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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 18 and 19. Register today and save your spot.
Rillavoice offers conversation intelligence software for offline sales and service. Bank branch associates talk to customers face to face. The software records, transcribes, and analyzes their conversations with AI.
Features
2000x more visibility than in-store audits. 100x faster. At a fraction of the cost.
Makes branch managers 25x more productive at coaching.
Allows reps to improve conversion rates by 30%.
Why it’s great
Rilla is basically an AI coach that doesn’t sleep, eat, or get tired and is always there to give real-time feedback to in-store associates on how they can improve their conversations.
Presenters
Sebastian Jimenez, CEO Jimenez is the Founder and CEO of Rillavoice. He graduated with a degree in Data Science from NYU and has worked in startups since. He was selected into the Forbes Next 1000. LinkedIn
Michael Castellanos, Chief Data Scientist Castellanos developed Rilla’s proprietary machine learning algorithms to analyze in- person audio. He used to work for the Department of Defense developing signal processing algorithms to detect enemy objects from sonar. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 18 and 19. Register today and save your spot.
txtsmarter, the only ecomms compliance surveillance service that collects, encrypts, and archives all iMessage, Android SMS/MMS, WhatsApp, and social chats in real-time mitigating compliance data leaks.
Features
Compliant with current e-comms regulations to avoid sanctions and fines
Allows employee e-comms supervisions to avoid comms related data gaps
Protects company’s brand and reputation from headlines
Why it’s great
txtsmarter is the only company that captures iMessage, Android SMS/MMS, WhatsApp, and others in real-time, retroactively at the root level, without using third-party apps or secondary number protocols.
Presenters
NuriOtus, CEO & Founder As CEO and Founder, Otus drives the overall strategic, business, and financial direction for txtsmarter and all interaction with partners, shareholders & investors. LinkedIn
Sabine Zimmerhansl, COO As COO, Zimmerhansl focuses on running the company’s operations, including product development, legal and compliance, finance, and strategic marketing, and eComms. LinkedIn
The news that CarbonPay has launched a new payment card that helps users determine and offset their carbon footprint is a reminder of the efforts that fintechs of all types are making to support climate sustainability.
CarbonPay’s new offering, only available in the U.S. and the U.K., is a prepaid corporate card called CarbonPay Business Ctrl. The card sits in front of a company business account and comes with an administrator dashboard to enable individual card spending limits. Because the solution is a prepaid card, there are no credit checks, interest rates, or repayment due dates for cardholders to worry about. The card includes smart features such as automating offsetting, carbon footprint tracking data, accounting software integration, and expense management.
CarbonPay says that for every $1.50 (or £1) spent using the card, it offsets 1kg of CO2 at no additional cost. CarbonPay has partnered with sustainability-as-a-service platform Ecolytiq to provide carbon footprint tracking.
“The fight against climate change can’t be solved by a handful of people, it requires systemic change and for everyone to take action,” CarbonPay CEO and founder Rory Spurway said. “That’s what inspired us to create CarbonPay, to help people and businesses around the world make a simple, but impactful change which will help us all in the fight against climate change. We turn every transaction into meaningful climate action by automatically offsetting CO2 every time you pay. It’s a simple, but important step towards making a real difference.”
What other “simple, but important” steps are fintechs taking when it comes to climate sustainability? CommerzVentures recently set out nine fields that fintechs and financial services companies have pursued in order to address the climate concerns of customers and clients. Here’s a look at some of the major categories, and the way fintechs are innovating within them.
Carbon Offsetting: CarbonPay’s new prepaid corporate card, mentioned above, is an example of carbon offsetting in fintech. Carbon offsetting involves lowering or removing carbon dioxide and/or other greenhouse gases in one instance to help compensate for CO2/greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere.
Carbon Accounting: Carbon accounting is a key part of carbon offsetting and involves measuring the amount of carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases created by a given process. In the fintech context, companies like Meniga are working with banks like Iceland’s Íslandsbanki to launch solutions that track the carbon footprint of a customer’s spending decisions . Carbon accounting is related to ESG Reporting, which involves the disclosure of information on a company’s environmental, social, and corporate governance. This provides interested investors with the transparency they need in order to determine whether or not a potential investment is consistent with their environmental, social, and corporate governance values.
