Thought Machine Inks Partnership with DXC Technology

Thought Machine Inks Partnership with DXC Technology
  • Banking technology company Thought Machine has teamed up with technology services provider DXC Technology.
  • The two companies are offering a joint solution that combines DXC Technology’s industry expertise with Thought Machine’s core banking platform, Vault Core, and payments processing platform, Vault Payments.
  • London-based Thought Machine made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2018.

A newly available joint solution from banking technology company Thought Machine and technology services provider DXC Technology will help small and medium-sized banks initiate and complete their digital transformations faster. The solution combines DXC Technology’s industry expertise and full-service management with Thought Machine’s core banking technology platform, Vault Core, and its payments processing platform, Vault Payments.

“This collaboration underscores our dedication to leveraging next-generation technology to enable banks to modernize faster and deliver exceptional financial products,” Thought Machine Global Head of Partnerships Randy McFarlane said. “With modern core systems, banks are empowered to develop more innovative, customer-centric services with speed and ease. We are excited to work with DXC to accelerate banking transformation and build the future of financial services globally.”

Vault Core is Thought Machine’s cloud-native core banking platform. As a cloud-agnostic solution, Vault Core gives banks the flexibility they need to select their preferred hosting option and provider. Institutions can leverage the technology to replicate their current back book of products, as well as create new financial products such as savings accounts, credit cards, loans, and mortgages. Vault Payments is the firm’s cloud-native payments processing platform and enables banks to work with all payment types regardless of method, scheme, or region. The technology embeds new and existing financial products into the payments platform, and gives users control over the entire payment life cycle.

The joint solution is designed to help smaller and midsized banks and financial institutions compete with their larger, global rivals who are able to build innovative, proprietary platforms in-house. Given the obstacles of complex vendor ecosystems and legacy infrastructures, the new offering from Thought Machine and DXC provides smaller and midsized bank with a one-stop managed service offering the technology, tools, and human talent to help them modernize legacy core banking systems, get new digital products to market faster, and ensure operational efficiency and compliance.

“With more than 45 years of experience in banking operations, DXC is deeply committed to delivering best-in-class digital solutions to the world’s leading financial institutions,” DXC Technology President, Global Infrastructure Services, Chris Drumgoole said. “Our joint solution with Thought Machine provides a comprehensive, future-ready path to modernization—enabling banks to accelerate innovation, improve operational efficiency, and reduce risk.”

Virginia-based DXC Technology partners with companies around the world to help them modernize IT systems, optimize data architectures, and ensure both security and scalability across public, private, and hybrid clouds. With more than 200 technology partners, DXC was created in 2017 in the wake of the merger between Computer Sciences Corporation and Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Enterprise Services business.

Headquartered in London, UK, Thought Machine made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2018. In the years since then, the company has grown into a leading core banking and payments technology provider for banks and financial institutions around the world, including Intesa Sanpaolo, Lloyds Banking Group, Standard Chartered, Lunar, Atom bank, and more.


Photo by David Besh

Carrington Labs Partners with Taktile to Enhance Credit Risk Strategies for Lenders

Carrington Labs Partners with Taktile to Enhance Credit Risk Strategies for Lenders
  • Credit risk analytics company Carrington Labs has teamed up with decision platform Taktile to help lenders optimize their credit risk strategies.
  • Lenders will be able to access Carrington Labs’ custom models directly from Taktile’s platform, enabling them to gain a better, more complete financial picture of loan applicants.
  • Carrington Labs made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall 2024 in New York. The company is headquartered in Sydney, Australia.

Credit risk analytics company Carrington Labs announced a partnership with decision platform Taktile to help lenders optimize their credit risk strategies for both consumer and SMB loans. Carrington Labs offers custom models that analyze a wide variety of data types—including transaction data, credit bureau data, and behavioral insights—to give lenders a more comprehensive understanding of a would-be borrower’s financial status. This leads to more accurate credit risk scoring, more approvals, and fewer defaults.

“Every lender is looking to modernize their approach to decisioning, offer management, and monitoring. Taktile’s low-code decision platform enables our clients to deploy Carrington Labs models and tools quickly, while also giving lenders much better visibility and control over their process,” Carrington Labs CEO Jamie Twiss said.

