This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.
Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
With hundreds of ballots officially cast and carefully counted – here are the winners of Best of Show for FinovateFall 2022!
Debbie for its technology that leverages behavioral psychology and rewards to help users pay off 3x more debt and help lenders recession-proof members. Demo.
Horizn for its platform that helps financial institutions maximize the impact of digital and accelerate returns on digital investments with customers and employees. Demo.
LemonadeLXP for its digital growth platform that helps financial institutions and fintechs turn staff into digital experts and support digital customers. Demo.
Quilo for its technology that empowers lenders to digitally syndicate an individual personal loan at the time of underwriting, enabling them to provide more loans to more people. Demo.
Stratyfy for its technology that increases access to financial services by bringing true transparency and less risk to critical financial decisions that impact millions. Demo.
Themis for its collaboration platform designed for risk and compliance requirements to help accelerate partnerships between banks and fintechs. Demo.
We are grateful to all of our demoing companies for being a part of our biggest FinovateFall to date. Thanks as well to our sponsors, our partners, and – last but not least – our awesome attendees who continue to make our conferences among the most anticipated events on the fintech calendar each and every year. We look forward to seeing you again next fall!
Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their six favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The six companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2022 conferences are below:
Exciting things are happening in fintech right now, and we’re incredibly grateful to have so many of you joining us at FinovateFall this year to take it all in for yourself. There’s a lot to be excited about! As you may have heard, this year’s FinovateFall is officially our largest show yet, with more than 1,600 of you here in the room with us. After a period of general upheaval and uncertainty, it’s great to see the fintech community coming together en masse to plot a course for the future.
What’s happening is bigger than just the number of people in the room, though. It’s no secret that the last few years have been challenging ones and what we’re seeing now is fintech’s response to that challenge. New ideas, new innovations, and new companies are taking shape right before our eyes; venture capitalists are actively seeking out early-stage investment opportunities; and financial institutions themselves are more receptive to change and innovation than ever before. And most importantly, at every step of the way, the industry is making a concerted effort to help the everyday people who need it most.
Analysis from our resident journalists on the top trends from the event and beyond
Thought leadership from Headline Sponsor, Provenir
The Best of Show demos videos
The Finovate Awards winners, and finalist profiles of Highnote and RBC Clearing
Expert opinion on accelerating your lending strategy, the do’s and don’ts of leveraging emerging technology in fintech and exploring virtual worlds and economies
Small business spending solution Pleo and open banking provider Yapily have formed a partnership.
Under the agreement, Pleo will leverage Yapily Payments to enable account-to-account payments for its small business clients.
Pleo will begin rolling out the new service to its business clients in the Netherlands and France in the coming months.
Small business spending solution Pleo has teamed up with open banking provider Yapily this week.
Pleo is leveraging Yapily Payments, a tool that enables direct account-to-account payments. And because Yapily uses open banking, it does not use card rails, which ultimately cuts out middlemen and limits fees. Yapily covers 19 countries and has more than 1900 institutions integrated with its open banking infrastructure.
Pleo was founded in 2015 and enables small businesses to tackle invoices, issue reimbursements, give their employees payment cards for work-related expenses. The company’s spending solution offers small businesses control over employee spend and provides visibility into their expenses.
Yapily Payments will enable Pleo users to top up their Pleo account directly from their bank account. This direct connection offers two major benefits– it offers instant payments and decreases the risk of card fraud and human error. “Manual processes, settlement periods, and bottlenecks in cash flow are all avoidable obstacles,” said Pleo Chief Product Officer Olov Eriksson. “We want to enable our users to focus on what really matters: growing their business and empowering their people.”
Pleo will begin offering customers the new capability in a gradual rollout “over the coming months.” The service will be made available starting in the Netherlands and France. The bank account to-up capability is just the start of Pleo’s partnership with Yapily. Pleo also plans to leverage more of Yapily’s payments solutions in the future.
