UK Credit Union Selects Illuma to Protect from Voice Fraud

UK Credit Union Selects Illuma to Protect from Voice Fraud
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Illuma Labs
  • Kentucky’s UK Credit Union is deploying IllumaSHIELD to strengthen fraud prevention and member authentication across its contact center and self-service channels.
  • IllumaSHIELD shifts away from security questions and passwords as banks and credit unions adopt voice biometrics to combat AI-powered fraud, including voice cloning and social engineering attacks.
  • Illuma’s technology continuously authenticates members as they speak, helping financial institutions reduce friction, shorten call times, and improve security without disrupting the customer experience.

Voice authentication solutions provider Illuma announced its latest partnership this month. The Texas-based company is teaming up with Kentucky-based UK Credit Union to help the credit union reduce fraud.

Specifically, UK Credit Union will implement IllumaSHIELD to bring authentication and fraud prevention capabilities to its contact center and self-service channels. IllumaSHIELD, which was unveiled at FinovateFall 2020, is the company’s voice security platform that leverages real-time voice authentication technology that passively verifies members as they speak, which reduces reliance on security questions and ultimately minimizes call handle time. Because the platform continuously evaluates risk throughout the interaction, it allows the credit union to step up authentication only when needed.

“AI-driven fraud is forcing financial institutions to rethink how they secure the voice channel,” said Illuma Founder and CEO Milind Borkar. “UK Credit Union is taking a forward-looking approach by adopting voice security that continuously verifies identity, blocks threats in real time, and improves both the member and agent experience—while eliminating friction from every interaction.”

As advances in generative AI have made it easier for fraudsters to clone voices, automate social engineering attacks, and bypass traditional knowledge-based authentication methods, financial institutions are having to secure voice interactions beyond asking for security questions and passwords. By providing continuous, biometric forms of identity verification, Illuma is authenticating users based on how they speak rather than what they know. Crucially, platforms like IllumaSHIELD aim to help banks and credit unions deliver this authentication without friction.

UK Credit Union anticipates that IllumaSHIELD will help it move beyond traditional knowledge-based authentication. “At UK Credit Union, protecting our members while delivering a seamless experience remains a top priority,” said UK Credit Union President and CEO Ryan Ross. “Partnering with Illuma allows us to modernize how we approach authentication and fraud prevention while creating a faster, more natural experience across our service channels.”

Headquartered in Plano, Texas, and founded in 2016, Illuma specializes in voice authentication solutions for credit unions and community banks. In addition to IllumaSHIELD, the company also offers advanced fraud prevention, adaptive multi-factor authentication (MFA), deepfake detection, and human-AI collaborative intelligence. The company most recently demoed at FinovateSpring 2025, where it won Best of Show for its deep fake detection technology.

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Introducing IMPACT: A New Event for Fintech Founders and Investors

Introducing IMPACT: A New Event for Fintech Founders and Investors
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: IMPACT

For years, Finovate has helped fintechs connect with banks and other customers. This September, we’re launching a new event designed to help fintechs connect with the people who fund them.

Taking place on September 11 alongside FinovateFall in New York, IMPACT: Funders & Founders Forum brings together fintech startups, scaleups, and investors for a full day of networking, content, meetings, and startup pitches. While FinovateFall is built around helping fintech companies meet potential customers, IMPACT is designed to help fintech founders build relationships with investors.

Who Should Attend?

IMPACT is for both fintech founders and investors.

On the startup side, the event is geared toward fintech startups and scaleups, particularly companies that have raised up to a Series A round. On the investor side, we’re bringing together venture capital firms, angel investors, private equity investors, family offices, and limited partners.

Whether a company is actively fundraising or simply looking to build relationships for the future, IMPACT offers an opportunity to connect with investors who understand the fintech landscape.

Why Are We Creating IMPACT?

While investors have long attended Finovate events, we’ve seen growing demand for a dedicated forum focused specifically on fundraising, investing, and startup growth.

IMPACT creates structured opportunities for founders and investors to connect through pre-arranged, one-on-one meetings, networking sessions, roundtable discussions, and live startup pitches featuring investor feedback and Q&A. The goal is to create an event where meaningful conversations and connections can happen more efficiently than through traditional networking alone.

What Can Attendees Expect?

The event features two dedicated content tracks.

The Investor Stage will explore topics such as AI in investment operations, emerging fund structures, venture capital trends, and the future of fintech investing.

The Founder & Startup Stage will focus on fundraising strategy, go-to-market planning, scaling a fintech company, building industry connections, and leveraging AI for growth.

