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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Gusto is partnering with SymphonyAI to bring enterprise-grade financial crime protection to its 400,000+ small and mid-sized business clients.
SymphonyAI’s risk intelligence platform gives Gusto’s clients faster detection, deeper visibility, and fewer false positives across fraud, AML, and sanctions monitoring.
The partnership marks Gusto’s evolution beyond payroll, strengthening its risk management capabilities and expanding its role as a full-scale financial operations platform.
Payroll, benefits, and HR management solutions company Gusto is bringing new benefits to its small business customers today. The California-based company is teaming up with SymphonyAI to offer its small business clients another tool to fight financial crime.
SymphonyAI’s financial crime and risk intelligence platform offers financial crime detection, investigation, and reporting capabilities to more than 2,000 enterprise customers across the globe, including 200 of the top financial institutions. The tools give compliance teams a synchronized view of risk across fraud, AML, and sanctions. As a result, organizations benefit from faster investigations, fewer false positives, and greater transparency.
“Small businesses deserve enterprise-grade protection, and SymphonyAI helps us deliver exactly that,” said Gusto’s Head of Financial Crime Compliance and AML/BSA Officer John Wiethorn. “Their platform gives our team deeper visibility and faster insight so we can stay ahead of risk and keep our customers’ operations safe and seamless.”
SymphonyAI’s financial crime platform enables Gusto’s compliance team to analyze massive transaction volumes, identify risks faster, and minimize false positives on its 400,000+ small- and mid-sized business clients.
“Gusto’s implementation shows how vertical AI delivers tangible, immediate impact,” said SymphonyAI President of the Financial Services Division John Edison. “Our platform automates the entire financial crime lifecycle—from detection and investigation to compliance and reporting—unifying processes that have historically been fragmented. This end-to-end automation is transforming how institutions fight financial crime, improving speed, accuracy, and operational efficiency.”
Gusto, originally known as ZenPayroll, was founded in 2011 to provide a cloud-based payroll, benefits, and HR management solution. The company’s tools help businesses track time and attendance, onboard new employees, manage existing talent, and more. Earlier this fall, Gusto acquired retirement specialist Guideline.
Adding SymphonyAI’s capabilities to its lineup will strengthen Gusto’s risk management framework and mark another step in its evolution from payroll processor to full-scale financial operations platform.
The International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) is out with a new report that highlights both the promise and the potential hazards of the tokenization of financial assets.
In a world in which stablecoins have increasingly defined innovation in the cryptocurrency/blockchain space, tokenization of financial assets is seen by some as the Next Big Thing in decentralized finance. Tokenization of financial assets refers to the process of representing ownership of a traditional financial asset, such as a share of stock or a bond, as a digital token on a distributed ledger or blockchain. Importantly, although tokenized assets can be transferred, traded, or exchanged between parties electronically, these assets are not cryptocurrencies—they are digital representations of regulated financial assets.
Valued for their ability to bring greater efficiency to the payments process—as well as their transparency, programmability, and potential to support financial inclusion via fractionalization—tokenized financial assets remain a new feature on the financial services scene. As such, there are myriad questions about how they can and should be used, as well as how they should be regulated. In their recent report, IOSCO, via its Fintech Task Force (FTF) and Financial Asset Tokenization Working Group (TWG) raised a number of these questions.
“The analysis shows that the majority of risks arising from the current commercial application of tokenization fall into existing risk taxonomies,” the report reads in its Executive Summary. “Market participants are not unfamiliar with managing such risk types. However, the manifestation of vulnerabilities and risks that are unique to the technology itself may require the introduction of new or additional controls to manage them.”
Here are three top takeaways from the IOSCO report on the tokenization of financial assets.
Legal Uncertainty and Ownership Rights
The biggest concern expressed in the report is the idea that there remains significant legal ambiguity about the tokenization of financial assets. This includes questions about the rights of ownership, transferability, and enforceability of claims.
“While there are currently well-established legal frameworks and structures for the treatment of financial assets created in paper certificate or book-entry form,” the report observes. “It can be unclear whether the existing legal treatment … applies to those created or represented in the form of tokens.”
In the absence of greater clarity on these legal framework issues, investors may find themselves unable to price or trade tokenized financial assets with confidence. This, at a minimum, can create asymmetry between investor expectations and outcomes and, at a maximum, contribute to more systemic uncertainty and challenges.
