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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Savana, a fintech headquartered in Pennsylvania, raised $45 million in new funding.
The new capital consists of a combination of equity and debt. Canadian investor Georgian led the equity component of the funding.
Savana will use the funds to fuel the continued growth of its Digital Delivery Platform.
Pennsylvania-based fintech Savana has secured $45 million in new funding. The capital infusion includes $10 million in debt financing. The Series A round was led by Toronto, Canada-based investor Georgian, and also featured participation from Fiserv – which also announced that it would expand its reseller agreement with Savana. The company will use the funds to power the growth of its Digital Delivery Platform, boost go-to-market activities, and accelerate its new capabilities roadmap.
“The banking industry is going through an incredible transformation,” Savana CEO, founder, and Chairman Michael Sanchez said. “This funding round will help support the growth of our digital delivery platform to enable any bank, whether new or going through transformation of existing technology infrastructure, to speed time to market of new products and services, support continuous digital innovation, and drive significant operational efficiency.”
Savana’s Digital Delivery Platform offers channel and product agnostic customer engagement, account servicing, and automated bank operations. The platform works with both new Gen3 cores as well as traditional core banking systems to provide universal digital delivery across all bank-assisted and consumer-direct channels. API-based and cloud-native, Savana’s Digital Delivery Platform gives financial institutions the ability to automate servicing for bank and credit union teams, as well as for customer-originated requests. The result is faster time-to-market and a more friction-free and consistent experience for customers and members, regardless of channel.
Founded in 2009, Savana is headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, a township 25 miles west of Philadelphia. Last fall, the fintech announced that Live Oak Bank had converted its legacy bank operations to Savana’s process orchestration platform. A digital, cloud-based bank that serves small business owners in 50 states, Live Oak Bank was the leading SBA and USDA lender by dollar volume in 2020. Excluding PPP funds, Live Oak Bank has total assets of more than $6.9 billion.
“Our goal was to re-define what banking could become when we embarked on our transformation journey,” Live Oak Chairman and CEO Chip Mahan said. “We knew that the only way to create a more compelling customer value proposition was to lead with technology that enabled innovation, convenience, and speed of delivery from the core to the customer. Savana is a key component of our end-to-end solution.”
American Express is launching American Express Global Pay, a cross-border payments tool for U.S. small businesses.
Businesses can use American Express Global Pay to pay suppliers in more than 40 countries and in 12 currencies.
American Express did not disclose exact fees, but said that it will display the fees when the business is creating the payment.
American Express is helping small businesses keep up with global competition with its launch of American Express Global Pay, a new cross-border payments tool for small businesses based in the U.S.
American Express Global Pay allows U.S. businesses to make domestic and international B2B payments to suppliers in more than 40 countries and in 12 currencies using the mobile-optimized website. Eligible customers can earn one Membership Rewards point for every $30 in equivalent foreign exchange payments.
“Businesses today start, grow and compete on a global scale,” said American Express Executive Vice President of Global Commercial Services Dean Henry. “Our U.S. Small Business Card Members told us they want an international payment solution focused on simplicity, convenience and the chance to earn rewards – so we built American Express Global Pay to enable these businesses to easily and effectively manage their B2B payments globally on a secure platform, backed by the trusted service and unique benefits of American Express Membership.”
Available to eligible U.S. American Express Small Business Card Members, American Express Global Pay enables users to access the cross-border tool in the same location they manage their American Express Business account and offers same-day delivery of funds in select countries.
While American Express has not disclosed exact fees, the company said that it will display the fees when the business is creating the payment. “In addition to these fees, we also make money from the purchase and sale of foreign currency,” American Express said. “Recipient banks or intermediary banks may charge their own fees, which can reduce the amount delivered to your recipient.”
Last week, we looked at Finovate alums that are leveraging their technologies to help employers help their employees achieve financial wellness and greater financial inclusion. Today we are highlighting a Finovate alum – and Best of Show winner – that is using its innovation to facilitate charitable giving in the workplace.
Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, Pinkaloo made its Finovate debut two years ago at FinovateFall. At the conference, the company demonstrated Modern Giving, its white-label charitable giving platform. The technology gives individuals a centralized account to use for their charitable giving, learn about other charities that match their values, and collaborate on philanthropic efforts with others. Modern Giving enables businesses to maximize engagement with their employees and customers, helping promote and drive charitable giving in their communities.
“Pinkaloo’s white-label Modern Giving offers an opportunity to attract new banking customers and members, as well as more deeply connect with your current customers around an area that they are deeply, deeply passionate about and truly care about strongly,” Pinkaloo founder and CEO Gideon Taub told our FinovateFall audience. “At the same time, your banking institution can make more money and hit your KPIs while directly powering the charitable giving of your customers and members.”
Left to right: Pinkaloo’s Daniel Gardner (COO) and Gideon Taub (CEO & Founder) delivering the company’s Best of Show winning demo at FinovateFall 2019.
The company’s demonstration was impressive enough to earn Pinkaloo a Best of Show award in its first Finovate appearance. And it looks as if our Finovate audience was not the only one paying attention to Pinkaloo’s achievements. Less than two years after its award-winning appearance on the Finovate stage, the company announced that it had agreed to be acquired by Ren (formerly RenPSG), a leading independent philanthropic solutions provider. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Founded in 1987 and headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, Ren supports more than $20 billion in assets. The firm partners with financial services companies, nonprofits, and community organizations to offer online access for donors, advisors, and employees to manage a variety of planned gifts ranging from charitable trusts to endowments and private foundations.
“Today’s philanthropic ecosystem demands ongoing innovation in how we recruit, engage, and retain donors – all while also giving donors the best possible experience,” Taub said when the deal was announced. “Donors want to be involved and drive change via small and large contributions alike. They need a robust platform to do just that – and a RenPSG-Pinkaloo team uniquely answers that demand.”
The future of the Pinkaloo brand, post-acquisition, remains to be seen. Techincal.ly quoted Taub in March 2021 as indicating that a “new shared brand will emerge from our combined company” as the two entities “integrate and innovate.” With employees around the country, Pinkaloo said it will retain its “Baltimore presence” as its leadership and team are integrated into Ren. Taub praised Ren for “respecting and welcoming our ideas and processes,” adding that the alignment of visions between the two companies “makes for an easy transition.”
Pinkaloo was a finalist in the Reimagine Charitable Giving Challenge sponsored by the Better Giving Studio (BGS) of Giving By All, an initiative of the Philanthropic Partnerships team of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Previous to its acquisition by Ren, Pinkaloo had raised $1.8 million in funding from investors including Squadra Ventures, C5 Accelerate, TEDCO, Baltimore Angels, and PeaceTech Accelerator.
The rate of innovation within the financial services sector has increased dramatically. As traditional financial services organizations attempt to keep pace, they often leverage technology from fintech providers to quickly develop or provision new cloud-based applications.
As a result, over half of fintechs globally are looking to implement new technologies that will support financial service organizations to better meet customer demand, enhance agility, and improve competitiveness.
In order to achieve these goals, financial services organizations need to be able to easily leverage and provision new fintech services and applications, and to seamlessly integrate their existing production applications and data sources with these applications.
This is where a real-time bidirectional data gateway comes in.
This webinar will discuss how a seamless connection between cloud-based fintech applications and financial services customers’ production applications and data assets will enable faster innovation to execute a wide range of business initiatives, from offering more personalized services tailored to individual customers to streamlining operations and improving compliance with regulations.
In collaboration with InterSystems, watch back on this webinar featuring:
Joe Lichtenberg, Product and Industry Marketing Director, InterSystems
Michael Hom, Head of Financial Services Solutions, InterSystems
Moderated by David Penn, Research Analyst, Finovate
It’s August, which means that FinovateFall officially kicks off next month. The summer heat may have you in vacation mode, but in a matter of weeks it’ll be time to switch gears and get ready for our three-day event, taking place in New York City, September 12 through 14.
Book your spot at this year’s conference by August 12 to save $600. FinovateFall is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, so you know it’s going to be big!
Because I know you’re busy submitting your final vacation request for the summer, I’ve distilled the agenda down to a few highlights.
