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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
With FinovateAsia and FinovateMiddleEast coming up later this year, we wanted to pause to take a look at the funding that participants from last year’s shows have received so far this year.
In the first eight months of 2019, four fintechs that participated in FinovateAsia and FinovateMiddleEast 2018 raised more than $23 million combined.
With real funding at stake, what are you waiting for? Apply to demo your tech at FinovateAsia or FinovateMiddleEast today. The application is free and you have nothing to lose!
The Middle East and North Africa startup culture has continued to mature, especially when it comes to early stage companies. Part of the growth can be attributed to the region’s investment in both talent and infrastructure. Coding programs and regional hackathons have not only added to the talent pool of startup recruits, they have also given the startup culture a boost.
In Asia, India has risen as the region’s top country for fintech funding. The $286 million in fintech funding the country raised in Q1 of this year outranks China’s total of $192 million raised for fintechs in that same quarter. Part of the slowdown in China can be attributed to increased regulation in the region.
If your startup is interested in demoing at this year’s FinovateAsia or FinovateMiddleEast conference, contact our demo team at [email protected] or [email protected].
NestReady to Enhance the Homebuying Experience at West Community Credit Union.
Around the web
Tearsheet interviewsFlybits CEO Hossein Rahnama on the challenge of digital transformation.
Facebook partners with HackerOne to launch bug bounty for its Libra Project.
Crowdfund Insider quotesUnison CEO Thomas Sponholtz and Lending Club CEO Scott Sanborn on the trend of fintechs considering a move from the San Francisco area.
Hanscom Federal Credit Union selectsDigital Onboarding to facilitate account activation.
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.
Intelligent identity platform Ping Identity is making plans to go public. The company’s registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which paves the way for an initial public offering, was made available late last week.
The number of shares to be offered and the initial price range have not yet been disclosed, but TechCrunch reports that the company could secure a valuation between $2 billion and $3 billion. Ping Identity will list on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol “PING.”
Vista Equity Partners, which acquired Ping Identity in 2016 for $600 million, will retain partial ownership of the company post-IPO. Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, RBC Capital Markets, and Citigroup are the IPO’s lead underwriters.
Founded in 2003, Ping Identity demonstrated its technology at FinovateEurope 2012. The company’s solutions enable customers and employees to securely and seamlessly access cloud, mobile, SaaS, and on-premises applications and APIs from any location. Ping Identity leverages single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) to provide one-click, real-time access and security, helping organizations move toward a “Zero Trust” identity-defined security regime. Named a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Access Management in 2019, the company introduced its new private cloud identity solution for the enterprise, PingCloud Private Tenant, earlier this month.
In its prospectus, Ping Identity notes that its platform secures more than two billion identities around the world as of June of this year. More than 50% of the Fortune 100 are Ping Identity customers, as are 12 of the biggest banks and five out of the seven largest retailers in the U.S. The company also highlighted its use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as its role in helping develop open identity standards.
Financially speaking, the company is seeking a return to the profitability it enjoyed in 2017. Ping Identity reported year-over-year revenue growth of 17% the following year, and announced period-over-period revenue growth of 14% for the first six months of this year.
This spring, the company was namedBest Identity Management Solution at the 2019 SC Awards, and twice-honored by DeveloperWeek with its Devies and Info Security Global Excellence awards. Ping has forged partnerships this year with companies like fellow Finovate alum TIBCO to leverage AI to help defend APIs against cyberthreats, and with Citrix Analytics to enable contextual access for its Citrix Workspace.
Ping’s competitors in the SSO and MFA solution provider space include heavyweights like IBM and Oracle, as well as Microsoft. And while comparing its technology favorably to the “complex, costly and increasingly fragile” systems of its rivals, Ping Identity has partnered with Microsoft and noted the benefits of this relationship in its prospectus.
“(We) partner with Microsoft to provide SSO, security control and adaptive MFA where non-Microsoft environments require integration or independence is preferred,” the prospectus reads. “Microsoft’s integration and interoperability with our solutions benefits enterprises while providing optionality and choice.”
Ping Identity was founded by Andre Durand, who serves as the company’s CEO. The company is headquartered in Denver, Colorado.
Heading into the fall of 2019, ProfitStarsCommercial Lending Center Suite will boast 500 banks, credit unions, and other FIs as customers. The company announced late last week that the milestone had been reached, underscoring the popularity of its solution that leverages automation and digital technology to streamline and enhance the commercial lending process.
Calling commercial lending “the last paper-based process left in banking,” ProfitStars president Russ Bernthal credited the lending technology for helping lending institutions make better decisions, more effectively manage risk, and boost profitability. “By partnering with us, 500 institutions are empowered to more effectively manage borrower relationships from one loan experience to the next, strengthening existing relationships and driving new business opportunities.”