Courtesy of the partnership, lenders will be able to access Carrington Labs’ models directly from Taktile’s platform. Firms will be able to combine the models with their own business rules to boost approval accuracy and quantify the probability of default. The models will also help them improve underwriting accuracy and launch faster without requiring major system overhauls or technical implementations. Via a single interface, lenders will have end-to-end control over the optimization of their credit risk strategy.

“I’ve seen how tough it can be for lenders to not only build strong risk models but also connect them to flexible, automated decision workflows,” Taktile CEO and Co-Founder Maik Taro Wehmeyer said. “That’s why I’m excited about our partnership with Carrington Labs. Lenders can now directly integrate their sophisticated credit risk models into the workflows they build on Taktile, making it easier to develop inclusive, data-driven underwriting strategies and continuously improve them at scale.”

Taktile’s technology helps lenders and other financial services companies better manage risk: from onboarding and underwriting to fraud detection, compliance, and collections. The company empowers risk teams to build, test, and update their risk strategies without requiring engineering talent. Companies working with Taktile have reported a 67% reduction in logic deployment time and a 95% reduction in decision time. Headquartered in New York, with offices in Berlin, Germany, and London, Taktile was founded in 2020.

Sydney, Australia-based Carrington Labs made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2024 in New York. At the conference, the company demonstrated its AI-powered, alternative credit risk scoring and loan limit recommendation technology. Carrington Labs leverages non-traditional data, credit expertise, and commercial acumen to provide lenders with a more complete picture of a loan applicant’s creditworthiness. This enables lenders to be more inclusive while at the same time boosting revenues, lowering default rates, and improving margins.

Carrington Labs’ partnership announcement comes just a month after the company reported that it was working with decisioning platform Oscilar to help shorten integration times for lenders and improve credit risk workflows for banks, credit unions, and other financial services providers.


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Supply Wisdom Locks in $14 Million; Introduces New CEO Jenna Wells

Supply Wisdom Locks in $14 Million; Introduces New CEO Jenna Wells
  • Risk intelligence platform Supply Wisdom has secured $14 million in Series B funding in a round led by Jurassic Capital.
  • Supply Wisdom also announced that Chief Operating Officer Jenna Wells has been appointed as the company’s new CEO.
  • Supply Wisdom made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2022 in New York. We interviewed Jenna Wells in March of this year on the subject of third-party risk in financial services.

Risk intelligence innovator Supply Wisdom has raised $14 million in new funding. The company, which made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2022 in New York, also introduced a new CEO, former Chief Operating Officer Jenna Wells. Finovate readers will recall our interview with Wells from earlier this year, in which she discussed the challenge of managing third-party risk in financial services.

“I’m honored to step into this new role during such a pivotal time for our company and the global business community as there is clearly an increased need for strong risk management,” Wells said in a statement announcing both the investment and her new status as Supply Wisdom CEO.

“As both a risk practitioner and leader at Supply Wisdom, I’ve seen firsthand how our AI-powered platform transforms how organizations manage risk across their entire supply chain ecosystem. I’m excited to support Supply Wisdom in continuing to provide comprehensive, predictive risk intelligence that enables businesses to act proactively and confidently in an increasingly complex risk landscape.”

Supply Wisdom offers a full-stack SaaS platform, powered by AI, that helps companies in financial services, insurance, technology and other industries turn open source data into risk intelligence on key third-party relationships. The company’s technology provides continuous monitoring, comprehensive intelligence reports, and alerts that cover all risk domains—financial, cyber, operational, ESG, compliance, Nth party, location—in real-time. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in New York, Supply Wisdom includes companies in the Fortune 100 and Global 2000 among its clients.

The Series B round was led by Jurassic Capital, which joins existing investors Fulcrum Equity Partners and Conductor Capital. Jurassic Capital General Partner Kevin Mosley praised Supply Wisdom as a “high-growth, capital-efficient and innovative company with a strong history of delivering exceptional value for third party risk management departments at leading global firms.” Mosley also expressed excitement at the appointment of Wells as CEO, noting that her “firsthand experience as a customer will continue to pay dividends across the organization.”