In addition to attending content sessions, eligible startups can participate in the IMPACT Zone, a dedicated showcase area where companies can meet investors and fellow founders throughout the day. Startups raising pre-seed through Series A funding can also apply to deliver a four-minute pitch in front of investors.

How Is IMPACT Different from FinovateFall?

While IMPACT takes place alongside FinovateFall, the two events serve different purposes.

FinovateFall helps fintechs connect with buyers and partners through live demos and networking. IMPACT helps fintechs connect with investors and advisors who can help fuel their next stage of growth.

Together, the events support fintech companies throughout their journey in everything from raising capital to winning customers. Whether you’re a founder seeking your next investor, a startup executive looking to expand your network, or an investor searching for the next breakout fintech company, IMPACT offers a new way to connect with the people shaping the future of financial services.

If you’d like to register or learn more, check out our website to learn about opportunities that best fit your needs.

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Tru Cooperative Bank Partners with DataVisor for Fraud Prevention

Tru Cooperative Bank Partners with DataVisor for Fraud Prevention
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, DataVisor
  • Fraud and financial crime prevention platform DataVisor has partnered with Tru Cooperative Bank (formerly First West Credit Union).
  • Via a pre-integrated deployment with VeriPark’s digital banking platform, Tru Cooperative Bank will leverage DataVisor’s technology to enable real-time fraud detection across the full digital banking journey.
  • Headquartered in Mountain View, California, and founded in 2013, DataVisor made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2023 in New York.

AI-powered fraud and AML platform DataVisor will put its fraud prevention technology to use protecting the members of Tru Cooperative Bank (formerly First West Credit Union). The offering will be delivered via DataVisor’s pre-integrated deployment with VeriPark’s VeriChannel digital banking platform, and will provide Tru Cooperative Bank with seamless, out-of-the-box fraud protection.

VeriPark is a London-based fintech, founded in 1998, that helps financial institutions embed real-time decisioning into every customer interaction, from omnichannel delivery and customer engagement to branch automation and loan origination. The company made its Finovate debut at FinovateMiddleEast 2019 in Dubai. Ozkan Erener is CEO.

DataVisor’s platform provides real-time fraud detection across the full digital banking journey, covering onboarding, login, profile changes, Interac e-Transfer, and billpay. The solution offers future-proof defense against a growing range of sophisticated financial crimes, replacing traditional solutions and enabling growth without introducing additional friction for members.

“As we build on our transition to a federally regulated cooperative bank, protecting our members is fundamental in everything we do—especially as we continue to evolve our digital banking experience,” Tru Cooperative Bank Chief Transformation & Information Officer Darrell Jaggers said. “DataVisor strengthens our ability to prevent fraud earlier across the digital journey, supporting a secure, seamless experience our members can trust.”

Formerly First West Credit Union, the financial institution transitioned to Tru Cooperative Bank in April 2026. The credit union’s members voted with 84% approval to apply for the right to operate under federal regulation rather than simply provincial jurisdiction, enabling the firm to serve members outside of British Columbia and to operate nationally across Canada. The name “Tru Cooperative Bank” was adopted with 87% approval from the institution’s members. While still operating its four regional brands in British Columbia: Envision Financial, Island Savings, Valley First, and Enderby & District Financial, Tru Cooperative Bank is the fourth federally regulated credit union in Canada since 2012. The financial institution has more than $20 billion in assets, nearly 300,000 members, and 45 branch locations.

“As financial crime grows more sophisticated, credit unions need a modern, AI-driven defense that prevents fraud in real time—not one that catches up after the fact,” DataVisor Co-Founder and President of Technology and AI Yinglian Xie said. “We’re proud to support Tru’s digital banking journey through our partnership with VeriPark, and to continue expanding DataVisor’s leadership in fraud prevention across the Canadian market and the credit union community.”

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Mountain View, California, DataVisor made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2023 in New York. At the conference, the company demonstrated how its fraud and risk platform integrates any data source, including third-party data, and combines a rules engine, device intelligence, a decision engine, and case management to increase detection and minimize fraud losses. DataVisor’s platform processes 30 billion events a year, boasts of more than 15,000 queries per second in live production, and delivers real-time scoring latency of less than 100 milliseconds.

DataVisor’s partnership news with Tru Cooperative Bank follows the company’s launch of Vera, a suite of conversational AI agents designed for financial crime prevention. Vera is built into DataVisor’s platform to help teams with fraud detection, strategy optimization, investigation, and reporting, while ensuring that human oversight, auditability, and control remain part of the process.

