MoneyGram Teams with Fireblocks to Upgrade its Rails with Stablecoins

MoneyGram Teams with Fireblocks to Upgrade its Rails with Stablecoins
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, MoneyGram
  • MoneyGram is partnering with Fireblocks to introduce stablecoin-based settlement across its global payments network, enabling faster, lower-cost transactions and real-time liquidity management.
  • Fireblocks’ blockchain infrastructure will power a programmable settlement layer that streamlines reconciliation, reduces pre-funding needs, enhances treasury operations, and supports large-scale stablecoin flows.
  • As a legacy payments giant adopts digital-asset rails, fiat-backed stablecoins are becoming core infrastructure for cross-border payments and corporate treasury.

Cross-border payments network MoneyGram is taking a step toward modernizing its global settlement infrastructure by partnering with Fireblocks to bring stablecoin-based settlement into its core treasury processes. The collaboration aims to enable faster payments, lower costs, and real-time liquidity across MoneyGram’s worldwide network.

Fireblocks is a blockchain infrastructure and security platform designed for storing, transferring, and issuing digital assets. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in New York, the company’s suite of digital asset tools includes treasury management, wallets-as-a-service, payments, and tokenization. Fireblocks also offers stablecoin infrastructure that enables institutions to seamlessly move, hold, manage, and issue stablecoins with enterprise-grade security.

Founded in 1940, MoneyGram serves 50 million clients annually with its payment network that connects over 200 countries and territories, 20,000 corridors, and close to 500,000 retail locations.

“We are leading the next era of money movement by enabling money to move instantly across any channel—fiat or stablecoin,” said MoneyGram Chairman and CEO Anthony Soohoo. “Fireblocks accelerates this vision by giving us the secure, programmable infrastructure to transform global payments at scale.”

The company will use Fireblocks’ stablecoin infrastructure to create a programmable settlement layer to help reduce capital requirements with pre-funding partners through continuous funding, receive stablecoin payments at scale from its partners, improve access to liquidity pools across global entities, streamline reconciliation and financial reporting for stablecoin operations, and improve treasury operations. MoneyGram will also use Fireblocks to help introduce programmable money and more resilient liquidity pathways.

“MoneyGram is rebuilding the rails of cross-border settlement in real time,” said Fireblocks Co-Founder and CEO Michael Shaulov. “By moving to a multi-chain, programmable infrastructure, it’s upgrading the speed and reliability of global payments at the foundation layer—where it matters most for the people who rely on these payments every day.”

For a long-standing, traditional player like MoneyGram, teaming up with Fireblocks pivots the company from traditional correspondent-bank rails toward a modern, agile payments infrastructure. Today’s partnership is an example of how fiat-backed stablecoins are becoming core plumbing for global payments and corporate treasury operations. It shows that stablecoins could provide instant, reliable, low-cost cross-border value movement at scale, while bypassing legacy banking delays and costs.

Photo by David Dibert

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Plaid Partners with ClearBank; Announces AI-Enabled Transaction Categorization

Plaid Partners with ClearBank; Announces AI-Enabled Transaction Categorization
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Plaid
  • Financial data network Plaid and real-time clearing and embedded banking enabler ClearBank announced a new partnership this week.
  • The partnership will enable Plaid to leverage ClearBank’s virtual accounts and UK Faster Payments Service (FPS) access to enhance the sending, receiving, and reconciling of open banking payments.
  • Founded in 2013, Plaid has been a Finovate alum since its debut at our developers conference, FinDeVR Silicon Valley 2014.

A new partnership between ClearBank and Plaid will deliver faster, more secure, and friction-free Pay by Bank experiences for both businesses and customers throughout the UK. Courtesy of the collaboration, ClearBank‘s virtual accounts and direct access to the UK Faster Payments Service (FPS) will enable Plaid to enhance the sending, receiving, and reconciling of open banking payments. This includes making it easier for companies to match incoming payments to specific users or transactions, enhancing the reconciliation process and reducing reliance on manual effort.

