Truist Acquires Finovate Best of Show Winner Long Game

Truist Acquires Finovate Best of Show Winner Long Game
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Long Game, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Truist has acquired mobile savings gamification app, Long Game.
  • Long Game uses strategies from the prize-linked savings and mobile gamification worlds to drive customer engagement and increase brand loyalty for banks.
  • Long Game won Best of Show in its Finovate debut last September at FinovateFall 2021 in New York.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But U.S.-based financial services company Truist announced today that it has acquired bank engagement and savings gamification app, Long Game.

“Truist’s commitment to help people build financial wellness is exactly what we are about at Long Game,” company co-founder and CEO Lindsay Holden said. “We’ve revolutionized bank engagement and are eager to apply ourselves to creating disruptive technologies that help Truist deliver a human touch in new ways.”

Long Game won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in New York last year. The company offers a bank-branded mobile app that leverages the best practices from prize-linked savings and mobile gaming to help banks acquire new customers, boost customer engagement, and promote financial literacy – with a particular focus on Millennial and Gen Z customers.

Courtesy of the acquisition, Long Game’s team of engineers, designers, and business leaders will join Truist’s innovation team. Holden will lead a San Francisco, California-based crew of engineers, product managers, and designers as they develop new client-centric solutions.

“At Truist we are laser-focused on shaping the future of finance with innovative people and products – and democratizing entrepreneurial opportunity while we do it,” Vanessa Indriolo Vreeland of Truist Ventures said. “Long Game is a female-led business with a diverse team of incredibly talented innovators creating unique solutions to help people achieve financial confidence.”

The acquisition is designed to help Truist reach a younger demographic. Truist also sees Long Game’s technology as complementary to its workplace financial wellness program, Truist Momentum, that helps employees better manage their finances based on their goals and values. Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Truist was formed in 2019 as a result of the merger between BB&T and SunTrust Banks. Truist is a publicly traded company on the NYSE under the ticker symbol TFC. The firm has a market capitalization of $66 billion.

Learn more about Long Game! Check out our interview with company co-founder and CEO Lindsay Holden on the Finovate Podcast with Greg Palmer.

Photo by Pixabay

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Fiserv Taps The Clearing House to Expand Access to Real-Time Payments

Fiserv Taps The Clearing House to Expand Access to Real-Time Payments
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Fiserv
  • Fiserv is leveraging a partnership with The Clearing House to help its bank clients offer real time payments.
  • Banks that integrate into Fiserv’s NOW Gateway will benefit from real time payments in peer-to-peer payments, interbank account transfers, billpay, and more.
  • The partnership comes as the U.S. Federal Reserve announced pilot participants of its own real time payments system, FedNow.

Fintech solutions provider Fiserv is in the fintech headlines today for its move to help its bank clients provide real time payments to their end users. The Wisconsin-based company is partnering with The Clearing House (TCH), which is allowing Fiserv’s bank customers to access its Real Time Payments (RTP) network via Fiserv’s NOW Gateway.

Banks can integrate into the NOW Gateway, which leverages the RTP network, to offer their clients a range of real time payments services, including peer-to-peer payments with Zelle, payouts for gig economy work and insurance claims, interbank account transfers, and real time bill payments. Ultimately, the move will allow financial institutions to send and receive real time payments on behalf of their customers over the RTP network, which connects to over 60% of bank accounts in the U.S.

“To remain competitive, financial institutions must offer real-time payment capabilities. That’s why we are committed to making real-time implementation easier for any financial institution, from regional bank to community bank, to credit union,” said Fiserv’s President of Digital Payments and Data Aggregation Matt Wilcox. “Our work with The Clearing House to integrate the RTP network with our NOW Gateway is the latest advancement towards this goal.”

Founded in 1853, TCH clears and settles more than $2 trillion a day through wire, ACH, check image, and real-time payments. The company’s RTP network facilitates real time payments by immediately clearing and settling payments. In the first quarter of this year, the network cleared almost 37 million transactions totaling almost $16 billion.

Today’s news comes as the U.S. Federal Reserve’s real time payments tool, FedNow, began onboarding pilot participants. Fiserv is among the first 120 pilot organizations, a list which also includes Finastra, Green Dot, Q2, Square, Temenos, and Visa. The purpose of the pilot is to establish connectivity and perform technical and operational tasks that will lay the groundwork for full-scale, end-to-end testing later this year.

