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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateMiddleEast on November 20 and 21, 2019 in Dubai. Register today and save your spot.
Okanii solves all of the problems of moving value around the world by creating the true internet of value.
Features
Cost – Okanii offers a 100x cost reduction that makes $0.01 micro-payments profitable
Security – Quantum proof hyper-tokenization, unbreakable, zero fraud
Scalability – easily supports all of the worlds’ transactions
Why it’s great Okanii is the opposite of blockchain. Make payments/ transactions in any asset (181 currencies, stocks, bonds, commodities, real estate) across any use-case (P2P, B2C, B2B), instantly, securely, and at no cost.
Presenter
Grant Colhoun, CEO Colhoun is a serial entrepreneur, payments expert, and a recovering investment banker. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateMiddleEast on November 20 and 21, 2019 in Dubai. Register today and save your spot.
Circlys is a social saving plan based on circles model (rotating savings and credit association /committees) with trusted users that have been risk accessed.
Features
On-time payment
Flexible plans
Long term saving benefits
Access to liquidity that fits any financial plans
Why it’s great Circulate with Circlys and according to plan.
Presenters
Hanan Alanazi, Operations manager
Khaled Hassoun, CEO Hassoun has eight plus years of experience in tech start-ups in which he undertook multiple roles in managing business aspects. LinkedIn
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateMiddleEast on November 20 and 21, 2019 in Dubai. Register today and save your spot.
Fraud prevention has many layers, each with its own view. However, fraudsters attack across all layers. With fcase holistic fraud investigations, you can now manage all fraud from one mission control.
Features
Centralized fraud prevention automation
Holistic manual fraud investigations
Fraud mission control
Why it’s great Built from the ground up to massively manage your fraud operations from one mission control, fcase is one golden source of fraud data, delivering a reduction in fraud, customer friction and improves efficiency.
DriveWealthpartners with Bamboo to give Nigerians real-time access to trade 3,500+ stocks listed on the U.S. stock market.
OnDeckbuilds liquidity with new $125 million securitization.
Salt Edgeteams up with Exprivia to expand access to open banking solutions.
Insuritaspartners with Security Federal Savings Bank to launch digital insurance agency platform.
Coinbaseadds five new currencies to its Coinbase Card – XRP, BAT, REP, ZRX, and XLM – as it brings its card to ten new countries.
MastercardlaunchesMastercard Accelerate, a worldwide initiative that gives fintechs access to the company’s suite of digital solutions to help differentiate their offerings.
Finastrainks partnership with UAE-based United Arab Bank, which will deploy the company’s Fusion Corporate Channels and Fusion Cash Management solutions.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
Customer segmentation identification company SheerID is receiving a boost for its platform today with a $64 million investment. The funds bring SheerID’s total funding to $96 million.
The round was led by CVC Growth, which will join SheerID’s board of directors. SheerID will use the funds to fortify its marketing, sales, and engineering efforts; launch in more geographies, and add more consumer segments relating to occupation, interests, causes, and affiliations.
SheerID was founded in 2011 to help companies gate exclusive offers to high-value customer segmentation groups. The segmentation, for example, prevents customers from using their student ID from the 1990s to score a discount on a laptop today. Other segmentations include military personnel, teachers, and seniors. “Our platform allows brands to create offers that honor and recognize an entire consumer tribe, increasing trust and word-of-mouth, and decreasing customer acquisition costs,” explained SheerID CEO Jake Weatherly.
The new funds come at a time of significant growth for SheerID. The company has seen 4.5x revenue growth over the past three years, ranked 243 in the Deloitte and Touche Fast 500, and landed 200 customers including Target, Amazon, Lowe’s, Comcast, Google, T-Mobile and Urban Outfitters.
“Our exponential growth is driven by major shifts in personalization, privacy, and performance marketing,” Wealtherly said. “Marketers are struggling to capture the attention of consumers who want more control over their personal data and less uninvited marketing from brands.”
Oregon-based SheerID demoed its verification platform at FinovateSpring 2019. The demo showed how the SheerID platform can help banks not only verify credentials for exclusive offers but can also fuel personalized marketing.