“ClearBank and Plaid share a commitment to modernizing financial services through transparency, security, and innovation,” ClearBank Group Chief Executive Officer Mark Fairless said. “By combining ClearBank’s cloud-native infrastructure with Plaid’s open banking connectivity, we’re unlocking potential for businesses to deliver faster, more reliable, and secure payment experiences.”

An enabler of real-time clearing and embedded banking, ClearBank will provide a regulated, real-time, cloud-native infrastructure that will benefit consumers with faster, more predictable bank payments. The partnership will enable Plaid to offer faster, more reliable pay-ins and payouts that will empower companies to provide better customer experiences at checkout and during account funding.

“Pay by Bank is no longer a niche option,” Plaid Head of Product, Europe, Zak Lambert said. “Adoption is rising quickly, especially among younger consumers who expect instant, secure, and low-friction ways to pay. To meet that demand, businesses need reliable real-time payment infrastructure. ClearBank’s technology helps Plaid deliver instant, secure, and cost-efficient bank payments so companies can better serve their customers’ needs.”

Plaid’s partnership announcement with ClearBank comes as Plaid announced a new AI-enhanced transaction categorization capability that delivers up to 10% greater accuracy on primary categories and 20% greater accuracy on detailed sub-categories. The result is fewer missed transactions and more accurate data labeling. In addition to AI-assisted label generation and targeted human review, Plaid also noted that it would deploy an expanded category taxonomy with more than a dozen new subcategories to help differentiate income types, repayments, disbursements, bank fees, and transfers.

A Finovate alum for more than a decade, Plaid made its Finovate debut at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2014. Today, the San Francisco-based fintech offers a data network that covers more than 12,000 financial institutions across the US, Canada, the UK, and Europe, making it easier for people to connect their financial accounts to the products and services they want. Plaid works with thousands of companies, including Fortune 500 firms and many of the world’s largest banks.

Plaid was founded in 2013. Co-founder Zack Perret is CEO.

Photo by Tim Bish on Unsplash

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T-Mobile’s Cybersecurity Playbook: How Mark Clancy Is Reinventing Telecom Security for the AI Age

T-Mobile’s Cybersecurity Playbook: How Mark Clancy Is Reinventing Telecom Security for the AI Age
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Speaker series, Streamly

As cyber threats become increasingly sophisticated, companies that once relied on simple firewalls must now face a new reality. For a major telecom like T-Mobile, the stakes are especially high, as networks, customer data, and identity services are all at risk. To protect both its assets and its customers, T-Mobile is rethinking its cybersecurity strategy at every level, from workforce authentication to real-time detection to a “human-first” culture.

Mark Clancy, SVP, Cybersecurity, Information, Technology at T-Mobile joined me in front of the camera at FinovateFall earlier this year to offer up what T-Mobile is doing to combat fraud. In our conversation, he discussed how SIM-based authentication is eliminating the friction in financial services while keeping clients’ money safe. He talked about why making security invisible doesn’t mean making it weaker, shared how banks can put customers first without compromising protection, and described T-Mobile’s network authentication tool, T-Secure.

Network authentication, what we call T-Secure, simply embeds the authentication process into the SIM card that’s already in your phone. We have 130 million customers, and we already know who they are. We use that to bind the transaction they’re performing to their identity and authenticate invisibly in the background using certificate-based authentication.

Mark Clancy leads cybersecurity at T-Mobile as Senior Vice President of Cybersecurity, Information, and Technology. Under his watch, the company has shifted from traditional reactive security practices to an identity-first, zero-trust model.

T-Mobile is one of the largest wireless carriers in the US, serving millions of customers nationwide. Historically a telecom company, T-Mobile has increasingly expanded into identity services, digital authentication, and mobile-based financial and communication products. The company runs a centralized Cyber Defense Center, employs zero-trust authentication protocols, and subjects all devices to rigorous security vetting before they go to market.

Photo by cottonbro studio

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Fighting First-Party Fraud: How AI is Revolutionizing Dispute Resolution in Fintech

Fighting First-Party Fraud: How AI is Revolutionizing Dispute Resolution in Fintech
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: CEO Interview, FinovateFall 2025, Speaker series

First-party fraud is a growing problem for financial institutions and retail businesses. But relative to other fraud threats—from deepfakes to account takeover—first-party fraud is often overlooked when it comes to major fraud challenges faced by businesses. Nevertheless, this type of fraud, which takes place when an individual claims to have not made a purchase they have actually made, is a problem that has only increased as ecommerce has expanded.

