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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
In the fast-evolving world of fintech, founders are a breed apart, characterized by their unique blend of grit, determination, and adaptability. Their journeys are often marked by challenges, triumphs, and invaluable insights. In this series of interviews, we delve into the minds of five fintech founders to uncover the lessons they’ve learned, the key traits they believe are essential for a successful founding team, and the distinctive challenges and opportunities they’ve encountered on their entrepreneurial paths. Join us as we explore the stories and experiences that have shaped these innovative leaders in the fintech industry.
Expensify is teaming up with Spotana to launch Expensify Travel, a business travel booking platform based on Spotanas Travel-as-a-Service offering.
The new travel service will offer Expensify’s business users access to global travel inventory, lower fares, and servicing.
Expensify’s new launch makes it a direct competitor with California-based Navan, a corporate travel and expense management platform that launched in 2015.
Business expense management company Expensify announced the upcoming addition of a new set of capabilities today, which will make it a more robust platform to help businesses plan and manage their expenses. The company is launching Expensify Travel.
Expensify Travel will allow the company’s business users to access global travel inventory, lower fares, and servicing. Expensify Travel will be built on top of New York-based Spotana’s cloud-based Travel-as-a-Service platform, which will help clients manage flight changes, cancellations, and unused ticket credits, as well as offer comprehensive travel management capabilities.
“Book your trip in minutes, we’ll handle the rest. We’ve made it effortless for members to search and book flights, hotels, cars, and trains — all at the most competitive rates available,” said Expensify CEO David Barrett. “Our early release will let business travelers manage it all in one place, with real-time support, customizable rules, and the option to assign virtual travel cards to employees. We couldn’t be more excited for the future of Expensify Travel in partnership with Spotana.”
Expensify plans to have the early release of Expensify Travel next week, offering booking and management capabilities, as well as 24/7 Expensify support. In the future, the new travel offering will be directly integrated into New Expensify, the company’s new super app. When booking their travel in the new chat-based app, customers will be able to book and manage trips, manage travel expenses, chat with colleagues, and more. “Through our partnership, Expensify has created a one-stop shop for travel and expense management for their customers with a seamless user experience,” said Spotnana Founder and CEO Sarosh Waghmar.
Expensify’s new launch makes it a direct competitor with California-based Navan, a corporate travel and expense management platform. Formerly known as TripActions, Navan was founded in 2015 and offers expense management tools such as employee spending controls, automated expense management tools, reporting capabilities, and more.
There are key differences between Expensify’s and Navan’s expense management tools, however. While both companies allow clients to use their own existing corporate expense cards with their expense management tools, Expensify also offers users its own branded debit card. Also, Expensify’s interface is focused on being user friendly to serve small and medium sized businesses, while Navan offers features that are tailored to meet needs of a variety of sizes.
It is more difficult to assess the differences between the companies’ travel booking tools, given that Expensify’s tools have yet to launch. However, it appears that the two will differentiate themselves with tools that serve their individual target markets. For instance, Navan offers a high-touch, premium travel experience, the ability to book meetings and events, and consulting services aimed at larger, corporate clients. Expensify’s tools will likely root in the company’s user-friendly, simplified approach.
U.K.-based fintech SumUp has raised $1.6 billion (€1.5 billion) in a private credit debt transaction.
The deal was led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and will enable SumUp to refinance debt and pursue international growth opportunities.
SumUp won Best of Show at FinovateEurope 2013, a year after the company was founded.
In a deal led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, U.K.-based fintech SumUp has secured $1.6 billion (€1.5 billion) in a private credit debt transaction. The financing will enable SumUp to refinance current debt as well as take advantage of growth opportunities around the world.
The deal gives SumUp a set of new investors: AllianceBernstein, Apollo Global Management, Arini, Deutsche Bank AG, Fortress Investment Group, SilverRock Financial Services, and Vista Credit Partners. It also comes six months after the company raised $307 million (€285 million) in equity and debt in a round led by Sixth Street Growth. Bain Capital Tech Opportunities, Fin Capital, and Liquidity Capital also participated in that financing.
