Meet the International Alums of FinovateSpring 2026!

Meet the International Alums of FinovateSpring 2026!
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, Ripple

With FinovateSpring 2026 right around the corner—May 5-7—we wanted to take a moment here at Finovate Global to highlight the international companies that will be demoing their latest fintech innovations live on stage next week.

While both our European conference FinovateEurope and our flagship event FinovateFall tend to showcase the lion’s share of our international alums, we are thrilled to host these eight fintech innovators from Greece, India, Israel, Italy, Singapore, and Switzerland this year at FinovateSpring!

Join us next week—May 5-7—at the Sheraton San Diego Resort for FinovateSpring 2026. 1200+ senior-level fintech attendees. 600+ attendees from banks and financial institutions. 50+ live fintech demos. Save your spot. Book your room. And we’ll see you in sunny San Diego!

BankUniverse—Greece

BankUniverse delivers a privacy-first ‘intent engine’ that identifies high-value prospects and automates conversion, increasing digital sales by 20%+ without sharing sensitive customer PII. Headquartered in Greece, the company was founded in 2024.

Cobalt—Tel Aviv, Israel

Cobalt automatically maps real system dependencies across complex banking environments, enabling agentic AI, real-time visibility, safer changes, reduced risk, and confident operations. Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, the company was founded in 2025.

ContexQ — Singapore

ContexQ is forensic Graph AI that detects fraud, money laundering, and hidden beneficial ownership by seeing the relationships every other AI misses. Headquartered in Singapore, the company was founded in 2024.

CRIF—Italy

CRIF is a global technology company delivering credit bureau services, business intelligence, advanced analytics, decisioning platforms, and digital solutions that power smarter lending and risk management worldwide. Headquartered in Italy, the company was founded in 1988.

Holdyn—Tel Aviv, Israel

Holdyn is a trust-first fintech platform enabling secure, structured transactions, and conditional payments. In addition to moving funds instantly, Holdyn also allows users to define how and when funds are released, reducing counterparty risk in both local and cross-border transactions. Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, the company was founded in 2025.

Nextvestment — Singapore

Nextvestment enables safe, self-service exploration while guiding advisors to intervene at the right moments, improving client engagement and advisor productivity without changing advisory models. Headquartered in Singapore, the company was founded in 2024.

uncharted group—Zurich, Switzerland

uncharted group’s operating system turns commoditized AI into a proprietary, compounding advantage for investment firms. Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, the company was founded in 2024.

Yubi—Chennai, India

Yubi is India’s AI-powered debt marketplace—connecting 17,000+ enterprises with 6,200+ lenders, having facilitated over $36 billion in financing. Now they’re bringing this breakthrough technology to the U.S. Headquartered in Chennai, India and Delaware, the company was founded in 2020.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Saudi Arabian financial app barq introduced international cross-border QR payments in partnership with Alipay+.
  • Dubai-based, B2B embedded finance platform Comfi raised $65 million in funding.
  • Blockchain-based enterprise solutions company Ripple opened the doors on a new regional headquarters in the UAE this week.

Central and Southern Asia

  • India-based fintech Pine Labs announced the acquisition of next-generation online checkout optimization platform Shopflo.
  • Central Asian digital banking ecosystem TBC Uzbekistan launched its AI assistant Lola.
  • Indian fintech Mobikwik secured approval from the Reserve Bank of India to initiate lending operations.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Cross-border payment infrastructure company TerraPay forged a strategic partnership with Nicaraguan remittance payout services company Banco de la Producción S.A (Banpro Grupo Promerica).
  • Argentina-based fintech belo secured $14 million in Series A funding in a round led by Tether.
  • The IMARC Group predicted that Mexico’s fintech market size will reach $67.2 billion by 2034.

Asia-Pacific

  • South Korea-based fintech RiskX secured seed funding for its technology that will enhance the pricing, risk analysis, and investor communication for structured derivatives.
  • Commonwealth Bank of Australia deployed an agentic AI system designed to detect emerging fraud and scam patterns in payments and transaction data.
  • Crypto payments network MoonPay joined Sungho Electronics and Seoryong Electronics in an investment in Soutk Korean fintech Finger as part of an effort to support a Korean won stablecoin ecosystem.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • South African bank Absa Group Limited improved its self-solve cases of digital and card fraud by 47% by using WhatsApp to instantly confirm suspected fraud transactions with customers.
  • Nairobi, Kenya-based cross border payments company WapiPay secured approval from the Bank of Jamaica to begin operations in the country.
  • PitchBook looked at the state of VC funding for African fintechs.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • European paytech Nexi integrated new digital payment option, Wero, bringing it into Germany’s ecommerce system via its German subsidiary, Nexi Germany.
  • Austrian cooperative banking group Raiffeisenbankengruppe Oesterreich partnered with nCino for its unified corporate lending platform
  • Finom unveiled a new, standalone version of its accounting solution for freelancers and small businesses in Germany.