In this interview, conducted at FinovateFall earlier this year, I spoke with Shanti Shanmugam, Co-Founder and CEO of Casap, about the challenge of first-party fraud and dispute resolution. Shanmugam explains how AI enables Casap to instantly distinguish legitimate disputes from fraudulent claims, reducing dispute resolution costs by 90% and reducing fraud losses for clients by 51%. Shanmugam discusses why trust is at the center of both banking relationships and the dispute resolution, and how a poor dispute resolution experience can impact how much business a customer decides to do with their primary financial institution in the future.

The true cost of disputes is in trust. You are saying ‘Hey, I really did not buy this TV at Best Buy, and I really need you to have my back.’ Right now, most financial institutions, especially if they’re not working with us, take on average 90 days to resolve your case. And you’re kind of waiting in the dark the whole time. Maybe they give you a credit up front, but at the end, if they don’t get that money back from the merchant, they’re going to be clawing that money back from you 90 days later. And that’s a very trust-breaking experience. It’s the number-one reason why people are leaving their institution as a primary financial relationship: because of a negative dispute experience. So that’s the hidden cost of a dispute.

Founded in 2022 and headquartered in New York City, Casap won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2025. The company’s dispute automation and first-party fraud prevention platform automatically resolves disputes, enabling financial institutions to intelligently manage first-party fraud. The technology also transforms the dispute resolution process into an opportunity to build lasting loyalty and trust. Casap’s solution increases recovery rates, identifies and prevents fraud patterns, and delivers fast, frictionless, low-cost dispute and chargeback resolution.

Photo by Kavoos Hosseinpour on Unsplash

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3 of Fintech’s Newest Security Features Every Bank Should Be Standardizing

3 of Fintech’s Newest Security Features Every Bank Should Be Standardizing
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: List series, Thought Leadership

Fraud is growing more sophisticated and has become supercharged by generative AI, deepfakes, and increasingly organized social-engineering networks. The changing dynamics have forced both banks and fintechs to rethink their defenses as criminals adapt faster, more frequently, and with more personalized attacks. Across fintech, it is clear that traditional fraud controls are no longer enough to protect customers.

But while the entire industry is facing the same escalating threats, fintechs have been especially creative in rolling out new layers of protection. Over the past year, a handful of standout features have emerged that combat fraud by proactively shaping customer behavior, interrupting social-engineering tactics, and closing gaps that legacy systems can’t reach. Here are three unique new innovations worth watching (and borrowing).

Revolut’s geolocation restrictions

Revolut released a safety feature yesterday that allows users to restrict money transfers to specific, user-approved geographic areas. If a transfer request is made from the customer’s device, but takes place at a location that the customer has not listed, the app blocks the transaction automatically, even if the fraudster has the user’s credentials. The feature uses both device GPS and Revolut’s internal risk engine to reduce account takeover losses.

Why banks should care:
Geolocation locking adds a low-friction layer to fraud defense, especially for reducing authorized push payment fraud (APP) and account takeovers. By having the user determine their restricted, “safe” locations, banks could offer users more granular control over how and where their money can move.

Monzo’s and Robinhood’s in-app scam warnings

Both Monzo and Robinhood help users determine whether an inbound call claiming to be from the bank is legitimate. When a customer is on a call and opens their mobile app, the app displays a banner that clearly communicates that the call they are on is not with the bank. In Robinhood’s case, the message states, “We are not currently trying to call you. If the caller says they’re from Robinhood, they are not. Hang up.”

Why banks should care:
Impersonation scams are one of the most expensive forms of APP fraud. Adding an in-app, real-time verification banner is an extremely simple but effective way to interrupt fraudsters.

iProov’s deepfake-resistant biometric verification

iProov is fighting deepfakes with biometric verification that detects AI-generated faces and synthetic video spoofing. The company analyzes pixel-level light reflections, which it calls “liveness assurance,” and uses deepfake-detection models to identify whether a live user is present. This is becoming essential for remote KYC, account recovery, and high-risk authentication.

