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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
CUSO Pure IT Credit Union Services received an investment of $6.8 million this week from a group of credit unions.
The funding will be used to help expand Pure IT’s ability to help credit unions leverage technology to compete with other financial institutions and to better serve their members.
The investment comes a few months after Pure IT announced an acquisition of Purity Technology.
Technology-based credit union service organization (CUSO) Pure IT Credit Union Servicesannounced an investment of $6.8 million. The funding came from a coalition of seven credit unions – including Lone Star CU, Union Square CU, DEXSTA CU, People’s Trust CU, Linn Area CU, Ardent CU, and fellow CUSO Envisant.
“What bigger compliment can you have than your own clients investing in your,” Pure IT Credit Union Services co-founder and CEO Jack Smith said. He added that it was part of Pure IT’s mission to “help the industry achieve maturation and evolution to stay relevant and serve even more members.”
The new funding will be used to expand Pure IT’s work in helping credit unions leverage technology to compete for, and better serve, more members.
Headquartered in Texas, Pure IT Credit Services was founded in 2016. Formed initially as a partnership between a credit union and a collection of technology services professionals, the company has grown into a credit union IT services and consulting firm that helps assess a credit union’s IT environment, enabling its clients to focus on business strategy, operations, and serving their members.
Earlier this year, Pure IT Credit Services acquired Texas-based IT services company Purity Technology. The purchase will enable Pure IT to deliver more secure, “modern mobility services” to a greater number of credit unions
“(Purity’s technology) helps smaller institutions and mid-sized institutions that don’t have IT people or don’t have full-time IT resources or are thinking about using ‘Mom and Pop’ down the street for their IT support ” Smith said in an interview with CU Broadcast host Mike Lawson. “This gets them secure and compliant … ‘Mom and Pop’ aren’t going to know what a financial institution needs … (Purity) is a built-in, support service that actually solves that issue for a lot of (different sized) credit unions that don’t have that sophistication internally.”
Illuma Labs, maker of the Illuma Shield voice verification platform, raised new funding this week from NYCUA and UsNet.
The amount of the investment was not disclosed. The funding comes one year after Illuma Labs secured $2.5 million in funding from the Curql Fund.
This week’s funding comes one month after the company partnered with Posh Technologies to win the “Next Big Thing” award from NACUSO (National Association of Credit Union Service Organizations) and Co-Op Solutions.
The amount of the investment was not disclosed. The company raised $2.5 million in funding from the Curql Fund just over a year ago
A Credit Union Service Organization (CUSO), Illuma Labs considers credit unions to be its key customers, investors, and partners. The company’s Illuma Shield technology enables call centers to leverage passive voice authentication to improve the user experience, guard against fraudsters, and boost operational efficiency by reducing call handle times, hold times, and abandon rates. A cost-effective, easy to deploy, and simple to use solution for mid-size financial institution call centers, Illuma Shield analyzes the unique aspects of a speaker’s voice and their communication device to create an AudioPrint that can be used to verify identity on subsequent calls. The AudioPrint process happens in the background, during normal conversation, without requiring the speaker to answer security questions or recite passphrases.
“This technology uses state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Voice Biometrics to address three of the top concerns for credit unions today,” Illuma Shield founder and CEO Milind Borkar said. “The platform improves member experience by emulating the warm welcome of a brick-and-mortar visit while offering a very high level of protection against account takeovers. Cutting out the security Q&A process also creates operational efficiency by shortening call times. The infusion of investment from NYCUA and UsNet is highly valued since it helps us expand to serve even more credit unions.”
A Finovate alum since 2019, Illuma Labs announced a partnership with SCE Credit Union, a $1 billion institution with more than 60,000 members in Southern California and Southern Nevada, in May. Also that month, Illuma Labs and Posh Technologies collaborated to win the “Next Big Idea” award from NACUSO and Co-Op Solutions. The partnership combined the passive voice authentication of Illuma Labs’ Illuma Shield and Posh Technologies’ conversational AI IVR to help call centers cope with high call volume and talent shortages.
