Lendio Acquires Billy, Launches Cloud Accounting Software

Lendio Acquires Billy, Launches Cloud Accounting Software
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Lendio, Mergers & Acquisitions

Small business loan marketplace Lendio is entering into the cloud-based accounting software field with the launch of Sunrise. The new endeavor is the result of the Utah-based company’s just-announced purchase of online bookkeeping startup Billy. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded by Toke Kruse in 2012, Billy aimed to create “hassle-free” finance software for business owners who wanted to focus on their business, not accounting. After the acquisition, Lendio rebranded the Portland, Oregon-based company to Sunrise and pivoted it into a freemium bookkeeping software that offers accounting, cash flow management, and loan and credit information, as well as access to Lendio’s loan marketplace into a single platform.

“We are very excited to announce the acquisition of Billy and the re-brand to Sunrise. The Sunrise platform will bring together previously disparate sources of information for small business owners, such as accounting, loan and credit data,” said Brock Blake, CEO and founder of Lendio. “It’s our goal for Sunrise users to feel more confident in making financial decisions that help their businesses grow.”

The free version of Sunrise offers cash and accrual-based accounting, as well as an invoicing system, estimate creator, and a customer-facing credit card payment portal for billing. Businesses can also sync their financial accounts to categorize and track expenses and income, store receipts, and view profit and loss statements, balance sheets, and other reports such as accounts receivable, customer statements, and more.

A paid subscription, which ranges from $99/ month to $499/ month, enables business owners to automate accounting tasks by outsourcing bookkeeping duties to professionals who use a system to recognize revenue, take care of invoicing, and reconcile books on a monthly basis. The paid version also integrates with Stripe, PayPal, and Square.

Sunrise invoice sample
Sunrise offers invoicing capabilities

Lendio is already working to improve upon Sunrise by building out capabilities such as enhanced loan integration. The company also plans to launch a Sunrise mobile app, add auto categorization, and offer tax software integration.

At FinovateSpring 2011, Lendio showcased its flagship loan marketplace. With an ecosystem of 75+ lenders, the company facilitates an average loan size of around 27,000. Since it was founded in 2011, Lendio has helped close $1.5 billion in financing (half a billion of which closed in the past six months alone) via 70,000 small business loans.

After launching franchising opportunities in 2017, the company announced it would find financing alternatives for small businesses whose loan applications are initially rejected. In a recent interview, when asked “What’s next?” Blake said, “At some point, maybe we’ll either go public or someone will come and give us an offer we can’t refuse. Then, we’ll kind of take a step back and say, ‘Okay, what next?'”

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Marqeta Teams Up with Capital on Tap

Marqeta Teams Up with Capital on Tap
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Marqeta

Capital on Tap is partnering with Marqeta, a global modern card issuing platform, to power payment processing for its small business credit card, relied on by over 60,000 UK enterprises, reports Sharon Kimathi of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

Since its launch in 2012, Capital on Tap has competed with the offering of major banks, by offering small businesses a faster and more transparent way to fund their business. Capital on Tap has already provided close to £1 billion in funding to more than 60,000 small businesses across the UK.

“Capital on Tap have shown themselves to be true innovators in the UK fintech space, taking an underserved market like credit for small businesses and building a product that can make a real difference for their customers,” said Ian Johnson, head of European growth at Marqeta.

Founded in Oakland, California in 2010, the Marqeta platform is used by various innovators to drive new modes of commerce through modern card issuing.

“We’re excited to partner with Marqeta,” said David Luck, co-founder and CEO of Capital on Tap.

“We loved the transparency and simplicity of their technology and how future focused and innovative their open-API platform is. They showed an intuitive understanding in how they could support our mission to help small businesses thrive through better access to working capital.”

Marqeta’s European digital banking solution supports instantly issued virtual cards and offers advanced spend controls to engage users and grow card use. It’s platform and APIs are highly configurable and scalable, and allow Marqeta partners to access actionable, real-time transaction data to drive program improvements.

Marqeta CTO Tony Ford presented Democratizing Issuer Payment Processing with Just-in-time “JIT” Funding at our developers conference, FinDEVR Silicon Valley, in 2016. During the discussion, Ford explained the anatomy of a payment card authorization, the importance of putting customers into the authorization stream, and the role of open payment APIs.