Infrastructure Risks and Operational Vulnerabilities
The second major risk discussed in the IOSCO report has to do with infrastructure risk, and the concerns range from the operational to the malicious. In either case, however, a major event that exposes these technical vulnerabilities could result in assets becoming permanently lost or cause an even wider market disruption.
Much of this concern is related to the relative newness of distributed ledger technology, as well as to some unique aspects of the technology compared to what is found in traditional financial markets. One example is the potential loss of a private key in a token structure, a phenomenon that does not exist in the world of traditional finance. The loss of a private key, which represents a sort of digital signature or ownership credential, would effectively result in the loss of access to the asset. To that end, a stolen private key would enable a criminal to steal the victim’s tokens.
“These assets face operational vulnerabilities and risks unique to this infrastructure, including cyber-attacks on blockchain nodes, congestion in transaction processing, data leakage, market fragmentation, smart contract bugs, and loss of private keys,” the report explains. “As tokenization scales up, regulators should also be cognizant of possible changes in market activities and market structure.”
Market Interconnectedness and Systemic Risk
A third concern is the creation of new dependencies and greater interconnectedness between market participants that is likely to happen as tokenization of financial assets scales. There are two versions of this. As an example of the first version, the report notes that a critical failure of a shared infrastructure, with multiple financial institutions tokenizing assets on the same blockchain network, could impact all tokenized assets on the network, rendering them temporarily or even permanently inaccessible.
Another example of the potential interconnectedness challenge arises as tokenized financial assets are increasingly used as collateral in cryptocurrency markets or as part of a stablecoin reserve. Here, the concern is that a crisis in the cryptocurrency markets such as a major or sustained stablecoin depeg could affect tokenized money market funds or government bonds being used as backing assets. The impact could readily spread to institutional investors with tokenized holdings, who would become involuntarily exposed to the heightened volatility of the crypto market.
Innovating for Known Unknowns
The quote from the report’s executive summary helps keep these and other concerns raised in the report in the proper context. While some challenges are more daunting, others more likely represent the kind of technological gauntlet that any product, service, or network must overcome as it scales. “Such risks and controls have been acknowledged by issuers and operators,” the report itself notes. That said, clear legal frameworks will be essential for addressing the broader challenges facing tokenized financial assets and unlocking their potential benefits.
Business verification specialist Dotfile has teamed up with fraud prevention firm Trustfull.
The partnership will integrate Trustfull’s risk-scoring API within Dotfile’s business verification platform to help businesses fight synthetic identity fraud.
Headquartered in Paris, France, Dotfile demoed its technology at FinovateEurope 2024 in London.
End-to-end business verification company Dotfile has partnered with fraud prevention firm Trustfull to help fight a synthetic fraud problem that analysts believe will cost businesses $23 billion by 2030.
“As the lines between AML compliance and fraud prevention continue to blur, financial institutions are increasingly looking for integrated solutions to help them stay ahead of risk without compromising user experience,” Dotfile CEO Vasco Alexandre said. “In Trustfull, we’ve found the ideal partner to meet that need. Our teams share a clear vision for secure, seamless onboarding and a deep commitment to customer-centricity, making our collaboration a success from day one.”
Synthetic identity fraud takes place when fraudsters combine authentic and counterfeit personal information to create fake user profiles and bypass standard identity verification checks. The partnership will integrate Trustfull’s risk-scoring API within Dotfile’s business verification platform. This will enable clients to identify synthetic identities and other suspicious behavior discreetly and in real time. Trustfull’s AI agents leverage the analysis of hundreds of open source intelligence datapoints from users’ phone numbers, emails, IP addresses, and web domains to flag high-risk signups and bolster KYC, KYB, and AML workflows.
For businesses onboarding customers at scale—such as traditional and challenger banks, BNPL providers, crypto platforms, and payment providers—the new integrated solution from Dotfile and Trustfull will help them find a balance between effective fraud fighting and a seamless customer experience. Trustfull’s risk scoring functionality is currently available to both new and existing Dotfile customers, providing a unified solution that combines risk scoring, fraud prevention, ID verification, UBO mapping, AML screening, and onboarding workflows in a single streamlined offering.
“Getting onboarding right is non-negotiable for today’s digital companies,” Trustfull CEO Marko Maras said. “By integrating Trustfull’s risk scoring solution within Dotfile’s market-leading platform, we’re giving fintechs a single, integrated way to detect and stop synthetic identities and high-risk users at the first touchpoint with the customer, preventing fraud while protecting signup conversion in one single step.”
