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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Yesterday we shared news that EVERFI and Sallie Mae were teaming up to promote financial literacy for high school kids in California. Today we share news on another youth finance-related front. gohenry, which specializes in providing financial education for youth and their families, has secured $40 million in financing. The round was led by Edison Partners, and featured participation from Gaia Capital Partners, Citi Ventures, and Muse Capital.
The funding takes the company’s total capital to more than $56 million.
“For too long, kids have been locked out of the digital economy and parents lacked the tools to help their children gain confidence with money and finances,” gohenry CEO Alex Zivoder said. “gohenry was the first to respond to these needs in 2012 when we launched a groundbreaking financial education app and debit card that truly empowered children. In 2020, we’ve achieved three key milestones: becoming profitable which many B2C fintechs seek, raising $40 million during COVID, and partnering with world leading funds. All three will help us fuel our U.S. expansion.”
gohenry specializes in helping kids aged six to eighteen develop sound money and financial habits. Launched in the U.K. as a financial literacy app and debit card in 2012, the company has grown its offerings to include its Teen and Eco cards – both of which feature built-in parental controls. The company’s solutions enable youth to learn how to manage allowances and other earnings and give parents the opportunity to guide their children as they learn the basics of digital finance. The company noted that young customers on its platform earned “nearly $150 million in allowances” and “contributed more than $140 million back into the global economy.”
As part of the agreement, Edison Partners managing director Chris Sugden will join gohenry’s board of directors.
“gohenry is catering to millions of parents who are looking to raise smart, financially literate children but are currently underserved by existing solutions,” Sugden said. “We’re thrilled to partner with Alex and the gohenry management team on this next milestone in their growth journey and look forward to realizing their ambitions to improve the financial fitness of kids across the globe.”
The new curriculum, Sallie Mae’s Knowledge for College program, will be made available to high school juniors and seniors in California either in a classroom or virtually. The program is focused on helping provide students – and their families – with the information they need to know in order to finance their higher education goals. The partnership between EVERFI and Sallie Mae comes as research indicates that eight in ten families find affording college “challenging,” less than half of families have a plan to pay for college, and just over half (51%) of students have researched financial aid opportunities.
The two companies also noted that California is unique in that it does not require high school students to take coursework in personal finance before graduating.
“Students and families continue to value higher education, but there’s still a certain level of anxiety and angst about how to pay for it,” Ray Martinez, co-founder and president of EVERFI, said. “(This) is why it is crucial that we provide these students with necessary tools to become confident in their ability to make smart financial decisions well into adulthood. Ensuring students and their families fully understand not only the process by which to apply for student financial aid, but also the responsibilities it carries is of the utmost importance and will help set them up for financial success.”
Knowledge for College includes five interactive modules to help students develop strategies for financing their post-secondary education and, beyond that, building good financial habits for life. Saving and budgeting are among the topics included in the curriculum, as are more advanced topics such as student loans and consumer financing.
“Financial literacy provides students with a strong foundation of knowledge and confidence in making informed decisions about the future,” Sallie Mae SVP Jen O’Donald said. “That future includes planning and paying for higher education, which is one of the first major financial decisions for many students and families. We want families to make these decisions with eyes wide open and that means providing critical education and information early in the process through programs like Knowledge for College.”
Washington, D.C.-based EVERFI made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateSpring. Founded in 2008, the company has been busy making friends this fall: teaming up with Athletes First this month and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) last month to help develop educational programs to boost African American history and fight anti-semitism, respectively. On the fintech front, EVERFI announced in November that it was working with Zelle to launch a free digital financial literacy course for high schools, and, in October, partnered with Citizens Financial Group to enhance the company’s existing College Bound Citizens education outreach initiative with a “robust digital component.”
We featured EVERFI in our look at the importance of financial literacy earlier this year. The company has raised more than $250 million in funding from investors including Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, and the Rise Fund, among others.
Some might use the term “dumpster fire” to describe 2020. And while it certainly has been a difficult year full of change, loss, separation, and frustration, there have been some silver linings.
One of those bright spots is the acceleration of digital transformation that has taken place across the tech industry. The trends we predicted last December seem like small goals compared to what many organizations were able to accomplish this year.
