Blog - Finovate

Cross River Acquires Accrue to Bring Loyalty to Payments

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 20, 2026
Categories: Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions

CRB Group, the parent company of Cross River Bank, has agreed to acquire customer loyalty platform Accrue for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition will integrate Accrue's branded wallet technology into Cross River's banking infrastructure, enabling merchants to offer payments, rewards, stored value, and loyalty capabilities in a single experience. The deal reflects the growing convergence of payments and loyalty, helping brands deepen customer relationships and keep more financial activity within their own ecosystems. The parent company of Cross River Bank, CRB Group, has agreed to acquire customer loyalty provider Accrue. While Cross River did not disclose the acquisition amount, the bank did express that the purchase will help it continue to expand its embedded finance offerings. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions. Founded in 2021, Accrue powers modern customer loyalty at the payment layer. Its branded wallet platform enables merchants to connect stored value, payments, rewards, and customer…

Mesh and Visa Make Stablecoin Balances to Everyday Purchases

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 20, 2026
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, VISA

Visa has teamed up with crypto payments network Mesh to enable customers to spend their crypto and stablecoin balances as they would fiat currency. The two are combining Visa's global acceptance network with Mesh's orchestration infrastructure to allow consumers to pay in-store and online from the crypto and stablecoin balances in their wallet apps. Mesh was founded in 2020 to enable easy payment across hundreds of exchanges, wallets, and providers. Today, the fintech has more than 200 enterprises using its network. According to Crypto.com, there are 774 million crypto owners across the globe, but they spend hardly any of the crypto they hold because of the friction involved to convert it to fiat currency. That's because customers have traditionally had to cash out their crypto to a bank account and wait or sign up for a payment card tied to a single platform. Among Mesh's customers are Kalshi, Tools for Humanity,…

U.S. Bank Taps Atomic to Simplify Recurring Payment Switching

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 19, 2026
Categories: Atomic FI, Daily news, US Bank

U.S. Bank has launched Payment Switch, a new tool that allows customers to move recurring bill payments to their U.S. Bank debit or credit cards without updating payment information at individual merchants. Available to new and existing customers, Payment Switch helps users track upcoming charges, identify changes in recurring expenses, and cancel eligible subscriptions. Developed in partnership with Atomic, Payment Switch is the third component of U.S. Bank Easy Switch, helping reduce friction in switching banks and strengthening primary banking relationships. U.S. Bank has launched a new tool called Payment Switch to help its customers organize how they pay their recurring bills. Customers can use the Bills & Subscriptions dashboard on the U.S. Bank mobile app to switch the payment method for recurring bills such as streaming services, cell phones, and utility bills to a U.S. Bank debit or credit card without having to change the payment credentials on each…

Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 19, 2026
Categories: Fintech Rundown

We're halfway through October, and as the fall conference season ramps up, the fintech news cycle will be on a tear this week. Here's a look at what fintechs are up to in this week’s list of the top fintech news. We’ll continue to update this post with news throughout the week. Stablecoins & tokenized deposits Euronet and Fireblocks extend their partnership to bring stablecoins into card issuing. Jack Henry expands collaboration with Google Cloud to deliver tokenized deposits for banks and credit unions. JPM Coin goes live on Ethereum, extending institutional finance reach on second public blockchain. Marqeta and Coinbase collaborate to enable stablecoin-backed card payments. Payments Embedded finance orchestration platform AAZZUR named a winner of TechRound’s SaaS66 2026, ranking 50th in the annual Top 66 list. Wildfire and Badge partner to bring personalized merchant offers and rewards to mobile wallets. KORT Payments to acquire AptPay to expand real-time…

Finovate Global Scandinavia: Funding Innovations in Open Banking and Personal Finance

By David Penn Posted on October 16, 2026
Categories: Finovate Global

This week's edition of Finovate Global features recent fintech news from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Norwegian open finance innovator Neonomics raises $4 million in new funding Open finance platform Neonomics has received an investment of $4 million. The funding comes from the Norwegian firm's existing shareholders and follows a strategic transformation that reduced its operating cost base by nearly 50% while maintaining high service quality and existing customer base. "We have fundamentally strengthened Neonomics, creating a more focused and efficient business with a clear direction for growth," Neonomics CEO Alfonso Muñoz said. "The combination of a significantly improved cost structure, growing customer demand and continued shareholder support puts us in a strong position to execute on our strategy." Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Oslo, Neonomics offers a full-stack open finance platform. Via a single secure API, the company unifies Pay by Bank payments, enriched account data, and AI-ready financial…

Mark Susser of ElevenLabs on Deploying AI Agents Successfully in Financial Services

By David Penn Posted on October 15, 2026
Categories: FinovateFall 2026, Interview, Speaker series