Trustfull analyzes digital footprint data from customer interactions to help businesses reduce risk and accelerate growth. The company’s technology leverages combined and silent phone, email, IP, device, browser, and domain checks to identify fraud and financial crime across the customer journey. Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Milan, Italy, Trustfull receives more than one million API requests a day, and leverages 500+ open data sources to provide a 95% fraud detection rate. With more than $13 million in capital raised, Trustfull counts ING Bank, Scalapay, and Elavon among its enterprise clients.
Headquartered in Paris, France, and founded in 2021, Dotfile demonstrated its end-to-end business verification platform at FinovateEurope 2024. Dotfile’s technology enables businesses to streamline the verification and onboarding process, automatically evaluating risk profiles and addressing and managing risk in real time. Companies using Dotfile’s platform can automate KYB and AML processes, reduce fraud, access quality data, and secure compliance all from a single platform.
Dotfile serves more than 80 financial institutions across 15 countries. With 3x year-over-year revenue growth, the French fintech has raised €8.5 million ($9.8 million) in funding from investors including Serena Capital and Seaya Ventures.
FintechOS and Finastra have forged a strategic partnership designed to modernize the account origination process for small businesses and consumers.
The partnership will integrate the Finastra Phoenix core system and MalauzAI Digital Banking into the FintechOS platform.
Finastra was formed via a merger between D+H Corporation and Finovate alum Misys in 2017. FintechOS has been a Finovate alum since FinovateFall 2021.
A newly announced strategic partnership between FintechOS and Finastra will help modernize the account origination process for small businesses and consumers. The pact will integrate both the Finastra Phoenix core system and MalauzAI Digital Banking into the FintechOS platform to make the account opening process faster, easier, and more secure for both in-person and online applicants.
“Our collaboration with Finastra is a direct response to the market’s demand for faster innovation,” FintechOS SVP of Growth Ash Govindia said. “By integrating our low-code digital onboarding and origination platform with Finastra’s core system, we are empowering financial institutions to launch sophisticated, customer-centric products in weeks, not months.”
The combination of a reliable core and digital banking system with a low-code origination platform and AI-powered product engine will help institutions avoid issues common to both traditional and online account opening processes. The integration will enable Finastra customers to configure pricing, tiers, bundles, and eligibility rules, and publish them to mobile, web, and banker-assisted journeys. This will reduce time to market and make operations less complex. The combined capabilities will be available to joint customers of both companies.
“Our goal is to help community and regional financial institutions deliver compelling experiences wherever customers engage,” Finastra General Manager, US Core and Digital Banking, Joe Gomez, said. “FintechOS complements Phoenix and MalauzAI by adding a flexible product and pricing layer that simplifies account opening while supporting personalized offers across channels. Together we make it easier to innovate while maximizing existing investments.”
Headquartered in London, Finastra leverages its expertise in lending, payments, universal banking, treasury, and capital markets to provide software solutions to more than 8,000 customers in more than 130 countries. This includes 45 of the world’s top 50 banks. Formed in a merger between Misys and D+H Corporation in 2017, the company recently announced a partnership with Belize Bank Group, which has deployed the company’s cloud-native core banking solution, Essence.
FintechOS made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2021 and returned to the stage earlier this year for FinovateFall 2025. Based in London and founded in 2017, the company offers an AI-driven product engine that integrates seamlessly into banks’ existing systems. The technology features low-code capabilities and composable architecture that facilitate rapid digital transformation and innovation without replacing current core infrastructure. Last month, the company announced that it has forged a strategic partnership with HCLTech to accelerate digital transformation and core modernization for banks and insurers.
CB Insights is out with its State of Insurtech Q3’25 report. The top takeaway? With the total number of deals down and merger and acquisition activity at record highs, the insurtech industry appears to be reorganizing to maximize the opportunities of scale, digital modernization, and market reach.
Deals Down
According to CB Insights’ research, the number of insurtech deals dropped to its lowest level since the second quarter of 2016. Q3’25 featured 76 insurtech deals, 65% less than the industry’s peak of 219 deals in the first quarter of 2021.
In addition to the number of deals being down, the median insurtech deal size has also decreased on a year-to-date basis from $3.8 million in 2024 to $2.9 million in 2025. The report indicates that a diminished early-stage pipeline is to blame. Year-to-date, 60% of all deals have gone to early-stage startups, the lowest deal-share percentage since 2011.
