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FinovateEurope 2021 Launches Next Week

By David Penn Posted on March 18, 2021
Categories: FinovateEurope 2021

FinovateEurope is right around the corner! Our all-digital, interactive fintech conference begins March 23 at 9am Central European Time and continues through March 25. Visit our registration page today to save your spot!

FinovateEurope will feature our signature format of innovative fintech demonstrations and in-depth, insightful keynotes, panel discussions, and debates on some of our industry’s most important topics and critical themes. To learn more about our demoing companies, check out our Sneak Peek Series. For more on our thought leadership content, here’s a short, day-by-day summary of what to look out for.

March 23: Martes / Dienstag / Wtorek / Tuesday

Kicking off the event on Day One of FinovateEurope are keynote addresses from Katharina Lueth of Raisin UK, Joe Lichtenberg of InterSystems, and a conversation between HSBC’s Steve Suarez and Louise Beaumont of the Open Banking Working Group.

The afternoon will feature a number of panel discussions and roundtables covering topics such as open innovation and strategic partnerships, the future of hybrid digital customer experience, and leveraging agility to thrive at times of crisis. The day will end with a conversation on digital engagement in the post-COVID era.

March 24: Mercredi / Onsdag / Quarta-feira / Wednesday

On Day Two, FinovateEurope begins with a keynote on open innovation and open banking, and continues with a pair of Mastermind Keynotes from Alex James of GoCompare and Alex Thomson of Quantum Metric, as well as from Annerie Vreugdenhil, Chief Innovation Officer with ING. In addition to a keynote on sustainable finance, the afternoon on Day Two will be devoted to panel conversations on the shift to digital payments and preserving “the human touch” in the digital financial world.

March 25: Donderdag / Giovedì / Čtvrtek / Thursday

The final day of FinovateEurope will feature some of our conference’s most popular sessions, such as our Analyst All Stars presentation. This year, our All Stars include Jost Hoppermann of Forrester, Zil Bareisis of Celent, and Vinod Jain of Aite Group. Day Three will also tackle the growth of morgagetech by way of a Mastermind Keynote from Floris van der Kolk of Ohpen and Rik Douwes of Link Asset Services. Rounding out the day will be a venture capital panel discussion on investment trends in the post-COVID era. This conversation will feature Citi Ventures’ Luis Valdich, Silicon Valley Bank’s Claire Palmer, SixThirty Ventures’ Samarth Shekar, and Mouro Capital’s Manuel Silva Martinez.

See our full agenda. And make sure you reserve your spot today for our first, Europe-themed, all-digital, fintech event!

Photo by Claudia Schmalz from Pexels

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Customer Engagement Tactics to Boost Loyalty and Monetization

By Charlie Burgess Posted on March 18, 2021
Categories: Finovate Webinar

Upcoming webinar
Title: Customer Engagement Tactics to Boost Loyalty and Monetization
Date: Thursday, April 15, 2021
Time: 04:00 British Summer Time
Duration: 1 hour

Research shows brands that excel in customer engagement often exceed their revenue goals. But how well is the financial services industry really responding to customers, and delivering on promises of “customer-centricity?”

Join this upcoming webinar where our expert panel will explore the top trends in customer engagement in 2021 for financial services companies, growth levers for financial service businesses, and how customer engagement strategies can be used to drive long-term growth. Find out which steps you can implement now, and in the long term, to improve customer engagement. Hear first-hand insights from Wise, including how the company has advanced its customer engagement strategy over time.

Featuring:

Erin Bankaitis, Strategic Business Consultant, Braze
Andrei Dinca, CRM Lead, Wise
Talie Baker, Senior Analyst, Aite
Moderated by Greg Palmer, VP, Finovate

Register now >>

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NYMBUS Picks Red Hat as Cloud Platform Partner

By David Penn Posted on March 18, 2021
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, NYMBUS

Financial services platform NYMBUS has selected the cloud platform from open source solution provider Red Hat for its digital banking ecosystem. The platform, Red Hat OpenShift, will enable Nymbus to help its community bank and credit union customers accelerate their digital transformations.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we bank, possibly forever,” Nymbus CEO Jeffery Kendall said. “It provided the push for local banks and credit unions to establish more secure, flexible, end-to-end digital banking solutions.” Kendall added that the partnership with Red Hat would give Nymbus’ partners more “freedom of choice” in the way they implemented their cloud banking strategies as well as the “multi-cloud uptime” Kendall said was “critical for the banking industry.”