Among the banks and credit unions to deploy ProfitStars Commercial Lending Center Suite in recent months are First National Bank, which selected the technology in May, and First State Community Bank, which announced its decision to deploy the solution in March. In addition to banks, firms like United Capital Funding, an accounts receivables and factoring company, have leveraged ProfitStars commercial lending platform to improve portfolio management and better serve their customers.
“Since installation, we have benefitted from more advanced portfolio management and flexible reporting tools,” United Capital Funding managing partner Ivan Baker said. “The platform also offers comprehensive digital capabilities that allow us to enjoy more touch points with our clients and connect with them when and how they prefer.”
A division of Jack Henry & Associates, ProfitStars demonstrated its Budget Manager solution at FinovateSpring 2012. Budget Manager is a distributed budgeting tool that enables administrators to access front line budget data and input in into the ProfitStars ALM/Budgeting app. The company’s offerings, which also include check imaging, card processing, and payment solutions, help its 9,000 customers manage risk, control costs, optimize revenue, and support growth.
In addition to ProfitStars partnership news this year, the company’s new product releases made fintech headlines, as well. This spring, ProfitStars introduced its Gladiator Total Protect solution, a suite of managed, IT, network security, and compliance services for banks. The release of Gladiator Total Protect follows the launch of its Gladiator iPay Enterprise Security Monitoring solution, made available last fall.
ProfitStars is headquartered in Allen, Texas, a suburb of Dallas.
ProfitStarsReaches 500 Bank and Credit Union Customers for Commercial Lending Solution.
Around the web
PYMNTS interviewsBento for Business Co-Founder and CEO Farhan Ahmad.
OnPay partners with Xero to bring back-office services to the agricultural industry.
Innov8tif selectsID R&D’sPassive Facial Liveness for remote customer onboarding.
LoanScorecard to power new QuickQual loan solution from Angel Oak.
ACI Worldwide to help Massachusetts-based Nichols College enhance its payment processes.
Revolutbolsters executive ranks with appointment of new treasurer, deputy Chief Financial Officer, and director of financial crime risk.
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.
By joining RippleNet – the global payments network that leverages blockchain technology to quickly and inexpensively facilitate transactions – cross-border money transfer specialist Xendpay will bring its fee-agnostic remittance service to customers in countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.
This includes access to its Pay What You Want feature that enables customers to pay no fees on transfers totaling $2,500 over the course of a calendar year. For businesses, the option is twice as valuable with a $5,000 fee-free limit.
“Most of our customers are migrants who are sending money back home,” Xendpay Head of Product Innovation Bhavin Vaghela said. “This money is vital to support their families: to pay rent or mortgage, electricity bills, medical fees, and education costs.” He added that, as an online service, Xendpay is able to save on overhead and pass that savings on to the customer.
“I think of our fees as similar to providing a tip,” Vaghela said. “If you feel like you’ve been treated well, received a good rate and enjoyed the experience, you might pay the recommended rate. We’ve even had clients pay us more.”
In joining RippleNet, Xendpay and its customers will benefit from a significant increase in processing speed for international money transfers, according to Vaghela. He noted that a transfer in a currency like the Thai Baht that might have taken up to four days to complete, now takes less than an hour courtesy of RippleNet’s technology and network of partners. Not only does the partnership with RippleNet accelerate the money transfers Xendpay has always offered, but also the collaboration enables Xendpay to provide money transfers it previously felt it could not.
“We were unable to offer currencies like Malaysian Ringgit or Bangladeshi Taka before,” Vaghela said. “Now that it’s easier to connect with local partners, we can provide our clients with more local currencies and, therefore, see new growth in those corridors.”
Xendpay demonstrated its cash-to-cash mobile international payment service at FinovateEurope 2013. Founded in 2012 by Paresh Davdra and Rajesh Agrawal, CEO, and headquartered in London, U.K., the company offers its services in 200+ countries, and transfers funds in more than 50 currencies and 2,900+ currency pairs. Xendpay is agent of foreign currency exchange payments firm RationalFX, founded in 2005 by Davdra and Agrawal.
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.
Central and Eastern Europe
Business Review looks at the potential for French-Romanian cooperation on fintech innovation.
Relex, a cryptocurrency-based real estate development investment platform, inks agreement with Belarus Currency and Stock Exchange.
Austrian telecom A1 to begin accepting cryptocurrencies as payment.
Middle East and Northern Africa
Emirates NBD introduces the first graduates of its fintech sandbox.
Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) joins the World Alliance of International Financial Centres (WAIFC).
