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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Password management platform Dashlane is riding the momentum of the $30 million it raised last month. Today, the New York-based company more than tripled its last investment, pulling in a $110 million Series D round.
The investment also more than doubles Dashlane’s previous funding total, boosting it to $211 million. Sequoia Capital led the round, with existing investors Rho Ventures, FirstMark Capital, and Bessemer Venture Partners also participating.
However, as CEO Emmanuel Schalit made clear in a blog post, “Dashlane’s ultimate success will not be measured by how much money we raise, but by our ability to empower people and businesses around the world to take control of their digital lives.” Dashlane is best known for its B2C offering that autogenerates secure passwords, as well as its form auto-filling function and digital wallet that securely stores users’ credit card information for fast online purchases. The company will use today’s investment to enhance its core product, add new capabilities, and build its brand to become synonymous with password security.
Schalit said that Dashlane is only “scratching the surface” of securing digital identities. “Billions of people and millions of businesses around the world feel the pain of digital identity – from breaches to stolen identities and the nuisance of remembering passwords. Few are even aware that there is a better way, and we are going to change that,” he said.
In addition to its B2C offerings, Dashlane also provides solutions that help businesses seamlessly onboard staff with new accounts, and has a partner program to allow brands to co-brand Dashlane’s identity manager as a service. The company’s partners include Visa, Intel, and yubico.
“While most people are not aware of the magnitude of these issues, an entire economy is booming and growing in sophistication around harvesting and weaponizing stolen credentials, with participation from nation-states and cybercriminals,” said Sequoia Partner Jim Goetz, who will join the company’s board of directors. “We believe this category has the potential to one day surpass anti-virus in size, and we are excited to partner with the emerging market leader as they create and grow the category.”
Dashlane also announced it has recruited Joy Howard (pictured), former CMO at Lyft, as its Chief Marketing Officer. Howard, who is slated to begin her role at Dashlane in August, will oversee the company’s global marketing initiatives. She brings to Dashlane her experience gained from leadership positions at Sonos, Patagonia, Nike, and Coca-Cola.
Since it was founded in 2009, Dashlane has amassed 11+ million users from 180 countries across the globe. The company demoed its password manager and keyboard-less ecommerce transaction technology at FinovateEurope 2013.
Fresh off its appearance at FinovateSpring, digital money management software developer Strands has announced a new strategic partnership with Tech Mahindra. The IT services and consulting firm will leverage Strands’ AI- and big data-powered technology and financial services expertise to help its clients enhance the customer experience with more contextual and personalized solutions.
“Our white-label digital money management solutions give financial institutions an edge over the competition, speed up internal processes, and help them reap the benefits of a more engaged relationship with their customers,” Strands CEO Erik Brieva said. He added that the strategic partnership would “accelerate the delivery of tangible business value.”
Strands uses big data and advanced machine learning to provide a range of offerings including personal and business financial management, customer-linked offers, insights-driven analysis with its Engager product, and open banking via its API hub. With more than 600 implementations to date, the company seamlessly integrates its technology into bank’s existing systems and, by giving FIs more relevant insights into their customer’s wants and needs, delivers both relationship and smarter banking at the same time.
Tech Mahindra’s Global Head of Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance, Gautam Bhasin put the partnership with Strands in the broader context of the company’s TechMNxt charter. The charter calls on the company to support a partner ecosystem to facilitate the development of solutions based on “next generation” technologies like artificial intelligence.
“Our collaboration with Strands will further enable us to implement this unique digital financial solution to enhance end-customer experience and faster time to market of products and services by banks, as well as increase return of investment for our customers,” Bhasin said.
A multinational Indian IT, integrated engineering solutions, and BPO provider, Tech Mahindra was founded in 1986 and is based in Pune. With $4.9 billion in revenues in 2018, the firm is a subsidiary of the Mahindra Group, and has more than 121,800 workers in 90 countries. The highest ranked non-U.S. company in the Forbes Global Digital 100 roster last year, Tech Mahindra has more than 900 clients around the world. Chander Prakash Gurnani, who won top honors at the CEO World Awards last fall, is CEO and Managing Director.