Photo by Andrew Stutesman on Unsplash

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Eleos Life Raises $3 Million in Media-for-Equity Investment

Eleos Life Raises $3 Million in Media-for-Equity Investment
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Eleos, Funding
  • Eleos Life, an insurtech based in the UK that expanded to the US last year, has secured a $3 million media-for-equity investment.
  • The investment came courtesy of Mercurius Media Capital (MMC), a US-based, media-for-equity venture fund, and will help accelerate brand awareness for Eleos in the United States via national television, digital, and cinema advertising.
  • Eleos Life was founded in 2023. The company made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2024 in London. Kiruba Shankar Eswaran is Co-founder and CEO.

UK-based insurtech Eleos Life has raised $3 million from Mercurius Media Capital (MMC), a US-based media-for-equity venture fund. The investment, a media-for-equity transaction, will help boost Eleos’s brand awareness in the United States through MMC’s network of national television, digital, and cinema advertising.

“Our investment in Eleos Life represents a perfect alignment of innovative technology and strategic storytelling,” MMC Founding Partner Piyush Puri said. “By bridging the gap between Eleos’s seamless digital platform and our vast network of national TV and cinema assets, we are creating a fast track for their US expansion. We aren’t just investors; we are partners in scaling their visibility across every screen in America.”

Eleos makes insurance coverage accessible with user-friendly, jargon-free, fully digital applications. Currently available in the UK, Eleos has embedded insurance coverage into the digital journeys of its bank and fintech partners, reaching nearly five million customers through more than 10 platform integrations.

As a media-for-equity investor, MMC will deploy national television, digital, and cinema inventory through outlets such as Sinclair Broadcast Group, TelevisaUnivision, and Atmosphere TV, providing Eleos with a sustained, multi-screen presence. In his statement, Eleos Life CEO Kiruba Shankar Eswaran underscored the value of this coverage.

“This partnership with Mercurius Media Capital isn’t just about funding; it’s about visibility,” Eswaran said. “This investment allows us to tell our story on the biggest screens in the country, ushering in the next era of growth for Eleos in the United States.”

As part of the investment, MMC will also provide Eleos with operational support through its network of partners specializing in creative services, AI-driven content, and go-to-market execution.

Founded in 2023 and headquartered in London, Eleos Life made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2024. At the conference, the company, which directly serves more than 30,000 customers across the UK, demonstrated how its life and income protection insurance can be embedded into consumer brands and integrated into online journeys.

Last month, Eleos Life announced a community-driven collaboration with Land Trust Alliance, a national network and voice of the land trust community dedicated to supporting private land conservation across the US. Courtesy of the partnership, Eleos policyholders will be able to designate the Land Trust Alliance as a beneficiary on their life insurance policies. Eleos began the year with the launch of its AI Agent Desk, a free specialized AI-powered chat assistant that enables P&C brokers and agents to deploy an intelligent chat widget on their platform.

Photo by Natalya Zaritskaya on Unsplash

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Versana Raises $43 Million to Build Infrastructure for Syndicated Loan and Private Credit Markets

Versana Raises $43 Million to Build Infrastructure for Syndicated Loan and Private Credit Markets
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • Versana has raised $43 million, bringing its total raised to $125 million, with backing from major banks and private credit players.
  • The company is building a shared, standardized data layer for the $9 trillion syndicated loan and private credit markets that replaces manual, inconsistent workflows with a single source of truth.
  • The new round brings on strategic investors like Fitch Ventures, MassMutual Ventures, Motive Partners, and Apollo.

New York-based Versana announced today that it raised $43 million to support its infrastructure that brings transparency to syndicated loans and private credit.

BNP Paribas led the round, with participation from new strategic investors Fitch Ventures, MassMutual Ventures, Motive Partners, and Apollo. Existing shareholders—including Bank of America, Barclays, Citi, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, U.S. Bancorp, and Wells Fargo—also made follow-on investments.

Today’s investment, which Versana will use to expand and grow globally, brings the company’s total funding to over $125 million.

“We’re thrilled that BNP Paribas, Fitch Ventures, MassMutual Ventures, Motive Partners and Apollo have joined as strategic financing partners,” said Versana Founder CEO Cynthia Sachs. “This is truly a landmark moment, reflecting clear alignment across two very similar asset classes, BSL and private credit, and the need for modern digital infrastructure and data on one centralized platform. Together, with ongoing support from our existing investors, these new commitments strengthen our global position to accelerate platform growth, product innovation and digital data expansion.”

Versana was founded in 2021 to build a shared data platform for the operationally complex $9 trillion broadly syndicated loan (BSL) and private credit markets. In these markets, a single loan is funded by multiple lenders that each maintain their own records across disconnected systems. As a result, the syndicated loan market often requires manual reconciliation to sort through inconsistent data and offers limited visibility into loan positions, payments, and terms.

Versana creates a standardized, real-time data layer that serves as a single source of truth for all participants in a loan. The platform ingests data from lead banks and distributes it across lenders, investors, and service providers to reduce reliance on spreadsheets and email-based workflows.

Versana is out to solve fragmented, inconsistent data, a core problem in credit markets. With backing from both major banks and private credit players, the company is positioning itself as a data layer across traditionally siloed parts of the market.