In a statement SumUp CFO Hermoine McKee pointed to an evolution in the company’s “requirements from capital markets” in explaining SumUp’s most recent fundraising effort. “Lenders understand and support our mission to create a world where everyone can build a thriving business, and recognize our successful methods of achieving, sustaining, and balancing profitability and growth,” McKee said. “This new financing will support us as we focus on providing best-in-class support experiences for our merchants and giving them the products and tools they need to succeed.”
To this end, SumUp noted in a statement that the company has generated positive EBITDA since December 2022, as well as achieving a “decade of sustained growth.” The company currently counts four million businesses among its partners, who rely on SumUp for services ranging from payments and order processing to customer acquisition and money management.
“SumUp has always enjoyed solid and steady support from the investor community, and it’s this continued backing which has enabled us to grow sustainably over the past 10+ years, serving millions of merchants of all sizes globally,” McKee said.
Founded in 2012, SumUp won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2013. The company began this year with its SumUp Beacon event which introduced merchants to a range of new SumUp solutions. These new offerings included SumUp Business Account,SumUp Invoices, SumUp Kiosk, and SumUp Online Store. SumUp also unveiled a pair of new Point of Sale (POS) solutions: POS Lite to enhance over-the-counter sales, and POS Pro to provide enhanced inventory management.
PNC and TCW have partnered to deliver a private credit solution.
The solution will leverage TCW’s loan origination, underwriting, and portfolio management expertise and will tap PNC’s extensive client relationships.
The two will offer directly originated, secured cash-flow and asset-based loans to middle market companies.
Financial services company PNC and TCW, a leading global asset manager have teamed up this week to deliver a private credit solution to middle market companies.
The two will leverage TCW’s loan origination, underwriting, and portfolio management expertise and will tap PNC’s extensive client relationships. “We are very excited to announce this new business strategy, which represents a natural extension of TCW’s existing Direct Lending and Rescue Fund strategies with an opportunity to offer investors access to a broader segment of the middle market,” said CIO of TCW Private Credit and chair of the new joint private credit partnership Rick Miller.
The two will offer directly originated, secured cash-flow and asset-based loans to middle market companies, whether or not they have private equity or venture capital backing. Together, PNC and TCW will manage the strategy’s investment activities, which range from origination to underwriting, and portfolio management.
“We are thrilled to partner with PNC to expand our direct lending capabilities and provide financing to a critical segment of U.S. companies, as well as offer a differentiated investment solution for clients,” said TCW President and CEO Katie Koch. “PNC and TCW have a long history of developing creative solutions across a number of joint financings, and this partnership represents an exciting opportunity to capture significant market share of the expanding private credit market by leveraging the strengths of both our firms.”
During their first year, PNC and TCW aim to have $2.5 billion in investor equity capital available to invest. Supporting this fund are investments from PNC and Nippon Life, one of TCW’s strategic partners and shareholders.
Since interest rates have risen and credit has become more expensive, small businesses have become particularly vulnerable to the credit crunch. This vulnerability stems from traditional banks tightening their lending standards to mitigate risk and reduce losses. Delivering a new private credit solution should help address this gap in financing options for small businesses, providing them with much-needed access to capital to support their growth and operations.
This year’s FinovateSpring arrives at an interesting time for fintech and financial services. For the first time in decades, a new emerging technology – AI – promises to accelerate technological innovation in our space in a way that is truly generational. At the same time, governments and regulators are struggling to keep up with an ever-shifting, ever-growing landscape of financial products and services. Add to this the sudden shift from an easy money, ZIRP-oriented world to one that is preoccupied with geopolitics and inflationary threats not seen since the 1970s.
Our spring conference – May 21 through May 23 – will tackle many of these issues and more that are driving decision-making in fintech and financial services this year. Here is a brief survey of the kinds of conversations, keynotes, and commentaries we have in store.
It’s (Still) All About AI
It may have been an underwhelming first quarter for fintech funding. But for those fintechs who have effectively embraced AI – especially generative AI – investors have remained eager to engage.
FinovateSpring will feature multiple sessions on AI and financial services starting on Day One. These include our Out of the Box Keynote Address from author Brian Solis who will explain how to determine which emerging technologies really matter to financial services providers and why. Day One will also feature a special address from Intelygenz USA President Chris Brown on practical examples of how applied AI and hyper-automation can turn cumbersome, error-prone manual processes into fully-digitized operations in weeks rather than months or years.
