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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 12 and 13. Register today and save your spot.
MeasureOne is a consumer-permissioned data platform that enables businesses to request any data that lives in consumers’ online accounts — including income, employment, insurance, and education.
Features
MeasureOne is the only one-stop-shop for consumer-permissioned data:
MeasureOne is the only domain-agnostic consumer-permissioned data platform, which means any data type that lives in a consumer’s online accounts can be requested and shared for a business transaction.
Presenter
Yaron Oren, Chief Revenue Officer Yaron Oren is a veteran startup leader and entrepreneur with a specialization in PaaS/API-driven businesses that disrupt legacy workflows and unlock innovation for consumers and businesses alike. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 12 and 13. Register today and save your spot.
Mall IQ is a privacy-first location intelligence platform, empowering FIs to increase card and loan revenue and prevent fraud with real-time, personalized mobile engagements via proprietary location tech.
Includes store-level accurate global coverage without hardware in 1M+ stores
Why it’s great
Generate incremental revenue from current customers with precise location technology with real-time engagements before a payment or loan need to become top-of-wallet. Minimum effort needed to integrate and operate.
Presenters
Batu Sat, CEO Dr. Sat has been a business and tech leader for 20+ years. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is an expert in ML/AI & Location Tech. He previously worked at Cisco and Microsoft. LinkedIn
Firuze Duygu Caliskan, COO Caliskan has an M.S. Degree in Engineering Management from Missouri University of S&T. 15+ years experience in strategic marketing and revenue expansion activities across the globe. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 12 and 13. Register today and save your spot.
Gridspace is a voice technology and artificial intelligence software company. The company provides natural-sounding virtual agents and voice observability software to contact centers.
Features
Performance – Gridspace runs neural networks directly on its own softswitches
Unified platform – Human & virtual agents in one place
Why it’s great
Gridspace is a true, full-stack provider of conversational AI – building and integrating its own enterprise-grade softswitch, conversational ASR, search engine, neural TTS, dialog systems and more.
Presenters
Evan Macmillan, CEO Before Gridspace, Macmillan co-founded Zappedy, a payments technology company that was backed by Eric Schmidt and acquired by Groupon. He has an engineering bachelor’s from Stanford in Product Design. LinkedIn
Adam Miller, Principal Engineer on Monophone Prior to Gridspace, Miller worked on the Search Webanswers team at Google and studied computer science at UIUC. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 12 and 13. Register today and save your spot.
Bankjoy’s new Business Banking platform makes it easier for community banks and credit unions to deliver truly feature-rich digital banking technology to their business customers.
Features
Use one portal for multiple business accounts
Manage users & control permissions
Send transfers to multiple recipients & more
Presenter
Michael Duncan, CEO & Co-Founder Before founding Bankjoy, Duncan managed software development for a large credit union in Michigan, including the development of their mobile banking app. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 12 and 13. Register today and save your spot.
Apiture’s embedded banking tools allow financial institutions to embed financial services into non-bank partners’ software, extending these services to new users and giving more convenient banking options.
Why it’s great
Embedded banking enables financial institutions of any size to create new revenue streams by attracting users outside of their existing geographic footprint and cross selling in new ways.
Presenters
Daniel Haisley, EVP of Innovation Haisley leads Apiture’s innovation efforts encompassing Data Intelligence and API Banking solutions. He has an extensive background in product and design management and, prior to his time at Apiture, Haisley held product leadership roles at Live Oak Bank and 1st Source Bank. He brings 10+ years of experience driving innovation in technology for financial institutions.
Haisley is a graduate of Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN, where he earned a B.S. in Financial Counseling & Planning, and the Graduate School of Banking at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, WI. LinkedIn
Danielle Eriksson, Director of Product Management Eriksson is responsible for leading the API Banking and Embedded Banking initiatives on the Innovation team. She has experience in capital markets, building financial products for retail and institutional investors, as well as building financial technology solutions to help financial institutions improve cost efficiencies, engage customers, and ultimately grow the balance sheet.
Eriksson graduated from Tufts University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Economics. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Quantitative Management and Business Analytics from the Fuqua School of Business. LinkedIn
Currencycloud teamed up with Future FinTech Labs (FTFT Labs) to help the New York City-based fintech launch its Tempo app.
Tempo is designed to make it easier, more secure and more effective for U.S. immigrants to send money overseas.
Acquired by Visa in 2021, Currencycloud has processed more than $100 billion in cross-border money transfers since inception in 2012.