As a new strategic investor, Fitch Ventures will help Versana expand its product-market fit into the pre-trade, credit decision-making process valued by portfolio managers and credit analysts. “We see meaningful opportunity to connect our complementary datasets to provide a more comprehensive and consistent view across loan data, including books and records, terms and conditions, covenants and related commentary,” said Fitch Managing Director Steven Miller.

Also joining as a strategic investor, Apollo will help Versana expand its capabilities by strengthening its connectivity with the buyside and new technologies enabling the loan market ecosystem. “We believe in Versana’s mission to modernize the broadly syndicated loan market,” said Apollo Managing Director Jennifer Lin. “Improving transparency and efficiency in BSL operations is important for the entire market, and we look forward to partnering with Versana as the platform continues to grow.”

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nCino Brings its Lending Platform to Austrian Banking Cooperative

nCino Brings its Lending Platform to Austrian Banking Cooperative
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, nCino
  • Agentic banking innovator nCino has teamed up with Austrian banking cooperative Raiffeisenbankengruppe Oesterreich.
  • The financial institution will use nCino as its unified lending platform, supporting the complete financing lifecycle from initial application to final disbursement.
  • Founded in 2012 and headquartered in North Carolina, nCino made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2017 in London. Sean Desmond is President and CEO.

Agentic banking platform provider nCino announced a new partnership with Austrian financial institution Raiffeisenbankengruppe Oesterreich. The company, one of the largest cooperative banking institutions in Europe, will use nCino as its unified corporate lending platform to support the entire financing lifecycle, including origination, underwriting, pricing, compliance, and portfolio monitoring.

“Raiffeisenbankengruppe Oesterreich is aware of its responsibility towards society and provides strong momentum for the promotion of the regional economy,” Chairman of the Raiffeisen Kooperationsgenossenschaft, Reinhard Schwendtbauer, said. “Raiffeisen focuses on long-term customer relationships, which are always built on trust—trust between our eight Raiffeisenlandesbanken, our local Raiffeisenbanken, and the communities they serve. nCino gives us the modern foundation to honor the trust of our customers and our responsibility towards them—with a platform designed specifically for how we work.”

The nCino platform spans financing products from current account credit to term loans. The platform’s features include Banking Advisor, an AI chat interface that generates credit memo narratives and application summaries, and standardizes documentation, while Priority Manager tracks file completion. The platform also offers mortgage lenders a multilingual AI chat interface, Mortgage Advisor, that provides 24/7 guidance and Doc Validation that accelerates document collection and classification. Combined, these automation tools help financial institutions lower costs, accelerate speed-to-close, and provide positive borrowing experiences for customers.

“In the DACH region, Raiffeisenbankengruppe Oesterreich is a powerful example of what’s possible when a traditional cooperative banking institution decides to modernize at scale,” nCino Managing Director of EMEA Joaquín de Valenzuela said. “They bring a century of community banking expertise to this partnership and nCino brings the platform and the cooperative banking expertise to help them take it further. We look forward to working alongside their team to bring a new standard of efficiency and innovation to corporate lending across Austria.”

One of Europe’s largest and most complex cooperative banking institutions, Raiffeisenbankengruppe Oesterreich has eight regional Raiffeisenlandesbanken that serve as central financing institutions for 270 local Raiffeisenbanken throughout Austria. The institution has its origins in the Raiffeisen movement in Germany and Austria in the 1880s, which was a cooperative banking initiative based on the ideas of mutual aid, self-help, and community solidarity. The movement was designed to address the financial challenges faced by farmers and others in rural communities, providing them with affordable financial services. Raiffeisenbankengruppe Oesterreich’s international operations are consolidated under Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI), which is owned by Raiffeisenlandesbanken. The group reported assets of €404.5 billion ($445 billion) as of the end of 2024.

Founded in 2012, nCino made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2017 in London. Today the North Carolina-based fintech has more than 2,700 customers around the world—including community banks, credit unions, independent mortgage banks, and other financial services providers. The company’s dual workforce of AI agents and human teams helps financial institutions become more efficient, make more informed decisions, and deliver better outcomes for their customers.

nCino is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ under the ticker NCNO. The company has a market capitalization of $1.97 billion.

Photo by Pierre Blaché on Unsplash

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Impact+ Heads to FinovateSpring to Spotlight Early-Stage Fintech Innovation

Impact+ Heads to FinovateSpring to Spotlight Early-Stage Fintech Innovation
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateSpring 2026

New for FinovateSpring 2026, Finovate is bringing its Impact+ session to offer early-stage fintech founders a dedicated platform to pitch their ideas directly to an audience of investors, banks, and industry leaders.

The session, which debuted at FinovateEurope earlier this year, is designed to create a structured environment for founders and investors to connect, exchange insights, and explore partnerships at a stage when ideas are still forming and companies are actively shaping their trajectory.

Taking place on Monday, May 4, Impact+ will feature a keynote from Stripe’s Asya Bradley, followed by an investor panel and a series of four-minute startup pitches. The evening concludes with networking, giving attendees the opportunity to continue conversations sparked on stage.