“With Vera, for the first time, financial institutions can outpace AI-driven attackers,” Xie explained when Vera was unveiled in April. “By unlocking unparalleled speed and intelligence, we are redefining the playing field and enabling a more proactive defense against AI-driven fraud.”

Photo by Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash

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Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News

Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Fintech Rundown

We have officially entered the final week of June, which marks the ending of the first half of 2026. As we close out the first six months of this year, here’s a look at the top news headlines for this week. We’ll continue to add more announcements as the week progresses.

Payments

Nuvion teams with Visa Direct to strengthen real-time global payout capabilities for businesses operating across borders.

Investing

BitDelta Pro selects Iress to power multi-asset trading platform.

Banking

Lloyds targets more than 1,000 new AI roles as it expands agentic AI capability.

Santander empowers employees with AI in order to generate €1 billion in business value.

Debt markets

9fin appoints Amit Lalwani as Chief Revenue Officer to lead next phase of global growth.

Small business banking

Rippling launches Business Banking for same-day payroll processing.

Photo by Luis Quintero

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Wise Acquires International Living Guidance Expert Expatica

Wise Acquires International Living Guidance Expert Expatica
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, TransferWise, Wise
  • Wise has acquired expat resource Expatica, gaining access to a website that attracted more than 7 million visits in 2025 from people researching and navigating life abroad.
  • The deal gives Wise an earlier touchpoint with prospective customers, allowing it to build brand awareness and trust before consumers choose a bank, payments provider, or money transfer service.
  • Wise plans to expand Expatica’s content and geographic reach, strengthening its position among the growing global population of expats and internationally mobile consumers.

Cross-border payments fintech Wise announced this week that it has acquired Expatica, an online resource for people living and working abroad. The move places Wise front and center among one of its most important customer groups, expats.

Expatica was founded in 2000 to provide local guidance for people living internationally. The company’s website serves as a directory that covers topics such as relocation, housing, finance, lifestyle, healthcare, and immigration. The website reached more than 7 million visits in 2025, with its largest audiences coming from France, Germany, Portugal, and Spain.

According to the UN, 304 million people (3.7% of the world’s population) were international migrants in 2024. With Expatica serving as a long-standing expert in the field, the acquisition will help Wise reach prospective expats earlier in their relocation journey, increasing the company’s visibility among a broader international audience.

By acquiring Expatica, Wise gains access to consumers when they are researching a move abroad—often before they have selected a bank, payments provider, or money transfer service. That early engagement could help Wise build brand awareness and trust long before a customer needs to move money internationally.

“Expatica has spent years helping people make sense of life abroad with practical, locally relevant guidance. That makes it a strong fit for Wise, because we already support millions of people whose lives span borders,” said Wise Head of Owned Sites Danny Butler. “When people are planning, moving and settling into life abroad, money is a big part of that experience—from getting paid to sending, spending and managing money across borders. Wise is built for those moments.”

Wise plans to maintain and augment Expatica’s website, with investments planned to expand the company’s content, local coverage, markets, and languages over time. As Expatica’s users leverage its resources to navigate life in a new country, Wise wants to become a familiar and relevant choice for expats who need to manage money across borders.

Wise was founded in 2011 under the name TransferWise to facilitate cross-border payments while bringing transparency to the fees involved. The company serves 19 million active customers worldwide, processing over $240 billion in cross-border transactions.

Photo by Gustavo Fring

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U.S. Bank’s Deepa Chatterjee: The Future of SMB Banking Is Personalization, Not More Products

U.S. Bank’s Deepa Chatterjee: The Future of SMB Banking Is Personalization, Not More Products
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateSpring 2026, Speaker series

For years, bank-fintech relationships often followed a predictable path. Banks identified promising startups, tested their technology, and viewed acquisition as the ultimate endgame. Today, that dynamic is changing.

At FinovateSpring 2026, I sat down with Deepa Chatterjee, SVP of Business Development and Go-to-Market for Small Business Banking at U.S. Bank, to discuss how bank-fintech partnerships are evolving, where banks are competing with digital-first challengers, and what the future of small business banking looks like.

One of the most interesting takeaways from our conversation was how dramatically the relationship between banks and fintechs has changed. While banks once viewed fintech partnerships as potential acquisition opportunities, many are now embracing deeper, longer-term collaborations. “The way that we worked with fintechs was primarily thinking of potentially acquiring them,” said Deepa. “Now that tha markets have changed we are far more likely to work and partner with fintechs in a much deeper way, and so ownership is not necessarily on the table.”