Day 1
Demos It wouldn’t be a Finovate event without the 7-minute demos. We’ll have three demo sessions on the first day of the event. Check out our list of who is demoing so far.
Panel: The Fintech Ecosystem & Strategic Partnerships – From Competition To Collaboration & Co-Creation Moderated by American Banker’s Penny Crossman, this panel features Josh Williams, CBO & Head of Partnerships at Seattle Bank; Maria Gotsch, President and CEO at Partnership Fund for New York City; Mike Vostrizansky, Growth Equity Investor at FTV Capital; and Franklin Garrigues, Vice President, External Ecosystems at TD Bank Group.
Startup booster The Startup Booster offers a chance for fintech founders to network with early stage fintech investors. This new session helps fintech founders gain insights and connections from investors through pre-booked one-to-one meetings. See if you qualify to participate in our Startup Booster program.
Day 2
More demos We’re featuring four demo sessions on the second day of the conference and will announce the Best of Show winners at the end of the second day.
Keynote Address: What Wins Deals in Fintech – What Are The Essential Success Factors for Winning More Deals, Better Deals, Faster Deals? Sam Kilmer, Managing Director at Cornerstone Advisors, will talk us through how to get deals done in fintech.
Power Panel: Why Reinventing Banking & Reimagining Customer Experience Is Vital For Banks To Compete In The New Normal Oak HC/FT Co-Founder & Managing Partner Patricia Kemp will moderate this session, with participation from Beyond the Arc CEO Steven Ramirez and Quavo Fraud & Disputes SVP and Revenue Executive Brittany Usher.
Day 3
Analyst All Stars Hear from Daniel Latimore, Chief Research Officer and Member of the Leadership Team at Celent; Alyson Clarke, Principal Analyst at Forrester; and Philip Benton, Senior Analyst of Financial Services at Omdia, on key opportunities and trends in the financial services space.
Fintech Fight Club Cage Match Edition Watch three industry leaders duke it out over some of the most challenging questions facing financial services. This is not another panel, but a cage match of ideas and opinions. This year’s participants include Jason Henrichs, CEO of Alloy Labs; Mary Wisniewski, Editor of Bankrate; and Lindsay Davis, Head of Markets at Atomic FI.
Fireside Chat: Climate Change & Financial Services – An Existential Threat Or The Biggest Opportunity In A Generation? I get to sit down with OakNorth President and COO Peter Grant to discuss how fintechs and financial services companies can find opportunities amidst a growing climate crisis.
There is, of course, much more to this year’s FinovateFall event. Check out the whole agenda, take a look at the speaker lineup, and be sure to register to be part of the 15th FinovateFall.
Yext announced the early access availability of its Summer ’22 release.
The New York company specializes in helping companies improve the way customers query their websites and apps for information about their businesses.
Yext made its Finovate debut in 2020 at FinovateFall.
Yext, a technology firm that leverages AI to collect and organize company information and provide it to customers, employees, and partners, announced that its Summer ’22 Release is now available for early access. The company announced last week that its solution now includes a number of new features that address a variety of business needs.
“Businesses today have to contend with an increasingly complex digital landscape,” Yext SVP of Product Management Maxwell Shaw said. “Instead of managing dozens of single-purpose applications, organizations should be empowered to consolidate essential functionality into one platform that can power both first and third-party experiences.”
The new features include:
Listing Updates: Provide greater visibility into engagement metrics and top keywords for enhanced search results. Improve status detail messages for better troubleshooting.
Custom Pages Development: Offers an improved, open architecture to enable external developers to create SEO-optimized landing pages at scale.
AI Data Cleaning. Applies a machine learning model for cleaning data, providing greater flexibility for developers who want to write complex functions or format data manually. Available currently as a Preview feature.
Fully Custom Search UI: Includes a new React component library which gives businesses new tools to build custom, AI-powered search experience frontends.
Solstice Algorithm Update: Leverages the Solstice algorithm update to enable administrators to optimize search experiences with Custom Phrases. Introduces Multi-Hop Relationship to support more complicated user queries.