Impact Investing/Financing: Investment strategies that seek to combine positive financial returns with positive environmental outcomes are referred to as impact investing or financing strategies. Within fintech, a growing number of roboadvisors have sought ways to enable customers to invest in companies – or funds of companies – that have a proven commitment to climate sustainability. Also known as socially responsible investing, digital investment platforms from Betterment to Personal Capital have included these kinds of investing options for their clients.
Sustainable Banking: Sustainable banking involves using ESG criteria to set the policy agenda for otherwise traditional banking. Whereas banks and other financial institutions historically have focused on the balance between risk and return, sustainable banking adds another factor, impacts, to create a third dimension that bank leaders must focus on when running their businesses. The most common example of this in the environmental context is the effort by sustainable banks and financial institutions to invest in renewable energy enterprises while eschewing investment in fossil fuel companies.
Indeed, looking at the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, which features the top 10% of the largest 2,500 companies in the S&P Global BMI based on their long-term ESG criteria, we see that those banks near the top of the list earned their lofty ranking in large part due to their hands-off attitude toward “dirty” energy such as oil and coal. BBVA, for example, secured the top spot this year as the most sustainable bank in the world – along with South Korea’s KB Financial Group. The Spanish bank earned credit for doubling its sustainable finance target and for issuing objectives to decarbonize its portfolio by 2030.
“This recognition confirms the success of our sustainability strategy and encourages us to continue working with the goal of accompanying our customers and society as a whole as they move toward a more sustainable and inclusive future,” BBVA Global Head of Sustainability Javier Rodríguez Soler said in a statement.
“Every company today is operating in the ‘decision economy,’ which is stimulated and fueled by data,” Arkose Labs Chief Product Officer Ashish Jain said. “We designed Arkose Detect to leverage the collective data from the world’s biggest companies so that those hard-to-suss-out fraud attacks can be easily detected. As fraud is constantly evolving, we have an ambitious product roadmap and will continue to innovate to stay ahead of threats.”
Arkose Detect was previously an embedded component of the company’s dynamic attack response solution, Arkose Protect. Now, in the wake of testing with major international businesses, Arkose Detect is being rolled out as its own product. Arkose Detect leverages AI to force fraudsters and cybercriminals to become increasingly sophisticated in their attacks. This raises the cost of their attacks against businesses defended with Arkose Detect, incentivizing fraudsters to go elsewhere.
Additionally, the new solution gives customers a risk score that allows them to adjust their own fraud models to better detect both automated, malicious bots as well as human-driven fraud attacks. Arkose Labs will also share the fraud data collected and analyzed by Arkose Detect with its customers in order to enable them to enhance their internal fraud prevention processes. Arkose Detect features more than 70 raw risk signals and more than 150 pre-built insights culled from Arkose Labs’ global network.
“In just six years, Arkose Labs has grown to boast a portfolio of category-leading customers across financial services, gaming, travel, ecommerce/retail, social media, and technology industries,” Arkose CEO and founder Kevin Gosschalk said. “And this is just an early chapter in our growth story. Our forecasted trajectory is exciting and attracting attention due to the efficiency of our core technology, on which Arkose Detect is built.”
A Finovate alum since its Best of Show-winning demo at FinovateSpring in 2019, Arkose Labs has since partnered with Bugcrowd to launch a private bug bounty program, introduced the industry’s first warranty against credential stuffing attacks, and unveiled a range of “significant updates” to its fraud detection platform including the development of Arkose Enforce, Arkose Insights, and Arkose Detect.
“The latest product enhancements include detection capabilities which are adapted to a world where attackers are spoofing devices and other identifying information,” Jain said when the updates were announced in October. “Customers also have easier access to the multi-layered risk insights that we use in our machine learning-powered decision engine.”
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Arkose Labs was founded in 2015. The company has raised more than $106 million in funding from investors including the SoftBank Vision Fund 2, M12 – Microsoft’s Venture Fund, and the Sony Innovation Fund, among others.
Revolut announced a partnership with fintech technology infrastructure company Cross River.