Tom Thimot, who led the company as CEO since 2023, will continue to serve the firm in a new role as Advisor to the CEO. In this capacity, Thimot will provide strategic advice to both Wells and Supply Wisdom’s leadership team.

Supply Wisdom’s funding and C-suite leadership news comes in the wake of the company earning a spot in the Inc. Regionals: Northeast list of the fastest-growing private companies in the US Northeast. An extension of the Inc. 5000 roster, the Inc. Regionals: Northeast listing includes firms in Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Jersey.


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17 Alums Raised More Than $1.2 Billion in Q2 2025

17 Alums Raised More Than $1.2 Billion in Q2 2025

Updated (6/24/25)

We back?

There are still a few days left but, so far, in the second quarter of 2025, 17 Finovate alums have raised more than $1.2 billion in new funding. The sum is several times larger than last year’s Q2 investment haul, as we note below, and also featured twice as many alums securing fresh capital.

Previous quarterly comparisons

  • Q2 2024: More than $292 million raised by eight alums
  • Q2 2023: More than $209 million raised by ten alums
  • Q2 2022: More than $984 million raised by eight alums
  • Q2 2021: More than $2.8 billion raised by 14 alums

In fact, Finovate alums in the second quarter of this year raised more than they have in any Q2 since 2021. This quarter also featured three funding rounds in which the amount of the investment was undisclosed. This means that the true tally for alum funding for Q2 exceeds the $1.2 billion headline number—and perhaps by a significant margin.

Top equity investments

  • Plaid: $575 million
  • Scalable Capital: $176 million
  • Thunes: $150 million
  • Stash: $146 million
  • Zopa: $106 million

The $575 million raised by Plaid is far and away the biggest equity investment for Finovate alums in Q2 of 2025. The funding round was led by Franklin Templeton, a new investor to the company, and featured participation from existing investors NEA and Ribbit Capital. The investment was a venture round, in which Plaid sold new shares to address a variety of issues, including providing liquidity to members of the Plaid team, as explained by company CEO and Co-Founder Zach Perret.

Q2 also featured a handful of other significant investments of more than $100 million. Interestingly, the four companies to receive funding in this range in recent months come from either the world of payments (Thunes) or investing (Scalable Capital, Stash, and Zopa). As fintech funding begins to recover, it will be worthwhile to watch and see if these two subsectors of our industry play a major role in leading fintech funding back toward pre-pandemic levels.


Here is our detailed alum funding report for Q2 2025.

April: More than $795 million raised by five alums

May: More than $257 million raised by four alums

June: More than $232 million raised by eight alums

If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the second quarter of 2025 and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at [email protected]. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum not included.


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Fiserv Launches Stablecoin for Banks

Fiserv Launches Stablecoin for Banks
  • Fiserv is leveraging Paxos, Circle, and Solana to launch FIUSD, a new stablecoin integrated into its global banking and payments infrastructure.
  • FIUSD is designed for traditional banks and offers a compliant, SDK-based solution that maintains control over the customer experience while enabling 24/7 settlement and programmable payments.
  • Fiserv is positioning FIUSD as a “bank-friendly coin,” making it possible for banks to participate and compete in the tokenized financial ecosystem.

In a move that signals growing mainstream adoption of digital assets, payments giant Fiserv has unveiled plans to launch its own stablecoin, FIUSD. The Wisconsin-based company is embedding the blockchain-based payments tool directly into its global financial infrastructure by the end of the year.

Fiserv will leverage stablecoin infrastructure from Paxos and Circle and will make FIUSD available to its clients via Web3 infrastructure player Solana. The new stablecoin will be made available at no additional cost to clients, giving them access to a new, interoperable digital asset service to integrate into their banking and payment flows.

Along with today’s announcement, the company also said that it is evaluating the use of tokenized deposits as an alternative to stablecoins. Tokenized deposits offer many of the same advantages that stablecoins do, such as speed, interoperability, and programmability. However, tokenized deposits are designed to align more closely with regulatory and capital requirements. This approach may offer banks a more familiar path to leveraging blockchain-based payment infrastructure without taking on the balance sheet complexities of non-deposit stablecoins.

