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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall on September 14-16, 2020. Register today and save your spot.
Bambu is building innovative solutions for the digital wealth landscape with focus on customer engagement.
Features
Intuitive user experience to engage end customers
Powerful insights for advisors on their customers
Achieving customer outcomes through goal-based investing
Why It’s Great Re-centering wealth management to the customer and away from the product.
Presenters
Nick Wakefield, Managing Dir. Wakefield is a keen innovator in financial technology, helping to build Bambu across Europe. He is also the Co-Founder of Regulation Asia, the leading intelligence hub for regulatory professionals across Asia-Pacific. LinkedIn
Sam Beeby, Ops. Dir. Beeby has 15 years of experience in digital product delivery for clients including Google, Facebook, Nike and Amazon. He is now focused on revolutionising financial services with human-centered designs. LinkedIn
The Brexit challenge. Rising economies of Central and Eastern Europe. The crisis of confidence in traditional financial institutions. The growing anxiety over the power of new enabling technologies … how will innovation in financial technology be shaped by these competing interests and demands?
Next week in Berlin, Germany, Finovate will host its first fintech conference in continental Europe. From February 11 through February 13, we will present the innovators, the entrepreneurs, the analysts, and the venture capitalists who will share their accomplishments and insights with our 1200+ audience of financial professionals. Below is a sneak peek at what we have in store over the course of our three-day event. Visit our FinovateEurope page for more details.
Industry Stage Day – February 11
This year FinovateEurope kicks off with an Industry Stage Day. This day begins with a pair of keynote addresses leading into the morning’s special address from Steven Van Belleghem, author of Customers The Day After Tomorrow. The afternoon will feature a variety of tracks with their own keynotes, addresses, and fireside chats on themes such as the digital future, insurtech, open banking, and payments.
Our Industry Stage Day will also feature our new Startup Booster program. Read our interview with Finovate VP and host of the Finovate Podcast Greg Palmer on Finovate’s latest commitment to fintech’s startup community.
Demo Stage Days – February 12 and 13
The second and third days of FinovateEurope will introduce our live fintech demos into the mix. In addition to our demos, we will also feature addresses, power panels, and special analyst insight presentations to help contextualize and examine the technologies – and their applications – on display during our Demo Stage Days. Learn more about the companies demonstrating their technologies in our FinovateEurope Sneak Peek series.
Another new feature for FinovateEurope is our Women in Fintech stream on Wednesday. This special opportunity offers keynote addresses, panel discussions, and networking sessions geared toward discussing and promoting gender diversity in the fintech industry.
FinovateEurope Need to Knows
We’re excited about Finovate’s first trip to Berlin, Germany. If you’re planning on joining us, then here’s some information to help you make the most of your stay.
What: FinovateEurope 2020 – a three-day conference in Berlin, Germany featuring live demonstrations of the latest innovations in financial technology
When: The conference begins Tuesday morning, February 11, with registration at 8:30am and opening remarks at 9:15am. FinovateEurope continues through Thursday, February 13.
Where: FinovateEurope will be held at the Intercontinental Berlin, Budapester Strabe 2, Berlin, Germany.
Why: Finovate’s combination of keynote addresses, panel discussions and debates, and live technology demos is the most exciting way to keep up with what’s new – and what’s next – in the world of fintech innovation.
How: To get tickets and join us? Visit our registration page today and save your spot! Join us for our Industry Stage Day, our Demo Stage Days, or save big with an All-Access Pass that will enable you to enjoy the entire, three-day event.
The collaboration could begin as soon as March. Amazon has not commented on the report either, other than to affirm that lending is one of the services it provides to its merchant partners. In a statement, the company praised its merchants for “account(ing) for more than half of everything sold in Amazon’s stores.”