In collaboration with Mastercard, Strands demonstrated its SME Cash Flow Manager Enhanced by Mastercard Technology earlier this year at FinovateSpring. The solution gives business owners actionable insights to help them save time and money, as well as the ability to monitor Quickbooks data within their digital banking experience. SME Cash Flow Manager enables financial institutions to offer the kind of digital financial management solutions that will lead to greater engagement between FIs and their SME customers.
Founded in 2004, Strands maintains offices in Barcelona, Spain; Miami, Florida; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Kuala Lumpur. The company has raised more than $55 million in funding, and includes Dalbergia, Sequel Venture Partners, Indigo Investment Corporation, and Debaeque among its investors.
Forbes: PayPal’s Latest Milestone: $10 Billion In Small Business Loans.
Atlanta Small Business Network looks at how Fiserv delivers fraud prevention across the globe.
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.
Insights and connections to the Asian fintech community you will only find at Finovate.
Save the date for FinovateAsia 2019! We’re moving back to Singapore this October 14 through 16, with a show that will feature demos of new fintech solutions, key insights from thought-leaders and influencers, and networking that delivers meaningful connections with fintech decision-makers.
Lowest price to attend ends Friday, May 31!
The agenda is packed with the latest fintech innovations, industry titans, and up-and-comers. The first day will feature digital trailblazers and disruptors analyzing the latest trends in fintech and financial services digital transformation in Asia. The stellar speaker faculty will debate the big issues facing financial institutions and fintechs in the new tech driven world. And the second day will feature Finovate’s signature live demos from 35+ fintech innovators.
It’s not just what you see and learn. Make essential business connections with the 600+ senior decision makers at the event. You can arrange meetings using the networking app before the event to make the most of your time there.
Register by Friday, May 31 and save up to $1,100. Book online here today or contact our customer services team at +1 (888) 670-8200 or register@knect365.com.
Make it at FinovateAsia!
Whether a new innovation or service, partnership or brand pivot, you’ll reach an audience of 600+ of the most influential people in fintech. Finovate’s format of seven minutes on stage, exhibition stand, attendee introductions, marketing exposure, and more delivers you a fantastic ROI.
The demo application process is competitive, so apply early to give your company the best chance of getting on stage. Plus, secure the lowest possible rate if chosen to demo.
In a round led by Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), personal finance solution provider SoFi has raised more than $500 million in equity funding. The new capital gives the San Francisco, California-based company a valuation of $4.3 billion, and will drive investment, the company said in its press release, in continued innovation and growth. SoFi’s total capital now stands at $2.3 billion.
QIA CEO Mansoor Al-Mahmoud highlighted SoFi’s long-term vision, which has enabled the company to evolve into a major personal finance platform for both lending and wealth management. “We strongly believe in SoFi’s approach, and their dedication to build a transformational financial platform that is rapidly disrupting consumer finance,” he said.
In his statement, SoFi CEO Anthony Noto underscored the company’s transformation, as well. “Over the last year, we’ve worked aggressively to grow SoFi from a desktop lending business to a broad-based, mobile-first financial platform enabling members to borrow, save, spend, invest, and protect their money,” Noto said.
With more than 700,000 members and 7.5+ million registered users, SoFi offers a variety of personal finance solutions in lending and wealth management. These include the company’s student loan refinancing and mortgages offerings, as well as newer products like SoFi Invest and SofiMoney.
SoFi Invest, launched at the beginning of the year, is a stock and ETF trading and investing platform that also allows for automated investing. SoFi Money combines the best of checking and savings accounts into a single account with a 2.25% APY and an app to facilitate mobile spending, saving, and payment.
Earlier this month, SoFi announced that it was introducing an exchange-traded fund based on the gig economy, GIGE. The actively managed fund – run by Toroso Investments – enables investors to participate in the stock market gains of companies like eBay, Lyft, Square, and Twitter. In April, the company teamed up with Lemonade and Root to add to its insurance offerings.
