Fund I and are proud to offer retail investors access to these frontier companies,” said Robinhood Ventures Fund I President Sarah Pinto. “They are helping shape the future of fintech and AI, and reflect RVI’s focus on investing in innovative companies operating at the forefront of their industries.”

In an era when valuable tech companies are staying private for longer, it is difficult for everyday investors to tap into that value. Instead, access has traditionally been limited to wealthy and institutional investors. But because Robinhood doesn’t require investors to be accredited or charge performance fees like traditional venture funds do, a wider variety of investors are able to participate.

Expanding its investment infrastructure is a key piece for Robinhood, which has recently disclosed its goal of becoming a financial super app. The California-based company is offering more than just investment access. It is building the rails to package, price, and distribute traditionally illiquid assets to everyday investors. If this infrastructure model proves successful, Robinhood could expand beyond venture equity into other private market categories such as credit, real estate, and tokenized assets.

Photo by Magda Ehlers

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Token.io Unveils Account on File, Enhancing Pay by Bank

Token.io Unveils Account on File, Enhancing Pay by Bank
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Token
  • Pay by Bank infrastructure provider Token.io unveiled its Account on File feature this week.
  • The new feature securely recalls a user’s preferred bank and accounts and presents these as defaults for future transactions, boosting the convenience of Pay by Bank.
  • Token.io was founded in 2015 and made its Finovate debut the same year at FinovateSpring. Todd Clyde is CEO.

Token.io launched its new Account on File feature this week. Designed to boost the convenience of Pay by Bank, the new offering securely recalls a user’s preferred bank and accounts and presents them as default selections for future transactions. Token.io said that Pay by Bank will be a boon to payment service providers (PSPs) and merchants across the UK and Europe, enhancing the customer experience and increasing checkout conversion rates.

“For high-frequency transaction scenarios, such as e-commerce purchases or account top-ups, every extra step costs you customers,” Token.io Director of Product Sam French said. “With our new Account on File feature, Pay by Bank can become a one-tap experience for returning payers, driving high conversion rates for merchants, while giving consumers a secure, familiar way to pay straight from their bank accounts.”

Like Card on File, Account on File helps streamline the typical Pay by Bank experience, removing up to two steps. This results in fewer clicks, faster checkouts, fewer drop-offs, and more completed transactions. Account on File will enable merchants to settle faster, experience lower processing costs, and benefit from the improved cash flow that comes with account-to-account (A2A) payments.

Additionally, Token.io has put tokenization at the core of its new Account on File feature, enhancing both security and trust. Tokenization swaps sensitive account details for a non-sensitive token. This token is used to reference the user’s bank account(s) without exposing sensitive, underlying information.

Token.io’s latest offering comes at a time when Pay by Bank is becoming increasingly popular. The company’s own research indicated that 90% of PSPs offer or expect to offer Pay by Bank in the near future. Token.io’s Account on File feature is currently available through the company’s latest API.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in London, Token.io made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2015. The company most recently demoed its technology at FinovateEurope 2017. Today, Token.io is a leading A2A payment infrastructure provider with partners including three of Europe’s five largest financial institutions, as well as major payments companies such as fellow Finovate alums Mastercard and ACI Worldwide.

Photo by www.kaboompics.com

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PayQuicker Partners with Avalara to Launch New Tax Reporting Solution

PayQuicker Partners with Avalara to Launch New Tax Reporting Solution
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Avalara, PayQuicker
  • Payouts and treasury platform PayQuicker launched its 1099 tax reporting solution, powered by fellow Finovate alum Avalara.
  • The new offering helps reduce the complexity of 1099 filing while keeping companies compliant with the latest regulatory mandates.
  • New York-based PayQuicker made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2022. Avalara is an alum of Finovate’s developer conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2015.

PayQuicker, a payouts and treasury platform that made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2022 in New York, has introduced its new 1099 tax reporting solution. Powered by agentic tax and compliance specialist—and fellow Finovate alum—Avalara, the new offering will help companies streamline and automate 1099 reporting while reducing both compliance risk and administrative burden.