For traditional banks, FIUSD offers a safe and controlled on-ramp into stablecoins. By partnering with a trusted infrastructure provider like Fiserv, banks can experiment with programmable money without needing to become crypto-native themselves.

Fiserv anticipates FIUSD to scale quickly, as it will be launched across its global network that includes relationships with 10,000 financial institution clients and six million merchant locations that process 90 billion transactions each year. Leveraging stablecoins and tokenized deposits in traditional banking and payments is expected to rapidly expand due to their ability to settle 24/7, streamline processes, increase efficiency, and power use cases where existing options may be limited.

“Through our privileged position as a trusted infrastructure provider to financial institutions, merchants, and their customers worldwide, we are relentlessly focused on delivering state-of-the-art innovation, efficiency, and choice to all of our partners,” said Fiserv Chief Operating Officer Takis Georgakopoulos. “With our scale, reach, and technology leadership, Fiserv is uniquely positioned to advance stablecoin-powered payments and help democratize access to blockchain financial services. Together with our other cloud-native banking and merchant platforms, we believe FIUSD will provide our clients with the efficiency and optionality they need to thrive in the evolving banking and payments ecosystem.”

Fiserv is differentiating FIUSD as a “bank-friendly coin,” stating that it enables banks to maintain full control of the customer experience. Unlike traditional public stablecoins like USDC or USDT, FIUSD is designed specifically for financial institutions. The stablecoin is delivered via an SDK that fits into Fiserv’s existing platforms and offers integrated fraud monitoring, risk tools, and a regulatory-first approach, positioning the stablecoin as a bank-grade alternative that blends innovation with institutional trust.

“FIUSD is designed with our clients in mind, a financial institution-friendly coin that simplifies stablecoin access through a secure and scalable ecosystem,” said Sunil Sachdev, Head of Embedded Finance at Fiserv. “We are excited to begin collaborating with our clients, partners, and other ecosystem players to create modernized financial experiences.”

Fiserv noted that this is the first of “a series of announcements” surrounding digital asset products it plans to release. Notably, the announcement comes the week after the US Congress passed the GENIUS Act, which will serve as a foundation for US banks to participate in a regulated digital asset ecosystem.

The news comes two months after Fiserv acquired Australia-based payment facilitator Pinch Payments. Fiserv has been involved in the payments space since it was founded in 1984. The company serves merchants, banks, and fintechs with payments tools, customer analytics, and fraud prevention technology. Fiserv is publicly listed on the NYSE under the ticker FI and has a market capitalization of $92.3 billion.

With FIUSD, Fiserv is not just staying ahead of the evolution of the DeFi economy, but it is also making it possible for banks to participate and compete in the tokenized financial ecosystem. As one of the first traditional movers in the stablecoin space, Fiserv could set a new benchmark as a bank-grade DeFi provider.


Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News

Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News

It’s the first week of summer, and fintech is heating up.  We’ll continue adding news to this post throughout the week, so stay tuned!


Payments

Open payments platform Spreedly unveils a strategic enhancement to its platform via integration of Just-In-Time Card Updates for Visa Cards powered by Visa Account Updater (VAU).

Walmart-backed PhonePe prepares for $1.5 billion India IPO.

Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha (NYK) agrees to acquire salary payments partner Kadmos Holding. 

Shift4 to acquire Australian payments company Smartpay.

Digital banking

AI-powered conversations platform for community financial institutions (CFIs) Eltropy launches its Collections 2.0 Suite to help CFIs manage rising delinquency rates.

Banking technology company Thought Machine partners with technology services provider DXC Technology.

NayaOne forges a collaboration with Google Cloud.

Cloud-native core banking platform 10x Banking announces strategic partnership with Australian banking software and operations provider Constantinople.

Finom brings in $133 million (€115 million) for its small business banking platform.

Small business technology

Accounting software provider Xero agrees to acquire SMB billpay platform Melio.

SAP Taulia and PayMate partner to enhance payment flexibility for businesses.