With more than $376 million funding from investors including Coatue Management and Granite Ventures, Marqeta was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in Oakland, California.


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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Arkose Labs, Blackhawk Network, CrediVia, Daon, HackerOne, ID R&D, Jack Henry, Lendio, Onfido, SmartX, Vera, Xero

On Finovate.com

  • Lendio Acquires Billy, Launches Cloud Accounting Software.
  • Daon’s New Features Bring Two-in-One Approach to Onboarding, Authentication.
  • CrediVia Adds Multifamily Options to Financing Platform.

Around the web

  • Busey Bank selects Jack Henry’s SilverLake System to improve workflows and enhance digital capabilities.
  • SMArtX Advisory Solutions to power managed accounts for Independent Financial Partners.
  • Gaming rewards and marketing firm Refereum hires Hacker One for its new bug bounty cybersecurity campaign.
  • Onfido teams up with MoneyNetint to help the U.K.-based cross-border money transfer company expand its ability to verify customers.
  • Arkose Labs launches private bug bounty program with Bugcrowd.
  • Tesco For Business leverages Blackhawk for U.K. gift card program.
  • ID R&D ships new version of IDVoice that combines AI and voice technology to increase biometric matching speed and improve enrollment and authentication.
  • VERA names Bill Gadala Chief Financial Officer.

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.

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nCino Acquires Analytics and Insights Specialist Visible Equity

nCino Acquires Analytics and Insights Specialist Visible Equity
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, nCino

Cloud banking innovator nCino is adding the financial analytics and compliance capability of Salt Lake City, Utah-based Visible Equity to its platform. The acquisition, announced last week, brings enhanced portfolio management and analytic insights to nCino’s Bank Operating System, and is designed to help banks and credit unions better manage risk and meet compliance regulations with regard to fair lending.

Calling Visible Equity “a perfect complement to our vision, mission and company culture,” nCino CEO Pierre Naudé put the news in the broader context of nCino’s long-term commitment to “transform” financial services. “We believe this acquisition will further enable us to execute on that mission,” Naudé said, adding that together Visible Equity and nCino will give clients “greater insights, efficiency, and risk management while furthering their customer relationships.”

In their statement, the companies said that they will continue to market their solutions separately, but added “the two platforms will become fully integrated to provide a seamless client and cloud-based experience.”

With more than 850 financial institution customers, Visible Equity provides analytics, data warehousing, and reporting to enable FIs to better identify and manage risk. The company’s technology blends customer data from loans, applications, deposits, marketing and other sources with advanced analytics to empower banks and credit unions to make accurate, data-driven decisions.

Visible Equity CEO and President Brad Hansen called the acquisition by nCino “the right move for us and a natural fit.” He highlighted the two companies’ shared “passion for innovation” and emphasis on customer success. “A key driver of our desire to become a part of the nCino family is their industry-leading Bank Operating System and ability to support a global client base of enterprise, regional, and community financial institutions,” Hansen said.

nCino made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2017, demoing its Bank Operating System. The technology leverages the Salesforce platform to provide financial institutions with an end-to-end, cloud-based banking solution that features CRM, loan origination, workflow, ECM, business intelligence and reporting all in one secure environment. nCino notes that its client institutions on average have experienced 40% decrease in loan closing times, 92% reduction in servicing costs, and 127% increase in account opening completion rates.

Other recent headlines for nCino include the appointment of Andrew Carriline as Strategic Advisor and the opening of a new office in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The company has announced a slew of new partnerships in 2019, teaming up with Westfield Bank and South State Bank in June; collaborating with S&T Bank in May, Navy Federal Credit Union in April, and both Project B-North and St. Louis Bank in March.

Based in Wilmington, North Carolina, nCino has raised more than $133 million in funding from investors including Salesforce Ventures, Wellington Management, and Insight Partners. The company was founded in 2012.

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Workday Buys Blockchain-Based Identity Management Innovator Trusted Key

Workday Buys Blockchain-Based Identity Management Innovator Trusted Key
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Trusted Key

Seattle, Washington-based Trusted Key will bring its innovations in blockchain-based, digital identity management technology to Workday, courtesy of a recently-announced acquisition. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“With our new platform, Workday wants to bring credentials into the digital age,” Workday SVP Jon Ruggiero wrote in a blog post discussing the role of credentialization in identity management. He highlighted the way that blockchain technology can help create “a new form of digital credential – one that puts individuals in control of their data, and is portable, authentic, and secure.”