Yapily was founded in 2017 and offers API-based tools to enable the connection between banks and third party fintechs. Last month, the U.K.-based company launchedVariable Recurring Payments, a tool that allows merchants and service providers to offer recurring payments of varying amounts without having to re-authenticate for each transaction.
Decentralized credit platform Credix raised $11.25 million in funding.
The Series A round was led by Motive Partners and ParaFi Capital and boosts Credix’s total funding to $13.8 million.
Credix will use the funds to enhance platform development, increase staff, and integrate with Web3 projects.
Decentralized credit platform Credix raked in $11.25 million today. The Belgium-based company’s Series A funding round was led by Motive Partners and ParaFi Capital with contributions from Valor Capital, MGG Bayhawk Fund, Victory Park Capital, Circle Ventures, Fuse Capital, and Abra.
Credix will use the funds to boost platform development, increase staff, and integrate with Web3 projects.
The round follows Credix’s December 2021 Seed round and brings the company’s total funding to $13.8 million. Company CEO Thomas Bohner described the round as the“next major step” in bringing Credix’s protocol and platform for credit investing to investors.
Credix launched last year to develop a credit platform that matches institutional investors and fintech lenders, bridging DeFi and real-world assets. The company enables finfech companies and non-bank lenders to convert their receivables and real assets into investment capital. Credix leverages USDC and smart contracts to offer instant settlement and transparency.
Since its launch, Credix has gone live in Brazil and has originated more than $23 million active loans in in the past six months. The company will launch in additional geographies “soon.”
Compliance communications surveillance service txtsmarter has raised Series A funding. The amount of the investment was not disclosed.
The Silicon Valley, California-based company also announced a new CEO, Edward Green.
Founded in 2014, txtsmarter demoed its technology at FinovateSpring earlier this year.
Private messaging communications surveillance service txtsmarter is sharing some big news. First, the Silicon Valley, California-based company has closed a Series A funding round led by North Carolina-based investment bank and financial services company, Carolina Financial Group. The amount of the investment was not disclosed.
Second, txtsmarter has appointed a new CEO, Edward Green, to lead the company in its next stage of growth. Formerly CEO of Ring Access and Basys Automation Systems, Green also has 26 years of direct venture capital experience. He replaces outgoing CEO Nuri Otus, who is no longer involved in the company’s operations.
Speaking about the fundraising, Green pointed to growing demands from companies to meet regulatory expectations as they relate to private messaging and communications. “Over the past couple of months, global regulatory agencies have focused on financial institutions, levying billions of dollars of fines for missing texts and WhatsApp messages,” Green explained. “txtsmarter’s unique solution empowers companies to achieve eComms compliance in near real-time across an ever-shifting landscape of communications channels.”
txtsmarter’s technology enables the capture, verification, encryption, and archiving of data from private messaging applications, platforms, and services. The company’s compliance communications surveillance service works with Apple iMessage, Android SMS/MMS, WhatsApp, and other messaging products. By making previously inaccessible data available in real-time – and recently adding the ability to access historical messaging data, as well – txtsmarter helps businesses meet compliance obligations and mitigate data leaks.
This spring, txtsmarter was awarded the 2022 Most Innovative Use of Alternative Data in Regulatory Compliance at the A-Team Innovation Awards. The company called the award a validation of the work its done in developing its intelligent compliance solution, as well as a reflection of the need for such a solution in the marketplace.
“With txtsmarter, there is no data loss, no apps to install, and no learning curve; it’s an elegant solution for the modern world of e-comms compliance surveillance for any company,” Hugh Cumberland, Managing Director, UK/EMEA, said. “We have all seen what big headlines can do to a company’s brand and reputation and have observed the FCA cracking down on firms to ensure all communications are recorded as required. txtsmarter mitigates communication data gaps to prevent sanctions and fines during the audit process. It’s as simple as that.”
New Finovate alum Hawk AI announced a collaboration with Diebold Nixdorf.
The partnership will facilitate the distribution and implementation of Hawk AI’s AML Surveillance and Fraud Prevention suite to banks.