Goldman’s potential alliance with Amazon follows news of the investment bank’s 2019 partnership with Apple and Mastercard as part of the Apple Card launch. It also comes as the firm makes a number of moves that suggest it is serious about financial technology. Financial News London noted that in addition to partnership changes in recent years that have led to fewer traders and more investment bankers, Goldman Sachs is also “clearing out space for leaders in the new consumer business (it) is building.” The article highlights a pair of new Goldman Sachs partners – the founder of PFM app Clarity, which Goldman acquired in 2018, and the CEO of United Capital, a recent wealth management acquisition – as evidence of this trend.
Another example of Goldman Sachs interest in fintech, of course, is its digital bank offering, Marcus, launched in 2016. At the company’s first investor day last week, Goldman affirmed its commitment to Marcus, pledging to add a digital wealth management component and a checking account to the platform in 2021. Goldman also unveiled a new mobile Marcus app that enables accountholders to check balances, schedule transfers, and make loan payments. As reported in the company’s fourth quarter results, Marcus has $60 billion in consumer deposits.
A possible partnership with Amazon is not the only fintech headline Goldman Sachs has picked up this week. Yahoo Finance is reporting that Goldman may seek to build its own financial services cloud platform as part of a “transformational, multi-decade effort.” The report quotes Goldman Sachs co-Chief Information Officer Marco Argenti who suggested that the company would leverage it own “core technology services” for external uses in the same way that Amazon has with its Amazon Web Services platform, and potentially provide a significant new revenue stream.
The actual scope of Goldman’s initiative is what has most observers and analysts buzzing. Does the company’s stated “transformational, multi-decade effort” essentially mean Goldman-Sachs-as-a-Service? Or a full-fledged AWS competitor? Bank of America and IBM announced their intention to develop a financial services public cloud platform last fall. It will be interesting to see if Goldman’s ambition is to meet, or exceed, that goal.
Recently I came across an interesting story of how tech native GenZ kids were being paired with aging Boomers to help them navigate a variety of contemporary technology tools – from their smartphones to their SnapChat apps.
At a time when sneers like “OK Boomer” quickly trend on social media, it was a refreshing reminder of the role younger generations can play in making some of the dramatic changes in society – including technology – easier for their older family members, friends, neighbors, and even perfect strangers to navigate.
With this in mind, I wanted to take a look at how entrepreneurs are leveraging fintech to do the same thing: make it easier for seniors to not just participate in online life, but to thrive there.
Ensuring that the online and mobile worlds are a safer place for seniors is one of the important contributions that technology can make. EverSafe, which introduced its solution to Finovate audiences at FinovateFall 2014, specializes in leveraging technology to help protect seniors against financial exploitation. The company’s software examines the senior’s financial transactions and credit report on a daily basis, looking for unexpected patterns and other anomalies that may indicate potentially fraudulent activity. Once suspicious activity is detected, the user is alerted immediately and, if the activity is confirmed, a resolution process is started.
Earlier this year, Eversafe lent its technology to researchers at the Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine in Portland. The goal is to help medical professionals uncover cognitive test markers that correlate with changes in the financial behavior of seniors. Interviewed in Alzheimer’s News Today, Dr. Kathy Wild noted that these insights could help determine when and to what extent independent living is the best option for a given senior. The results of Wild’s study are expected in 2021.
Eversafe was founded in 2012 by Howard Tischler, who is the company’s CEO. The firm is headquartered in Columbia, Maryland.
Best of Show winner at FinovateFall 2018, Golden offers technology geared toward helping older Boomers take care of their parents, many of whom are entering assisted living communities. The company’s Financial Caregiving Assistant app and Family Collaboration platform provide an array of services such as security for online accounts; automatic, on-time billpay; expense review; and a family document vault. The offering also helps seniors and caretakers to discover government benefits and drug discounts they may be eligible for. Partnerships with a variety of financial services companies gives Golden users the ability to offer branded services – including legal, financial, estate, and wealth management services – to their customers, as well.
The first company to win AARP’s Financial Innovation Award and Blue Cross Blue Shield’s Aging Innovation Challenge, Golden was launched in 2016 by CEO Evin Ollinger, and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Even among hardened fintech fans there was an audible gasp in the room when FinovateAsia 2019 Best of Show winner Bereev‘s CEO announced bluntly that her company’s goal was to help you “plan for your death.” Then again, it’s hard not to take a company that uses the Twitter hashtag #DeathPlan seriously.