Courtesy of the new partnership, Nymbus customers will be able to deploy and launch a turnkey, digital bank-in-a-box – running on OpenShift – on whatever cloud platform they prefer. The open source, cloud-agnostic nature of Red Hat’s solution helps institutions avoid being dependent on a sole vendor, which can impede innovation.

“Cloud technology is reshaping the way banking services are created and delivered in our digital world,” Red Hat VP and Global Head of Financial Services Richard Harmon said. “It is providing service providers the ability to quickly adapt to market changes and make it easier for community banks and credit unions to consume new software. We are excited to work with Nymbus to bring the innovation of open source and cloud technology to the market. Nymbus truly embraces the open source way of working, and we are looking forward to contributing to their success.”

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Miami Beach, Florida, Nymbus most recently demonstrated its technology on the Finovate stage in 2019 as part of FinovateFall. The company began this year with a pair of C-suite hires – Chief Alliance Officer Sarah Howell and Chief Product Officer Larry McClanahan – a new partnership with NYDIG to support bitcoin banking, and a $53 million Series C funding round that took the company’s total capital to more than $98 million.

Photo by Darkhanbaatar Baasanjav from Pexels

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Blend to Acquire Title365 from Mr. Cooper

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on March 18, 2021
Categories: Alumni News, Blend, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, Mr. Cooper

Digital lending platform Blend has agreed to acquire Mr. Cooper-owned Title365 for $422 million.

Blend will leverage Title365 for its title, escrow, and settlement services. Integrating this technology into Blend’s platform will allow the company to automate title commitment upon loan application submission, digitally reconcile settlement fees in real time, and streamline communication among parties. Ultimately, Blend anticipates that Title365’s industry expertise will help minimize costs by integrating title and settlement into the loan process.

Title365 was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in California. The company fits nicely with Blend’s approach of offering a modern experience with its mission “to be the most technologically advanced title insurance and settlement services provider.”

Title365 will be part of Blend’s title marketplace that allows lenders and consumers to choose their preferred title and escrow partner. The tool will be similar to Blend’s insurance marketplace that allows consumers to shop for competitive rates from more than 25 insurance carriers.

“We’re really excited about the agreement to add Title365 to our team as we continue our work to build the full consumer homebuying journey into our platform,” said CEO Nima Ghamsari. “With Title365, we will be able to expand our ability to put lenders at the center of a vastly improved homebuying journey that delivers new levels of efficiency, speed, convenience, and cost savings to everyone.”

Founded in 2012, Blend recently received $300 million in new funding, bringing its total funding to $665 million and boosting its valuation to $3.3 billion. The company facilitated $1.4 trillion in loans last year and counts 285+ lender partners, which together are responsible for around 30% of all mortgage volume in the U.S.

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25 Fintechs Going Green

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on March 17, 2021
Categories: List series

ESG investing is no longer the only environmentally conscious aspect of the financial services world. Recently, we’ve seen an explosion of fintechs– both new and incumbent players– going green.

Here’s a roundup of who’s who in sustainable fintech:

Ando Money

Ando Money is a California-based digital bank that uses client deposits to support green initiatives.

Ant Group

Ant Group, the fintech subsidiary of China-based Alibaba Group, has pledged to go carbon neutral by 2030.

Aspiration

Aspiration is a digital bank that won’t use consumer deposits to fund fossil fuel projects like pipelines, oil drilling, and coal mining. Additionally, the fintech plants trees in collaboration with reforestation partners when users round up their purchases.

Atmos Financial

California-based Atmos Financial offers a savings account that uses client deposits to exclusively finance climate-positive projects at scale.

Carbon Chain

Founded in 2019, CarbonChain offers organizations visibility into the emissions of their supply chains to identify the highest polluting transactions.

Carbon Collective

Carbon Collective offers roboadvisory services that help users divest from fossil fuels and invest in stock market funds that are low-carbon and don’t depend on fossil fuels for their core business.

Carbon Zero

Carbon Zero offers a credit card that rewards users’ purchases by using merchant-paid fees to buy carbon offsets.

Cloverly

Cloverly integrates with existing fintech apps, financial institutions, and payment processing services to assess their carbon impact and determine offsets needed.

Cooler Future

Still in beta, Cooler Future is a Finland-based startup that enables users to invest in a sustainable portfolio.

