Signifyd Collaborates with Capital One To Help Retailers Combat False Positives

Signifyd Collaborates with Capital One To Help Retailers Combat False Positives

A new partnership between Finovate alum Signifyd and Capital One will bring the fraud prevention specialist’s Authorization Rate Optimization solution to the bank’s payment ecosystem. The integration will help boost authorization rates and reduce the number of orders on Capital One credit cards that are inaccurately declined due to suspected fraud. This will increase revenue for retailers, as well as enhance customer lifetime value. Capital One will benefit from stronger cardholder loyalty, while cardholders will enjoy a more secure, online shopping experience with less friction.

“We are so pleased to partner with Capital One to solve a strategic issue for the ecommerce world,” Signifyd CEO Ra Ramanand said. “The very largest ecommerce sites globally can work directly with issuers to optimize their auth rates, but what do other merchants do? They come to Signifyd because we can optimize payment acceptance through our deep product integrations across the financial ecosystem.”

Signifyd’s Authorization Rate Optimization technology will be integrated with Capital One’s Enhanced Decisioning Data API. This will give Capital One enhanced data and fraud insights to help establish whether or not a given transaction should be approved or declined at the bank authorization stage. The solution provides identity intelligence across the entire shopper journey, delivering instant insights from the Signifyd Commerce Network at checkout, and helping authorization rates go up and the number of false declines go down.

An increase in false declines are, in some ways, the predicable outcome of the arms race between retailers and fraudsters. As fraud becomes more sophisticated, with more attacks and intrusions taking place earlier in the transaction process, both banks and merchants have found themselves increasingly declining payment at the authorization stage. The Economist reported that up to one in eight e-commerce dollars are currently declined during payment authorization, and the Aite Group reported that 62% of the merchants it surveyed admitted that their false decline rates have gone up in the last two years.

“There is no reason (why) merchants and banks should miss the opportunity to create seamless customer experiences at checkout,” Signifyd General Manager, Payment Solutions Okan Ozaltin said. “Working directly with issuing banks such as Capital One means Signifyd can offer the kind of ecommerce protection that makes life better for merchants and their loyal customers.”

Making its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring in 2013, Signifyd has become a leading, enterprise-grade fraud prevention platform. This year, the company was recognized by G2 in its 2021 Summer Report as a leader in the space as well as being first in market presence. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Signifyd has raised $390 million in funding, including a $205 million Series E round closed in April that was led by Owl Rock Capital. In addition to its partnership with Capital One – itself an alum of Finovate’s developer conference FinDEVr – Signifyd has teamed up in recent months with B2B payments specialist Adflex and, this spring, launched its Return Abuse Prevention Solution, which helps retailers better manage the $43 billion problem of fraudsters who abuse the refund and return system.

“Unfortunately, fraudsters and a subset of consumers are becoming more aggressive and ingenious when it comes to taking advantage of return policies meant to make life easier for shoppers,” Signifyd Vice President of Product Gayathri Somanath said when the solution was introduced. “Return Abuse Prevention relies on Signifyd’s network data, machine learning models and our new Decision Center module to give retailers the tools they need to stay ahead of this increasing, revenue-crushing trend.”


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Has the Pandemic Actually Benefited Women in Fintech?

Has the Pandemic Actually Benefited Women in Fintech?

The pandemic has not only shined a light on the inequalities of women in the workplace, it also created a larger gap, especially for working mothers. Between mandatory home schooling and a lack of childcare, the workload that women bear around the house is increasing.

There have been plenty of studies and articles stating that these demands are placed unfairly mothers, have made it difficult for them to advance in their career, and have caused many mothers to drop out of the workforce entirely.

I don’t want to minimize the headaches that moms (and truly everyone) have endured over the past 20 months. However, it’s worth pointing out a few ways that the pandemic economy has actually benefitted working mothers, specifically mothers working in fintech (myself included).

Flexible hours

The need for employees to balance work with home schooling and childcare motivated many workplaces to embrace more flexible working hours. As long as employees produce quality work, put in the necessary hours, and attend mandatory meetings, many are able to set their own schedule that works with their family.