Fraud and security

Financial crime compliance company ThetaRay teams up with East African financial services group, I&M Group PLC.

iDenfy partners with MN2S Label Services to enhance the identity verification process.

Wealth management and financial advisory

AI-driven financial planning and advice platform Quinn emerges from stealth with $11 million in seed funding.

Finovate Best of Show winner Trust & Will launches EstateOS, an intelligent platform for modern legacy planning.

Crypto and DeFi

Automated reconciliation and financial control solutions company AutoRek introduces its data management and reconciliation platform for cryptocurrencies and digital assets, Mion.


Photo by Nitin Dhumal

NetGuardians and Intix Merge to Form Vyntra

NetGuardians and Intix Merge to Form Vyntra
  • NetGuardians and Intix have merged to form Vyntra, a new company focused on unifying transaction observability and financial crime prevention for banks and financial institutions.
  • Vyntra will deliver real-time transaction intelligence to help over 130 financial institutions across 60+ countries detect fraud, ensure AML compliance, and resolve payment issues before they impact customers.
  • Vyntra aims to strengthen operational resilience and support instant payments by offering a more transparent, secure, and intelligent financial infrastructure.

Fraud and risk protection company NetGuardians is joining forces with financial messaging platform Intix. The two announced this week that they have merged to form Vyntra, which aims to bring transaction intelligence to financial institutions.

Vyntra combines NetGuardians’ expertise in financial crime prevention with Intix’s transaction observability. Vyntra will help its more than 130 financial institution clients in 60+ countries receive real-time intelligence about their customers based on their transactions.

“Vyntra represents a new chapter—not just for us, but for the financial institutions we serve,” said Vyntra CEO and former Group CEO of both Intix and NetGuardians Joël Winteregg. “Whether it’s monitoring transactions and payment flows, ensuring anti-money laundering (AML) compliance, or detecting fraud as it happens, Vyntra unifies transaction observability and financial crime prevention under one roof. Our mission is simple: to help financial institutions navigate complexity with clarity and protect the integrity of every transaction.”

Vyntra is launching at a time when financial institutions need real-time, full observability of transactions to enhance compliance, reduce risk, and strengthen operational resilience. The company will leverage fraud prevention, AML compliance, and transaction observability to help financial institutions see, secure, and optimize every transaction in real time. The intelligence will also help firms protect instant payment networks and detect and resolve payment issues before they impact customers.

“The merger of NetGuardians and Intix was designed to support a safer and more transparent financial system,” said Gisle Glück Evensen, Partner at Summa Equity. “Now, as Vyntra, this vision becomes a reality. We’re proud to support the team as they lead the way in transaction observability and financial crime prevention.”

Switzerland-based NetGuardians offers tools to help companies reduce payment and internal fraud and monitor transactions to meet AML requirements. The company also provides its own NetGuardians Community Scoring and Intelligence service that generates actionable insights to help firms expand their risk signals.


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The GENIUS Act Passes: 4 Things This Means for Banks and Fintechs

The GENIUS Act Passes: 4 Things This Means for Banks and Fintechs

The GENIUS Act passed in the US Senate yesterday with a 68 to 30 vote. The bill now moves to the House, where it’s up against the STABLE Act. This means that the House will need to choose between passing the GENIUS Act at face value or passing and reconciling the STABLE Act. 

For financial services, the GENIUS Act is a big deal. That’s because it is not only the first stablecoin legislation to gain real bipartisan traction, but it will also serve as a foundation for the US to begin a digital asset ecosystem. Overall, there are four major implications the bill has on banks.

Stablecoins gain legitimacy and clarity

As a decentralized finance tool, stablecoins have long been grouped together with their crypto cousin bitcoin. Because of this, many traditional financial institutions in the US have shied away from associating themselves with stablecoins.

The GENIUS Act, however, offers both banks and fintechs a clearer legal framework to issue and use stablecoins since it outlines requirements for licensing, reserves, and oversight. Having regulation on their side reduces regulatory uncertainty and will encourage financial institutions to adopt the new payments tool and leverage stablecoins for new use cases. Reducing ambiguity around compliance and risk will also benefit firms exploring tokenization.