Why banks should care:
Banks increasingly rely on remote onboarding and passwordless authentication, but deepfakes are now able to defeat many of the legacy selfie-verification systems launched in the past decade. Deploying deepfake-resistant biometrics is becoming essential to prevent fraudulent account opening and social-engineering-driven account resets.

Each of these features has one thing in common: they put friction in exactly the right place. The friction isn’t applied to every transaction, and they won’t deter honest customers, but they will help stop fraud in common places. By using smarter triggers, real-time context, and design choices, fintechs are able to interrupt fraudsters. And while each solution won’t stop all fraud, they take care of some of the heavy lifting while minimizing the burden of friction on end consumers.

Photo by Pixabay

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Insurtech Eleos Launches AI Voice Agent

Insurtech Eleos Launches AI Voice Agent
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Eleos
  • Embedded income protection and life insurance provider Eleos has launched its AI Voice Agent.
  • The new offering is designed to provide customers with always-on, around-the-clock assistance, backed by human customer service professionals.
  • Eleos made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2024 in London. Kiruba Shankar Eswaran is Co-Founder and CEO.

London-based insurtech Eleos recently unveiled its AI Voice Agent. The new solution will provide always-on, 24/7 customer service, including the ability to make outbound calls to prospective clients. The AI Voice Agent draws answers from actual Eleos policy documents to address customer queries regarding issues such as policy coverage updates, claims information, how to cancel existing policies, and more.

“We’re committed to making protection simple, accessible, and always available,” Eleos Life CEO and Co-Founder Kiruba Shankar Eswaran said. “Our voice agent extends this mission by giving customers the support they need, exactly when they need it—whether that’s at midnight or mid-afternoon. We’re removing barriers to access and empowering our customers to manage their protection with confidence.”

Eleos emphasized that its new AI Voice Agent is designed to support, not replace, human customer service professionals. Rather, the AI agent will serve customers with basic queries, as well as those who have difficulty reading online content or writing emails. In all instances, customers will have ready access to a human agent via phone, email, or WhatsApp.

Eleos’ AI Voice Agent is the latest iteration of the company’s ongoing investment in AI-powered technology. In August, Eleos unveiled Theea, an intelligent chatbot that guides customers through their insurance application with step-by-step instructions and personalized coverage calculations.

“Life insurance is one of the most important financial decisions people can make, but too often it feels out of reach,” Eswaran said when Theea was launched. “With Theea, we’re changing that by building awareness through clear, jargon-free guidance, improving access with on-demand, multilingual support, and driving engagement by giving people the confidence to explore and choose coverage in their own time. Our mission has always been to make protection simple and inclusive, and Theea is a powerful step in that direction.”

An insurtech specializing in embedded term life insurance, disability insurance, and income protection in both the US and UK, Eleos made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2024. At the conference, the company showed how it partnered with consumer brands to embed life insurance and income protection into their online journeys. Eleos demonstrated how the company leverages partner data to raise awareness of the importance of life insurance and income protection, provide quotes on various insurance products, and expedite the application process.

Photo by Peter Spencer

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Fidelity International Taps Tink for Account Top-Ups via Pay by Bank

Fidelity International Taps Tink for Account Top-Ups via Pay by Bank
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Tink
  • Fidelity International is partnering with Visa-owned Tink to offer pay by bank account top-ups, giving investors a faster, more seamless way to fund ISAs, SIPPs, cash management accounts, and general investment accounts.
  • Tink’s pay by bank enables real-time, secure bank-to-bank transfers, settling in under 40 seconds and reducing friction, fraud risk, and costs associated with manual transfers or card-based payments.
  • Pay by bank adoption is accelerating across Europe, driven by lower fees, faster settlement, and open banking growth.

Global asset manager and retirement savings firm Fidelity International has teamed up with Visa’s open banking platform Tink. Fidelity will leverage Tink’s pay by bank tool to enable account top-ups for its personal investing customers and advised clients.