We’re now faced with another year of uncertainty, not knowing what 2021 will bring. And while it is probably more prudent to make industry predictions in three-month increments, here’s a broader view that assesses some of the larger trends we expect to see take shape over the next 12 months.
Embedded Banking
Embedded banking, and more specifically embedded payments, began taking off this year. To be clear, embedded payments has been around for awhile now. The concept began as a way for customers to pay for a purchase without having to leave the merchant’s site or app.
However, companies are beginning to perfect the customer experience to such an extent that the customer doesn’t experience friction related to the payment. In these cases the payment process is so deeply integrated into an app that the customer doesn’t have to put extra effort into making the payment.
The classic example of embedded payments is Uber. A customer takes a cab ride and arrives at their destination without having to fumble around with their payment card. With Uber, when a customer arrives at their destination, they know that they have paid for the ride but they don’t have to make any extra effort to finalize it or even need to think about it at all.
When software providers can achieve an experience where the customer doesn’t have to think about the payment (but, of course, makes the payment anyway), they will not only have created a better customer experience but also will be able to close more sales.
Open banking in the U.S.
Open banking has already taken off in Europe and is making progress in Australia and Canada, as well. The U.S., however, has been slower to enact regulation.
Helping to drive progress toward an open banking future in 2021 and beyond, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) that requests information from the public on how consumers’ access to their financial records should be regulated.
Essentially, the ANPR serves as a first step in creating formal regulation in the U.S. around open banking. This– along with other factors such as an increase in digital use among consumers, a general recognition that screen-scraping techniques are harmful, and an increase in third party fintech apps– have primed the pump for open banking to take shape next year.
Automation
We’ve reached a point with AI where Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can help businesses effectively scale their operations. On the business side, we can expect to see increased automation in lending decisioning, communication and workflow tools, customer service, billing, invoicing, accounting, and investing. In fact, almost any business operation that lacks the ability to process information fast enough is a good candidate for automation.
End consumers can expect to see more benefits from automation, as well. More and more fintechs are working to optimize savings and investment opportunities for their clients. Take, for example, Wealthfront’s self-driving money concept. The roboadvisor wants to make money management effortless for customers by optimizing the use of each of their paychecks to pay bills, top up their emergency fund, and efficiently allocate the remainder into investments.
Banking-as-a-Service
This trend seems a bit meta, as many of the clients for banking-as-a-service tools are they themselves banks. It may prove difficult to explain to a fintech outsider why a bank would want to launch a challenger bank (the answer: to compete with banks!).
Despite this, however, banking-as-a-service sits at the core of fintech. Banks and fintechs focus on their core competency and integrate solutions from third parties into their own.
There are two major drivers that are transforming this historically vanilla concept into one of next year’s hottest fintech trends. The first is the push toward open banking. As explained above, there is more data being created in the digital realm than ever and, because of this, consumers want to share their data across platforms. This interoperability is altering customer demand and incentivizing fintechs to integrate additional functionality into their existing services.
The second driver is the sudden increase in the number of challenger banks. Late last year and into 2020, we have seen not only a record number of challenger banks launch, but also a record amount of VC funding allocated to challenger banks. While most consumers are maintaining their relationships with their traditional bank, they are also opening accounts at challenger banks such as Chime and N26.
These digital-first banks often have attractive features such as credit building tools, early paydays, and fee-free overdrafts. To compete, some banks are launching challenger banks of their own. Enterprise technology company Moven and digital banking services provider Q2 recently partnered to create a “bank-in-a-box” concept that aims to help banks improve their digital offerings and retain their digitally savvy customers.
Honorable Mention
Aside from this list, there are two items that deserve honorable mention. The first is buy now, pay later technology. The trend is currently on fire but will likely fizzle out after consolidation takes place. The second trend, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), is on the opposite side of the spectrum. As China initiates the launch of its country’s own CBDC there has been a lot of hype about the concept. However, we are likely still three to five years out from the U.S. making any significant progress toward a CBDC so all talk about the subject will be just that– talk.
The following is a sponsored post by Tracy Schlabach, Senior Manager, Product and Customer Marketing, Accusoft.