Lastly, the number of active investors in insurtech in Q3’25 shrank to the fewest since the first quarter of 2017. Especially notable was the quarter-over-quarter decline in investors making multiple investments, from 13 in Q2’25 to 4 in Q3’25.
Mergers and Acquisitions Up
At the same time, M&A activity in insurtech was on a tear, reaching its highest levels in three years. There were 21 insurtech M&A deals in Q3’25—the most since Q3’22 when there were 23 deals. This compares favorably to 16 deals in Q2’25. The report notes that the gains in the third quarter of this year helped reverse a trend of decreasing M&A activity between 2022 and 2024.
The reasons for the uptick in M&A activity are varied and interesting. Some analysts have suggested that business leaders are becoming increasingly confident in dealing with uncertainty and have embraced a “move through uncertainty” mentality, in the words of WTW analyst Jana Mercereau. Other factors include high stock market valuations, which can facilitate acquisitions; relatively stable interest rates; and the relatively weak M&A period from 2022 to 2024. The drive for digital modernization also plays a role. For its part, CB Insights offers an intriguing idea that the relative lack of attention from investors gave established insurance companies the opportunity to “engage more closely with emerging insurtechs.”
Insurtech in Q4 and Beyond
Heading into the final quarter of the year, there are a number of questions for insurtechs and many of them mirror concerns and issues in fintech more broadly. Which companies are actually putting AI to work in interesting use cases, and which are still in a pilot phase purgatory? How well are investors and establishment insurance companies recognizing where the value lies? How will evolving regulatory requirements incentivize regtechs to develop innovative compliance solutions for insurers? These are some of the questions that come to mind when reading CB Insights latest insurtech report. It will be interesting to see how the events of the fourth quarter and beyond help us answer them.
We have two more weeks until the holiday season slowdown, but the fintech news pulse is already beginning to slacken. So far this week, we’re seeing a lot of news in the fraud and compliance spaces, as well as the payments subsector, with Visa and Mastercard reaching a revised $38 billion settlement with merchants. Here is some of the biggest news from this week so far. We’ll continue adding news to this post throughout the week, so stay tuned!
Fraud and security
Agent IQenhances fraud prevention capabilities with integrated risk-based authentication platform from IDScan.net.
Paystand has acquired Bitwage to create a Global Autonomous Finance Network that combines accounts receivable, accounts payable, FX, and treasury management into one decentralized system.
The deal strengthens Paystand’s stablecoin capabilities, enabling instant global payments, on-chain treasury management, and lower transaction costs for businesses operating across borders.
As stablecoin adoption surges, today’s deal validates that stablecoins are not speculative assets, but rather reliable, programmable payment instruments.
Cloud-based billing and payment platform Paystand is acquiring blockchain payments company Bitwage this week. The California-based company will leverage Bitwage to build a Global Autonomous Finance Network to offer a decentralized, programmable foreign exchange and treasury engine.
Bitwage was founded in 2014 and has since helped more than 90,000 workers and 4,500 businesses send and receive payments across almost 200 countries. The company facilitates stablecoins, bitcoin, and fiat currencies, linking both sides of the ledger in one programmable platform.
Founded in 2013, Paystand was created to eliminate fees, digitize the cash cycle, and create a self-driving money experience for businesses. The company offers B2B payments and billing capabilities, helping businesses leverage the blockchain to securely record their payment history by certifying and notarizing payments on the blockchain. Over the past few years, Paystand has connected 1+ million businesses and processed billions in volume.
Bringing on Bitwage’s technology will enable Paystand to help businesses scale their stablecoins operations. Specifically, clients will be able to make global payments instantly within Paystand’s accounts receivable (AR)/accounts payable (AP) network, handle treasury management with on-chain settlement, maintain compliance, and lower costs. Notably, the integration will also offer a more connected finance stack that merges AR, AP, payouts, foreign exchange, and treasury in a single, borderless system.
“This is how modern business should move money, from manufacturers in China, to suppliers in Argentina, to developers in Kenya, and everywhere in between,” said Paystand CEO and co-founder Jeremy Almond. “From invoices to payroll, from spending to earning, we’re building a financial system that works like software: 24/7, decentralized, and borderless.”
Paystand selected Bitwage because it has been using the company for years to pay international vendors and contractors in stablecoins. Some employees, including Almond, even received portions of their paycheck and bonuses in Bitcoin.
Logistically, Bitwage employees will join the Paystand team.