Trusted Key’s digital identity management technology enables financial institutions to leverage credentialization and tokenization to provide a more seamless and secure authentication experience for users. The platform uses strong cryptography and blockchain technology to convert government-issued identity documents into secure, cryptographic credentials and tokens. These tokens can be used to securely establish identity to access both online assets as well as mobile apps, without relying on passwords. The credentials can also be used to authorize transactions and make digital signatures.

A leading cloud core financial management suite provider, Workday will use blockchain-powered credentialing technology to help companies improve their HR operations to more efficiently verify applicant skills and qualifications, as well as to onboard new workers. As Ruggiero noted, digital credentialing does more than just alleviate an otherwise time-consuming, error-prone manual process. It also makes it easier for firms to respond to a changing workforce that is both “more mobile, distributed, and diverse,” and helps companies in tight labor markets move faster and with less friction to attract and onboard their preferred candidates.

Launched in 2005 and headquartered in Pleasanton, California, Workday was featured this year by Gartner as a leader in cloud core financial management suites. This marked the third year in a row the company has been recognized in the category. With customers ranging from Bank of America and Thomson Reuters to Netflix and Denny’s, Workday has processed more than 100 million credentials and 70 million job applications – as well as employment records, certifications, licenses, and more. The publicly-traded company is listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker WDAY and has a market capitalization of $48 billion. Aneel Bhusri is co-founder and CEO.

Trusted Key demonstrated its Digital Identity Platform at FinovateFall 2017. The company is also an alum of our developers conference, winning a Crowd Favorite award at FinDEVr London 2017 for its presentation, Secure Digital Identity.

Founded in 2016 by Prakash Sundaresan and Amit Mital, Trusted Key picked up $3 million funding last spring. The round, led by Founders Co-Op, took the company’s total equity financing to more than $4 million. Trusted Key is the first exit for Kernel Labs, a Seattle startup studio with a focus on machine learning, computer vision, and security.

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Aixigo Teams Up with MLP Banking

Aixigo Teams Up with MLP Banking
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: aixigo

MLP Banking AG and digital financial consulting software provider, aixigo, have developed a digitally supported portfolio evaluation and optimisation solution, reports Jane Connolly of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

The VEM Guide supports MLP’s wealth management advisory services by transparently modeling possible portfolios with just a few clicks, taking into account customer requirements for risk, return and liquidity.

Risk assessments are then automatically evaluated and updated daily, with forecasts based on economic research by specialists at MLP Group company, FERI Trust GmbH.

“The VEM Guide is a very good example of how personal advice can be meaningfully supplemented by digital service,” said Jakob Trefz, head of wealth management at MLP Banking AG. “In this way, we make our customers’ decisions even faster and at the same time we support our advisors in the best possible way.”

Mario Alves, head of sales and partner management at aixigo, added: “The integration of the aixigo risk engine into MLP’s VEM Guide shows how the needs of clients and advisors in wealth management can be met precisely.”

As well as modeling and implementing portfolios more easily, the software can also generate associated documents and offer a digital customer signature option.

Aixigo demonstrated its Digital Financial Portfolio Management Back Office solution at FinovateFall 2018. The solution enables a small group of advisors to easily manage hundreds of thousands of investment portfolios.

Founded in 1999, aixigo is based in Aachen, Germany.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Currency Cloud, Lending Club, LoanScorecard, nCino, Onfido, Token, Trusted Key, Trusted Knight

On Finovate.com

  • Workday Buys Blockchain-Based Identity Management Innovator Trusted Key.
  • nCino Acquires Analytics and Insights Specialist Visible Equity.

Around the web

  • Token.io announces partnership with U.K. property marketplaces StuRents and Mashroom.
  • Identity verification specialist Onfido partners with international payments provider Currencies Direct.
  • NewFi Wholesale implements LoanScoreCard’s automated underwriting system Portfolio Underwriter.
  • Apply Financial, Currencycloud collaborate to simplify cross-border payments.
  • Lending Club offers Levered Certificates backed by over $100 million in loans on its marketplace.

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.

