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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Budapest, Hungary-based digital banking solutions company Finshape has completed its acquisition of loyalty platform Realtime-XLS.
The acquisition will enhance Finshape’s expertise in customer loyalty with the addition of 60 new specialists, as well as expand the firm’s reach geographically.
Finshape made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023 in London.
Digital banking solutions provider Finshapehas completed its acquisition of loyalty platform Realtime-XLS. Finshape bought the company from the Collinson Group and it represents Finshape’s first acquisition of a global product company. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
There’s a lot to like in the move. The acquisition will boost Finshape’s expertise in the field of customer loyalty, giving the company 60 new specialists. The deal will also enable Finshape to extend its geographic reach courtesy of new offices in France and Singapore, and bolster its relationships with major banks in the UAE, Australia, Indonesia, and Singapore. In total, Finshape will consist of nearly 600 professionals supporting millions of end users across 100 banks around the world.
“This acquisition is a strategic milestone on our mission to transform the way banks serve their customers by unlocking the full potential of people and technology,” Finshape CEO Petr Koutný said.
Integrating the Realtime-XLS solution will give Finshape’s Digital Bank Operating System (DBOS) advanced loyalty capabilities, enabling banks to reward customer behavior, boost customer engagement, and generate additional revenue via cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. This will increase customer lifetime value, help banks secure a larger share of wallet, and make growth more sustainable.
“The loyalty solution will now form an integral part of our growing, customer-centric digital banking portfolio,” Koutný added. “Seamlessly integrated into our DBOS platform, it enhances the value we deliver by enabling banks to offer hyper-personalized experiences and build deeper, more meaningful relationships with their customers.”
Headquartered in Budapest, Hungary, Finshape won Best of Show for its demo at FinovateEurope 2022. At the event, the company showed how its platform combines digital banking and deep personalization capabilities to help financial institutions boost digital engagement, loyalty, and sales—especially among their micro- and small business customers. The company was formed in 2021 when Czech Banking Software Company (BSC) merged with Hungary’s W.UP (a three-time Finovate Best of Show winner).
Jenő Nieder, Deputy CEO at PortfoLion Capital Partners, the majority owner of Finshape that helped finance the merger between BSC and W.UP, praised the transaction as “perfectly aligned with the buy-and-build strategy” conceived when Finshape was founded. “This transaction not only incorporates a new loyalty platform but also adds new capabilities and true global coverage to an already strong company,” Nieder said.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 8 – 10. Register today using this link and save 20%.
Conductiv
Conductiv helps lenders find more good loans, approve them faster, and grow portfolios safely using AI and permissioned data orchestration.
Features
Prevents fraud
Identifies charge offs before they happen
Finds new good loans hidden within existing loan applications
Who’s it for?
Banks and credit unions that make retail, SMB, and commercial loans.
Dimply
Dimply is an intuitive AI experience engine for builders in financial services to create, own, and evolve customer experiences, turning any data into personalized experiences, ready to embed instantly.
Features
Allow teams closest to customers to own the experience
Bring APIs in real-time to orchestrate data
Deliver personalized journeys inside existing apps and sites
Who’s it for?
Banks, credit unions, insurers, pension providers, wealth managers, and other financial services providers.
ID-Pal
ID-Pal’s ID-Detect is an additional layer of verification applied to every submission that accurately detects the most common type of AI document fraud, like synthetic IDs and portrait swaps.
Features
Confirms presence of physical, real ID vs. deepfake
Detects AI-manipulated IDs instantly and removes risk of fraud
Delivers seamless onboarding of real users and reduces false-positives
Who’s it for?
Credit unions, community banks, payment providers, wealth management firms, fund admins, merchant acquirers, and financial service providers.
Kaaj AI
Kaaj AI agents turn messy small business loan packages into clear, holistic risk assessments in just three minutes, helping lenders close ten times more loans.