Later in the day, we will feature more instances of AI at work in financial services – particularly the role of AI agents and the importance of ethical AI. And we’ll finish the day with a rousing Hot or Not Expert Debate specifically on GenAI and how banks and financial services companies can move beyond the hype to learn where the technology can be most effectively deployed.
Behavior, Financial Inclusion, and Human-centricity
One of the ironies of the “AI Era” in fintech and financial services is the way it has encouraged us to look more closely at the human behaviors, biases, and beliefs that drive financial decision-making. This development connects a number of key trends in financial services – from behavioral economics to financial inclusion to the importance of human-centricity when using technology to solve problems.
This year at FinovateSpring, we will address these ideas through sessions such as our Executive Briefing on Financial Inclusion. This discussion on “the new customer base” focuses on areas of innovation – such as investing, credit building and repair, and savings – that underserved populations often struggle to access. A keynote address later in the day looks at the psychology of financial decision-making directly as a way to help financial services companies better design and market their products to customers.
On Day Two, Danielle Shamos, Chief Revenue Officer with Revive Media, will give a Special Address on maximizing brand impact and the strategic use of tools like Amazon Ads to help financial services brands boost visibility and increase demand. We will also have a session on what banks and fintechs need to know about the worldview of Gen Z.
Our Women in Fintech Briefing is back, looking at how technology, the pandemic, and new ways of working have changed the way that companies large and small attract and retain female talent. The session will also examine what is necessary to continue to drive change and to support development for women at different stages of their lives.
Deposits, Lending, and More: Winning the Battle for Banks
In some ways, FinovateSpring saves some of its most potent conversation for the final day of the conference. For all the promise of AI and the opportunities of financial inclusion, the financial services space remains a hotly contested arena in which more businesses are competing for the dollars – and the deposits – of what often feels like a shrinking number of business and retail customers.
What can banks and fintechs do to attract and engage customers at a time of unprecedented competition – from Big Tech, Big Retail, and their own rivals in the space?
Day 3 of FinovateSpring takes this question head on in a series of keynotes and power panels first thing in the morning. Cornerstone Advisors’ Managing Director Sam Kilmer will lead a keynote address on how banks can innovate to drive revenue in a challenging economic environment. The morning also features a power panel on deposit generation growth strategies for banks, and keynote on why the secret to digital growth may have less to do with technology and tactics and more to do with a “future mindset” that is shared throughout the organization.
As always we will also present our All Star Analyst panel and Investor’s Where the Smart Money is Investing Now sessions on Day Two of FinovateSpring. Another big feature of FinovateSpring is our Credit Union Spotlight. This session is designed to give credit unions a special opportunity to meet, network, and foster greater collaboration between credit unions and fintechs. We’ll share more information about the spotlight here on the Finovate blog in the days to come.
Canada-based Beem Credit Union has partnered with VeriPark to become the most “digital-first, people-first” credit union in the province of Vancouver.
VeriPark offers an Intelligence Customer Experience Suite that provides tools to enhance branch automation, lending, and customer engagement.
Headquartered in London, VeriPark made its Finovate debut at FinovateMiddleEast 2019 in Dubai.
The latest fintech news from Canada involves a May-December relationship between a credit union that’s less than a year old and a fintech that’s been around since the dot.com days.
British Columbia, Vancouver-based Beem Credit Union has announced a partnership with VeriPark, a software developer based in the U.K. The goal of the partnership is to help the credit union, which was founded earlier this year, become the most “people-first, digital-first credit union in the province.”
Founded in 1998, VeriPark offers an Intelligence Customer Experience Suite that has enabled its customers to achieve 98.5% reduction in cost-to-serve, 55% more sales, 20% greater satisfaction, and 45% more profits. The suite includes VeriChannel, the company’s omni-channel delivery offering, VeriTouch, a customer engagement/CRM solution; branch automation courtesy of VeriPark’s VeriBranch offering; and loan origination and servicing technology via the company’s VeriLoan solution. Institutions in retail banking, corporate/SME banking, private banking/wealth management, and insurance are among those taking advantage of VeriPark’s technology to enhance their operations.