Juvo, a company that specializes in building financial identities for the underbanked, announced this week that it has forged a strategic partnership with global mobile commerce company DOCOMO Digital. The collaboration will marry Juvo’s financial-identity-as-a-service capabilities with DOCOMO Digital’s payments platform to give prepaid mobile users broader payment options when it comes to paying for digital services.
The partnership specifically helps address the challenge that many prepaid mobile users in emerging markets face when accessing digital services. Many users abandon purchases because of insufficient prepaid balances or lack of other payment options such as credit cards. Working together, Juvo and DOCOMO Digital will now offer micro-credits, in real-time, to allow the transactions to be completed without requiring the user to top-up their balance immediately.
Founder and CEO of Juvo Steve Polsky described the company’s mission as creating a “YES economy” that provides financial identities for the 68% of adults around the world who are unable to participate in the regular economy because they do not have a credit history. “By creating financial identities, Juvo empowers our partners with the data to say YES to more of their customers, opening up new revenue streams,” Polsky said.
The emerging markets are a particular focus for the initiative. In a statement, DOCOMO Digital CEO Jonathan Kriegel said the partnership will make it easier to provide financial services to the underbanked in these regions, where access to mobile and data services is on the rise. “Our partnership with Juvo aligns perfectly with our endeavor to make the mobile commerce experience seamless for consumers, while unlocking more value for mobile operators and digital merchants,” Kriegel said.
Juvo introduced its Financial Identity as a Service (FiDaaS) platform in September. The solution uses alternative, typically untapped data sources to establish creditworthiness and build financial identities for the underbanked that will help them access financial services. Juvo’s platform presently updates more than five billion data points daily for 200 million consumers on four continents.
Juvo demonstrated its Identity Scoring solution at FinovateFall 2016. At the conference, Polsky and VP of Product Jason Robinson showed how the technology leverages consumer internet “know-how,” data science and game mechanics to identify mobile users and encourage them to engage with their mobile operator. The cloud-based solution also offers intelligence and reporting tools to give mobile operators the analytics and insights they need to boost engagement.
Named to the Deloitte 2019 Technology Fast 500 earlier this month and honored by Frost & Sullivan for Strategic Excellence in Emerging Markets in July, Juvo was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company has raised $54 million in funding, and includes Samsung NEXT, Wing Venture Capital, and New Enterprise Associates among its investors.
Tradeshiftintegrates with fraud protection specialist SiS-id to reduce payments fraud.
XerolaunchesPay with TransferWise, a new domestic bill payment solution to help U.K. customers pay and manage bills.
Pendo Systemsteams with WSN to help customers navigate digital transformation.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
How many partners does it take to help drive a national effort to boost youth financial literacy?
According to news from Finovate Best of Show winner Zogo, eleven is a great place to start.
Zogo announced late last month that it has teamed up with 11 community banks and credit unions across 12 different states to offer its teen financial literacy app to customers and members as a branded offering. Each institution will get an access code specific to their bank or credit union that they provide to the users of the app. Once the code is entered, the Zogo app becomes branded with the institution’s logo, helping create a more unique, partner-specific experience for the customer.
“With Zogo, we wanted to create a financial education experience our peers would actually use,” Zogo co-founder and CEO Bolun Li said. “We are excited to partner with community-focused financial institutions to bring this vision to life.”
The app works by guiding users through more than 300 educational micro-modules that help them meet the national standards for financial literacy. These include topics such as using credit, saving, and financial investing. Successfully completing a module earns the user points that can be redeemed in the form of gift cards. Zogo won Best of Show honors at FinovateFall in September for its live demo of the app, which leverages behavioral economic research developed at Duke University in North Carolina to help foster literacy in younger adults.
