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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
RAccount holders should be able to trust their bank or credit union to protect their valuable financial data. However, the human presence within complex networks inherently creates privacy and governance vulnerabilities, particularly in the visibility, control, and protection over how, when, and where data is made available to the people who use it every day.
Though modern cybersecurity is inherently multi-layered, the deepest layer must include modern data security governance that protects against privileged access and human error.
Watch on-demand to hear Lou Senko, CIO of Q2, and Doug Wick, VP of Product and Marketing for ALTR, explore how a large, publicly traded financial experience (FinX) company is using innovative solutions to provide the ultimate failsafe to its customers, as well as:
• Best practices for keeping sensitive financial data safe • How to gain transparent visibility and control over your data • How blockchain technology can support the restoration of digital trust.
Entrepreneur.com featuresXero in its round up of solutions to help companies better control their business expenses.
SaaS banking engine Mambuinks deal with its first Brazilian client, Acesso.
Worldpay to deployUP eCommerce Payments solution from ACI Worldwide as part of new international partnership.
Czech Republic’s Twistoannounces plans to expand to Poland this fall, with expansion to Romania to follow.
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.
In a round led by Point72 Ventures, contextual data intelligence specialist Flybits has raised $35 million in new funding. The fresh capital takes the company’s total equity financing to $50 million, and will help drive its growth in EMEA, Latin America, and the U.S.
The Series C round featured participation from Mastercard, Citi Ventures, and Reinventure, which was backed by Westpac Banking Corporation of Australia. Existing investors Portag3 Ventures, TD Bank Group and Information Venture Partners contributed to the round, as well.
The financing will also enable Flybits to commercialize its portfolio of AI and machine learning patents, as well as make enhancements to UX and design. Flybits also plans to launch a marketplace to make it easier for financial institutions, fintechs, and financial data providers to collaborate on new products and services.
“Banks are looking for ways to maximize their use of data and better engage with customers, but are having a hard time executing and scaling this on their own or by leveraging passive PFM (personal financial management) services,” Flybits founder and CEO Dr. Hossein Rahnama explained. “Flybits enables banks to use real-time data and contextual intelligence to shift to those new models and go to market with them faster without over reliance on their IT department.”
Point72 Ventures Partner Tripp Shriner shared Rahnama’s view on this new challenge for banks and other FIs, whom Shriner said “are struggling to communicate with their customers about their products and services in the digital environment.” He praised Flybits for developing a “superior end-to-end solution for personalization of the digital customer experience.”
Today’s investment comes just a few months after Flybits announced that it was a key enabler of the Mastercard Contextual Engagement Solution. The technology is the first product built using the Mastercard Innovation Engine and helps drive contextually-relevant and personalized digital engagement. Last fall, Flybits announced it would work with TD Bank Group to provide enhanced, “micro-personalized” mobile experiences to the bank customers.
Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Flybits demonstrated its contextual recommendation engine at FinovateSpring in May. The technology leverages behavioral data and combinations of data sets to provide a deeper understanding of individual customer behavior and preferences based on collective experiences.
Lemonade, the training platform developed by Finovate Best of Show winner Launchfire, is going live as a standalone SaaS brand, the company announced today. In a statement, Launchfire noted that offering the solution as its own SaaS offering was a “key strategic goal” to help ensure the product had a “strong identity” and “clear value proposition” for its brand.
“It was time to create some separation between our two business offerings,” Launchfire CEO John Findlay said. “Both Lemonade and our Promotions Agency have seen significant growth in the past few years, and we wanted to create some space to let each shine on their own.”
Launchfire demonstrated Lemonade, its game-based employee and customer engagement solution for financial institutions, at FinovateEurope 2019, winning Best of Show. Lemonade leverages microlearning, product simulations, and roleplay scenarios to help institutions educate and train workers faster. The solution also provides in-depth analytics to enable managers to track progress and measure how effectively the current training process is going.
“For 20 years, we’ve educated consumers using game-based promotions,” Launchfire CTO Alexandre Lemaire said. “In hindsight, it was a natural transition to combine proven game tactics with learning science to derive this powerful learning platform, and the result is fantastic. We’re pushing learning outcomes, metrics, and engagement to entirely new levels,” Lemaire said.
Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Launchfire won gold at the 2019 Hermes Creative Awards of the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals in May. Back in December, the company was honored with a gold award at the Brandon Hall Group Excellence Technology Awards for “excellence in gaming or simulation technology.”
TrueLayer, provider of financial APIs, has integrated with Revolut to enable the secure access of financial data via open banking, reports Henry Vilar of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
Money management app, Emma, will be one of the first companies to use the new integration. Emma’s customers will now be able to use their Revolut account information to track their spending in real time.
Account information will only be accessible when a customer chooses to use a new product and actively agrees to share their information.