With more than 160,000 members, Beem CU was formed late last year via a merger between Interior Savings and Gulf & Fraser. The merger went into effect on the first of January and the combined institution will boast a network of 55 branches and 14 insurance locations in the region. Beem CU has $10 billion in total assets; Brian Harris, who was CEO of Interior Savings, will take on the role of Chief Executive with Beem CU.
VeriPark made its Finovate debut at FinovateMiddleEast in 2019 in Dubai. At the conference, the company demoed its cloud-based, SaaS service Customer Insights that enables organizations to gather data from a variety of sources to better understand the preferences of their customers.
Earlier this year, the National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) announced that it was going live with a new corporate banking CRM solution built by VeriPark. NBK now benefits from customer profile, sales, and prospect management tools, a 360 degree single view of corporate customers, as well as customer retention solutions. The bank is the largest financial institution in Kuwait with 68 branches in the country and a total of 143 branches around the globe.
VeriPark is headquartered in London. Ozkan Erener is CEO.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco on May 21 and 22. Register today using this link and save 20%.
Cascading AI
Cascading AI has created an AI Loan Assistant, called Sarah. Sarah is capable of doing the work of a 30-person lending team, guiding hundreds of small business owners through loan application processes.
Features
Game-Changer Alert: Sarah increases banker productivity by 10x and applicant conversion rates by 3x (to 67%). Put the two together for a 30x step change for the industry.
Who’s it for?
Banks, community banks, credit unions, and non-bank lenders.
CoreChain Technologies
CoreChain is like “Venmo for business.” Its solution CoreChain Pay delivers an easy-to-use digital AP payments solution enabling mid-market businesses to easily pay vendors securely and efficiently.
Features
Eliminate fraud risk in AP payments
Lower cost accounts payables
Simplify and digitize vendor payments
Who’s it for?
Mid-market companies with $50M to $1B revenue and a complex supply chain (500+ vendors).
Kobalt Labs
Kobalt Labs is an AI copilot, automating and strengthening third-party diligence for fintechs and financial institutions. It surfaces regulatory gaps in internal policies and third-party docs within minutes.
Features
Automate third-party diligence at 10x speed
Surface issues that become difficult to resolve when missed
Track each risk along with severity
Store vendor comms for easy future audits
Who’s it for?
Credit unions, community banks, partner banks (particularly on the fintech partner diligence side), and fintechs looking to accelerate their compliance operations.
Quinn
Quinn solves the problem of wealth advisory scalability so that all individuals and families can access a financial advisor without minimum income and asset requirements.
Features
Delivers a financial plan in five minutes, not five weeks
Offers a holistic plan that encompasses savings, retirement, debt, and investing
Puts the plan in action
Who’s it for?
Financial institutions, wealth advisory firms, and financial planning institutions.
TRIYO
TRIYO extracts and structures work data for end-to-end visibility, reducing operational risk and empowering AI and predictive analytics to fuel automation and drive informed decision making.
Features
Offers real-time monitoring, analytics, and 360° view
Collects work data from different systems, forms, and off-platform activity with API-first approach
Provides data for training internal AILLM tools
Who’s it for?
Banks, credit unions, wealth management firms, and non-banking financial institutions.
Robinhood has received a Wells Notice from the U.S. SEC.
In the Wells Notice, the SEC staff alleged Robinhood violated Sections 15(a) and 17A of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
Robinhood Markets Chief Legal, Compliance, and Corporate Affairs Officer Dan Gallagher said that he is “disappointed” with the Wells Notice. “We firmly believe that the assets listed on our platform are not securities,” he said.
Stock brokerage app Robinhood is feeling the heat from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today. The California-based company revealed in a blog post over the weekend that it received a Wells Notice from the SEC.
In the Wells Notice, staff at the SEC filed an enforcement action against Robinhood, alleging the company violated Sections 15(a) and 17A of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The former section requires broker-dealers to register with the SEC and become a member of a self-regulatory organization (SRO), such as FINRA. The section aims to ensure that broker-dealers adhere to standards and practices to protect investors. The latter, 17A, establishes the framework for the National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC). This section also requires transfer agents to register with the SEC and sets standards to ensure securities transactions are efficiently processed.