Global payments solutions and infrastructure company Currencycloud has partnered with Future FinTech Labs (FTFT Labs) to help the NYC-based fintech launch a new remittance solution for U.S.-based immigrants. The new offering, an app called Tempo, will help immigrants living in the U.S. send money securely to North America, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, India, and the Philippines.
Tempo will gives FTFT Labs customers access to a multi-currency wallet that makes sending money internationally easier and more cost-effective compared to other high-fee remittance services. Tempo app users will be able to leverage both FTFT Labs’ Conversion Tool to buy and trade currencies and use FTFT Labs’ Funds feature to top off their digital wallet.
“Tempo represents an easy, fast, and secure way to transfer money cross-border,” FTFT Labs CEO Sean Liu said. “Working with Currencycloud and using the breadth of services it allows us to offer our customers a seamless process from start to finish. We are confident we will be able to continue to make remittance a seamless process for our end users.”
Tempo users pay a fee of $2.99 pre-transaction – although the company is currently offering customers fee-free transactions when they sign up. Transfers via Tempo take place instantly rather than over the three business days typical of other money transfer apps, and users can send as little as $20 or as much as $1,500. Tempo sees its transfer amount limit as an advantage compared to other money transfer apps that do not have a limit, seeing the limit as a way to help ensure “a high level of security, by design, for users.” The Tempo app is available for both Android and iOs devices.
Making its Finovate debut in 2012, Currencycloud most recently demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2018. The London-based company serves banks, fintechs, and foreign exchange brokerages, helping them and their customers make seamless and secure cross-border transactions in multiple currencies. Since inception, Currencycloud has processed more than $100 billion transferred between more than 180 countries. Acquired by Visa in 2021, the company includes fellow Finovate alums Dwolla and Mambu among its partners. Currencycloud maintains offices in New York, Amsterdam, Cardiff, and Singapore.
“Migrants in the U.S. should be able to send money cross-border without friction and without prohibitive costs,” Currencycloud VP of Sales Lewis Nurcombe said. “A fintech like Future FinTech Labs understands the needs of working people wanting to send money to family and friends, and as such is successfully reimagining how money flows for this huge market.”
Future FinTech Labs is a subsidiary and research and development center for FTFT Group. FTFT Labs is dedicated to designing, developing, and providing operational support for FTFT’s digital banking and payment services offerings.
Active in 15 countries in Latin America, payments infrastructure provider Geopagos has secured an investment of $35 million. The equity funding round was led by Riverwood Capital and featured participation from Endeavor Catalyst. The sum represents the company’s first institutional financing and will be used to fuel the development of new embedded payments solutions and help the firm expand throughout Latin America.
Geopagos provides financial institutions, fintechs, retailers, software companies and other organizations with end-to-end digital solutions to help them launch or grow their payment acceptance businesses in the area. These solutions include terminals that enable mobile phones to operate as point of sale devices as well as technology that turns websites into e-commerce platforms.
With clients including Santander, BBVA, Banco Estado de Chile, and Finovate alum Fiserv, Geopagos processes more than 150 million transactions and more than $5 billion in volume a year. The Buenos Aires-based company was founded in 2013 by Sebastián Núñez Castro, Julián Lisenberg, Fernando Tauscher, Raúl Oyarzun and Damián Harburguer.
“Latin America is a market with very low card penetration and Geopagos is well positioned as a software enabler and infrastructure provider to boost card acceptance and digital payments across the region,” Riverwood Capital co-founder and managing partner Francisco Álvarez-Demalde said.
Speaking of payments in Latin America, blockchain-enabled accounts receivable and B2B payments company PayStand has acquired Yaydoo, an accounts payable, cash flow management, and liquidity solution provider based in Mexico. Yaydoo is one of the fastest-growing startups in Mexico, with more than 150 employees working in more than six different countries. Founded in 2017 and operating throughout Latin America Yaydoo raised $20.4 million in Series A funding last year and this year was named a “Súper Empresa 2022” and a “Súper Empresas para Mujeres 2022” by Expansión Top Companies México.
“Together, PayStand and Yaydoo will redefine the boundaries of B2B fintech across the continent,” PayStand CEO Jeremy Almond said. “The combined company will be one of the first global B2B blockchain platforms at a significant scale. The resulting company will have processed over $5 billion in payments, added 300 additional employees, and built a network of over 500,000 connected businesses, the largest of any commercial B2B blockchain in the world.”