The acquisition comes at a time when stablecoin usage and regulation are rising. According to Paystand, the value of stablecoins in circulation has grown by more than 50% since early 2023, while over $7 trillion in stablecoin transactions were processed last year, surpassing even PayPal’s volume. At the same time, new legislation such as the GENIUS Act in the US and MiCA in the EU are offering regulatory clarity.
When mainstream adoption and policy momentum are converging, digital dollars are becoming a core part of global commerce. Paystand’s purchase of Bitwage validates that stablecoins are not speculative assets, but rather reliable, programmable payment instruments that can lower costs, reduce settlement times, and connect businesses and workers across borders in real time.
Digital experience analytics company Glassbox has acquired anomaly detection and business monitoring firm Anodot. Terms of the deal were not available.
Glassbox will integrate Anodot’s engine into its platform to help businesses monitor and better understand customer behavior.
Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Virginia, Anodot made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2022 in London.
Digital experience analytics provider Glassbox announced its acquisition of Anodot, a provider of real-time anomaly detection and business monitoring. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
The integration of Anodot’s engine will enable Glassbox to detect more granular shifts in user behavior in order to spot patterns across digital experiences. This will help the firm identify a range of behaviors that could impact the business, providing early warning of potential customer friction, system underperformance, or conversion declines. These insights will help product, UX, DevOps, and analytics teams make informed decisions and provide them with the built-in workflow integrations they need to accelerate response times.
“As enterprises increasingly rely on digital channels to engage customers, Glassbox has become essential for understanding and shaping customer behavior,” Glassbox CEO Guy Perry said. “By integrating Anodot’s advanced anomaly detection into our platform, we’re enabling customers to automatically uncover and proactively react to even the smallest shifts in user behavior. This acquisition reinforces our commitment to helping our customers deliver exceptional, frictionless digital experiences at scale.”
Glassbox’s acquisition is the first big move for Perry, who joined the company as CEO last month. Perry was previously CEO and president of trade finance software company Surecomp and, before that, held senior leadership roles at NCR Global and Motorola Solutions. In his appointment announcement, Perry underscored Glassbox’s “world-class technology, deep expertise, and truly customer-centric culture” and the firm’s ability to “redefine how organizations turn digital insights into meaningful outcomes.”
Headquartered in London and founded in 2010, Glassbox offers an AI-driven platform that captures, analyzes, and optimizes user interactions across digital channels. The company’s technology helps organizations enhance digital experiences for customers, boost brand loyalty, and improve revenue growth. Glassbox provides 100% user session capture, real-time alerts, and AI-powered insights to help companies detect and resolve customer pain points, ensure accessibility, and fight fraud.
Anodot made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2022 in London. At the conference, the Ashburn, Virginia-based company demonstrated its business monitoring platform that uses AI to continuously monitor and correlate payments activity and business performance. Helping identify revenue-critical issues—from processes that are creating an unacceptable level of customer friction to anomalous behavior that is potentially fraudulent—the platform provides real-time actionable alerts and forecasts to reduce detection time by as much as 80%.
Earlier this year, Anodot announced that it had formed a new business unit, Umbrella, dedicated to the company’s cloud cost management platform. Designed to meet the needs of managed service providers (MSPs) and multi-divisional enterprises, the Umbrella Cloud Cost Management Platform leverages AI and business analytics to give companies visibility into their cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) spend.
This week’s edition of Finovate Global features the latest fintech news from Egypt.
Fawry and Wadi Degla Partner to Offer Integrated Digital Payments
A strategic partnership between leading Egyptian fintech Fawry and real estate development company Wadi Degla Developments will bring integrated digital payment solutions to Wadi Degla customers. Wadi Degla will leverage Fawry’s online payment gateway and POS network, simplifying and accelerating payment processes, to enhance the customer experience and help drive digitization in the real estate sector.
The alliance fortifies Fawry’s status as a trusted technology partner for the country’s real estate developers and underscores Wadi Degla’s determination to increase operational efficiency and boost customer satisfaction. The partnership will also feature new value-added solutions including the Fawry Business Corporate Card and digital loyalty programs.
“This partnership marks a key milestone in our mission to drive digital transformation across Egypt’s vital real estate sector,” Fawry Chief Business Officer Heba El Awady said. “At Fawry, we aim to empower developers to provide modern, integrated payment services that cater to the growing demand for digitization. We continuously strive to develop innovative solutions tailored to the evolving needs of various sectors, and our collaboration with Wadi Degla Developments is a prime example of constructive partnerships between technology and real estate, enhancing operational efficiency and creating tangible value for customers.”
