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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Our first all-digital European fintech conference is in the books. And given a little extra time to resolve a truly historic number of tied votes, our attendees have decided which companies will take home our Best of Show trophies for FinovateEurope 2021.
This year’s winners are:
Dbilia for its digital memorabilia that leverages blockchain and NFTs to enable fans to invest in creatives. Video.
Proptee for its global property app that helps reinvent the way people invest in real estate. Video.
Quantum Metric for its technology that helps retail banks differentiate on the digital experience, improve digital adoption, and enhance internal efficiencies. Video.
Thanks to all of our demoing companies, our partners and sponsors, and to you, our attendees in the fintech and financial services community. Be sure to stay in touch with the Finovate blog in the days and weeks to come for more information on our “Spring Collection” of webinars, networking opportunities, and upcoming conferences – including FinovateSpring in May.
Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their three favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The three companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2020 conferences are below:
It’s hard to believe it’s only been one year since FinovateEurope 2020 wrapped. What a year it’s been! Looking back on the 2020 demo and speaker videos feels notable precisely because of how “normal” they all look. So much of the past year has been spent dealing with specific challenges and simply trying to weather the storm. It almost seems bizarre to see innovations that don’t specifically address COVID-related problems. But that’s exactly what we have to start doing again.
As we inch towards a gradual re-opening process and, with any luck, a new, more sustainable status quo, it’s vital that we don’t forget one of the biggest lessons of 2020: to prepare for the future, we have to look beyond the problems we can already see.
Fintech is an industry that rewards those who see problems before they arise, and there are no shortage of opportunities waiting just around the corner. Now is the time to look upstream and maybe even dust off projects you shelved a year ago. Put simply, it’s time to stop playing defense all the time and approach fintech with optimism again.
The writing is on the wall – we are going to return to “normal” again. Now it’s up to all of us to imagine how good “normal” can be.
Not letting any grass grow beneath its feet in the wake of the U.S. Justice department’s decision to block its acquisition by Visa, fintech infrastucture company Plaid has since launched its FinRise incubator to support early-stage founders who are members of ethnic minority groups.
“While technology has come a long way to level the playing field, the reality is that many minority-owned businesses are still frequently denied access to some of the most basic resources needed to start and grow their businesses,” Nell Malone and Bhargavi Kamakshivalli wrote on the Plaid blog when the program was announced in January. Highlighting in particular the plight of African-American owned businesses as noted in a report from the Small Business Administration, Malone and Kamakshivalli wrote: “It is a shared responsibility to help power a financial system that works for everyone, and we recognize that one way to achieve that is to support and promote a diverse ecosystem of entrepreneurs.”
All this makes today’s announcement that FinRise has chosen the first companies to participate in its accelerator program that much more exciting for supporters of financial inclusion and diversity. Out of more than 100 applications, five early-stage fintechs were selected, offering solutions in everything from identity verification and authentication to financial wellness and lending.
The qualifications for consideration were startups with at least one founder who is African-American, indigenous, or a “person of color,” has two or more employees, and is post-seed, pre-Series B in its funding status. The members of the incoming class are below:
Global Data Consortium: a global identity verification API that provides KYC and eKYC services for businesses
Guidefi: a financial wellness marketplace to help members of ethnic minority groups connect with “vetted, culturally-attuned” financial advisors
OfColor: a financial wellness program that offers personalized PFM and loans to help ethnic minority employees maximize their 401(k) contributions
Walnut: a point-of-sale lending platform that works with healthcare providers to make it easier for patients to pay for their medical bills
Zeta: a financial wellness company that specializes in PFM solutions for couples and families
FinRise begins with a three-day bootcamp of workshops covering issues ranging from regulatory and policy concerns to marketing and communications strategy. After the bootcamp, startups will be paired with Plaid mentors to help them further develop and scale their products. The nine-month program consists of workshops and networking opportunities with accelerator partners, as well as discounts on services offered by Plaid network partners. Even those startups not selected for the accelerator this session will be eligible for discounts and credits from companies supporting the program.
FinRise’s network partners include: Alloy, AWS Activate, Brex, Fintrail, FS Vector, Hummingbird, Very Good Security, and Zendesk.
On the heels of its FinovateEurope demo this week, digital banking player Meniga has raised $11.8 million (€10 million). The investment brings the company’s total funding to $55.7 million.
Velocity Capital and Frumtak Ventures led the round, followed by Industrifonden and Meniga customers UniCredit, Swedbank, Groupe BPCE, and ĂŤslandsbanki.