Yext demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2020. The New York-based company showed how its technology helps streamline the way customers find answers to their queries when visiting a company’s website or app, using direct answers and calls-to-action. This helps boost conversion, lower operational costs, and generate new potential sources of customer intelligence to fuel future marketing efforts.
“Your marketing teams are spending a lot of money and effort driving customers to your site. We’re going to show you how to stop losing those customers because of your site experience,” Yext Head of Industry for Financial Services and Insurance Shane Closser explained during the company’s FinovateFall 2020 demo. “There’s no other solution in the market, especially within financial services, that you can deploy within six to eight weeks and see a demonstrable marketing ROI. Typically what we see is a 2x to 3x improvement in search experiences (for) users browsing your website.”
Founded in 2006, Yext began this year with a round of new platform additions for its Winter ’21 release, including listing modernization, consumer authorization, connector updates, and a feature called “Answers Headless React” which gives businesses new tools to build custom, AI-powered search experience frontends. This spring, the company announced a significant leadership transition that put board chair Michael Walrath in the CEO seat and named former Yext Chief Accounting Officer Darryl Bond as CFO. Yext also promoted Chief Strategy Officer Marc Ferrentino to the position of President and Chief Operating Officer.
With customers such as BBVA, Banner Bank, Farmers, and Citizens Financial, Yext is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker YEXT. The company has a market capitalization of $550 million.
Uber is launching a new debit card with tandem checking account.
The Uber Pro debit card is made available via partnerships with Mastercard, Marqeta, and Branch.
Uber Pro cardholders can receive up to 7% cashback on fuel purchases.
Uber’s latest attempt to attract more drivers to its platform comes in the form of a debit card with a tandem checking account. Late last week, the rideshare company announced the Uber Pro debit card.
The new debit card comes courtesy of partnerships with Mastercard, Marqeta, and Branch, a workforce payments platform that caters to gig economy workers and contractors. The card offers Uber drivers up to 7% cash back on gas purchases when they achieve Diamond status as an Uber Pro driver.
The Uber Pro card comes with a checking account powered by Branch, which will automatically deposit cardholders’ earnings into their account after every trip. Branch offers a unique take on earned wage access by enabling workers to access their paycheck as they earn it. The card currently has a wait list and will launch in the coming weeks.
This latest announcement comes three years after Uber originally introducedUber Money, a debit card and mobile app powered by Green Dot, and five years after the company launched its Barclays-powered credit card.
The launch of the Uber Pro card comes alongside a handful of other driver-related announcements from the ridesharing company. The Uber app will now offer drivers a range of nearby trips to choose from, show drivers their exact earnings upfront before they accept a trip, and offer enhanced benefits to Uber Pro drivers.
These driver-focused benefits are in part an effort to smooth out the supply and demand issue that Uber is facing. The nationwide labor shortage, combined with high fuel prices, has historically made it difficult for Uber to attract drivers. In May, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said, “Our need to increase the number of drivers on the platform is nothing new nor is it a surprise … there’s a lot of work ahead of us, but this is a machine that is rolling.”
Rapyd will facilitate in-app payments for Viber users.
“Through this partnership, Rakuten Viber can confidently step into the world of payments and become a leader in embedded finance, supported by Rapyd’s licensed end-to-end fintech offerings,” said Rapyd CEO Arik Shiltman.
Payments platform Rapyd partnered with consumer-facing messaging app Rakuten Viber today. Under the agreement, Rapyd will facilitate in-app payments for Viber users.
“The future of payments is integrated fintech, and this partnership demonstrates why we founded Rapyd in the first place: to democratize fintech for all,” said Rapyd CEO Arik Shiltman. “We’re proud to provide the infrastructure and licensing for global companies like Rakuten Viber, one of the world’s most trusted and recognized messaging and communications platforms, to develop their own financial services without them having to build the foundation from scratch. Through this partnership, Rakuten Viber can confidently step into the world of payments and become a leader in embedded finance, supported by Rapyd’s licensed end-to-end fintech offerings.”