According to Robinhood’s 8-K filing, “The potential action may involve a civil injunctive action, public administrative proceeding, and/or a cease-and-desist proceeding and may seek remedies that include an injunction, a cease-and-desist order, disgorgement, pre-judgment interest, civil money penalties, and censure, revocation, and limitations on activities.”
Robinhood has made it clear that it is making efforts to comply with the SEC to resolve the issue. The company originally launched Robinhood Crypto, its crypto trading arm, in early 2018. Robinhood Crypto currently allows customers in 48 states and Washington D.C. to buy, sell, store, and in many cases transfer up to 18 cryptocurrencies.
Robinhood Markets Chief Legal, Compliance, and Corporate Affairs Officer Dan Gallagher said that the company uses a “rigorous review process designed to ensure that it does not list digital asset securities.” The company said it has always been careful not to list certain tokens that the SEC has deemed securities in public actions against other platforms. Robinhood has also steered clear of products, including lending and staking, that may be considered securities.
“After years of good faith attempts to work with the SEC for regulatory clarity including our well-known attempt to ‘come in and register,’ we are disappointed that the agency has decided to issue a Wells Notice related to our U.S. crypto business,” said Gallagher.“We firmly believe that the assets listed on our platform are not securities and we look forward to engaging with the SEC to make clear just how weak any case against Robinhood Crypto would be on both the facts and the law.”
Robinhood has not disclosed any specific actions it plans to take to respond to the SEC’s notice. The company can take action to respond to the allegations before the SEC makes a move to sue or settle with Robinhood to resolve the issue. The company said that the development will impact neither the services it provides nor its end customers’ accounts.
BaaS-enabled banks have been operating in a regulatory minefield recently. Since late 2023, the U.S. FDIC and CFPB have issued multiple consent orders to banks, citing their BaaS relationships as the cause. From the perspective of an onlooker, it appeared that regulators were issuing the consent orders to make examples out of certain players in the industry, foregoing formal BaaS regulation.
This has been particularly troubling for community banks, which often rely on BaaS to adapt to modern consumer preferences by layering the newest fintech tools on top of their legacy core systems, without the need to build technology in-house or update old technology.
The agencies’ newly published document may disappoint, however. That’s because the new document does not provide formal Baas regulation by laying out rules by which community banks can abide in order to avoid consent orders. Instead, the new document lays out “potential considerations, potential sources of information, and examples” for risk management, due diligence, contract negotiation, ongoing monitoring, termination, and governance with third parties.
“This guide is intended to assist community banks when developing and implementing their third-party risk-management practices,” the new document states. “This guide is not a substitute for the TPRM Guidance. Rather, it is intended to be a resource for community banks to consider when managing the risk of third-party relationships. This guide is not a checklist and does not prescribe specific risk-management practices or establish any safe harbors for compliance with laws or regulations.”
Baas-enabled banks seeking to navigate third-party relationships may find the new resource frustrating, however. While some of the advice in the document is helpful, the agencies have built a lot of wiggle room for themselves into the document. Ultimately, however, the guidance is better than nothing.
Regardless of what it lacks, both community banks and even larger financial institutions will likely find it useful to compare the guide’s “potential considerations” to their current internal processes. And in the end, the guidance may help deter another tidal wave of consent orders.
Identity decisioning platform Alloy teamed up with SME data intelligence innovator Coris.
Courtesy of the partnership, Alloy customers will be able to access Coris’ Merchant Profiler and Corshield solutions directly from within the Alloy platform.
Alloy introduced itself to Finovate audiences at FinDEVr Silicon Valley in 2016.
Alloy, the identity decisioning platform, announced a new partnership with SMB data intelligence company Coris. Via the partnership, Alloy customers will be able to access Coris’ solutions to automate SMB onboarding, underwriting, and fraud prevention.
“We’re excited to partner with Coris on improving the SMB risk management process for builders of financial products,” Alloy GM of Partner Solutions Brian Bender said. “Having a wide array of data at their disposal is critical for banks and fintechs to manage identity risk across the customer lifecycle.”