Malaysia-based, Bereev digitizes and simplifies a life-planning process that is not only complex, but is also typically paper-intensive and burdensome. In explaining the origins of the company, founder and CEO Izumi Inoue compared the unexpected, end-of-life experience of her grandmother with the passing of her grandfather soon afterward, who had learned from his wife’s death the importance of end-of-life planning. And not just for important documents and the numbers to bank accounts, either. More personal instructions like which friends to contact were also a part of Inoue’s grandfather’s plan. They are a part of Bereev, as well.
A legacy planning solution, Bereev helps guide an individual’s family on what to do in the event of their injury, incapacitation, or death. Bereev has four components to building this contingency plan: a digital vault for important documents such as wills and insurance policies; the ability to record and save “last words” to be sent or shared with loved ones; and an accessibility console that enables the user to determine who gets access to which data and information in Bereev.
The fourth component is a guided journey that helps ensure that users provide clear instructions on how they want their affairs handled after death. The solution is set up so that all the user has to is answer a pair of questions each week, and Bereev will build out over time a personalized set of end-of-life instructions based on the user’s responses. “Before you know it,” Inoue said, “you’ll have very clear instructions left behind.”
Poignantly, Inoue notes that there are many innovations in technology in general and fintech in specific, that help you prepare and take advantage of the happier times in life: getting married, buying a first home, planning for a family. “But what about the darker and tougher times in life,” Inoue asks, “who is going to help you then? At Bereev, our goal is to help you cope through those difficult moments of life – with technology.”
Sequoia Capital has led a $35 million funding round for payments infrastructure specialist Finix. The investment, which also featured participation from Acrew Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, Activant Capital, and Inspired Capital, takes Finix’s total funding to more than $55 million. The Series B will enable the company to further grow its product and engineering teams, as well as accelerate innovation in its payments-infrastructure-as-a-service offering.
Finix’s goal is to help companies “own their payment stack” which enables them to create the payment experience that best fits their customers and business. From enhancing the merchant onboarding experience to managing the flow of funds, Finix sees control over the payment process as a “strategic imperative” that companies should not relegate to third party payment service providers. In the same way that companies like Marqeta and Plaid have made it easier for businesses to issue cards and access financial information, Finix sees itself as empowering businesses to own payments.
“Every day, our customers prove to us they are able to build superior product experiences that delight both consumers and merchants when they have full control over their payment stacks,” Finix CEO Richie Serna said.
Finix also differentiates itself by the way it charges for its service. Instead of taking a cut from each transaction, Finix opts for a fixed pricing model plus a sliding scale fee based on the number of payments processed. Finix notes that companies can go live with its system in as few as two months and at a significant savings compared to building their own in-house solution.
“Historically, software companies have had two options: either take (the) pain and integrate payments into your software, or give it to your customers in the form of a disconnected experience,” Sequoia partner Pat Grady explained. Instead, he said, companies can use Finix’s “developer-friendly building blocks” to create an integrated, seamless payment experience for customers while adding payments as a new source of revenue.
Finix was founded in 2015 and is based in San Francisco, California. The company’s customers include Passport Labs, a mobility management platform, retail POS company Lightspeed POS, and small business financing and cash flow solution provider Kabbage.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall on September 14-16, 2020. Register today and save your spot.
Altilia is a leader in automating business processes across multiple industries by combining human and machine intelligence. They provide augmented intelligence solutions for next generation RPA.
Features
Augmented intelligence solutions
Help businesses process complex, unstructured documents
Along with typical and alternative data, quickly, securely and at scale
Why It’s Great Scalable, modular and flexible, Altilia’s human-in-the-loop technologies help deliver significant cost reduction while augmenting employee productivity and transforming customer engagement.