Fiserv most recently demoed at FinovateWest 2020 where it showcased its Virtual Banking Assistant, a tool that helps banks deliver intelligent, AI-driven conversational experiences. With nearly 10,000 financial institution clients, the company facilitates 12,000 transactions each second. Frank Bisignano is president and CEO.

Photo by Monstera

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FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek: Keep Financial Technologies

FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek: Keep Financial Technologies
By Heather Stowell Posted on
Categories: FinovateSpring 2022, FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek, Keep

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 18 and 19. Register today and save your spot.

Keep is introducing a new form of employee compensation called Cash Vesting Plans that works like a 0% interest loan from the employer to the employee.

Features

  • Cash bonus given to employees and vests over time
  • 0% interest loan given against bonus
  • Employee financial freedom while improving retention and hiring

Why it’s great

Keep is aligning employer and employee incentives and disrupting the way compensation works.

Presenter

Rob Frohwein, CEO
Frohwein was the Co-Founder and CEO of Kabbage, a global fintech acquired by American Express. With Keep Financial, Frohwein is now disrupting how compensation works.
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FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek: Incognia

FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek: Incognia
By Heather Stowell Posted on
Categories: FinovateSpring 2022, FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek, Incognia

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 18 and 19. Register today and save your spot.

Incognia is a privacy-first, location identity company that provides frictionless mobile authentication to banks and fintechs for reduced fraud losses.

Features

  • Delivers highly precise risk assessment for mobile apps for less fraud
  • Recognizes trusted users based on location behavior
  • Enables zero friction, zero-factor authentication

Why it’s great

With identity fraud losses hitting $52 billion in 2021, today’s fraud prevention is not working. Incognia’s privacy-first, location identity delivers highly precise risk assessment for mobile apps.

Presenter

Andre Ferraz, CEO & Founder
Ferraz is an expert on location technology and a strong advocate for user privacy. Originally from Brazil, Ferraz founded his first company while a university student in computer science.
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FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek: Horizn

FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek: Horizn
By Heather Stowell Posted on
Categories: FinovateSpring 2022, FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek, Horizn

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 18 and 19. Register today and save your spot.

Horizn’s award-winning platform helps banks globally accelerate digital banking knowledge, fluency, and adoption with both customers and employees.

Features

  • Overachieve digital banking customer growth objectives
  • Call center and branch efficiency and profitability through digital
  • Support ongoing agile product/feature launches

Why it’s great

Using Horizn, banks experience a more than 300% increase in product/feature launch effectiveness and success, 20% reduction in volume of digital banking support calls, and 45 second reduction in support call time (average).

Presenter

Steve Frook, SVP of Sales
As SVP of Sales at Horizn, Frook works closely with financial institutions to significantly increase adoption and awareness of new and existing innovations.
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FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek: Finzly

FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek: Finzly
By Heather Stowell Posted on
Categories: FinovateSpring 2022, FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek, Finzly

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 18 and 19. Register today and save your spot.

Finzly allows the building of programmable banks by providing a financial infrastructure for banks, fintechs, and businesses to quickly offer and access financial services in an open ecosystem.

Features

  • Speed to market
  • Agility to assume new avatars
  • Freedom to innovate

Why it’s great

Speed, agility, and freedom culminate in innovation and the democratization of banking!

Presenters

Booshan Rengachari, CEO & Founder
Rengachari founded Finzly in 2012 with a vision to simplify transformation of financial institutions and democratize banking. Today, his brainchild – the award-winning nextgen platform, Finzly OS – is a testament to his vision, helping banks play an active role in the connected economy. He is a member of the U.S. Faster Payment Council Advisory Board, regular speaker at leading industry forums, and acclaimed for his thought leadership in bank transformation.
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Murthy Bulusu, CTO & Co-Founder
Co-founder of Finzly, Bulusu is instrumental in building the Finzly platforms and streamlining the customer implementation process. Bulusu formerly led technology teams at Wells Fargo, TIAA-CREF, Ford, and Chrysler. Working in tandem with the product team, he explores emerging technologies and appropriately uses them in Finzly products.
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Vijay Vardhan, VP of Products
Vardhan is the VP – Products at Finzly, leads product management, and helps to maximize the company’s customer-centric focus through the correct approach to product design. Innovation to solve real-world problems in the modern economy and working on the right product roadmaps is Vardhan’s forte. He has 4 patents in automobile technology, worked at GM & Chrysler, and has an MBA from Michigan State.
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FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek: Banyan

FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek: Banyan
By Heather Stowell Posted on
Categories: BANYAN, FinovateSpring 2022, FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 18 and 19. Register today and save your spot.