Banks may face new competition from Special Purpose Depository Institutions

The Senate version of the bill includes a controversial provision allowing Special Purpose Depository Institutions (SPDIs), such as Kraken, to operate across US states without the approval of each host state’s banking regulator.

If the bill is successful, it will allow fintechs with SPDI licenses to gain a regulatory shortcut because they do not need to comply with capital and liquidity requirements. This may erode the role of traditional banks in certain payment and custody markets and may not be a positive change.

“That is a pretty significant expansion of special purpose depository institutions,” Klaros Group Partner Michele Alt told American Banker. “I would ask, what else could you create as a special depository institution? How could this be used?” 

Notably, however, even though the bill has passed through the Senate, the House’s version of the stablecoin bill doesn’t include a similar provision. This means that if the bill does pass through the House, the House and the Senate will need to convene for a conference to come to an agreement. 

Rising expectations for real-time money movement

While consumers already expect many things in real-time, the GENIUS Act adds more pressure for banks and fintechs to deliver faster, more programmable payments. The bill will enable regulated stablecoins and essentially facilitate real-time settlement, 24/7 money movement, and programmable financial interactions.

This method of funds transfer won’t rely on traditional rails like ACH, wires, or even FedNow. If end users and businesses get accustomed to real-time, programmable payments, their expectations may be permanently shifted, requiring banks to keep up.

This adjustment would be tricky for banks, as many would need to invest in infrastructure that supports tokenized payments, smart contracts, and on-chain compliance.

Banks need to stay agile

If the House does not pass the GENIUS Act, it can advance its own bill in the form of the STABLE Act or negotiate a compromise. Either way, regulatory change is clearly in motion. Banks and fintechs should closely monitor the developments and begin scenario planning now. Whether it’s the GENIUS Act, the STABLE Act, or a hybrid outcome, stablecoin regulation is on the horizon. Those who prepare early will be best positioned to compete in a tokenized financial future.


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Grifin Lands $11 Million to Help Users Invest as they Shop

Grifin Lands $11 Million to Help Users Invest as they Shop
  • Grifin raised $11 million in Series A funding to grow its investing app that allows users to invest where they shop, bringing its total funding to $20 million.
  • The app uses Adaptive Investing to automatically invest $1 per purchase into companies users buy from, helping them build daily investing habits.
  • Grifin targets underserved investors, especially women ages 40 to 60.

Approachable investing app Grifin announced that it raised $11 million this week to help users invest where they shop. The Series A funding round, which brings the company’s total raised to $20 million, was led by Nava Ventures with participation from TTV, Draper Associates, Gaingels, Nevcaut Ventures, and Alloy Labs.

Grifin will use today’s funding to hire employees, partner with HR platforms and consumer brands, build family plans, and build out more tools and experiences to add to the app.

“We are thrilled to partner with Grifin in their mission to make investing fit into the daily lives of people across the country,” said Freddie Martignetti, Partner at Nava Ventures. “With more than 178 million uninvested Americans, Grifin has the potential to make a remarkably positive impact by helping their app users lay the foundation for long-term wealth building.”

Martignetti will join Grifin’s Board of Directors.

Grifin was founded in 2017 to make investing fun by allowing shoppers to invest in a portion of the brands they purchase from. The company removes complexity and fear associated with investing by building an investment portfolio based on the consumer’s purchasing habits. Grifin automatically transfers $1 for every transaction the user makes during the week, then invests the funds into their portfolio that is comprised of companies from which the user purchases. Grifin calls this approach Adaptive Investing.

With Adaptive Investing, Grifin creates a dynamic investment portfolio that is uniquely personalized to the user and their everyday habits. As the user’s shopping habits change, Grifin adapts the portfolio. The company also offers users full control on how much and in which companies they invest, allowing them to block companies and manually adjust their investment amount.

“We have always believed that investing should be positive and fun. Where it doesn’t feel like a second job, it simply feels like second nature,” said Grifin CEO and Cofounder Aaron Froug. “Unlike traditional investing, Grifin instills confidence through action and connection. Our goal with Grifin is to build daily investment habits, different mindsets and change the relationship people have with the brands they love. This new funding enables us the fuel to scale a product that’s already proven its power to increase investing habits in a whole new way.”