“Businesses need reliable automated solutions to stay compliant without slowing down operations,” PayQuicker CFO Joe Bertalli said. “By partnering with Avalara, we’re able to provide our customers with a robust 1099 solution that reduces complexity, increases accuracy, and gives them confidence in their compliance processes.”

PayQuicker’s 1099 solution enables companies to collect W-9 and other W-series tax forms over the course of the year to help ensure accurate payee information at all times. PayQuicker’s solution also leverages real-time Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) matching to validate data at the point of collection. This helps reduce the potential for costly backup withholding notices, penalties, and corrections at a time when regulatory requirements around tax reporting for businesses are becoming increasingly complex.

Powered by Avalara’s tax compliance technology, PayQuicker’s 1099 solution provides scalable, secure, and compliant tax reporting for businesses managing sizable numbers of payees. The solution facilitates the accurate and efficient generation, filing, and distribution of 1099 forms supported by automated federal and state filing, electronic delivery, and ongoing regulatory updates.

“PayQuicker is focused on making complex financial workflows easier for businesses,” Avalara General Manager for 1099 Reporting Queenie Lee said. “We’re excited to power their 1099 solution with Avalara’s compliance expertise, enabling customers to automate reporting and reduce risk while staying focused on growth.”

An alum of Finovate’s developer conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2015, Avalara leverages an expansive library of tax content and industry integrations to serve more than 200,000 direct and indirect customers in more than 75 countries. Avalara’s purpose-built AI agents automate compliance processes from tax calculations and return filings to exemption certificate management and more. Avalara has helped companies achieve an 85% reduction in time spent managing tax returns and a 50% reduction in time spent on exemption certificate management. Scott McFarlane is Co-Founder and CEO.

Headquartered in Rochester, New York, PayQuicker made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2022. At the conference, PayQuicker demonstrated its Payouts OS solution which packages the company’s technology into an in-market payouts orchestration platform. Payouts OS leverages a single REST API that plugs into multiple banks and international payment rails to identify and facilitate the fastest, most cost-effective way for clients to make payouts to businesses and consumers around the world.

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich

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Embedded Finance Platform Array Acquires Penny Finance, Chimney, EarnUp

Embedded Finance Platform Array Acquires Penny Finance, Chimney, EarnUp
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, Array, Chimney, Penny Finance

Embedded finance platform Array has been on a truly remarkable acquisition pace in recent weeks. The company, which won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2021 and again in its return to the Finovate stage for FinovateSpring 2022, acquired fellow Finovate alum—and fellow Best of Show winner—Penny Finance in late February. This move came just a few days after Array announced its acquisition of another Finovate alum and Best of Show winner, Chimney.

And just to show that Array’s appetites are not limited to Best of Show-winning Finovate alums, the company also announced its acquisition of paytech EarnUp less than a month ago.

What do these acquisitions mean for Array? Overall, these deals represent the company’s strategy to provide its financial institution partners with modular, embeddable tools and data that enable them to boost engagement, improve retention, and secure measurable value. Designed to complement the solutions currently offered by fintechs, financial institutions, and digital brands, Array’s embedded, invisible-by-design approach allows consumers to enjoy a wider range of financial solutions and services while still relying on the brands they know and trust.

Consider Penny Finance. Penny Finance is an online financial planning engine that enables credit unions and community banks to provide personalized education, resources, and services to their members and customers. Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, and founded in 2020 by CEO Crissi Cole, Penny Finance helps individuals and families pay off debt, begin investing, and build wealth—all within a unified, integrated solution. Array Founder and CEO Martin Toha said that acquiring Penny Finance will enable Array to serve consumers the same way that they experience financial challenges and responsibilities: “as part of a single, ongoing journey.”

“Penny Finance strengthens our ability to support that full picture,” Toha said, “enabling our partners to deliver more holistic, consumer-first financial experiences directly within the products people already use.”

The acquisition will empower Array to help its clients address a broader range of consumer needs and complements the company’s current credit, identity, and privacy offerings with solutions to help consumers enhance their financial wellness through better savings behavior and financial planning.