Presenters
Umberto Scilinguo, COO Scilinguo has 10+ years as a technical team leader for design and implementation of augmented intelligence solutions and COO for company management and growth hacking. LinkedIn
Fausto Pupo, VP Bus. Dev. Pupo has 9+ years as a designer of AI software solutions, pre-sales and post-sales engineer, partner manager and business developer. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall on September 14-16, 2020. Register today and save your spot.
Authlete provides an API authorization engine to implement OAuth, OpenID Connect, Financial-grade API and CIBA for various use cases from Open Banking to Identity Assurance.
Features
Unique architecture to build secure open API platforms faster
The first certified solution of Financial-grade API and CIBA
Highly integrable with existing infrastructure assets
Why It’s Great Authlete provides core capabilities of standard-compliant API authorization and enables customers to allocate more resources on businesses development
Presenter
Takahiko Kawasaki, Co-Founder Kawasaki is a Co-Founder of Authlete, implementing state-of-the-art specs into the service and providing his insights as blog entries at https://medium.com/@darutk/. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall on September 14-16, 2020. Register today and save your spot.
Bankish provides credit providers with an end-to-end and highly modular loan administration platform. The cloud-based solution (SaaS) features vital functionality with outstanding configurability.
Features
Core-IT solution designed to simplify procedures via modularity
Ease of use
Configurability and automation
Why It’s Great Bankish’s core-IT software brings all aspects of the business together in one, seamless environment.
Presenters
Ian Kalla, CXO Kalla is a finance and investments enthusiast with a demonstrated history in project management and client/investor relations. He’s passionate about fintech for its efficient, operational focus. LinkedIn
Marek Piller, CTO Piller has 20+ years of experience in banking and IT (Swedbank, Coop Bank, Tieto), and is a true professional of core-IT solutions in banking. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall on September 14-16, 2020. Register today and save your spot.
MODIFI is solving trade finance for SMEs globally. Their online platform allows SMEs to get the trade finance they need. Simple, flexible and transparent, they empower businesses to trade internationally.
Features
Speed: Apply for finance in under 10 minutes
Growth: Improve cash flow and grow businesses
Global: Worldwide platform available 24/7
Why It’s Great Trade finance is an old and broken industry. MODIFI’s platform removes the inefficiencies to give SMEs rapid access to the finance they need to trade and grow.
Presenters
Nelson Holzner, CEO & Co-Founder Lawyer, turned private equity investor, turned serial entrepreneur, with 20 years of professional experience in top international firms, startups and high growth companies. LinkedIn
Sven Brauer, COO Expert in European Fintech & Banking industry, especially the German lending space with consumer credit market for B2C + B2B lending, such as working capital financing. LinkedIn
The five-day World Economic Forum wrapped up late last month. The event, based in Davos, Switzerland, hosted some of the brightest minds in the world to speak on some of the biggest issues facing our society today.
We combed through the agenda to bring you a view of the discussions through a fintech lens. Here’s a summary of some of the most interesting fintech-related topics covered at the global event.
Shaping the Future of Financial and Monetary Systems The majority of this session wrestled with digital transformation. One of the overarching themes in this discussion as it related to digital transformation was the idea that we’ve recently reached a major inflection point in the banking industry. That is, banks are no longer adding products and services to their existing models, but the very nature of how they operate is beginning to change. And as these changes happen, banks can only move as fast as their customers are willing to move alongside them.
Shaping the Future of the Digital Economy This panel represented a range of industries. Specific to the financial services industry, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman said he expects the fintech industry to see more innovation in the next five years than it has seen in the last 30. The cause of this development speed comes down to AI. Along with AI, digital transformation was another hot topic. The panel agreed that digital transformation has opened up new opportunities and in many cases requires firms to revamp their entire business model.
From Token Assets to a Token Economy This session sought to answer the question, “how can tokenization make illiquid assets accessible without creating new financial risks?” The panelists explained how tokenization makes fractional ownership possible with physical goods, such as a famous painting or a piece of real estate. One overarching theme that pulsed throughout the discussion is that global regulation is behind in the tokenized asset realm. So while technology may be advanced enough for a tokenized asset economy, we are still many years away from it being commonplace.