The move places Rakuten Viber squarely in the center of the global digital payments space. Viber users can use the messaging service to send and receive money instantly, with no fees. Recipients can store money in a mobile wallet with an IBAN, which is available in the Viber app. Rakuten Viber is launching the service in Greece and Germany, where users can transact in Euros. The company will later expand into multiple currencies and will roll out to more countries.
Founded in 2016, Rapyd is a fintech-as-a-service innovator that offers a payments network and platform to facilitate local and international supplier and customer payments. The company has offices in London, Tel Aviv, San Francisco, Denver, Dubai, Miami, Singapore, Iceland, and Hong Kong.
This week’s edition of Finovate Global takes a look at recent fintech developments in Germany where green banking, embedded finance, and open banking are the themes at the top of this week’s fintech headlines.
First up, Berlin-based Sustainability-as-a-Service innovator ecolytiqannounced that it was teaming up with Slovakian financial institution Tatra Banka. The climate engagement fintech will provide Tatra Banka with the technology the firm needs in order to launch new green banking functionality on its online banking brand, Blue Planet. The new feature, which will be made available to Tatra Banka’s more than 600,000 customers, will enable users to monitor the impact their transactions may have on the environment (for example, with CO2 emissions), provide users with ideas on how to reduce their environmental impact, and offer rewards for spending that is environmentally friendly.
Founded in 2020, ecolytiq demonstrated its technology at Finovate’s developer event, FinDEVr 2021, which was held as a part of FinovateSpring that year. Putting accurate data at the center of the ability to move toward greater environmental sustainability, ecolytiq demonstrated how its open knowledge graph and streaming technology keep its data relevant and current. More recently, the company announced a strategic partnership with exceet Card Group, makers of sustainable payment cards made from wood and, the following month, teamed up with French sustainable neobank Green-Got.
Peter Golha, a director at Tatra Banka said that the institution believed it had a a role to play in the transition toward a more environmentally sustainable economy. “Not only have we a chance to change our own trajectory, but also a chance to live the topic of sustainability alongside our clients,” Golha said.
Founded in 1990, Tatra Banka was the first private bank to be established in Slovakia. Winner of the TREND Bank of the Year award for two years in a row, Tatra Banka announced this spring that it had achieved its greatest profit to date, reporting $164 million (EUR 162.1) in consolidated profits for the financial year 2021.
Second, German financial management platform for businesses Airbank inked a deal with Klarna Kosma this week. Klarna Kosma is an open banking platform launched by Swedish e-commerce innovator Klarna this spring. Seen as a rival to fellow Finovate alum Tink and its open banking platform, Klarna Kosma offers financial institutions, fintechs, and merchants connectivity to more than 15,000 banks in 24 countries around the world via a single API. Kosma was made possible in many ways by Klarna’s acquisition of direct, bank-to-bank payments company SOFORT in 2014, and Klarna has been developing and expanding the service ever since.
“Over the past year, the demand for Open Banking services from financial institutions and fintech startups has reached a tipping point,” Klarna Kosma VP Wilko Klaassen said. “(This) is why we have built a dedicated business unit which brings together engineering, product management, sales and marketing all together in the same team to focus on this $15 billion, fast-growing market.”
Airbank will leverage its new relationship with Klarna Kosma to “accelerate” its expansion into European markets and beyond. Airbank enables businesses to consolidate their bank accounts in a single location, allowing them to more easily automate bill management, make payments, and manage their finances. Companies also can use Airbank’s platform to track their financial transactions and forecast future liquidity. The partnership with Klarna Kosma will make it possible for Airbank to securely access account information from thousands of banks around the world, expand more aggressively, and better serve its SME customers that have global requirements.
“By the end of this year, we will serve over 50 counties, making Airbank the most comprehensive global banking solution for SMEs in the industry, with the ability to connect bank accounts from almost anywhere in the world,” Airbank founder and CEO Christopher Zemina said. “We are delighted to have Klarna Kosma as an experienced and dynamic partner that shares our ambition to shape the future of B2B financial management.”
Lastly, early in the week we learned that Berlin-based embedded finance startup Monite had teamed up with Codat, a U.K. firm that offers a universal API to enable access to consented business data from banking, accounting, and ecommerce platforms. The partnership will enable both SaaS platforms and financial institutions to integrate invoicing and billing functionality into their apps. This will allow platforms and institutions to offer businesses a unified solution for managing their financial operations.