Alloy’s 500+ customers will be able to access a pair of Coris’ solutions directly from within the Alloy platform: MerchantProfiler, Coris’ KYB and small business intelligence product; and Corshield, Coris’ SMB-specific fraud model. Merchant Profiler enables fintechs and software companies to onboard, underwrite, and monitor their SMB customers via GPT-4 powered SMB industry classification. The solution also provides automated analysis of SMB websites, third party consumer reviews, and more; as well as real-time KYB, including Secretary of State business verification, sanctions screening, and TIN matching. Merchant Profiler also offers adverse media insights to see if there is significant negative news or information about a business or its beneficial owners.
CorShield fights business impersonation fraud and first party fraud at the point of sign-up. The solution automatically triangulates known data on SMBs and cross-references applicant data against the known information. CorShield then generates a fraud score to assess the likelihood of fraud and shares the primary reasons for the fraud score with the user.
One firm using CorShield claimed that the solution helped them instantly approve 90% of business applications. The company also said that Coris’ SMB intelligence data has lowered the firm’s application review time by more than 75%.
Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Coris has helped its business customers verify more than 150,000 SMBs and provided data on more than 330 million global SMBs. The company secured $3.7 million in funding earlier this year in a round co-led by Lux Capital and Exponent Founders Capital. Y Combinator, Blank Ventures, WePay Co-Founder Bill Clerico, and Mercury CEO and Co-Founder Immad Akhund also participated.
Alloy introduced itself to Finovate audiences at FinDEVr Silicon Valley in 2016. The company returned to the Finovate stage in 2022 to demo its open payment hub, CHUCK, and its gifting platform Social Money, launched in partnership with Prizeout. Earlier this year, Alloy announced a partnership with embedded finance platform Liberis. The partnership will enable Liberis to integrate automated compliance verifications from Alloy directly into the funding application process.
Headquartered in New York, Alloy was founded in 2002. The company has raised more than $207 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. Alloy includes Lightspeed Ventures, Avenir Growth Capital, and Canapi Ventures among its investors.
Investment and innovation are defining the wealth management space as the week begins. LA-based wealth management platform Altruist enters the week with $169 million more in capital, courtesy of a Series E round led by Iconiq Growth. Meanwhile, JP Morgan Chase announced that it has deployed generative AI to enhance its thematic investment offering.
Be sure to check back all week long for more fintech news!
Crypto
Revolutlaunches its stand-alone crypto exchange for professional crypto traders, Revolut X.
KeyBanklaunchesKeyVAM, a virtual account management solution powered by Qolo for treasury management clients who have complex demand deposit account structures.
Regtech
Global RegTech consolidator Corlyticsacquires Deloitte UK’s RegTech platform.
Embedded finance
Issuer-processor Paymentologyteams up with Diamond Trust Bank to bring embedded finace solutions to customers in Kenya.
Accelerators and incubators
Ally Financiallaunches its Ally Innovation Challenge to promote solutions leveraging Responsible AI.
A few days ago, we highlighted the $25.7 million (€24.1 million) investment secured by Danish challenger bank Lunar. Also this week, we noted partnership news from Denmark-based real estate tokenization platform – and FinovateSpring alum – DigiShares.
With all this Danish fintech news, we are devoting this week’s edition of Finovate Global to the fintech scene in Denmark: a Nordic country with a population of nearly six million and a per capita GDP that’s among the top ten in the world. We’ll also highlight some of the Danish fintechs that have demonstrated their innovations on the Finovate stage.
Danish fintech unicorn Pleo raises €40m in debt financing
Pleo enables companies to centralize their business spending – expenses, reimbursements, invoices, and more. Pleo also offers physical, temporary, virtual, and vendor company cards to help businesses better track and manage spending. Pleo integrates readily with common business tools such as NetSuite, Xero, and Quickbooks, making its solution a viable option for companies ranging from start-ups to enterprises. With more than 30,000 customers using its spend management platform, Pleo notes that its technology saves administrative teams 138 hours every year and has a satisfaction rate of 90%.
“We are delighted to announce our partnership with HSBC Innovation Banking. Starting at €40 million, the debt financing available to us can extend based on future requirements – which will expand our existing reach even further into more countries, enable us to increase limits and offer more currencies,” Pleo VP of Credit and Treasury Amit Kahana said. “Beyond this milestone partnership and imminent launch in the Netherlands, Pleo is expecting to see exciting developments over the coming 12 months as Pleo prepare(s) to launch in even more markets.”