Hawk AI made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring in San Francisco.
Hawk AI, a fraud-fighting and AML platform based in Germany, announced a new partnership with fellow Finovate alum Diebold Nixdorf. Together, the two companies will collaborate to distribute and implement Hawk AI’s AML Surveillance and Fraud Prevention suite in banks to enable them to combat financial crime more effectively. The initial focus on the collaboration will be in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and will make it easier for Diebold Nixdorf customers in particular to access Hawk AI’s financial crime fighting technology.
Hawk AI CEO and co-founder Tobias Schweiger said that the willingness of financial institutions to adopt technology like Hawk AI’s AML Surveillance and Fraud Prevention suite is due to both “operational considerations” as well as the demands of regulatory authorities, which are “starting to ask for answers to fast-changing financial crime trends which no longer can be addressed with old technology and too much labor.” Instead, Schweiger said, Hawk AI’s partnership with Diebold Nixdorf helps alleviate one of the critical problems to answering these regulatory queries; namely the challenge of implementing newer, better financial crime fighting technology. Schweiger credited Diebold Nixdorf for having the “strong know-how, and professional services capabilities” to make implementation easier and less risky for customers.
“We’re thrilled to work with Hawk AI, a pioneer in explainable AI-powered AML and modern fraud prevention,” Diebold Nixdorf Director Solutions DACH Walter Gries said. “While combating new fincrime techniques is urgently needed, financial institutions must ensure a transparent process where frontline workers, auditors, and regulators trust the results. Hawk AI’s systems provide this trust, and we look forward to bringing the technology to new financial institutions together.”
Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Munich, Germany, Hawk AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring earlier this year. At the event, the company demoed its technology that combines AI with traditional, rule-based strategies to monitor financial transactions in real-time. When suspicious activity is observed, the platform sends alerts to financial crime specialists for further investigation. This helps limit the amount of false positives that can weigh-down the effectiveness of a financial crime solution and create unwanted friction for customers.
Hawk AI’s partnership with Diebold Nixdorf comes just one month after the German company reported that it was working with KYC and customer onboarding specialist Ondato. Announced last month, Hawk AI and Ondato have teamed up to offer an integrated KYC validation process that features AML transaction monitoring and behavioral analysis. Ondato CEO and co-founder Liudas Kanapienis highlighted this aspect of the partnership in his statement, noting that the collaboration will enable Ondato to “expand client onboarding and compliance management towards behavior monitoring.”
Also in August, Hawk AI teamed up with Aux, a credit union service organization (CUSO) that serves more than 200 credit unions in the U.S. The partnership will make it easier for credit unions to access Hawk AI’s financial fraud and AML solutions. Aux VP of Compliance Services Gaye DeCesare praised Hawk AI’s technology as “easier to use and more cost effective than other legacy products on the market today.” DeCesare also underscored the fact that HAWK AI’s technology is “enhanced with new features and functionality” on a regular basis.
UBS and Wealthfront have mutually terminated a $1.4 billion acquisition announced earlier this year.
Despite the call-off, UBS has given Wealthfront $69.7 million in financing at a $1.4 billion valuation.
The termination of the deal comes after a significant decline in fintech valuations.
No matter the circumstances, breakups are always hard. Just ask financial services firm UBS and roboadvisor Wealthfront.
After agreeing to acquire Wealthfront in a deal valued at $1.4 billion in January, the two announced last week that the deal was off. Prior to last week, the acquisition was expected to close in the second half of this year. However, the two parties cited “unspecified regulatory concerns” as a reason for the deal collapse.
Purchasing Wealthfront, a roboadvisor headquartered in California, would have helped Switzerland-based UBS grow in the U.S. market and also would have offered access to Wealthfront’s digital wealth management tools and user-friendly technologies.