The firms that will be using the app as early as this year are:
CommunityWide FCU (Indiana)
Diamond CU (Pennsylvania)
First Bank & Trust (Louisiana)
Magnolia FCU (Mississippi)
MassMutual FCU (Massachusetts)
North Star Community CU (North Dakota)
Pen Air FCU (Florida)
Pyramid FCU (Arizona)
RelyOn CU (Texas)
Southern Chautauqua FCU (New York)
West Town Bank & Trust (Illinois, North Carolina)
Founded in 2018, Zogo has raised $295,000 in pre-seed funding, and is backed by Techstars and MetLife. In addition to its Finovate Best of Show honors, Zogo was the winner of the National Association of Credit Union Service Organizations (NACUSO) 7th Annual Next Big Idea contest earlier this year.
“Zogo is such a timely application, built to connect with young adults as they are beginning to learn the value of money,” NACUSO President and former USAA Bank CEO Jack Antonini said. “Delivered through ubiquitous mobile phone, this app can help credit unions capture new members, while teaching and reinforcing responsible financial habits.”
Intelligent Automation software provider Kofax is the latest company to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhance the capabilities of its solutions. The company announced this week that it is using AI and ML – along with natural language processing (NLP) – to add sentiment analysis and entity extraction to its intelligent automation offering. This improvement will make it easier for customers using Kofax’s technology to better understand and derive value from unstructured content.
“With new AI capabilities to process structured and unstructured data as well as understand intent and sentiment, Kofax is unrivalled in our ability to help enterprises glean greater insights from any type of content, react quicker to customer needs, and deliver a significantly better experience,” Kofax Chief Strategy Officer Chris Huff said.
Sentiment analysis enables organizations to discern the intent and emotion in the unstructured language of emails, legal documents, social media, and customer support queries. Entity extraction adds the ability to locate key elements in unstructured data and classify it into pre-defined categories. Kofax referred to it as the ability to easily locate “people, places, and things” from unstructured data.
The solution will enable organizations to manage the challenge of processing sizable amounts of unstructured and semi-structured data, alleviating the need for manual review of documents. With the ability to extract data in real-time, companies will see increases in productivity and efficiency while benefiting from deeper insights into customer behavior and preferences.
“Our investment in AI technologies to complement rules-based automation is paying off for our 25,000+ customers who’ve come to rely on our experience, dependability, and reliability for achieving true digital transformation at scale,” Huff added.
Founded in 1991 and acquired by Lexmark in 2015, Kofax launched its intelligent automation software platform and marketplace earlier this year. The technology automates end-to-end business operations at scale, and enables companies that have made a commitment to digital technology to further increase efficiency and productivity via automation.
“Kofax’s Intelligent Automation platform has driven excitement, and more energy around further adoption and expansion of the program,” Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group’s Yoshiaki Nishita said. “In addition, our employee mindset is changing as well. They’re no longer concerned automation will replace them. They see it as an extension of themselves. Ultimately it’s become a fundamental shift in their thinking.”
Kofax demonstrated the KYC Automation with RPA extension of its TotalAgility platform at FinovateSpring 2016. The technology uses existing API infrastructure – or its own Synthetic API capability if necessary – to help organizations meet KYC requirements and fight financial fraud.
Wealth management solutions provider WeInvestlaunched a new product today that aims to help financial services companies discover new investment tactics.
The new offering, StratWealth, is a strategy marketplace with more than 100 algorithmically-generated, customized investment strategies for banks, brokers, and asset managers to choose from. With an initial investment minimum of $4,000, StratWealth also caters to retail clients. The platform, which hinges on a dashboard to visualize different products, offers access to portfolios comprised of 90,000 funds including customized stock and ETF baskets.
“Through our proprietary StratWealth platform, we are enabling financial institutions by providing them with a pool of expert investment ideas to choose from and hence accelerating the entire process of product development,” said CEO Bhaskar Prabhakara. “With this, we hope that the collective financial landscape globally will benefit – with better investment strategies and a wider variety of customized portfolios to choose from.”
The impetus for StratWealth was the rising demand for thematic investments which often deliver better long term performance than traditional investment strategies.
WeInvest’s partners for the tool include MSCI, Solactive, and Schroders. “Our indexes will provide them with the tools they need to assess and measure these structural trends and create customized thematic portfolios with a focus on a number of megatrends,” said Beng Eu Lim, Head of South East Asia Client Coverage at MSCI.