How to Implement Responsible AI The World Economic Forum has teamed up with the government of Singapore to create a model framework of governance for the use of AI. This panel discussed the new framework and how it addresses the explainability of AI, which aims to be simple enough for all players to understand. As a part of the effort, the group has also released a toolkit for boards of directors to understand how to conduct AI oversight.
The Real-World Impact of 5G This session hosted representatives from Verizon, Qualcomm, and ABB. The group addressed political and policy issues around security and trust. Secondary to the conversation were social concerns. The first considered if 5G will cause a digital divide between societies that have 5G and those that do not. The other social concerns addressed were potential climate change and health concerns.
Global Cybersecurity Outlook The general consensus of this panel is that we are currently losing the battle of cybersecurity. The panelists looked at who is ultimately responsible to act as the authority to govern fraudsters, discussed the balance between security and consumer privacy, and considered whether businesses’ cybersecurity spending is happening in the right areas. Finally, the panelists concurred that security is not an IT problem, but that it is a business problem and everyone at the organization should be a security expert to some extent.
Creating a Credible and Trusted Digital Currency This discussion looked at opportunities, challenges, and concerns around digital currencies. The panel acknowledged that digital currency adoption has a certain and definite future. Representatives addressed real use cases, including cross-border payments, financial inclusion, and fraud prevention. Among the discussion points were stablecoin competition, central banks’ participation, as well as cultural effects. Much of the dialogue circled back to digital currencies issued by central banks (CBDCs).
The combination of Worldline and Ingenico will create the world’s fourth largest payment services provider with 20,000 workers in 50 countries serving nearly one million merchants and 1,200 financial institutions.
Worldline announced today that it would acquire Ingenico for $8.6 billion (€7.8 billion) in a stock and cash deal. The combination would give the new entity broad reach across Europe – blending Ingenico’s strength in Germany, the Nordic countries, and France, with Worldline’s strong presence in Switzerland and Austria. The acquisition also will help the companies expand and take advantage of opportunities in the U.S., Asia, and Latin America.
Worldline Chairman and CEO Gilles Grapinet will be CEO of the combined entity. Bernard Bourigeaud, Ingenico Chairman, will take the role of non-executive Chairman of the Board of Directors once the deal is closed.
“I am proud to announce that today is a great day for Worldline and for Ingenico, and more widely for our Payment industry,” Grapinet said in a statement. “Together we create the European World-Class leader in digital payments.” In praising the Ingenico team and its leadership, Grapinet also highlighted two areas – online payments and merchant acquiring – where he expected the new entity to excel.
In his statement, Bourigeaud put the deal in the context of the other recent mega mergers – FIS and Worldpay, Fiserv and First Data, TSYS and Global Payments – in the payments space. “The combination of Worldline and Ingenico offers a unique opportunity to create the undisputed European champion in payments on par with the largest international players,” he said. “This transaction comes at (a) time of accelerating consolidation of the industry and I am convinced that the joined forces of both leaders will deeply transform the industry.”
Worldline estimates that the new company will have projected 2019 net revenues of $5.8 billion (€5.3 billion) and operating margins of $1.3 billion (€1.2 billion).
An alum of our FinovateEurope conference, Worldline demonstrated its Worldline Connected Piggy Bank solution at our London event in 2017. The offering helps provide financial education for children, encouraging savings at an early age by combining an actual, physical piggy bank with a mobile app and savings account.
Opentech has leveraged Mastercard Send APIs to offer a new solution, OpenPay Send, that will give financial institutions across Europe powerful money transfer capabilities.
“Opentech’s mission is to be the enabler of digital payments
for banks, leveraging state-of-the-art infrastructures to build highly reliable
and flexible solutions, ready to be deployed to the end user,” Opentech CEO Stefano
Andreani said. “The partnership with Mastercard and the integration with their worldwide
network is a perfect fit to our strategy, bringing a great value and
convenience to our customers.” Andreani called OpenPay Send “an important
addition to our offering.”