Deepa Chatterjee is SVP of Business Development and Go-to-Market for Small Business Banking at U.S. Bank. She leads business development, partnerships, sales enablement, product marketing, data insights, and automation initiatives for the bank’s small business segment. Before joining U.S. Bank, Chatterjee held leadership roles at Dayforce and Oportun and spent more than a decade at American Express in strategy, marketing, and business development positions. She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Barnard College at Columbia University and an MBA from the Yale School of Management.

U.S. Bancorp, the parent company of U.S. Bank, is one of the largest banking institutions in the United States, serving millions of consumer, business, commercial, and institutional clients. The bank offers a broad range of financial services, including business banking, payments, treasury management, merchant acquiring through Elavon, lending, and wealth management solutions. U.S. Bank has increasingly expanded its digital capabilities through fintech partnerships and embedded financial services designed to help small businesses streamline their financial operations.

Photo by Vitaly Gariev

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Coinbase Wants to Become Your Primary Financial Platform

Coinbase Wants to Become Your Primary Financial Platform
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Coinbase, Daily news
  • Coinbase is evolving beyond crypto into an “everything exchange,” adding AI-powered advice, agentic trading, tokenized stocks, and expanded credit offerings in a bid to become consumers’ primary financial platform.
  • The new launches highlight two major fintech trends: AI moving from financial guidance to autonomous action, and the continued blurring of lines between banks, brokerages, fintechs, and crypto platforms.
  • By combining investing, lending, payments, wealth management, and AI tools into a single experience, Coinbase is betting that convenience and integration will define the next generation of financial services.

Crypto exchange platform Coinbase wants users to think of it as much more than a cryptocurrency exchange. This week, the company unveiled a series of new products as part of its effort to become a primary financial platform for consumers.

Since it was founded in 2012, the company has been slowly building out a comprehensive banking platform. What started as a crypto wallet has evolved into a full service financial platform with debit and credit cards, prediction markets, derivatives, crypto-backed lending, and more.

“Coinbase is building the future of finance, where you can manage your money with just one interface, and one login,” the company said in its blog post announcement. “We’re saying “no” to financial fragmentation, and the new products we’re introducing today take us several steps closer to that future.”

Here’s a rundown of the top five new tools and features Coinbase is unveiling this week and why each matters:

Coinbase advisor

Coinbase has launched an AI financial advisor to provide personalized financial guidance based on a customer’s holdings and financial situation. While many fintechs are hesitant to give financial advice because of the regulatory requirements, Coinbase registered with the SEC as a Registered Investment Advisor and with the CFTC and NFA as a Commodity Trading Advisor.

Why it matters: The move places pressure on both traditional financial institutions and fintechs offering robo-advisory technology to offer more sophisticated, real-time financial guidance at a lower cost. Offering AI-powered financial advice caters to consumers of all levels because it allows them to communicate using natural language, comes at a lower cost, and does not require the consumer to change their existing habits or switch apps. When compared to traditional wealth management, which has historically been reserved for affluent customers, the advisor tools will have a wider reach and be a valuable tool for customer retention.

Agentic trading

Customers can deploy AI agents to execute personalized trading strategies on their behalf while maintaining ultimate control over the account. Investors can confine their agent to an isolated sub-account and set limits around capital allocation, asset permissions, and trade sizes. Coinbase joins Robinhood, which launched agentic trading earlier this month, in pioneering this feature.

Why it matters: With agentic tools, AI implementation makes the leap from informing decisions to taking action. Having an agent move funds on an investor’s behalf can help with treasury management, cash flow management, and micro-investing decisions that would be too tedious for human investors.

Expanded stock and options trading

In a move that continues to expand Coinbase beyond crypto, the company announced broader access to stock trading and options trading. The company first unveiled stock trading in December 2025 and expanded it to all US users in February of this year. This week’s announcement highlights the next phase of Coinbase’s strategy that will focus on transforming it into a full-service financial platform.

Why it matters: Even though stock trading is not new for Coinbase, it highlights the company’s new position as a universal investment platform. Similar to how Robinhood expanded into banking and SoFi branched out into investing, Coinbase’s move to broaden its offerings will make the company a more holistic banking platform. The move is also an example of how lines across financial services are beginning to blur. The distinction between crypto platforms, brokerages, and banks is increasingly disappearing.

