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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Are middle class banking customers a silent majority that can be successfully marketed to as a cohort of their own?
That’s the wager of former PayPal and Intuit CEO Bill Harris, whose digital bank for middle class Americans, One, has just raised $17 million in funding. The capital infusion brings the San Francisco, California-based firm’s total capital to $26 million.
“Middle-class American families are being left out, and we built One specifically for them,” Harris said. “One will combine the technology and convenience of challenger banks with a full-suite of products that traditional banks offer.”
The Series A round featured participation by Foundation Capital, Core Innovation Capital, and Obvious Ventures. Harris initiated the round last year in partnership with One CEO Brian Hamilton, formerly the CEO of Azlo. The digital bank is in private beta now and is slated for a launch this summer. One will offer competitive rates for savers, and combine debit and credit into a single account with one card.
“The current financial system breaks up the money people earn into silos, making it hard for busy families to stay on top of their banking and credit accounts,” Hamilton explained. “Most people have a balance in their checking account that earns nothing and outstanding debt on their credit card that costs too much.”
One accountholders earn 3% APY on their balances when saved via One’s Auto-Save feature (1% APY on other saved balances), and can borrow at a monthly rate that is as low as 1%. No interest is charged on funds repaid within the borrowing month, and accountholders can increase their credit limit by setting up direct deposit.
One also supports shared “pockets” for saving, spending, and borrowing, to make it easier to share funds with family members, roommates, team members, and others. The digital bank charges no overdraft or cash advance fees, does not require a minimum balance, and provides access to more than 55,000 ATMs.
“One is designed to maximize a family’s hard-earned paycheck by unifying saving, spending, and borrowing into one account,” Hamilton said. “When this money is being managed from one place, people save more, are charged less, and gain control.”
Status is something we’ve become accustomed to in the social media era. On Facebook, we update our status to let our friends know how fun our vacation was. On Instagram we brag about our financial status, on Twitter we show off our social status, and on LinkedIn we boast about our professional status.
Comparisons
There’s one fintech in particular that understands this. Aptly named Status, the New York-based company helps users compare themselves with others– though not via pictures, memes, or self-aggrandizing updates. Status takes a user’s financial snapshot by aggregating all of their accounts and anonymously compares a range of metrics with the national average and different groups, including others with similar demographics, people in the user’s geographical location, those that are in the user’s income range, and of the same age.
What exactly are they comparing? Users can analyze their spending, income, debt, assets, net worth, and credit score and compare each figure against those of different groups. Specifically, users can see how much others in their geographical area spend on groceries, how their credit score compares to the national average, how their net worth compares with others in their same age group, how much folks in their same income range spend on housing, etc.
Business model
Because users are motivated to share as much financial data as they can to see how they compare with their peers, Status has excellent insight into which products and services will be most enticing. If Status sees a consumer has a lot of liquid cash, they might show them an ad for a high-interest savings account. Or maybe the user’s vehicle is 15 years old– in that case Status may show them new vehicle financing offers.
Some of Status’ partners include Airbnb, AllState, Liberty Mutual, Betterment, VSP, and Haven Life. Status makes money when it makes a successful referral. This is a common model with B2C fintechs who want to offer their services for free to end consumers.
Personal experience
I have to admit, I’ve enjoyed the comparison capabilities more than I thought I would. My competitive side loves comparing every aspect of my financial standing with others. However, I found it more difficult than I expected to aggregate my entire financial life to gain an accurate comparison. I linked my everyday accounts but there are multiple investment accounts and crypto holdings still outstanding. Additionally, I never found a good way to account for my investment property.
As for the referrals, I was impressed. The offers listed were much more relevant than the offers my bank (which keeps trying to get me to refinance a vehicle loan that I don’t have) usually presents.
Overall, I think I’ll be back. As with all PFM platforms, it is difficult to get a clear picture since transaction categories are often muddled. However, it is still a nice way to not only view my own financial standing, but also compare it with my neighbors.
With the support of PayU and Microsoft’s venture capital division M12, digital assets startup Bakkt has picked up a whopping $300 million in Series B funding. The round, which closed last Friday, also featured participation from Boston Consulting Group, Goldfinch Partners, CMT Digital, Pantera Capital, and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Bakkt’s parent company.