Banyan demonstrates how banks, fintechs, and their retail partners can use item level data to drive everyday spend and top of wallet behavior.

Features

  • Better transaction categorization drives loyalty and everyday spend
  • Enhanced item level offers
  • New personalized ways for banks and fintechs to up-sell and cross-sell other banking products

Why it’s great

Banyan’s scalable data infrastructure is used to enrich transaction categorization and create product level offers that make banking apps more meaningful and rewarding to today’s digital consumer.

Presenters

Andrea Gilman, CMO
Gilman brings over 20 years of marketing expertise, including product management, product development, and digital transformation to Banyan. Gilman’s previous experience includes years with Mastercard and IBM.
LinkedIn

Wil Schobeiri, CTO
Schobeiri brings over 15 years of technology, product management, and leadership experience to BANYAN, including as CTO. He also had CPO roles at MediaMath and Revantage (a Blackstone company).
LinkedIn

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FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek: Coinme

FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek: Coinme
By Heather Stowell Posted on
Categories: Coinme, FinovateSpring 2022, FinovateSpring 2022 Sneak Peek

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 18 and 19. Register today and save your spot.

Coinme, a leading crypto exchange in the U.S., offers an Embedded Crypto Finance product that “crypto-enables” fintechs and traditional FIs to offer digital assets to their customers.

Features

  • Excite customers by offering crypto
  • Generate new revenue
  • Boost platform engagement

Why it’s great

Coinme offers a proven turnkey solution for adding crypto to fintech and FI platforms to increase user engagement and revenues.

Presenter

Sung Choi, SVP Strategy & Business Development
Choi leads Coinme’s strategy and business development departments and spearheads the revenue operations of Coinme’s Embedded Crypto Finance product.
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Fintech Startup Showcase: With Ownwell, Proptech Meets Taxtech

Fintech Startup Showcase: With Ownwell, Proptech Meets Taxtech
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Startups

The convergence between the complexities of property management and property taxation has produced more than its fair share of headaches for commercial and residential property owners alike. Fortunately, fintech innovation in the form of Ownwell exists to help these property owners save money when it comes to paying property taxes.

“Property owners have a lot to consider when deciding to protest (property tax overpayments),” Ownwell CEO Colton Pace explained. Pace cited the costs in time and money, the complexity, and the access to real estate industry expertise as major hurdles for property owners when contesting property value assessments. “Ownwell handles the entire process of appealing on behalf of property owners and charges the lowest fees currently on the market,” Pace said. “We ensure all property owners, regardless of financial status, have access to the tools, resources, and information they need to manage their property taxes with confidence.”

Formerly known as realAppeal, Ownwell combines industry expertise and machine learning to provide property owners with protection against overpaying on their property tax. Ownwell provides owners with a savings estimate based on current sales and valuation data. If the owner decides to challenge their assessment, locally-based property tax experts leverage proprietary software to build the best case possible for the property owner. With a Savings-or-Free guarantee, Ownwell customers only pay if the process saves them money on their property tax assessment. The company said that its customers save an average of $1,457, and that “nearly” nine of 10 of its challenges are successful.

Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Ownwell earned a spot in the fintech headlines recently with news of its $5.75 million seed funding round. The investment was led by First Round Capital, and featured participation by Wonder Ventures, Founder Colllective, Long Journey Ventures, and Scott Banister, former board member of PayPal. The company said that it will use the additional capital to hire additional talent – from sales to technology to local tax expertise – across the board. The seed funding comes as the Ownwell reports growing its customer base by 40x over the past nine months, with operations in Texas, California, Washington, and Florida.