Tokenized US stocks

Coinbase plans to enable non-US customers to trade tokenized US equities around the clock. Tokenized stocks are backed 1:1 by the underlying asset, representing true equity ownership, including dividend payouts and complete shareholder rights. Additionally, investors will be able to lend their shares to earn yield, use them as collateral for a loan, or even gift them directly to someone else.

Why it matters: Tokenized trading offers 24/7 trading, potentially faster settlement, and broader global access to US markets. This changes the traditional models of limited trading hours, clearinghouses, and custodians that have dictated the legacy stock market since its inception.

Expanded access to Coinbase One Card

The company expanded USDC-backed access to the Coinbase One Card, a card built for users who are generally overlooked by traditional credit bureaus. The update allows users who aren’t approved for a traditional line of credit to secure a Coinbase One Card using USDC as collateral. The card offers Bitcoin rewards on everyday purchases while paying rewards on the underlying USDC deposit every week.

Why it matters: Offering a credit builder card allows Coinbase to tap into a new set of users who have historically been ignored by traditional financial institutions. And because Coinbase’s credit builder card still pays out rewards and offers additional benefits like the new Travel Portal that provides cardholders access to all of the same travel protections and benefits offered through the American Express Network.

From the looks of these new products and tools, it appears that Coinbase is making a bid to become a full-service financial institution without calling itself a bank. Combining investing, lending, payments, wealth management, and AI-powered tools into a single experience will allow Coinbase to provide a more unified experience to customers that care less about traditional financial categories and more about convenience. As the lines between banks, brokerages, fintechs, and crypto platforms continue to blur, Coinbase’s latest moves offer a glimpse into what the next generation of financial services may look like.

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Three Top Takeaways from the HSBC, Google Cloud Partnership

Three Top Takeaways from the HSBC, Google Cloud Partnership
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Google Cloud Platform, HSBC, List series

A newly announced, multi-year partnership between HSBC and Google Cloud will enable the financial institution to work with engineering teams from Google Cloud and DeepMind to develop new AI-powered tools and capabilities. The partnership will allow HSBC to benefit from access to Google’s latest agentic AI capabilities including Gemini and the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform.

The agreement will enable more than 200 new AI use cases for HSBC over the next two years, with a focus on the highest value initiatives for investment and delivery. HSBC estimates each of these could return more than $100 million in either direct revenue gains or broader efficiency improvements.

“AI is becoming one of the defining technologies of our time, allowing us to create a personalized experience for each customer, delivered in real time and at scale, while keeping human judgment, decision-making, and accountability at the core,” HSBC Group CEO Georges Elhedery said. “A partnership like this one with Google Cloud helps us empower our colleagues with the tools they need to be future-ready, and supports our work in building a simple, agile, faster, and more personal HSBC.”

These new opportunities fall into three main categories: wealth management, fraud and financial crime, and support for frontline/relationship manager client service. Here is a closer look at each element of the new partnership and its implications for AI in banking and financial services.

Hyper-personalized wealth management

The partnership will enable HSBC to combine smarter, AI-driven insights with the expertise of relationship managers. This will transform the way the bank serves its wealth management clients and empower thousands of relationship managers to provide proactive, customized financial support and real-time advice to customers at every stage of the client journey.

What this says about AI: The ability to achieve hyper-personalization is increasingly regarded as the Holy Grail of customer engagement. AI enables banks and other financial institutions to leverage their data to better understand the unique needs of individual customers, businesses, and enterprises. This allows them to not only develop customized solutions and services that directly respond to each client, but also to respond quickly to shifting preferences and even anticipate emerging trends and circumstances that customers might not immediately recognize.

What this says about banks: More and more banks are realizing the opportunities in delivering wealth management services. This is driven by a number of factors, from the so-called Great Wealth Transfer and the growing number of high-net-worth households to the democratization of wealth management brought about by fintechs and robo-advisors.

Wealth management is also an area where more banks and financial institutions can provide greater value, especially for mid-tier and non-HNW customers for whom bespoke, concierge-level wealth management services are typically out of reach. AI plays a key role here, helping translate client data—from financial records to conversations with advisors—into actionable insights that lead to better and more accurate financial guidance. The fact that AI is able to provide this at a competitive cost means that these higher-value, higher-margin services can be offered to a wider range of customers.

Stronger financial crime risk management

HSBC will leverage its relationship with Google Cloud to deploy both generative and agentic AI to build a financial crime architecture that identifies fraud risk as early as possible. The bank’s goal is to detect and intervene twice as quickly once risk is detected across the nearly one billion transactions monitored by the bank every month for financial crime and fraud.