In January, Wealthfront had 470,000 clients and a total of $27 billion in assets under management. The company was founded in 2008 by Andy Rachleff and Dan Carroll as KaChing, and rebranded under the Wealthfront name in 2010. The company is known for it user-friendly, automated investing tools. Last year, Wealthfront added to its reputation by creating a Socially Responsible Investing Portfolio that is designed around sustainability, diversity, and equity.
“We are continuing to explore ways to work together in a partnership and UBS has given us $70 million in financing at a $1.4 billion valuation,” said Wealthfront Chief Executive Officer David Fortunato. “With this fresh round of funding under our belt along with the ability to begin self-funding the business, we are committed to building a lasting company that positively impacts the lives of our clients for decades to come.”
UBS has offered the new investment, which totals $69.7 million, via notes that can be converted into Wealthfront shares. “That protects other investors in Wealthfront from potentially having to mark down their stakes in the companies,” explained the Wall Street Journal
It is worth noting that the call-off of the acquisition comes after a significant decline in fintech valuations. If the deal was to have gone through, UBS would have likely overpaid for Wealthfront. It will be interesting to see if the Swiss bank will acquire a cheaper U.S.-based roboadvisor as a replacement now that valuations have decreased.
This is a sponsored post by Strands, Gold Sponsors of FinovateFall 2022.
Nowadays, personalization has become a must in all sectors that affect consumers’ daily lives. Companies such as Netflix and Amazon have already been able to create totally customized and customer-centric experiences thanks to advances in technology, data, and analytics. Digital Banking has also faced these expectations, demanding personalization for different user bases, needs, and underserved segments. With a focus on financial wellness, banks can generate cross-selling opportunities and create personalized journeys according to the interests of their customers.
Technology advancements have enabled companies to collect, analyze, and use data from a variety of sources, including internal and external channels, enabling banks to make better decisions, offers, and actions than ever before. Unfortunately, most banks still struggle to know their customers or to interact with them timely and relevantly – to provide the right offers at the right time to the right customers.
This is what customer centricity means, which is vastly different from product or brand centricity. When a financial institution has a deep understanding of its customers, it can provide solutions that are tailored to meet their specific needs, life stages, values, and interests beyond their typical sociodemographic information.
As part of this approach, extra data sources are tapped, such as third parties, in addition to what’s available within core banking as open banking data, surveys, social media, and other data sources consented by the customers, integrating machine learning, categorized transactional data, and other customer experience solutions that can enrich the available raw data.
How to derive and use such insights is now the question. In the first stage of data enrichment and analysis, core application data can be used to understand how the customer interacts with the bank, the recency, frequency, channels, etc. Through this information and analytical models, it is possible for financial institutions to predict proactively what the customer is likely to want or need in real time.
Tampere, Finland-based ReceiptHero is on a mission to make meaningful interactions from every day transactions.
The company’s platform combines digital receipts with loyalty programs and benefits to give merchants new ways to engage with their customers. Consumers benefit from an integrated solution that relieves the burden of paper and email receipts, as well as the hassle multiple loyalty cards and apps.
We caught up with Chris Moore, Chief Operating Officer with ReceiptHero, to talk about how far the company has come since its Finovate debut in 2020, and the role ReceiptHero plays in the emerging data economy. We also talked about the company’s recently announced partnership with Ingenico.
You made your Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2020 in Berlin, Germany. What was that experience like?
Chris Moore: Wow, that feels like a decade ago! Back then we were a very small team and had just released our Nordea bank integration. We had also started to systematically onboard our first batch of Finnish merchants to the platform. The feedback we got from the demo was fantastic; it really felt like we were solving a global problem and not just something we had been talking about here in Finland. You could argue pitching at FinovateEurope was the catalyst to where we are today.
Later that year you secured two million dollars in seed funding. What did that investment say about your company at the time and how did you put the capital to work?
Moore: The seed funding also solidified we were fighting a problem big enough. We picked some great Nordic investors and they’ve provided more than just capital since the investment. Essentially, the funding was to grow the platform and increase our sales efforts in the Nordics, but also to (expand) into other markets, such as Switzerland and the U.K. and put capital towards our POS integrations which are a key part of getting the receipt data flowing from the retailers.