Founded in 2013, PayStand made its Finovate debut at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley, one year later in 2014. The company leverages blockchain and cloud technology to digitize receivables, automate processing, lower time-to-cash, remove transaction fees, and drive new revenue. A member of the 2021 CB Insights Fintech 250 and named to the Inc. 5000 for a second year in a row in 2021, PayStand has secured $86 million in funding, most recently raising $50 million in a Series C investment led by NewView Capital and featuring participation from SoftBank’s SB Opportunity Fund and King River Capital.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
This week, we take a look at more of the fintech entrepreneurs, analysts, and experts who will share their knowledge and insights into the fintech industry at FinovateFall next month.
Day One will feature Joe Lichtenberg, Global Head of Product and Industry Marketing for Intersystems, with his Mastermind Keynote address: How Next Generation Architectures Empower Financial Services Firms with Trusted Business Insights. Lichtenberg’s morning presentation will introduce a new architectural approach that is providing business decision makers with a consolidated, accurate, and real-time view of their business.
Personetics President of the Americas Jody Bhagat will deliver a Mastermind Keynote: How Mid-Market Banks Can Find Their Sweet Spot with Digital Plus Human Interactions in the afternoon of Day One. Bhagat will discuss how mid-market banks can evolve their relationship models to do more of what they do best: supporting customers with advanced money management capabilities and Digital Plus Human interactions.
VantageScore EVP and Chief Product Officer Rikard Bandebo will deliver a Mastermind Keynote in the afternoon of Day Two of FinovateFall. In a presentation titled Leveraging Data Analytics to Drive Financial Inclusion, Bandebo will talk about new tools and analytic strategies to discover not just newly scoreable consumers, but newly lendable consumers, as well.
Day Three of FinovateFall will feature a Mastermind Keynote during the Payments Stream. Tom Ward, Partner with Sidley Austin LLP and recent CFPB Enforcement Director, will deliver an address titled The CFPB in the Biden Administration – Enforcement and Regulatory Priorities for Fintechs in 2022 and Beyond. Ward’s presentation will explain the CFPB’s enforcement priorities as they relate to fintech and the organization’s current focus within the industry.
Co-founder and Chief Impact Officer for Symend Tiffany Kaminsky will deliver a Mastermind Keynote during the Customer Experience Stream on Day Three. Kaminsky’s presentation – Upping the Ante: Using the Science of Decision-Making for Effective Customer Engagement – will help businesses leverage behavioral science to better engage with customers and hyper-personalize customer outreach efforts.
Our Artificial Intelligence Stream on Day Three will feature a Mastermind Keynote from Kore.ai SVP of Marketing Michael Kropidlowski. In his address – Creating Extraordinary Customer and Employee Experiences for the Banking World – Kropidlowski will show how conversational AI is revolutionizing the customer experience in banking.
Visit our FinovateFall 2022 hub today and reserve your seat. Register by September 2nd and take advantage of early-bird savings!
Alliant Credit Union announced a partnership with lending-as-a-service fintech Upstart.
The agreement will make Alliant part of the Upstart Referral Network.
Upstart SVP of Lending Partnerships Michael Lock said the move will help Alliant “grow its membership while providing greater access to affordable credit.”
Alliant Credit Union first partnered with Upstart in May 2022. With today’s announcement, Alliant becomes part of the Upstart Referral Network. Under this agreement, Upstart offers qualified loan applicants tailored loan offers in around five minutes. When the applicant decides to pursue the loan opportunity, Upstart transitions the client from its own user interface to an Alliant-branded experience, where they finish the online member application and close the loan.
“As part of the Upstart Referral Network, Alliant will be able to grow its membership while providing greater access to affordable credit,” said Upstart SVP of Lending Partnerships Michael Lock.
With more than 650,000 members and over $15 billion in assets, Alliant Credit Union is among the top 10 U.S. credit unions. Alliant SVP, Chief Capital Markets Officer, and Head of Commercial Lending Charles Krawitz said that the company is “very particular” when it comes to selecting partners. “Our partners must embrace doing things the right way, with legal and risk compliance maturity,” said Krawitz. “We believe Upstart has invested in robust systems that ensure borrowers are well-vetted, and that they will make a strong partner for delivering value and options to our members.”