“Bakkt launched two years ago with the vision of building trust in and unlocking the value of digital assets for institutions and consumers alike,” company CEO Mike Blandina wrote in a blog post earlier this week. He pointed to the company’s launch last year of its end-to-end regulated market for bitcoin, as well as its institutional bitcoin custody offering, as examples of how the Atlanta, Georgia-based startup has been “focused on delivering that vision.”
These examples will soon also include a new app, slated for a summer launch, that will enable users to maximize the value of a widening variety of digital assets – from loyalty and rewards points to cryptocurrencies.
“Bakkt gives users control over their digital assets,” Blandina wrote. “Whether it’s miles from your favorite airline, loyalty points from the local grocery store, or bitcoin you’ve purchased, the Bakkt app enables you to aggregate all of these assets into a single digital wallet.”
The funding takes the company’s total capital to more than $482 million, and adds to its more than $1 billion valuation. Proceeds from the Series B will be used to help fund parent company ICE’s acquisition of loyalty solutions provider Bridge2 Solutions. Bakkt will leverage Bridge2 Solutions’ partnership network, and its Loyalty Pay offering, to help build and launch products of its own.
Powering more than 4,500 loyalty and incentive programs, including programs for seven out of the top ten financial institutions and two of the largest U.S. airlines, Bakkt was founded in 2018.
A collaboration between TransferWise and Chinese payments and lifestyle services platform Alipay will enable TransferWise’s more than seven million users to instantly send yuan to Alipay users. All that senders require is the recipient’s name and their Alipay ID to have funds from 17 different currencies converted to Chinese yuan and transferred to the account linked to the recipient’s Alipay profile.
“Our newest partnership with Alipay has been one of the most requested features from our users since our expansion to Asia,” TransferWise CEO and co-founder Kristo Käärmann said. “Alipay functions as the primary payment method for more than a billion people in China and we are excited to be bringing instant international transfers to the fingertips of Alipay’s users.”
Käärmann added that working with Alipay helps TransferWise move closer to fulfilling its Money without Borders mission, “and is a continuation of our vision of making cross border payments, instant, convenient, transparent, and eventually free.”
Transferees will also benefit from being able to send money based on the real exchange rate. Eligible currencies are GBP, EUR, BGN, CZK, DKK, HUF, NOK, PLN, RON, SEK, USD, CAD, AUD, HRK, HKD, SGD, and JPY. Up to five transfers to Alipay per month are permitted, with per transaction caps of 31,000 CNY, and an annual limit of 500,000 CNY. TransferWise is celebrating the new offering by giving fee-free, first transfers for the first 100 new customers – as well as a bonus payment of 10 yuan to the recipient on their first remittance from Alipay received. The promotion extends until April 8.
Working with Alipay represents a significant opportunity for TransferWise. Alipay serves more than one billion consumers around the globe, and China itself is believed to be one of the biggest remittance destinations in the world, with Chinese ex-pats abroad expected to send more than $66 billion (£54 billion) back home to China according to a 2019 report from the Migration Data Portal.
“We are committed to working with partners such as TransferWise, using innovative technologies to help global consumers gain access to inclusive financial services,” Alipay Head of Global Remittances Ma Zhiguo said, “creating greater value for society and bringing equal opportunities to the world.”
The announcement comes in the wake of TransferWise’s introducing global money transfers to six mobile wallet platforms in Indonesia (GoPay, Ovo, and Dana), the Philippines (PayMaya), and Bangladesh (bKash).
Founded in 2011 and based in London, U.K., TransferWise has been a Finovate alum since their FinovateEurope demo in 2013. The company has raised more than $772 million in funding, and has earned a valuation of $3.5 billion as of its May 2019, $292 million secondary share sale.
UAE-based foreign exchange platform Al Ansari has partnered with financial crime compliance company Pelican. Under the deal, Al Ansari will leverage Pelican’s PelicanSecure, a set of AI-based sanctions screening, anti-money laundering tools, and transaction monitoring solution.