Digital transformation has been on the radar of most financial institutions for years. In a 2020 Digital Transformation Survey by BDO of financial services professionals, 68% of respondents in 2019 saw a growth in revenue directly related to digital investments. While many have made digital transformation a priority, some have faced roadblocks including risk-aversion and lack of corporate sponsorship.
With COVID-19 sweeping the globe, priorities are shifting, emphasizing the need for digital transformation. As noted in a state of the industry report authored by the Institute of International Finance and Deloitte, “COVID-19 has generated leadership and organizational support by highlighting the need for digital transformation as a means to reach customers and maintain operational resilience.” Of those surveyed by BDO prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, 36% see industry disruption as the primary digital threat. In addition, a recent survey by IDG Research states that 59% of respondents are seeing an acceleration of digital transformation in their companies driven by the pandemic.
Now that implementing the digital strategy has taken center stage on the fintech roadmap, developers are looking to meet the needs of leadership as well as customers and employees in a timely and budget efficient manner.
What Is Digital Transformation?
The name digital transformation embodies a wide assortment of initiatives, from the customer engagement experience to transforming legacy systems. In an article by The Financial Brand, financial executives were asked to select their top digital transformation priorities for 2021. Out of the long list of initiatives, four of the highest priorities are:
Improve Customer Experience
Improve Use of Data, Analytics, and AI
Enhance Innovation Agility
Improve Back Office Efficiency
Financial institutions are prioritizing several diverse initiatives to remain relevant during the global pandemic. Project managers need to shorten development time, meet executive mandates, and launch products that significantly improve the employee and customer experience.
SDK and API Integrations Streamline Fintech Development
Development teams can effectively meet those timelines by partnering with software manufacturers who build and maintain software development kits (SDKs) and application programming interfaces (APIs). Developers can integrate these SDKs and APIs into their product offerings to add unique document processing capabilities. By partnering with a high-tech software solution, your team can save development time, shorten sprints, and reduce maintenance cost. While these are significant benefits, partnering and integrating third-party software manufacturers come with many advantages, including the ability to:
Remove the burden of building and maintaining extensive document processing libraries
Access the manufacturer’s support and engineering team who can assist with implementation and resolve issues
Significantly reduce time to market of your product
Let’s take a deeper look at each of these advantages.
Integrate vs. Build & Maintain Document Processing Libraries – Consider how many different file formats are available in the market for submitting data to financial institutions. Fintech users receive everything from Word documents to PDFs to images taken with cell phones. All of those file formats need to be taken into consideration when building a fintech application that streamlines the process of capturing data from those files. Building out libraries of code that can address every possible option is extremely cumbersome and time-consuming. However, developers can leverage an SDK or API that has been developed specifically for document processing and open up time to focus on their core competencies.
Access to Support and Engineering Experts – When financial institutions embed third-party document and image processing solutions, they are also gaining access to a team of experts. At Accusoft, each customer has access to technical support and product developers that have helped hundreds of companies with implementing and utilizing these document processing SDKs and APIs. Digital transformation is a pressing concern for financial organizations. You can help them meet their needs with our SDKs and APIs. Get this new functionality up and running quickly in your application so your developers can focus on more mission-critical tasks.
Reduce Time to Market – As noted in the report by BDO, “Most financial services companies anticipate high returns on revenue and profitability from digital transformation.” Project managers that prioritize research and implement third-party software solutions can significantly reduce the time to market. This, in turn, will allow their company to realize profits faster than their competition.
With the recent changes in the world, the need for digital transformation is not slowing down. Financial institutions that prioritize those initiatives and research ways to develop and implement their new offerings quickly will be ahead in realizing revenues and returning profits to shareholders.
Accusoft is a software development company specializing in content processing, conversion, and automation solutions. From out-of-the-box and configurable applications to APIs built for developers, we help organizations solve their most complex content workflow challenges. Our patented solutions enable users to gain insight from content in any format, on any device with greater efficiency, flexibility, and security. Visit us at www.accusoft.com
Restaurant payments and analytics innovator Upserve is the latest company to be acquired by point of sale (POS) and ecommerce solutions firm Lightspeed.
The $430 million purchase was announced earlier this week, marking Lightspeed’s 10th acquisition since it was founded in 2005. The deal comes on the heels of Lightspeed’s November purchase of ShopKeep that is anticipated to close for $440 million.