In a statement, the CEOs of both Monite and Codat praised the great variety of financial apps and platforms dedicated to serving SMEs. The challenge, according to both Monite CEO Ivan Maryasin and Codat CEO Pete Lord, is that the variety can be overwhelming for many small businesses. “What’s still missing are the ‘super apps’ that bring everything together,” Maryasin said. “It can be time-consuming to manage and get the most out of them all,” concurred Lord.
Founded in 2020, Monite has raised $7.8 million in funding for its technology that empowers financial institutions and platforms to offer financial services such as multi-banking, AP automation, invoicing, and more to their customers. London, U.K.-based Codat neared unicorn status last month upon raising $100 million in Series C funding. The investment took the company’s total funding to more than $176 million and gave Codat a valuation of $825 million. The round was led by JPMorgan Partners, and featured participation from Plaid and Shopify.
Jack Henry & Associates announced a partnership with Victor Technologies.
The partnership will help Victor Technologies move forward with its instant payments strategy.
Jack Henry & Associates serves more than 8,000 customers in the U.S. via its Jack Henry Banking, Symitar, and ProfitStars brands.
Financial services provider Jack Henry & Associates has partnered with Victor Technologies to help advance its instant payments strategy. A subsidiary of MVB Edge Ventures and part of MVB Bank, Victor Technologies leverages both its integrated risk management technology as well as APIs to enable fintechs to embed financial services. The company has added real-time payments (RTP) capabilities via Jack Henry’s JHA PayCenter, which will enable MVB Bank’s Jack Henry core to send and receive real-time payments.
“Instant payments 24/7/365 is now table stakes and offers a huge competitive advantage for our clients,” Victor Head of Strategy and Operations said. “The features of the RTP network provide payment finality and certainty, which reduces back-office reconciliation because transactions are now settled in real-time. This is especially true for key growth verticals like gaming and crypto where transactions need to be processed at any time regardless of banking hours. The addition of real-time payments gives end-users quicker access to their money.”
MVB Bank is the first Jack Henry client to go live using the company’s RTP Send functionality, and the bank intends to offer RTP Request for Payment services, as well. The ability to offer both solutions will make it easier for Victor Technologies to provide its customers with the kind of faster payment needs their businesses require.
A Finovate alum since 2010, Jack Henry & Associates serves 8,000 clients around the country via its three signature brands: Jack Henry Banking, Symitar, and ProfitStars. The company leverages these brands to deliver innovative solutions to community and regional banks, credit unions, as well as corporate entities and large-scale financial institutions. Founded in 1976 and headquartered in Monett, Missouri, Jack Henry & Associates’ partnership announcement with Victor Technologies comes just one month after Jack Henry announced that more than 250 financial institutions have taken advantage of its JHA PayCenter – and its connections to both The Clearing House RTP network and the Zelle Network – to execute their faster payment strategies.
“We strategically built JHA PayCenter to support the diverse faster payments strategies of Jack Henry clients, financial institutions using third-party core and digital platforms, as well as other fintechs,” Jack Henry & Associates VP of Payment Solutions Tede Forman said. “The payments hub virtually eliminates the inherent technology and staffing challenges experienced by financial institutions that elect to build and maintain direct connections to one or multiple faster payments networks.”
MX has appointed Jim Magats as CEO, replacing Interim CEO Shane Evans.
Magats comes to MX after spending 18 years as a senior executive at PayPal, where he specialized in open finance.
Evans will continue to serve as a senior advisor.
Open finance fintech MXnamed Jim Magats CEO this week.
The news comes after company Founder and former CEO Ryan Caldwell stepped down at the beginning of the year, appointing Shane Evans as Interim CEO. After the transition, Caldwell stepped into a new role as Executive Chair to spend more time with family and focus on his daughter’s health recovery.