Founded in 2015 and with 38 employees, WeInvest offers its services in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Dubai. Prabhakara most recently presentedAdviseWealth at FinovateMiddleEast 2018 in Dubai. WeInvest’s clients include Singapore’s Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), Thailand’s Siam Commercial Bank and Dubai’s Mubasher Financial Services.
Fintech is a global game, so why don’t we always hear about all of the global players? The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, for example is often overlooked when it comes to fintech.
The Milken Institute, a non-profit think tank, recently looked beyond the borders of the U.S., Europe, and Asia to better understand the state of fintech in MENA– specifically in the UAE and Bahrain. The findings come in the Milken Institute’s recent reportThe Rise of FinTech in the Middle East: An Analysis of the Emergence of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
The publication reports that the region receives only 1% of all VC fintech investment across the globe. But considering funding numbers alone paints a different picture than looking at fintech activity as a whole in the region. Looking beyond funding numbers, the report details the state of fintech in the region, its challenges, and what to watch.
MENA’s fintech pulse
Just getting started
It may be true that the rest of the globe receives 99% of all VC fintech investment, but the UAE and Bahrain are just getting started. Policymakers began forming fintech-specific initiatives in 2017 and, with only a couple of years of development, there is still plenty of time for the countries to grow the depth and breadth of fintech in the region.
Potential clients
The MENA region has around 450 million residents, an ample population to support a wide range of fintech initiatives. What’s more, half of all residents are under 25 years old and more likely to be tech savvy, having grown up with technology touching almost every aspect of their lives.
Geographical advantages
MENA acts as a gateway to neighboring Asia, which has two positive aspects. First, it is ripe with potential fintech partners. Second, Asia has a large population of financially underserved residents in need of the types of alternative financial services fintechs offer.
Growth
The region’s fintech sector is growing at a 30% compounded annual growth rate. By 2022, it is estimated that 465 fintechs in the region will garner $2+ billion in annual funding, a 25x improvement when compared to the $80 million in funding fintechs brought in in 2017.
What to watch
Milken’s report states that the following fintech subsectors are emerging regularly throughout the MENA region:
Payments
Remittances
Insurtech
Lending
Regtech
Digital banking
Crowdfunding
Blockchain
Cryptocurrency
And of that list, payments dominate. The fintech scene in MENA is comprised of 85% payments, money transfers, and remittances companies. This, the report details, is fueled by the prevalence of mobile devices and internet connectivity.
Challenges
Lack of local talent
As with many regions across the globe, MENA struggles to find local talent with specialized fintech expertise. Perhaps exacerbating the issue, the region’s major growth sectors such as traditional financial services, oil, and healthcare attract many of the experts from the talent pool.
Regulation
Again, MENA startups are not unique in their struggle with regulation. However, in its report, Milken pointed out that MENA fintechs often face extreme regulatory hurdles that outshadow typical regulatory challenges in their number and complexity. Examples include Visa requirements, licensing fees, quotas for employee hiring, and square footage requirements.
Cost of doing business
Regulation is just one aspect that adds to the cost of doing business in the region. Other factors are a high cost of living, licensing, and work visa costs.
For a more complete picture of the state of fintech in the region I highly recommend reading the full report. And to see MENA’s newest technology demoed live, and to hear from the most renowned industry leaders in fintech in the region, be sure to check out FinovateMiddleEast, taking place on November 20 and 21 in Dubai. Tickets are still available.
Kick off your high-heeled sneakers – fintech’s got a brand new podcast.
The new program, the Finovate Podcast, was launched this fall by host Greg Palmer, Finovate VP of Strategy. New episodes of the show are released twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays.
We talked with Greg about what the Finovate Podcast brings to the fintech community, what topics the podcast will focus on, and what guests the podcast will feature in the weeks and months to come.
Finovate: You just posted your 14th Finovate podcast. What kind of reception has the podcast received from the fintech community so far?