Pleo initially earned its unicorn status in the summer of 2021, courtesy of a $150 million investment that drove the company’s valuation to $1.7 billion. Pleo secured an additional $200 million in funding in an extension of its Series C round in December of that year, giving the company a valuation of $4.7 billion.
Ageras raises €82m in oversubscribed private placement round
From its origins in 2012 as an online marketplace to help small businesses connect with financial professionals like accountants and bookkeepers, Denmark-based fintech Ageras has grown into a more comprehensive financial services provider, offering cloud-based accounting services to more than 300,000 small businesses in Europe.
“We want to make it easier to be a small business in an increasingly difficult administrative and regulatory landscape by offering a fully integrated platform where companies can manage their banking, accounting, and tax in one financial cockpit,” Anderson said.
The investment takes Ageras’ total equity capital to more than $231 million, according to Crunchbase. The funds will also support Ageras’ plans for new acquisitions, with Anderson admitting that there are a number of potential targets already under consideration.
Ageras operates in more than 100 countries and boasts more than a million users of its technology. Headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, Ageras was acquired by Investcorp, which took a minority stake in the company in 2017.
Here come Finovate’s Danish alums
Over the years, Finovate has been proud to showcase a large number of innovative fintechs from Northern Europe, including a handful from Denmark. Here are some of the Danish fintechs that have demoed their innovations on the Finovate stage.
Cardlay Payment Systems – FS24 – Cardlay Payment Systems will make its Finovate debut later this month at FinovateSpring in San Francisco. The company offers a white-label card and expense management solution, Cardlay Expense, that delivers an exceptional, real-time experience for cardholders.
Subaio – FEU22 – Subaio made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2020 in Berlin, Germany, and returned to the Finovate stage two years later for FinovateEurope 2022 in London. The company helps financial companies generate new revenue streams by identifying recurring payments and insights, and delivering different use cases based on this data.
Aiia – FEU21 – Aiia demoed its technology at FinovateEurope 2021 in London. The leading open banking platform in Northern Europe, the company provides open banking services to a sizable number of financial instituitons including Lunar, Pleo, DNB, and Santander Consumer Bank. Aiia was acquired by Mastercard in 2021.
DigiShares – FS21 – DigiShares introduced itself to Finovate audiences at FinovateSpring 2021 in San Francisco. The company offers a white-label tokenization platform for real estate, bringing both automation and liquidity to the property market.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Asia-Pacific
Vietnamese fintech startup M_Service, operator of mobile e-wallet Momo, secured $28 million (£ 19.7 million) in funding.
A new inclusive instant payment system (IIPS), Higala, launched in the Philippines.
Fintech Australia and the Thai Fintech Association signed a Memorandum of Understanding to foster fintech capabilities between the two countries.
Sub-Saharan Africa
The Central Bank of Nigeria paused account opening for new customers at four fintechs: Kuda Bank, Moniepoint, OPay, and Palmpay.
Digital financial solutions provider Payless Africa launched in Kenya.
FX and cross-border payments provider Crown Agents Bank teamed up with business platform Invest Africa.
Central and Eastern Europe
Norway-based digital identity solution provider Signicat became the first international aggregator to integrate mojeID Poland into its digital identity portfolio.
Romanian fintech Finqware teamed up with FwF to help European companies automate financial operations.
Lithuanian fintech Softloans raised $1 million (€1 million) in pre-seed funding.
Middle East and Northern Africa
National Bank of Iraq (NBI) went live with core banking and payments technology from Temenos.
Egypt’s Bokraraised $4.6 million in pre-seed funding for its platform that offers investment products via asset backed securities.
Central and Southern Asia
Bangladesh-based Eastern Bank (EBL) teamed up with Mastercard to launch a dual currency prepaid card for medical tourists in India.
Indian cross-border payments platform BriskPE secured $5 million in seed funding.
Bank of Thailand launched QR code cross-border payments to India.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Brazil-based banking-as-a-service company QI Tech became the country’s latest unicorn after securing an extension of its $200 million Series B round from last October.
Uruguyan cross-border payment platform dLocal partnered with online English-learning platform Open English.
Brazilian fintech Nubanklaunched its new banking experience Nubank+, offering cashback, streaming video courtesy of a partnership with Max, and more.