Why Impact+ Matters

Early-stage fintech is often where the most interesting ideas emerge, but it’s also the hardest to get visibility into. Impact+ aims to close that gap by bringing founders and investors into the same room.

The concise format gives founders just four minutes to clearly articulate the problem they’re solving, how their solution works, and why it matters. This high-speed format offers investors a way to quickly evaluate emerging opportunities.

Meet the Startups Taking the Stage

At FinovateSpring, eight early-stage companies will take part in the Impact+ session, each tackling a different piece of the financial services stack—from underwriting and compliance to agentic commerce and investment intelligence.

Agentix

Agentix is positioning itself as the infrastructure layer for agentic commerce, enabling AI agents to transact across systems through a single integration. By focusing on discoverability across AI interfaces and enabling agent-to-agent transactions, the company is building toward a future where payments are initiated and completed by software agents rather than humans.

BUOH

BUOH is building an AI guidance layer for banks and insurers, designed to improve how institutions engage with customers during financial decision-making moments. By detecting intent and delivering personalized guidance, the platform aims to increase conversion rates, reduce customer acquisition costs, and improve long-term value.

CustomerPlus

CustomerPlus is rethinking client onboarding and compliance by replacing fragmented tools with a unified client management platform. By embedding regulatory rules directly into workflows, the company enables automated KYC assessments and more consistent compliance processes across products and jurisdictions.

Draco AI

Draco AI is focused on automating underwriting for small business lenders, starting with the merchant cash advance market. Its platform replaces manual analysis, such as reviewing bank statements and aggregating debt positions, with AI-driven workflows that compress hours of work into minutes.

Fintellion

Fintellion is an AI-native investment intelligence platform designed to bring institutional-grade research capabilities to smaller firms. By combining equity research, portfolio intelligence, and real-time insights into a single system, it aims to enable faster, more informed investment decisions without the need for large analyst teams.

Mercata

Mercata is building intelligence infrastructure for hedge funds by connecting internal knowledge such notes, ideas, and research, with external market data. The platform creates a persistent memory layer for investment teams, helping firms track evolving narratives and identify opportunities in real time.

ValueAssure

ValueAssure is developing protection products for niche markets underserved by traditional insurance. Its flagship offering, ValueAssureAUTO, provides trade-in value protection for vehicle owners, addressing gaps not covered by standard auto insurance or GAP products.

Ventus AI

Ventus AI is creating a customer intelligence layer that transforms transaction data into actionable insights. By identifying behavioral patterns and life events, the platform enables financial institutions to deliver more personalized experiences aimed at improving conversion, retention, and assets under management.

If you’re an investor interested in attending this session, there’s still time to register. We’ll see you in San Diego!

Photo by Evie Shaffer

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A Look Back at the 2025 Finovate Awards

A Look Back at the 2025 Finovate Awards
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Awards

Now that the nominations for the 2026 Finovate Awards are open and the judging teams are being assembled, we thought we’d take a look back at some of the winners of last year’s competition.

The 2025 Finovate Awards featured a wide variety of companies from around the world, all competing for top industry honors in more than 25 different categories. Here, we present a seven-member sampling of that year’s category-winning companies, from Best Anti-Fraud Platform to Best Wealth Management Solution.

The 2026 Finovate Awards will be announced September 10 during FinovateFall 2026 in New York. The nominations window remains open until May 22. To learn more and to nominate your favorite fintech company, bank, solution, or financial services professional, visit our Finovate Awards hub today!

Best Anti-Fraud/AML Solution – Oscilar

For its technology that powers real-time risk decisioning across fraud, credit, and compliance with a single unified solution. The company’s no-code AI Risk Decisioning platform leverages agentic AI and advanced signal processing to analyze complex data, detect anomalies, and automate decisions quickly and accurately. Learn more about Oscilar.

Best Banking-as-a-Service Provider – Zindigi-JS Bank

For its platform that empowers users to take control of their finances, providing them with an all-in-one finance app that enables them to securely move money, purchase mobile credit for any number, pay bills, invest in mutual funds, and more. Users can access an enhanced experience with Zindigi Ultra, which provides increased transaction limits and seamless international transactions. Learn more about JS Bank’s Zindigi.

Best Consumer Lending Solution – Wisetack

For its platform that provides embedded pay-over-time options for in-person services such as HVAC repair, plumbing, electrical, fencing and flooring, pest management, and more. Via APIs, Wisetack can be embedded into any software or user experience, putting the technology directly into the software tools that businesses are already using. Learn more about Wisetack.

Best Consumer-Facing Payments Solution – Engage People

For its Access Plus platform that serves more than 80 million active members who can use points to pay at a range of major retailers including Amazon, Apple, Best Buy, and PayPal. Engage People leverages agentic loyalty to transform traditional loyalty programs into AI-powered shopping experiences in which members engage with a personal agent that knows their balance and their preferences. Learn more about Engage People.

Best Digital Bank – Nubank

For serving more than 100 million customers across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia with one of the largest digital banking platforms in the world. The company, known as Nu, leverages proprietary technologies and innovative business strategies to offer individuals and small businesses simple, intuitive, low-cost, empowering financial solutions. Learn more about Nu.