The partnership will enable Revolut to offer personal loans to its customers in the U.S.
The announcement comes in the wake of Cross River’s announcement that it raised $620 million in March.
International superapp Revolut has partnered with fintech infrastructure provider Cross River to help it build and scale its business in the U.S. The collaboration will facilitate the first personal loans for Revolut’s U.S. customers and, courtesy of Cross River’s technology infrastructure, will be followed by additional credit solutions to be launched later this year.
“At Revolut, we’re building the world’s first global financial superapp so the move into credit and personal loans is a natural next step,” Revolut U.S. Head of Lending Tarun Bhushan said. “Revolut has developed technology to provide loans instantly to approved customers, with no origination fees – so customers can get the credit they need, when they need it.”
In addition to the absence of origination fees, the partnership means that Revolut borrowers will also be liberated from late fees and prepayment penalties, as well. Potential borrowers can also use the Revolut app to check their rates without affecting their credit score. Revolut’s “near-instant” and same-day loan funding solution means that users receive their funds in their Revolut wallet accounts within minutes of approval. Customers can also establish automatic loan repayments using the app’s AutoPay feature.
“At Cross River, we’re always looking for new and innovative ways to provide access to credit,” EVP and Head of Fintech Banking at Cross River Adam Goller said. “Our partnership with Revolut is instrumental in facilitating responsible financial solutions to consumers, and we’re excited to be powering Revolut’s U.S. expansion.”
Loans from Revolut are currently available only to the company’s U.S, customers. Revolut expects to be able to make the personal loans available to all U.S. consumers “in the coming months.”
Revolut’s partnership news comes as the company makes headlines for both personnel moves and expansion into new markets. This spring, Revolut appointed a new APAC General Manager, a new CEO for Brazil ahead of its expansion into that Latin American country, as well as a new General Manager and a new Head of Growth to support Revolut’s move into the U.S. market.
“It’s an exciting time to be joining Revolut as we further establish and grow our brand in the U.S.,” new Revolut General Manager for the U.S. Yuval Rechter said in March. “The pandemic has supercharged the digitalization of banking and Revolut is the best answer for U.S. consumers seeking greater value, transparency, and flexibility in how they manage their money.”
Cross River made fintech headlines less than a month ago with the news of its $620 million capital raise led by Eldridge and Andreessen Horowitz. The funds will be used to accelerate the company’s tech-focused growth strategy which consists of projects in embedded finance – including payments, lending, and crypto – as well as investments in “people and communities,” plans for international expansion, and “bolstering strategic partnerships.”
“Cross River is powering the future digital economy and changing lives by reinventing the way financial services are accessed,” Cross River founder, President, and CEO Gilles Gade said last month with the financing was announced.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 18 and 19. Register today and save your spot.
FinGoal’s insights platform sits atop digital banking and personal financial data. Premiering at Finovate, their Aggregator Switch Kit allows fintech developers to switch data aggregators in minutes.
Features
Coverage: The best, most enriched and open data in the industry
Access: Data is shared easily across ecosystems
Cost: Better cost structures for aggregation, enrichment and account verification
Why it’s great
Fintech developers should not be hostage to their aggregation provider.
Presenters
Ariam Sium, VP Product Sium leads Product at FinGoal and uses the tenets of focus and value to govern each product decision made in the rapidly adapting world of fintech. LinkedIn
Jenn Underwood, Product Analyst Underwood brings an expertise in personal finance to our product development. Her passion for equitable financial services and value-based savings greatly enriches the UX. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 18 and 19. Register today and save your spot.
LemonadeLXP is a digital growth platform that helps FIs and fintechs turn frontline staff into digital experts and support customers as they switch to digital banking.
Features
Turn staff into digital experts with addictive microlearning
Support staff and customers with technology walkthroughs
Optimize digital customer experience, grow digital banking business
Why it’s great
LemonadeLXP is the fastest and easiest way to provide staff and customers with the training and support they need to become experts on digital banking capabilities.
Presenters
John Findlay, CEO Findlay is a serial entrepreneur, a lifelong innovator, and an expert in digital engagement. Outside of work he’s a dad, husband, athlete, musician, and geopolitics nerd. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 18 and 19. Register today and save your spot.