“Penny was built to give people confidence in how they spend, save, and plan—without judgment or complexity,” Penny Finance’s Cole said. “By joining Array, we can scale that mission and integrate financial education and planning tools into trusted experiences that already play a meaningful role in people’s financial lives.”

Array’s acquisition of Chimney will add the fintech’s modern financial calculators and home value tracking tools to its platform offerings. Founded in 2020 and based in Brooklyn, New York, Chimney helps more than 160 financial institutions in the US leverage real-time property data and predictive analytics to engage homeowners and grow loans. Chimney’s technology identifies high-propensity opportunities for home equity, refinancing, new mortgages, and more, enabling financial institutions to target the right customers and members at the right time with personalized offers delivered inside their banking apps and platforms. In his statement, Chimney CEO and Co-Founder Matthew Covi underscored this last point, highlighting the value of embedded finance in helping consumers get the resources they need while remaining engaged with the brands they trust.

“Traditional financial institutions are where the majority of Americans manage their finances,” Covi said. “By empowering these institutions with personalized, data-driven solutions that modernize the banking experience, we’ve realized our mission of helping millions of Americans live healthier financial lives.”

Lastly, EarnUp is a payments technology firm that helps consumers better manage debt and bills by aligning mortgage, loan, and bill payments with pay cycles. By enabling them to disaggregate large, inflexible monthly payments into smaller contributions aligned with their paychecks, EarnUp helps lower the amount of missed payments to creditors and financial stress for debtors. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, and founded in 2015, EarnUp has completed 50 million transactions with a cumulative value of $43 billion since inception. Brad Woodcox is CEO.

“EarnUp is a long-standing proven product in the home loan space, having supported millions of US mortgage borrowers through deep integrations with leading mortgage servicing platforms,” Toha said. “We hope to use this distribution and product to extend Array’s reach into the home loan payments space. This acquisition strengthens our ability to help financial services providers deliver more practical, consumer-centric experiences—especially for households managing tight margins and multiple debt obligations.”

Founded in 2020 and headquartered in New York City, Array most recently demoed its technology at FinovateSpring 2023. At the conference, the company demonstrated two of its latest financial solutions—HelloPrivacy (now Privacy Protect) and Subscription Manager—to help banks and other financial institutions generate noninterest income and boost engagement while providing customers with resources to help them stay safe online and save money. Privacy Protect helps defend users from identity theft and privacy risks by monitoring and removing personal information from the web. Subscription Manager helps users manage their subscriptions better, canceling unused subscriptions and negotiating lower rates on select subscriptions.

FinovateSpring 2026 will take place at The Sheraton San Diego on May 5-7. Register today using this link and save 20%.

Photo by Toomas Tartes on Unsplash

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Mastercard Acquires Stablecoin Infrastructure BVNK for $1.8 Billion

Mastercard Acquires Stablecoin Infrastructure BVNK for $1.8 Billion
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, MasterCard, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Mastercard is acquiring stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK for up to $1.8 billion to bridge fiat and on-chain payments within a single network.
  • The deal positions Mastercard to connect cards, bank rails, stablecoins, and tokenized deposits to create a unified, multi-rail payments ecosystem.
  • While competitor Visa relies on a partnership-led approach to stablecoin integration, Mastercard is seeking to own the infrastructure layer outright.

Mastercard is making a move to own the rails that bridge stablecoins and fiat this week. The payments giant is acquiring stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK for up to $1.8 billion, including $300 million in contingent payments. 

The announcement comes at a time when the current stablecoin market capitalization exceeds $316 billion, a figure that is up 2.5x from 2023. It also comes as users across the globe are increasingly open to holding stablecoins. In a recent survey of over 4,000 stablecoin and crypto holders, BVNK found that 56% of participants expressed plans to acquire more stablecoins within the next 12 months.

This increased utility of stablecoins is creating a need in the traditional financial space as users require a bridge between fiat and stablecoins. As a result, banks and fintechs need to offer their customers payment options enabled by stablecoins and tokenized deposits.

Mastercard anticipates that acquiring BVNK’s stablecoin infrastructure will allow it to become the bridge between fiat and stablecoins. The company will connect stablecoin rails to its own network to offer consumers the accessibility and interoperability they have come to expect in the traditional finance realm.