Adding the account top-up capability will allow Fidelity International users to quickly add funds to their ISAs, SIPPs, cash management accounts, and general investment accounts. With Tink’s pay by bank, users can send funds directly from their bank accounts using their secure bank log-in details. The funds are sent on fast rails that settle the transaction in less than 40 seconds on average and offer real-time payment confirmation.

“Fidelity’s focus is always on making investing as accessible and straightforward as possible. Partnering with Tink to offer pay by bank gives both our personal investors and our advised clients a fast, convenient way to fund accounts—reducing friction and improving the overall customer experience,” said Fidelity International Chief Digital Officer, Global Platform Solutions, Ian Hood. “By integrating pay by bank, we’re expanding our digital payments infrastructure to offer a modern, secure alternative to traditional methods like manual bank transfers, helping users move money quickly and safely.”

Founded in 2012, Tink was an early player in Europe’s open banking ecosystem. The Sweden-based company was acquired by Visa in 2022 for $2 billion and today offers a wide variety of products ranging from payments to account data to risk decisioning and finance management. With 3,000+ connections to all major banks across Europe, Tink processes 10 billion transactions per year across 19 geographical markets.

Pay by bank is one of Europe’s fastest-growing payment methods, driven by lower transaction costs, faster settlement times, and a shift toward open banking–powered digital payments. For merchants, direct bank-to-bank transfers eliminate interchange fees and reduce chargeback risk, making the payment experience both cheaper and less prone to fraud. Consumers benefit from a smoother checkout flow, fewer authentication steps, and greater security due to strong customer authentication.

According to Juniper Research, there are currently 183 million open banking users worldwide, a number expected to surpass 645 million by 2029. The combination of cost efficiency, real-time settlement, higher authorization rates, and improved fraud controls positions it as one of the most strategically important payment innovations in the market today and offers the potential for it to become a mainstream payment option.

For Tink, Fidelity’s rollout is another signal that pay by bank is moving from early adoption into mainstream financial services. As Tink Head of Payments Ian Morrin noted, “Pay by bank represents the next evolution of open banking payments, delivering a fast, secure way to pay directly from your bank account. As adoption accelerates, we’re thrilled to see leading institutions like Fidelity put open banking at the heart of their payments experiences to make topping up investment accounts more seamless.”

Photo by Karola G

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ID-Pal Acquires KYB Specialist, NorthRow

ID-Pal Acquires KYB Specialist, NorthRow
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, ID-Pal

ID-Pal’s strategic acquisition of NorthRow, a specialist in compliance solutions, will enhance the Irish company’s compliance intelligence for Know Your Business (KYB), Know Your Customer (KYC), and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) operations. The move will combine ID-Pal’s AI-powered verification platform with NorthRow’s expertise in KYB and business due diligence, enabling ID-Pal to offer a single solution for ensuring one perpetual risk view for both individuals and organizations.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but post-acquisition, NorthRow’s services and operations will operate without interruption under ID-Pal. The acquisition comes at a time when new regulations in the UK, and the US Corporate Transparency Act, are putting pressure on compliance teams and making strategies like continuous KYC, AML, and KYB monitoring essential features.

In a statement on the company’s website, ID-Pal Founder and CEO Colum Lyons put the acquisition in the context of his own firm’s founding. “Alongside co-founders James O’Toole and Robert O’Farrell, ID-Pal was created to support businesses with accurate identity verification built on privacy preservation,” Lyons said. “As the financial services space becomes more regulated, and with AI-driven document fraud becoming the biggest threat our industry has faced, it is essential that businesses have a unified view of the risks ahead and how to manage them. Our acquisition of NorthRow allows ID-Pal to unify this process with one comprehensive platform that defends businesses against fraud at every entry point and avoids noncompliance fines.”

The acquisition builds on ID-Pal’s identity verification tools, adding native end-to-end KYB checks to provide continuous monitoring of changes in a business’s status, structure, or directors. The deal also helps ID-Pal deliver on its goal of providing scalable, AI-powered solutions that can tackle ever-evolving compliance challenges. NorthRow’s technology will help companies adapt to regulatory changes worldwide by providing real-time data on companies, from ownership structure to financial health.