PalturaiBusinessGraph is a leading Knowledge Graph Platform, adding a new dimension of network analytics to businesses. Make more informed decisions and identify hidden opportunities and risks.
Features
Sales & Marketing – discover new leads in business networks
Risk, Fraud & Compliance – identify trouble spots in business ecosystems
Palturai BusinessGraph is pre-loaded with 66M+ companies, 60M+ people and 211M+ relationships. The solution is actively deployed at Tier-1 financial services and public sector institutions.
Presenters
Bernhard Ritz, Regional President, North America Ritz is the Regional President for Palturai in North America. He spent two decades at SAP and held various management roles in Corporate Strategy and Strategic Business Development. LinkedIn
Noel Billingsley, Head of Business Operations, North America Billingsley leads operations for Palturai in North America. A former career banker and serial entrepreneur, he brings unique experience in guiding the introduction of Palturai to the NA market. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 18 and 19. Register today and save your spot.
OpenAltoffers a capital raising and custodial platform for private businesses and their investors, including private offerings marketplace, due diligence, transaction processing, and data reconciliation solutions.
Features
Private market investment research and due diligence
Transactional automation
Seamless custodial integration and reporting
Why it’s great
OpenAlt bridges the gap between financial advisors and investable private businesses to allow for better diversification of the investment and retirement portfolios.
Presenters
Nikita Brodskiy, Co-Founder Brodskiy has more than 15 years of experience in the IT industry and FinTech. He holds an M.S. in Management from Stanford Graduate School of Business. LinkedIn
Anton Charnotski, Co-Founder Charnotski is a seasoned software architect, platform builder, and engineering leader. He has extensive experience in the custodial space and holds an IRA Services Professional certification (CISP).
Quarterly funding for Finovate alums topped $365 million in the first three months of 2022. The amount is lower than last year’s Q1 tally, and is more reminiscent of the sums raised by Finovate alums in the first quarters of 2019, 2017, and 2016. The number of alums receiving funding in Q1 of 2022 was also lower than in recent years.
That said, overall fintech investment is as strong as ever. According to research from CB Insights, while overall fintech investment in Q1 of 2022 was lower than in three out of four quarters in 2021, the sum – more than $28 billion – tops Q1 2021 and stands as the largest first quarter for fintech investment on record.
The biggest fundraising of the quarter was the $85 million secured by Personetics in January. Close behind was the $70 million that iProov raised – also in the first month of the year. Given that there were only 11 alums reporting funding in Q1 of 2022, it is understandable that the top ten equity investments for the quarter represent virtually all of the known funds raised by Finovate alums in the first three months of the year.
Here is our detailed alum funding report for Q1 2022.
If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the first quarter of 2022 and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at research@finovate.com. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum not included.
Finovate alums Boss Insights and MX are partnering to give SMEs access to real-time financial business data.
The partnership will support faster, more accurate lending and funding for SMEs, as well as enhancing payment services.
A multiple-time Finovate Best of Show winner, MX is headquartered in Lehi, Utah. Boss Insights is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
A partnership between open finance company MX and business data aggregation innovator Boss Insights will make it easier for small and medium-sized businesses to access real-time financial business data. Announced late last week, the collaboration will help banks and other financial institutions better serve their SME customers.
Courtesy of the new partnership, firms will have a 360-degree view of their business customers’ financial health via a single API. The API offers real-time access and integration with accounting, banking, and commerce data from more than 1,000 sources including QuickBooks, Xero, Shopify, Stripe, and Amazon.
“Boss Insights shares MX’s view that finances should be simple, useful, and intuitive,” Boss Insights CEO Keren Moynihan said. “Together, MX and Boss will empower fintechs, private lenders, and financial institutions with a platform to originate, decide, and monitor the business requests of their SMB and commercial business customers. This will help them make faster, more accurate lending, funding, and payment decisions.”