What this says about AI: Helping financial institutions detect fraud faster, including real-time monitoring, is one of the most broadly accepted use cases for AI technology. AI is able to analyze vast amounts of data in real time to detect suspicious patterns and activities that traditional, rules-based systems can miss, while also providing predictive analytics that can enable institutions to anticipate potential financial crime risks before they materialize.

What this says about banks: For banks and other financial institutions, financial crime risks have only grown larger in recent years. The Nasdaq Verafin 2026 Global Financial Crime report indicated that the economic impact of financial crime internationally has grown by $1.3 trillion in the past two years from 2023 to 2025. With regard to fraud-specific losses, fraud scams were the fastest-growing category costing $62 billion in 2025 alone. In the face of this, moves like HSBC’s to embrace AI-powered solutions for fighting fraud have become increasingly common. The 2026 Global Financial Crime report noted that 75% of financial institutions said they planned to boost their use of AI for financial crime detection.

Enhanced client service for frontline and relationship managers

Courtesy of the partnership, HSBC’s frontline staff and relationship managers will have expanded access to an AI-powered decision assistant that has already proven capable of reducing administrative and client meeting prep times from hours to minutes for thousands of users. HSBC will also codify regulatory procedures into an AI structure to give bankers consistently structured options and analysis to enhance decision-making and provide faster insights without losing human judgment and oversight.

What this says about AI: One of the great promises of automation and AI is freeing human labor and talent from mundane, often tedious, and inefficient manual processes. The fact that so much of AI innovation is being designed for in-house use by frontline workers and employees to enable them to better serve their clients underscores that AI, in its best light, actually creates space for more human connections between customers and service providers.

What this says about banks: Empowering frontline workers and relationship managers with AI-powered tools is helping a growing number of banks boost efficiency and reduce costs. From enhancing underwriting analysis to streamlining workflows, financial institutions are increasingly comfortable with AI-powered tools. This is especially the case when institutions deploy these solutions as complements to existing systems rather than as replacements for them.

Photo by Kit Suman on Unsplash

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Ripple Contributes to Flutterwave’s Series E Round

Ripple Contributes to Flutterwave’s Series E Round
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding, Ripple
  • Ripple participated in Flutterwave’s Series E round, helping push the African payments company’s total funding above $500 million and valuing it at $3.2 billion.
  • The partnership will embed Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin and XRP Ledger into Flutterwave’s payment infrastructure to support faster settlement, liquidity management, remittances, and cross-border payments.
  • The deal highlights the growing race to control stablecoin infrastructure, with Ripple seeking to establish RLUSD and XRPL as foundational components of a major payments network rather than simply offering a standalone digital asset.

African payments infrastructure company Flutterwave revealed that it has received an undisclosed amount of funding from digital asset company Ripple, which contributed to its Series E Round this week. The funds boost Flutterwave’s total raised to more than $500 million.

Notably, the new round values Flutterwave at $3.2 billion as the company moves into the next phrase of its stablecoin strategy that integrates stablecoin-powered settlement, liquidity, and remittance rails. The company hopes this new infrastructure will empower African businesses to bypass frictions associated with legacy payment systems.

Ripple is coming on as a strategic investor, and as such will embed Ripple’s stablecoin, RLUSD, into its payment rails and Send App to create a stablecoin-first payment architecture that eliminates traditional bottlenecks. Flutterwave will also leverage the XRP Ledger (XRPL) for faster transaction clearing and will deploy an API to bridge its domestic network with Ripple’s global payments network.

“Flutterwave has built one of the most advanced payments networks in Africa, and as its infrastructure evolves, stablecoins are becoming central to that story,” said Ripple Managing Director MEA Reece Merrick. “Our investment will establish RLUSD within that infrastructure, with Flutterwave driving stablecoin flows over the XRPL and deepening its role as a settlement layer for real-world payments across the continent. Together, we also plan to bring Ripple Payments’ speed and efficiency to cross-border transactions in the region, opening up faster, lower-cost financial services to businesses and consumers at scale.”

Flutterwave will use the funds to bridge traditional financial systems with next-generation digital asset infrastructure. Since it was founded in 2016, Flutterwave has processed over a billion transactions worth over $50 billion. The company accepts payments in more than 30 currencies, processing an average of 500,000 payments each day. In addition to its payments technology, Flutterwave also offers invoicing technology, business loans, and analytics tools. Adding to these capabilities, the company agreed to acquire Mono, an open banking technology company, earlier this year.