Moms are always on call, whether to nurse a baby, help with homework, solve an argument, or change a diaper. So being able to step away from the computer to take care of pressing tasks is a huge benefit.

Remote working is the new norm

Prior to the pandemic, many workplaces were strictly against remote work, even when in-person collaboration wasn’t necessary. While commuting into an office five days a week has its benefits, it also comes with its share of difficulty. Not only does the extra time of the commute add up, but there is also more time and money spent on a professional wardrobe and makeup.

For breastfeeding mothers, long commutes are especially burdensome because the more time spent away from the baby means the more times mothers have to pump, store milk, and wash and sterilize bottles.

Meetings and conferences come to you

I included this point because of personal experience. My son was nine months old when I attended my first conference after maternity leave. Because I was still nursing, I chose to bring him with me to FinovateFall 2019 in New York. Even though I was physically at the conference, I still missed out on much of the content because I had to step out to nurse him so frequently.

In comparison, at FinovateFall 2021 last week, I was able to attend the show digitally from my home office with my newborn daughter on my lap. I was so much more present during the demos and discussions since I wasn’t running back and forth from the venue to a hotel room.

In this post-pandemic way of work, many businesses have made a point to offer digital experiences either in place of or alongside physical meetings. Now that so many more meetings and conferences offer a digital option, women do not have to miss out in the event they need to care for a sick family member or if they have a gap in childcare.

Normalizing home life

Perhaps the biggest upside of the pandemic is that it has shed a light on the full breadth of women’s duties outside of the workplace. Not only this, but colleagues are more accepting of times when family life collides with work. I’ve worked from home for 11 years, and prior to the pandemic I would have been mortified if my two-year old was audible outside of my office door on a conference call.

In this new era, colleagues and clients are much more open to home life. In fact, I’ve videoconferenced with people who not only don’t mind seeing and hearing children in the background of calls*, but they also ask me to bring them to the computer so that they can say hello to their children on the other end of the screen.

*At least within reason. Yes, children can be quite annoying sometimes.


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FinovateFall’s Best of Show Goes International

FinovateFall’s Best of Show Goes International

FinovateFall 2021 wrapped up a little over a week ago. Our return to live fintech conferencing produced one of our largest number of Best of Show winners (nine) to date. The event also gave us the one of the highest percentage of non-U.S. based Best of Show winners for a FinovateFall event.

This week’s Finovate Global Alumni Profile gives us an opportunity to take a closer look at the quartet of international fintechs that wowed our audiences with their latest innovations in New York City last week.


A Finovate alum since 2016, Bambu has made most of its Finovate appearances at our international shows in Hong Kong, South Africa, Dubai, and Berlin. The company is a multiple-time Best of Show winner, earning its first award in its second Finovate appearance at FinovateAsia in 2017, its second Best of Show award a year later at our conference in Capetown, and its third Best of Show trophy just last week in New York.

Bambu offers a next-generation B2B roboadvisory platform for both financial institutions and fintech disruptors. Powered by the company’s proprietary algorithms and machine learning technology, Bambu’s cloud-based platform has 300,000 end users in ten countries around the world. This summer, the company announced the acquisition of investment management technology provider Tradesocio, a move that will help expand Bambu’s reach internationally.

“After five years of building solid foundations, Bambu is now entering a phase of rapid growth,” Bambu CEO Ned Phillips said when the acquisition was announced in July. “This deal helps us in three key areas: it expands our product offering into stocks and crypto, it gives us a wider global footprint, and enables us to scale our team effectively to match exponential demand. We believe this positions us well for our Series C and ambitions of becoming the global leader in WealthTech.”


Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, Dreams earned its second Best of Show award last week at FinovateFall. The company, founded in 2014, is among the more recent Finovate alums, joining our roster last year for our all-digital FinovateEurope conference.

Dreams offers engagement banking solutions that leverage insights from cognitive and behavioral science to enhance financial wellbeing. Launched as a B2C offering, the company has expanded into the B2B2C space, offering its solutions to banks to help them boost digital engagement with their customers. This year at FinovateFall, Dreams demonstrated the savings module of its white-label banking platform, which features debt management and micro-investing functionality, as well as new social/viral features.