Features
Delivers an end-to-end small business loan assessment in three minutes
Provides holistic credit and fraud risk insights with ready-to-review credit memos
Offers AI agents for loan officers, sales, and credit teams that unlock ten times more loans
Who’s it for?
Banks, credit unions, and small business lenders.
Payfinia
Payfinia’s composable QR payment service, built with Matera, allows FIs to deliver secure, instant QR code payments across FedNow, RTP, ACH, and digital asset platforms.
Features
Delivers instant, secure bank-to-bank payments via QR codes
Works across FedNow, RTP, ACH, or digital assets
Ensures safe, real-time transactions with native fraud controls
Who’s it for?
Credit unions, community banks, digital banking platform providers, and fintechs.
Scamnetic
Scamnetic offers cutting-edge, globally patented AI solutions that detect, prevent, and stop scams in real time, protecting identities and communications everywhere.
Features
KnowScam 2.0: Provides real-time scam detection across multiple channels
IDEveryone™: Delivers instant identity verification to prevent impersonation
Enhanced AI: Uses deepfake detection with actionable insights
Who’s it for?
Banks, credit unions, payment providers, fintechs, SMBs, and individuals.
Vertice AI
Vertice AI empowers community FIs with predictive analytics that transform data into actionable insights, driving smarter, measurable growth.
Features
Delivers AI-powered insights for precise customer targeting, boosting acquisition and cross-selling
Provides automated, personalized campaigns that maximize engagement
Chime is partnering with Workday to integrate Chime Workplace into Workday Wellness, expanding access to financial wellness tools through employers’ existing HR systems.
Chime Workplace helps employees manage money, save, and build credit, while giving employers insights into overall financial health and benefit usage.
The move positions Chime beyond consumer banking, signaling its push into the employer-driven financial wellness space.
Chime announced its latest move to build up Chime Workplace, the financial wellness suite it launched in March of this year. The company has partnered with HR solutions company Workday, becoming a Workday Wellness partner for financial benefits.
Chime will integrate Workday Wellness into Chime Workplace to bring financial wellness into its employee benefits suite. Chime Workplace offers employers a single platform with financial wellness tools and an aggregated view of employee financial health. The platform helps employees manage their money, track their savings, build their credit, and more.
Workday was founded in 2005 to provide HR tools as a service to businesses across industries. Today, in addition to offering a wide range of HR tools, the company also offers AI tools such as agents, financial tools such as payroll and financial management, legal tools such as contract intelligence, supply chain management solutions, and more.
Under the partnership, organizations using Workday can turn on benefits for their employees using Chime Workplace directly through Workday Wellness in their existing HR systems. Workday’s Workday Wellness solution offers its clients insights into which benefits their employees want and use, helping them to improve their programs and add appropriate new offerings, all in the Chime Workplace dashboard. Chime Workplace will be available via the Employer Benefits Selection Portal for Workday customers.
“Employees today are increasingly looking to their employers for competitive financial wellness benefits,” said Workday General Manager, HCM, Workforce Management and Payroll Cristina Goldt. “Our partnership with Chime makes it easy for Workday customers to provide their workforce with financial wellness tools directly through Workday Wellness. This ultimately helps them manage money, build credit, and save—fostering a more financially confident and resilient workforce.”
The integration is Chime’s latest move to differentiate itself as a competitor in the challenger banking field. The company was founded in 2012 and formed Chime Enterprise in 2024 after acquiring employee rewards and loyalty platform Salt Labs. Chime has more than 8.7 million members. By embedding its workplace tools into HR platforms like Workday, the company is positioning itself not just as a consumer bank alternative, but as a partner in the employee benefits ecosystem. This shift may indicate that Chime intends to grow beyond direct-to-consumer banking and capture a larger share of the employer-driven financial wellness market.
A new partnership between Donor-Advised Fund (DAF) provider Endaoment and philanthropic advisory firm Active Cause will help creatives, athletes, entertainers, and influencers make charitable donations in cash, stock, crypto, and other assets.