Doconomy

Doconomy is a Sweden-based digital bank that wants to inspire behavioral changes and reduce unsustainable consumption and carbon emissions.

Ecocart

Ecocart is a browser extension that works with merchants to help customers offset the environmental impact of their online purchase.

Helios

Founded in 2019, Helios is a France-based fintech that offers a digital bank account that helps users offset their carbon footprint.

Joro

Joro connects to users’ payment cards to analyze their carbon footprint and determine the biggest drivers of their carbon footprint.

Meniga

As part of its digital banking platform, Meniga provides a Carbon Insight tool that offers end users visibility into their carbon footprint based on their spending.

NetZero

NetZero connects to users’ bank accounts to determine the carbon footprint of their purchases. The fintech also helps users reduce their emissions and offset their footprint.

Nori

Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Nori is developing a marketplace for carbon removals.

OpenInvest

OpenInvest helps advisors offer their clients ESG investing that align with their values.

Raise Green

Raise Green offers a marketplace where users can invest in local, impactful projects.

ReGal

Headquartered in the U.K., ReGal offers alternative financial services based on Green Blockchain.

Ripple

Payments network Ripple pledged to be carbon net-zero by 2030 and to decarbonize public blockchains.

Stripe

U.S.-based ecommerce and mobile payments company Stripe offers a tool called Stripe Climate. The offering enables businesses to direct a portion of their revenue to help scale emerging carbon removal technologies.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow offers a digital bank account that uses customer deposits to fund sustainable initiatives. The startup’s premium account, Tomorrow Zero, offers a payment card that is made of wood.

Treecard

Treecard offers a free payment card made of wood. The company donates 80% of its profits to reforestation.

Trine

Trine is a Sweden-based company that allows firms as well as private and professional investors to crowdfund solar energy products.

Tumelo

Tumelo helps investment platforms and pension providers engage investors by showing them the companies in their portfolio and empowering them to vote on ESG issues.

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Identity Verification Specialist Socure Scores $100 Million in New Funding

By David Penn Posted on March 17, 2021
Categories: Funding, Socure

Digital identity verification company Socure announced that it has secured $100 million in Series D funding in a round led by Accel and featuring participation from the investment divisions of Citi and Wells Fargo. The investment brings the company’s total capital to more than $196 million.

“We are now more confident than ever that we will be the first company to eliminate identity fraud while unlocking complete and fully-automated coverage of every good ID,” Socure CEO Johnny Ayers said.

Also participating in the round were Commerce Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, Flint Capital, Strategic Capital, Synchrony, Sorenson, and Two Sigma Ventures. And while a specific new valuation was not included in the funding announcement, Socure’s Ayers hinted at the lofty level – and more – in congratulating his team on the company’s success.

“Reaching unicorn status is a testament to our dedicated and talented team which we are looking forward to rapidly scaling to meet demand,” Ayers said. “We are incredibly grateful for the chance to innovate and partner to solve this problem with some of the greatest companies in the world and are energized for the opportunities that lay ahead for Socure, especially as we make our march to a potential IPO.”

A Finovate alum since 2013, the company demonstrated its digital-to-physical identity verification technology at our fall conference in 2017. Socure’s predictive analytics platform marries AI and machine learning with trusted on- and offline data intelligence from a wide variety of sources to verify identities in real time. Operating in a number of verticals ranging from financial services and eCommerce to gaming and telecom, Socure has more than 350 customers including three of the top five banks, six of the top 10 card issuers, and more than 75 of the most innovative fintechs including Varo Money, Chime, and Stash.

More recently, Socure announced a partnership with advisory, tax, and assurance firm Baker Tilly that has since established that Socure’s Intelligent KYC product meets “and creates additional assurance” in providing USA PATRIOT Act compliance. Earlier in the year, Socure had announced that Intelligent KYC would be made available to digital gaming operators in eleven states.

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Flutterwave and PayPal Partner to Empower African eCommerce

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on March 17, 2021
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, PayPal

Payments ecosystem giant PayPal announced a collaboration with Flutterwave, a leading payments technology company in Africa, this week. Through the collaboration, PayPal will enable its users to pay African merchants using Flutterwave’s platform.

The partnership will not only connect Flutterwave’s African merchant clients with PayPal’s 377 million accountholders, it will also help them work around the fragmented and complex payments infrastructure in Africa. To use the new functionality, online shoppers across the globe simply select the Pay with PayPal option while checking out at an African merchant’s page online.