Grifin is targeting the 86% of Americans that don’t directly own any stock, and says that its primary investor group is women between the ages of 40 and 60. The company has added 500,000 registered users and has seen more than 100,000 new app installs in the last month alone.

Grifin differs from investing companies like Acorns by focusing on emotional connection and brand loyalty rather than rounding up spare change. While Acorns emphasizes passive micro-investing based on leftover change, Grifin actively builds a portfolio based on where users actually shop, which turns consumer behavior into their personalized investment strategy. This approach not only builds financial habits but also helps users feel more connected to their investments, making the process more engaging and meaningful.


Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

Icon Solutions Secures Investment from UBS

Icon Solutions Secures Investment from UBS
  • Payments company Icon Solutions has secured a new equity investment in a round led by UBS. Citi and NatWest, existing Icon Solutions investors, also participated.
  • The investment will help Icon Solutions bring its Icon Payments Framework (IPF) to more banks to enable them to develop and deploy new payment processing solutions faster.
  • Headquartered in the UK, Icon Solutions made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2017.

UK-based paytech Icon Solutions announced a new equity investment led by Swiss bank UBS. Citi and NatWest, current Icon Solutions investors, also contributed funding. The amount of the total investment was not disclosed.

“This investment round is further endorsement of our founding belief that banks should be empowered to lead their own payments transformation,” Icon Solutions Co-Founder and Director Tom Kelleher said. “With IPF now internationally proven and increasingly adopted by major financial institutions, we look forward to continuing our close partnerships with Citi, NatWest, and UBS to build on this global momentum and deliver truly innovative and ground-breaking payments solutions.”

Both Citi and NatWest have deployed Icon Solutions’ Icon Payments Framework (IPF) to enhance their respective payments programs. IPF offers banks a payments development framework that enables them to build, test, and deploy payment processing solutions faster, allowing them to accelerate the transformation of their own payments infrastructure.

“This investment reinforces our partnership with Icon and confirms our commitment to deliver faster to market, future-ready payment solutions for our clients,” UBS Head of Group Operations and Technology Office for Personal & Corporate Banking and GWM Switzerland & International Pieter Brouwer said. “The collaboration helps us drive innovation at scale and enhances our capabilities for seamless instant payments and advanced transaction processing.”

Founded in 2009, Icon Solutions demoed its technology at FinovateEurope 2017 in London. The company’s core solution—the Icon Payments Framework—is a payment development framework relied upon by tier 1 banks around the world including Citi, NatWest, BNP Paribas, and UBS. Built to integrate seamlessly with multiple payment schemes, IPF helps financial institutions accelerate transformation of their payment infrastructure, while maintaining control of both timeline and costs. Cloud and ISO 20022-native, IPF reduces cost of ownership by up to 50%, accelerates speed to market by up to 4x, and enables real-time payments adoption in six months.

This spring, Icon Solutions introduced new Director of People Hannah McKechnie. Formerly Head of HR for the company, McKechnie, in her new role, will oversee Icon’s ‘People and Purpose’ programs, including support for Icon’s partnerships with the Social Mobility Foundation and with purpose-led technology training and services company Digital Futures.


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Pendo Unveils AI Agent Performance Analytics Solution

Pendo Unveils AI Agent Performance Analytics Solution
  • Software experience management platform Pendo launched its Pendo Agent Analytics solution today.
  • The new offering enables companies to analyze and review the performance of their AI agents as well as measure the adoption rates of the technology.
  • Pendo made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022. The company is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina.

How effective are your AI agents really? A new offering from software experience management platform Pendo is designed to answer that question.

Pendo Agent Analytics, introduced today, enables companies to measure the performance of their AI agents and to measure the adoption of their agentic AI technology as readily as they do for their SaaS applications.

“The shift to intelligent software is happening faster than we could ever imagine, and enterprises are faced with improving their SaaS applications, while accelerating agent and AI innovation,” Pendo CEO and Co-Founder Todd Olson said. “I’m proud that we are supporting customers wherever they are on their transformation journey.”