“Real estate is often the most valuable asset homeowners and investors own, but it’s difficult to track and manage the rising costs of property taxes, insurance, financing, and more,” First Round Capital partner Bill Trenchard said. “Ownwell is building a platform to help property owners reduce their property taxes and manage the other costs of ownership with confidence.”

Photo by David McBee

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American Express Teams Up with Billtrust to Streamline Virtual Card Acceptance

American Express Teams Up with Billtrust to Streamline Virtual Card Acceptance
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, American Express, Daily news
  • American Express and Billtrust announced a partnership that will leverage automation to enhance acceptance of AMEX virtual cards.
  • The collaboration is designed to meet the accounts receivable (AR) needs of suppliers who are experiencing faster payments and increased cash flow.
  • A Finovate alum since 2015, American Express recently partnered with i2c to help fintechs and financial institutions develop solutions on its payments network.

A partnership between American Express and B2B accounts receivable (AR) automation and integrated payments innovator Billtrust will make it easier for suppliers to accept payments via AMEX’s virtual cards.

The integration, announced late last week, will enable suppliers to automate and accelerate virtual card payments and to benefit from real-time insight into their outstanding invoices and current cash flow. The partnership, according to AMEX President of U.S. Global Merchant Services Colleen Taylor, is designed to help suppliers keep pace with both an increased demand for products and services, as well as a need for faster, more efficient payment processes. This is due, Taylor suggested, in large part to the trend of businesses “moving away from paper-based payments to electronic payments for the greater visibility and speed they provide.”

Unfortunately, this trend of faster payments and larger cash flows also means that many companies have existing AR systems that are often inadequate. The partnership between American Express and Billtrust responds to this challenge by giving suppliers a complete solution that covers all aspects of the AR process, including credit decisioning, ordering, invoicing, payments, cash application, and collections. The partnership also will give suppliers access to Billtrust’s Business Payments Network (BPM), which boosts invoice and digital payment efficiency by connecting them with hundreds of buyers and buyer portals.

“Both Billtrust and American Express recognize the need to support merchants and suppliers in responding to buyer demands for digital payment options,” Billtrust CEO Flint Lane said. “This collaboration brings automation to American Express merchants and suppliers, helping create better outcomes and increased customer satisfaction.”

American Express has been a Finovate alum since 2015, when the company presented The role of B2B payments in the evolving commerce ecosystem at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley. The company’s partnership news with Billtrust comes in the wake of a collaboration with digital payment and banking technology company i2c that will make it easier for fintechs and financial institutions to develop and scale products on AMEX’s global payments network. American Express trades on the NYSE under the ticker AXP, and has a market capitalization of $127 billion.

Photo by Taras Makarenko

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Talking Best of Show with Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast – On Video!

Talking Best of Show with Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast – On Video!
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Best of Show, Finshape, Podcasting, SESAMm, Speaker series, Trulioo

Join Finovate VP and Host of the Finovate Podcast Greg Palmer as he shares his video conversations with Finovate Best of Show winning companies.

Greg Palmer talks with Irfan Khan, CEO, and James Goodwin, Director of Business Development, with mmob. FinovateEurope 2022 Best of Show winner. Demo video.

“What mmob does is solve the pain points on two sides of an ecosystem. On one side for third party product providers and service providers, we integrate all of their products and services onto our network. Then we also make that seamlessly accessible through to larger distribution channels so their products and services can be integrated natively.”

Greg Palmer catches up with Hal Lonas, Chief Technology Officer with Trulioo. FinovateEurope 2022 Best of Show winner. Demo video.

“(Identity verification) is very challenging, especially when you look at it as a global problem. Every region, every geography has a little bit of a twist. People may not have consistent addresses in some countries, or may not have a track record with a financial institution or a utility compared to some other places. So identity verification is very, very difficult and made much more complicated if you operate in a lot of countries or incorporate a lot of data sources.”

Greg Palmer talks with Sylvain Forté, CEO and co-founder of SeSAMm, which won Best of Show honors at FinovateEurope 2022. Demo video.

“We are an AI company focused on analyzing billions of articles and messages from the web in real -time using a technology called Natural Language Processing (NLP). We basically process text data and we derive insights that are consumed by financial professionals and corporates. We have the ability to screen an enormous, 20 billion articles and messages and to detect things like environmental, social, and governance risks; early warnings; analyzing competitors; measuring sentiment on companies and on concept.”