Al Ansari selected PelicanSecure for its compliance accuracy, auditability, processing capacity, and AI-based risk classification approach. Company CEO Mohammad Bitar also noted that, because AI is a core part of Al Ansari’s strategy, Pelican’s use of the enabling technology was a factor in the partnership.
“We selected Pelican as we are convinced they can support us enhancing our anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance frameworks to make them more robust through the use of innovative technology, said Bitar. “This is the start of a long-term partnership with Pelican and we look forward to working closely to streamline our operations around sanction screening, transaction monitoring and AML, both now and in the future.”
Pelican is headquartered in the U.K. and was founded in 1993. Among the company’s clients are ADCB, Standard Chartered Bank, Al Mulla Exchange, Wells Fargo, State Bank of India, and Bank of Barbado.
Al Ansari opened its first branch in 1966 and has since expanded to 190 branches. The company has 2,500 employees that help facilitate 80,000 transfers each day for 2.5 million customers every month. Last year, Al Ansari transferred $11.3 billion (AED 40.5 billion) via its network.
One of the best ways to take the temperature of an industry is by talking to those helping fund it. Our conversation at FinovateEurope last month with Nick Sando, a member of the Future of Money team at Octopus Ventures, was a great opportunity to find out what venture capital is focusing on in 2020.
Octopus Ventures is one of the largest VCs in Europe and invests primarily in seed and Series A investments, two to five million. The firm has three principal focus areas: the Future of Health (health and wellness investments), DeepTech (industry 4.0) and fintech (or “Future of Money” of which Sando is a part), including payments, insurtech, credit, lending, and blockchain. “We’re pretty agnostic across the space,” Sando said.
Sando arrived at Octopus Ventures in 2018, after a career in which he founded companies like SaaS beauty and wellness platform Mojo and retail platform SnagTag. He notes that the benefit of co-founding two businesses what that it provided him with a “crash course in company building.” Sando added, “we had successes, failures, raised funding, and exited, all in a short space of time.” He has earned a double major in Finance and Economics from the University of Miami School of Business.
Asked where he and his fellow panelist on our All-Star Venture Capital panel believe the smart money is headed this year, Sando replied with a smile, “Well, there is always the theme ‘Is there correction coming?’ And there a lot of people who think that there is. So the smart money is probably the money that’s still there at the end of it!”
Here are some of the top takeaways from my conversation with Nick Sando this year at FinovateEurope in Berlin.
On valuations in fintech companies and the IPO v.s. acquisition debate
Sando: Investors (should) … look at businesses which are trading at multiples which, if they went public, they would be receiving the same multiples. In fintech, some of them are getting too large to be acquired. So going public is route to go down. I look at some of the challenger banks, for example. Who’s going to acquire them? They are so big now! I think the IPO route should be back on.
On the role of venture capital in helping startups become better businesses
Sando: Having such a large fund gives us the benefit of being able to invest into certain roles across the board. The most commonly helpful role that we can provide outside of money is generally hiring. We have various people, and a whole hiring function in Octopus – and that’s not for our internal hiring, its for our help our portfolio companies hire.
In fintech, these companies are global companies with big ambitions, so traveling for example, from Europe to the States is on nearly all of these company’s roadmaps. Therefore we have set up an office, for example, in the States which is purely just to help those companies make these transitions.
So I think, given there are so many fintech investors in the market, as a fintech founder, I’d ask myself, “I should really be getting a little bit more than cash, these days!” Because they deserve it.
On what makes for a successful and creative venture capital team
Sando: A VC team should be made up of very different thinkers. If you have a VC team with all the same way of thinking, you might as well just have one of those people. What a team needs, therefore, is whatever it lacks.
We generally lean toward people who are intensely curious, have a different opinion than ours, see the world differently – maybe they grew up somewhere else, maybe they were a founder themselves – I think over half our team (are founders) … I think that’s what makes really great investment teams as a whole, when people can argue and talk and debate different ways of thinking.
Faster payments for freelance workers? That’s the goal of the new partnership between freelance career platform UnderPinned and payments platform Banked. The two companies are now offering a commission-free service that reduces the amount of time it takes to process a freelancer’s invoice from more than three minutes to less than 30 seconds.