“Jim Magats brings a wealth of experience and knowledge about how to deliver high-impact financial solutions and products for consumers, merchants, and financial organizations, along with a vast network of partners and customers at the world’s leading financial institutions and fintechs,” said Caldwell. “We have tremendous confidence in Jim’s ability to lead the organization through the next phase of our growth in establishing our leadership in the open finance economy, helping organizations of all sizes access and act on financial data to improve customer outcomes and grow their businesses.”
Magats comes to MX after spending 18 years as a senior executive at PayPal. Most recently, he served as the company’s Senior Vice President for Omni Payments Solutions where he was charged with overseeing the company’s open banking strategy and partnership network of more than 150 financial institutions and networks.
The appointment is strategic for MX, which has spent the past few years positioning itself as a leader in the open finance space, because of Magats’ experience in open finance. While at PayPal, he worked with regulators in Europe helping to create PSD2 banking standards. He also spent time building PayPal’s open, secure API capabilities to facilitate digital payments.
“Financial data is the lifeblood of a connected economy, and nobody helps organizations access and act on financial data better than MX. Our opportunity to make financial data accessible and actionable is global, extends across verticals, and has the potential to make a positive difference in the lives of billions of people,” said Magats. “After 18 amazing years at PayPal, I’m incredibly excited to join MX, a company on a mission to build the open finance economy and empower the world to be financially strong. We are going to deepen and extend our partnerships with financial institutions and fintechs to fuel the next wave of innovation while fostering greater participation in the global economy through new products, use cases, and services.”
During his seven-month tenure as Interim CEO, Evans saw the company through the tragic passing of company Cofounder Brandon Dewitt. Evans, who joined MX in 2019 as Chief Revenue Officer, will continue to serve as a senior advisor.
One of the more interesting developments in fintech in recent years has been how a number of innovators have sought to leverage the workplace as a way to make financial wellness, education, and inclusion a reality for workers. Today’s column will introduce five of fintechs – Finovate alums all – that are bringing the benefits of fintech innovation not only to where users live, but to where they work, as well.
Digital transformation consulting services company Digital Align introduced its AlignMoney solution at FinovateSpring two years ago. The offering is the world’s first, digital Banking-as-a-Benefit platform for employers to offer to their employees, helping companies both attract and retain talent. AlignMoney makes it easy for employees to secure a variety of banking products and services – ranging from savings, checking, and credit cards to home loans, insurance, and investments.
Making its Finovate debut as part of our all-digital fintech conference in 2020, Icon Savings Plan returned to the Finovate stage a year later for FinovateFall in New York. The company’s innovation is a portable retirement plan that replaces the complexity and fragmentation of the 401(k)s with a low-cost, personalized savings and investing plan for both W2 and 1099 employees. And when the employee leaves their employer, their Icon Savings Plan goes with them without any change in service or hassle – and potential expense – of having to rollover the account.
Among Finovate’s newest alums, Keep Financial made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring. The company, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, and founded in January 2022, won Best of Show for its Cash Vesting Plans that help companies solve hiring and retention challenges while aligning interests between employees and employers. More than a typical bonus, Keep Financial’s Cash Vesting Plans vest over time, enabling workers to be rewarded for their continued contributions to the company. The plans operate like 0% interest loans from which employees can draw upon at any time and for any amount. Borrowed funds are repaid at each vesting milestone while the employee continues to work for the company.
In the same way that fintechs urge banks to leverage their relationship with customers to provide new and better financial products and services, SalaryFits seek to leverage the relationship between the employee and employer to provide better, fairer financial solutions, as well. The London-based company connects the product offers from financial institutions to the payroll of companies. This enables businesses to contribute to the financial wellbeing of their employees and gives providers a way to reach a broader market of potential customers. Financial solutions from more than 100 financial institutions are available via SalaryFit’s cloud-based platform.
Taking to the Finovate stage for the first time two years ago at FinovateSpring, Kirkland, Washington-based SecureSave offers a new type of workplace savings program that helps employees build and maintain an emergency savings account. SecureSave provides employees with a free emergency savings app to make the process of saving for an emergency fund easy and automatic via payroll deductions. The company partners with employers, benefit brokerage firms, and financial services providers to make emergency savings a component in a holistic financial wellness program.