“Posh’s conversational AI and Illuma’s voice biometrics is a combination that makes sense,” Posh co-founder Karan Kashyap said. “As we do our parts as CUSOs to bring transformative technology to the credit union market, our partnership will enhance member security for credit unions while offering a streamlined authentication experience for the caller – a win-win. We look forward to a bright future with Illuma Labs.”
This is a sponsored article by Kim Minor, Senior Vice President Global Marketingat Provenir.
To compete successfully in our digital-first, instant gratification world, you need a risk-decisioning ecosystem designed to intelligently serve customers. A solution that not only connects every piece of credit decisioning and AI/ML software you own, but also enables you to access any external and internal data source in real time to auto optimize decisions—along with the impact of those decisions—across your entire customer lifecycle.
But many financial services providers are unable to tie all these elements together because legacy risk analytics offerings just weren’t built that way. So, as a user you’ve had to look to multiple products when you want world-class solutions for data and AI-powered decisioning. You’ve relied on vendors to make changes. You’ve relied on multiple user interfaces (UI) to keep control. You’ve waited months for solutions to go live, and… you’ve needed to replace technology a few years later when it can’t expand and scale with your business.
Whether you’re a startup with a single product line, or a unicorn offering a range of financial solutions, you need to create a financial ‘home’ for your customers, which means delivering a great customer experience from start to finish, regardless of changing dynamics.
Here are the five key features of a risk decisioning platform that will enable you to create world-class customer experiences:
No-Code Management: to integrate systems, change processes and launch new products
In a survey of 400 decision makers in fintech and financial services organizations across the globe, 78% of respondents cited low/no code UI as a feature they have or that would be most important when selecting an automated risk decisioning system. Inflexible solutions that require a vendor or your IT department to connect to a new data source, make workflow changes or launch a new product hinder time to market, increase costs, and put you behind your competitors. Look for a solution that has pre-built data integrations and a visual, drag-and-drop interface to easily and quickly make changes to respond to evolving consumer needs.
Connected Data: easy access to real-time and historical data
Through our survey of decision makers, we discovered that credit risk decisions rely more on historical than real-time data. Sixty-one percent of respondents use both historical and real-time data when making credit risk decisions yet only 11 percent mostly use real-time data. To make accurate credit risk decisions, easy access to data across the whole credit lifecycle is a must. And all teams must have access to the same data sets to ensure big picture decisioning. Without it, the insights needed to get new products and processes to market faster and to make intelligent risk decisions remain hidden in silos of data.
Centralized Control: data and AI-powered decisioning across the customer lifecycle
To power continuous innovation across the customer lifecycle, organizations need to be able to launch, learn, and iterate with ease, but separate solutions for data and AI-decisioning slow innovation down. Consumers expect their experiences to be seamless, giving them access to tailored financial services products while also protecting them from financial fraud. To support this consumer need and business strategy, financial services organizations need to combine data and decisioning into one cohesive solution that can provide the technology to access, analyze, and action data across fraud, identity, and credit decisioning processes.
Auto-Optimization: decisioning that gets more accurate every time it’s used
Do you know how your current risk models are performing? Or whether model drift is occurring and unhealthy? How long would it take you to respond to performance changes once they’re spotted? Traditional decisioning has relied on human intervention to spot model performance changes and identify efficiency improvement options, meaning improvements happen on an ad-hoc basis, if at all.
To operate at maximum efficiency and run the most accurate models possible, your AI-powered decisioning and data solution needs a centralized UI that connects all necessary data so it can be used to power a continuous feedback loop, where both historical and real-time data are used to auto-optimize performance on an ongoing basis. Model performance and accuracy can be monitored and adjusted in real time.
Grow and Expand with Confidence: Technology that scales and grows with your business
One of the biggest obstacles financial services companies face is having technology that can support their business as it evolves and grows. For example, people often find it a challenge to support decisioning as application volume grows and their offerings expand. Sometimes the impact can be from delays waiting for vendors or in-house teams to make changes; often it means procuring or building new solutions to fill in technology gaps or completely replacing existing solutions. Whatever the path forward, the impact is the same… delayed growth, limited agility, and user frustration. To preempt future technology challenges, look for options that empower you to grow, expand, and change direction.