Last fall ReceiptHero partnered with Mastercard and Visa. How did these partnerships come about and what was accomplished through them?
Moore: These partnerships came quicker than we expected. To partner with both Visa and Mastercard at the seed stage was a huge milestone for us. But we also knew that tackling the digital receipt problem would only happen if we had global partners such as the two major card schemes. The partnership with both Visa and Mastercard allows us to move into new markets in Europe with less dependence on local payment providers and therefore fewer integrations before being able to launch our solution. So it was a really big win with regards to scaling the platform and providing confidence at the highest level to support our objective of removing paper receipts as the main method of proof of purchase. I don’t think these partnerships would of been possible without our great development team building out a PCI DSS compliant platform, emphasizing our commitment to safeguarding cardholder data and providing the best possible receipt platform on the market today.
Speaking of Visa, you’ve recently strengthened your relationship with the company. How so?
Moore: Visa has seen increased client requests and interest in digital receipting over the last 18 months and, for a while, they have been trying to find a European partner who can enable such a solution. Building on the technical partnership from 2021, this new agreement puts us in the shop window as an approved partner for Visa’s clients and partners. We are already seeing the benefits of being involved in Visa’s Fintech Partner Connect program and we hope we can announce something soon off the back of this strengthened relationship.
You have talked about the idea of the data economy. In what way is ReceiptHero a part of this data economy – and what role does it play within it?
Moore: We are surrounded by data in our daily lives, most of it is unstructured and in hard to reach places. Receipts printed on paper are just that: unstructured and, as a customer, it’s hard to apply that purchase data to good use. Part of my opening remarks at FinovateEurope was that we are showered by amazing digital payment innovations and sadly the post purchase experience has mainly been left to stay in the analog world. Purchase data is core to building a strong data economy, as this data has so far been siloed and in a format that is hard to receive in real-time. It’s not really been leveraged or valued as it should be. ReceiptHero is breaking down those silos and enabling a world where a consumer can have this data instantly in their banking app or in an approved service where the data is used to better the customer experience.
Part of our unique role in fighting for digital, structured receipts is that we have a fiduciary duty to the data that flows through our platform to use it in a way that benefits all ecosystem stakeholders. We have no ulterior motive here; we are not a bank, a large retailer nor the cash register or payment provider enabling the sale. This allows us to act with the best interest of all stakeholders and help everyone to better utilize this new found digital data for the cardholder and the merchant.
ReceiptHero also plays a role in the trend toward sustainability and responsible consumption. How important has this been to you and to your customers?
Moore: For large retailers that print hundreds of thousands of receipts a day, what happens when you turn off all the receipt printers in your stores nationwide and only send customer receipts via digital channels? What are the impacts to your business from a cost perspective – but also the environmental repercussions? Simply put, less trees get turned into wood and then into paper, which then would have found their short existence as thermal receipts that sadly cannot be recycled due to the harmful chemicals on the paper. Take that scenario and then multiply it across thousands of retailers right across Europe (and, at some point, globally). That becomes a significant change in our fight for sustainability and better digital experiences.
What can you tell us about the fintech industry in Finland that those outside of the country – and the region – might be surprised to hear?
Moore: Well, I have personally been in Finland for 10 years now and I’ve seen the fintech space grow year over year. Sweden has always been a few steps ahead with regard to fintech unicorns, but Finland has now quickly caught up. We have a great ecosystem here where banks seek to innovate and look for fintechs to speed up those embedded features. Now we have unicorn successes such as Enfuce and AlphaSense in Europe. I also think the VC space is heating up with regards to fintech funding, with lots of appetite for investments in young ambitious fintech companies.
You introduced a loyalty rewards solution this summer. Why this move now – and how has the early reception to the new feature been?