Francesco Simoneschi, CEO and co-founder of TrueLayer, said: “We’re increasingly seeing how open banking is uniting successful companies so that they can offer more and more great services to consumers.”
Edoardo Moreni, CEO and co-founder of Emma, added: “Our users can now have access to all their balances, see the exact conversion in pound and manage their money like never before.”
TrueLayer’s partnership is its latest milestone in 2019, with the recent announcement of a $35 million funding round led by Tencent and Temasek.
It recently expanded across Europe to Germany, France, Italy and Spain, the launch of payment initiation capabilities and partnerships with companies including Zopa, ClearScore, Plum, CreditLadder, Canopy, and ANNA Money.
Revolut demonstrated its platform at FinovateEurope 2015. Founded in 2013 and based in London, U.K., the company has raised more than $336 million in funding. Future Fifty, DST Global, and Draper Esprit are among the firm’s investors.
Ritholtz Wealth turns toBetterment’sBetterment for Advisors, a white label online investing solution, to power its Liftoff automated investment platform.
This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.
ClickSWITCH, which made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring, has unveiled its partnership with Current, a digital bank launched in 2016. Current has used the ClickSWITCH API to build and design a customized UX that makes it easy for members to switch direct deposits to their checking accounts.
“We are excited to be providing direct deposit technology to Current’s banking solution,” Founder and CEO of ClickSWITCH Cale Johnston said. “Current is on the leading edge of an industry that is evolving at a rapid pace. They are adding new users at a very impressive rate, and we believe our solution will increase user adoption for their growing platform.”
ClickSWITCH offers banks and other financial institutions a turn-key solution that automates the switch of direct deposits and recurring payments for account holders. The company’s automated account holder acquisition technology makes onboarding easier and faster, enabling FIs to improve customer acquisition and account activation rates, ease the funding of new accounts, and increase the number of primary account holders.
Current bills itself as “a bank built for modern life.” The institution, launched in 2016, provides an iOS/Android banking app, and a Visa debit card with no minimum balance or overdraft fees. With more than 400,000 active accounts, Current offers a variety of innovative options for customers such as its Teen Checking Accounts and Early Direct Deposits. Current founder and CEO Stuart Sopp highlighted the bank’s Early Direct Deposit program, which allows customers to access their paychecks up to two days in advance, as a major beneficiary of ClickSWITCH’s technology.
“For more Americans, changing where their paychecks are deposited is the best measure of truly switching banks,” Sopp said. “By partnering with ClickSWITCH, we’re able to make that process far more seamless and offer a better customer experience for our account holders – which is always our top priority at Current.”
Founded in 2014, ClickSWITCH is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The company demonstrated its automated direct deposit switch technology at FinovateSpring 2019. ClickSWITCH has raised $17.1 million in funding, and counts Point72 Ventures and Commerce Ventures among its investors.
Earlier this year, the company partnered with fellow Finovate alum Digital Onboarding to enable Old Point National Bank to update and switch direct deposits and recurring payments more efficiently. Last spring, ClickSWITCH worked with virtual branch app provider Mobilearth to add a new direct deposit switching feature to Mobilearth’s roving teller dashboard.
Pan-American Life Insurance Group (PALIG), a provider of insurance and financial services throughout the Americas, has selected Fiserv technology to strengthen the efficiency and effectiveness of its anti-money laundering (AML) compliance and risk management program in multiple countries, reports Henry Vilar of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
PALIG sought a provider with insurance industry expertise, a global footprint, and flexibility to help streamline AML compliance and fraud and risk management processes. The company selected Fiserv to provide a solution that accommodates country-specific regulations and reporting requirements.
The firm hopes this will improve efficiency for PALIG by enabling it to execute and monitor risk management processes in multiple countries through a single platform.
PALIG is initially deploying the Fiserv solution for use in Panama, the Cayman Islands, Colombia and Costa Rica, with plans to expand to more of the 22 countries where it has operations.
“Effective risk management is an important part of how we do business,” said Steven A. Friedman, executive vice president, chief investment officer, corporate development and strategy, Pan-American Life Insurance Group. “Working with Fiserv will optimize our ability to manage risk in an increasingly complex world so we can continue earning our customers’ trust.”
AML Risk Manager from Fiserv incorporates advanced capabilities that address four areas of an AML risk management program: know your customer (KYC) monitoring, detection and alerts, case management, and reporting.
Fiserv was founded in 1984, and is based in Brookfield Wisconsin. The company partnered with Samsung SDS last year at FinovateSpring to demo the Fiserv Commercial Center: Security & Samsung SDS Nexsign. Earlier this year, Fiserv announced plans to merge with First Data.
Standard Bank has cut customer waiting and transaction times since adopting the Infosys FinacleMobile Teller Solution at branches across Africa, reports Jane Connolly of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
Since going live with the enterprise level, tablet-based solution at 107 branches in five countries – Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia and Eswatini – the bank has seen transaction turnaround times reduced by over 40%.