The service works via UnderPinned’s Virtual Office platform, which leverages open banking to retrieve data from invoices and automatically generate bank transfers that can be readily authorized by any U.K. banking provider.
“The number of people choosing freelance work has grown rapidly in recent years, but the infrastructure that supports this type of employment has failed to keep pace with the trend,” said Albert Azis-Clauson, UnderPinned founder and CEO. He highlighted payments as a major pain point. “The traditional process of paying an invoice for a freelancer is extremely clunky and time-consuming,” he said, “and that’s (why) we’ve decided to launch this new service.”
UnderPinned’s Virtual Office provides freelancers and gig economy workers with resources they need to make their jobs easier. The cloud-based hub helps freelancers manage portfolios and projects, invoices, contracts, and more. The Virtual Office also features educational tools and support resources to give freelancers additional assistance with things like finding work spaces to securing insurance. Founded in 2018, and launching its technology earlier this year, UnderPinned already has more than 2,200 users on its platform. The company, which is headquartered in London’s Bethnal Green, is in the final few weeks of its crowdfunding campaign, having raised 93% of its £500,000 ($614,000) target.
In working with Banked, UnderPinned has partnered with a firm that, since its founding in 2017 and launch early last year, has been dedicated to improving the payments process. Banked offers an API platform that fully leverages open banking by connecting to banks to enable payments and authentication of user information with their third party solutions. Based in London, the company includes account top-ups for e-money, trading, and gaming businesses, and payment linking for charities, marketplaces, and crowdfunding platforms among the use cases for its technology.
“We started Banked because we wanted to build a platform that allowed businesses and consumers to do more with their financial lives,” Banked CEO and founder Brad Goodall said. “Our new partnership with Underpinned delivers on this, helping freelancers and businesses save a huge amount of time and ultimately money. It provides a new way of paying invoices that will transform the freelancer experience.”
German online lender Kreditech announced a rebrand this week. Now known as Monedo, the company has completed a major C-suite overhaul – including a new Chairman, CEO, CFO, and CTO, and is gearing up for an expansion into the near-prime lending markets of India, Russia, Poland, and Spain.
“The name change marks the next stage in the fundamental transformation we have been undergoing, as the company moves from a start-up to a scale-up fintech,” Monedo CEO David Chan explained. “Throughout 2019 we have been focused on successfully transitioning the company back to growth by focusing on improving operational efficiency, risk, and cost management capabilities, and strengthening our products and services.”
Chan credited this emphasis – along with the financial support of the company’s investors – for making the company “perfectly positioned” to reach its growth goals.
Monedo says that it plans to reach €1 billion in revenue by 2025, propelled both by growth in current markets as well as expansion into new ones. Founded in 2012, the company has been a Finovate alum since 2014.
A new partnership between two Finovate alums – SecureKey Technologies and Onfido – will combine AI-enabled, physical identity document proofing with real-time authentication and verification.
“Our partnership demonstrates positive market movement towards a more secure digital future for consumers,” SecureKey Technologies CEO Greg Wolfond said. “At SecureKey, we believe strong, privacy-based digital identity requires the collaboration of multiple players and are pleased to continue our track record of developing market-leading digital identity services and offerings alongside like-minded organizations.”
Toronto, Ontario-based SecureKey is a Finovate alum since its FinovateFall debut in 2010. Ondot, which is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, first demoed at Finovate 2014 and most recently presented its latest technology at FinovateSpring in 2018.
The collaboration will enable users to scan physical ID documents and have additional personal information verified in real-time from trusted sources such as financial institutions, credit bureaus, and government agencies. The companies said that this combination of credential and login document validation is key to both expanding digital capabilities worldwide as well as making identity verification a more secure and safe process for consumers.
“At Onfido, our mission is to create a more open world, where identity is the key to access,” company CEO Husayn Kassai said. “SecureKey clearly shares this same drive to build a more secure landscape where customers can have privacy, security, and consent all in one easy-to-use process,.”
Here is our weekly look at the latest news from our Finovate alums.
Signifydlaunches its Commerce Protection Platform to maximize e-commerce conversion, automate customer experience, and eliminate fraud and customer abuse.