Over the past year, Dreams has announced partnerships with Singapore-based financial services software provider Silverlake Symmetri and Ukrainian commercial bank UKRSIBBANK, a subsidiary of BNP Paribas Group.

“Our financial wellbeing platform – which is built upon behavioural science and personal finance management principles – will provide the perfect tool for UKRSIBBANK to help its customers make better financial choices and become more sustainable in the way they handle their finances,” Dreams CEO and founder Henrik Rosvall said when the collaboration was announced. “This partnership will also help UKRSIBBANK safeguard the loyalty of its customers and futureproof its digital banking offering against a growing number of challenger banks and fintechs.”


Hailing from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, digital adoption platform Horizn was launched in 2012. The company is dedicated to helping financial institutions leverage micro-learning, social technology, gamification, and advanced analytics to enhance employee performance, fuel client adoption of new technologies, and boost revenues. With a global reach of more than 40 countries in North and South America, Asia, and Europe, the company has enabled its clients to realize 85% employee adoption rates and a 20% increase in mobile platform usage.

Horizn made its Finovate debut in 2017 at FinovateEurope in London. The company earned its first Best of Show honors at FinovateEurope in Berlin three years later, and picked up its second Best of Show award the following year at our all-digital event FinovateFall 2020. “It’s great to see Finovate recognize the impact that Horizn is having on banks worldwide,” company CEO Janice Diner said last year. “While COVID-19 may have accelerated the shift to digital, Horizn ensures bank customers stay digital.”

In addition to their Best of Show winning technology demonstrations, Horizn has also provided Finovate with some of its most compelling keynote speakers. Both Diner and Senior Vice President for Global Sales Steve Frook have shared their insights during the Conference Days component of our Finovate events. Frook’s FinovateEurope presentation, Landing Your First Bank Customer, was a highlight of our Berlin conference last year. And Janice Diner’s epigrammatic reminder that “if you build it they will come is a myth” remains as a good a piece advice for fledgling fintechs as you’ll ever hear.


The rise of fintech in Latin America has been one of the most impressive developments in global financial services in recent years. This is partly why the Best of Show award won by Uruguayan fintech Infocorp last week at FinovateFall feels so special.

Making its Finovate debut in the spring of 2017, Infocorp demonstrated its IC Campaigns platform that enables financial institutions to coordinate marketing and commercial operations via all available channels to better identify the optimal, next action for each client. The technology takes the omnichannel banking and seamless user experience requirements of modern banks to another level by helping institutions set up shorter-cycled, more agile campaigns that deliver increased conversion rates and higher ROI. Last week at FinovateFall, Infocorp introduced its Mobile Native App, a new solution that brings hyper-personalized experiences for every user in a single bank app.

Inforcorp CEO Ana Inés Echavarren spoke to the importance of “the mobile challenge” in a conversation with fintech analyst and thought leader Jim Marous in the weeks leading up to Infocorp’s return to the Finovate stage in September. “Everywhere the mobile channel is the one of choice now among users,” she explained. “Adoptions have gone up in all the implementations that we have in all the countries that we know of.” As far as Echavarren is concerned, this means that there has been a “mindset shift” in which the mobile experience and the user experience increasingly have become synonymous. To this end, Echavarren said, “we are no longer talking about the bank application, but about the user application.”

Founded in 1994 and headquartered in Montevideo, Infocorp has more than 40 successful deployments, 10+ million active users on its platform, and processes more than 120 million transactions a year.


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


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RBC’s Nomi Spend Management Tool Adds Forecasting

RBC’s Nomi Spend Management Tool Adds Forecasting

Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) launched two new capabilities for its NOMI financial intelligence platform. Unveiled today, NOMI Forecast shows users their future cash flow. The app also has increased its security with the launch of two-step verification upon login.

“At a time when Canadians are more conscious than ever of their daily finances, and banking digitally more frequently, they expect solutions that help them confidently manage their money and safeguard their accounts and information,” said RBC SVP Digital Peter Tilton. “With NOMI Forecast, we’re giving clients next generation cash flow advice and insights to take the stress out of balancing their accounts. Equally important, 2-Step Verification will work to provide clients added peace of mind as they navigate this rapidly evolving digital banking landscape.”