Founded in 2012, Upstart differentiates itself in the alternative lending space by partnering with banks and credit unions seeking to increase their approval rates and lower their loss rates. The company’s AI-first lending tool enables financial institutions to reach a wider variety of end customers, including those with less favorable credit files.
Upstart went public in December 2020 and was in the news headlines recently due to concerns about a drop in funding as well as a decline in earnings. Company CEO Dave Girouard said that the decline was “disappointing” and “unacceptable,” adding, “It may be natural for you to question whether Upstart’s AI-powered risk models aren’t working as designed, but we’re confident this isn’t the case, that, in fact, our models continue to improve with respect to accuracy and risk separation.”
Teslar Software announced a partnership with Missouri-based community bank, The Seymour Bank.
Courtesy of the deal, The Seymour Bank will use Teslar’s lending process automation platform to modernize and streamline its commercial lending business.
Teslar Software made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2015 in San Francisco.
The Seymour Bank, a Missouri-based financial institution with more than $137 million in assets, has selected Teslar Software to enhance its commercial lending strategy. The bank will use Teslar’s lending process automation platform to reduce reliance on manual processes and boost efficiencies..
“With Teslar, we will become more accessible to our customers, delivering a portal that allows them to easily and quickly monitor the status of their loans and securely communicate with us,” The Seymour Bank vice president Heather Johns said. “Plus, Teslar’s automated workflows will save time for our employees, resulting in a better, more efficient experience.”
In addition to the digital customer portal, designed to improve convenience, The Seymour Bank will also leverage Teslar’s technology to improve its ability to track documentation and monitor exceptions. The institution, founded in 1939 and headquartered in Seymour, MIssouri, outside of Springfield, prides itself in its commitment to local involvement and customer service. But, in the words of Johns, the bank “also want(s) to be recognized for modern technology and seamless experiences.” The partnership with Teslar will bring the benefits of modern, automated technology to both the bank’s customer-facing and back office operations.
“The Seymour Bank is a locally owned bank that has prioritized serving its customers and community for more than 80 years,” Teslar Software founder and CEO Joe Ehrhardt said. “We look forward to supporting the bank as (it provides) more digitized, seamless interactions to enhance both the customer and employee experience.”
Teslar’s partnership with The Seymour Bank comes just weeks after the firm announced that it had teamed up with National Bank & Trust to streamline the Texas-based financial institution’s lending process with a new suite of automated workflow and portfolio management tools. Chartered in 1888 as The First National and headquartered in La Grange, Texas, National Bank & Trust is a full-service bank dedicated to providing customized service, “lightning fast lending”, and future-focused technology.
Winner of the 2020 Finovate Award for Best Fintech Partnership for its PPP.bank initiative – a free website developed in collaboration with Citizens Bank of Edmonds and Mark Cuban – Teslar Software was founded in 2008 and made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring in 2015. Since then, the company has grown into a robust, portfolio management system provider and strategic partner to help community and regional banks compete in an increasingly tough and crowded environment for lending services.
The customer journey is vital in today’s financial services landscape and cloud-enabled business innovation is the vital ingredient.
A good user experience is a critical factor in helping consumers differentiate between firms and helping brands build lasting relationships with customers.
According to the Harvard Business Review, firms with leading customer satisfaction rankings can grow their revenues two and a half times faster than their competitors. Moreover, research by Forrester demonstrates that customers are over twice as likely to stick with a brand when their problems are solved quickly.
Yet, great digital experiences rely on intuitive GUIs and an agile, cloud native strategy, both of which are not easy to achieve. In this article, we’ll demystify how to get started with cloud computing in software engineering for banking and help you develop a leading customer UX.
What Are the Challenges of Cloud Business Innovation in Banking?
Approximately US$1.3 trillion was spent in 2020 on digital transformation, yet Deloitte data shows 70% of projects fail. That equates to over US$900 billion wasted — so what’s going wrong?
Just as an HD TV relies on good HD content, great apps need high interactivity with data, an always-on presence, security, and scalability to perform under high demand.
Eric Newcomer, WSO2 CTO, argues that cloud business innovation goes wrong when there’s a messy middle. In other words, when there’s a lack of clarity about how strategy, outcome, and skill coordinate the microservices within a platform, cloud business innovation becomes dysfunctional.
Within banking specifically, the stakes of digital transformation are extremely high. Today’s financial services firms must deal with an onslaught of cyberattacks and regulatory constraints, not to mention increased competition from new fintech entrants better-equipped to deliver excellent customer experiences. So how can financial institutions ensure they foster an innovative and successful cloud-first environment?