ID-Pal will also benefit from expanding its portfolio with major financial services companies such as Caxton, Equifax, and Hargreaves Lansdown. Caxton COO Alana Parsons praised the strategic acquisition for creating “a powerful platform for the future.” Parsons added, “We’re excited to start working with ID-Pal and to benefit from the innovation in KYC and KYB risk intelligence that this partnership will deliver.”

ID-Pal most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2025 in New York. At the conference, the company showed how its ID-Detect solution provides an additional layer of verification designed to detect evidence of document fraud. ID-Detect is a standard feature of ID-Pal’s identity verification, helping businesses deal with the growing challenge of AI-generated fake identification cards and other documents. ID-Pal’s technology is used in more than 250 jurisdictions, covering more than 16,000 document types and accessing 400+ trusted data sources.

Photo by Caio Cardenas

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Wealthfront Files S-1, Targeting $2 Billion IPO

Wealthfront Files S-1, Targeting $2 Billion IPO
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: IPO, Wealthfront
  • Wealthfront filed an S-1 with the SEC, planning to raise up to $485 million by offering 34.6 million shares at $12 to $14 each, targeting a $2 billion valuation.
  • The wealthtech firm was founded as kaChing and rebranded to Wealthfront in 2010 and has expanded from robo-advisory into high-insurance checking, savings, and credit products.
  • The IPO follows a previously canceled $1.4 billion UBS acquisition, and positions Wealthfront among a new wave of fintechs going public, including eToro, Chime, and Klarna.

Wealthtech firm Wealthfront revealed this week that it has filed an S-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, taking its first formal step toward an IPO.

According to the filing, Wealthfront plans to offer 34.6 million shares at $12 to $14 each, which would raise up to $485 million and value the company near $2 billion. The company plans to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol WLTH.

Founded in 2008 and making its Finovate debut as kaChing a year later, the company rebranded to Wealthfront in 2010 and has since solidified its place as a pioneer in the wealthtech space. Since launch, Wealthfront has evolved its platform to add challenger banking features such as a checking account with up to $8 million in FDIC insurance, which is made possible via the company’s partnerships with 32 program banks. The fintech also offers a high-yield savings account, a portfolio line of credit, an automated bond ladder, and is working on a mortgage lending product.

Wealthfront generally targets younger investors who hold an average balance of $67,000, while 180,000 of its clients hold more than $100,000 in assets and over 10,000 clients have assets more than $1 million in assets on the platform.

This isn’t Wealthfront’s first move toward an exit. In January 2022, the company formed a $1.4 billion deal to be acquired by UBS. At the time, that price reflected a premium of at least 2x on Wealthfront’s most recent private market valuation. Wealthfront called the acquisition a “strategic partnership” that would enable the company to offer new services and give its customers access to “UBS’s industry-leading investing insights and research.”

Two weeks after unveiling the acquisition plans, however, UBS called off the deal. Shareholders were reportedly spooked, as it came during a period of significant decline in fintech valuations. Notably, however, Wealthfront’s current $2 billion target valuation is significantly higher than the $1.4 billion acquisition price UBS had offered in 2022, which would equate to roughly $1.55 billion in today’s dollars after adjusting for inflation.

In going public, Wealthfront is in good company with other fintechs including eToro, which debuted in January of 2025; Chime, which went public in June of 2025; and Klarna, which debuted in September 2025 after postponing the move for six months.

With the S-1 now public, Wealthfront will enter the SEC review process and prepare for a roadshow, which places its likely IPO window in early 2026.

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Backbase and Unblu Transform Self-Service Banking into Human-Connected Experiences

Backbase and Unblu Transform Self-Service Banking into Human-Connected Experiences
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Backbase, unblu
  • Backbase and Unblu have forged a new strategic partnership to transform self-service banking into a trusted, human-connected experience that combines the best of both worlds.
  • The partnership will integrate Unblu’s Conversational Engagement Platform with Backbase’s AI-powered banking solution, adding features such as live chat, voice and video calling, and AI-powered chatbots.
  • Both Unblu and Backbase most recently appeared on the Finovate stage at FinovateFall 2021 in New York. Backbase is a four-time Best of Show winner that first demoed on the Finovate stage in 2009.