Zenoo selectsID R&D for its passive facial liveness digital onboarding solution.
Revolut Users Can Now Diversify with Gold – Digital alternative banking company Revolut announced this week it is helping users diversify their portfolios even further by enabling in-app purchases of gold.
Mastercard and Samsung Make Going Digital More Accessible – “This partnership with Mastercard is our way of making that future available to everyone by helping to close the digital divide, especially in emerging economies and countries,” explained KC Choi, executive vice president of Global Mobile B2B at Samsung.
Airwallex Integrates with Xero to Help SMEs Reconcile Cross-Border Payments – Small and medium-sized businesses working with Australian cross-border payments company Airwallex will be getting some help with their books. The company has announced a new partnership with New Zealand-based, cloud accounting company Xero.
Credit Sesame Launches Digital Bank Account – Financial health platform Credit Sesame announced this week it has launched Sesame Cash, a debit card aimed to help consumers reach financial stability while optimizing credit.
SpyCloud Integrates with ThreatConnect to Help Stop Account Takeover Attacks – A new partnership between intelligence-driven security operations platform ThreatConnect and account takeover prevention solution provider SpyCloud will help individuals take action during the critical time between credential exposure and account breach.
Natural language processing technology innovator Eigen Technologies has added $5 million (£4 million) to its Series B, taking the round’s total to $42 million and giving the firm more than $60 million in overall capital. The funding comes from ING Ventures and is part of a “broader strategic partnership” that blends Eigen’s NLP technology with ING’s experience in applying machine learning to financial services.
Eigen Technologies co-founder and CEO Dr. Lewis Z. Liu put the investment from ING in the context of the two firms’ years-long relationship. “(We) have found them to have some of the most advanced thinking in the market in the application of machine learning in financial services,” Liu said, “something that comes from their fantastic innovation culture.”
ING currently uses Eigen’s NLP technology in its LIBOR replacement and loan operations. Via the strategic partnership, the companies will accelerate deployment of Eigen’s technology in other areas, including trade finance and small business banking.
Eigen leverages machine learning to extract data from a diverse range of documents, and then integrate that data into the workflows of its customers. The company’s algorithms use pattern recognition to examine words, phrases, and sections of text to help businesses review documents for compliance purposes, automatically extract granular information from asset portfolios, and has applications in fraud identification, contract negotiation, and other activities.
ING Chief Innovation Officer and CEO of ING Ventures Benoît Legrand praised Eigen’s ability to deploy its technology in multiple use cases such as retail and wholesale banking. “This partnership will allow both companies to work closer together when implementing use cases through data and process analysis,” Legrand said, “so as to accelerate Eigen’s advantage in NLP as well as ING’s digital transformation.”
Eigen Technologies demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2019. The company has teamed up with more than 25% of the G-SIBs (globally systematically important banks), as well as major asset managers, insurers, hedge funds, and law firms. Eigen was founded in 2014 and has offices in London, U.K. and New York City.
Digital alternative banking company Revolutannounced this week it is helping users diversify their portfolios even further by enabling in-app purchases of gold.
The U.K.-based company, which first started with cryptocurrency holdings, then began offering investment in stocks, will enable customers on its Premium and Metal plans to purchase and transfer gold. Users cannot, however, make purchases with their gold holdings using their Revolut card. If a user attempts to make a purchase when they only have funds in gold, Revolut will convert a portion of their gold into fiat currency and use that.
Revolut makes it clear that since gold is not regulated by the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, funds used to purchase gold – and the gold itself – will not be safeguarded under the U.K. Electronic Money Regulations 2011, the Payment Service Regulations 2017, or the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
This is good timing on behalf of Revolut. Since the stock market and crypto assets are extremely volatile at the moment, many people are purchasing to gold to grasp onto some stability. And now they don’t even need to leave Revolut’s app to do so.
There is no word on if or when the company will allow trading of other precious metals such as silver or platinum.
We recently shared the news that restrictions on the ability of banks in India to work with cryptocurrency exchanges was overturned by the country’s Supreme Court.