To truly thrive in an increasingly competitive industry, you need to provide consumers with world-class customer experiences. A unified data and AI-powered decisioning platform lets you make smarter decisions, faster. Use your technology’s powerful data integration and automation capabilities to create streamlined user experiences and drive real-time decisioning.
About the Author: Kim Minor is Senior Vice President, Marketing at Provenir, which helps fintechs and financial services providers make smarter decisions faster with its AI-Powered Risk Decisioning Platform. Provenir works with disruptive financial services organizations in more than 50 countries and processes more than three billion transactions annually.
One of the more interesting conversations I enjoyed at FinovateSpring this year was a chat with Rupesh Chokshi, VP of Product Strategy and Innovation with AT&T Business. Often not a part of the general conversation on fintech innovation, communications companies like AT&T play a major role in providing both the infrastructure and technology that makes much of fintech innovation in 2022 possible. Chokshi discusses this – and more – in our conversation from FinovateSpring in San Francisco earlier this year.
On the relationship between fintech innovation and the revolution in connectivity
There is a trend right now in wireless connectivity, ubiquitous connectivity. And if you look at a lot of the innovation that’s happening in fintech, it’s associated with the user experiences. Whether it is an interaction on a mobile commerce kind of platform or some interaction with a call center that’s utilizing conversational AI or other technologies, connectivity plays a very important role and having ubiquitous connectivity that is high scale and on-demand is important.
A lot of the smaller, younger fintechs are banking on this infrastructure, this capability, this networking trend to be there to really differentiate the end user experience and the end game for their products and services.
On the challenges financial services companies are facing right now
I think there is still a lot of siloed, legacy infrastructure. There are still a lot of companies that are dealing with the question of how do you take what you have on to a new platform or to have some of that journey in the cloud or the multi-cloud. They are also understanding the kind of modernization of the app structures and modernization of the networking capabilities that you need. I feel there is an opportunity to do a little bit of a catapult or a breakthrough because (companies) have figured and mulled over all of these things for such a long time.
On what AT&T Business is doing to help fintechs and financial services continue to innovate
We’ve all talked about the digital acceleration that took place. Ten years of innovation happened in two years. We’re grappling with this whole hybrid work environment … In order to make all that a reality, the way we’re thinking about it, is that the investments we are making in our fiber footprint, in our 5G capabilities, are going to provide that baseline connectivity. And from there we’re thinking about enablers. We’re making our networks more programmable and open to those APIs that can be consumed by the application layer to make the end user experience very much differentiated.
So if I think about it, it’s a layered cake. For us, it’s the core connectivity, the infrastructure, put the enablers at the top of it, and then go into some deeper partnerships into the ecosystem, startups, large tech, hyperscalers, integrators … And then going to the true end customers and the verticals we support.
Listen to the rest of our conversation at FinovateTV.
“Poland is seeing fast acceleration of the digitization of financial service offerings, and we’re very happy to be partnering with one of the most innovative banks in the Central Eastern Europe region,” SVP of EMEA at Onfido Oliver Krebs said. “We pride ourselves on delivering access to online services that both detect and prevent fraudulent attempts while enabling the business to scale and meet regulatory requirements.”
The partnership will enable Bank Millennium to enhance its online customer journey with an onboarding process that is quicker, simpler, and easier for customers. New users will be able to sign up with Bank Millennium with just a photograph of their government-issued identification document (ID) and a selfie video. Onfido’s AI-powered identity verification technology first ensures that the ID is legitimate, and then matches the image on the ID with the image in the selfie video. This makes sure that the individual is the legitimate owner of the ID and is physically present. By leveraging Onfido’s technology, the institution will enable new customers to onboard with the bank from any location, at any time via a fully-compliant digital experience.
“We wanted to make our process even more user-friendly and accessible on most devices, and that is why we choose to work with Onfido,” Director of the Electronic Banking Department at Bank Millennium Halina Karpińska said. “We based the changes on a detailed analysis of our onboarding flow, we also looked at best market standards and, as always, we took into account the opinions of users. Now new customers finish the process already logged in to the application, with an active account that they can immediately use.”