Moore: Distributing digital receipts in real-time is the very foundation of what can be built with this data. What we wanted to prove is what happens in adjacent segments when you get this data and wrap a lightweight loyalty solution around it. We’ve started to onboard our SME merchants onto the rewards program, and so far it looks like we’re able to provide even more value to the merchant and the cardholder. For larger retailers where they might already use a loyalty platform, we can enable real-time card-linked receipt data to give them better visibility over repeat spend, lifetime loyalty, and average basket size.
You’ve also announced that you will be joining Ingenico’s new PPaaS platform. What can you tell us about this partnership?
Moore: We’ve announced this week that we’ve signed a partnership with Ingenico, one of the world’s largest payment terminal providers and now part of the Worldline group. PPaaS is Ingenico’s new payment platform that enables a “one-to-many” integration for us, so we can enable our digital receipt solution for thousands of acquirers, another partnership that supports us to scale across Europe. What’s exciting about this partnership is that we can onboard cardholders from the payment terminal, allowing another entry point to receive digital receipts for customers.
What else can we expect to hear from ReceiptHero over the balance of 2022 and into 2023?
Moore: Well, we’ve got some important retailers coming to the platform over the next six months so we’re really excited to announce those in due course. These are retailers that operate across multiple markets and more signs of us expanding further into Europe. There will be some bank partnership news too, but I wont give anymore away on that just yet!
New York-based identity decisioning platform Alloy has raised $52 million in funding at a valuation of $1.55 billion.
Alloy will use the additional funding to help it respond to global demand in the wake of its recently announced international expansion.
Alloy made its Finovate debut at FinDEVr Silicon Valley in 2016.
Alloysecured $52 million in new funding today. The identity decisioning platform for banks and fintechs announced that the investment, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Avenir Growth, gives the New York-based company a valuation of $1.55 billion. The capital will help Alloy respond to growing global demand for its fraud prevention solutions.
Existing investors Canapi Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Avid Ventures, and Felicis Ventures also participated in the funding. This week’s investment comes almost one year after the company raised $100 million at a valuation of $1.35 million.
“We feel incredibly lucky to have partners that not only understand the impact of our investments into our platform and in expanding globally but also proactively come to the table to support them,” Alloy co-founder and CEO Tommy Nicholas said when this week’s investment was announced. “With this newest investment we’ll be able to accelerate our growth and better address the global fraud challenges that companies are facing.”
Alloy demonstrated its technology at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016. At the event, the company discussed how its technology enables businesses to build fully-customizable APIs for customer identification and compliance. In the years since then, Alloy has grown into a fraud-fighting unicorn with more than 300 companies using its API-based platform to automate identity decisions during the account origination process and monitor those decisions on an ongoing basis. Leveraging more than 160 data sources, Alloy enables institutions and companies to pull customer, credit bureau, and alternative data through a single point of integration to help them find and onboard good customers without increasing their exposure to potentially fraudulent activity.
Over the past 12 months, Alloy has experienced revenue gains of more than 2x. Processing more than a million decisions daily, Alloy includes Ally Bank, Ramp, and Evolve Bank & Trust among its customers. The company was named to the seventh annual Forbes Cloud 100 last month, a roster of the world’s top private cloud companies. In August, Alloy also announced that its fraud and risk decisioning platform is now officially available in 40 countries in North America, EMEA, Latin America, and APAC.
“We’ve identified a clear need in the global market for Alloy, particularly with the recent rise in fraud, fines for poor implementation of regulatory requirements, and the growth of embedded finance,” Alloy Head of Global Edwina Johnson said. “We’re excited to bring Alloy’s unique platform, and team, to companies operating worldwide.”
Yesterday we shared the announcement that FinovateFall 2022 is on track to be our biggest event to date. Today we have great news from the other side of the Finovate stage: fully 50% of the speakers at FinovateFall in New York next month will be women.
“This definitely contributes to our DEI initiatives and effort to inject diversity into our events and portfolio as a whole,” Finovate Brand Strategy Director Adela Knox said.
Here are just a few of the women who will share their insights into fintech and the future of financial services at FinovateFall, September 12 through 14.