Greg Palmer chats with Tamás Braun, International Sales Director with FinovateEurope 2022 Best of Show winner, Finshape. Demo video.

“Finshape is a new brand in the digital banking market. It has come about with the merger of two companies: BSC (Banking Software Company) and W.UP. With the combined force of these two companies, Finshape now has about 700 people with a hundred banking clients across the globe as clients and partners across four continents. We’re very proud to have built this digital powerhouse and we’re looking to do a lot more in shaping the future of digital banking.”

Stay tuned for more videos from Greg Palmer and the Finovate Podcast’s Conversations with Best of Show winners.

Photo by Donald Tong

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Oh Canada! OneVest Secures $3.9 Million; Square Loans Arrives; CBDCs Garner Political Opposition

Oh Canada! OneVest Secures $3.9 Million; Square Loans Arrives; CBDCs Garner Political Opposition
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global

This week on Finovate Global we’re taking a look at some recent fintech developments in Canada.

On the fundraising front, embedded wealth management platform OneVest announced a $3.9 million (CAD $5 million) seed funding round this week. The investment was led by Luge Capital and takes the Canadian fintech’s total funding to $5.5 million (CAD $7.1 million).

The funding will help OneVest, which was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, to grow its team, expand sales, and support product development. The company offers digital wealth management services that can be embedded into consumer-facing products via APIs. The technology integrates well with multiple fintechs and financial institutions, empowering them to combine wealth management and investment functionality into their own financial solutions.

“People are increasingly demanding a more seamless and simple experience where financial products are integrated into their everyday lives,” OneVest co-founder and CEO Amar Ahluwalia said. “Our mission is to make investing more accessible to everyone, and available anytime, anywhere and through any channel.”

The first company to take advantage of the new offering is Neo Financial, which leveraged OneVest’s platform to launch its new actively managed wealth platform, Neo Invest.

Square announced this week that it is bringing its financing solution to business borrowers in Canada. Square Loans leverages transaction data to create and bring customized offers to eligible sellers, giving them a straightforward, paperwork-free application process. Funds are available the next business day and businesses are charged a single, upfront loan fee that is paid back automatically as a set percentage of daily card sales with Square. This arrangement enables borrowers to make larger repayments when sales are strong and smaller repayments when sales are weaker.

“From our earliest days, Square has focused on building easy-to-use tools and services to empower entrepreneurs to succeed on their own terms,” Head of Square Alyssa Henry said. Since Square Loans launched in the U.S. and Australia, the company has provided more than $9 billion in financing to more than 460,000 businesses with an average loan size of $6,750.

For all the interest – an even enthusiasm in some quarters – over CBDCs, not everyone is on board. This week we learned that Pierre Poilievre, leadership candidate for Canada’s Conservative Party is not only unimpressed by the opportunities provided by CBDCs, he also wants to enact a ban on the technology.

But don’t mistake Poilievre for a Luddite. The man considers himself a blockchain backer and has, in fact, pledged to make Canada “the blockchain capital of the world.”

“A Poilievre government would welcome this new, decentralized, bottom-up economy and allow people to take control of their money from bankers and politicians,” the Conservative Party politician said in March. He added that an embrace of blockchain would “expand choice” and “lower the costs of financial products” as well as providing a wealth of tech-oriented jobs and opportunities for entrepreneurs in Canada.

As such, Poilievre’s CBDC skepticism seems to be more related to his attitude toward central banks than his opinion on blockchain technology. He has promised that, in addition to a CBDC ban, he would support an audit of the central bank’s balance sheet – a common commitment from conservative politicians in the post-Global Financial Crisis era. This would include a review of the central bank’s bond buying program during the pandemic. Poilievre has blamed the central bank economic response to COVID for the country’s currently high inflation rate.

Both a Canadian CBDC and a Poilievre mandate are some ways away, if that. The Canadian central bank has been working on a CBDC for year, with the project still in development stage. Poilievre, while the front runner to become the leader of the opposition Conservative Party, would nevertheless have to wait until 2025 at the earliest to challenge Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Photo by Brett Sayles

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