Bank Milllennium Poland was founded in 1989 as Bank Inicjatyw Gospodarczych BIG SA. Part of the Millennium Group since 2003, the institution offers a wide range of banking solutions for private customers, SMEs, and enterprises alike. Last year, the bank was named Poland’s Best Digital Bank by Global Finance Magazine.
To start this week, Onfido announced that it has signed on to a digital ID program for financial services sponsored by The Investing and Savings Alliance (TISA). The program is designed to develop digital identities for consumers that will enable them to create and reuse identities when working with financial institutions. Already signed up for the program are a variety of companies including a handful of Finovate alums such as Signicat, Daon, and MoneyHub. Also involved in the digital identity plan are Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest, and Barclays
“TISA’s vision to create a resuable digital ID that meets all relevant regulatory requirements, such as know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML), and also help consumers securely prove their identity to U.K. financial services is admirable,” Onfido Global Director of Public Policy Matthew Peake said in a statement.
Founded in 2012 and headquartered in London, Onfido made its Finovate debut in 2018 at FinovateEurope. The company’s technology has helped firms deliver a 12x year-over-year improvement in fully-automated performance, as well as delivered 95% of its identity verification checks in less than 10 seconds and a 10x lower false acceptance rate.
This spring, Onfido announced a partnership with Tesco Bank. Co-founder Husayn Kassai is Onfido CEO.
MoneyGram is rolling out a service that will enable users to buy cryptocurrency using cash, as well as allow them to withdraw their crypto holdings in cash, at select MoneyGram locations.
The new capabilities are made possible via a partnership with Stellar Development Foundation.
The service is currently available in the U.S., Canada, Kenya, and the Philippines.
While Western Union is taking payments digital, its competitor MoneyGram is bringing them into crypto. MoneyGram announced today it has begun to roll out a service that will enable cash users to access cryptocurrency via participating MoneyGram locations.
The new service is the result of a partnership between MoneyGram and the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), the organization behind open-source public blockchain Stellar that allows money to be tokenized and transferred globally. MoneyGram and SDF originally partnered in October of last year, when the two piloted the functionality that enabled digital wallet holders to deposit cash into their digital wallets at MoneyGram locations, send payments internationally via Stellar, and exchange Stellar for cash currency.
The functionality of exchanging cash to cryptocurrency and back to cash again aims to offer unbanked populations access to the digital economy. The fund transfer capabilities don’t require a bank account or a credit card. Consumers that hold a digital wallet with Vibrant or LOBSTR can visit a participating MoneyGram location to load their digital wallets using cash or to cash out their digital currency holdings into cash. MoneyGram expects to collaborate with more digital wallets in the future.
To incentivize adoption of the crypto in/out feature among its 150 million customers, MoneyGram is not charging a fee for the service for the first year.
“A much-needed solution to the cash-to-crypto on/off-ramp problem is here,” said Stellar Development Foundation CEO and Executive Director Denelle Dixon. “Today, almost 2 billion people rely on cash for their livelihood, with no options to access the digital economy. At the same time, a persistent pain point for crypto-native users is off-ramping cryptocurrency quickly and reliably. The groundbreaking nature of this service is how it solves problems for a range of users with varying needs around the world.”
The service is currently available in the U.S., Canada, Kenya, and the Philippines. By the end of this month, global cash-in functionality will be available in seven more countries and cash-out functionality will be available globally (where permitted by law).
MoneyGram, an 82-year-old fintech, was acquired by private equity investment firm Madison Dearborn Partners in a $1.8 billion deal earlier this year. Alex Holmes is chairman and CEO.
Klar, arguably the largest digital bank in Mexico, secured $70 million in equity funding this week. The investment – led by existing investor General Atlantic and featuring participation from Prosus Ventures, Quona Capital, Mouro, IFC, Acrew, and Endeavor Catalyst – gives the company a valuation of $500 million. Klar has raised more than $150 million in equity funding since its founding in 2019. The sum represents the largest amount raised by a Mexican neobank to date.