“Meniga has established itself as a trusted strategic partner to top-tier banks around the world for Personal Finance Management and Business Finance Management tools, which are built on top of its market-leading data consolidation and enrichment technologies,” said Willem Willemstein, General Partner & Founder at Velocity Capital Fintech Ventures. “We’re extremely excited about the growing demand for the personalised banking experiences that Meniga delivers, such as its new product, Carbon Insights, which uses transaction data to measure a bank customer’s carbon footprint.”
Meniga will use the funds to increase its R&D efforts and further build its sales and service teams. The company also said it will use the funds to bolster its green banking products.
The latter point is notable because Meniga has been making a name for itself in the green banking arena since the launch of its Carbon Insights tool. While multiple digital banking providers, such as Aspiration and Treecard, have launched in an effort to promote ESG banking for individual consumers, there have not been many players helping incumbent banks to compete by offering their own green banking products.
Launched last year, Carbon Insights enables banks to inform customers about their carbon footprint based on their spending habits and offers them the ability to reduce or offset it. Earlier this month Iceland’s ĂŤslandsbanki became Meniga’s first client for Carbon Insights.
During the company’s FinovateEurope demo, Meniga CEO and Co-founder Georg Ludviksson noted that the company is currently implementing Carbon Insights with banks in four separate countries. “The demand is growing fast,” he added. “Carbon-concious consumers are here to stay.”
Founded in 2009, Meniga powers banking apps used by more than 100 million people in more than 30 countries. The company is headquartered in the U.K. with offices in Reykjavik, Stockholm, Warsaw, Singapore, and Barcelona.
Financial crime fighter Feedzai has secured a growth investment of $200 million. Product development, partner strategy, and global expansion are three Feedzai priorities that will be accelerated by the new investment.
The Series D round was led by KKR, and featured participation from existing investors Sapphire Ventures and Citi Ventures. The company’s total capital now stands north of $277 million, having most recently raised $50 million in a 2017 Series C round.
“This new investment delivers on our mission to keep commerce safe by further developing our single machine learning cloud platform for all four stages of the customer risk journey: prevention, detection, remediation, and compliance,” Feedzai CEO Nuno Sebastiao wrote on the company blog this week. “Focusing on the entirety of the risk lifecycle,” he added, “allows us to partner with financial services in a radically new way at every step of the journey.”
The funding also gives the risk management platform a valuation “well over $1 billion” the company noted in its funding announcement.
Partnered with some of the largest financial institutions in the world – including four of the five largest banks in North America, Feedzai leverages its risk management platform to monitor activity at companies with more than 800 million customers in 190 countries. The firm’s platform leverages machine learning and AI to help companies defend themselves from financial crimes including money laundering, detecting fraud in less than three milliseconds.
A Finovate alum since 2014, Feedzai unveiled its Feedzai Fairband solution earlier this month. Feedzai Fairband is an AutoML algorithm-based technology that automatically discovers less biased machine learning models while increasing model fairness by as much as 93% on average. Dubbed “the world’s most advanced AI fairness framework,” Feedzai Fairband enables financial institutions to accommodate their customers fairly and without the bias that even the most carefully-designed AI models may still hold.
“Feedzai Fairband is one of the biggest milestones in the financial services industry as it presents a low-cost, no-friction framework to address one of the biggest problems of our era – AI bias,” Feedzai Chief Scientist Dr. Pedro Bizrro said. “By creating the most advanced framework for AI fairness, Feedzai is allowing financial institutions to incorporate a critical piece of technology that addresses a problem under close public scrutiny with proven damaging effects across the globe. Building accurate and fairer models will be less challenging from now on.”
Named to Techround’s roster of the top 50 fintech companies in the U.K. in February, Feedzai highlighted the “skyrocketing” rise in fraud attacks in 2020 in its Financial Crime Report Q1, 2021, released earlier this month.
“2020 was a year of rapid growth in financial crime. Fraudsters tried to take advantage of the convergence between a fast-paced digital environment and a new wave of inexperienced consumers to perpetrate a multitude of attacks that created a significant uptick in fraud,” Jaime Ferreira, Senior Director of Global Data Science at Feedzai said in the report. “Financial institutions need to further invest in technologies to protect their customers while developing educational approaches. Robust technology and informed consumers are a powerful combination when fighting financial crime.”
Feedzai began the year with an announcement that Latin America’s largest investment bank, BTG Pactual, will implement Feedzai’s financial crime management technology.