Greg Palmer: So far the reception has been really positive! Certain episodes have been more popular than others, but listeners seem to be responding well to the format. Part of the reason I wanted to do this podcast in the first place was because I feel like I’m always talking to interesting people who know so much more than I do, and I wanted to share their insights with a broader audience.
I’m finding that a lot of people aren’t really aware that some of the things that they take for granted would surprise others in the space, and it’s always fun when we can uncover something like that. And on the other side, the folks I’m interviewing all seem to believe that I’m making them sound smart – they are smart, of course, but I’m glad I’m making them sound like it!
Finovate: How does the Finovate podcast differ from some of the other fintech or technology podcasts out there?
Palmer: A lot of podcasts in the space are longer-form, and require a lot more time and attention. I deliberately wanted to create a podcast that was shorter, punchier, and more efficient. Partly that’s because of how my brain has been wired after working at Finovate for so long, and partly it’s because I think that’s the show I would want to listen to. Our episodes top out at about 13 minutes, which makes them a lot more digestible. And just like with the content on stage at Finovate events, if an episode isn’t your cup of tea, no worries, the next one will have a completely different focus.
Finovate: Who are some of the guests you’ve already had on the program? If someone were to go back and only listen to one or two of your previous podcasts, which ones would you highlight and why?
Palmer: We’ve already had a number of great guests, including our Best of Show winners from FinovateSpring 2019, and some non-product folks like Ghela Boskovitch, Karen Mills, Wayne Miller, and Alissa Knight. If you were going to start with one, I’d take the Ghela one first, she’s such a fascinating person, and we were able to get into some really good stuff on our first chat. Karen Mills was great, and so was Alissa Knight. I’m not supposed to play favorites with the Best of Show winners, but I really enjoyed speaking with Jeff LoCastro of Neener Analytics. Kevin Gosschalk from Arkose Labs was another fun one.
Finovate: Podcasts are an increasingly popular media channel. What can podcasts do to help stimulate interest in, conversation about, and broader coverage of financial technology?
Palmer: For me it comes back to the difference between the way people converse vs. the way they communicate in writing or other channels. I think fintech as an industry has a lot of mystique around it, and some of the concepts can be really intimidating. That intimidation can put people off or keep them from engaging with solutions that they should. A conversational podcast can really help to make some of the basic concepts easy to understand, and it can humanize the people behind the tech, which really helps. The more open, honest conversations we can have about the tech that’s driving the space, the better it is for everybody, and that’s where a podcast can really be an important asset.
Finovate: How has the podcast experience been for you? You are typically either on the stage talking to large audiences or behind the scenes working with startups. What do you get to do differently as a podcast host that you enjoy the most?
Palmer: I have to say I love it, and not just because I got to go out and buy some cool new audio toys to play with! My role on stage at Finovate events is to put other people in a position to shine, and my work behind the scenes with presenters ahead of time has very much the same goal. I want the people who come across our stage to be able to reach the audience in a meaningful way and create a real connection with them, even if they only have seven minutes in which to do it.
In the podcast, though, I get to be a more visible part of the conversation, which I appreciate, and it lets me try out some of my own thoughts on the space in a way that I haven’t been able to before. I think the biggest change since I’ve been doing the podcast, though, is the way I look at the people I interact with. Now that I have an amplifying outlet for the insights that I discover, I’ve started to look at people through this lens of “What can you tell my audience? What do you know that other people don’t know?” It’s a really interesting way to talk to people, and in my limited experience so far, I’m finding that I’m learning a lot myself as I ask those questions in my own head.
Finovate: Where do you see the Finovate podcast a year or two from now? What are your goals for the program?
Palmer: I want to grow the show, obviously, and I want to keep bringing a variety of guests in from all across the fintech ecosystem. My ultimate goal, though, is to use this platform as a way to share knowledge, and push the ecosystem to be better. There are a lot of exciting aspects of fintech, but there is so much work to do, and I hope my podcast can help people move forward in a confident way. If the Finovate Podcast can get to a point where it’s helping to inspire people, excite people, or even scare them a little bit, then it’s a huge success in my book.
Find out more about the Finovate Podcast. Want to amplify your message? Get involved as a supporter of the show.