“Since its inception, Klar has aimed to empower millions of consumers across Mexico with simple and transparent offerings that enable them to live better lives,” Klar CEO and co-founder Stefan Möller said. “We see an opportunity to provide bespoke solutions to Mexican consumers who are eager to adopt technology, and who are not adequately served by anachronistic institutions.”
In addition to the equity investment, Klar received $20 million in venture debt funding from WTI.
Klar offers financial services consumers a wide range of solutions, including credit, mobile payments, rewards programs, loans, early wage access, and BNPL. The largest digital finance platform in Mexico, Klar has added 1.4 million customers in the last 12 months, reported revenue gains of 7x and transaction volume increases of 4x year over year.
Klar plans to use the fresh capital to enhance its platform, explore strategic acquisitions, pursue new distribution channels, and “invest in its team and talent.”
In other Latin American fintech news, we learned that Argentina’s Ualá has won approval from the country’s central bank to acquire Wilobank, Argentina’s first digital bank.
The deal was first announced in 2021, and this week’s decision will enable the transaction to close as early as next week, according to Bloomberg. The deal will also make Wilobank founder Eduardo Eurnekian a minority stakeholder in Ualá.
“The acquisition of Wilobank will significantly expand the value proposition of the Ualá ecosystem, offering better credit and collection tools not only for individuals but also for entrepreneurs,” Ualá founder and CEO Pierpaolo Barbieri said. “It is a crucial step so that more and more people can access simpler, more accessible and transparent financial products.”
Ualá’s acquisition will enable the $2.5 billion Argentinian fintech to accelerate growth and reach more customers. Especially attractive as new potential clients are pensioners and government welfare recipients who receive government payments via savings accounts that can only be provided by banks. Ualá has five million accounts – four million in Argentina – on the region. Wilobank has more than 250,000 savings accounts and has issued more than 113,000 debit cards.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
ICICI Bank is integrating ZestMoney’s EMI (Equated Monthly Installments) BNPL network into its Cardless EMI product.
Customers can use ZestMoney’s BNPL capabilities to make purchases of up to $12,900 (Rs. 10 lakh).
This BNPL tool is currently live for ICICI clients making purchases online and will be available at physical retail locations “soon.”
Another day, another onslaught of BNPL news. Following this week’s chatter on Apple Pay Later and Zopa’s entrance into the BNPL market, ICICI Bank in India announced a partnership with Equated Monthly Installments (EMI) BNPL network ZestMoney.
The tie-up will enable ICICI Bank to expand its Cardless EMI product that facilitates purchases at participating physical retail and e-commerce platforms. When using ZestMoney’s BNPL capabilities, ICICI customers can use cardless credit to make purchases of up to $12,900 (Rs. 10 lakh) online or in-store and pay for it in EMIs. ICICI customers can also use ZestMoney’s flagship Pay-in-3 offering that enables users to split their transaction into three EMIs without extra cost.
“With this partnership, millions of our pre-approved customers can shop from e-commerce platforms and retail merchants registered on ZestMoney by just using mobile phone and PAN,” said ICICI Bank Head of Unsecured Assets Sudipta Roy. “We believe this facility provides immense convenience and improves affordability of our customers, as they can purchase high-value products on EMIs in a secure, instant, and digital manner, without even carrying their cards or wallet.”
This BNPL tool is currently live for ICICI clients making purchases online at ZestMoney’s retailer network which includes Xiaomi, OnePlus, Sugar, Mamaearth, Decathlon, Boat, Yatra, Urban Ladder, Vijay Sales, Titan Eye Plus, and more. BNPL payments made at physical retail locations will be available “soon.”
Launched in 2020, ICICI Bank’s Cardless EMI feature is most popular for users between the ages of 25 to 35. The solution is most widely used in e-commerce shopping platforms, travel, education, insurance, healthcare & wellness, and fashion apparel.
Founded in 2015, ZestMoney enables its 17 million users to apply for a digital credit line within seconds. The company’s merchant network includes 10,000+ online retailers and 75,000 physical stores. In addition to winning Best use of AI/ML at last year’s FinovateAwards, ZestMoney was also selected as a 2020 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum and was recognized as the second fastest-growing technology company by Deloitte India in 2021.