Germany-based digital bank N26 announced today it is bringing on Gilles BianRosa as its new Chief Product Officer.
In this new role, Gilles will be responsible for leading product teams in Berlin, Barcelona, Vienna, and New York. He will also define, guide, and implement N26’s product strategy. To support these efforts, Gilles will bring on new team members and build N26’s product innovation.
“Gilles has a track record of delivering consumer-facing innovation that truly engages, excites and entertains customers,” said N26 co-founder and CEO, Valentin Stalf. “Today, N26 has revolutionized how people relate to their banking experience on an everyday basis. With Gilles on board, we will expand our experience further to being banking that easily connects an account with one’s lifestyle in an even more tangible way.”
Gilles brings with him decades of experience as CPO at tech companies including SoundCloud and Samsung Electronics. He also has entrepreneurial roots, having served as the co-founder and CEO of two Silicon Valley startups.
N26 is one of the most well-known players in the ever-growing digital banking realm. Founded in 2013, the startup offers its digital banking services in 25 countries, including the U.S., where it launched in 2019 and has since accumulated 500,000 customers in the area.
Today’s news comes about a month after N26 received a $35 million (€30 million) investment, bringing its total raised to $819 million. And it’s not the first C-level hire that N26 has initiated this year. In January, the company brought on Jan Kemper as Chief Financial Officer. Kemper holds experience in leading companies to go public, which may be an indication of N26’s intentions. In fact, Bloomberg expects the startup to IPO within the next two years.
In the biggest fundraising for an identity verification company to date, Jumio has locked in an investment of $150 million. The funding comes courtesy of Great Hill Partners, a private equity firm that specializes in investments in “high-growth, disruptive companies.” The investment takes Jumio’s total funding to more than $255 million, according to Crunchbase.
“Jumio’s innovations helped establish the identity verification market, and the need to establish someone’s digital identity remotely has never been greater,” Jumio CEO Robert Prigge said. The company plans to use the new capital to automate its identity verification solutions, expand the breadth of its Jumio KYX Platform, and further build out the platform’s suite of AML compliance solutions.
As part of the investment, Great Hill Partners’ Nick Cayer and Matt Vettel will join Jumio’s Board of Directors. Cayer, who has been with Great Hill since 2006, praised the company as “the de factor global leader in online identity verification, fraud detection, and compliance.” He added that given the mandate many institutions have to digitize processes such as onboarding and KYC monitoring, firms like Jumio can play a key role in helping them keep pace with the growing volume of digital and mobile-based transactions.
Making its Finovate debut in 2013 and being acquired by Centana Growth Partners in 2016, Jumio has verified more than 300 million identities issued by 200+ countries and territories since inception in 2010. With customers and partners in a wide range of verticals – from financial services and the sharing economy to retail, travel, and online gaming – Jumio leverages AI, biometrics, machine learning, and certified liveness detection to help ensure that customers are who they claim to be. Jumio’s KYX Platform, launched last fall, provides organizations with an end-to-end identity verification and eKYC solution that enables them to onboard new accounts safely and accurately, keep existing accounts secure, and meet their compliance obligations with regards to KYC, AML, and GDPR.
“Digital transformation is more than a buzzword. It’s today’s business imperative,” Prigge said. “To succeed, organizations must transform quickly and do it in ways that build trust, security, and satisfaction. Businesses can tailor the Jumio KYX Platform to fit their unique needs and risks and tap into services that accelerate digital transformation without sacrificing security and convenience.”
Learn more about how Jumio fights deep fakes and bots in our interview from last summer featuring company VP of Marketing, Dean Nicolls.
Online small business insurance company Huckleberry announced a partnership with Berkshire Hathaway GUARD today.
As part of the partnership, Huckleberry joins Berkshire Hathaway GUARD’s curated network of independent agents and brokers across the U.S. For Huckleberry, it’s the largest partnership with an insurance carrier the company has inked since it was founded in 2017.
Huckleberry offers a range of coverage for U.S. small businesses in need of insurance. Coverage types include general liability, workers’ compensation, business owners’ policies, business interruption, liquor liability, and more. Five of its policies, including including cyber, automotive insurance, and umbrella insurance, were added just last year.
What’s unique about Huckleberry, which offers coverage in 45 U.S. states, is its paper-free application experience that offers an estimate in a matter of minutes. And because the startup doesn’t charge brokerage fees, it not only provides a streamlined approached, but also a more competitive rate. instant coverage
The San Francisco-based company is in the process of moving its headquarters across the country to New York and also has plans to open a second headquarters location in Columbus, Ohio. As part of this growth, Huckleberry aims to boost its workforce to 100 people by the start of next year.
