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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.
Evident Systems helps financial institutions of all sizes transform into fully real-time organizations: payments, operations, security, and customer service. The company’s first product is Evident Cloud RTP.
Features
Rapid, self-service onboarding to the Real-Time Payments Network
Secure integration with core systems of record
Automated test infrastructure
Ongoing monitoring
Why it’s great Evident Systems has partnered with The Clearing House as one of the first Third-Party Service Providers. Your account holders shouldn’t wait for Real-Time Payments: start today with Evident Cloud RTP!
Presenters
Bobby Calderwood, Founder of Evident Systems Before founding Evident Systems, Calderwood was a distinguished engineer on the technology fellows team at Capital One. He is an expert in real-time, event-driven financial information systems. LinkedIn
Keith Gray, Vice-President of RTP Strategic Partnerships at The Clearing House Gray is VP of The Clearing House over RTP Network Strategic Partnerships, which are critical to the success of RTP since many financial institutions will leverage RTP via a technology partner. LinkedIn
INETCOlaunchesINETCO Insight 7, a payment fraud detection platform.
Ephesoft and Infor partner to demonstrate new cloud-based document capture solution.
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.
Akshatha Kamath, Content Marketing at MoEngage, explores the fintech landscape in South East Asia, and why fintechs need to work on their “stickiness” factor.
According to the World Bank’s Global Financial Inclusion Index database, Indonesia has made rapid progress in financial inclusion across East Asia and the Pacific. The country has come a long way from just 20% of the adults owning an account in 2011 to 48.9% owning an account in 2018. While the country still grapples with the challenges of the unbanked population, it has led to the growth of fintech companies.
Indonesia has 167 fintech companies that offer payment, lending, personal finance, crypto and blockchain, crowdfunding, insurtech, and PoS services. The fintech industry is regulated by two entities – Bank Indonesia and Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK). While Bank Indonesia oversees the monetary policies, OJK takes care of P2P lending, crowdfunding, digital banking, data security, insurtech, and consumer protection.
According to the Fintech Indonesia Report 2018, payment and lending form the major part of the fintech ecosystem.
The Growth Story of Fintech in Indonesia
As the Government pushes for financial inclusion among its citizens, Indonesia is also a witness to the growth story of fintech companies. With over 167 companies operating in Indonesia, the fintech market has grown by 16.3% with total investment in fintech companies reaching $176.75 million in 2017 alone.
Here are a few factors that are responsible for the growth story of fintech in Indonesia.
Technology-enabled population: With a population of 261.12 million, the majority below the age of 35, technology is a key enabler for Indonesians. Over 143.2 million people have access to the internet, and mobile subscriptions are as high as 415.7 million.
Topography: Another factor responsible for the popularity of fintech companies is the topography of Indonesia. Indonesia is an archipelago country made of 17,000 islands spanning across 50,000 kilometers from east to west. As banks face a challenge in reaching the most remote areas, fintech companies are helping the Government meet its financial inclusion goals by offering financial solutions in every nook and corner of the country.
Easy loans for small-medium businesses: One of the challenges for small-medium businesses is the limitation in granting loans. According to financial regulators of Indonesia, banks and other financial institutions can only grant up to Rp600 trillion. In 2016 alone, the national loan demand had reached Rp1,600 trillion, due to which there was a restriction on availing bank loans. Fintech companies have simplified the process for the businesses by not asking for collaterals and enabling the debtors to submit the documents from anywhere, anytime.
Convenience: While cash is still the preferred mode of payment, cashless transactions and e-money products provide convenience to the users.
Challenges of Indonesia’s Fintech
Industry
While the fintech industry is working to push the government’s vision of financial inclusion and offering convenience to users, it has its own set of challenges.
Low internet connectivity: Despite the high penetration of the internet, connectivity is still low in Indonesia. Considering that the internet is the key requisite for delivering services to customers, fintechs face a challenge in reaching out to its customers, while customers face problem in completing their transactions without any hassles.
Preference for cash transactions: While Indonesia is shifting to cashless mode of payment, cash is still the preferred mode of payment for merchants.
Strict regulation: This is one of the major challenges for fintech companies. There are only 40 P2P lending services registered with OJK due to the strict regulatory process laid down by OJK and Bank Indonesia. At one point in time, OJK published a list of 100 lenders who were not recognized, while Bank Indonesia announced the release of Fintech Regulation and Regulatory Sandbox in 2017 to protect the interest of the customers. According to a study by the Monash Business School on Indonesia’s fintech industry, the regulator’s decisions are well-intentioned as they want to encourage people to adopt the financial system and discourage fraudulent activities. However, the lack of clarity in the process is posing a challenge to fintech companies that have not received a green signal to operate from OJK.