“Lightspeed is quickly emerging as a world-leading commerce platform for SMBs and partnering with them to deliver data-based insights through a single digital hub was a natural choice,” said Upserve CEO Sheryl Hoskins. “Together we look forward to empowering North American restaurateurs to deliver superior guest experiences and make them wildly successful.”
Lightspeed anticipates the acquisition will accelerate product innovation and boost its analytics commerce platform. The company’s purchase of Upserve will also help Lightspeed reach an additional 7,000 U.S.-based clients in the hospitality industry.
Originally founded under the name Swipely in 2009, the company rebranded to Upserve in 2016 to reflect the company’s focus on the restaurant industry.
Upserve has raised a total of $40.5 million from 14 investors, including Greylock and Vista Equity Partners. From October 2019 to October 2020, the company recorded approximately $40 million in revenue.
It’s been a grand week for Finland’s ReceiptHero. The company announced a few days ago that it was teaming up with SEB Kort to have its digital receipt functionality integrated into SEB Kort’s corporate card, Eurocard. Then, we learned that ReceiptHero had inked a deal with fellow Finovate alum ETRONIKA that will enable the launch of the first e-receipt solution in the Baltic region. The new offering will allow ETRONIKA’s business customers to use their KASU retail network management system and ReceiptHero’s technology to issue digital receipts to their customers.
“ETRONIKA has built a truly modern retail chain management and POS product and we are thrilled to be partnering on a wider partnership that allows us the initial steps of building out the Baltic ecosystem.” ReceiptHero CEO Joel Ojala said.
Today comes more news from the Finland-based fintech. Courtesy of an investment from VC Lifeline Ventures, Superhero Capital, and Vidici Ventures of Sweden, ReceiptHero has picked up $2.43 million (€2 million) in seed funding.
“We’re making some real strides now with merchants and potential bank partners,” Ojala said. “We’ve hit an inflection point where banks understand the potential of digital receipts and value for their customers. For merchants they feel safe with ReceiptHero protecting their customer data and payment information.”
Growing interest in ReceiptHero’s technology, which transmits digital receipts from merchants directly to customer banking or account apps, comes as Finland’s government has decreed that digital receipts will be mandatory by 2025. Finland launched a digital receipt pilot project in 2019 that saw more than 50,000 state workers shopping exclusively with merchants using ReceiptHero’s platform.
ReceiptHero made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateEurope in Berlin. Headquartered in Helsinki, the company is also partnered with Nordea, integrating its technology with the bank’s Nordea Wallet offering at the beginning of last year. Other recent ReceiptHero partners include SKJ Systems, Diebold Nixdorf, and global IT system integrator CGI.
One of the more interesting questions during a recent FinovateWest Digital panel on challenger banks asked: how important are partnerships to these digital newcomers? This week, one answer to that question came in the form of an announcement from Australia’s self-described “smartbank” – 86 400 – that it was teaming up with one of the global leaders in data aggregation and insights: Envestnet | Yodlee.
“The average Australians’ financial world can be very complex, with numerous accounts for numerous products across different financial institutions,” 86 400 CIO Brian Parker explained. “By partnering with Envestnet | Yodlee, we’ve given our customers the ability to see all their accounts in one place, delivering a better view of their financial lives and helping them take control of their money.”
Founded in 2017 and backed by Cuscal, Australia’s largest independent payments company, 86 400 offers no fee banking; card, mobile, and smartwatch-based payments; and competitive interest rates for both savers and borrowers. Via mobile app, 86 400 customers can easily monitor and manage their finances, functionality that will be significantly enhanced via the smartbank’s new relationship with Envestnet | Yodlee.
“Consumers don’t have to wait for Open Banking to access and use their own data,” Envestnet | Yodlee ANZ Country Manager Tim Poskitt said. “Envestnet | Yodlee’s data aggregation enables consumers to link their financial accounts with tools and products that deliver better financial outcomes. That’s what 86 400’s products provide.”
86 400, which takes its name from the total number of seconds in a 24 hour day, has forged partnerships in recent months with mortgage brokers like Mortgage Choice and Connective. Headquartered in Sydney, New South Wales, 86 400 wonBest in Class at Australia’s International Good Design Awards. Robert Bell is CEO.