NOMI Forecast works by showing users all of the pre-authorized payments they have coming over a seven-day period. By accounting for known upcoming expenses, the forecasting capability offers users better visibility of their account activity and helps them have more control over their finances.

With the two-step verification process, users can select their mobile device as the primary channel to access the account. If they attempt to login with another device, they receive an in-app notification to verify their session. Unlike two-factor authentication, there is no security code delivered via email or text. Instead, the user presses a button to continue their session.

In a press release, RBC said that the two new features demonstrate the bank’s “commitment to add value, enhance security, and create peace of mind” for clients.


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Ocrolus Raises $80 Million at $500 Million Valuation

Ocrolus Raises $80 Million at $500 Million Valuation

Financial document automation platform Ocrolus pulled in $80 million in Series C funding today. The round was led by Fin VC and included participation from Thomvest Ventures, Mubadala Capital, Oak HC/FT, FinTech Collective, QED Investors, Bullpen Capital, ValueStream Ventures, Laconia, RiverPark Ventures, Invicta Growth, Stage II Capital, and Cross River Bank.

The New York-based company now boasts $127 million in funding and is valued at over $500 million. Ocrolus plans to use the funds to expand U.S. operations and “more aggressively” build products for banking and mortgage lending.

“Our platform helps lenders automate underwriting and intelligently leverage cash flow and income data for credit scoring,” said Ocrolus Co-founder and CEO Sam Bobley. “By enabling lenders to more quickly analyze diverse sources of financial data, Ocrolus levels the playing field for every borrower, providing expanded access to credit at a lower cost.”

Ocrolus was founded in 2014 to create a document processing automation solution that helps lenders classify, capture, detect, and analyze financial documents to make better lending decisions. To accomplish this, the company leverages AI, machine learning, and human-in-the-loop (HITL) optimization. The HITL component serves as Ocrolus’ key ingredient to differentiation because it ensures an enhanced level of accuracy when analyzing data derived from documents.

The company, which won a Best of Show award at FinovateFall last week for its document analysis technology, has benefitted from the recent acceleration of digitization brought on by COVID. In today’s lending environment, FIs need to offer online options to compete. We spoke with Ocrolus’ VP of Solutions Nicole Newlin last year on the effects of this digitalization.

Ocrolus’ client list is as impressive as it is extensive, including firms such as Brex, Enova, Lending Club, PayPal, Plaid, and SoFi. Accommodating for a recent uptick in demand, the company added more than 75 employees this year and plans to boost its hiring efforts next year, focusing specifically on machine learning and data science professionals.


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Rent-to-Rewards Specialist Bilt Locks in $60 Million in Funding

Rent-to-Rewards Specialist Bilt Locks in $60 Million in Funding

It’s becoming easier and easier to earn awards from everyday – or every month – transactions. Bilt, a fintech that enables renters to accrue points that can be redeemed for rewards, announced this week that it has raised $60 million in new funding. The investment, which included Mastercard and Wells Fargo among its chief contributors, gives the company a valuation of $350 million.

Launched earlier this summer, the company has since introduced its solution to more than two million rental units across the U.S. The company’s founder, Ankur Jain, said that Bilt is the first and only coalition of major property owners to offer this kind of solution and noted that “15 of the top 20 property owners” have become involved.

Also participating in the funding were some of the country’s biggest real estate companies including AvalonBay Communities, The Blackstone Group, Douglas Elliman, Equity Residential, GID-Winsor Communities, LENx, The Moinian Group, Morgan Properties, Starwood Capital Group, and Related.

Tenants can earn points by either renting from a member of the Bilt Rewards Alliance of more than two million rental homes or by making transactions using the Bilt Mastercard. Points can be used in a wide variety of ways, including travel, fitness club membership, paying rent, or even as part of a down payment to help pave the path to homeownership. Via the Bilt Mastercard, cardholders can earn up to 50,000 points a year toward rent, and earn an unlimited amount of points that can be used on other transactions.

Bilt sees major opportunity in a market that consists of approximately 109 million renters who pay an estimated $500 billion in rent every year. The company said that it will use the additional funding to help scale its loyalty program, giving more renters the opportunity to get something more than shelter from what is typically an individual’s “largest expense every single month,” according to Jain.