Lack of stickiness: According to Hootsuite, each consumer uses at least two or more fintech services. With so many fintech apps vying for the customer’s attention, increasing stickiness and engaging the users on the app can be quite a challenge for fintech companies.
How Kredivo Increased its Stickiness
and Increased the Conversions by 40%
Kredivo is an Indonesia-based fintech company that allows e-commerce buyers to apply and qualify for instant credit and payback over time. Within three years of launch, Kredivo had become one of the fastest growing and the stickiest digital payment channels for e-commerce in Indonesia. Kredivo wanted to go a step further to engage new users who had downloaded the app, enable them to complete the transactions within the app, and boost the overall brand and app store SEO. It wanted a single marketing automation platform that could help them address engagement challenges and also handle newer channels and use cases in the future. Kredivo chose MoEngage’s Push Amplification to track the notifications that were sent. It also acted as a fall back to GCM and delivered notifications to devices with a failed delivery, which boosted the delivery rate by 20%.
Kredivo also used MoEngage’s Automated Workflow to set up unique workflows based on user attributes such as age, gender, and income to send customized offers via emails and push notifications. The automated workflow led to a 40% increase in conversions within ten months.
Kredivo’s Workflow
In order to improve the SEO in the app store, Kredivo sent
automated emails to the users who had completed an in-app transaction to leave
their ratings and feedback. The triggered emails led to a 64% conversion rate.
All these efforts together helped Kredivo to improve the engagement on their app. You can read the complete case study here.
For a fintech company, personalized customer experiences and
winning the trust of customers is crucial to sustain and stay ahead in this new
and competitive industry. With marketing automation platforms like MoEngage,
you can achieve this goal easily.
One of Poland’s leading private banks, BNP Paribas Bank Polska, will deploy a new digital portfolio management solution from FinovateEurope Best of Show winnerDorsum. The bank will implement the Hungarian software company’s Wealth Management Platform to help give its advisors and wealth management relationship managers comprehensive wealth reporting, MiFID II compliant advisory workflows, as well as investment portfolio advisory.
Director of Brokerage House at BNP Paribas Bank Polska Emilia Jakubiak emphasized that the wave of digitization that is transforming the financial sector is as critical for financial services professionals as it is for customers. “It is not enough to focus only on the client facing platforms,” she said. “It is also important to give bank relationship managers a highly advanced and ergonomic digital platform for their everyday work. Dorsum’s solution will assist us in further improvement of our services and customer experience. ”
Jakubiak noted that the enhanced portfolio overview and MiFID 2 alignment in particular would enable advisors to “dedicate more attention to each customer which will additionally support the growth of the business in the investment segment.”
BNP Paribas Bank Polska is a member of the international BNP Paribas banking group. The institution, founded in 2015 and known previously as Bank BGZ BNP Paribas, offers savings, investment, and financing products to individual clients, and participates in the financing SMEs and corporate enterprises need in order to operate both in the Polish and international markets. The universal bank is listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.
“We are very proud that we have been chosen by another very prominent player in the European market,” Dorsum CEO Róbert Kő said. “BNP Paribas Bank Polska has positioned itself as potential market leader in the Polish private banking sector by embracing growth and innovation.”
At FinovateEurope earlier this year, Dorsum demonstrated its My Wealth app, which combines traditional and digital advisory processes to provide clients with a broader, more comprehensive view of their investments. The app features a self-learning chatbot, automatic portfolio notifications, and news, and supports the ability to reach out to the client’s financial advisor via a variety of channels.
Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Budapest, Dorsum works with more than 80 financial institutions, serving clients in 10+ countries and more than 8,000 individual users. A leading software company in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) market, Dorsum announced successfully implementing the new integrated securities account management system for Takarék Group in April. In March, the company won the SME Top 100 Silver Award in the Service Providers category at the Best Engines of the Economy conference series.
The new TSYS Authentication Platform, launched late last week, is the product of a collaboration between TSYS and four other companies – Featurespace, Emailage, InAuth, and Payfone – three of them Finovate alums. The solution leverages consumer experience data culled directly from cardholder touchpoints to deliver real-time verification on all kinds of remote customer interactions ranging from account origination and purchases to profile and password updating.
The platform, which integrates into TSYS client’s existing authentication systems, is available in Europe and will be launched in North America next year.
“At TSYS, we understand how various transactions are connected because we work with a global network of card issuers representing millions of individual accounts,” explained TSYS Issuer Solutions SVP of Product Strategy and Commercialization Justin Griggs. “If a device has been compromised in Ireland, for example, we can use that information to flag a remote login attempt in North America. We have real-time knowledge of potential fraud issues, and now we’re using that information to help our clients authenticate their customers and transactions across any use case.”