At a time when more and more banks and financial institutions are integrating AI-powered solutions into their systems and processes, what separates successful deployments of AI technology from failed, expensive, or incomplete ones? At FinovateFall 2026, I sat down with Mark Susser, GTM Lead for Financial Services at ElevenLabs. In our conversation, Susser explained what separates successful AI deployments from those that stall, how companies can identify the right use cases for a given AI solution, and why modularity and meeting customers where they are are key. "The ones that stall out typically make one of two main mistakes: One is that they have too much of a broad platform initiative. Nothing specific to prove, no use case that has been picked out, and they're more focused on what the technology could do versus what the actual business needs. Another area that we see some faltering in is that they…

Ramp Raises $1.85 Billion, Boosting Valuation to $60 Billion

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 15, 2026
Categories: Daily news, Funding

Corporate card and expense management platform Ramp raised $1.85 billion in a funding round led by Dragoneer Investment Group, boosting its valuation to $60 billion, nearly double its November 2025 valuation. Ramp now serves more than 85,000 businesses, powers over $275 billion in annual purchases, and generates more than $2 billion in annualized revenue. Ramp's growing suite of AI-powered tools and roughly 30× annualized revenue multiple suggest investors are betting on its evolution from an expense management provider into a broader financial operations platform. Corporate card and expense management platform Ramp closed a $1.85 billion funding round, boosting its valuation to $60 billion, an amount that exceeds many established fintech companies and is nearly double the company's $32 billion valuation following its November 2025 funding round. Dragoneer Investment Group led the round, which was co-led by Thrive Capital, Founders Fund, Sands Capital, and Avenir Growth. Additional investors, including Capital International, Fidelity…

Illuma Raises Funds to Bring Voice Security to Credit Unions

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 15, 2026
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, Illuma Labs

Voice security fintech Illuma has secured an undisclosed investment from existing clients Financial Plus Credit Union and Dort Financial Credit Union, along with CUSO One Washington Financial. The funding will help Illuma advance its deepfake detection, fraud prevention, and adaptive authentication capabilities while expanding its reach among credit unions and community banks. The investment highlights the growing importance of AI-powered fraud prevention, as financial institutions seek to strengthen security without adding friction to the customer experience. Voice security fintech Illuma has raised an undisclosed amount to support its efforts in providing deepfake detection, fraud prevention, and adaptive authentication for credit unions and smaller banks. The investment comes from existing Illuma clients Financial Plus Credit Union and Dort Financial Credit Union, as well as Washington-based CUSO One Washington Financial, and follows its most recent funding round since February of 2025. According to Crunchbase, Illuma has raised a total of $11.5 million…

Extend Introduces its AI Receipt Agent to Automate Receipt Matching

By David Penn Posted on October 15, 2026
Categories: Alumni News, Extend

Financial operations platform for spend and expense management Extend has introduced its AI Receipt Agent. The Receipt Agent automates the routine work of matching receipts with card transactions, while keeping finance teams in control of every decision. Headquartered in New York, Extend made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2019. The company powers billions in transaction volume and has more than 10,000 business customers. Spend and expense management platform Extend unveiled its AI Receipt Agent this week. The new offering for the firm's bank partners automates the work of matching receipts to card transactions while keeping finance teams in control of every decision. As part of Extend's effort to make trusted AI tools accessible to its small and mid-market business clients, the AI Receipt Agent was developed in conversation with finance teams and is designed to earn trust via useful, understandable automation. "Every business owner we talk to wants AI to…

PayQuicker Enhances Payouts Platform with Next Generation API

By David Penn Posted on October 14, 2026
Categories: Alumni News, PayQuicker

Payment orchestration platform PayQuicker launched its next-generation API platform, API v2, this week. The new solution will give PayQuicker clients access to a range of new capabilities, including real-time webhooks, high-volume batch processing, payment retractions, and expanded visibility. Founded in 2007, PayQuicker made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2022. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York. PayQuicker unveiled its next-generation API platform, API v2, this week. The new offering gives PayQuicker clients access to advanced capabilities such as real-time webhooks, high-volume batch processing, payment retractions, and expanded visibility into fund activity. The capabilities of API v2 include signed notifications for payee registrations, payment status changes, account receipts, and batch job progress. The new offering also enables users to submit up to 5,000 payments or invitations per job, with payments schedulable up to 30 days ahead. API v2 also supports payment retractions to enable users to recover the remaining balance…

Ocrolus Adds Document Fraud Detection to Mortgage Workflows

By David Penn Posted on October 13, 2026
Categories: Alumni profile, Ocrolus

Ocrolus, a vertical AI workflow and analytics platform for lenders, has announced that its document fraud detection solution, Ocrolus Detect, will now be included at no additional cost for all its mortgage customers. Ocrolus Detect reviews bank statements, pay stubs, and tax forms for tampering. Underwriters see the results of the review in the Ocrolus platform or the Encompass embedded viewer where they already review the file. Ocrolus has leveraged its integration with Resistant AI to enable Detect to spot documents that are created or edited by generative AI. Unfortunately, Generative AI makes it easy and inexpensive to produce false financial documents across different types of lending. Ocrolus has determined that 12% of loan applications processed via its platform contain suspicious activity. Detect determines both what a document says and how it was created, and gives each document an authenticity score with reason codes to indicate to the underwriter where…