Flutterwave launched to help businesses and individuals make payments across the continent flexibly and affordably. This comes at a crucial time for Africa. The ecommerce sector on the continent is expanding and is expected to grow from $16.5 billion in 2017 to $29 billion by next year.

“The collaboration reinforces our vision of creating a seamless digital payments system for Africa’s business communities that can now transact with international consumers,” said Flutterwave Founder and CEO Olugbenga Agboola. “By working with PayPal, we can further strengthen our commitment to our customers and service users as we will be enabling them to transact and expand their business operations to reach new markets.”

Flutterwave was founded in 2016 and has since processed over 140 million transactions worth over $9 billion. Today’s news comes just a couple of days after the company closed a $170 million round at a $1 billion valuation.

Photo by Jack Sparrow from Pexels

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FX, Fulton Bank, and Finzly’s Latest Partnership

By David Penn Posted on March 16, 2021
Categories: Alumni profile

One of Finovate’s most recent alums, Finzly, announced this week that Fulton Bank has achieved significant operational efficiencies in its foreign exchange business courtesy of Finzly’s FX START and EXIM STAR solutions.

“International trade and foreign exchange can be a complex business for financial institutions of any size to manage successfully,” Finzly CEO and founder Booshan Rengachari said. “With one integration to the core, our FX STAR and EXIM STAR solutions help institutions like Fulton Bank to more efficiently, securely, and cost-effectively meet the needs of their customers.”

Finzly specializes in connecting banks and their customers via a real-time payment services hub and cloud-based bank operating system, BankOS, delivering a modern, digital banking experience. The company’s platform leverages open APIs and integrations into core technology to enable financial institutions to subscribe, try, and launch both Finzly’s and third-party fintech apps and solutions. With FX STAR, Finzly’s customers are able to execute foreign currency transactions, purchase foreign currencies in bulk using multi-currency accounts, as well as initiate payments. EXIM STAR serves as an international trade finance solution to help financial institutions manage the transaction lifecycle for commercial letters of credit, standby letters of credit, and documentary collections.

“We recognize Finzly as a proven provider that understands the unique business needs of regional financial institutions,” Fulton Bank International SVP and Manager Amy Sahm said. “Through the implementation of their user-friendly platform, our bank has been able to achieve better standard functionality across the board – from improved access to reports and confirming trades, to upgrades in investigation and reconciliation capabilities.”

Fulton Bank operates more than 223 financial centers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as well as in the mid-Atlantic states of Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia. The firm is a subsidiary of Fulton Financial Corporation, a financial holding company based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with $26 billion in assets.

Finzly made its Finovate debut in 2019. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based company most recently demonstrated its digital account opening solution at FinovateWest 2020, earning a Best of Show award from conference attendees. This year, in addition to its partnership with Fulton Bank, Finzly teamed up with Lead Bank, a Kansas City, Missouri-based “community-minded” commercial bank. Lead Bank implemented Finzly’s Payment Hub – part of Finzly’s Bank OS – to boost its own payment and digital capabilities.

“The ability to service our fintech and corporate clients with a Banking as a Service solution, as well as communicate messages to and from the core platform, is crucial to fulfilling and facilitating the requirements of Lead Bank and our channel partners,” Sheila Stratton, Director of Digital Strategy, Lead Bank said. “Finzly’s solution provides a modern technology platform in which our bank can expand payment capabilities while tapping a flexible and innovative solution to support our bank in delivering on the specialized needs of our clients.”

As well as partnerships, 2021 marked the launch of Finzly’s SWAP STAR solution. The new technology provides an end-to-end, sales, trading, and post-trade processing system for interest rate derivatives. SWAP STAR is available as an app within Finzly’s BankOS cloud-based bank operating system.

Photo by Andre Furtado from Pexels

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FinovateEurope Digital 2021 Sneak Peek: Aiia

By oliver Posted on March 16, 2021
Categories: Aiia, Finovate, FinovateEurope 2021, FinovateEurope 2021 Sneak Peek

Aiia‘s open banking platform provides easy ways to innovate on top of financial data and the ability to pay and receive money with open banking payments.