Best Financial Mobile App – DBS Bank

For its DBS digibank app that enables users to manage a range of banking tasks with just a few taps on their smartphone. Users can enjoy up to 5% interest per annum on their savings, conduct free 24×7 fund transfers via UPI, IMPS, NEFT, and RTGS, make fee-free mutual fund investments, quickly access loans, and more. DBS is a leading financial services group headquartered in Singapore with a presence in 19 markets. Learn more about DBS Bank.

Best Wealth Management Solution – Flourish: Enabling Wealth 3.0

For its Flourish Platform that supports more than $8 billion in assets under management and is used by more than 1,100 wealth management firms representing more than $2.6 trillion in assets under management. The company’s technology empowers RIAs to implement the holistic financial plans that they create for their clients, helping advisors move beyond the traditional stocks-and-bonds portfolio to offer comprehensive financial services that address clients’ entire financial lives. Learn more about Flourish.

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

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Blockrise Looks to bunq for Financial Infrastructure

Blockrise Looks to bunq for Financial Infrastructure
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • bunq is launching a live BaaS use case, partnering with Blockrise to offer Bitcoin-friendly bank accounts with embedded banking services.
  • Blockrise users will gain regulated banking benefits, including fiat deposit protection up to €100,000 under the Dutch Deposit Guarantee Scheme via bunq’s license.
  • BaaS enables crypto–bank convergence in which banks provide compliant infrastructure while crypto platforms own the customer relationship.

European neobank bunq is going live with its BaaS offering, partnering with Bitcoin platform Blockrise to offer users Bitcoin-friendly bank accounts. 

Netherlands-based Blockrise users will gain access to Bitcoin services alongside embedded bank accounts. By leveraging bunq’s European banking license, fiat deposits will be protected up to €100,000 under the Dutch Deposit Guarantee Scheme.

“Up to now, Dutch Bitcoin users had to choose between security and convenience. With bunq’s infrastructure, they get both—a bank account that works seamlessly with Bitcoin, protected by the Dutch Deposit Guarantee Scheme,” said Blockrise Founder and CEO Jos Lazet. “We are proud to be the first-ever Bitcoin platform that is able to offer full bank accounts to our clients.”

The partnership marks the first live use case of bunq’s BaaS offering, which integrates bunq’s financial infrastructure into a business’ existing product by building on bunq’s open API. bunq anticipates that its BaaS service will offer users better, safer products. Because bunq handles the complex compliance and security requirements involved in offering bank accounts, businesses are able to focus on their core competencies and move with more agility.

The collaboration also reflects a convergence between traditional banking and digital asset platforms. As regulatory frameworks mature in Europe, licensed banks like bunq are becoming key enablers for crypto firms looking to offer more complete financial services. With BaaS-crypto partnerships, banks provide the compliant infrastructure, while crypto platforms own the customer relationship, which blurs the line between decentralized finance and centralized finance.

Founded in 2012, Amsterdam-based bunq offers both retail and commercial accounts with a range of tools, including budgeting and term deposits for consumers, and expense management and payment acceptance tools for businesses. Earlier this year, bunq applied for a US banking license for the second time, after it withdrew its original application in 2023.

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SumUp Expands its Small Business Product Suite

SumUp Expands its Small Business Product Suite
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, SumUp
  • SumUp is expanding its platform in the US with an all-in-one small business offering, combining POS Lite, a handheld terminal, card readers, and invoicing into a single ecosystem.
  • Today’s expansion of services comes 10 years after the company initially launched in the US.
  • The strategy reflects fintech’s rebundling, moving beyond payments to unify operations, sales, and business management tools in one platform.

Payment acceptance company SumUp is expanding its core product ecosystem in the US to give small business owners an integrated suite of tools to run their operations.

The new ecosystem breaks down into two categories: the first aims to help users run their business while the second helps them with payment acceptance. Combined, the tools offer business owners a complete set of business management tools in a single platform.

The first category offers businesses access to POS Lite, a point-of-sale solution built for merchants who need a fast, lightweight way to manage sales without the overhead of a full system; and SumUp Terminal, a handheld device that combines full POS functionality, payment acceptance, and business management tools in a single standalone unit.

SumUp has offered payment acceptance tools since it was founded in 2011. The fintech’s new business suite will include portable, plug-and-play card readers that accept chip and PIN, contactless, and mobile wallet payments; as well as an invoicing tool that generates professional invoices with built-in payment links.

“Small businesses shouldn’t have to stitch together five different tools just to run their day,” said SumUp USA Head of Product Ben Brazier. “We built this ecosystem around how merchants actually work—starting with payments, and layering in the management tools they need to stay on top of their business. The Terminal is the clearest expression of that philosophy: one device, everything you need, nothing you don’t.”

SumUp’s expansion echoes the wider “rebundling” trend that is taking place in fintech right now. Instead of offering fragmented point solutions, SumUp is bringing businesses a set of unified tools that bring payments, operations, and business management in a single platform, raising the bar for what small businesses expect from their financial and operational partners.

