Blog - Page 203 of 1289

Union Credit Emerges from Stealth to Deliver Perpetual Credit Approval

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 19, 2023
Categories: Alumni News, CUneXus, Daily news, Funding

Union Credit is launching out of stealth mode with $5 million in Seed funding led by CMFG Ventures. The startup is launching in an exclusive partnership with CuneXus, leveraging the company's continuous credit approval that facilitates loans in one click. The partnership with CuneXus will offer Union Credit access to CuneXus' 250 credit existing clients in the credit union space.

Embedded lending startup Union Credit emerged from stealth today and is launching with an extra $5 million, thanks to a fresh round of seed funding led by CMFG Ventures.

Facilitating today's launch is a partnership with CuneXus, a company that helps credit unions and community financial institutions offer potential borrowers perpetual loan approval, making it possible for customers to take out pre-approved loans in one click. CuneXus was acquired by CUNA Mutual Group in 2020 for an undisclosed amount. The entity now produces more than $27 billion in loans each…

Marqeta Unveils its Web Push Provisioning Solution as Mobile Wallet Adoption Rises

By David Penn Posted on January 19, 2023
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Marqeta

Card issuing platform Marqeta launched its new web push provisioning solution. The new offering will enable consumers to pay for products directly from their mobile wallets without having to first download a mobile app - that may be rarely used again. The web push provisioning solution was inspired in part during Marqeta's Hack Week event back in October 2021.

Modern card issuing platform Marqeta launched its new web push provisioning product this week. The new offering will reduce friction at the point-of-sale by enabling users to pay for purchases directly from their mobile wallets without having to download a mobile app first.

The new web push provisioning product is designed to address a major pain point for consumers: having to download an app - that may be rarely, if ever, used again - in order to complete a given transaction. Marqeta's solution can help boost conversion rates by eliminating this…

upSWOT Forges Open Banking Partnership with Mastercard

By David Penn Posted on January 18, 2023
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, MasterCard, UpSwot

Mastercard and upSWOT announced an open banking partnership this week. The collaboration will enable upSWOT's small business customers to access actionable insights and more readily secure financing. upSWOT made its Finovate debut in 2020 and returned to the Finovate stage in 2022 for FinovateFall.

A collaboration between Mastercard and North Carolina-based fintech upSWOT will help banks better serve their small business clients by providing them with actionable insights and easier access to capital. Courtesy of Mastercard's open banking platform and services delivered via its subsidiary Finicity, the partnership will bring open banking capabilities to upSWOT's platform. This will enable SMEs on upSWOT's platform to connect owner-permissioned financial data to 200 API-enabled apps, providing services such as accounting, payroll, e-commerce, CRM, and more.

"SMBs have long been accepted as the engines of economic growth and development but at times are underserved," upSWOT CEO Dmitry Norenko said. "We believe that fintech…

Ingenico Taps Fujitsu Frontech for Palm Vein Biometrics Solution

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 18, 2023
Categories: Daily news

Ingenico partnered with Fujitsu Frontech to authenticate customer identities and facilitate transactions using the palm of the customer's hand for in-person transactions. To make a payment, customers hover their hand over a near-infrared sensor, which reads their palm veins to authenticate their identity and complete the payment using stored card credentials. The unique pattern of veins in the palm is difficult for fraudsters to hack because the patterns under the skin are challenging to replicate.

Ingenico has partnered with Fujitsu Frontech to authenticate customer identities and facilitate payment using the palm of their hand for in-person transactions.

Leveraging its subsidiary Fulcrum Biometrics, Fujitsu Frontech's solution uses palm vein identification to enable consumers to identify themselves and authenticate their payments by moving their hand over a near-infrared sensor on Ingenico's AXIUM range, the company's Android payment terminal. The technology creates a more convenient experience for customers as it eliminates the need to…

Savings Platform Plinqit Teams Up with SUMA FCU to Help Members Enhance Financial Wellness

By David Penn Posted on January 17, 2023
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Daily news, Plinqit

The jury is still out on whether or not January is officially Financial Wellness Month. But savings platform Plinqit isn't waiting around for any verdict. The Ann Arbor, Michigan-based fintech announced this week that it has partnered with SUMA Federal Credit Union to help give the institution's 7,000+ members the resources they need to become better savers.

The partnership will enable SUMA FCU's members to access tools such as Plinqit's Build Skills solution. Build Skills provides users with content that helps them build their personal finance awareness and savings skills, and then pays them for learning new skills. In turn, the funds earned from learning more about financial wellness can help propel users toward their Plinqit savings goals. SUMA FCU members will be able to access the functionality via SUMA FCU's digital banking platform, thanks to Plinqit's integration with Jack Henry's Banno Digital Toolkit.

SUMA FCU expects the new…

LendInvest to Use New Funding to Enter Mortgage Market

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 17, 2023
Categories: Daily news, Funding

LendInvest received increased funding from Lloyds Bank this week, bringing its total warehouse investment to $367 million (£300 million). The boost in investment will help LendInvest enter the homeowner mortgage market, a $1.5 trillion (£1.2 trillion) opportunity. LendInvest now has more than $4.4 billion (£3.6 billion) in funds under management.