Partnership between NilePay PLC and Zain South Sudan brings the first licensed mobile money service to South Sudan.
Central and Southern Asia
An investment of $110 million will help power Tala’s planned expansion into India.
Khalti, a fintech startup based in Nepal, wins the United Nations Fintech Innovation Fund.
Software Technology Parks of India establishes FinBlue, a Center of Excellence in FinTech, to support emerging fintech startups.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Argentina’s largest national private bank Banco Galicia integrates PFM technology from Strands.
Citi enables biometric authentication for its institutional clients throughout Latin America.
TransferWise announces launch of international transfers from Argentina.
Asia-Pacific
Standard Chartered Bank partners with SAP Ariba to bring financial supply chain solutions to companies in the Asia-Pacific region.
Japanese messaging platform Line teams up with Nomura to launch online brokerage firm geared toward younger, digitally-oriented traders.
Singapore FinTech Association and PwC Singapore look at the demand for talent in the local fintech industry.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Ghananian fintech Bezo Money is among the 11 startups to receive an $100,000 investment as part of its graduation from Pan-African incubator MEST.
Nigerian startup financial services startup Carbon posts its audited financial information online to promote transparency in the country’s tech market.
South African startup Ukheshe raises $500,000 (R7.6 million) for its app that provides payment services for the unbanked.
Insurwave, the world’s first marine insurance blockchain platform, has onboarded Xceptor so it can automate the generation and distribution of insurance documents, reports Ruby Hinchliffe of Fintech Futures, Finovate’s sister publication.
The joint venture between EY and Guardtime will use Xceptor to build out an extensive digital library of insurance documents, enabling the automation of downstream processes.
With more than 60 clients, including HSBC, JP Morgan, and Deutsche Bank, Xceptor is already well-known among banking leaders.
“This digitised single view of marine insurance records will deliver considerable efficiencies in both process and pricing,” said EY’s global vice chair of industry, Shaun Crawford. “Bringing in the generation and distribution of contracts between brokers and insurance underwriters is another exciting step to dramatically speeding up the production of an agreed final contract.”
“The current paper-intensive process takes a fleet of insurers to insure a single tanker,” said Xceptor CEO Andrew Kouloumbrides. “The process is lengthy and complicated, involves numerous insurers and brokers, along with many T&Cs, claims, sub-clauses and negotiations. It’s a complex process that is crying out for automation and a clear audit trail.”
Xceptor uses AI to to extract and transform any type of data from any source to help enterprises automate workflows. At FinovateEurope 2015, the company demoed version 4.0 of its intelligent automation solution.
Swiss fintech Numbrs, which demonstrated its PFM solution at FinovateFall in 2013, is back in the fintech headlines in a big way. The company has raised $40 million in new funding that takes the firm’s total capital to nearly $200 million and boosts the company’s valuation to more than $1 billion.
The company did not disclose the round’s investors by name. It did confirm that both existing and new investors participated. The funding is designed to help Numbrs as it prepares to expand outside of its current market in Germany, with the U.K. as the company’s next target.
In a blog post at the Numbrs website, the company highlighted the relatively-exclusive club it has joined when it comes to private firms with a billion-plus valuation and praised the role of private investors in giving Numbrs “the time to build the best technology platform in the financial industry.” Since its founding in 2012, the company has developed partnerships with major FIs such as Barclaycard and Santander. More than two million app downloads and an excess of $11 billion (€10 billion) in managed assets have helped the company’s solution to become the top independent finance app in Germany.
Numbrs leverages machine learning and analytics tools to enable users to better manage their financial lives. Users link one or more accounts to the app and Numbrs goes to work: analyzing finances to create savings plans based on user goals, tracking and categorizing transactions in real-time to help users avoid overspending, and making it easy to handle common banking chores such as checking balances and transferring money.
The Numbrs app also offers a Money Store where users can shop for loans, credit cards, and insurance – just added in April – as well as other financial products and services.
The funding news for Numbrs arrives amid a summer of positive headlines for the company. Numbrs celebrated reaching 2.2 million downloads in July, the same month the company announced hitting the €10 billion mark in terms of assets managed on the platform. The company forged a partnership with Allianz in May, making the company’s insurance products available via the Numbrs app.
Numbrs is headquarterd in Zurich, Switzerland. Martin Saidler is CEO.
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.
As we approach the end of the summer, we reignite our #WomeninFintech series. We recently spoke with Kathleen Craig, CEO, HTMA creators of Banker Jr. and Plinqit about what inspired her to launch fintech software for banks and credit unions to engage their next generation of customers and why she thinks the future of fintech has to become more relationship driven.
Finovate: How did you start your career?