With this in mind, and given the growing interest in India as a fintech power, we spoke with Neeraj Khandelwal, co-founder of CoinDCX, a cryptocurrency trading platform and liquidity aggregator in India. The company, founded in 2018 and based in Singapore, recently won the Excellence in Finance – Companies award by FiNext. Last month, CoinDCX launched its cryptocurrency derivative trading platform, DCXfutures. Bain Capital Ventures is among the firm’s investors.
Finovate: The biggest news in India in terms of the cryptocurrency market has to be the Supreme Court’s overturning of the Central Bank’s ban on cryptocurrencies. What can you tell us about the impact of the ban and the effect of the ruling striking it down?
Neeraj Khandelwal: The banking ban was related to the suspension of banking relationships with individuals or businesses dealing with cryptocurrencies, but crypto businesses were still free to operate on their own. In response, CoinDCX innovated and offered peer-to-peer services for the buying and selling crypto through INR.
After the verdict, banking relations have resumed once again. CoinDCX became the first cryptocurrency platform in India to integrate bank account transfers, just six hours after the Supreme Court’s ruling. Today, we are seeing 10x growth in signups on a day-to-day basis. Our product, Insta, which allows customers to buy crypto with INR, has also seen high hits. Overall, the market is in an upswing.
Finovate: What is the potential of the cryptocurrency market in India? How widespread are cryptocurrencies now and what factors are driving growth in adoption in India?
Khandelwal: Less than five million people currently hold cryptocurrencies in India today. However, listing websites like exchangewar.info have shown that the highest volumes are coming from India, so there is indeed great potential here. With a population of over one billion, India stands to contribute significantly to a large part of the global crypto volume and the industry as a whole.
In India, there is a growing number of cryptocurrency exchanges and startups that are constantly innovating to strengthen and expand the industry. In addition, India holds many favourable advantages for cryptocurrency adoption—for instance, with an average age of 27 years, India has a huge working population with disposable income on the rise.
Finovate: Many of us outside of India are fascinated by the country’s cashless experiment. At this time, what has been learned from that experience and what is the future of cashlessness in India?
Khandelwal: The writing on the wall is crystal clear that cashlessness is the way to go. This was first witnessed on an extremely large scale during the time of demonetization in late 2016. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which is the umbrella body for retail payments and settlements in India, revealed that the value of UPI transactions for December 2019 was INR 2.02 Lakh Cr. This figure is expected to grow as cashlessness brings greater convenience and faster transactions.
As cryptocurrencies are entirely digital, it promotes greater benefits for cashlessness in comparison to fiat currencies. I believe that in the coming years, the Indian economy will be built on the foundation of a cashless society, with both digital fiat and cryptocurrencies working in parallel.
Finovate: You are part of the founding team of CoinDCX. Can you tell us a little about the company, the market it serves, and the role it plays in helping pave the way for broader adoption of cashless technologies?
Khandelwal: CoinDCX specializes in crypto-enabled fintech services. Sumit Gupta and I founded CoinDCX in 2018, with a mission to connect billions of people to global financial markets. Today, CoinDCX is reputed to be India’s most trustworthy cryptocurrency trading platform and remains one of the strongest products in our service offerings. CoinDCX has empowered its traders with a bouquet of industry-first crypto-based products to trade better using liquidity from the world’s leading exchanges like Binance, Huobi Global and OKEx.
By bringing all crypto-trading products under a single roof, our products are designed to cater to all types of traders, keeping their experience, risk tolerance, and frequency of trading into consideration.
Our users have found the platform to be simple and effortless. Anyone can trade in 500+ markets with DCXtrade, convert their INR to cryptocurrencies and vice versa on DCXInsta, earn by lending their holdings with DCXlend, and leverage their trades up to 6X in 250+ Altcoins using DCXmargin.
Here is our weekly look at fintech around the world.
Asia-Pacific
Alipay to encourage 40 million merchants and service providers to use its mini programs as competition with WeChat intensifies.
Hong Kong will soon have a new challenger bank as Standard Chartered’s Mox Bank opens for business later this year.