Backbase raised $128 million (€120 million) in growth equity funding this week.
The round was led by private equity firm Motive Partners, and gave the company a valuation of $2.6 billion (€2.5 billion).
Backbase’s Engagement Banking Platform enables banks and credit unions to leverage a cloud-based platform to offer bank customers seamless digital experiences.
Engagement banking platform Backbasesecured $128 million (€120 million) in growth equity funding from private equity firm Motive Partners. The investment gives the company, which made its most recent Finovate appearance at FinovateFall 2021, a valuation of $2.6 billion (€2.5 billion). The funding also marks Backbase’s first-ever funding event since its founding in 2003.
“Today is a major milestone for more than 2,000 Backbasers and 150 customers around the world, to celebrate the incredible progress we made,” Backbase founder and CEO Jouk Pleiter said in a statement. “With this partnership, we’re even better equipped to drive our Engagement Banking vision to the next level.”
The investment from the “founder-friendly” firm will enable Backbase to commit more resources to its Engagement Banking solution, helping power the company’s mission to “re-architect” banking in a customer-focused way. Backbase’s technology gives banks and credit unions the ability to move away from disconnected, point and channel solutions. Instead, with Backbase’s cloud-based platform, financial institutions can build frictionless customer journeys across all stages of the customer lifecycle from onboarding and servicing to lending and expanding wallet share.
With more than 150 financial institutions around the world using its technology, Backbase gives banks and credit unions the ability to quickly digitize and transform their customer-facing operations to meet the expectations of increasingly digitally-savvy banking customers. At its most recent Finovate appearance last fall, Backbase demonstrated a customer onboarding solution that consolidated a customer’s finances via direct deposit, billl pay auto linking, and debit card account opening. The technology showed how financial institutions can get key insights into their customers and empower them to take more control over their financial lives.
“Backbase’s proven track record of entrepreneurship and organic growth will continue,” Jouk said. “Our formula is simple: focus on the needs of our customers and empower highly skilled teams to deliver. We’re changing a big industry, which is hard work. Having critical mass and market momentum allows us to stay laser-focused. Together we’re making it happen.”
Founded in 2003, three-time Finovate Best of Show winner Backbase maintains a global headquarters in Amsterdam.
How does technology help financial advisors do their jobs better? What does it mean to be “customer-focused” when it comes to financial health? And how does an organization successfully pursue a commitment to financial inclusion as a company, while simultaneously supporting and reinforcing a commitment to diversity, equality, and inclusion within a company?
We talked with Christina Walls, Chief Marketing Officer of intelliflo, about intelliflo’s evolution into a comprehensive digital investment platform. We also discussed the firm’s determination to help its clients leverage technology to reach more customers from more diverse backgrounds and investment sophistication levels. Toward the end of our conversation, we talked about the key role of equality in the diversity and inclusion conversation, and what can be done to bring more women into leadership roles within fintech and financial services.
Why was intelliflo formed a year ago? What is the strategy behind the combined company brand?
Christina Walls: What makes what we’re doing at intelliflo so exciting is how we’re addressing the challenges that financial advisors around the world have using technology to expand access to advice. That’s why our parent company, Invesco, combined five digital wealth companies into a single, API-driven platform – intelliflo – so we can offer financial advisors a holistic digital platform designed to serve investors throughout the entire advisory lifecycle. Our technology delivers the digital tools financial advisors need to better serve modern investors and widen access to financial advice.
What was your role in bringing together the five previously separate companies and modernizing the marketing function?
Walls: Validating the opportunity for five companies to come together as one new global brand, culture, and market proposition in the U.S., U.K., and Australia was the first step. Next, the marketing team built a modern, omni-channel marketing function that delivers against global and local business needs. We focused on training colleagues for new jobs and recruiting talent We also embedded new processes and a MarTech stack including sales enablement and CX/EX listening platforms that align with our modern, 360, digital CX/EX experience mindset versus traditional marketing funnel acquisition methodology.