Maybe it is true, as fintech observer and wit Ron Shevlin suggested on Twitter recently, that the credit card issuers have to be scratching their heads a bit with the sudden popularity of the Buy Now Pay Later ecommerce craze-turned-trend. But as Homer Simpson famously put it, “we’re not succumbing to mass hysteria. We’re just jumping on the bandwagon.”
The latest news from the BNPL bandwagon features U.S. buy now pay later company Affirm, which announced that it would acquire Canadian BNPL outfit PayBright for $264 million (C$340 million).
“We built PayBright with the mission of making the everyday commerce experience simply better for Canadians,” company President and CEO Wayne Pommen said. “Partnering with Affirm gives us the opportunity to deliver on that promise on a much larger scale.” Pommen added that he was “delighted” at the opportunity to take “Buy Now Pay Later to the next level in Canada.”
Just where is that next level? PayBright currently has more than 7,000 retailer partners around the world, including companies like Samsung, Wayfair, and Oakley. And competition in the Canadian BNPL space has intensified of late; Australian BNPL rival Afterpay announced its expansion to the country in August.
Here is our look at fintech around the world.
Latin America and the Caribbean
BNamericas interviews Ruben Galindo, CEO of Mexican fintech CapitalTech on how the company has managed to serve its customers during the pandemic.
A partnership between FacePhi and Peruvian fintech TuSueldoYa will help businesses better manage cash advances during the COVID-19 crisis.
IBS Intelligence highlights four Mexican fintechs that are “transforming the financial sector”: Credijusto, Konfio, Clip, and Albo.
Asia-Pacific
Lightnet, a Singapore-based company that leverages blockchain technology to power its remittance offering, announces partnership with Siam Commercial Bank.
P2P lending marketplace Rai Capital goes live in Cambodia.
The Philippine Central Bank recognizes digital banks as a new bank category as part of a new regulatory framework.
Sub-Saharan Africa
A rare look at the evolving fintech ecocsystem in Cameroon.
Telkom, a telecommunications company based in South Africa, goes live with its digital wallet that enables WhatsApp based P2P mobile payments.
Nigerian payment infrastructure solution provider Airopay introduces a new digital payment app.
Central and Eastern Europe
Paysera expands to Albania, opening offices in the capital city of Tirana.
Polish fintech ZEN announces strategic partnership with Mastercard; goes live in 32 European markets.
U.K.-based cashless payment solution provider DiPocket chooses Lithuania for its office in the CEE region.
Middle East and Northern Africa
Emirates NBD introduces next-generation global corporate banking platform businessONLINE.
New report highlights Riyadh and Bahrain among “top fintech ecosystems to watch.”
Kuwait-based banking technology service provider VeriTech partners with Norway’s Zwipe to meet growing demand for contactless payments in the Middle East.
Central and Southern Asia
India-based cryptocurrency investment platform CoinSwitch Kuber announces plans for early December launch.
Fintech Futures takes a look at Indian challenger bank Finwego, which specializes in lending in the private school education space.
Swedish biometric company Fingerprint Cards teams up with Indian smartcard manufacturer M-Tech Innovations to launch contactless cards in India.
PhonePe is selling a $700 million stake in its company to existing investors, including Walmart, which led the financing round. The digital wallet and online payments company will use the funding to distance itself from Flipkart, which Walmart purchased in 2018. As part of the deal, Flipkart’s ownership of PhonePe will drop from 100% to 87%, according to TechCrunch.
India-based PhonePe anticipates that the $700 million in capital– along with independence from parent company Flipkart, which operates an ecommerce division– will help boost its growth in the ever-growing digital payments arena.
Further cementing PhonePe’s independence, the company has appointed its own board of directors, including PhonePe Founder and CEO Sameer Nigam and former Flipkart executive Binny Bansal.
“We are really excited to have access to dedicated long-term capital to further our ambitions in the financial services distribution sector as well as creating large innovative growth platforms for India’s micro, small, and medium enterprises,” said Nigam.
Founded in 2015, PhonePe is estimated to be worth around $5.5 billion. The company anticipates it will be profitable by 2022 and plans to go public in 2023. PhonePe currently has 100 million active users and recorded almost one billion transactions on its platform in October.