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A Passionate Mindset and Superior Execution: A Conversation with BM Technologies’ Luvleen Sidhu

A Passionate Mindset and Superior Execution: A Conversation with BM Technologies’ Luvleen Sidhu

Is there a better person to lead a conversation about bold leadership in fintech than Luvleen Sidhu? Chair, founder, and CEO of BM Technologies, Sidhu was the youngest female founder and CEO to take a company public when her firm listed on the New York Stock Exchange at the beginning of the year.

“I am proud to see BM Technologies take this historic step and enter the public markets,” Sidhu said in January. “We are delighted to be one of the first neo banking fintechs to go public. We are also EBITDA positive today, which serves to set us apart from other neo banking fintechs in the market.”

Formerly known as BankMobile, BM Technologies currently has more than two million account holders, and provides disbursement services at 700+ college campuses in the U.S., reaching one out of every three students in the country. The BaaS innovator was among the fintechs to earn recognition at the recently announced Finovate Awards, taking home top honors in the Best Fintech Partnership category for its collaboration with T-Mobile.

Beyond the Arc’s Steven Ramirez hosted a fireside chat with Luvleen Sidhu as part of the FinovateFall conference in New York last week. Below are a few excerpts from their conversation.

On what it takes to be a bold leader today

For me, being a bold leader really comes down to a few key things that, in my opinion, a bold leader would demonstrate. So that is being able to have a compelling and unique and unifying vision and purpose. (It is) being able to get people to buy into that, to be energized by that, committed to that. (It is also) being able to have superior execution, because you can have a great idea and be in the clouds, but unless you are working on improving, iterating, and being agile and adaptive to the times, you’re not going to succeed.


On the inspiration behind her company’s “bold bet” in 2016

We launched in 2015 as a direct-to-consumer strategy – like the Chimes, the Varos, the N26s of the world are doing now. We found out pretty early on that our pillar of being able to have a profitable, sustainable model as fast as possible wasn’t happening. The CAC was really high. We weren’t getting the sort of engagement and direct deposit customers which are critical in banking to actually get. So we took a bold bet in 2016 where we took a B2B2C approach and started implementing banking as a service, which is our strategy today.


On practicing bold leadership on an individual level

I think it’s contagious. When you’re bringing that innovative sort of passionate mindset and energy to work, then you engender that with everyone that you work with. It creates this ripple effect and you get others to buy in and work with you and you create a lot of tremendous momentum from that. I think it’s (important to) remain keen to continuous learning. This space is moving so fast. We can’t rest on our laurels for more than six months (before) you’ve got to innovate again. And so it’s people that make sure that they’re looking at what their customers are saying – and responding to that – but also looking at the competitive environment, how is it changing, how is it evolving … (That’s) how you remain competitive in the space.

Check out the rest of Luvleen Sidhu’s Fireside Chat: Why We Need Bold Leadership More Than Ever Before from FinovateFall 2021.

Extend Teams Up with Amex to Bring Virtual Card Solution to SMEs

Extend Teams Up with Amex to Bring Virtual Card Solution to SMEs

A new partnership between American Express and New York City-based fintech Extend will give small businesses in the U.S. new options when it comes to using and deploying virtual cards. Specifically, U.S. companies with eligible American Express Business Cards will be able to use Extend’s technology to enroll and create virtual cards in as little as five minutes.

American Express EVP for Global Commercial Services Dean Henry highlighted the increased use of virtual cards during the pandemic – and the continued interest companies have in using the technology to facilitate contactless payments. “With today’s announcement, our Business Cards can work even harder for our Card Members through this quick and easy virtual Card option,” Henry explained. “This gives our Card Members enhanced flexibility and control across their day-to-day business spending, including for B2B purchases and enabling their employees to pay for expenses.”

The statistics on virtual card use by businesses support Henry’s assessment. A study conducted by American Express indicated that 39% of U.S. businesses expect to increase their use of virtual cards over the next 12 months. With regard to the specific benefits available via the new offering from Extend and American Express, there are at least seven – not including touchless payment ability – worth highlighting. These advantages include fast onboarding, flexibility and ease of use, spending controls due to the use of tokenization, better security and protection against fraud, streamlined expense reporting, automated card issuance, and the ability to earn rewards.