SoFi, in partnership with Quovo, participated in our developers conference, FinDEVr New York 2017. At the event, the two companies led a presentation, How Quovo and SoFi Perfected Bank Authentication, which won the duo a Favorite FinDEVr Alum award. SoFi was founded in 2011.
Plaid, a provider of APIs for financial infrastructure, announced its expansion into the U.K. this week. The move makes a lot of sense– an open banking fintech is launching in the motherland of open banking.
“We’re building a financial network that will deliver on the promise of open banking with the best in both local expertise and global opportunity,” Keith Grose, International Lead at Plaid said in a blog post.
The U.K. is Plaid’s second international market after launching in Canada last year. The expansion overseas initiates the San Francisco-based company’s more comprehensive launch into Europe as a whole.
Plaid elected to launch in the U.K. because, as some have argued, the region is the fintech capital of the globe. More than 1,600 fintech companies have come out of the U.K. and that number is projected to double in the next ten years.
Today’s news is as much about Plaid launching in the U.K. as it is about opening up the possibility for its client applications to do business in the region, as well. Venmo, Robinhood, Coinbase and Acorns all use Plaid to connect to their customers’ U.S. bank accounts, and can now more easily expand into Europe using existing integrations.
Plaid, which was granted its AISP license from the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority last October, currently offers five of its products in the U.K.:
Auth, an account authentication tool
Balance, which pulls account balance information in real-time
Identity, which leverages bank data to verify consumer identity
Transactions, which pulls bank statement data across banks
Assets, a verification of assets tool
Missing from this list is Plaid’s Income product, a tool that validates a consumer’s income and verifies direct deposit data.
At FinDEVr San Fransisco 2014, the company’s founder, Zach Perret gave a presentation about leveraging the Plaid API for financial infrastructure. Plaid has raised $310 million since it was founded in 2013. After the company’s most recent investment last year, TechCrunch estimated Plaid to be valued at $2.65 billion.
Plaid began 2019 by acquiring its competitor Quovo in a $200 million deal. At FinovateSpring earlier this month bill payment platform doxoannounced it is leveraging Plaid to bring customers overdraft protection when paying their bills online. And last week, Plaid unveiled Plaid Direct, a lightweight integration that makes banks and fintechs a data source in the Plaid network, allowing end customers to enjoy open banking connectivity across financial service providers.
From banking chatbots to speculations on superintelligence, the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on financial services is one of the hottest topics in fintech. Our Summit Day sessions on AI at FinovateSpring earlier this year were consistently among our best attended sessions.
To continue this conversation, we exchanged emails with Alenka Grealish, Senior Analyst, Corporate Banking, Celent. Grealish’s recent report, AI in the UI: Adoption, Use Cases, and Business Cases, represents Celent’s latest investigation into the issues surrounding the rise and role of AI in financial services.
Finovate: In setting up this conversation, I noted that Celent referred to this as part of an inaugural initiative. Why is now the time to turn the spotlight on this technology and its impact on financial services?
Alenka Grealish: We observed the beginning of a shift from all experimentation to gradual implementation amongst vanguard banks. It was common to have nine proofs of concept to one pilot at the vanguard banks. We’re now seeing more pilots and a few moving into production.
Finovate: What are we talking about when we talk about AI? How broad is this technology?
Grealish: Broad. What defines AI has expanded in the commercial world. The narrow Turing Test no longer applies. The current goal of AI developers is not to replicate humans, but rather complement them and build applications that team with them. A great example is found in anti-money laundering.
The broad definition includes rules-based and learning-based models. A useful way to categorize AI capabilities is: natural language processing and understanding, natural language generation (data-to-text), speech (speech-to-text and vice versa), vision, and data insights (machine learning driven analytics that generate, for example, cash flow forecasts for customers and next best action for bankers).