A DAF works like a charitable investment account, enabling investors to make tax-deductible contributions and to recommend charitable grant outlays from the fund, while the assets grow in value over time.
Founded in 2020, Endaoment made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2024 in San Francisco. Robbie Heeger is President and CEO.
Next-generation Donor-Advised Fund (DAF) provider Endaoment has teamed up with philanthropic advisory firm Active Cause. The partnership combines Endaoment’s DAF infrastructure with Active Cause’s experience in serving the philanthropic needs of athletes, creatives, entertainers, and other influencers. Active Cause clients will be able to leverage the Endaoment platform to set up their own personalized DAFs where they can make charitable donations in cash, stock, crypto, as well as other assets.
“Active Cause is leading a cultural shift in philanthropy by centering creatives, athletes, and entertainers,” Endaoment President and CEO Robbie Heeger said. “We’re proud to provide the technology and infrastructure that allows their members to give seamlessly and confidently, while tracking their impact in real time.”
A DAF is a financial vehicle that acts like a charitable investment account. Contributions to DAFs are irrevocable to the sponsoring 501(c)(3) organization, which gains legal control over the funds. And while funds cannot be withdrawn for personal use, contributors—donors—still retain advisory rights over how the funds are invested and ultimately distributed.
DAFs provide donors with immediate tax benefits, enabling them to deduct the full amount of the contribution from their tax bill. The invested assets appreciate and grow tax-free over time and donors can recommend grants from the fund to qualified charities as they deem appropriate.
The partnership will embed charitable giving options directly into Active Cause’s membership platform, empowering influencers to support the causes that matter most to them. In addition to providing streamlined, simplified philanthropic service and tax advantages for creatives with often high-but-unpredictable income streams, the personal DAFs also offer a degree of privacy to help keep charitable donations out of the headlines.
“Our partnership with Endaoment gives members access to a modern platform that makes giving easier, faster, and more transparent,” Active Cause Co-Founder and CEO Yonis said in a video statement posted on LinkedIn.
Active Cause has more than 20 athletes, artists, and creators who have launched funds through the company and granted more than $10 million to community organizations as of 2025. The company provides philanthropic strategy and impact monitoring on key metrics like tax savings and fund growth. Working with Active Cause streamlines philanthropic processes, cutting administrative time by up to 50%, and lowering administrative costs to as low as 1.5% for DAFs greater than $10 million.
Founded in 2020 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Endaoment made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2024. Earlier this year, the company launched its Farcaster mini-app that helps users “convert emotional resonance into immediate impact.” The app enables users to find and donate to causes directly within their social feed and to share giving opportunities with those in their network. Donations can be made in USD, USDC, or ETH.
FinovateFall is just around the corner (taking place September 8 through 10 in New York), and we can’t wait to welcome fintech leaders, bank executives, investors, and analysts back to our flagship show. With discussion sessions, networking opportunities, and 60+ demos packed into three days, it’s important to have the right tools at your fingertips to help you navigate the event. That’s where the ConnectMe event app comes in.
You can think of the app as your personal conference assistant. It gives you everything you need to maximize your time at FinovateFall, starting today and continuing after the event.
Plan Ahead
With the app, you can browse the full agenda, bookmark the sessions and demos that matter most to you, and build a personalized agenda to manage your on-site schedule. Whether you want to see the latest fintech demo on stage or catch a discussion on open banking, you’ll know exactly where you need to be and when.
Connect with the Right People
Networking has always been a cornerstone at Finovate, and the app makes it even easier. Use the attendee directory to see who else will be in the room, send messages, and set up meetings in advance. The app features an AI-powered matchmaking feature that highlights the people and companies most relevant to you, making it easy for you to make the high-impact connections you’re looking for.
Stay in the Loop
From last-minute speaker updates to location details, the app keeps you informed in real-time so you don’t miss a thing. You can also engage in live polls and Q&A during sessions, making the event more interactive and getting your voice heard.
Keep the Conversation Going
Your FinovateFall experience doesn’t end when the conference does. The app remains open after the event, giving you continued access to contacts, content, and discussions. Whether you missed a meeting or wanted to follow up with a contact you met on the networking floor, the app makes it easy to keep building relationships and follow up on new opportunities.
To download the FinovateFall ConnectMe app, keep an eye on your email inbox for a link and a code to get in. Be sure to set up your details within the app ahead of the show in order to hit the ground running. Whether this is your first Finovate or your fifteenth, the app is the best way to ensure you can maximize your event experience.
The fallout from JP Morgan’s plan to charge companies for access to client bank account data continues as—according to a report from Bloomberg—Visa has announced that it is shuttering its open banking unit.
We’ve got a lot to say about the fight for open banking next month at FinovateFall. For now, be sure to check in to Finovate’s Fintech Rundown for all the latest fintech news!
AI-powered credit intelligence company martini.ailaunches its Financial Autonomy Ladder, a framework for measuring an institutions evolution from manual to autonomous decision-making systems.
MeridianLinkexpands its partnership with Jack Henry, which will resell the suite of Meridian Link One platform solutions, including MeridianLink Mortgage and MeridianLink Consumer.
First Northern Credit Union selectsAppli to modernize member lending experience.
Small business solutions
Expensifyannounces upgrades to its Expensify Travel offering including central billing, event management, and employee itineraries.
Handpoint was founded in 1999 to provide in-person payments tools. The company helps its customers accept payments on smartphones, tablets, and handhelds, and enables merchants to accept card payments securely. In addition to hardware, Handpoint also offers an embedded payments platform, a card-present gateway, and provides real-time transaction data that gives merchants in-depth reporting. Before today’s announcement, Handpoint had raised a total of $8 million, most recently pulling in $2.4 million in 2021.
Handpoint demoed at FinovateFall 2012 and FinovateEurope 2012, at the height of the mobile payment acceptance wave that Block (then Square) kicked off in 2010.
Electronic Payments was founded in 1998 and offers a network of POS value-added resellers (VARs), agent banks, sales agents, and independent sales offices (ISOs) to businesses across multiple industries. Among the company’s products are Cygma, a full-stack authorization and clearing platform; Exatouch, a full-featured point-of-sale device; and ProCharge Gateway, a virtual terminal that helps process and manage payments from one central location.
Handpoint will give Electronic Payments an immediate European presence, as Handpoint maintains offices in the UK, Iceland, and Spain, new territories for Electronic Payments. Integrating Handpoint’s tools could allow US merchants that require cross-border capabilities to tap into a single payments partner on both sides of the Atlantic. Additionally, Electronic Payments could integrate Handpoint’s embedded payments platform with its Cygma clearing system, which would facilitate a more omnichannel approach.
Purchasing Handpoint will also help Electronic Payments strengthen its mobile and embedded payments offerings. This will help it compete with the self-service model that new players, like Stripe and Square, offer.
Headquartered in Ontario, Canada and founded in 2022, Cinareo Solutions complements workforce management platforms, helping them streamline contact center operations and mitigate risk by enabling precise resource allocation and decision-making that is driven by data.
Cinareo made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego, demonstrating how its SaaS solution provides scenario-based capacity planning for both contact center agents and support staff. The company’s technology leverages industry-recognized statistical models and simulations to help businesses meet customer demands as well as vital financial KPIs.
We caught up with Karen Elliott recently to learn more about the field of capacity planning, the role of enabling technologies like AI, and how Cinareo Solutions helps contact centers ensure that the right person with the right skills is in the right place at the right time.
What role does capacity planning have in workforce management? What makes it challenging and how does Cinareo help companies better meet those challenges?
Karen Elliott: Capacity planning is the strategic backbone of workforce management. It determines how many people you need with the right skills, in the right place, at the right time, to meet service levels without overspending on labor. In contact centers, capacity planning sits upstream of scheduling—it uses historical data, forecasts, and business assumptions to set headcount and budget requirements weeks, months, or even years in advance. Effective planning ensures customer demand is met efficiently and profitably.
The challenge is that unpredictable demand, scattered data, and outdated tools make planning a constant challenge. Most organizations resort to using Excel spreadsheets and spend hours or even days of manual labor and embedded formulas to try to figure out the optimal plan. Cinareo streamlines the process by ingesting your data and enabling rapid “what-if” scenario modeling and multi-skilling simulation to create optimized plans for both agents and support staff with the click of a button.
Not only does Cinareo handle planning with ease, but the platform also creates financial budgets and recruitment and training plans so you know who to hire, and when, to ensure you meet your service targets.
Who are Cinareo’s primary customers? How do you reach them?
Elliott: Cinareo is an industry-agnostic platform for all contact centers. We have customers worldwide in financial institutions, telecom, travel, utilities, retail, and even government. We partner with CCaaS and WFM solutions to integrate directly into their platforms so that data can flow seamlessly into Cinareo. Any organization with variable demand, labor-intensive operations and service or cost targets would get huge benefits from using a platform like Cinareo.
We have a wide network of referral agents and ISV partners that recommend Cinareo to their clients when they see a clear need. Cinareo offers webinars and monthly product showcases to demonstrate the power behind the platform—or can even arrange custom demos and proof of concepts to make sure potential customers truly understand the benefits of a modern planning platform like Cinareo.
What in your background led you to pursue innovation in this field?
Elliott: I spent 12 years at the IBM Innovation Center earlier in my career within the User Experience group with a key focus on user-centric software solutions. After leaving IBM, I co-founded a professional consulting firm that specialized in contact center optimization that helped organizations improve their people, processes, technology, and knowledge.
Years of consulting highlighted a huge gap in the market in regard to capacity planning. We worked with countless private and public sector organizations that would build these complex spreadsheets to determine their optimal staffing and we decided there needed to be a better way, so we created Cinareo. It was built to complement any CCaaS or WFM platform in the market and integrate into whatever was the customer’s platform of choice. If customers switch platforms, they can take Cinareo with them—having a portable, agnostic solution was key to the design.
Another important goal was designing a platform that was simple and intuitive based on years of experience in user-centric design. We even have our customers as active members of the planning and design of the solution—this ensures that everything we build is focused on the needs and requirements of the people using the software.
What role do enabling technologies like AI play in developing innovative workforce management solutions?
Elliott: Capacity planning remains relevant in contact centers even if AI is involved, and it can take on a different but crucial role in optimizing the overall performance. While AI can now handle routine queries or simple updates, the reality is much more complex. Cinareo helps determine the right mix of AI-driven processes and human resources to meet the demand efficiently. Our customers are modelling their operations using Cinareo to determine the ideal balance of human agents vs bot and the ROI on an investment in AI as well.
Incorporating AI into Cinareo is a given—we are already full steam ahead in our strategic plans to ensure that AI-driven capacity planning can make a dramatic difference. But true innovation in customer support isn’t about replacing the people—it is about giving people the ability to work faster and smarter – and we are doing that with Cinareo.
You recently launched Flexible Monthly Planning. What is the value proposition with this new offering?
Elliott: We initially offered Cinareo as a strategic, long-term capacity planning platform where users could build 12-, 24- or 36-month plans. However, as we continued to enhance Cinareo, our customers were telling us they wanted more flexibility in their planning, so we built in the capability to do weekly planning up to 52 weeks in order for contact centers to create tactical plans over the short or medium term.
To continue to expand on Cinareo’s flexible platform, we recently launched more flexibility into our monthly planning as well, so customers can build a plan for any number of months up to 3 years in advance. These enhancements were all driven by the needs of our clients since our goal is to have our software reflect “the voice of the customer” and truly be user-centric.
You made your Finovate debut at FinovateSpring earlier this year. How was the experience?
Elliott: We had a fantastic debut at FinovateSpring! We generated a lot of great interest in the solution from the demo we provided. Prior to FinovateSpring, we had recently started onboarding more fintech clients and noticed an uptick in interest from banks, credit unions, and insurance agencies looking for a solution like Cinareo. We thought FinovateSpring would be a great opportunity to demo Cinareo to a wider audience and get fintech companies to see the realm of the possible with a modern capacity planning solution. There is such a clear need in this sector for a solution that will not only improve CX and EX, but also provide important KPIs like the cost per contact to help with financial management.
What can we look forward to seeing from Cinareo in the months to come?
Elliott: We are excited over some of the new features that are set to launch in the months to come—we have been scaling up significantly to meet customer demand. A couple new features that are soon to be released are multi-lingual functionality in addition to the ability to compare a plan with your historical data in a quick and easy way. We will be offering our clients a way to see how their plan performed against their actuals in both performance and staffing—down to the 15-minute interval level. This new feature will help our customers understand trends and patterns and be able to improve their planning moving forward.
That is just the tip of the iceberg—we have so many more exciting things planned over the next while. We would love to increase our customer base to have even more voices driving the future of our software! If you want to see how Cinareo can solve your capacity planning challenges, feel free to contact us.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Middle East and Northern Africa
Whish Money teams up with Mastercard to enable cross-border payments to Lebanon.
Bank of Algeria joined the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) launched by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank).
Qatar-based AlRayan Bank went live with Finastra Corporate Channels.
Central and Southern Asia
India celebrated National Fintech Day earlier this week.
Ukrainian fintech Fintech Farm launched its mobile banking service Tezbank in Uzbekistan.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) announced plans to unveil new Information Systems Audit Standards to enhance audit practices for startups, fintechs, and e-commerce companies.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Brazil-based digital financial services platform Nubankintroduced Armando Herrera as new CEO of its Mexican operations.
Uruguayan cross-border payment platform dLocal teamed up with cross-border marketplace platform Tiendamia.
Puero Rico-based transaction processor and fintech EVERTEC announced plans to acquire a controlling stake in Brazilian fintech vendor Tecnobank.
Each year at FinovateFall, the conversations on stage showcase some of the newest and most compelling ideas in fintech. But the story isn’t just limited to the stage. Just steps away from the general session, we have an energy-filled video studio that provides a space where fintech founders, thought leaders, and influencers can share their insights in front of the camera.
Working in collaboration with Informa’s video platform Streamly, the video studio has become an integral part of the Finovate experience because it offers speakers and sponsors a unique channel through which they can highlight their vision, discuss the impact of their technology, and connect with a broader audience long after the event itself. Between sessions, you’ll see us interviewing founders, executives, and thought leaders in the studio to extend the reach of both their thoughts and the show.
Here’s what you can expect from this year’s recordings:
Executive interviews: one-on-one conversations with fintech founders and bank executives about where particular industry subsectors are headed.
Company spotlights: Conversations that dive deeper into the solutions showcased on the demo stage and in the networking hall.
Expert insights: Analysis from industry experts on the latest industry trends like AI, open banking, digital identity, and more, as heard from the show floor.
Once recorded, our team of experts will produce, polish, and publish them on Streamly, YouTube, and the Finovate blog and promote them across social channels. Our goal is to ensure that the ideas shared at FinovateFall resonate beyond the conference itself, and will ultimately help shape conversations across the industry.
For both attendees and followers not in attendance, the videos offer another way to access insights from some of the brightest minds in fintech, even if they can’t be in every session live. Check out some of the videos from past events, and stay tuned later this fall to watch the freshly recorded sessions from FinovateFall 2025.