Founded by Bryan O’Connell , Huckleberry has raised $22 million. Its most recent investment was a $22 million Series A round led by Tribe Capital.
Here in the U.S., it’s tax season. And even though the IRS has extended the filing deadline by a few weeks, it’s still a stressful time for both individuals and businesses. In an era of changing benefits, everyone is on the lookout to minimize their tax burden.
Enter MainStreet, a company founded in 2019 that helps qualify tech startups for tax credits that most accountants don’t check for. The California-based company works with startups’ accountants to check for more than 200 potential unclaimed tax credits.
MainStreet works by integrating the startups’ payroll and scanning the data on a monthly basis for potential federal, state, and local tax credits. If MainStreet finds a tax credit, the company will advance 80% of the credit amount to the startup so that they can use the funds right away instead of waiting on their tax refund. The client is responsible for repaying that amount, with no interest incurred, after they receive their credit from the government.
MainStreet does not charge a fee for this monthly service. Instead, the company keeps the remaining 20% of the startups’ tax credit amount. However, MainStreet only receives payment if it successfully finds a refund for the client.
In the event of an audit, MainStreet offers support through the auditing process. And if MainStreet makes an error with the paperwork or credit claim, the client is insured for up to $1 million.
So far, MainStreet has found more than $80 million for over 1,000 startups. The company’s clients include Rally, Newfront Insurance, LedgerX, Pave, and more.
In the long term, MainStreet plans to expand its operations beyond serving tech startups to include small businesses, as well.
MainStreet has received almost $63 million from investors including Gradient Ventures, Sound Ventures, and Signal Fire.
In a round led by Coatue, Ribbit, and Stripes, digital asset infrastructure specialist Fireblocks has secured $133 million in new capital to power its mission to make it easier for banks to get into the digital asset space.
“Fintechs and banks require not only a specialized custody and settlement infrastructure to ensure customer funds are safely managed, but (also) a platform that enables new lines of digital offerings,” Fireblocks CEO Michael Shaulov said. He noted that while the company has no plans to become an actual bank itself, “we believe our infrastructure will lend itself perfectly to power an entirely new era of financial services.”
Also participating in the round as strategic investors were The Bank of New York Mellon and SVB. A number of Fireblocks existing investors also contributed to the round, including Paradigm, Galaxy Digital, Swisscom Ventures, Tenaya Capital and Cyberstarts Ventures. The investment brings the fintech’s total capital raised to $179 million.
Founded in 2018, Fireblocks launched as a digital assets infrastructure company helping crypto-based institutions and exchanges move, store, and issue digital assets. As interest in digital assets – especially cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum – has surged, Fireblocks has begun to leverage its talent and technology in digital assets to enable banks and other financial institutions to bring cryptocurrency access to their customers. By linking to its Fireblocks’ platform, banks and fintechs will be able to deploy a wide range of solutions – from custody, tokenization, and asset management to trading, lending, and payments – on both public and private blockchain networks.
The company’s investors highlighted Fireblocks’ capacity to enable banks and other financial institutions to efficiently and securely take advantage of the opportunity of and interest in digital assets. CEO of Asset Servicing and Head of Digital for BNY Mellon Roman Regelman said that bridging the gap between traditional and digital assets is “foundational to the future of custody.” Coatue Managing Partner Kris Fredrickson concurred: “our belief (is) that a new financial ecosystem is emerging and (companies) like Fireblocks are essential.”
Peer-to-peer lending platform and digital bank Zopa landed some extra funds this week, now that its new banking platform is starting to take off.
The U.K.-based company pulled in $28 million (ÂŁ20 million) from existing investors, bringing its total raised to $465 million.
Investors in today’s round include IAG Silverstripe, which led the round, as well as Augmentum, Alternative Credit Investments, Venture Founders, and others. The company will use the funds to support the growth of its digital bank.
Zopa secured its banking license last June and has since transitioned its platform from a peer-to-peer lending operation to a digital bank with a peer-to-peer lending option. Since that time, Zopa began offering savings accounts, which have reached $346 million (ÂŁ250 million) in customer deposits, and a credit card product that has made Zopa a top 10 credit card issuer in the U.K. based on new customers.
The new funding comes at a time when competition among digital banks is at an all-time high. Zopa is poised to do well in the battle for new clients and deposits, however. The company has built a well-established client base, resources, and relationships since it was founded in 2004 as a peer-to-peer lending platform.