U.K.-based property finance asset manager LendInvest scored an increase in warehouse funding from Lloyds Bank totaling $367 million (£300 million) this week. The purpose of the investment is to facilitate LendInvest's entry into the mortgage market, which the company estimates to be a $1.5 trillion (£1.2 trillion) opportunity.

LendInvest was founded in 2008 to serve as an online marketplace for property lending and investing, enabling everyday investors to access a wider variety of asset classes, including opportunities to gain exposure to the U.K. property market. The company launched its homeowner mortgage product in beta last month and plans to launch…

Australian Billionaire Richard White Acquires KYC/KYB Specialist Kyckr

By David Penn Posted on January 17, 2023
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Kyckr, Mergers & Acquisitions

KYC/KYB specialist Kyckr has agreed to be acquired by tech entrepreneur and billionaire Richard White. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Kyckr is an alum of our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, where the company presented "Corporate Identity on the Blockchain."

Kyckr, a technology company that provides corporations with authoritative real-time data on potential and existing customers and suppliers, has agreed to be acquired by Richard White, an Australian technology entrepreneur. White, who founded Australian technology company WiseTech Global in 1994, will acquire the company via his personal investment vehicle RealWise KYK AV Pty Ltd. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

"The Kyckr team is delighted to have the strategic guidance, support, and vision that successful tech-entrepreneur and founder Richard White provides," Kyckr CEO Ian Henderson said. "We are embarking upon an exciting evolution of our powerful offering to broaden its scope by building an integrated…

Fintech Conversations at the World Economic Forum This Year

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 16, 2023
Categories: Julie's Column

The five-day World Economic Forum (WEF) began today. The annual event gathers leaders from across the globe in Davos, Switzerland to discuss the latest economic, social, and political issues. This year's theme is Cooperation in a Fragmented World and many of the sessions are relevant to the fintech industry.

I combed through the agenda and highlighted the sessions that are most worth watching below. WEF allows the public to watch live via its website or watch the session recordings on its YouTube channel. The meat of the event begins tomorrow, and here's what I'll be paying attention to.

January 17

Staying Ahead of a Recession
With the risk of a recession in 2023 continuing to loom over major economies, what steps can leaders take to make a potential recession as short and as shallow as possible?

Financial Institutions: Innovating Under Pressure
At a time of large-scale macro shocks, how…

AliPay Taps SplitIt to Enable Customers to Pay After Delivery

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 16, 2023
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, SplitIt

Splitit partnered with Alipay to power the firm's Pay After Delivery payment option. Splitit is leveraging Checkout.com's payment-acquiring capabilities to facilitate Alipay's Pay After Delivery. Splitit was founded in 2012 as PayItSimple. The company rebranded in 2015 under its current name.

Installments-as-a-service company Splitit announced a new tie-up with global payments platform Alipay this week. Under the partnership, Splitit will power Alibaba Group-owned AliExpress' Pay After Delivery.

The new payment option enables shoppers to pay after delivery using their existing credit card. Pay After Delivery leverages Splitit's Installments-as-a-Service platform that embeds a branded experience within AliExpress' checkout flow.

Splitit, which leverages Checkout.com's payment-acquiring capabilities to offer the new installment service, was founded in 2012 as PayItSimple. Splitit's Installments-as-a-Service tool is similar to well-known buy now, pay later (BNPL) technologies in that it enables consumers to pay for a good or a service in installments, interest-free.

Splitit's tool differentiates…

Finovate Global Scandinavia: Subaio Partners with Aiia, Boost.ai Brings Conversational AI to DNB

By David Penn Posted on January 13, 2023
Categories: Aiia, Alumni News, Finovate Global, Jumio, Scalable Capital, Subaio

Denmark-based Subaio announced this week that it was teaming up with fellow Danish fintech - and fellow Finovate alum - Aiia. Subaio will leverage its partnership with Aiia to better assess creditworthiness for its new white label offering. The collaboration will streamline creditworthiness assessment through a combination of Aiia's access to financial data and Subaio's recurring payments detection technology.

"To create automation and a product that works for solid credit scoring across industries, we need as solid and deep quality of data as possible to label the transactions and categorize them afterwards," Subaio Chief Commercial Officer Soren Nielsen said. "That's why we chose Aiia to help us bring this next exciting step in the Subaio journey up to speed."

In some ways, partnerships like this are being encouraged by regulatory decisions. The EU's revised Consumer Credit Directive of 2021 mandates that financial services firms document customer income and recurring…

Xoom Adds Cross-Border Money Transfers to Debit Card Deposit Product

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on January 13, 2023
Categories: Daily news, PayPal

PayPal-owned Xoom has added international money transfers to its Debit Card Deposit product. Leveraging a partnership with Visa, U.S. users can send funds directly to recipients' eligible Visa debit cards. Debit Card Deposit originally launched domestic transfers in 2020.

PayPal's international money transfer service Xoom added a new debit card feature today that will help users send money across international borders. Leveraging a partnership with Visa, Xoom's Debit Card Deposit product now facilitates international money transfers.

Debit Card Deposit originally launched in 2020 to allow customers to send funds within the U.S. Today's addition will enable Xoom customers in the U.S. to use the Xoom mobile app or web interface to send money across the international border directly to friends or family using their debit card. Recipients, who will receive the funds on their eligible Visa debit card, will be able to access the funds in real-time.

"We know that…