With 2021 right around the corner, we’re taking one last look at a year we will remember for a long time.
The Finovate Fintech Fulltime Review kicks off next week with a free, all-digital, live and on-demand showcase of webinars, white papers, eMagazines and more – all designed to make sense out of a year that was in many ways both tragic and transformative. The event begins Monday, December 7 and runs through Friday, December 11.
Among the features of next week’s event worth highlighting is our interactive conversation: Don’t Let Your Contact Center Be the Black Sheep of Your Bank’s Innovation. This live webinar with Mike Straham, VP of Contact Center Solutions with Lifesize, will explain the role of the bank contact center in the overall customer experience and why it is critical for banks to innovate in this space.
A customer experience specialist, Straham has more than 20 years of experience identifying and implementing advanced software technologies to reduce costs, increase productivity, improve customer satisfaction, and create new revenue streams. He joined Lifesize earlier this year after tenures at Talkdesk, Genesys, and Interactive Intelligence.
Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Lifesize specializes in providing video conferencing and collaboration solutions. In October, the company announced a strategic partnership with Omilia, a conversational AI solution provider. Over the summer, Lifesize acquired U.K.- and Silicon Valley, California-based digital collaboration solutions company Kaptivo.
Also featured next week during our Finovate Fintech Fulltime Review is our conversation with Quadient: Digital Overload: What Do Customers Want Now Besides Emergency Zoom Installations and Contactless Payments?
Led by Quadient’s Andrew Stevens, Principal for Banking and Financial Services, and moderated by Celent Senior Banking Analyst Craig Focardi, this interactive webinar will discuss how to maintain a true focus on the customer experience in the middle of rapid technological change and disruption.
Stevens is a customer experience and communications experts who has worked with and executed transformation programs for institutions across the world. His experience in both technology and banking/finance gives him unique insights into the challenges that financial institutions face today in meeting the needs of ever-more-demanding customers.
Quadient is an international customer experience solution provider specializing in customer experience management, business process automation, mail-related solutions, and parcel locker solutions. Headquartered in Bagneux, France, Quadient includes Societe Generale, Humana, FedEx Express, and Ping An Bank among its customers.
To learn about all we have in store for next week’s Finovate Fintech Fulltime Review, check out our event hub for more information.
Lloyds Banking Group is making instant, cross-border payments possible, thanks to a partnership with global secure financial messaging services provider SWIFT.
The U.K.-based bank announced it is the first bank to go live with SWIFT’s gpi Instant Connection, a new service that helps consumers and businesses send money in seconds across the globe.
gpi, which stands for Global Payments Initiative, was launched in 2017 to facilitate international payments. Since then, SWIFT has amassed more than 4,000 financial institution clients who collectively use gpi to send more than $300 billion each day in more than 150 currencies.
“At Lloyds Bank we strive to continually evolve and create innovative solutions for our clients,” said Ed Thurman, Managing Director and Head of Global Transaction Banking at Lloyds Banking Group. “The gpi Instant service is set to be a game changer in cross-border payments and we are very excited to be the first bank globally to offer the service here into the U.K.”
The new service leverages SWIFT gpi, SWIFT’s high-speed cross-border rails, and connects with a country’s own real-time infrastructure. In Lloyds’ case, SWIFT gpi is connecting with the U.K.’s Faster Payments, the region’s own real-time payments initiative.
“We developed gpi Instant with our community through responsible innovation and equal emphasis on four core needs — speed, security, transparency and compliance,” said David Watson, Chief Strategy Officer at SWIFT. “We look forward to continuing our work with market infrastructures and financial institutions to bring the benefits of seamless cross-border payments to customers across the globe.”
The launch with Lloyds comes after SWIFT tested out the service earlier this year in a pilot with Lloyds, Barclays, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, DBS, Wells Fargo, and BBVA. The real-time payments capabilities are part of SWIFT’s new strategy to retool cross-border infrastructure to facilitate instant and frictionless transactions.
With more than $9 billion in assets, VyStar Credit Union is the latest community-based financial institution to partner with open finance money experience innovator MX. VyStar, one of the 20 largest credit unions in the U.S., will leverage MX’s data connectivity APIs, account aggregation, and data enhancement tools to enhance the online experience for its more than 735,000 members in Georgia and northeastern Florida.