Features such as designated workflows for tellers, relationship managers and agents, offline operation capability, an inbuilt analytics engine and an interactive user interface have improved capacity. Tellers can now offer personalised services on the go and service multiple customer requests from a single window.
Other benefits have included a 50% reduction in paper use, 14% lower branch network costs and staff training time slashed from one week to about two hours.
“Ensuring world class customer experience is a key priority for Standard Bank and ensuring this at non-digital touch points such as branches was a challenge,” said Klaas Kruger, chief information officer of African Regions at Standard Bank.
“The implementation of ‘Moby’, Finacle’s Mobile Teller Solution as we call it, has been a significant step in our journey towards customer centric digitalization and process optimization. ‘Moby’, in combination with our existing Finacle Omnichannel Hub, has been a game changer in helping us provide the best banking experience in Africa.”
The solution is in the implementation stage for Ghana and Tanzania and will be further phased in across the bank’s African Regions countries.
A division of EdgeVerge Systems, a subsidiary of Infosys, Finacle demonstrated its technology at FinovateEurope 2017. The company was founded in 1981 and is headquartered in Bangalore, India.
ClickSWITCH to Power Digital Direct Deposit Switch for Current.
Standard Bank Leverages Mobile Teller Tech from Infosys Finacle.
Fiserv to Enhance Risk Management for Pan-American Life.
Around the web
New integration between Revolut and TrueLayer brings Open Banking to money management app Emma.
Via its Mastercard Send push payments solution, Mastercard and Evolve Bank & Trust team up to back Branch and similar companies to ensure prompt payment for gig workers.
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.
Kyndi has boosted its total funding to $28.5 million this week after closing a $20 million Series B round led by Intel Capital. Also participating in the round were UL Ventures, PivotNorth, Pinnacle Peak, and all existing investors.
Kyndi founder and CEO Ryan Welsh said that the round accelerates the company’s growth. “The extra capital allows us to grow our engineering and sales teams. It also allows us to expand our footprint in Washington, D.C., for our government customers,” he said.
Since the company’s last round of funding in 2017, Kyndi has quadrupled in size, revenue, and number of customers, built its executive team, and released its Explainable AI product, which Welsh demoed at FinovateSpring 2018. Explainable AI helps organizations analyze massive amounts of data by unifying probabilistic and logical methods. Additionally, the tool helps minimize human bias that often occurs when information is manually extracted from raw data.
“Enterprises are turning to AI to take advantage of new opportunities and to solve pressing business problems, and we expect AI’s use in business will continue to grow as the technology matures,” said Nick Washburn, Senior Managing Director of Intel Capital. “Solutions like Kyndi’s, which remove some of the mystery of AI technology, will continue to gain importance, and we look forward to helping them accelerate AI adoption and address the need for explainability.” Intel Capital’s Investment Director Sunil M. Sanghavi will join Kyndi’s board of directors.
Manatee County, Florida’s only chartered credit union is teaming up with FinovateFall alum Digital Onboarding to improve new customer engagement. Manatee Community FCU, founded in 1958 and headquartered in Bradenton, Florida, will leverage Digital Onboarding’s fully-automated new account activation technology to boost membership and improve the overall banking experience for new and existing customers.
“Building member engagement is challenging, especially when members live outside of the primary branch service area,” Digital Onboarding CEO Ted Brown explained. “With the Digital Onboarding platform, Manatee Community Federal Credit Union can deliver an exceptional banking experience to all of its members. We’re thrilled to be partnering with the credit union on this important growth initiative.”
Digital Onboarding enables banks and credit unions to move beyond traditional marketing techniques involving phone calls, emails, direct mail, and print brochures when it comes to attracting and engaging new potential customers. Guided journeys help new customers quickly navigate the onboarding and activation process, and institutions can add features such as gamified incentives to customize the process further. The platform can be used to generate automated, intelligent email and text campaigns to keep customers engaged and aware of new service and product offerings. FIs running the platform benefit from summary analytics and reports that provide transparency into the account activation process, enabling community banks and credit unions to optimize their strategies to secure the best responses.
“At Manatee Community Federal Credit Union, we recently expanded our charter to serve members in Sarasota County, various employment groups, and associations,” Manatee Community FCU CEO Sherod Halliburton said. “(We) want to ensure that we deliver a best-in-class banking experience, no matter where our members reside.” He added that his team reviewed a variety of different digital platforms before choosing Digital Onboarding’s solution, which he called “the best option in the market.”
Boston, Massachusetts-based Digital Onboarding demonstrated its platform at FinovateFall 2018. Last month, the company announced that it would join the Venture Center FinTech Accelerator sponsored by Fidelity Information Services. This spring, we featured Digital Onboarding in a profile on how banks can compete with Apple’s new credit card.