Southeast Asian ride-hailing firm turned super app company Grab to use Wirecard for payment processing.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Visa and Nigeria-based mobile money platform Paga forge strategic partnership to bring more security and convenience to mobile payments.
South African cloud platform builder Jini Guru teams up with product engineering firm Azilen Technologies to build fintech solutions for emerging markets.
Modern Ghana features WorldRemit Country Manager Gbenga Okejimi on the country’s fintech industry.
Central and Eastern Europe
Total Croatia News featuresMicroblink in its look at Croatian companies making the Financial Times’ 100 Fastest Growing Companies in Europe roster.
International Banker profiles Poland’s digital banking leader mBank.
Hamburg, Germany-based lender Kreditech rebrands as Monedo
Middle East and Northern Africa
Saudi Arabia Monetary Authority (SAMA) hires payments technology company HPS to provide a QR-based payments system.
Orange Money goes live in Morocco after receiving authorization from the Bank Al Maghrib.
Business Chief Middle East looks at the top 10 fintech startups in the Middle East and UAE.
Central and Southern Asia
FamPay, a Bengaluru, India-based fintech that is building a payments network for teens, picks up $4.7 million in seed funding.
Bloomberg Quint looks at the controversy over the Reserve Bank of India’s moratorium on Yes Bank and its impact on fintech companies in the country.
My Republica asks whether or not India’s cashless revolution can be extended to Nepal.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Mexican fintech Clip launches new “point of sale in the palm of your hand” solution, Clip Total.
Born2Invest look at how fintech platforms are supporting female entrepreneurs in Mexico.
Fintech-as-a-service company Rapyd partners with Brazilian payment providers Dock and Banco Rendimento.
What does it take to create an event with true gender diversity? In this piece, Finovate Content and Strategy Director Adela Knox, who was recently named the Goodwill ambassador for the European Women Payments Network (EWPN), explains how she gets the balance right.
Finance leaders have predicted this year could mark a turning point for gender diversity in the banking and finance sector as pressure is mounting and gender pay gap reporting galvanizes efforts to promote more women.
The financial services industry is making progress on gender balance in the workforce. Mindsets are changing and, as a result of hard work and commitment, progress is starting to be reflected in the numbers. Finovate has always advocated for gender diversity at our events globally to support the overall industry change and market shift happening within the fintech sector. There is still a long way to go to create an environment in which women have equal access to opportunity and positive outcomes but we at Finovate are eager to support the industry change every step of a way.
Our team made a commitment to pledge to only run events with mixed-gender panels. As a result a considerable amount is being done to challenge the prevalent all-male conference panels. We provide women in fintech with an opportunity to bolster their profile and to be taken seriously. The gained visibility and platform become fundamental to getting women into the boardrooms and ultimately build their network and advance their careers.
We focus on an equal female-to-male ratio during our speaker acquisition phase and we also proactively support gender equality at our events while running Women in Fintech forums with the goal to empower women in financial services and technology.
The Women in Fintech forums are compiled of networking evenings, workshops, panel discussions, keynote presentations, and debates offering dialogue-driven sessions and initiatives to promote diversity and gender equality at the workplace and educate on why encouraging it matters. Topics include: What is diversity in the workplace? What are the benefits and challenges of diversity in the workplace? How can we manage diversity in the workplace? What should hiring, policies, & practices look like? How can we promote gender equality at workplace? etc.
We collaborate with various industry bodies and associations who strive to create more opportunities for women and minorities, as well as being a champion for a more diverse and inclusive industry for all. Some of the groups that we collaborate with include the European Women in Payments Network (EWPN), Women in Fintech NY, and Women in Fintech SF. This is an ongoing effort and we at Finovate are passionate to constantly grow and elevate our initiatives globally. Recently, i had an opportunity to interview Isil Ugurlu, the German Ambassador of EWPN, while running yet another Women in Fintech forum at the annual FinovateEurope 2020 in Berlin, about what it means for the organisation to collaborate with event organisaers like Finovate. You can watch the interview here:
To promote the gender goal of 50/50 diversity in financial services, women who register by this Friday, March 13, can purchase a ticket to any 2020 Finovate event at a 50% discount. Just enter the code EQUALITY on the booking form.