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Mambu Strikes First Deal in Brazil; Twisto Sets Sights on Poland

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finovate Global, Infosys, Mambu, Revolut, Samsung, Twisto

As Finovate goes increasingly global, so does our coverage of financial technology. Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World is our weekly look at fintech innovation in developing economies in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Indian financial services marketplace MyMoneyMantra raises $15 million in funding.
  • Razorpay, a payments solutions provider based in India, reports a 40% increase in the number of digital transactions in the country during the second quarter of 2019.
  • Credit Suisse and NASSCOM agree to promote the growth of Indian fintech startups.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Mambu forges partnership with its first Brazilian customer, Acesso.
  • MercadoLibre announces plan to allow users of its e-wallet in Mexico to earn interest on funds saved on the app.
  • Bloomberg looks at Goldman Sachs’ Special Situations Group and its pursuit of investment opportunities among Latin American fintechs.

Asia-Pacific

  • China Merchant Bank to deploy regulatory reporting technology from Wolters Kluwer.
  • Philippines Union Bank picks Refinitiv to power its electronic trading business.
  • Samsung partners with a cohort of South Korean banks on a blockchain-based digital identity project.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Central Bank of Kenya reaches fintech cooperation agreement with the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
  • Standard Bank leverages mobile teller technology from Infosys Finacle.
  • Kenyan payment solutions provider WAPI Pay pledges to support faster adoption of Wechat Pay and Alipay across Africa.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Czech Republic’s Twisto announces plans to expand to Poland this fall, with expansion to Romania to follow.
  • Revolut makes Apple Pay available to its customers in Hungary.
  • Austrian insurtech Bsurance and fintech Cashpresso team up to provide automatic buyer protection Cashpresso customers.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Nasdaq and Iraq Stock Exchange ink new market technology agreement.
  • Emirates NBD’s Liv leverages gamification to raise money for charity.
  • Abu Dhabi Global Market’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority issues guidelines for robo advisors operating in ADGM.

Top image designed by Freepik

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Visa Acquires Germany’s POS Payment Gateway Payworks

Visa Acquires Germany’s POS Payment Gateway Payworks
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, payworks, VISA

Visa will create a fully white-labelled omnichannel payment management platform for merchants and acquirers after acquiring Payworks, reports Jane Connolly of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

The news follows a 2018 strategic partnership and investment Visa made in Payworks, a Munich-based provider of next-generation payment gateway software for point of sale (POS).

Visa will integrate its CyberSource digital payment management platform with Payworks’ cloud-based software for in-store payment processing, allowing merchants and acquirers to accept face-to-face transactions across multiple POS terminal types.

The platform will provide a unified payment experience for in-store, in-app and online purchases.

“For the past two years, we have partnered closely with Payworks to deliver cutting-edge integrated commerce solutions for CyberSource’s clients worldwide,” said Carleigh Jaques, SVP, global head of digital merchant products at Visa. “As these solutions become mainstream, aligning more closely with Payworks and combining our businesses is a natural extension of our relationship.”

Christian Deger, CEO and co-founder of Payworks, added: “Integrated commerce is an accelerating opportunity for Payworks and its clients. By combining our POS technology with CyberSource’s digital commerce capabilities, we can bring our joint solution to merchants and acquirers across the globe at an accelerated pace. We are excited about joining the Visa family and integrating our capabilities to deliver innovative, differentiated integrated-commerce solutions.”

Research has shown that creating an omnichannel fulfilment strategy is among the top priorities for 94% of retailers.

Payworks demonstrated its platform at FinovateEurope 2014. Headquartered in Munich and founded in 2012, the company began this year with the launch of the first Android-based smart terminal, which was added to its portfolio of pre-certified payment terminals on its Pulse gateway.

This April, the company extended its partnership with worldwide POS software provider Lightspeed. In May, Payworks inked a deal with Hubtel to give merchants in Ghana and Kenya broader access to Payworks’ all-in-one, Android-based smart terminals.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: AdviceRobo, Ethoca, FinanceIt, Flybits, Horizn, On Deck Capital, Salt Edge, Sensibill, Thomson Reuters, TickSmith

Around the web

  • Digital Finance Institute features Ethoca, Financeit, Flybits, Horizn, On Deck Canada, Salt Edge, Sensibill, and TickSmith in its look at the top fintech companies in Canada in 2019.
  • AdviceRobo launches new pan-European PSD2 categorization and default prediction API for lenders, CatRobo.
  • Thomson Reuters purchases regtech collaboration platform, HighQ.