Although the partnership that helped bring the TSYS Authentication Platform to life brought in some new partners for TSYS, the company has a history with at least one of its collaborators: Featurespace. Two years ago, the two firms teamed up to launchTSYS Foresight Score with Featurespace, a fraud prevention solution that leverages machine learning to improve its effectiveness and accuracy over time without requiring human reprogramming.
“Our ARIC platform was specifically designed to help manage complex problems like transactional card fraud,” Featurespace CEO Martina King said when the partnership was announced. “Combined with TSYS’ industry experience, and robust client base, this product has tremendous potential in the fight against fraud.”
TSYS demonstrated its Authorization Controls solution at FinovateAsia 2013. The technology enables users to set default spending limits, category permissions, and other authorization rules and parameters on their accounts. The technology also supports user defined authorizations such as Alert, Decline, and Pre-Authorize, to provide increased visibility into and control over what happens during a transaction attempt.
Founded in 1983 and based in Columbus, Georgia, TSYS announced a mega merger earlier this year. The company agreed to be purchased by merchant acquirer Global Payments in a deal valued at $21.5 billion. Combined, the new entity will provide payment technology solutions to more than 3.5 million SMEs and 1,300+ financial institutions around the world.
DorsumBuilds Wealth Management Platform for BNP Paribas in Poland.
Around the web
Plaiddiscloses role of Visa and Mastercard as strategic investors in its $250 million Series C round from December.
iSignthissecures patent from European Patent Office for PSD2, SCA, and KYC.
SoFiinks 20-year arrangement for exclusive naming rights for the new Sofi Stadium where National Football League teams the Los Angeles Chargers and the Los Angeles Rams play.
Payoneer amps up cybersecurity efforts to significantly reduce phishing attempts.
Larkylaunches its nudge code library to bundle geo-location and engagement technology directly into mobile banking apps.
SpreedlylaunchesSpreedly 3DS2 to help execute 3DS2-compliant transactions across multi-gateway environments.
BNP Paribas Bank Polska to implementDorsum’s wealth management platform.
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.
Join us in October as our annual Asia-Pacific fintech conference returns to Singapore! FinovateAsia is one of the best ways for fintech startups and innovative industry veterans from the region and around the world to showcase their latest technologies before an audience of C-level decision-makers, venture capitalists, all-star analysts, and more.
For information on how to participate in FinovateAsia as a demoing company, partner, or sponsor, send us an e-mail and we’ll tell you everything you need to know.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Konfio, a Mexican financial services and credit assessment platform for SMEs, picks up $100 million secured credit facility from Goldman Sachs.
FinovateAsia isn’t the only big deal coming to Singapore this fall. Courtesy of a partnership with conversational AI innovator Clinc, Singapore’s OCBC Bank will offer its customers a new voice-enabled mobile banking assistant – the first of its kind in Singapore.
The solution is called the OCBC Banking Assistant and was developed via OCBC’s Innovation Lab, where it was trained both to handle specific banking use cases as well as the intricacies of local Singaporean vernacular and context.
“We are always open to forging new partnerships that allow us to reimagine banking for our digital customers,” OCBC Bank’s Head of Digital Business for Singapore & Malaysia Aditya Gupta said. “We choose to work with Clinc because of their superior conversational AI platform and their next-generation natural language processing capabilities.”
Gupta called the collaboration “the next step towards making our customers’ mobile-first interactions more seamless and natural.”
The new mobile app will enable OCBC Bank customers to pay bills, transfer funds between accounts, check spending history and transactions, locate the nearest ATM, and receive spending advice – all just by using their voice. Clinc’s natural language technology means that users do not need to memorize special keywords or specific phrases in order to access many of the most commonly-used banking services.
The deployment also marks the first time that Clinc’s billpay competency is being used in its entirety, a point highlighted by company CEO Jason Mars.
“This is the first full production roll out of its kind,” Mars said, calling the launch “a milestone” for his company, OCBC Bank, and the financial industry writ large. “It’s not a chatbot or virtual assistant-type experience that people are familiar with,” he said. “Rather, it’s Clinc’s signature voice-first, human-like AI experience used to create a mobile bank assistant that enables OCBC Bank customers to get spending insights, account and transaction details, and pay bills, all by using unscripted, everyday, messy language.”
OCBC Bank – which stands for Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation – is a multinational banking and financial services entity, founded in 1932 and based in Singapore. With more than $340 billion (S$467.5 billion) in assets, OCBC Bank is the second biggest bank in Southeast Asia by assets and one of the larger banks in the APAC region.