OpenPay Send will also enable firms to offer a broad range of services – from remittance and micropayments to insurance claim distribution and real-time P2P payments. Available via a single integration, the solution helps institutions transfer money to more than 100 corridors – including as many as three billion bank accounts – as well as mobile wallets, payment cards, and cash-out locations worldwide.
The new technology gives banks and other FIs the flexibility to tailor its offering, specifying which countries and sending channels to be activated, and at what costs. OpenPay Send also features a customizable UI for both mobile and web, as well as an administrative portal. Opentech will demo OpenPay Send later this month at FinovateEurope in Berlin, Germany.
Mastercard’s Arne Pache, VP of Digital Payments and Labs, praised the collaboration as an example of how the Mastercard Send platform improves the process of global money transfer. “(We) designed the Mastercard Send platform envisioning a better, faster, and smarter way to send money all over the world in multiple ways by leveraging our expertise and the existing relationships with our customers.” Pache added that the partnership with Opentech and launch of OpenPay Send “brings this vision to life.”
Opentech demonstrated its white-label mobile app, OpenPay for Business, at FinovateEurope 2018. The company is headquartered in both Italy and Switzerland.
Here is our weekly roundup of the latest news from our Finovate alumni:
Revolutoffers free airport lounge access to users if their flight is delayed by more than one hour.
Billtrust’s Business Payments Network is now integrated with Corporate Spending Innovations to enable their customers to automate supplier payment delivery.
Voleotaps Glen Wilson as its interim CEO. Company founder Thomas Beattie will remain as Voleo CCO.
Xignite now available in Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Jack Henrylaunches core-agnostic banking platform.
DefenseStormreports zero attrition and 50% customer growth in 2019.
FISpartners with alternative SMB funding company LiberisFinance.
Pacific Service Credit Union selectsDigital Onboarding to enhance member onboarding.
Quidmerges with social media analytics company NetBase.
ndgit and Konsentuspartner for PSD2 compliance. This week, ndgit also released version 2 of its API platform.
Arxan Technologiesrecorded 30% subscription growth in 2019.
Here’s How Far We’ve Come with Voice AI in Customer Service – When it comes to customer service, even in-person interactions can be unpleasant. And doing business over the phone is usually markedly worse, especially if there is a bot involved. There is one fintech fighting that stereotype, however.
Currencycloud Raises $80 Million in New Funding – B2B cross border payments innovator Currencycloud has locked in $80 million in new funding.
Citi Unveils Digital Investment Platform Powered by Jemstep – Launched by Citi last week and powered by Jemstep, Citi Wealth Builder is the latest addition to the world of digital investing platforms.
LendUp Tops $2 Billion in Consumer Loans Mark – Since its launch in 2011, socially responsible lender LendUp has surpassed $2 billion in consumer financing via its digital lending platform.
FICO Suite 10 Brings New Precision and Flexibility to Credit Scoring Decisions – The new technology from FICOleverages trended credit bureau data to boost its predictive power, enabling lenders to make more precise decisions on credit risk.
Splitit Taps Stripe to Facilitate Merchant Onboarding for Payment Installments – The agreement makes Stripe the payment facilitator for all new merchants who onboard with Splitit.
Also on Finovate.com
PSD2 Turns Two: Where Do We Go From Here? – Break out the PSD2 birthday cake! On January 13 the Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2)– what we now generally think of as open banking– turned two years old.
Digital Dollars and E-Euros: The Case for National Digital Currencies – In recent weeks and months, we’ve heard news of a growing number of central banks investigating the pros and cons of digitizing their money supply.
Stop Looking at Your Customer Base as a Faceless Mass – f you ask Balázs Vinnai, president of W.UP, one size does not fit all when it comes to banking. In fact, his company’s entire premise is built around creating a personalized user experience.
Follow the Money: FinovateEurope’s VC All Stars Talk Fintech Investment in Europe – This year at FinovateEurope, we’ve added a panel called Investor All Stars. It’s stacked with investors who will offer up their take on the top topics for venture capital funding in fintech.