The two companies also noted in their partnership announcement that they planned to offer additional features and expand functionality in the future. Among the new functionalities anticipated is the ability to add American Express virtual cards to mobile wallets to facilitate in-store transactions.

“This market is rapidly growing as businesses realize just how versatile and effective virtual Cards can be,” Extend CEO Andrew Jamison said, “whether it’s managing subscription payments, equipping employees with secure company cards, or developing custom payment solutions with our APIs.”

Founded in 2017, Extend made its Finovate debut two years later at FinovateSpring in San Francisco, California. That same year, the Manhattan-based company raised $11 million in Series A funding in a round led by Point72 Ventures and the FinTech Collective, giving the firm a total capital of $14 million. More recently, the virtual card platform company forged partnerships with Mastercard and TSYS in the fall of 2020, and with City National Bank in January of this year.

American Express joined the Finovate alum club via its 2015 presentation at our developers conference FinDEVr Silicon Valley. At the event, members of the company’s engineering team discussed the evolving role of B2B payments in the e-commerce ecosystem, and how American Express was “bringing commercial payments to the cloud.”


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3 Takeaways from Jill Castilla’s Keynote at FinovateFall

3 Takeaways from Jill Castilla’s Keynote at FinovateFall

At FinovateFall last week, Citizens Bank of Edmonds CEO Jill Castilla described how she is leading her bank through the pandemic. In her 16-minute address, she described how her bank navigated the decision making process and leveraged fintech relationships to help their small business customers survive COVID lockdown.

Citizens Bank of Edmonds was founded in 1901, has $400 million in assets, and 55 employees. The bank aims to serve everybody and has a goal to be the best at everything. And while that sounds like a lofty goal, the bank has proven that it is up to the task by implementing unique solutions that come alongside customers to meet their needs.

So what does it take to be such a successful bank in both the eyes of competitors and customers? Here are three takeaways from Castilla’s keynote that are worth considering.

Communication is foundational

By today’s standards, Castilla is very liberal about offering up her contact information. During the pandemic, she was quick to share her cell phone number; she even tweeted it out multiple times! Providing this open line of communication to both staff and customers was key to ensure that nobody fell through the cracks. Castilla even concluded her keynote by sharing her phone number, saying, “You’re welcome to text me any time.”

But it doesn’t end there. When the pandemic hit, Castilla made sure to contact all of Citizens Bank of Edmonds’ business customers to determine their main areas of stress. And when the bank had to close its lobby, it sent employees to meet customers at the curb to schedule time slots to serve its customers and maintain the personal touch.

Look forward

Castilla watched Frozen II during lockdown and the quote, “All one can do is the next right thing” caught on. In trying to make decisions for the bank, Castilla and her team would consider “the next right thing.” In other words, they would think about what the best decision would be for the future, and not for the present moment.

Castilla offered the example of using the mantra to determine if Citizens Bank of Edmonds should host its annual block party at a time when COVID was just getting started. Thinking about the next right thing made it easy for the bank to call off the party.

And while a block party may seem trivial, consider this mantra implemented for a larger, more strategic decision making. Questions such as, “should we make an investment in AI technology?” or, “should we partner with this up-and-coming fintech?” are a bit easier to answer when filtered through the lens of the next right thing.

Focus on the needs of clients

This takeaway ties back into the first two points, because if financial institutions maintain a foundation of communication while focusing on the next right thing, they will ultimately be doing what is best for their clients.

“Doing the right thing will help you find your people,” Castilla said during her keynote, “And talking about what’s important to you out on social media and the digital space will help you connect with people.” She also noted that both banks and fintechs are trying to do what is best during this challenging time, adding, “Collectively and individually, while working together and on our own, we’re going to change the world for [consumers and small businesses], we’re going to provide greater access to credit, we’re going to have a better understanding of what their financials are, (and) we’re going to help them run more successful businesses.”