How to Overcome These Challenges
Great cloud computing in software engineering needs equally great cloud native practices and technology, focusing specifically on integration and APIs. Without this focus, customers lose the always-on, always integrated feel that today’s users demand.
Therefore, financial services firms require an all-in-one platform delivering accelerated and enhanced engineering processes to speed up innovation in their cloud environment. Unfortunately, building robust and agile platforms from scratch can be timely and costly.
Instead, partnering with existing solutions providers allows financial service firms to focus on developing cloud banking innovations and better deliver security, compliance, and ideal customer experiences. You can read more about overcoming challenges for banks to generate fintech innovation here.
The Role of Digital Platform-as-a-Service Within Financial Services
An “opinionated” digital platform-as-a-service (digital PaaS) accelerates cloud banking innovation by tackling some of the core complexities of developing digital applications. As a result, you can build, deploy, and iterate new versions more easily.
Digital PaaS platforms enable diagrammatic and low-code functionality, providing a great developer experience. In turn, your teams can increase their productivity and attention to quality assurance for end-users.
Moreover, digital PaaS integrates with automated deployment tools using Docker and Kubernetes. As a result, you can test, develop, and deploy new user features for maximum customer satisfaction faster than ever before, using just a few clicks.
Digital PaaS solutions deliver seamless platform functionality and integration with your existing data warehouses, allowing you to leverage efficient and scalable consumer solutions.
How Low-Code Digital PaaS Enables Cloud Computing in Software Engineering
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to cloud computing in software engineering, so what makes a digital PaaS-based method the most appropriate for financial services?
A digital PaaS approach provides a highly stable environment to create and manage APIs since it establishes core conventions and assumptions within your workflows. These assumptions include the programming language and dev environment, all the way to the publishing process on software marketplaces. As a result, you can remove barriers to collaboration and shorten project lead times. Similarly, as a cloud-enabled solution, you provide collaborative space for your teams to work.
Moreover, you can easily build platform microservices and provide teams with autonomy over their software output. Software teams can publish updates to critical platform elements accordingly without jeopardizing the rest of your platform or relying on slower project teams, keeping your user experience competitive.
However, the benefits don’t stop when you hit publish. Digital PaaS solutions allow you to run professional DevOps systems and make improvements in step with live user trends. Consequently, you can remain competitive and establish a close relationship with customers.
Finally, once your APIs are built, you can share them through marketplace and import or export data with other SaaS platforms. As a result, you can leverage other data sources for enhanced features. For example, you can capitalize on open banking ecosystems, enhance your security through additional identity checks, and more.
And so, with complex development and deployment tasks that are both easy to learn and use, you can deliver fresh digital services faster — and more accurately — than ever.
Introducing Choreo by WSO2
With around only three in ten digital transformations being successful and the heightened competition within banking today, financial services companies need to innovate at speed and scale.
Choreo is a digital PaaS that helps companies manage and develop APIs, services, and integrations quickly. Choreo enables developers and operations teams to go from ideation to production in hours or days versus weeks and months via a seamless environment that eliminates the complexity of cloud native computing.
Choreo provides a diagrammatic and pro-code environment side by side, allowing you to create an outline and make detailed tweaks in minutes. It includes a developer marketplace with over 400 pre-built connectors that makes it easy to discover, reuse, publish, and share.
With security and transparency at its foundation, you can easily trace code changes and root issues across your entire development history. You can also benefit from AI-assisted coding and enhanced governance features.
Find out more about Choreo and create an API with just a few clicks.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 12 and 13. Register today and save your spot.
Instnt’s fully-managed Customer Acceptance Platform helps businesses sign up and accept 50% more good customers with zero fraud loss for good, with continuous, portable identity assurance.
Features
One-click frictionless customer acceptance
Day 0 to Day N continuous identity assurance
Decentralized, reusable KYC verification
Why it’s great
Instnt provides frictionless customer acceptance experiences without compromising on security, risk and compliance.
Presenters
Sunil Madhu, CEO Madhu is a serial entrepreneur operating in Security, Risk & Compliance for over 30 years. Recently, he founded and was the CEO of Socure. LinkedIn
Justin Kamerman, CPO Kamerman has over 20 years of experience designing and building high performance distributed systems in the telecommunications, IPTV, identity verification, social media analytics, and IIoT industries. LinkedIn