SumUp has more than four million merchant clients across the globe. Today’s expansion of services comes 10 years after the company initially launched in the US and five years after the fintech acquired payments and marketing platform FiveStars, a move that helped SumUp scale in the region. Overall, SumUp operates across 37 markets on four continents.

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KeyBank Deepens Ties with Qolo to Launch New Virtual Card Program

KeyBank Deepens Ties with Qolo to Launch New Virtual Card Program
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Qolo

KeyBank is launching a new commercial card program this week. The Ohio-based bank is deepening its partnership with card issuing company Qolo to launch its Key Virtual Card (KeyVC), a virtual commercial card program that helps businesses manage and track payments. 

“KeyVC is designed to reduce that complexity by allowing clients to use virtual cards alongside other treasury tools, with consistent reporting and simplified reconciliation across payment types. Businesses want payment tools that fit naturally into how they already operate,” said Qolo Chief Operating Officer Rouzbeh Rotabi. “Working with KeyBank, we’ve built a virtual card solution that feels like a seamless part of the treasury environment–giving finance teams more flexibility, stronger controls, and clearer insight into their spending.”

KeyVC will enable KeyBank’s commercial clients to create and manage virtual cards within the bank’s Virtual Account Management platform (KeyVAM). Adding virtual cards to their existing treasury management tools will offer KeyBank’s commercial clients a way to pay suppliers while maintaining oversight of spending and facilitating reconciliation.

“Commercial clients are increasingly looking for simpler and more controlled ways to manage payments,” said KeyBank Head of Commercial Cards John Withrow. “By expanding our partnership with Qolo, we’re making virtual cards easier to use within our existing treasury platforms, helping clients streamline accounts payable, improve visibility, and maintain better control over how and when money is spent.”

Qolo, which demoed at FinovateFall 2022, was founded in 2018 with the aim of simplifying payments through a unified infrastructure layer. Its platform combines an embedded ledger, card issuing, money movement, real-time reconciliation, and cross-rail connectivity into a single API. Rather than requiring banks to replace legacy cores, Qolo overlays its technology on top of existing systems, enabling institutions to deploy new payment capabilities in months, not years.

In an interview at FinovateFall last year, I sat down with Patricia Montesi, Qolo Founder and CEO, to discuss how the company helps modernize payments infrastructure. “We set out to build an entire, comprehensive payments stack that includes ledger, card, payments, virtual account management—everything all available through a single API served up to you so that you can then focus on your customers,” said Montesi.

Qolo and KeyBank have worked together since 2024, when the two launched KeyVAM. Expanding this partnership will enable KeyBank to prioritize embedded payment experiences inside treasury workflows, rather than offering standalone payment tools. Qolo’s API-based approach will allow KeyBank to avoid a core overhaul while still providing modern card-based capabilities.

Embedding virtual cards within treasury environments shifts competition from facilitating payments to providing a more holistic workflow solution. The integrated approach brings payment tools directly into how finance teams manage liquidity, reconcile transactions, and control spend.

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Vernon Building Society Partners with FintechOS to Power New Mortgage Platform

Vernon Building Society Partners with FintechOS to Power New Mortgage Platform
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, FintechOS
  • Vernon Building Society has partnered with FintechOS to power its new mortgage platform.
  • The new platform spans the entire mortgage origination workflow and will run above the building society’s core infrastructure, making a system replacement unnecessary.
  • Headquartered in London, FintechOS most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2021 in New York.

Vernon Building Society has teamed up with FintechOS to power its new unified mortgage platform that spans the complete origination workflow. From initial inquiry and decision-in-principle to application, underwriting, offer, and completion, the platform will run above Vernon’s current core infrastructure, alleviating the need for a system replacement.

Powered by FintechOS 8, the new unified system will feature decision workflows, as well as built-in compliance rules. Vernon’s financing teams will be able to use no-code configuration and AI-enabled capabilities to design and launch new mortgage products, and to respond more quickly to evolving customer preferences and shifting market conditions. Additionally, the platform unifies product and pricing governance with origination execution. This enhances the ability of Vernon to configure and evolve business rules, eligibility criteria, and construction logic within a governed layer above the core system. With versioning and auditability supporting consistent outcomes for both brokers and advisor workflows, the platform reduces redundant tasks while providing greater flexibility.

“A common misconception is that financial institutions have an AI problem; in reality, their challenge is largely an operationalization one,” Founder and CEO of FintechOS, Teo Blidarus, said. “We built FintechOS 8 around a simple premise: AI in financial services only works when it is grounded in real product data, real workflows, and real governance. This release makes data and AI operational for financial institutions, not experimental.”

FintechOS 8 also features FintechOS Dex, an AI copilot that provides in-context guidance for all roles across the product lifecycle. The copilot helps users navigate cases, access needed data faster, and apply governed generative assistance within approved workflows. The technology also supports AI-enabled document ingestion and data extraction to manage document-heavy processes. It limits automation to those high-friction activities such as capturing and validating data and routing exceptions for review to ensure human oversight, traceability, and audit readiness. The new platform will give brokers a dedicated portal that will enable them to track cases in real time. Borrowers will benefit from a shorter path from application to offer, and financing teams will be relieved from manual, repetitive tasks, enabling them to focus on personal service and human decision-making.