Zopa CEO Jaidev Janardana echoes this. “Less than a year since launching our bank, we have exceeded our plan for growth, both in terms of customers and balance sheet,” he said. “This capital injection will enable us to continue on this accelerated path. Our strong entry to the U.K. savings and credit card markets shows the organic appeal of our products and we are happy to have investors who share our excitement at the opportunity to serve more customers across more product categories.”
Still looking for evidence that cryptocurrencies have arrived? The $170 million raised this week by Austrian digital asset neobroker Bitpanda is a testament to both the surging interest in cryptocurrencies as well as the vitality of fintech innovation in the CEE countries.
Bitpanda’s Series B round earned the company a valuation of $1.2 billion, giving Austria its first fintech unicorn. The Vienna-based company, founded in 2014 by co-CEOs Eric Demuth and Paul Klanschek, along with CTO Christian Trummer, plans to use the capital to add to the types of investments available on its platform, as well as expand to more markets in Europe.
This latest funding round was led by Valar Ventures and featured participation from partners of DST Global. The round is more than triple the amount raised by Bitpanda in its Series A financing back in September, which was also led by Valar Ventures (SpeedInvest of Vienna was an investor in the round, as well). The capital arrives the same week that Bitpanda announced that it had reached a new milestone of more than two million registered users on its Bitpanda and Bitpanda Pro platforms.
Bitpanda enables cryptocurrency investors and traders to buy, sell, save, and send more than 50 digital assets including Bitcoin and Ethereum. The neobroker also offers the world’s first real crypto index and a Bitpanda Card that enables Bitpanda accountholders to spend their digital assets as easily as they spend their cash.
With FinovateEurope right around the corner, we’ve got more than a little continental fintech on the mind these days. This week we take a quick look at fintech news from France, a country whose fintech industry is often overlooked in the broader conversation on European fintech.
Earlier this week, we learned that Finovate alum Ledger was launching a new business division dedicated to taking advantage of growing institutional interest in cryptocurrencies. Headquartered in Paris and founded in 2013, the company announced that its Ledger Enterprise Solutions unit will support enterprise adoption of the company’s core custody technology, Ledger Vault, as well as advise institutional clients with regards to technology implementation, security, and governance of digital asset portfolios.
On the French fintech funding beat, PayFit, a payroll and HR platform launched in France in 2016, announced that it has secured $107 million (EUR 90 million) in Series D funding. The investment was led by Eurzeo Growth, Large Venture, and BPI France, and featured participation from the company’s existing investors Accel, Frst, and individual investor Xavier Niel.
The company said that the capital will help support its comprehensive HR solution for SMEs and enable the company – which also operates in Spain, Germany, the U.K., and Italy – to “increase headcount from 550 to 800” by the end of 2021.
PayFit serves more than 5,000 small businesses, and includes Revolut, Starling Bank, and Treatwell among its customers. The company experienced growth of 40% in 2020 – a pace PayFit anticipates doubling this year – and credited much of this “hypergrowth” to the digital imperative brought on by the COVID-19 crisis.
“As a result of the pandemic, HR professionals have faced a much higher workload and unfamiliar challenges,” PayFit co-founder and CEO Firmin Zocchetto said. “They have had to deal with various issues, including supporting the company’s management with the implementation of remote work policies and ensuring employee wellbeing through new initiatives.”
Zocchetto said that there are “tens of millions of SMEs” that are ready for digital transformation. “The market is huge, and our ambition remains the same: to become the point of reference for payroll and HR management for all SMEs,” he said.
Striking another note in the funding beat, French fintech Silvr announced a EUR 3 million seed investment this week. The company, launched last year by Nima Karimi and Gregory Tappero, provides financing for digital businesses that cannot access traditional bank financing and want to raise equity capital.
Silvr offers a revenue-based financing model based on the performance of the financed company, an approach that contrasts with both traditional asset-based lending and fundraising models. Karimi has said that Silvr’s strategy offers a new option for SMEs in France, calling it simpler and more transparent.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
SEON, a Hungarian startup helps companies weed out false accounts and prevent fraudulent transactions, secured $12 million (EUR 10 million) in funding. The round is Hungary’s largest Series A funding to date.
Lithuanian fintech FINCI has gone live with Temenos’ Payments and Transact core banking solutions.
Estonian financial services company LVH invested GBP 4.45 million in U.K.-based B-North, which is building a SME lending bank.