Headquartered in Cairo, Egypt, and founded in 2008, Fawry offers a digital transformation and fintech platform that delivers more than 1,186 financial services to consumers and businesses. With more than 29 million customers across Egypt, Fawry is the country’s largest payment network, processing more than three million operations a day. Ashraf Sabry is founder and CEO.
Egypt’s DisrupTech Ventures Makes Second Non-Egyptian Investment
Our last look at fintech in Egypt highlighted the launch of a new $31.5 million fund from HSBC Egypt that is dedicated to supporting small and medium-sized businesses in the fintech sector. Today, there’s another Egypt-based fund making fintech headlines: Egypt’s DisrupTech Ventures, which just made its second investment outside of Egypt and its first for a Moroccan fintech with its funding of Chari.
Founded by Ismael Belkhayat and Sophia Alj and backed by Y Combinator, Chari offers a fintech platform that transforms thousands of small neighborhood shops into access points for digital payments and other financial services. Chari’s payment institution license enables the company to empower small businesses to serve as financial hubs for their communities. Chari brings digitization to Morocco’s informal economy, helping businesses quickly access working capital, and embedding financial services including insurance and payment options into merchants’ daily operations. Launched in 2020, the company has onboarded more than 20,000 retailers to its platform.
“Our investment in Chari is a milestone for DisrupTech,” Managing Partner at DisrupTech Ventures Mohamed Okasha said. “Chari is redefining how financial services are delivered at the grassroots level. By empowering small shops to act as financial gateways, Chari is creating the foundation for a new, inclusive fintech infrastructure in Morocco. This is exactly the kind of transformative model we seek to support across Africa.”
The amount of the investment was not disclosed. The funding is part of Chari’s Series A extension round, which included raising $12 million and featured leadership from SPE Capital and Orange Ventures. Along with its investment, DisrupTech Ventures will also join Chari’s board of directors.
DisrupTech Ventures is headquartered in Cairo, Egypt. Founded in 2021, the company is the country’s leading fintech venture capital firm with an emphasis on early stage fintech and fintech-enabled startups.
Egypt’s Students Top Arab Fintech Talent Competition
The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE)’s FinYology initiative introduced the third edition of its FinTech Got Talent 2025 competition this year. In partnership with the Federation of Egyptian Banks (FEB) and the Egyptian Banking Institute (EBI), the fintech talent competition seeks to identify and support fintech innovation among university students.
This year’s competition was won by ESLSCA University for its mobile app, Tapay, that transforms an ordinary smartphone into a contactless payment terminal. Taking second place was the team from the British University in Egypt (BUE), which offered a financial literacy app called Money Adventure, that leverages gamification to help children learn about the importance of learning how to manage their money. Coming in third was the team from Cairo University, which presented AgriDawar, a digital platform that uses e-payment technology and e-wallets to connect farmers to buyers of agricultural surplus residues.
All three teams represented Egypt at the Arab FinTech Challenge 2025 last month, with the ESLSCA University and BUE teams again taking first and second, respectively, topping teams from universities from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Morocco.
FinTech Got Talent was initially launched in 2024 as part of the FinYology initiative. This effort is designed to integrate academic learning with hands-on fintech applications. FinYology includes more than 30 Egyptian universities, has supported more than 900 student-led projects, and featured the participation of 19,000 students. Eighteen partner banks have also provided continuing backing to the FinYology initiative.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Brazilian fintech Kanastra secured $30 million in Series B funding for its capital markets infrastructure and services offering.
Kenya’s mobile money market reached 91% penetration this year according to the Communications Authority of Kenya, a jump from 77% penetration last year.
Central and Eastern Europe
Hamburg, Germany-based fintech Atrya locked in €1.5 million in funding for its stablecoin payment network.
Estonian fintech Creem raised €1.8 million in pre-seed funding for its “programmable finance layer” the helps startups manage payments, taxes, compliance, and more.
Embedded financing platform YouLend and business management platform Tide take their partnership to the German market.
For financial institutions deciding on their modernization strategy, what are the options? Does legacy technology need to be abandoned immediately or entirely? Or are there ways that financial institutions can leverage the infrastructure they have while embracing areas where digital and other modern solutions can bring real efficiency gains?