“We expect that most financial institutions and fintechs will in time provide digital currency services, be it with stablecoins or tokenized deposits. We want to support them and their customers with a best-in-class, highly compliant, interoperable offering that brings the benefits of tokenized money to the real world,” said Mastercard Chief Product Officer Jorn Lambert. “This acquisition reinforces what we have always done, using innovation and technology to power economies and empower people. Adding on-chain rails to our network will support speed and programmability for virtually every type of transaction.”

Mastercard isn’t the first traditional card network making a move to establish a foothold in the stablecoin space. Visa has formed partnerships with Circle and Bridge to support USDC payments and enable on-chain settlement flows. Mastercard, however, is taking things a step further. Instead of relying on a partnership-led approach, the network giant is acquiring the stablecoin infrastructure outright. Bringing the infrastructure in-house will allow Mastercard to connect traditional finance, on-chain assets, and enterprise payment flows within a single network.

BVNK was founded in 2021 and currently processes over $25 billion each year on behalf of enterprises and payment service providers. The UK-based company leverages stablecoins to enable businesses to move value instantly across borders and networks. Through its partnerships with global licensing bodies and Tier 1 banks, BVNK serves clients such as Worldpay, Deel, and dLocal.

“This partnership is about complementary strengths: Mastercard brings 200+ countries and territories, institutional trust and settlement rails. BVNK brings proven stablecoin infrastructure, deep expertise and an enterprise customer base,” said BVNK Co-founder and CEO Jesse Hemson-Struthers in a post on LinkedIn. “More trust attracts more users. More users attract more businesses. More businesses attract more developers. And suddenly, moving money on stablecoin rails becomes as routine as moving money on traditional rails—accessible to everyone.”

Once the acquisition is finalized later this year, Mastercard will be able to offer a single network to connect cards, bank rails, stablecoins, and tokenized deposits. The new, multi-rail approach will let customers choose the solutions that work best for them without tying them down to a single platform.

“This deal brings together complementary capabilities to define and deliver the future of money,” said Hemson-Struthers. “Together, we’re able to deliver an unprecedented infrastructure for digital currency-based financial services.”

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What BVNK’s Report Reveals About How Consumers Are Using Stablecoins

What BVNK’s Report Reveals About How Consumers Are Using Stablecoins
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Report series

Multi-rail payments infrastructure platform BVNK recently published a report on stablecoin utility that examines how consumers actually use stablecoins. The report found that consumers’ desire to obtain stablecoins is rising, and that stablecoins are becoming a fixture of consumers’ savings portfolios.

Published in partnership with YouGov, Coinbase, and Artemis, the report is the result of a survey of 4,658 crypto and stablecoin holders across 15 countries. Here are four major findings from the survey:

Stablecoin holdings increasing

Of the stablecoin holders surveyed, almost half (49%) increased their holdings within the past 12 months, while only 7% of people decreased their holdings. More than half (56%) of crypto or stablecoin holders expressed plans to acquire more stablecoins in the next 12 months. This shows that stablecoins are transitioning from a niche tool into a mainstream asset.

Crypto owners are diversifying

The report also surveyed crypto holders who do not yet own stablecoins. Among this subset of non-owners, 13% said that they intend to acquire stablecoins in the next 12 months. In low and middle income economies such as Africa, consumers showed a higher interest in acquiring stablecoins for the first time. In fact, in Africa in particular, 76% of respondents said that they plan to acquire stablecoins in the next 12 months. This is a reflection of the utility of stablecoins in lower income regions.

Stablecoins and crypto are becoming a core element of savings

The stablecoin and crypto holders surveyed reported allocating around one-third (34%) of their savings to crypto and stablecoins. Almost half (48%) of respondents allocate up to a quarter of their savings to stablecoins and crypto. This shows that many consumers are beginning to treat digital assets not as speculative, but as a meaningful component of their long-term savings strategies.