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.

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Ondot Unveils New Cloud Service to Help Smaller Banks, Credit Unions Compete

Ondot Unveils New Cloud Service to Help Smaller Banks, Credit Unions Compete
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Ondot Systems

The new cloud service announced by Ondot this week will make it easier for the company’s 4,000 bank and credit union customers to secure faster upgrades, deploy new functionalities, and access the latest innovations designed to enhance the mobile and digital card experience. Leveraging the cloud will also help FIs lower costs associated with operations, maintenance, compliance, and monitoring.

Ondot Head of Product Prasanna Narayan pointed to the challenges that regional banks and credit unions in particular face when it comes to integrating physical data into their data centers. Making Ondot’s card controls and other solutions available via a cloud-based service, Narayan explained, can help these smaller financial institutions keep pace with their bigger rivals. “This option allows mid-sized and smaller issuers to more quickly and easily launch these services and compete with larger national banks on digital customer experience,” he said.

Enhanced security is as much a part of the new cloud service as the enhanced customer experience. Narayan highlighted Ondot’s depth of understanding the security and compliance needs of financial institutions given its eight years of experience working with banks and credit unions. A scalable and reliable AWS, and robust disaster recovery and redundancy provide consistent uptime for clients using the service.

Santa Clara, California-based Ondot demonstrated its digital card mobile app at FinovateSpring 2018. The solution supports a range of digital payment card services from new customer acquisition to instant card activation and new card provisioning. The company won a Finovate Best of Show award at our first conference in Dubai, UAE, last year, FinovateMiddleEast, where it demoed its card controls technology.

2018 was a big year for the company. Back in November, Ondot introduced a new, end-to-end digital card services platform for banks in the Asia-Pacific region. Last summer, the company announced a partnership with PSCU, the premier payments credit union service organization, that will enable credit unions to integrate Ondot’s card alerts and controls technology into their mobile and online account management apps – or have them delivered directly via PSCU’s digital platform.

Founded in 2011, Ondot has raised $51 million in funding. Vaduvur Bharghavan is co-founder and CEO.

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Urban FT Acquires Remote Deposit Capture Innovator CFC Technology Group

Urban FT Acquires Remote Deposit Capture Innovator CFC Technology Group
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Urban FT

Fintech solution provider Urban FT has bought Minneapolis, Minnesota-based remote deposit capture (RDC) specialist CFC Technology Group.

The purchase, the Urban FT said in a statement today, will further support its position as a leading digital banking and payments provider – particularly for the community banks and credit unions that represent a sizable portion of its customer base. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

“Urban FT is focused on tilting the playing field for community-based financial institutions,” said company CEO Richard Steggall, “which is representative in our growth as revolutionary pioneers, empowering institutions that choose to give a damn about the people and the communities they serve.” Steggall added that the acquisition marked Urban FT’s expansion into merchant-based banking territory, and bolstered its “ability to provide end-to-end digital payment solutions.”

Since inception in 1998, CFC Technology has worked with more than 800 institutions and thousands of merchant customers. A specialist in remote deposit capture, mobile banking, and business continuity solutions, CFC Technology is a frequent partner of community banks and credit unions, providing services in more than 25 states.

Headquartered in New York City, Urban FT demonstrated its Urban FT Workshop, a real-time, multi-tier mobile app management platform for the financial services industry, at FinovateFall 2016. Founded in 2012, the company now has more than $3 billion in annualized processing volume and 700+ clients.

Earlier this year, the Urban FT launched its agent bank program Community Access. The program provides financial and mobile banking tools for the retail and commercial customers of community banks. Last fall, the company’s co-founder Mark Kilpatrick was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30.

Urban FT has raised $3 million in funding. CFC Technology represents the company’s latest acquisition, having purchased fellow Finovate alum Wipit in 2015 and iParse in 2017. Urban FT inked an agreement last year in which Digiliti Money – a subsidiary of Digiliti Money Group (formerly Cachet Financial Solutions) – would merge into Urban FT’s affiliate, FinTech Imaging Solutions.

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