Among Finovate’s newer alums, making its Finovate debut in 2019, Boss Insights leverages big data and AI to accelerate the lending process for SMEs. The company’s Smart Capital product suite offers automated screening, due diligence, and portfolio management, and empowers lenders with real-time insights that lower risk and boost revenue opportunities. Founded in 2017, Boss Insights is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
“The partnership of MX and Boss Insights demonstrates the power and role of connectivity and data in the future of finance,” MX EVP of Partnerships Don Parker said in a statement. “As a leader in Open Finance, MX is committed to expanding our partner ecosystem with reputable partners who align to our overarching mission and stringent data and security standards. Today’s partnership with Boss Insights demonstrates our commitment to Power the Open Finance Economy.”
The newly-announced collaboration with Boss Insights is one of a number of partnerships that Lehi, Utah-based MX has announced in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the company teamed up with omnichannel payments platform Qolo Partners to help fintechs and neobanks scale their businesses faster. In March, MX worked with fellow Finovate alum Fiserv to enable secure consumer financial data access and sharing. That same month, MX announced that it had forged a new data access partnership with the University of Wisconsin Credit Union.
Last month, President Joe Biden signed an executive order on ensuring responsible development of digital assets. The order, which comes at a time of rising interest in digital assets such as cryptocurrencies, seeks to protect consumers, financial stability, national security, and reduce climate risks.
We recently spoke with Peter Torrente, National Leader of KPMG’s Banking and Capital Markets practice, to gain some insight on how the executive order may impact banks and fintechs. With more than 30 years of experience, Torrente primarily works with global financial services companies.
What are the highlights of the executive order?
Peter Torrente: The U.S. has an interest in responsible financial innovation including the continued modernization of public payment systems. This executive order details the country’s first comprehensive government strategy for exploring digital assets. It outlines steps to reduce risks that digital assets could pose to consumers, investors, and businesses. It also addresses other important considerations such as financial stability and financial system integrity; combatting and preventing crime and illicit finance; national security; U.S. leadership in the global financial system and economic competitiveness; financial inclusion and equity; and climate change and pollution. Finally, it also explores a U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) by placing urgency on research and development of a potential digital version of the dollar.
What are the major implications for banks and fintechs?
Torrente: The executive order seeks to ensure that the largest financial regulators, including banking regulators in the United States, make coordinated plans to oversee the blockchain industry. I see this order as a good signal for a comprehensive set of regulations for the digital asset industry. First, the new laws and regulations will require banks and fintech companies involved in the digital asset industry to enhance their governance and control frameworks related to Anti-Money Laundering (AML) / Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) processes. Second, this executive order indicated that the federal government sees digital assets as an important part of the economy and society; it creates opportunities for traditional banks take another look at their digital asset strategy. Lastly, it explores a U.S. CBDC, which would significantly impact domestic and international wire transfer processes. I also see this order as an encouraging signal for banks and fintech companies to push forward with financial innovations associated with the digital asset industry.
Will the executive order benefit end consumers? Or make them worse off? How?
Torrente: Yes, it has the potential to benefit end consumers. First, the initial set of regulations will focus on establishing the baseline rules to protect investors and consumers from fraudulent activities. It can create transparency for end consumers and help them make informed decisions. Second, this executive order promotes building innovative financial platforms. End consumers may benefit from improvements in business performance, efficiency, and enhanced financial inclusion through these innovations. Given digital assets have the potential to increase the speed of payments, it can vastly improve access to financial services, especially for low-income Americans often left out of the traditional banking system. Lastly, new policies and laws for the digital asset industry could potentially help reduce excessive price volatility and improve market stability as cryptocurrency becomes a mainstream financial technology.
Do you envision further regulations around ESG in the future?
Torrente: The pace of proposed rules and regulations related to ESG risk identification, measurement and disclosure has clearly accelerated over recent months. But when we take a step back, these regulatory actions are largely the result of growing interest from a variety of stakeholders – investors, analysts, community groups, and government leaders – who may have been focused on sustainability and ESG for years. There is a widespread desire among stakeholders for enhanced consistency and comparability across ESG targets and metrics. Standardized disclosure requirements are viewed as important to advancing the broader ESG agenda. Stakeholders’ expectations of companies’ ESG strategies, commitments and disclosures are only increasing, which may lead to additional regulatory guidance and focus.