Stablecoin holders are relatively young

Not surprisingly, more than half (54%) of those surveyed who own stablecoins are aged 18 to 34 years old. Of the respondents in the older age bracket of 55+, only 8% said that they currently hold stablecoins, while 17% of people in that age range said that they plan to acquire crypto within the next 12 months. This shows that stablecoin adoption is being driven largely by younger consumers who are more comfortable incorporating new financial technologies into their everyday financial lives.

Overall, the findings suggest that stablecoins are evolving beyond their early role as a trading tool within crypto markets and are beginning to function as a practical financial instrument for everyday users. As access to digital wallets and crypto infrastructure improves, stablecoins are increasingly positioned to bridge traditional finance and digital assets by offering consumers a way to store value, move money globally, and participate in global markets with lower barriers than traditional finance.

Photo by DS stories

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Napier Unveils Insights AI to Enhance AML Screening

Napier Unveils Insights AI to Enhance AML Screening
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Napier
  • Regtech Napier AI unveiled Insights AI, its new solution to help companies enhance their anti-money laundering (AML) screening processes.
  • The new offering will help financial crime compliance teams close key gaps in AML investigations by providing behavioral analytics and AI-enabled explanations of contributing activity.
  • Headquartered in London, Napier AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2018.

AI-powered financial crime compliance solutions provider Napier AI announced new functionality in its Transaction Monitoring solution that will help firms with their anti-money laundering (AML) screening. The new offering, Insights AI, provides behavioral analytics and natural language explanations for use in financial crime compliance, closing what Napier called “critical gaps” in anti-money laundering investigations.

The new functionality comes courtesy of an innovation partnership between Napier AI and the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), with the company leveraging the FCA’s Supercharged Sandbox to test new models and strategies. The goal was to provide financial crime compliance teams with a tool that would surface clear, AI-enabled explanations of customer behavior beyond the initial alert. These insights would be available directly within transaction monitoring tasks, highlighting behavioral patterns and illuminating potential new or emerging risks during the investigation. This is because, for most compliance teams, the challenge is less total alert volume and more about investigation inefficiency. To this end, Insights AI identifies relevant behavioral patterns, explains contributing activity in context, reduces the amount of time spent on manual data analysis, and enables compliance teams to focus on more complex issues during the investigation process.

Napier Chief Data Scientist Janet Bastiman underscored the value of the relationship between the company and the FCA. “Participating in the FCA Supercharged Sandbox allowed us to design and run new approaches to testing AI models for anti-money laundering,” Bastiman said. “One of the biggest historical challenges in tackling complex money laundering typologies is the disconnected nature of the data required for pattern analysis along the complete lifecycle of customer behavior or transaction flows.”

Under the name “Project Theseus,” the technology was tested for pattern mining and fluid dynamics as part of the FCA Supercharged Sandbox Showcase. This involved the deployment of frequency-based AI algorithms on large-scale synthetic financial data sets to identify money laundering typologies more effectively than traditional rules-based systems—while using significantly less computing power. The tested AML transaction monitoring models now form part of the Napier AI Continuum platform and support the company’s newly announced Insights AI feature.

“The embedding of Insights AI into our Transaction Monitoring solution is all about ensuring the incredible data science behind the scenes is surfaced in a way that puts power into the hands of AML analysts, to make the best possible human-in-the-loop decisions for the alerts,” Napier AI Chief Product Officer Will Monk said. “We lead with a compliance-first approach to AI in AML by partnering closely with the FCA so we can ensure our product aligns with regulatory guidance and meets policy goals around reducing the impact of economic crime on the UK.”

Founded in 2015, Napier AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2018 in London. At the conference, the company demonstrated how its customer screening and transaction monitoring enhancement software enables firms to enhance their AML and client screening processes. The company’s technology helps reduce false positives by up to 80% while significantly lowering operational risk and cost.

Napier AI began the year with the launch of MV Shield—Powered by Napier AI. The fruit of a partnership between Napier AI and banking technology provider Mutual Vision, MV Shield is a compliance-as-a-service (CaaS) solution built specifically for building societies and credit unions in the UK and Canada. MV Shield provides an alternative to standard AML systems, aligning its controls, reporting, and risk models to the specific needs of membership-based financial institutions.

Photo by Thomas Windisch

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