Remember that early-bird savings for FinovateFall 2022 end soon! Be sure to stop by the FinovateFall registration hub today to take advantage of special discounted ticket prices through Friday, September 2nd.
SC Moatti
SC Moatti will deliver a keynote address titled: Winter Is Coming: Now’s the Time to Hire That Chief Product Officer. Moatti is the founding Managing Partner of Mighty Capital; and the founding CEO of product acceleration platform, Products That Count.
In her address, Moatti will explain the consequences of not heeding the “product call” and why, if there’s one role companies should keep on their list of new hires this season, then it should be a Chief Product Officer.
As part of FinovateFall’s Payments stream, Wells Fargo Head of Enterprise Payments Ulrike Guigui will give a keynote address, Has the Pandemic Changed Payments Forever? 90% of Bank’s Useful Customer Data Comes from Payments – How Can They Ensure They Stay in the Game?
Alyson Clarke
Also in our Payments stream, Bernadette Ksepka, AVP and Deputy Head of Product Development, FedNowSM Service, Federal Reserve System, will sit down with PayGen co-founder and Chief Product Officer Robin LoGiudice to discuss The Continued Evolution of Faster, Cheaper, and Better Payments – Where Next with Instant Payments.
Alyson Clarke, Principal Analyst with Forrester, will deliver a keynote address titled Hybrid Banking – Why the Future is a Blend of Physical and Digital, as part of our Customer Experience stream.
Also in our Customer Experience stream, Symend co-founder and Chief Impact Officer Tiffany Kaminsky will share her insights in an address titled Upping the Ante: Using the Science of Decision-Making for Effective Customer Engagement.
Fintech-as-a-service innovator Solid raised $63 million in Series B funding this week.
Solid offers a platform that enables businesses to build and scale embedded fintech products into their own solutions.
The company, which made its Finovate debut in 2019 as “Wise,” will use the investment to accelerate its expansion into “fintech-ready” verticals such as travel, health care, and the gig economy.
Fintech-as-a-service company Solid has raised $63 million in Series B funding. The company offers infrastructure to enable companies to launch and bring to scale embedded fintech solutions. The round was led by FTV Capital. Existing investor Headline also participated.
“We built the most comprehensive fintech infrastructure from the ground up, so others don’t have to,” Solid co-founder and CEO Arjun Thyagarajan said. “Now, any company can quickly spin up bank accounts, crypto wallets, send payments, and issue cards to their end users, right into their product experience, while Solid does the heavy lifting of building and maintaining compliant fintech infrastructure.”
Solid made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2019 as “Wise.” At the conference, the company demonstrated its small business banking-in-a-box offering that included a checking account, payments, invoicing, cards, and point-of-sale solutions. The company rebranded as Solid last year as part of a pivot to highlight the modern banking platform they had used to launch their Wise business banking solution.
“We went from powering the Wise app to powering other products and ecosystems,” Thyagarajan and company co-founder and President Raghav Lal wrote at the Solid website last spring. “Along the way, we realized our brand and our positioning needed to change, too. And today, we are making the change and excited to share that Wise is now Solid.”
Solid will use the new capital to help fuel the company’s accelerated expansion into what it calls “fintech-ready” verticals like travel, construction, healthcare, and the gig economy. The company’s fully abstracted fintech-as-a-service platform gives developers the tools they need to easily embed fintech products into their offerings. Solid reports that fintech programs that build and launch on its platform own the experience and have little or no regulatory overhead. Solid’s technology also leverages modern APIs and a minimal-code approach to make integration easier. Companies that have used Solid’s platform include fellow Finovate alums like Paystand, as well as SaaS companies such as Everflow and emerging startups like Starlight.
Founded in 2018, Solid is headquartered in San Mateo, California. This week’s investment brings the company’s total funding to more than $80 million according to Crunchbase. Solid reported a 10x growth in revenues, customer base, and transactions processed last year. More than 100 fintech programs and $2 billion in transactions have been processed on the company’s infrastructure year to date.