“This is what pragmatic modernization looks like—modernize the core, unify product and pricing logic with origination execution, and move faster without the risk and disruption of full system replacement,” Blidarus said.

Based in Stockport, Cheshire, Vernon Building Society offers mortgages, savings, and investment products to savers and homebuyers in the Greater Manchester area. The institution is also a leading provider of bespoke or specific-need mortgages to customers throughout England and Wales. Vernon has total assets of £534m ($667.5 million), a year-over-year gain of 5.4%, and recently reported growth in its mortgage book (4.6%) and its retail savings balances (6.2%). Founded in 1924, the institution today has more than 24,000 members across the UK.

Headquartered in London, FintechOS made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2021 and most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2025 in New York. Founded in 2017, FintechOS enables banks, credit unions, building societies, and other financial institutions to modernize the way they build, launch, and manage financial products and services by running them above their current core systems. FintechOS has more than 60 customers across North America, Europe, and APAC, and manages assets exceeding $100 billion.

Photo by Balazs Bezeczky from Pexels

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AU10TIX Partners with Camunda for KYC/KYB Workflow Orchestration

AU10TIX Partners with Camunda for KYC/KYB Workflow Orchestration
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • Identity verification and fraud prevention company AU10TIX has partnered with enterprise platform for agentic orchestration Camunda.
  • AU10TIX will leverage Camunda’s platform to support Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business (KYB) workflows at scale.
  • Camunda Financial Services Transformation Lead Jawwad Rasheed will speak about the benefits of agentic orchestration at FinovateSpring 2026, Wednesday, May 6.

Identity verification and fraud prevention specialist AU10TIX has selected Camunda to support Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business (KYB) workflows at scale. Camunda’s enterprise platform for agentic orchestration enables users to manage complex identity processes without embedding decision logic inside the application code. Externalizing decision logic, as Camunda’s platform does, enables businesses to manage complex workflows efficiently and to adapt to changing circumstances without disrupting applications.

“Camunda gives us robust orchestration for some of the most critical processes in our business,” AU10TIX VP of Research and Development David Voschina said. “By leveraging standardized, configurable workflows, we can scale faster, introduce new verification scenarios more efficiently, and provide greater transparency. Continuous innovation is essential to staying ahead through a proactive defense framework, and Camunda strengthens our ability to anticipate threats.”

Camunda’s technology coordinates document and photo capture, automated authenticity and consistency checks, third-party risk screening, and decision handling into a sole transparent business process. Decisions are consolidated into a single case, automating approvals and declines and routing exceptional cases to human agents for manual review as needed. The platform’s Optimize feature gives users operational oversight, performance transparency, and SLA accountability across operations.

“Identity verification sits at the heart of trust in digital services,” Camunda VP of EMEA Sales Stéphane Faivre-Duboz said. “With Camunda, AU10TIX has a scalable orchestration foundation that connects systems, services, and decisions into one governed process—enabling both compliance and continuous growth.”

Amsterdam-based AU10TIX provides identity verification and management solutions to help businesses defend themselves against fraud. The company’s automated global identity management system detects organized mass fraud attacks by analyzing traffic patterns and cross-referencing data. Since inception, the platform has authenticated billions of identities and prevented more than $24 billion in identity fraud. AU10TIX’s technology enables seamless customer onboarding and verification while proactively adapting to emerging threats and regulatory mandates.

Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Berlin, Germany, Camunda enables firms to automate complex business processes across agents, people, and systems. The company creates production-ready, enterprise-grade agents with built-in governance that are designed to manage business-critical processes. More than 700 businesses around the world leverage Camunda’s platform to reduce time-to-value, boost operational efficiency, and enhance customer experiences.

The partnership between AU10TIX and Camunda reflects a number of growing trends within fintech: from the increased importance of identity and fraud prevention solutions to the embrace of agentic orchestration as a way of not only managing and automating workflows, but scaling those workflows, as well. The partnership is an example of how fintechs are working together to bolster fraud defense, improve efficiency, and remain one step ahead of both the latest fraud threats as well as evolving regulatory demands.

Catch Jawwad Rasheed, Camunda Financial Services Transformation Lead, at FinovateSpring 2026 next month in San Diego for his special address, “Invisible Infrastructure, Visible Results: The Case for Agentic Orchestration in Financial Services.”

Photo by Andrew Konstantinov on Unsplash

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Meet the Keynotes: FinovateSpring Spotlights Innovations in AI

Meet the Keynotes: FinovateSpring Spotlights Innovations in AI
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateSpring 2026

Are you interested in how AI can help banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions boost engagement, offer new products and services, and grow revenues? This year, FinovateSpring 2026, taking place in sunny San Diego, California, May 5-7, is set to deliver the latest insights into innovations in AI that enable financial services providers to compete more effectively in the 21st century.

In special addresses and keynotes over three days, FinovateSpring will showcase how AI can enhance customer experiences through greater personalization, improve contact center efficiency using agentic AI, and more. Featuring a range of AI experts and innovators, the conference will highlight how banks and financial institutions can maximize AI and successfully deploy what many believe is the most revolutionary technological innovation of our time.