The new offering is designed to provide companies with systems to help them better understand and optimize the way AI agents have become a part of org charts, workflows, and product roadmaps. From IT teams that have compliance and productivity concerns, to R&D teams focused on business outcomes, achieving greater transparency in AI agent operations is a critical step in the road to broader and more effective adoption of the technology.

To this end, Pendo Agent Analytics provides metrics and reports that track both homegrown and third-party agent operations along with usage of traditional software. The technology also provides insight into how users act before and after they interact with an agent, analyzes conversations with agents to identify prompt trends, and maps agent usage to task completion to help measure ROI.

Headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, Pendo made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022. At the conference, the company demonstrated how its platform helps firms analyze, assess, and act to enhance software investments across online, mobile, SaaS, AI, and agentic applications. With more than 14,000 companies in 163 countries around the world using Pendo’s technology, the company has collected a total of 23 trillion events, providing a wealth of insights for training conversational AI and agentic software systems.

Pendo’s new product offering comes as the company announced a raft of platform enhancements designed to meet the needs of the “agentic era” of AI. These included AI agent deployment tools, optimized user acquisition tools, enhanced support analysis and AI-powered bug reporting, and improved data cleanliness and insights integration.

“Nearly every week our teams are showing me new prototypes and ideas for the future of Pendo. Our summer release includes so much of that work, new features and products that will improve your SaaS foundation and set you up with a strong AI foundation,” Olson said.


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Grammarly Taps Gr4vy to Power Modular, Scalable Payments

Grammarly Taps Gr4vy to Power Modular, Scalable Payments
  • Grammarly is partnering with Gr4vy to streamline its checkout experience using no-code, cloud-based payment infrastructure, giving it access to 400+ payment service providers without requiring custom integrations.
  • The move reduces development time, lowers transaction costs, and improves approval rates, while also automating recurring billing and maintaining PCI compliance.
  • This partnership highlights a growing trend of software companies using modular payment orchestration to boost agility, conversion, and retention.

Payments infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) company Gr4vy announced today that AI writing assistance platform Grammarly has selected to use it to enhance its checkout experience. Grammarly will use Gr4vy’s no-code cloud system to create bespoke checkout experiences for its users.

Gr4vy will offer Grammarly access to multiple payment service providers (PSPs) without having to directly integrate them into its checkout. This will not only save Grammarly time in the form of development and maintenance, but it will also allow the company to select from the more than 400 different PSPs in Gr4vy’s network. Eliminating the need for Grammarly to use custom-built PSP connections will lower transaction costs, increase approval rates, and speed up time-to-market.

“Grammarly’s decision to use our platform is a testament to the simplicity and flexibility we offer, as well as our ability to deliver efficient and scalable solutions that will drive customer growth and retention,” said Gr4vy’s Founder and CEO John Lunn. “We are thrilled to empower Grammarly with the flexibility it needs to optimize payment processes while focusing on its core mission of helping people and teams do their best work.”

Gr4vy is cloud-native, PCI Level 1-compliant, and enables merchants to set up dedicated instances in specific regions to improve transaction speed and comply with data localization laws. Founded in 2020, the company provides businesses access to a range of PSPs, offers anti-fraud tools, and helps payment service providers optimize their payment stack without the need for IT expertise. In 2022, the California-based company was awarded Top Emerging Fintech Company at the Finovate Awards. Earlier this year, Gr4vy partnered with bike manufacturer Trek to power an online-to-offline payment experience and offer consumers accurate inventory checks and simplified checkout.

In addition to leveraging Gr4vy’s PSP network, Grammarly will also use the payment fintech’s hosted payment fields to securely collect sensitive card data and ensure PCI compliance. Additionally, Grammarly will use Gr4vy’s Account Updater to handle recurring billing transactions efficiently, automating the management of expired cards and ensuring uninterrupted subscription service.

Today’s payments partnership mirrors a broader trend of software companies embracing modular, cloud-native infrastructure to stay agile. When creating a frictionless user experience is paramount and when recurring revenue models are increasingly common, enabling payments orchestration can directly impact conversion rates and retention. The partnership is a good example of how smart payment orchestration is evolving from an operational function into a strategic advantage.


Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash