Data Privacy Management Software Provider Basis Theory Secures $33 Million

Data Privacy Management Software Provider Basis Theory Secures $33 Million
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Basis Theory, Funding
  • Data management and payments infrastructure company Basis Theory has raised $33 million in Series B funding in a round led by Costanoa Ventures, along with Stage 2 Capital and Moneta VC.
  • The investment, which takes the company’s total capital raised to $50 million, will be used to help expand its payment vault for merchants, as well as fuel the company’s innovations in agentic commerce.
  • Founded in 2020, Basis Theory made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022 in San Francisco. Colin Luce is CEO.

Data management innovator Basis Theory has secured $33 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Costanoa Ventures alongside Stage 2 Capital and Moneta VC. The investment also featured participation from existing investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, Kindred Ventures, Box Group, and Offline Ventures. The Series B takes Basis Theory’s total capital raised to $50 million, according to Crunchbase.

“This funding represents more than capital,” company Co-Founder and CEO Colin Luce wrote on the Basis Theory blog this week. “It validates our mission of giving merchants control over their payments data and the flexibility to innovate on their own terms.”

Basis Theory lives at the intersection of technology and commerce. The company’s PCI Level 1, SOC2 type II, and ISO 27001-compliant vault offers fintechs and merchants broad flexibility and customization as they build their payment infrastructures and create payment stacks that suit their individual needs. As merchants look for superior ways to manage payment data across a growing number of payment service providers, Basis Theory offers a technology that enables them to tokenize and manage sensitive payment data while maintaining complete control over how that data is accessed both within their own systems as well as when it is shared with third parties. This week’s funding will help Basis Theory expand its enterprise-grade payment vault for merchants around the world, as well as power the company’s work in agentic commerce.

“The payments ecosystem is changing rapidly, and merchants no longer want to be locked into rigid platforms,” Luce said. “We’re giving control back by making payments data as accessible and programmable as any other data type so it can fuel growth, intelligence, and automation across the entire business.”

Basis Theory’s payment vault, which is independent of any payment processor or orchestration layer, also serves as a foundation for agentic commerce and the Agentic Commerce Consortium. Launched last month by Basis Theory, the consortium is a network of more than 20 companies that are collaborating to define the standards and infrastructure that will enable AI agents to become trusted buyers. This will empower merchants to embrace agentic commerce safely and at scale.

In a statement introducing the consortium, Luce acknowledged that other entities have also articulated agentic AI standards, such as Google with its Agent Payments Protocol (AP2). At the same time, Luce suggested that the underlying infrastructure must be improved first. “Our view is that we must start by modernizing the existing underlying foundational infrastructure via APIs, but done in a way where AP2 or MCP or KYA or any other protocol can be built on top of or wrapped around it,” Luce wrote. “It’s too early to know which protocols will gain adoption or whether who is behind the protocol will dictate said adoption.”

Founded in 2020, Basis Theory made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022. At the conference, the company introduced its tokenization platform and showed how its data tokenization API offers a developer-first approach to ingesting and managing high-risk data such as credit cards or personally identifiable information (PII). The technology’s use cases extend from fintech, e-commerce, and the creator economy, to subscription platforms, vertical SaaS, and digital health.

Photo by Mark König on Unsplash

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Charity Bank Turns to Sandstone Technology to Power Mobile Savings App

Charity Bank Turns to Sandstone Technology to Power Mobile Savings App
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Sandstone
  • Ethical, UK-based savings and loan Charity Bank announced a strategic partnership with digital banking solutions provider Sandstone Technology to power development of its mobile savings app.
  • Charity Bank and Sandstone Technology have been collaboration partners for more than a decade.
  • Headquartered in Sydney, Australia, Sandstone Technology made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2012, and most recently demoed on the Finovate stage at FinovateEurope 2016.

Charity Bank has forged a strategic partnership with Sandstone Technology to power development of its new mobile savings app. The app will offer a variety of enhanced, self-service capabilities, feature robust security, and provide a suite of modern tools to help meet the needs of Charity Bank’s customers. The technology supports seamless updating, rapid product launches, and a consistent user experience. The app is expected to be available to Charity Bank customers in the spring of 2026.

“Partnering with Charity Bank on this initiative is both exciting and rewarding,” Sandstone Technology Chief Customer Officer Jennifer Harris said, “Mobile is now the channel of choice across all demographics, and this solution reflects the importance of delivering banking experiences that are intuitive, flexible, and future-ready. Our collaboration is built on trust and innovation, and this project showcases our shared vision for the next generation of digital banking.”

Charity Bank is an ethical savings and loan wholly owned by charitable foundations, trusts, and social purpose organizations. The institution uses savers’ deposits to provide loans to organizations in the UK that are working toward positive social change for individuals, communities, and the environment. Since 2002, Charity Bank has lent more than £600 million to charities and social enterprises across the UK.

Sandstone Technology is a long-time technology partner of Charity Bank, having collaborated for more than a decade. The current partnership to develop the institution’s mobile app represents the latest milestone in Charity Bank’s digital transformation journey designed to enhance the customer experience and make access to ethical banking available to more banking customers.

“We are thrilled to take this next step with Sandstone Technology,” Charity Bank Director of Operations and Savings Justin Hort said. “Launching a mobile app is a major milestone that reflects our commitment to evolving with our savers’ needs. We’re focused on delivering a seamless, modern and intuitive experience—and with Sandstone’s proven track record, we knew they were the right partner to bring this vision to life.”

Headquartered in Sydney, Australia and founded in 1996, Sandstone Technology made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2012. The company, which offers solutions for loan origination, digital banking, and digital onboarding, most recently demoed on the Finovate stage at FinovateEurope 2016. Abhish Saha was appointed CEO in 2022 after previously serving as the Executive General Manager of the company’s Digital Banking & Elevate business unit. Saha replaced Michael Phillipou, who had been Sandstone Technology’s CEO since December 2020.

More recently, Sandstone Technology earned recognition for its partnership with UK-based Chetwood Bank, helping the institution deploy its digital savings platform that has contributed to a 39% increase in customers completing the application process and opening a savings account.

Photo by Mark Hansen on Unsplash

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Cybersecurity Awareness Month: The State of Fraud in 2025 and Best of Show Fraud Fighters

Cybersecurity Awareness Month: The State of Fraud in 2025 and Best of Show Fraud Fighters
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: 1Kosmos, Best of Show, Casap, Corsound AI, David's column, Herd Security, Illuma Labs, Keyless, Trulioo

October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month in the US—although those in fintech and financial services can be forgiven for feeling as if every month is cybersecurity awareness month.

This is not to say that the threat of fraud and financial crime is any less important in health care, consumer technology, or any other sector of the economy. But the facts are hard to ignore. According to the New York Federal Reserve, financial services companies face 300x more cyber attacks compared to companies in other industries. After all, that’s where the money is—to say nothing of a treasure trove of data on banking customers, borrowers, investors, and more.

Additionally, the impact of fraud and financial crime on financial services companies and their customers can be significantly greater, as well. Estimates indicate that the average breach cost in the financial sector is more than $6 million, compared to the global average of $4.9 million. In fact, the financial services sector is second only to healthcare when it comes to the average cost of a data breach.

Released in the first half of the year, Alloy’s 2025 State of Fraud Report noted that a sizable number (60%) of financial institutions and fintechs reported fraud growth across both consumer and business accounts over the past year. The good news is that, unlike in AI, where there remains some skepticism about the potential benefits versus costs and risks, Alloy observed that 87% of institutions queried believed that investing in fraud prevention—especially via deploying identity risk solutions, building in-house anti-fraud solutions, and adding talent to fraud teams—outweighed the costs.

More recent reports on fraud and financial crime underscore additional challenges. The Kroll 2025 Financial Crime Report, which surveyed 600 international executives, noted that a growing number of executives fear an acceleration in financial crime, with 71% believing financial crime risks will increase in 2025 compared to 67% in 2023. Alarmingly, the executives also confessed a sizable gap between their concerns about the accelerating pace of financial crime and their own organization’s preparedness to fight it, with only 23% of those surveyed believing their compliance programs were up to the task.

As for the question of whether AI is an effective tool to fight financial crime or a new and dangerous weapon in the hands of fraudsters, the answer, unsurprisingly, is “yes.” Just over half of those executives surveyed (57%) believe AI is a benefit to fighting financial crime while just under half (49%) believe AI represents a significant risk and vector for fraud.

Best of Show winners lead the fight against financial crime

With fraud and financial crime threats on the rise, it is no surprise to see a growing number of companies on the Finovate stage whose innovations are dedicated to fighting fraud, scams, and other financial crime. In fact, 2025 was the first year since COVID that featured a fraud fighter in every Best of Show winning cohort: FinovateEurope, FinovateSpring, and FinovateFall.

Here’s a look at some of our Best of Show winning alums from recent years who are innovating in the field of financial crime and fraud prevention.

Casap – Offers a co-pilot and collaboration platform that fully automates dispute management and empowers financial institutions and fintechs to more effectively fight first-person fraud.

Herd Security – Leverages AI-driven detections, training content, phishing simulations, and exercises to make users an active and engaged part of defending their companies and organizations from fraud and cybercrime.

Keyless – Equips companies with biometric authentication technology that reduces account takeover (ATO) fraud by up to 80%, and verifies a user’s genuine identity in addition to their device in 300ms or less.

Illuma – Offers a real-time voice authentication solution that replaces traditional knowledge-based authentication, enhances the caller experience, and improves operational efficiency while preventing fraud in contact centers.

Corsound AI – Leverages 200+ patents to provide voice-to-face and real-time deepfake detection. The company’s technology leverages the unique correlation between voice and facial features to authenticate identities accurately.

1Kosmos – Combines identity proofing, credential verification, and strong authentication to enable remote identity verification and passwordless multi-factor authentication to enable workers, customers, and residents to securely utilize digital services.

Trulioo – Covering 195 countries, Trulioo offers an identity platform that verifies more than 14,000 ID documents and 700 million businesses, while checking against more than 6,000 watchlists.

Photo by Thorium on Unsplash

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Redefining the Small Business Banking Experience: Insights from U.S. Bank’s Shruti Patel

Redefining the Small Business Banking Experience: Insights from U.S. Bank’s Shruti Patel
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Interview, US Bank, Women in Fintech

This article is brought to you in collaboration with Gregory FCA.

AI and personalization are redefining the rules of engagement in business banking. As Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer for Business Banking at U.S. Bank, Shruti Patel (pictured) brings a unique lens to the discussion, drawing from her deep experience in banking, payments, and fintech.

Following her appearance at FinovateFall 2025, we sat down with Shruti to discuss the evolving needs of business customers, the transformative role of AI, and the growing importance of partnerships between banks and fintech.

Tell us a little bit more about your role at U.S. Bank, your title, and what you’re responsible for.

Shruti Patel: I am the Executive Vice President, Chief Product Officer for Business Banking at U.S. Bank. In this role, I oversee services for our small business customers, ranging from $100,000 to up to $50 million in annual revenues, across banking, payments and our full suite of digital capabilities. 

You spoke on the panel about the customer experience revolution. In your view, what do today’s business banking customers expect from their financial partners that they didn’t expect five or ten years ago?

Patel: We consistently hear two key expectations from our small business customers. First, they want banks to deliver best-in-class, highly sophisticated digital capabilities. Nearly 80% of small business customers, including U.S. Bank customers, have time and again told us that they’re expecting their banks to give them a one-stop shop. Many are already banking with us across our deposit products. They engage a lot with our payment products, whether this is small dollar loans, large dollar loans, or credit card solutions, or operating lines of credit. 

But beyond these core services, they increasingly expect seamless, integrated digital experiences. By that, I mean not just dashboards that track transactions, but robust features like money moment insights, best-in-class accounts payable and receivable tools, and embedded payroll capabilities. To address these needs, we recently announced two exciting developments: our new accounts payable solution in partnership with Melio and Fiserv, and embedded payroll capabilities in partnership with Gusto. Both are part of our broader commitment to delivering integrated, end-to-end experiences for small business customers.

AI is everywhere in the conversation this year. Beyond the hype, how are you seeing AI deliver real value to business banking customers, whether through engagement, personalization, or entirely new experiences?

Patel: We are still in the early stages of deploying AI, but we’re already seeing strong impact across several use cases. The first is fraud monitoring and detection—security is top of mind for our business banking customers, and AI has proven valuable for fraud monitoring early detection.

The second area is customer service. While not a new application for AI, we’re using it to transcribe interactions, synthesize information, and provide our service teams with a complete view of the customer relationship. Because business owners are pressed for time, they expect seamless, efficient support from us, and AI helps ensure our teams can respond quickly and effectively. 

We’ve seen a wave of innovation in areas like billpay and payroll, often driven through partnerships between banks and fintechs. Why are these types of collaborations becoming so important for small business banking?

Patel: As I mentioned earlier, small business customers are navigating an unprecedented macroeconomic environment. They’re dealing with tariff pressures and uncertainty, persistent inflation, supply chain disruptions lingering from the pandemic, and ongoing challenges in accessing capital. In this context, anything financial institutions can do to help small businesses operate more efficiently and cost-effectively is critical—not only for their success but also for deepening engagement and trust.

That’s where fintech partnerships have become so important. Business owners often tell us they feel overwhelmed by the number of software options available. They’re looking for simple, integrated solutions that support core needs like cash flow management, accounts payable and receivable, and payroll. For example, if you’re a small business with fewer than 10 employees, you want easy-to-use payroll software that just works.

With this in mind, we’ve anchored our strategy on fintech partnerships and selective acquisitions to create a one-stop shop. We launched embedded payroll capabilities with Gusto, accounts payable solutions with Fiserv in partnership with Melio, and made strategic acquisitions such as talech, a point-of-sale solution, Bento for spend management, and TravelBank, which complements our corporate card offering. Together, these investments strengthen our ability to support small businesses end-to-end.

As you reflect on FinovateFall, what are the biggest themes or innovations you heard about that excite you about the future of business banking?

Patel: For me, the most exciting theme is personalization. I participated in a session on AI and personalization, and it reinforced that while banks and financial institutions have access to strong data, we still have a long way to go in harnessing it effectively. Accompanying customers through their end-to-end journeys and across different stages of the business lifecycle is critical.

For example, the needs of a startup are very different from those of a mature, established business. A startup might be focused on accessing small-dollar loans, while established businesses may require large operating lines to scale and expand. Small businesses need a very simple operating account with some benefits around digital transactions and money movement, but our large customers are looking for robust money movement capabilities and Treasury solutions.

The key is building personalization into these core jobs. Customers frequently ask us: “Should I be using Faster Payments or ACH?” That’s where AI can help, by serving as a product recommender that guides business owners to the right solution based on their specific needs.

Photo by Chris F

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Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News

Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Fintech Rundown, Yodlee

As the week begins, we’re checking in on news of big funding in fraud prevention and cross-border payments, major developments on the crypto front for both Citi and JPMorgan, as well as new report from Alessa on how AI stands to enhance AML processes in 2026. Be sure to check back all week long for the latest in fintech news here on Finovate’s Fintech Rundown!

Payments

Cross-border payments company Routefusion raises $26.5 million in Series A funding.

Payment solution provider and acquirer Paystrax acquires UK fintech Nochex.

International payments platform LemFi unveils Send Now, Pay Later service combining credit and remittances.

Stax Payments goes live with Stax Processing, a full-stack end-to-end payments processor.

Crypto and DeFi

Crypto payments company MoonPay integrates with crypto trading, earning, and exploring terminal, Axiom.

Crypto wallet Cake Wallet announces integration of xStocks, new functionality that enables users to invest in tokenized stocks and ETFs via Web3 self-custody.

EBC Financial introduces Bitcoin (BTC) Contracts for Difference (CFDs).

Fraud prevention

Resistant AI scores $25 million in Series B funding.

Open banking and open finance

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority launches its open finance accelerator.

Credit analytics

Yodlee introduces new credit subsidiary Yodlee Credit, a new Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA) under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

Carrington Labs teams up with Sea.dev to accelerate loan decisioning and help SMBs secure financing faster.

Sapiens International Corporation forges strategic partnership with Linqura, a sales and underwriting intelligence solutions provider for commercial insurers.

Insurtech

Axonic Insurance turns to iPipeline for its financial planning platform AFFIRM.

Photo by vee terzy

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Bankjoy and InvestiFi Bring Investing Options to Community Banks and Credit Unions

Bankjoy and InvestiFi Bring Investing Options to Community Banks and Credit Unions
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Bankjoy, InvestiFi
  • Digital banking platform Bankjoy has teamed up with digital investment solutions provider InvestiFi.
  • The partnership will enable customers and members of community banks and credit unions to invest in stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies directly from their checking accounts.
  • Michigan-based Bankjoy most recently demoed its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateFall 2023. InvestiFi made its Finovate debut as CryptoFi at FinovateFall 2022 and rebranded in 2024.

Digital banking platform Bankjoy has forged a strategic partnership with fellow Finovate alum InvestiFi, a provider of digital investment solutions. The partnership will enable community banks and credit unions that use Bankjoy’s digital banking platform to offer their customers and members the ability to invest in stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies directly from their checking accounts.

The partnership comes as a growing number of fintechs are empowering smaller, more community-focused financial institutions to directly offer investment services. Last week we noted the partnership between two-time Finovate Best of Show winner Eko and Brooklyn Coop FCU as another example of fintech/financial institution partnerships designed to make it easier for customers and members to invest without having to leave the comfort and familiarity of their digital banking platforms.

“With deposit outflows to platforms like Robinhood accelerating, community banks and credit unions must meet members where they already are: inside their banking app,” Bankjoy COO and Co-Founder Weiwei Duncan said. “By embedding wealth management tools directly into digital banking, they not only keep members engaged with their own products, but also strengthen loyalty and competitiveness in a fast-changing market.”

The threat to credit unions and community banks from these new platforms is not just that their members and customers will use them for their investments; many of these platforms are looking to grow by adding banking services to their digital brokerage offering. Partnerships between fintechs like Bankjoy and InvestiFi are designed to discourage individuals from transferring both their investments and banking business to these new platforms. Additionally, the addition of new services like investing enables community banks and credit unions to attract new customers and members by serving as a single location where they can do both their banking and their investing.

“At InvestiFi, we continue to strive to support financial institutions with cutting-edge, in-house investing solutions,” InvestiFi CEO Kian Sarreshteh said. “Partnering with Bankjoy, a well-respected and trusted platform that supports banks and credit unions, allows us to extend our reach and help more financial institutions across the US, providing them with the tools they need to offer seamless digital investing experiences.”

As CryptoFi, InvestiFi made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2022. The company rebranded in 2024 to reflect its growth into a comprehensive self-directed investing suite for credit union members. More recently, InvestiFi has forged partnerships with community-based financial institutions such as West Virginia Central Federal Credit Union ($303 million in assets), Horizon Utah Federal Credit Union ($180 million in assets), Illiana Financial Credit Union ($278 million in assets) and Ocala Community Credit Union ($29 million in assets). InvestiFi also introduced new Chief Product Officer Patrick McNally in August of this year. McNally was formerly Director of Data & Analytics at digital wealth tools provider Exodus Movement.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Royal Oak, Michigan, Bankjoy most recently demoed its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateFall 2023. At the conference, the company showed how its digital banking platform is helping neobank Panacea Financial provide financial services to medical professionals.

Last month, Bankjoy announced that it was expanding its partnership with account activation specialist Pinwheel. A collaboration partner since 2024, Pinwheel has now expanded the number of solutions available on the Bankjoy digital banking platform to include its Switch Kit. This offering combines Pinwheel’s Direct Deposit Switch solution with its Bill Switch feature, unveiled earlier this year, to help solve pain points in the account activation process for consumers.

Photo by Liza Summer

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Splitit to Help AI Agents Pay in Installments

Splitit to Help AI Agents Pay in Installments
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, SplitIt
  • Splitit launched its Agentic Commerce Partner Program that enables AI agents to offer card-linked installment payment options directly within merchant checkout flows without requiring new lines of credit.
  • The program is designed to align with emerging standards like Google’s AP2 and OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol, ensuring interoperability as autonomous shopping ecosystems evolve.
  • As AI-driven commerce accelerates, Splitit aims to make flexible pay-later options a native part of agent-powered purchases starting with a pilot in the fourth quarter of this year.

Embedded BNPL solutions provider Splitit announced yesterday that it launched a partner program that will allow AI agents to take advantage of pay-later capabilities when making payments on behalf of their users.

Called the Agentic Commerce Partner Program, the new initiative will allow autonomous shopping agents to make payments using card-linked installments. AI agents that have registered with Splitit can request real-time installment options directly within the merchant’s checkout flow. The payments take place on existing payment rails using the users’ existing payment cards, and do not require new lines of credit.

While the agentic commerce landscape is still in its early days of development, Splitit built its Agentic Commerce Partner Program to align with emerging industry frameworks like Google’s AP2 and OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol to ensure flexibility and interoperability across future agent ecosystems.

“Agentic AI will fundamentally reshape how consumers and businesses buy,” said Splitit CTO Ran Landau. “Splitit’s mission is to ensure that seamless, transparent installments are built into this new paradigm from day one, not bolted on later. We look forward to partnering with leading merchants, platforms, networks, and banks in developing meaningful use cases that can be beneficial to shoppers and brands.”

Splitit’s new feature aims to keep up with the newest evolutions in agent-powered shopping. According to Adobe, 53% of consumers plan to use AI for product research and 40% plan to use AI for purchasing recommendations this holiday season, especially as shoppers are turning to Gen AI for deal-hunting, recommendations, and gift inspiration.

By embedding installment payment functionality directly into agentic commerce flows, Splitit is positioning itself at the cutting edge of autonomous shopping. As agentic ecosystems mature, the integration will allow merchants and platforms to offer more flexible, seamless payment options at the point of decision. Splitit’s Agentic Commerce pilot program will roll out in Q4.

Photo by Magda Ehlers

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Finovate Global India: Inclusion, Digital Asset Innovation, and a Salute to Our Indian Alums

Finovate Global India: Inclusion, Digital Asset Innovation, and a Salute to Our Indian Alums
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, Ripple, Wise

This week’s edition of Finovate Global looks at recent fintech headlines from India.

RBI pushes financial inclusion; launches digital currency sandbox

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Sanjay Malhotra used the occasion of the 6th Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai to encourage technologies to emphasize financial inclusion as well as better trust and efficiency as they help build the future of the country’s financial ecosystem. Fintech will be able to participate by joining the sandbox directly or via their partner banks.

Malhotra credited Indian fintech for a range of innovations that have been the envy around the world. “India’s world-class digital public infrastructure, as symbolized by systems such as UPI, Aadhaar, and DigiLocker, has not only enhanced efficiency and service delivery, but also ensured that millions of Indians enjoy easy access to a wide range of financial services.”

UPI is India’s real-time payment system that enables instant fund transfer between bank accounts via mobile apps. UPI can be used with just a mobile number or Virtual Payment Address (VPA) and has enabled everything from peer-to-peer transfers to merchant payments. UPI processes more than 700 million transactions a day.

Aadhaar is the name of a biometric digital identity system that gives all residents a unique 12-digit identification. Aadhaar is the basis for digital KYC (Know Your Customer) processes and has use cases ranging from account opening and insurance enrollment in financial services to medical record access, government benefit disbursement, and more. DigiLocker is a cloud-based digital document storage platform that enables users to store and access official documents digitally. DigiLocker is estimated to have more than 465 million registered users.

In each case, the solution has been both a significant technological innovation and a way of bringing a wider range of financial services to a greater number of communities and businesses, and individuals.

Underscoring the compatibility between financial inclusion and technological innovation, Malhotra added, “serving the privileged will be a lucrative business, but companies must focus on serving the underserved sections of society. Build for inclusion. There may be higher profits to be made by deepening access to the haves and the privileged, but prioritize building systems to expand financial services to the unaccessed, the unreached, and the unserved segments of society.”

The RBI also made headlines with the launch of its digital currency sandbox. The initiative will enable fintech firms to build and test solutions using the central bank digital currency (CBDC) as part of its ongoing pilot project. The RBI’s first retail e-rupee pilot (India’s central bank digital currency or CBDC) went live in December 2022, and currently has more than seven million users.

The announcement was made by Suvendu Pai, General Manager at the RBI. Pai said that the launch was designed to encourage innovation in digital payments and to grow the ecosystem for India’s CBDC.

“The CBDC retail sandbox will give innovators the space to experiment and build on top of the digital rupee,” Malhotra explained. “It will help create new use cases, improve customer experience, and add value to ongoing pilots.”

Meet Finovate’s Indian alums

Would you believe that outside of the US and the UK, the next largest group of Finovate readers are based in India?

As our previous story acknowledged, India is an under-recognized superpower when it comes not only to fintech innovation, but also when it comes to making sure that technological innovations are built to benefit as many people as possible.

Finovate has been happy to host a growing number of Indian fintechs at our conference both in the US and abroad. Our most recent event, FinovateFall 2025, featured a trio of India-based fintechs—MoneyPlanned, OPL, and Sequretek—on stage and a fourth, CloudBankin, in our Impact Zone. But these are only the most recently added alums. Here are some of the Indian firms that have demonstrated their latest innovations on the Finovate stage.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Google Payment Lithuania launched its bank account verification service.
  • Deutsche WertpapierService Bank (dwpbank) completed its acquisition of Berlin-based fintech lemon.markets.
  • Learn how the Latvian government is preparing to adopt the second edition of its national fintech development strategy.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Banco de Crédito del Perú, the largest bank in the country, has launched Criptococos, a digital asset-compatible banking platform, in partnership with BitGo.
  • Chilean HR tech firm Buk acquired fintech Bemmbo to provide financial services via the new Buk Finanzas offering.
  • Brazilian Buy Now Pay Later firm Pagaleve raised $30 million in Series A2 funding.

Asia-Pacific

  • Bank of Singapore unveiled a new agentic AI tool to automate components of the KYC process.
  • Binance Japan, a subsidiary of Binance, forged a digital assets alliance with financial services provider PayPay Corporation.
  • Singapore-based equity management platform Qapita raised $26 million in Series B funding.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • South African AI-powered fintech Optasia announced plans to raise $375 million when it goes public on South Africa’s Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
  • Kenyan asset financing firm M-KOPA reported its first profit of $9.2 million in 2024. The startup experienced a $24.7 million loss in 2023.
  • Check out Greg Palmer’s Finovate Podcast interview featuring Bridgit Antwi, Head of Strategy and Planning at African payments company Flutterwave.

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BVNK Lands Funds from Citi Ventures for Stablecoin Infrastructure

BVNK Lands Funds from Citi Ventures for Stablecoin Infrastructure
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • BVNK has received a strategic investment from Citi Ventures, adding to its $90+ million in funding to accelerate its multi-rail payments infrastructure.
  • BVNK has doubled transaction volumes in the past year and is competing with Circle, Ripple, and Stellar networks to bridge fiat and digital assets with enterprise-grade stablecoin settlement solutions.
  • Stablecoins are rapidly becoming core financial infrastructure, with supply surpassing $180 billion and on-chain settlement volumes reaching trillions as businesses seek faster, cheaper cross-border payments.

Multi-rail payments infrastructure platform BVNK announced this week that it has scored a strategic investment from Citi Ventures. The amount of the funds is undisclosed, and adds to the $90+ million in funding BVNK has raised from investors such as Visa, Haun Ventures, Tiger Global, and others.

“Stablecoins are seeing increased interest in use for settlement of on-chain and crypto asset transactions,” said Citi Ventures Head Arvind Purushotham. “We were impressed by BVNK’s enterprise-grade infrastructure, and their proven track record.”

BVNK was founded in 2021 and currently processes over $20 billion each year on behalf of enterprises and payment service providers. The UK-based company leverages stablecoins to enable businesses to move value instantly across borders and networks. Through its partnerships with global licensing bodies and Tier 1 banks, BVNK serves clients such as Worldpay, Deel, and dLocal.

“This investment reinforces our mission to accelerate the global movement of money,” said BVNK Co-Founder and CEO Jesse Hemson-Struthers. “Our platform enables companies to harness stablecoins to move money quickly across borders and launch innovative financial products with enterprise-ready security and compliance.”

Citi Ventures’ strategic investment comes as stablecoins are working their way to becoming a key piece of financial infrastructure. The total supply of stablecoins has exceeded $180 billion in 2025, with on-chain settlement volumes now reaching trillions of dollars each year as businesses make the swap to faster, cheaper alternatives to traditional banking.

This surge has helped to fuel BVNK, which has doubled its transaction volumes in the past year and has expanded its partnerships across the globe. The fintech’s biggest rivals, which include Circle, Ripple, and Stellar-powered payment networks, are all seeking to build top-tier infrastructure that bridges the gap between fiat and digital assets. Citi’s financial and strategic support will help BVNK differentiate itself in the race to build the enterprise-grade, multi-rail payments platform needed to make stablecoin settlement a mainstream tool for global commerce.

Photo by Brett Sayles

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FIS Integrates Glia’s Customer Interaction Tech into its Digital One Banking Platform

FIS Integrates Glia’s Customer Interaction Tech into its Digital One Banking Platform
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, FIS, Glia
  • Global financial technology company FIS has announced a strategic partnership with AI-powered customer interactions platform Glia.
  • The partnership will integrate Glia’s multi-channel digital interaction solution into FIS’s Digital One online banking platform.
  • FIS made its first Finovate appearance at FinovateFall 2010. Glia is a 10-time, Finovate Best of Show award-winner.

FIS has forged a strategic partnership with AI-powered customer interactions platform Glia. The partnership will integrate Glia’s AI for All digital interaction solution into FIS’s Digital One online banking platform. The goal is to deliver superior experiences for banking customers via a combination of AI-enabled service and high-touch human support.

AI agents will be able to respond quickly to routine inquiries 24/7 while also intelligently routing more complex queries and issues to human agents. This will reduce resolution times and provide more personalized service that adapts instantly to customer needs. Embedding these AI capabilities directly into FIS’s digital banking infrastructure will empower financial institutions to modernize their customer service operations without disrupting current systems.

“By integrating Glia’s sophisticated AI and digital interaction capabilities into our Digital One platforms, we’re enabling banks and credit unions to reap the benefits of a virtual workforce and high-touch, personalized service,” FIS Head of Retail Digital & Open Banking Hashim Toussaint said. “This new technology aligns perfectly with our recently announced Banking Modernization Framework, where open banking serves as a cornerstone for institutions looking to transform their operations and customer experiences. It truly represents the future of banking—where intelligent automation meets human insight.”

Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, FIS made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2010. Today the fintech services and consulting firm works with 70% of the top 100 insurance firms, has more than $16 trillion in financial assets on its platforms, and serves 5,800+ clients across 150 countries. A member of the Fortune 500, FIS is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: FIS), and has a market cap of $35 billion.

The integration of Glia’s AI for All will enable FIS’s Digital One platform to provide a consistent, context-aware experience across channels—from mobile app to web platform to live agent. The platform will also deliver faster resolution times by triaging queries to separate the routine from the more complex. The integration will also provide 24/7 availability, with AI agents fielding account management questions, providing transaction support, and offering basic financial guidance beyond traditional banking hours.

“Financial institutions today face the dual challenge of meeting rising customer expectations while managing operational costs,” Glia CEO and Co-Founder Dan Michaeli said. “Adding Glia’s AI-powered platform to FIS’s digital online banking products creates a powerful solution that doesn’t force organizations to choose between efficiency and experience—they can have both.”

Having introduced itself to Finovate audiences as SaleMove in its Best of Show-winning debut at FinovateFall 2015, Glia has since become one of Finovate’s most decorated demoers, earning Best of Show honors a whopping ten times. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in New York, Glia offers an AI-powered, customer interactions solution for community banks and credit unions that delivers increases in digital branch loan dollars by more than 5x, boosts digital containment rates to 62%, and reduces abandonment rates by 12%.

Photo by Trevor Neely on Unsplash

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From Rate Wars to Real Value: How Wysh is Redefining Deposit Strategy through Protection

From Rate Wars to Real Value: How Wysh is Redefining Deposit Strategy through Protection
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2025, Speaker series, Streamly, Wysh

With more banking options available than ever before, winning customers and their deposits has become increasingly difficult. Differentiation is not only harder to achieve, it’s also more essential for banks and credit unions seeking growth. Yet for many institutions, finding a truly distinct value proposition can feel elusive.

This is where Wysh’s embedded life insurance product comes in. I spoke with Wysh CEO and Founder Alex Matjanec at FinovateFall last month about how his company helps banks differentiate their offerings by adding life insurance protection. The unique benefits help firms build loyalty, retention, and deeper customer relationships while also helping grow deposits.

“The main problem that we’re solving is that in America, there’s a massive underinsured gap where many Americans don’t have enough insurance. And the way they get it is actually going away, so they’re looking for new avenues to do so. On the other side, banks are looking to differentiate themselves by capturing new deposits to beat digital institutions… and we think layering in protection is the way to do so and we make it very easy to do that.”

Alex Matjanec is a serial entrepreneur with deep roots in fintech and digital product leadership. Before founding Wysh, he co-founded MyBankTracker.com, which has been called “the Expedia of banks,” and was involved in other startup ventures focused on financial tools and mobile apps. Under his leadership, Wysh has scaled from a small team to over 50 employees, expanding into dozens of US states, and forging partnerships with banks and fintechs to embed protection into deposit accounts.

Wysh was founded in 2021 to help banks increase deposits while adding value and improving customer retention. The company’s flagship solution, Life Benefit, allows banks, credit unions, and fintechs to embed micro life insurance directly into deposit accounts without requiring underwriting, opt-in steps, or extra bureaucracy.

Photo by Nita

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Offset Labs Secures Pre-Seed Funding in Round Led by Archangel Ventures

Offset Labs Secures Pre-Seed Funding in Round Led by Archangel Ventures
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Byne, Funding, Offset Labs
  • AI defense startup Offset Labs has secured €600k ($804k) in pre-seed funding in a round led by Archangel Ventures and featuring participation from Amadeus Capital Partners and Seven Capital.
  • The funding takes the company’s total capital raised to more than $1.1 million, according to Crunchbase.
  • As Byne, the company made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateEurope 2025 in London.

UK-Ukrainian AI defense venture Offset Labs, which rebranded from Byne earlier this year, has raised €600k ($804k) in pre-seed funding in a round led by Archangel Ventures. Amadeus Capital Partners and Seven Capital also participated in the investment. The funding takes Offset Labs total funding to more than $1.1 million, according to Crunchbase.

“This funding marks an important milestone in our mission: to build the first AI Lab creating frontier models specifically tailored to the needs of defence and national security customers,” the company noted on its LinkedIn page. “We believe that achieving this vision requires uniting talent, data, and computing infrastructure under one roof. Only with this integrated approach can we deliver the breakthrough—the ‘ChatGPT moment’—for mission-relevant AI and sustain a decisive qualitative offset in the decade ahead.”

With a team split between London and Kyiv, Offset Labs is a bi-national security laboratory that has designed and deployed AI models for signal and voice processing in operational environments. The investment is expected to accelerate the company’s development of what it refers to as a “decisive AI advantage” for NATO and its allies. As its name implies, Offset Labs is focused on the idea of an “offset” or strategic leap forward that provides one side a significant advantage in the balance of power.

The company believes that AI is the next likely area for an offset, but insists that in order for Western countries to make this happen, firms will have to embrace an integration of data, research, and talent at scale. This is where Offset Labs comes in, “to bring everything from data curation to research under one roof and unlock deep AI innovation for defense customers, ensuring Western leadership in this critical domain.”

As Byne, the company made its Finovate debut in February at FinovateEurope 2025. At the conference, the startup’s co-founder and CEO Borys Nadykto demonstrated how the technology enables users to create secure Large Language Model (LLM) agents for enterprise use. Designed to manage the tension between productivity gains and data security when using AI tools like ChatGPT, Byne’s technology empowers companies to host LLM applications within their secure perimeter (on-premise or private cloud) to ensure safe handling of sensitive data and integration with internal systems.

Headquartered in London, the company was founded as Byne in 2022 by Nadykto, Denys Budnyk, and Andrii Yakovyna. Byne announced its rebrand to Offset Labs earlier this year.

Photo by vackground.com on Unsplash

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