FinovateSpring 2026 will be held at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina, May 5-7. Buy your ticket. Book your room. And join us for the next, must-attend event on the fintech conference calendar!

AI That Makes It to Production: Deploying Trusted CX in Days, Not Months

Merlin Bise, CTO of Inbenta AI, will show how organizations can go from zero to product-ready AI in less than a week, how to deploy assistants that understand customers in any language, eliminate hallucination risk with traceable and explainable responses, and integrate AI solutions into existing CX infrastructure—no platform replacement required.

Headquartered in Texas, Inbenta delivers enterprise AI solutions to more than 1,000 organizations, including BBVA, Deutsche Bank, and Samsung. The company’s flagship Encore platform serves companies in financial services, e-commerce, healthcare, and more with 98% accuracy, near-zero hallucinations, full auditability, and 850+ integrations that eliminate vendor lock-in.

See the keynote on Tuesday, May 5, 10:25am!

From Plateau to Compound: Why the AI That Got You to 65% Call Resolution Will Never Get You to 100%

Henry Pezzo, Sales Director at Omilia, will discuss the challenge of how to effectively deploy AI in enterprise contact centers. He will explain how an agentic, self-learning platform that monitors every interaction, identifies what to improve, and builds better agents automatically can serve as an alternative to manual tuning, vendor dependency, and generic language models.

Based in Larnaca, Cyprus, and founded in 2002, Omilia specializes in AI-driven customer service transformation. The company’s self-learning agentic CX platform enables enterprises to automate interactions with precision, empowering agents in real time and delivering seamless, personalized experiences across channels.

See the keynote on Tuesday, May 5, 2:00pm!

Scaling Support Without Losing Trust: How Acorns is Rebuilding Customer Care with AI

Trish Vogeler, Support Systems & Tools Lead for Acorns, and Stacy Osorio, Director of Customer Success for Cresta, will explain how Acorns is rethinking customer care to understand the key drivers of customer satisfaction. Vogeler and Osorio will discuss how Acorns uses AI to surface actionable insights from customer interactions, redesign quality assurance around behaviors, and introduce automation via voice AI agents that enhance rather than compromise the human experience.

Acorns offers straightforward tools to help Americans manage their finances better—from wiser spending to smarter saving and investing. The company’s Acorns Early is a smart money app and debit card that helps children develop sound financial wellness skills as they grow up. Since its inception in 2014, Acorns has helped more than 13 million customers save and invest more than $22 billion.

Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and founded in 2017, Cresta combines AI and human intelligence to turn customer conversations into competitive advantages. Cresta uses AI agents, AI-augmented human agent assistance, and quality management to transform contact centers, improve the customer experience, and grow revenues. The company counts firms such as Alaska Airlines, Cox Communications, and Intuit among its customers.

See the keynote on Tuesday, May 5, 3:20pm!

Invisible Infrastructure, Visible Results: The Case for Agentic Orchestration in Financial Services

Jawwad Rasheed, Financial Services Transformation Lead for Camunda, will discuss the challenges that financial services organizations face when embedding and scaling AI into their core operations. He will explain the importance of agentic orchestration, which is often the missing ingredient in AI strategy that enables businesses to avoid the agentic value trap and break through the automation ceiling.

Headquartered in Berlin, Germany, and founded in 2008, Camunda is a leader in agentic orchestration, automating complex business processes—including high-value knowledge work—across agents, people, and systems. The company offers production-ready, enterprise-grade agents with built-in governance to manage business-critical processes.

See this keynote on Wednesday, May 6 at 12:30pm!

Creating Trust and Loyalty Through AI-Enhanced CX

Jon Lakefish, Founder of Lakefish Group, will explore the most powerful AI tools currently available that enable individuals and teams to enhance the customer experience, improve communication, and boost operational efficiency. Lakefish will focus on practical applications instead of theory and will introduce the latest agentic platforms that are transforming AI’s role in organizations.

Headquartered in Duvall, Washington, Lakefish Group is an AI-driven marketing and branding firm that leverages 20+ years of strategic expertise with the power of AI and the gig economy to deliver campaigns that compete with billion-dollar brands at a fraction of the cost. The company specializes in AI consulting, brand identity development, and strategy advisory services.

See this keynote on Wednesday, May 6 at 12:45pm!

Other scheduled keynotes include:

The Global Economic & Geopolitical Outlook & the Direction of Travel for the US Economy—Manas Chawla, Founder and Chief Executive, London Politica. Tuesday, May 5 at 10:40am.

Why Agentic AI is Truly a New Frontier in Financial Services & How Agentic Commerce Will Reshape the Retail Landscape—Chris Nichols, President of Institutional Banking, SouthState Bank. Thursday, May 7 at 10:00am.

The $84 Trillion Handover: What Banks Need to Understand About Gen Z’s AI-First Relationship with Money—Tyler Brown, Industry Analyst, tylerbrown.co. Thursday, May 7 at 3:00pm.

Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash

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