Finovate: Has AI become a catch-all for a variety of technologies, some of which are AI and some of which are not? And is that an issue for AI adoption going forward?
Grealish: AI has certainly become a buzz word and its definition stretched by tech vendors. Semantics aside…Critical to successful AI adoption is not to seek a problem for AI to solve but rather the reverse: determine the key problems you’re trying to solve (e.g., high false positives in AML) and/or goals you’re trying to achieve (e.g., personalize customer-banker interactions). Then, (the next step is to) examine the potential means to solve/achieve. The means could be a combination of rules-based and learning-based AI or established tech (e.g., OCR) combined with AI.
Finovate: What were the top two or three high-level takeaways from your research?
Grealish: I was struck by the percentage of banks $10+ billion in size which had implemented front-office AI. I had expected less than 10%.
Finovate: Your report notes a difference in AI adoption between retail and commercial banks, calling the former an “early adopter” and the latter “vanguard.” What distinguishes the two?
Grealish: The vanguard phase is when a small number of entities, less than 5%, moves into production. The technology is not mature but works sufficiently well for low risk use cases. These entities tend to have nimble organizations and little to no legacy baggage. The early adopter phase typically occurs when the vanguard banks are successful and appear to be gaining a competitive edge and inspire the next wave of adopters to take action. The early adopters are innovators but are likely juggling multiple priorities and hence cannot always be in the vanguard.
Finovate: One of the areas you highlight is the use of AI-enabled technologies for employees and workers. What sort of use cases – especially those relevant to financial services – are you seeing here?
Grealish: In terms of employee enablement, I’m excited by what I see. AI is proving helpful in basic “tell me” support, such as, “do we offer this type of product?” and “where is this feature located in our online portal?” It is also progressing in higher level support, such as data insights on sales trends and next best action suggestions.
Finovate: You note “relative complexity” as a main hurdle to broader adoption of AI. How are financial services companies navigating this challenge (hiring talent, partnerships, etc.)?
Grealish: AI is not a standalone technology but rather is woven into current processes and platforms and/or drives new processes and platforms. Hence, success begins at the top of the house, banks with a transformation, data-driven leadership team view AI as one component of a broader digital strategy.
Next, successful banks have a business model comprising four key elements: a collaborative multidisciplinary organizational dynamic, an enterprise-wide AI initiatives team, strong data and model governance, and regulatory engagement and compliance playbook. At the operating model level, these banks have basic automation expertise and are incorporating AI to solve the hard stuff, such as analysis of unstructured data.
At the foundation, these banks are migrating to a modern data and tech infrastructure that supports a digital-first strategy.
Finovate: You note that the primary business goal for most businesses using AI-enabled technologies is cost savings, but that customer engagement “is increasingly a goal.” What are some of the more interesting use cases for AI-enabled technologies in customer engagement?
Grealish: We’re in the very early days of customer engagement, that is, brief, basic “tell me” conversations. These “tell me” conversations are taking off thanks to Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, which are driving consumers’ comfort level engaging with machines. The outlook over the next 5 years is promising. “Do it for me” type interactions will become common. For example, a small business will simply ask the online virtual assistant to choose the optimal payment type based on its criteria. Further on the horizon are “Alert and advise me” type interactions. For example, a mid-market company has an FX exposure and is alerted with action options to hedge the exposure.
SoFiAnnounces $500 Million Investment Led by Qatar.
Around the web
Trustlylaunches automated invoice payment solution, Pay Your Invoice.
PayPalreaches $10 billion in small business loans issued via its business financing offerings.
Mastercard and UOB partner to introduce the UOB Retail Business Metal Card designed for APAC SMEs.
Kofaxlaunches its Intelligent Automation software platform.
Brazilian exchange brokerage, Frente Corretora de Cambio, goes live with cross-border remittance solution powered by Ripple technology.
Fenergounveils a new suite of CLM tools, Digital Client Orchestration.
Trulioonamed best identity verification and authentication solution at 2019 CNP Expo.