Our new global brand is bold, personable, and challenges the status-quo. The experiences we deliver for all consumers of our brand – colleagues, clients, or partners – need to “feel” different. Every decision we made underpins our business purpose and strategy. The new marketing function was repositioned from previously reactive and tactical to a strategic, commercial, and customer-focused partner for the business.
What were some of your biggest challenges and successes during this project?
Walls: The biggest success is seeing our efforts help advisors grow and improve their clients’ financial health. Advisors are increasingly challenged to accomplish more with less resources; they need open, digital, and cloud-based technology to serve clients of all ages and sophistication levels. With intelliflo, advisors can meet clients where they are, including across digital channels, providing a personalized experience with greater collaboration and communication.
Since March 2021, we have seen increases across all marketing metrics. For example, one omni-channel solution campaign led to a 73% rise in sales YOY in January 2022.
The biggest challenge was planning and executing a new global brand launch during the pandemic and virtually building a new marketing function, business culture, and relationships. I’m so appreciative of the hard work of all my colleagues at intelliflo, who are passionate, proud, and dedicated to our business purpose; without them we wouldn’t be where we are now.
Why did you help intelliflo evolve from D&I to DEI?
Walls: In today’s world, diversity and inclusion can’t work without equality. Companies with D&I policies do a great job of recruiting people from diverse backgrounds, welcoming and celebrating those differences, and making them feel included in the organization, but with all evolution comes revolution.
At intelliflo, our culture relies on ensuring every colleague, regardless of their background, race, gender, etc. is included, has an equal share of voice, and is confident to challenge any level of seniority of the business for the greater good of delivering our business purpose – widening access to financial advice. We must all focus on equality; it is the critical bridge between diversity and inclusion.
As part of our newly created employee value proposition and DEI focus, we’ve recently formed a DEI ally network. We are dedicated to educating colleagues and building greater awareness for all colleagues, customers, clients, partners, industries, and communities, from the inside out.
What more do you think can be done to support women in fintech?
Walls: Progress has been made, but there’s still much work to be done. This isn’t just about delivering a gender metric. For the industry to change we need to highlight the value women bring, especially when it comes to diversity of thought. We should increase access to funding for women-led fintechs, hire more women at all levels of the business, widen access to professional networks in the industry, implement more policies, and continue reporting gender equality metrics, like the pay gap.
Male allies are also important. I’m fortunate to have many male allies at both intelliflo and Invesco and am personally dedicated to continuing the great work all genders have pushed forward in advocating women and removing biases for future generations to forge a gender equal world.
Gender is only one example of equality. Many other traditionally underrepresented groups also need a voice. We must hold ourselves and each other accountable to eradicate these biases and promote greater DEI for everyone.
You’ve likely heard by now that Apple has taken the veil off of its BNPL tool, Apple Pay Later. The tech giant announced Apple Pay Later at its World Wide Developer Conference on Monday.
If you haven’t read coverage of the announcement yet, here’s the gist– the new tool will enable Apple Pay users to split any purchase made where Apple Pay is accepted into four installments, paid out over the course of six weeks (check out the video announcement at the bottom of this post for more details).
Apple is coming in late to an already over-saturated BNPL market and faces a lot of competition from well-established players. However, the company is not showing up to compete empty handed. Apple Pay Later has a handful of advantages over other contenders.
Advantages
Acceptance at physical retailers As mentioned earlier, users can pay with Apple Pay Later anywhere Apple Pay is accepted. This includes many physical retailers. And because 90% of retail purchases are made in-store as opposed to online, Apple already covers a lot of territory that other players haven’t been able to access yet. BNPL giant Klarna currently offers in-store services at just over 60,000 retail locations. As a comparison, Apple Pay is accepted at more than 250,000 retail locations.
Underwriting The success of a BNPL tool not only hinges on retailer acceptance, but also on underwriting. After all, if your users aren’t paying you back, what’s the point?
While Apple is working with Goldman Sachs as the issuer for the Apple Card, the bank will only be involved in offering access to the Mastercard network and won’t facilitate underwriting. However, Apple’s advantage comes in the form of Credit Kudos, a U.K. startup the tech giant bought last year that enables businesses to leverage open banking to assess affordability and risk.