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JP Morgan Taps Thought Machine to Replace Retail Banking Core

JP Morgan Taps Thought Machine to Replace Retail Banking Core

JP Morgan Chase announced this week it will replace its U.S. core banking suite with U.K.-based Thought Machine’s Vault.

Founded in 2014, Vault is a cloud native core banking engine that leverages smart contracts to help banks and fintechs build in the cloud and avoid the constraints of legacy technology. Vault provides a full range of retail and small business banking capabilities, including checking accounts, savings, loans, credit cards, and mortgages.

In the future, Thought Machine plans to build Commercial and Private Wealth offerings into Vault, as well.

JP Morgan, which was in the headlines yesterday for its purchase of college planning platform Frank, will benefit from Vault. The technology’s cloud-based nature will decrease the siloed structure that comes with most large, legacy banks. Instead, JP Morgan will operate as a universal banking platform where all products run on a single system.

“JPMorgan Chase represents one of the most ambitious, powerful financial institutions in the world—and our joint work signals to the finance industry that cloud native core banking technology is the future for financial services,” said Thought Machine CEO and founder Paul Taylor. “We are delighted to be working with JPMorgan Chase on this project, delivering modern core technology to the bank, and powering the next generation of financial services in North America.”

Thought Machine, which raised $125 million last year, is said to be working on another $205 million funding round. The company has seen significant growth over the past year and has scaled up its clients base to include Lloyds Banking Group, Standard Chartered, Atom bank, Monese, and SEB. Not only that, the company added 100 employees in the first half of 2020.


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Leading Transformative and Innovative Change in Fintech: A Conversation with Karen G. Mills

Leading Transformative and Innovative Change in Fintech: A Conversation with Karen G. Mills

As part of our #womeninfintech series, we spoke with Karen Gordon Mills, a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Business School and a leading authority on U.S. competitiveness, entrepreneurship, and innovation. She details her perspective and experience with small businesses and lending, and highlights several other women leading the charge to create a better future with fintech.

How did you become interested in fintech?

Karen Mills: My interest in fintech grew out of my work with small businesses.

As Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) from 2009 to 2013, I had a front-row seat to the challenges that small businesses face when accessing bank capital. Getting a loan is an onerous process even for the most creditworthy small business owners. It often involves carrying stacks of paperwork to a local bank and waiting months for a decision. That’s because for banks, lending to small businesses is actually pretty hard. They tend to lack complete information about the business that would allow them to determine profitability or cash flow, and since small businesses are such a heterogenous group, it’s difficult for loan officers to develop expertise in a specific sector. These frictions have led to a credit gap, especially among the smallest and most vulnerable businesses.  

The traditional lending process wasn’t working for this critical part of our economy. Yet it had been this way for decades and only started to change in the late 2000s, around the time I was at the SBA. That’s when a wave of new fintechs entered the market. The fintechs gathered nontraditional data streams from their small business customers (like daily transactions) to get around the lack of information, integrated them using application programming interfaces (APIs), and deployed machine learning tools to quickly generate insights about the business and automate loan decisioning. All of a sudden, small businesses could submit applications, receive decisions, and find new funds in their accounts in a matter of days.

I thought fintech’s potential to transform small business lending was so transformational that I wrote a book describing its evolution and possible outcomes: Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream. I’ve continued to speak about and research fintech developments in my current role as a Senior Fellow at Harvard Business School.

How have you seen the industry change across your career?

Mills: Lots of people initially thought the fintechs would knock traditional banks off the map. But that hasn’t happened. Although banks might be less nimble or tech-savvy, they have established customer bases and low-cost capital—which most fintechs don’t. One big change we have seen in recent years is a rise in bank-fintech partnerships, with each seeking to benefit from the other’s strengths. Another important development is the presence of Big Tech companies, like Apple and Amazon, whose wide reach and ability to create seamless user experiences allow them to make rapid and large-scale inroads with small businesses.

The pandemic has obviously brought massive change over the last year, and accelerated the uptake of digital technologies for both lenders and borrowers. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) played a key role, pushing banks to overhaul their systems and get money out the door at an unprecedented pace. Fintechs were especially important in distributing aid dollars to the smallest businesses, and they may be able to leverage that success into new customer relationships. Meanwhile, with more and more activity occurring online, small businesses will likely adopt new digital tools to serve their various needs—in everything from lending to advertising.