Kathleen Craig: I have more than a decade of banking and customer service experience. Prior to launching HTMA, I served as Vice President of eServices at a Michigan-based community bank. I studied Business Administration at Eastern Michigan University.
Finovate: What sparked your interest in fintech?
Craig: During my time with eServices in 2010 through 2012, I could see the writing on the wall that our community bank was going to need to compete in the digital arena. At the time the large cores were making this really hard to do. I understood that open banking and open API’s were an inevitability and I wanted to be a part of driving our industry forward to a place where only the largest technology companies could use technology and consumer data to serve $1 billion bank customers better.
Finovate: What prompted you to launch HTMA/Banker Jr etc.?
Craig: My motivation to create HTMA came from my passion for technology, children, and financial literacy. Our first product, Banker Jr. for banks and Member Jr. for credit unions, launched in January 2013 to provide financial education to children while giving institutions the opportunity to tap into their up and coming customer base through a branded platform. The solution is now licensed by financial institutions in nineteen states.
Finovate: Why is it important to teach financial literacy to children?
Craig: Financial education is lacking, especially among the youngest generations, and we are seeing the effects in consumer financial behavior and saving habits. In fact, according to GOBankingRates, over half (58 percent) of American adults do not have $1,000 in their savings accounts to cover emergency expenses, and many are struggling to pay down debt. Forbes reported that 38 percent of United States households carry credit card debt. Just under half (43 percent) of individuals with student loans are not making payments. Additionally, one in three Americans have no money saved for retirement.
Meanwhile, only 16.4 percent of United States students are required to take a personal finance course to graduate high school, however, the group where the biggest lack of financial literacy can be seen is Millennials, with only 24 percent demonstrating basic financial knowledge. This is a serious problem.
Finovate: Why is it important for banks to embrace new tech?
Craig: One of the biggest differentiators for community financial institutions is their customer service and ability to help their community members. However, increasingly people are not walking in the doors, so technology is going to be the best way for them to translate that great customer service to a digital experience. To do this, we are going to have to push for it and be creative and innovative. Digital lends itself to transactions versus relationships, but we believe it can do both.
Finovate: Where do you think the future of fintech is heading?
Craig: It has to be more relationship driven. While it is great that folks can check balances, deposit checks and transfer money, people really need guidance and help with their money. Right now education and guided experience is not happening yet in fintech. There is a lot of talk about AI, chatbots and data driven tech, but measured successful outcomes that demonstrate a customer is better off having used your platform is what fintechs need to be striving for. The future of fintechs needs to be made up of less buzzwords and more customer results.
Finovate: What piece of advice would you give women starting out their career in finance/ fintech?
Craig: First, you need to do what you are passionate about. Secondly, have great mentors and advocates. The wider and more diverse your circle is the more fun you will have and the more success you will be able to achieve by learning from those you surround yourself with.
Wealthtech firm Wealthfront made its first acquisition today. The California-based company has purchased Grove for an undisclosed amount. Grove is a four year old virtual financial planning and advice company with $4 million in assets under management and is headquartered in California.
Not included in Wealthfront’s purchase are the clients behind Grove’s accounts, which number close to 500. Grove has entered into a strategic agreement with Facet Wealth to offer financial planning to these clients, who will be able to transition to Facet Wealth starting tomorrow. With Facet, clients will receive three check-ins per year, a dedicated financial planner, investment recommendations, and a strategy session for $780 per year plus a set-up fee of $560. Additionally, Facet anticipates that some of Grove’s CFPs and planning employees will transition over to its team.
Wealthfront is making the purchase to bolster its Self-Driving Money vision. Under the new initiative, Wealthfront takes control of the user’s finances by allocating their paycheck once it is deposited into their account. The tool will ensure all bills are paid, deposit the appropriate amount into each savings account, and contribute to the best investments to help the user attain their goals.
Grove Cofounder and CEO Chris Hutchins said, “We’ve always appreciated the role technology and automation can play in scaling quality financial advice. We are dedicated to the vision of Self-Driving Money as we believe it will have a huge impact on how people manage their finances.”
This is Wealthfront’s first reveal of its Self-Driving Money plans. The launch depicts a departure from the high-touch model competitors such as Betterment and Personal Capital have added to their offerings. It shows that, in an era of customer service revolution in fintech, Wealthfront is sticking with its robo roots. If Wealthfront serves as a place where consumers deposit their paycheck, they can gain a better foothold to compete with traditional banks.
Wealthfront debuted as KaChing at FinovateSpring 2009. The company pivoted as Wealthfront in 2015. Last year, Wealthfront unveiled a host of new offerings, including a freemium model, homeownership planning tool, and an integration with TurboTax that leverages user’s data to offer a more personalized experience.