Features

Aiia Data: Full access to account information services
Aiia Pay: Makes it possible for all to leverage open banking payments
Aiia Hub: Puts the end-user in control of their shared data

Why it’s great
Open banking for all. Aiia lets a wide range of financial institutions, fintechs, accounting system providers, payment service providers, and others leverage open banking with one single line of code.

Presenter

Gudmundur Hreidarsson, CTO & Co-Founder
Hreidarsson is the Co-Founder of two major fintech successes in the Nordics: open banking platform and advisor, Nordic API Gateway (Aiia), and the personal finance management app, Spiir.
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FinovateEurope Digital 2021 Sneak Peek: Data Reply

By oliver Posted on March 16, 2021
Categories: Data Reply, Finovate, FinovateEurope 2021, FinovateEurope 2021 Sneak Peek

DATA Reply‘s quantum-inspired accelerator, MegaQUBO, solves optimization problems very fast and is applicable to collateral optimization.

Features

Massive parallelization and solving speed
Focus on the quality of the solution and improved accuracy
Service scalability and ease of use

Why it’s great
The quantum-inspired accelerator, MegaQUBO, finds solutions to highly complex optimization problems in real business contexts with great speed and improved accuracy, and it scales with your projects.

Presenters

Sara Felloni, Senior Consultant
Felloni is the Senior Project Manager at DATA Reply. She holds a master’s degree in Applied Mathematics at University of Milan and a PhD in Quantum Information Processing.
LinkedIn

Davide Caputo, Senior Consultant
Caputo is the Senior Data Scientist at DATA Reply. As a quantum computing specialist, he holds a master’s degree in Physics at University of Turin and a PhD in Experimental Physics.
LinkedIn

Blanca Silva Fernández, Consultant
Silva Fernández is a Data Scientist at DATA Reply. As a quantum computing specialist, she holds a master’s degree in Physics at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and a PhD in Experimental Physics.
LinkedIn

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FinovateEurope Digital 2021 Sneak Peek: Strands

By oliver Posted on March 16, 2021
Categories: Finovate, FinovateEurope 2021, FinovateEurope 2021 Sneak Peek, Strands

As experts in big data, AI, and machine learning since 2004, Strands creates highly-customizable digital money management software for top-tier financial institutions worldwide.

Features

Offers financial control and wellbeing for retail banking customers
Helps users plan ahead and budget with all their accounts in one place
Provides visual insight about where every cent goes each month

Why it’s great
Strands’ PFM means smarter money management for the customer, improved bank-user engagement, and a greater share of wallet for the bank. Know how people spend, and then help them do it better.

Presenter

Claudio Cungi, Head of Product
Cungi has six years of experience in management consulting. He joined the CRIF group in 2018 as a Product and Business Development Manager for open banking.
LinkedIn

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eToro To Go Public in $10 Billion SPAC

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on March 16, 2021
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, eToro, Mergers & Acquisitions

Social trading and investment marketplace eToro announced today that it is making the leap to go public. In true 2021 style, however, the Israel-based company isn’t pursuing an IPO. Instead, eToro is merging with FinTech Acquisition Corp. V, a publicly-traded special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), in a deal worth $10 billion.

When the deal is finalized, the combined company will operate as eToro Group Ltd. and is expected to be listed on the NASDAQ.

The move to go public comes after a period of growth for the Israel-based company. Last year, eToro added more than five million new users and brought in $605 million in revenue, 147% higher than the revenue it saw in 2019. Additionally, average monthly registrations have grown from 192,000 in 2019 to 440,000 in 2020. In January 2021 alone, eToro added more than 1.2 million new registered users. Similarly, the number of trades executed on its platform has grown– from eight million average trades per month in 2019, to 27 million in 2020, and 75 million in January 2021 alone.

“We founded eToro with the vision of opening the global market for everyone to trade and invest in a simple and transparent way,” said eToro CEO Yoni Assia. “Today, eToro is the world’s leading social investment network. Our users come to eToro to invest, but also to communicate with each other; to see, follow, and automatically copy successful investors from all around the world. We created a new category of wealth management – social investing – and we are dominating the market as evidenced by our rapid expansion.”

eToro is the seventh fintech to use a SPAC to go public in the past few months, joining SoFi, BankMobile, Payoneer, MoneyLion, Apex, and OppFi.

eToro was founded in 2007 and has offices in Cyprus, the U.K., Australia, and the U.S. The company is among Finovate’s earliest alums, demoing at the very first FinovateEurope conference in 2011.

Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

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