Starling Bank has agreed to acquire Ember with plans to integrate Ember’s tax and bookkeeping tools into its business banking platform, giving small businesses streamlined support for invoicing, expenses, payroll, and tax submissions.
Ember’s software currently serves customers of major UK banks, but will become exclusive to Starling customers in 2026.
The move positions Starling to help businesses comply with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs’ (HMRC’s) Making Tax Digital mandate by April 2026.
UK-based Starling Bankannounced this week that it will acquire fellow UK fintech Ember, a tax and bookkeeping platform. Starling will build Ember’s resources into its banking platform to provide small business owners with tools they need to manage their transactions and tax submissions. Terms of the acquisition are undisclosed.
Ember was founded in 2019 to give small businesses a human accountant to work with throughout the year to offer real-time insights into their finances and automated bookkeeping. The company offers tools for invoicing, expense management, payroll, tax optimization, and more to do the heavy lifting of tax and VAT compliance while maximizing companies’ visibility into their finances.
“Ember’s platform is beautifully designed to simplify complex accounting tasks through a user-friendly interface,” said Starling Bank Managing Director of SME Banking Adeel Hyder. “As Starling ramps up the roll-out of best-in-class solutions for small businesses, we will continue to build, partner, or buy as best meets customers’ needs.”
Ember currently serves thousands of UK-based small businesses, including customers of HSBC, Revolut, Barclays, and Lloyds. Under the agreement with Starling, however, the company’s software will be exclusively available to Starling Bank customers starting in 2026. Also, as part of today’s deal, Starling will discontinue Ember’s accountancy advisory services.
This is a key move for Starling and strategic timing, given that His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has mandated a Making Tax Digital requirement starting in April of 2026. Starling’s integration of Ember’s tools will help the many businesses that aren’t prepared for online tax reporting to integrate Ember’s HMRC-recognized software by the end of 2025.
The integration of Ember will be available to Starling’s business customers as part of a suite of business services. Among the bank’s other commercial customer tools are Spaces, a tool that allows business owners to put money aside for designated purposes; Bills Manager, which helps businesses pay suppliers on time; and Spending Intelligence, an AI-powered spending tracker.
“We are a natural fintech consolidator, so targeted acquisitions like Ember will form a key part of our strategy as we continue to develop Starling Bank in the UK and Engine by Starling overseas,” said Starling Group Chief Financial Officer Declan Ferguson. “Just as Fleet Mortgages has flourished since we bought it in 2021, I’m confident that Ember’s best-in-class tools will become a fantastic addition to Starling Bank’s offering.”
Crypto exchange Kraken has announced its acquisition of no-code, natural language-based trading tools provider Capitalise.ai.
The acquisition will enable traders and investors on Kraken’s platform to build and execute complex trading strategies using everyday language rather than code.
Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, Capitalise.ai won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2017.
Crypto exchange Kraken has acquiredCapitalise.ai, an Israel-based fintech that provides no-code, natural language-based trading and analytic tools for investors and traders. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Capitalise.ai won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2017 in San Francisco. At the conference, the company demonstrated how its technology can translate a wide variety of data inputs—including financial, social, and weather data—into actionable investment ideas across equities, cryptocurrencies, currencies, futures, options, and more. Capitalise.ai provides automated trade execution and the ability to optimize investment strategies quickly to analyze, predict, and improve performance.
“This acquisition gives Kraken Pro clients a powerful new way to act on ideas in real-time—testing, optimizing, and executing bespoke strategies with unprecedented speed and confidence,” Kraken Head of Exchange Shannon Kurtas said. “Capitalise.ai’s technology transforms how people interact with financial data—breaking down barriers that have long kept scalable, advanced strategies in the hands of a few. This is a major leap forward in democratizing access to pro-grade trading tools.”
Capitalise.ai’s functionality will be integrated into the Kraken Pro trading app in a phased rollout later in 2025. The company’s co-founders CEO Amir Shiovich and CPO Shahar Rabin, along with members of Capitalise.ai’s product and engineering team, will join Kraken.
The acquisition comes as the evolution of Kraken’s Pro platform, with its advanced features, has increasingly required both technical skill and deep trading expertise in order for users to make the most of the solution. Capitalise provides an effective response to this challenge, enabling clients regardless of background to build, test, and automatically execute often complex trading strategies using simple, everyday language.
“I founded Capitalise.ai alongside my partner Shahar Rabin, with the goal of democratizing advanced capabilities that were once reserved for hedge funds—through a simple, intuitive text interface,” Capitalise.ai’s Shiovich wrote on LinkedIn this week. “Over the years, we’ve partnered with world-leading brokers, served thousands of clients, and supported the trading of billions of dollars. By joining Kraken, we now have the opportunity to scale and drive meaningful impact across the trading industry.”
Founded in 2015, Capitalise.ai is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel. Earlier this year, the company announced an expanded partnership with FOREX.com that enabled FOREX.com’s customers in the EU and the UK to access Capitalise.ai’s platform.
Among the longest-standing cryptocurrency platforms in the world, Kraken offers trading in more than 200 digital assets and six different national currencies including EUR, GBP, USD, CAD, CHF, and AUD. Founded in 2011, the company has been a pioneer in spot trading with margin, parachain auctions, staking, regulated derivatives, and index services. Kraken supports more than 15 million clients in 190+ countries and has more than $207 billion in quarterly trading volume on its platform.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 8 – 10. Register today using this link and save 20%.
Appli
Appli’s AI-powered calculators turn visitors into confident shoppers, guiding key loan and savings decisions to boost revenue across every financial product.
Features
Delivers personalized financial guidance using AI enabled financial calculators
Boosts engagement via a trusted experience seamlessly embedded
Drives revenue growth and turns trust into loyal customers
Who’s it for?
Credit unions and community banks.
Debbie
Debbie is a rewards platform for good money habits where users can earn points for saving, paying off debt, and making on time payments.
Features
Drives 2x average deposit lift from engaged members
Delivers a 35% reduction in delinquencies
Sources thousands of new consumers for half the cost
Provides competitive intelligence data for upsell opportunities
Who’s it for?
Banks and credit unions.
FintechOS
FintechOS’s AI-driven product engine helps banks innovate without replacing core systems. Its low-code, composable architecture accelerates digital transformation, enhancing compliance and decision-making.
Features
Launch Web3 products without core changes
Manage deposits and digital assets from a single platform
Unlock revenue via crypto-backed lending with GENIUS Act readiness
Who’s it for?
Regional and community banks and credit unions.
Lyzr AI
Lyzr AI is a full stack AI agent infrastructure platform for enterprise.
Features
Safe and responsible AI built into the framework
Full stack approach from building agents to taking them into production
Clonable blueprints and use cases for financial institutions
Who’s it for?
Banks and financial institutions.
Mall IQ
Mall IQ (rebranded as LocatIQ) is an SF-based location AI company empowering financial institutions with real-time customer intent insights, predictive AI models, and contextual engagement.
Features
Delivers real-time, hyper-personalized engagement for revenue growth
Uses predictive AI models for card spend potential, including affluent and churn prediction
Offers alternative credit scoring, fraud prevention, and false card decline prevention
MoneyPlanned is a patented AI infrastructure for financial planning—delivering real-time, personalised, compliant advice and execution, turning every institution into a 24/7 superhuman advisor.
Features
Patented AI infrastructure: Builds and executes goal-based plans in minutes
Behavior-aware engine: Adapts to life events, nudging action
Reset enables banks and credit unions to natively embed earned wage access, driving growth in deposits and transaction revenue while strengthening customer financial health.
Features
Gives cardholders daily access to income and automated cashflow budgeting
Attracts and retains direct deposit relationships
Earns 4x more interchange revenue per transaction on existing cards