In this interview, I talk with Casey Ferguson, VP of Marketing at Zoot Enterprises, about the company’s phased approach to modernizing financial systems, integrating legacy technology, and enhancing fraud prevention strategies. Ferguson explains why incremental progress, cross-functional collaboration, and layered fraud defenses are key to effective digital transformation.
“At Zoot we look at modernization this way: It’s not about tearing everything down. When you look at this kind of rip and replace mentality you’ve got to remember that it can be pretty risky, it can be very expensive, and it can be kind of slow, as well. When you think about the pace of change, architecting the perfect environment, the world may have changed by the time you have a perfect picture of all this. So working on things incrementally and in phases can really make a difference.”
Headquartered in Bozeman, Montana, and founded in 1990, Zoot Enterprises provides acquisition, origination, and decision management solutions that help financial institutions streamline processes, increase flexibility, and accelerate growth. Zoot offers comprehensive and flexible platforms for numerous specific business operations—from loan origination and data acquisition to fraud detection and prevention.
Financial infrastructure and blockchain technology company Ripple has secured $500 million in new funding at a valuation of $40 billion.
The funding comes at time of great activity for the San Francisco, California-based fintech, which has announced six acquisitions in the past two years and whose stablecoin, RLUSD, topped the $1 billion market capitalization mark this month.
As OpenCoin, Ripple made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2013.
We shared this news in yesterday’s Finovate weekly LinkedIn newsletter (subscribe if you haven’t). But we’re happy to share it with Finovate blog readers today. Financial infrastructure and blockchain technology company Ripple has raised $500 million in new funding, boosting the firm’s valuation to $40 billion. The funding follows the company’s recent $1 billion tender offer at the same valuation, and comes at a time of renewed interest in digital assets such as stablecoins and the growing importance of crypto services such as custody and trading.
“This investment reflects both Ripple’s incredible momentum and further validation of the market opportunity we’re aggressively pursuing by some of the most trusted financial institutions in the world,” Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said. “We started in 2012 with one use case—payments—and have expanded that success into custody, stablecoins, prime brokerage, and corporate treasury, leveraging digital assets like XRP. Today, Ripple stands as the partner for institutions looking to access crypto and blockchain.”
The investment was led by funds managed by affiliates of Fortress Investment Group, affiliates of Citadel Securities, Pantera Capital, Galaxy Digital, Brevan Howard, and Marshall Wace. The fundraising comes as Ripple celebrates completing six acquisitions, including two valued at over $1 billion, in the past two years. The company, which first introduced itself to Finovate audiences at FinovateSpring 2013 as OpenCoin, has also expanded into new markets in prime brokerage and treasury management, adding to its existing footprint across payment, custody, and stablecoins.
This year, Ripple acquired stablecoin infrastructure company Rail to enhance its Ripple Payments offering as a full-service cross-border platform that leverages Ripple’s stablecoin RLUSD and XRP to make international fund transfers faster and more efficient for businesses. The acquisition of multi-asset prime brokerage firm Hidden Road in October—now integrated into Ripple’s Ripple Prime platform—enables Ripple to offer its institutional clients a range of financial services including trading, custody, and derivatives for both traditional and digital assets. The company’s purchase of Palisade, a digital asset wallet and custody firm, will bolster Ripple’s Ripple Custody offering. Ripple Custody provides banks and other financial institutions with safe and secure ways to store digital assets, stablecoins, and Real World Assets (RWA).
Just this month, RLUSD surpassed $1 billion in market capitalization. Reaching this milestone in less than a year after it was launched, RLUSD is now the 10th largest, US dollar-backed stablecoin. RLUSD is the primary stablecoin used by Ripple for payment flows, Ripple President Monica Long noted in an interview with CoinDesk, adding that Ripple has processed “nearly $100 billion in payments volume to date.” Also this month, Ripple announced that its digital asset spot prime brokerage capabilities were now available to customers in the US.
“The launch of OTC spot execution capabilities complements our existing suite of OTC and cleared derivatives services in digital assets and positions us to provide US institutions with a comprehensive offering to suit their trading strategies and needs,” Ripple Prime International CEO Michael Higgins said.
Founded in 2012, Ripple is based in San Francisco, California.
Just days after we featured Canada in our weekly Finovate Global column, we can now add to our understanding of what is driving fintech innovation in Canada with a look at the country’s recently unveiled federal budget.
“Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget—and I’ll tell you what you value,” former US President Joe Biden liked to say. In this regard, Canada’s budget—with CAD $141 billion in new spending and CAD $51 billion in cuts and other savings—reflects a commitment to investing in the most transformative technologies of our time for the benefit of Canadian businesses and citizens, as well as for the wellbeing, defense, and even sovereignty of the country itself.
“The world is undergoing a series of fundamental shifts at a speed, scale, and scope not seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall,” the budget document begins. “The rules-based international order and the trading system that powered Canada’s prosperity for decades are being reshaped—threatening our sovereignty, our prosperity, and our values.”
“This is not a transition. It is a rupture—a generational shift taking place over a short period of time.”
Against this backdrop, here are four takeaways for fintech and financial services from Canada’s newly released budget.
Open Banking on Track for 2027 Implementation
The Canadian government will commit to introducing the last remaining pieces of legislation needed to complete the Consumer-Driven Banking Framework, advancing the country’s open banking system. The budget indicates that process will take place in two phases: data sharing (“read access”) followed by transaction initiation (“write access”), with full implementation set for the middle of 2027.
Oversight of open banking will remain with the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC), which will ensure strong consumer protection and compliance. The country’s Department of Finance will continue coordinating the framework’s policy and legislative rollout. Meanwhile, the Bank of Canada, the country’s central bank, will oversee the broader payments ecosystem as new participants—from fintechs to non-bank Payment Service Providers (PSPs)—and new instruments such as stablecoins become a part of the country’s real-time payment infrastructure.
Stablecoin Regulation Framework Unveiled
Canada will introduce federal legislation to regulate fiat-backed stablecoins. Stablecoin issuers will be required to maintain asset reserves and meet consumer protection standards. These entities will also be mandated to establish and implement redemption policies and risk-management frameworks. The government also will amend its Retail Payment Activities Act, first passed in 2021, to enable payment service providers to use approved stablecoins for transactions.
Per the new budget, the Bank of Canada will receive CAD$10 million over two years (2026-2027) to administer the new framework and receive funding of approximately CAD$5 million a year afterwards. This sum will be offset by fees collected from regulated stablecoin issuers.
The move to embrace stablecoins is a major part of the country’s effort to modernize its payment systems and create new efficiencies. But, as with efforts in Europe and elsewhere, the initiative is also designed to avoid what some Canadian observers worry could be excessive and undue use of foreign-issued stablecoins, including those from the country’s larger neighbor to the south.
Real-Time Payment Rail Infrastructure on Track
The new budget also confirms that Canada’s Real-Time Rail (RTR) system will be operational in 2026. RTR will provide instant, cheaper payments for a broad range of transactions including payroll, expense reimbursements, and other business-related fund transfers. There will also be further updates to the Retail Payment Activities Act to enable new entities, such as non-bank PSPs, to apply for membership in Payments Canada and participate directly in national payment systems including RTR. Payments Canada is the public, non-profit entity that owns and operates Canada’s national payment clearing and settlement infrastructure.
Canada’s RTR project is very much intertwined with other fintech-based initiatives in the budget, such as open banking and stablecoins. For example, the budget notes that the combination of write access and RTR by mid-2027 will help usher in the “next phase of consumer-driven banking” characterized by safer, faster payments and greater choice for Canadian businesses and consumers.
A Billion-Plus Investment in AI and Quantum Computing
The budget allocates CAD $1.26 billion for AI and quantum computing technologies. The inclusion of quantum computing technology is especially interesting, affirming Canada’s determination that investment in quantum computing is key to ensuring the country remains on the cutting edge in terms of innovation-enabling technologies.
The allocation for AI represents the lion’s share of the sum at just over CAD $925 million. The funding will support the construction of a large-scale, publicly-accessible AI infrastructure. It also provides for investments in data center infrastructure and domestic compute capacity. The budget endorses a “Sovereign Canadian Cloud” to help ensure sufficient compute capacity as well as data sovereignty. Notably, there is also funding specifically focused on tracking AI technology adoption, a major concern for many decision-makers when it comes to investing in AI. Over six years, CAD $25 million will be allocated for a Statistics Canada program to implement the Artificial Intelligence and Technology Measurement Program, also known as TechStat.
With regard to quantum computing, the budget earmarks more than CAD $334 million over the next five years to bolster the country’s quantum ecosystem via the Defense Industrial Strategy introduced in the budget. The budget places quantum computing technology alongside AI in Canada’s broader innovation plan, describing it as “similarly transformative,” with promising use cases in finance and cybersecurity.