“Our strategy is to harness innovation and strategic fintech relationships that provide the best experiences that will improve our members’ financial well-being, and this partnership with an innovative fintech like MX is a big step in furthering that strategy,” Joseph R. Colca, SVP of Digital Experience at VyStar Credit Union, said. “We’ve been impressed not only with MX’s world-class data enhancement tools, but also with the alignment of our missions to empower financial strength through member advocacy.”
The partnership will enable members of VyStar Credit Union to aggregate and view accounts from all of their financial institutions into a single interface. MX’s technology collects, cleanses, and enriches transaction data, providing insights that help users more accurately plan their financial futures, as well as take smarter financial actions in the present. VyStar believes that embracing the technology will enable the Jacksonville, Florida-based credit union to gain wallet share among its customers by removing any need to log in to other apps or websites.
“With MX, VyStar is giving its customers greater clarity into their finances, which is exactly the kind of innovation, partnership, and money experience that MX loves to enable through our powerful data platform,” Chief Customer Officer for MX Nate Gardner said.
A multiple time Finovate Best of Show winner, MX most recently demonstrated its technology last year at FinovateFall. A leading data platform for banks, credit unions, fintechs, and other financial services providers, MX offers solutions to quickly and accurately collect, enhance, analyze, and present financial data. The company enables financial institutions to better understand and serve their customers, and helps them empower their customers to make better, more informed financial decisions.
Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Lehi, Utah, MX has made headlines in recent months via its partnerships with companies like Borrowell, a leading credit education firm based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Advicent, a SaaS technology solution provider for financial advisors and planners headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Central Pacific Bank , a full-service financial institution based in Honolulu, Hawaii. Named to the 2020 CB Insights Fintech 250 and highlighted as one of the fastest growing companies in Utah, MX unveiled its open finance platform, MX Open, in September. Ryan Caldwell is co-founder and CEO.
Branded payments firm Blackhawk Network has always been busy over the holiday season. Between its gift cards, digital rewards, and prepaid cards, the California-based company has helped people embrace the spirit of giving.
And while Blackhawk Network is still helping fuel the gifting and rewards economy this year, it is moving to an even more 2020-friendly (that is to say, digital-first) approach.
Last week Blackhawk announced it has teamed up with Evite to power the digital greeting card and invitation company’s eGift card program. Evite users can now choose from more than 100 eGift card options from popular brands including Lowe’s, Red Lobster, and Old Navy.
“It’s no surprise we’ve seen the demand for virtual gifts and greetings skyrocket in 2020. Contactless gifting is now a must-have, especially with the holidays approaching,” said Evite CEO Victor Cho. “Adding an extra touch like an eGift card can help people create personal connections with family and friends that they haven’t been able to see. It also helps our users stay safe, creates maximum flexibility for gifters and receivers, and modernizes the 2020 gifting experience. Thanks to Blackhawk’s expansive network of eGift card choices, our users have a broad selection to choose from at the tip of their fingertips.”
Brett Narlinger, head of global commerce at Blackhawk Network, noted that Blackhawk has seen a 70% increase in eGift sales– all before the peak holiday shopping season.
In addition to its partnership with Evite, Blackhawk announced a new payment solutions suite called Pay4It that connects physical and digital payments. The suite helps merchants reach underbanked populations with the ability to add cash to a digital wallet, mobile app or account, or make payments for digital goods with cash. It also offers consumers more choices to pay by enabling additional digital wallets and transforming loyalty points and rewards into purchasing power. Finally, Pay4It brings the gift card mall to non-traditional locations and into the digital realm.
“Retailers’ and merchants’ businesses changed instantly this year, and Blackhawk has responded with a product suite that brings once-disparate physical, digital and stored value payments together, keeping brands and consumers connected in a seamless way,” said VP of Global Product Strategy at Blackhawk Network Helena Mao.
An alum of FinovateFall 2012, Blackhawk Network was founded in 2001 and was acquired in January of 2018 by Silver Lake and P2 Capital Partners in a deal worth $3.5 billion. The company works with more than 1,000 brands and card partners, is in more than 200,000 retail locations in 28 countries, and connects with more than 300,000,000 shoppers each week. Talbott Roche is CEO.