A new strategic partnership between Backbase and Unblu is designed to help transform self-service banking into a trusted, human-connected experience. The two companies will offer a joint solution that combines Unblu’s Conversational Engagement Platform with Backbase’s banking platform, adding features such as live chat, voice and video calling, co-browsing, and AI-powered chatbots.

“Digital banking should never come at the expense of human connection,” Backbase Global VP of Marketplace Mayank Somaiya said. “By embedding Unblu’s collaboration tools into our ecosystem, banks can deliver effortless transitions from automated service to expert guidance, helping customers feel supported throughout their digital journey.”

The goal is to enable customers to transition seamlessly from digital self-service to human-assisted interactions in a single engagement. The solution will enable relationship managers, case workers, and frontline service agents to access the customer’s individual context in order to better serve them. A unified employee workbench connects capabilities that were previously isolated across the bank’s tech stack. This empowers bank employees to deliver seamless human-digital interaction within the Backbase platform, benefit from AI-enhanced productivity that automates routine tasks and produces real-time insights, and maintain complete regulatory compliance via encrypted communications, audit trails, and built-in data residency controls.

Use cases for the joint offering include onboarding and account opening, wealth management, customer service, and enabling hybrid branch experiences. The pre-integrated solution will be available to Backbase customers around the world in early 2026.

“We’re excited to partner with Backbase to help financial institutions deliver the kind of personal, frictionless customer experiences today’s users expect,” Unblu Co-CEO Jens Rabe said. “By bringing our digital interaction tools directly into the Backbase platform, we’re enabling banks to build deeper relationships while maintaining the compliance and security standards they can’t compromise on.”

A Finovate alum since 2009, Backbase is a four-time Finovate Best of Show winner. Based in Amsterdam, Backbase offers an AI-powered banking platform that helps banks modernize their operations across retail, SME, commercial, and private banking, as well as wealth management. Backbase has enabled financial institutions to achieve year-over-year increases in retail transactions by 51%, customer satisfaction rates of 78%, and app onboarding in less than five minutes. Founded in 2003, Backbase forged a partnership with Facilization, a consulting, system integration, and financial services software firm, in October. The company also teamed up with Akkuro, a core banking technology provider, and Prove, a digital identity company, in September. Founder Jouk Pleiter is Backbase’s CEO.

Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Unblu most recently demoed its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateFall 2021. At the conference, the company showed how its technology helps 170+ financial institutions around the world deliver an “in-person” experience online. The company’s customers include UBS, Deutsche Bank, and Intesa Sanpaolo, and the firm has forged partnerships with fintechs—and fellow Finovate alums—such as Temenos, Avaloq, Q2, and ebankIT.

Just days after the company announced its partnership with Backbase, Unblu reported that founder and Co-CEO Luc Haldimann would be transitioning into the newly created role of Chief Strategy Officer. Rabe, who joined the company as Chief Marketing Officer and later served as the firm’s Chief Operating Officer, has been serving as Co-CEO and will become the company’s sole CEO as of January 2026.

“Luc built Unblu from the ground up and shaped it into an internationally respected technology leader,” Rabe said. “As CEO, I look forward to continuing the collaboration with Luc in his new strategic role to ensure Unblu remains at the forefront of secure, human-centered digital engagement.”

Photo by Javier M. on Unsplash

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FinovateEurope is Coming Up. Here Are My Top Agenda Picks.

FinovateEurope is Coming Up. Here Are My Top Agenda Picks.
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateEurope 2026, Julie's Column

The holiday season is well underway, and once it wraps up, FinovateEurope will be right around the corner. And with fintech evolving faster than ever, next year’s event, taking place February 10 and 11 in London, is shaping up to be one of the most important gatherings of the year for anyone working in financial services, banking, and fintech. The event features more than 100 expert speakers, 30+ live demos, and a packed agenda with deep dives into AI, embedded finance, decentralized finance, and cross-border banking.