KyckGlobal partners with InComm to provide same-day pay to gig workers.
Sam Kilmer offers 3 takeaways of FinovateSpring 2019 in 3 minutes.
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.
Courtesy of a partnership with ID document verification specialist Onfido, Checkr has launched a new solution that will enable businesses to add identity verification to their trust and safety programs. The new solution, Checkr Connect IDV, leverages Onfido’s technology to verify the user’s ID and conduct a biometric check comparing the image on the ID to a selfie taken by the user.
Combined with Checkr’s AI-powered background check technology, the new offering gives businesses a unified identity verification and background check solution. Available in the fall, Connect IDV will help businesses avoid some of the hurdles – from complex integrations to a dependance on multiple manual processes – that have discouraged businesses from using identity verification solutions more completely.
“Identity verification and background checks are becoming increasingly important in our digital society and (are) an essential step for every company that wants to grow its customer base or workforce,” CEO and co-founder of Onfido Husayn Kassai explained. “By embedding our identity verification technology within Checkr’s platform we can now offer customers what they have been asking for: a strong, seamless solution for their end-users.” Kassai called this a “shared priority” between the two companies.
“Every business today faces increased risk from identity fraud, and traditional anti-fraud methods are falling behind the capabilities of sophisticated bad actors,” VP of Product at Checkr Lydia Varmazis said. “We designed Checkr Connect IDV to make it simple for our customers to add identity verification into their hiring workflows, allowing them to elevate their trust and safety programs.”
San Francisco, California-based Checkr was founded in 2014 by Daniel Yanisse (CEO) and Jonathan Perichon (CTO). The company offers solutions for continuous background checking, quality screening, and well as security resources, and includes Uber, Instacart, and GrubHub among its 10,000+ customers. Checkr has raised $149 million in funding. T. Rowe Price, Y Combinator, and Accel are among the firm’s investors.
Founded in 2012 and based in London, U.K., Onfido demonstrated its Facial Check with Video technology at FinovateEurope 2018. More recently, the company announced a partnership with mobility-as-a-service firm Drover, and earned a spot in the inaugural cohort of cross-border regulatory sandbox, Global Financial Innovation Network (GFIN).
Onfido picked up a major investment this spring, adding $50 million in new capital and taking the company’s total funding to more than $100 million. Onfido added C-level talent this year, as well, hiring Kevin Goldsmith as Chief Technology Officer and Thomas Ammirati as Chief Revenue Officer.
Merchant acquirer Global Payments has agreed to buy issuer processor firm Total System Services (TSYS) in a $21.5 billion deal, reports Jane Connolly of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
The two companies confirmed the deal today (May 28) in what will be the payment industry’s third “mega-merger” of 2019. The all-stock deal values TSYS at $119.86 per share, a rise of 20% since before news of the talks started to emerge.
Global Payments shareholders will own 52% of the combined company, while TSYS investors own 48%. TSYS CEO Troy Woods will become the chairman.
The combined entity will provide payment technology and software to more than 3.5 million small to medium-sized merchants and over 1,300 financial institutions worldwide.
It is expected that the deal, anticipated to close in the fourth quarter, will generate around $8.6 billion in adjusted net revenue annually plus network fees and make cost savings of $300 million.
TSYS was founded in 1983 and is headquartered in Columbus, Georgia. The company demonstrated its Authorization Controls solution at FinovateAsia 2013, showing how the technology enabled users to set their own default account parameters and authorization rules.
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 Eastern Europe
FintechOS of Romania raises $1.23 million (€1.1 million) in post-seed funding.
Elvira Nabiullina, head of the Central Bank of Russia, talks about the state of Russian fintech.
Lithuania’s Evarest to launch a stock trading app in the second half of the year.
Vents Magazine highlightsTrustly’sPay’N Play technology.
The 2019 Aspire Leaderboard recognizes Quadient as overall leader for CCM for the second year in a row.
Star Tribute profilesSezzle and its plans to go public in Australia later this year.
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.