This funding announcement and strategic partnership are both reminders of the race for ownership and control in the new stablecoin economy. While Ripple is investing in Flutterwave’s growth, it is also bidding to establish RLUSD and XRPL as foundational components of a major payments network, controling how stablecoins move through the global financial system.

Photo by Damilare Adeyemi

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Zocks Launches Client Queries to Transform Advisor Conversations into Actionable Insights

Zocks Launches Client Queries to Transform Advisor Conversations into Actionable Insights
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Zocks
  • AI platform for financial services Zocks has launched its Zocks Client Queries solution.
  • Zocks Client Queries enables financial advisors to uncover potential growth opportunities and respond to unmet client needs by querying data using plain language.
  • Founded in 2022 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Zocks made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2026. Mark Gilbert is Co-Founder and CEO.

AI platform for financial services Zocks unveiled its Zocks Client Queries solution this week. The new offering is an agentic AI product that enables financial advisors and enterprises to uncover organic growth opportunities and unmet client needs in seconds, using plain language. Advisors can use Client Queries to ask questions such as “which clients have a 401(k) with a previous employer that we could consolidate” or “which clients have a review due this quarter with over $500,000 in held-away assets,” and Client Queries will deliver a list of clients who fit those parameters. The solution then presents advisors with a set of automated next steps, including sending a personalized email, creating opportunities in a CRM system, or scheduling a meeting.

Zocks Client Queries also helps advisors address potential service gaps. Advisors, for example, can inquire, “which clients have a significant age milestone in the next 90 days, and we haven’t spoken with them in the past 12 months?” or “which clients mentioned a major life change but haven’t updated their estate plan?” allowing advisors to deliver proactive service to all clients regardless of account size.

“Every advisor-client relationship and conversation contains signals that point to the next opportunity, whether that’s a life change, a servicing need, or a held-away asset,” Zocks CEO Mark Gilbert said. “With Client Queries, firms can query across personal and financial information to operationalize those signals for every advisor, and deliver on the scale and consistency that manual processes can’t. What once required hours of research can now happen in minutes, at a fraction of the cost.”

Zocks leverages AI-powered intelligence to continuously build and maintain a comprehensive profile for all clients, drawing from CRM records, financial plans, tax, portfolio, estate, and insurance data, as well as conversations, meetings, emails, and documents shared with advisors. Zocks Client Queries analyzes these profiles in real time to deliver actionable lists and automated workflows in seconds. This gives advisors the opportunity for deeper insights and greater personalization compared to traditional lead generation and prospecting strategies.

“For our advisors, Client Queries removes the friction between having an idea to engage clients and quickly acting on it,” RFG Advisor VP of Technology and Operations Jordan Hutchison said. “For the enterprise, it gives us a way to operationalize growth across every advisor’s book simultaneously.”

Founded in 2022 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Zocks made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2026. At the conference, the company demonstrated how its AI assistant for financial advisors automates administrative tasks including meeting prep, account opening, document processing, and more. Zocks’ technology transforms client conversations into structured insights that bolster relationships and support business growth.

Zocks’ AI assistant saves advisors more than 10 hours a week, enabling them to build plans and onboard clients faster, discover new growth opportunities, anticipate client needs, and scale their business. Zocks counts more than 5,000 firms as its customers, including six of the nine Barron’s Top Mega RIAs and two of the top three life insurance carriers.

Photo by Shen Pan on Unsplash

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ACI Worldwide Integrates Wero, a New Payment Option for Merchants in Europe

ACI Worldwide Integrates Wero, a New Payment Option for Merchants in Europe
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Alumni News
  • ACI Worldwide has joined the European Payments Initiative (EPI) and will integrate EPI’s Wero wallet into its Payments Orchestration Platform.
  • The integration will enable merchants and financial intermediaries across Europe to offer Wero as a payment option at a time when instant payments are growing in popularity.
  • Founded in 1975 and headquartered in Nebraska, ACI Worldwide has been a Finovate alum since 2011. Thomas Warsop is CEO.

International paytech ACI Worldwide has joined the European Payments Initiative (EPI) as a technical service provider. As part of the strategic collaboration, ACI Worldwide will integrate EPI’s Wero wallet solution into its Payments Orchestration Platform, enabling merchants and financial intermediaries throughout Europe to offer Wero as a payment option.