How have you seen female leadership influence the fintech space, particularly around small businesses?

Mills: Women have developed some of the most transformative and innovative fintech solutions that I’ve seen for small businesses. For example, Kathryn Petralia co-founded Kabbage, a company that pioneered the use of alternative data and machine learning to automate small business lending. As the head of Square Capital, Jackie Reses built out Square’s similarly data- and technology-driven strategy for providing small business loans. Both of these women, and many others like them, have created crucial new opportunities for small businesses to grow and thrive.  

Women’s leadership has also been influential in other, related spaces. In traditional banking, women like Jill Castilla, the CEO of Citizens Bank of Edmond, a community bank in Oklahoma, are spearheading digital transformations intended to provide better service for small businesses. In academia, female economists like Professor Sabrina Howell of NYU are doing crucial research around fintech’s impact on small businesses—including demonstrating how fintechs like Kabbage and Square played an outsize role in delivering PPP funds to minority-owned businesses during the pandemic. 

What more do you think can be done to support women in fintech?

Mills: First and foremost, we need more women in fintechs, in banks, and in the research and policy areas too. There are talented women coming up in banking and in other areas of finance who will push the industry to adopt more innovative solutions.

And, yes, there are things we can do to help. Investors need to funnel more money to female founders in fintech, and established companies and organizations need to implement better recruitment and selection strategies. There are brilliant, highly-qualified women out there who may well have the next big idea or innovation for small business customers. We just need to be more deliberate about bringing them on board and promoting them to the highest leadership levels – in ways that account for the biases and obstacles that women often face.   

We also need to be aware that simply recruiting more women isn’t good enough. It’s crucial to actively foster cultures of diversity, equity, and inclusion that provide women—and all underrepresented groups—with the resources and opportunities they need, and with an environment in which their contributions are valued. Organizations that do this well will be more successful in innovating and winning in a rapidly changing environment like the worlds of banking and fintech.

What advice would you give to women starting their careers in the industry now?

Mills: Fintech is a great industry to be in. Traditional banking is being challenged and organizations are more open to innovative thinking – because they have to be. Female leaders are most often excellent problem solvers. The solutions that fintechs put forward are game changing. Better access to capital can have a significant impact on the success and wellbeing of small business customers, and on the American economy.

My advice to women is that this is a critical time to get involved. Work to build a new environment that closes gaps in the market and improves access and opportunity for a more diverse set of small business owners. Get engaged, build relationships (and help each other out), pursue your ideas, and stay committed to your goals.


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Trustly Launches Instant Payouts for U.S. Users

Trustly Launches Instant Payouts for U.S. Users

Trustly, the company that helps customers pay directly from their bank account, launched Instant Payouts for U.S. users this week.

The service helps U.S. businesses provide their clients with near-instant payouts to their bank accounts. Instant Payouts in the U.S. is made possible via a partnership with Cross River Bank, which participates in The Clearing House’s (TCH) RTP network, a real-time payments rail.

Trustly’s business users can fund payments with Cross River Bank, which will send RTP payments on their behalf to their customers’ accounts at other participating RTP banks.

“The RTP network provides a platform for financial institutions and their corporate users to create innovative new payment products for their customers,” said TCH SVP of technology and Innovation Bijan Chowdhury. “Trustly’s partnership with Cross River Bank to deliver Instant Payouts to U.S. businesses and Cross River Bank’s use of the RTP network to send instant payments to the the businesses’ customers illustrates the power of the RTP network to boost innovation in the payments industry.”

Trustly was founded in 2008 and supports card-not-present payments for online merchants to offer a secure way for consumers to transact using their online banking access credentials. Last year, the company processed over $21 billion in transaction volume in its network. At FinovateEurope 2017, the company debuted Direct Debit, a payment offering that removes the pain of entering payment card information by allowing users to transact using their current account by entering their bank login credentials.

Trustly works with more than 8,100 merchants, helping them connect with 525 million consumers and 6,300 banks across 30 countries. The company has 500 employees across Europe, North America, and Latin America.


Photo by Luis Miguel P. Bonilla from Pexels