As someone who studies and writes about fintech, here are the handful of sessions I’m most excited about and why I think they matter for the next wave of fintech:

Keynote Address: AI First Banking – Why Agentic AI is Truly A New Frontier In Banking

Alpesh Doshi, Managing Partner at Redcliffe Capital will examine how banks can harness agentic AI, discuss agentic commerce, and take a look at a future where bots are customers.

AI, Everything, Everywhere, All At Once: Getting Beyond The Hype – How Financial Institutions Can Use AI To Make Money Or Save Money

This panel, featuring Theo Lau, book author and Founder of Unconventional Ventures; Arthur J. O’Connor, Academic Director of Data Science & Generative AI at CUNY School of Professional Studies; and Norman Tambach, Group Chief Financial Officer at Mashreq; will spend 25 minutes filtering out AI hype from reality. The group will unpack how to measure the success of AI investments, reveal what they see as the biggest opportunities when it comes to leveraging AI, examine AI regulation, and more.

Analyst All Stars: How financial services have been changed forever

This is always one of my favorite sessions, because it offers a fast-paced look at the top up-and-coming trends. Four leading fintech analysts will each be given seven minutes on stage to present their analysis of what has changed, what is new, and what is coming next in the industry.

Digital Banking In The Artificial Intelligence Era – How Can Banks Adapt To Serving Non-human Customers?

This fireside chat with David Birch, Principal at 15Mb, will offer a peek into the new era of digital banking, one that will be fueled by AI. While banks are prepping their own AI tools for internal use, consumers are also adapting to the AI-first world. Birch will discuss how banks can serve the new era of non-human customers.

Live Demo Sessions + 30+ Fintech Innovation Showcases

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Credolab Unveils Income Prediction Model

Credolab Unveils Income Prediction Model
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, CredoLab
  • Behavioral and device metadata analytics innovator Credolab has unveiled its Income Prediction Model.
  • The new offering will enable lenders to estimate applicant income using privacy-consented smartphone metadata. This will help them serve would-be borrowers with limited credit histories and proof-of-income.
  • Founded in 2016, Credolab made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia 2018 in Singapore. Peter Barcak is Co-Founder and CEO.

One of the biggest challenges for lenders seeking to expand into new markets—especially emerging, underbanked, and digital-first markets—is accessing accurate proof-of-income and credit history information. Even in a world in which open banking is embraced—making financial data more accessible overall—customers who have little data to share will remain on the outside, unable to benefit from a growing range of critical banking and financial services.

To meet this challenge, behavioral and device metadata analytics company Credolab has launched its Income Prediction Model. The new offering leverages machine learning to enable lenders to estimate applicant income by using privacy-consented smartphone metadata. The solution analyzes thousands of anonymized behavioral signals that, put together, correlate with income levels. These signals include app ownership patterns, device model and age, and interaction habits. Individual client institutions can train models on their own specific datasets and customize them based on the unique characteristics of their local populations. Importantly, Credolab’s Income Prediction Model never accesses personally identifiable information (PII) or demographic data like age, gender, or education.

Credolab uses proprietary feature engineering to convert raw metadata—collected with explicit user consent via its SDK—into more than 11 million behavioral features. The technology uses selection strategies based on information value, correlation filtering, and gradient boosting to narrow these features into a few dozen highly predictive indicators. The models use elastic-net logistic regression and tree-based ensemble techniques and validate them with out-of-time and out-of-sample testing to ensure both robustness and explainability.

“In many markets, a lack of verified income data is the biggest barrier to financial inclusion,” Credolab Co-founder and CEO Peter Barcak said. “Our new model gives lenders a privacy-safe and statistically sound way to infer income levels using only device behavior. It’s a powerful step toward fairer, faster, and more inclusive credit decisions, especially among populations for whom traditional data simply doesn’t exist.”

Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Singapore, Credolab made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia 2018. Since then, the company has become the device and behavioral data partner for more than 150 banks, financial services companies, and fintechs around the world. The company’s solutions for risk management, fraud prevention, and insight-driven marketing have delivered decreases of up to 21.9% in the cost of risk and fraud, increases of up to 32% in applicant approval rates, and decreases of up to 28% in the cost of acquisition.

Photo by Christian Dubovan on Unsplash

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