“We are excited to announce our strategic partnership with EPI to make Wero a success across Europe,” ACI Worldwide Head of Europe Nick Craig said. “This collaboration leverages ACI’s advanced instant payment processing capabilities to address the fragmentation of payment methods in Europe, providing a unified solution which enables a seamless, secure, and efficient payment experience for consumers and merchants. Wero will be an important addition to ACI’s best-in-class Payments Orchestration Platform, which has the industry’s widest reach of acquirers and APMs.”

Running on SEPA rails, Wero is a new pan-European digital wallet solution. Launched in 2024, the offering is intended to unify and streamline payments throughout Europe, including peer-to-peer transfers, e-commerce and point-of-sale purchases, as well as other value-added services. The solution was launched by a consortium of 16 European banks and financial services companies and currently provides instant, account-to-account payments to consumers in Belgium, France, and Germany.

ACI Worldwide’s Wero announcement comes as analysts expect the new payment option to boost consumer adoption of instant payments across Europe. The EU Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) has been in effect since January 2025, mandating banks and payment service providers (PSPs) in the Eurozone to be able to send and receive instant payments. ACI’s own research, collected in its Prime Time for Real-Time report, indicated that instant payment transactions in Europe are expected to climb from 17.2 billion in 2023 to 38.6 billion in 2028. The report suggested that instant payment transactions will account for 13% of all electronic payments in Europe by 2028, an increase of more than 50% from 2023.

“Seeing ACI joining EPI members’ ranks is a new step towards massive availability of Wero across our core markets and beyond,” EPI CEO Martina Weimert said. “Through the integration onto ACI’s platform, all their merchants and their customers will be able to integrate Wero as a new payment solution, empowering their business and Europe’s resilience at large. Together, we are helping accelerate the development of a more connected, innovative, and resilient European payments ecosystem.”

A Finovate alum since 2011, ACI Worldwide delivers software solutions that provide intelligent payments orchestration, banking, merchant payments, and billing. The company has customers in 94 countries including the top 10 global banks, more than 80,000 merchants, as well as thousands of organizations using its billpay and fraud prevention solutions. ACI Worldwide processes more than 770 billion transactions a year, amounting to trillions of US dollars.

Founded in 1975 and headquartered in Elkhorn, Nebraska, ACI Worldwide is a publicly traded company on NASDAQ under the ticker ACIW. The company has a market capitalization of $4.6 billion.

Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash

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SumUp Launches in Canada, its 38th Market

SumUp Launches in Canada, its 38th Market
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, SumUp
  • SumUp has expanded into Canada, its 38th market, bringing its payment acceptance tools to a country where small businesses account for 98% of all businesses.
  • Canadian merchants will gain access to the SumUp Go card reader for in-person payments and Payment Links for accepting online payments without specialized hardware.
  • The launch reflects SumUp’s broader strategy of evolving from a card reader provider into a full commerce platform as competition for small business merchants increasingly centers on ecosystem breadth rather than payment acceptance alone.

Payment acceptance company SumUp has officially launched in Canada, marking the UK-based company’s 38th market.

The expansion into Canada comes 11 years after SumUp launched in the US and will help further the company’s mission to “make commerce simpler and more accessible for all businesses worldwide.”

Adding Canada to SumUp’s global footprint offers the company access to Canada’s 1.1 million businesses, 98% of which are small businesses. In addition to its competitive pricing, intuitive payment tools, and customer care, SumUp will bring these merchants two core products:

  • SumUp Go card reader, which allows merchants to take in-person payments using a pocket-sized reader designed to reduce wait times at checkout. The reader is easy to set up and does not charge monthly fixed costs.
  • Payment Links enable merchants to accept online payments without hardware at all, giving merchants a fast way to collect payments from anywhere by simply creating and sending a secure link that can be shared via text, email, or social.

“Launching in Canada is a natural next step in SumUp’s growth across North America,” said SumUp North America CEO Andrew Helms. “Canada has an incredibly vibrant small business community and we see a huge opportunity to give these merchants the tools they need to thrive, without the complexity or hidden costs they have come to expect from legacy providers. At SumUp, we’re in it for the merchant. When they succeed, we succeed.”

Founded in 2012, SumUp serves four million small merchants across the globe. In April, the company expanded its small business product suite, adding new business management tools and card readers.

The company’s move into Canada comes as competition for small business merchants is intensifying, with providers increasingly competing on the breadth of their ecosystems rather than payment acceptance alone. By expanding into a market where small businesses account for nearly all registered companies, SumUp gains access to a large merchant base while continuing its evolution from a card reader provider into a broader commerce platform.

Photo by Andre Furtado

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