The partnership with OCBC Bank is the latest collaboration that Clinc has been involved in. In June, the company reported that it was bringing its conversational AI technology to the healthcare industry, courtesy of a partnership with digital workforce solution provider Olive. And in January, Clinc announced that it was working with Ford to bring voice recognition to the automaker’s vehicles.
Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Clinc demonstrated its conversational AI-based solution at FinovateFall 2016, winning Best of Show. Named Frost & Sullivan’s 2019 Technology Leader for Artificial Intelligence, Clinc announced a major investment this spring, pulling in $52 million in new funding in a round led by Insight Partners.
Rekyvik-founded software company Meniga has announced its partnership with Portuguese national financial group Grupo Crédito Agrícola to launch its new banking app, moey! – reports Ruby Hinchliffe of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
The free app will give Crédito Agrícola customers “a better understanding of their spending and finances”, as well as providing “seamless payments through services like Apple Pay and MB WAY”, said inovação e digital director Ricardo Madeira.
The financial advice app, which will also integrate with Android Wallet and Group expenses, inflicts no costs for account opening or maintenance.
“Through the moey! app’s intuitive interface and features, users will enjoy a seamless mobile experience which will significantly improve their everyday banking and personal finances,” said Madeira.
moey! will rely on Meniga’s technology as an engine, and will offer various services including an activity feed for personalised messages and targeted rewards, insights and expense reports which can be filtered, as well as budget and financial planning advice which will automatically generate your budgets and manage them for you.
Meniga’s CEO and co-founder Georg Ludviksson is “very proud” to be working with one of Portugal’s “most reputable banking groups.”
He said the bank’s team has “unrivaled insight” about the needs of its local banking customers, feeling confident that the new app “will excite users right across the region”.
The century-old Portuguese bank has more than one million clients and is one of the larger, more financially stable groups in the country.
Founded in 2009, Meniga demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2018, winning Best of Show for its white-label, digital banking solutions that help banks boost customer engagement.
Clinc’s Conversational AI Gives Voice to New App from Singapore’s OCBC Bank.
Finovate Global: ThetaRay Opens Mexico City Office; Dubai’s Foloosi Turns to KSA for Expansion.
Around the web
Meniga to enable consumers to donate cashback from their Meniga Rewards app to help combat climate change.
Mambuforges partnership with Swiss online lender bob Finance.
We Write Code joinsDwolla’s Partnership Ecosystem.
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.
Digital transformation strategist Luxoft and client lifecycle management specialist Fenergo are joining forces. The agreement, announced earlier this week, makes Luxoft the latest to join Fenergo’s 300-member, worldwide partnership ecosystem.
Luxoft will act as a consulting partner to provide expertise, practical experience, and advice to Fenergo’s clients when its comes to initiatives such as data migration, IT architecture, and change readiness. Other such partners on Fenergo’s platform include Accenture, Capgemini, and Genpact. Fenergo CEO Marc Murphy described Luxoft as an “ideal partner” that will help the company “scale… business at a greater pace.”
Luxoft not only gains a way to fulfill its clients’ needs for digital transformation, the company also stands to gain new clients of its own by becoming a member of Fenergo’s ecosystem. “Our partnership with Fenergo aligns with our strength and success in financial services, and presents new opportunities to grow our business, expand our partner ecosystem, and deliver exceptional value to our clients,” said Dmitry Loschinin, executive vice president of DXC Technology, and president and CEO of Luxoft.
Luxoft was acquired by DXC Technologies (NYSE: DXC) which holds a market capitalization of $8.5 billion. At FinovateFall 2014, Luxoft debutedHorizon, a data visualization framework for banking executives.
A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 23 through 25, 2019 in New York City. Register today and save your spot.
Plinqit is the first savings app of its kind that pays users for engaging with content through its patent-pending Build Skills™.
Features
Higher engagement (55%) vs. other apps
More than 100 accounts opened within days of launching
The only savings app that pays customers for engaging with financial education
Why it’s great Unlike any other savings app on the market, Plinqit’s patent-pending Build Skills™ pays users for engaging with content, creating higher user engagement for financial institutions.
Presenters
Kathleen Craig, Founder and CEO Founder and CEO of Plinqit by HT Mobile Apps (HTMA), Craig has over a decade of banking experience. HTMA serves banks in 19 states from $26 million to $20+ billion in assets. LinkedIn.
Bryan Freeman, Marketing Director at HT Mobile Apps A former bank marketer, Freeman’s focus is growing Plinqit user adoption and managing existing financial institution relationships who sponsor the product. LinkedIn.