Physical and virtual card Some BNPL players already offer both physical and virtual payment cards. However, Apple having both will be a leg up for the company. Having both a physical and virtual presence takes up space consumers’ digital and physical wallets, making it more likely to be top-of-mind (and top-of-wallet).
Brand trust and recognition According to Statista, Apple has the second most valuable brand in the world at $612 billion. This value is driven by having a brand that consumers trust, recognize, and value. It is widely believed that when Apple releases a hardware product, it will be top-notch. Consumers will expect the same from Apple Pay Later, and will therefore be less hesitant to trust the new tool.
What’s missing?
Apple has thought of almost everything when it comes to Apple Pay Later. One thing I’d love to see is a retroactive payment-switching feature similar to Curve’s Go Back in Time. The tool allows users to free up cash by switching payments from one card to another up to 30 days after the purchase was made.
Apple could allow customers to choose to use Apple Pay Later even after a transaction has been completed in order to free up emergency cash flow. While I wouldn’t advise this as a personal finance strategy, it would offer Apple an even greater leg up on BNPL competitors (including Curve’s when it becomes more widely available in the U.S.).
Australia digital finance platform SocietyOne is adding new checking and savings accounts, SpendOne and SaveOne.
SocietyOne is leveraging Westpac’s banking-as-a-service platform to offer the new accounts.
Today’s news comes three months after SocietyOne was acquired by alternative lender MONEYME.
It’s 2022 and digital banking is in the air. P2P lending platform SocietyOne is among the many fintechs that have added checking and savings accounts to compete with this decade’s new crop of challenger banks.
The Australia-based company recently unveiled it has tapped its long-time investor Westpac to add these new checking and savings accounts, SpendOne and SaveOne. Westpac’s banking-as-a-service platform will fuel the new accounts, which will work in conjunction with SocietyOne’s fixed rate secured and unsecured personal loans, as well as its free credit score product.
SpendOne and SaveOne can be accessed via SocietyOne’s new mobile app, which offers customers visibility of their transactions and allows them to take out a SocietyOne loan, set up automatic repayments, and access their credit score.
Today’s news comes three months after SocietyOne was acquired by alternative lender MONEYME. According to the press release, the launch of SpendOne and SaveOne “is aimed to fast-track the MONEYME Group’s goal of becoming Australia’s largest non-bank credit provider.” Once the acquisition closed in March of this year, combining the companies significantly increased MONEYME’s customer base and created a $1.2 billion loan book.
“The launch strongly aligns with MONEYME’s diversification strategy and our focus on delivering leading digital-first experiences to empower Generation Now,” said MONEYME CEO and Managing Director Clayton Howes. “The SpendOne and SaveOne accounts are designed to automate good financial habits, giving customers more freedom, flexibility, and a one-stop shop to manage their money.”
Marketed as a transaction account, SpendOne will not charge transaction or account fees. The account comes with many of the features users would expect from a large bank, including a debit card, account-to-account transfer capabilities, and ATM cash withdrawals. Additionally, SpendOne has a round-up feature that lets customers opt to round up their everyday transactions to a select amount, sending the balance to their SaveOne account.
The SaveOne account comes with an interest rate of 1% per year. In addition to the roundup feature mentioned above, SaveOne also helps users save with an autosave option that allows a percentage of customers’ deposits to be automatically transferred to their SaveOne account.
“Adding these products creates a frictionless experience for SocietyOne customers, who can now monitor and manage everyday transactions, savings, SocietyOne personal loans, and their credit score, all in one app,” said MONEYME COO Jonathan Chan. “With easy oversight and automated features to help customers save more, it provides increased control over their finances.”
SocietyOne was founded in 2012. Since then, the company’s platform has matched investors’ funds with over 35,000 customers and, last January, surpassed $1 billion in lending. SocietyOne is a wholly-owned subsidiary of MONEYME, which is listed on the ASX under the ticker MME and has a market capitalization of $220 million.
