Roostify Teams Up with HSBC Bank USA

Roostify Teams Up with HSBC Bank USA
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Roostify

The new digital home lending experience from HSBC Bank USA, a division of HSBC Group, will be powered by mortgagetech innovator, Roostify. The new offering is designed to provide borrowers with a mortgage loan transaction journey that has less stress and friction and more ease of use.

HSBC Bank’s solution will provide borrowers with a streamlined application and fulfillment process for both new home buyers and those looking to refinance. Mortgage customers will be able to submit loan requests online and securely share documents digitally. The platform gives borrowers transparency into the entire process, enabling them to track their loan status in real time from application through closing. The technology is integrated into HSBC’s loan origination system to make it easier for lenders and borrowers to communicate and exchange information.

“HSBC has been a great partner in driving innovation to improve their customer experience,” Roostify co-founder and CEO Rajesh Bhat said. “Information exchange is a vital part of the home buying experience, and it can be a game-changer when done right. This solution provides HSBC’s customers with a modern, improved way of applying for and closing a mortgage, and delivers transparency to both the customer and lending team from start to finish, for an optimal experience.”

Head of Mortgage, Retail Banking and Wealth Management for HSBC Bank Raman Muralidharan underscored the role of digital in helping the firm pursue what he called “customer experience-led growth.” He pointed out that mortgage customer increasingly want a lending experience that mirrors the other digitally-oriented financial experiences in their lives. Muralidharan credited Roostify for delivering a solution that “provides a superior experience to our customers and to our mortgage consultants.”

Roostify demonstrated its digital lending platform at FinovateSpring 2018. The company began the year teaming up with Glacier Bancorp, a $11.9 billion regional bank serving customers in the Mountain West and Pacific Northwest. This spring, Roostify partnered with mortgagetech solutions provider Mortech, combing its platform with Mortech’s product and pricing engine (PPE). Last month, the company announced that it had completed its integration with e-document signature and print fulfillment company, Docutech.

Founded in 2012, Roostify has raised $33 million in funding from investors including Cota Capital and USAA. We featured the San Francisco, California-based company in our Earth Day look at fintechs whose technology helps support a greener environment.

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SheerID Launches Instant Student Verification in 190+ Countries

SheerID Launches Instant Student Verification in 190+ Countries
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: SheerID

SheerID, the Oregon-based firm that leverages its digital verification identity technology to support gated, exclusive offer campaigns, unveiled its Instant Student Verification solution today. Available in 191 countries, the first-of-its-kind technology enables brands from Amazon to Spotify to more effectively make gated offers to university students worldwide.

Using SheerID is straightforward. Students provide some basic information – name, university, and date of birth – and SheerID verifies their eligibility for student offers from a wide and growing variety of top brands. This gated offer approach not only provides for more relevant rewards and offers, it also respects the privacy preferences of Gen Z consumers who SheerID said are anticipated to make up 40% of consumer spending by 2020.

“(This) announcement marks another major milestone for SheerID and a major milestone for the industry,” SheerID CEO Jake Weatherly said. “Building authentic, trust-based relationships with students around the world is an imperative for every brand as students are literally the next-generation consumer.” Weatherly said that the ability to instantly verify a student’s status, anywhere in the world, “ushers in a tsunami of opportunity” for brands marketing to Gen Z consumers in what he called a “privacy-friendly context.”

The concept, as Weatherley explained in a blog post this week titled Why SheerID Launched the First Worldwide Student Verification Platform, puts exclusivity as the center. Discussing the critical opt-in nature of gated offers, he wrote: “By recognizing the person on the other side of the purchase – and respecting their rights to control their data – exclusivity marketing goes beyond the transaction to infuse more meaning into the exchange. It creates an authentic customer relationship.”

In addition to the instant student verification announcement, SheerID also introduced its enhanced fraud prevention. This additional layer of protection features cross-checking of specific identity attributes with third party sources, as well as leveraging advanced algorithms to detect suspicious activity consistent with fraud.

SheerID made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring in San Francisco, where the company demonstrated multiple use cases of its Verification Platform. The company counts more than one billion consumer attributes across nearly 9,000 authoritative data sources in its Verified Identity Network.

SheerID has raised $32.1 million in funding, and includes Centana Growth Partners and Voyager Capital among its investors.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: CREALOGIX, Flywire, HooYu, Jack Henry, Roostify, SheerID

On Finovate.com

  • SheerID Launches Instant Student Verification in 190+ Countries.
  • HooYu and NatWest Collaborate to Offer Account Opening By Selfie.

Around the web

  • Flywire partners with Student Loan Company to provide additional payment options for SLC’s overseas customers.
  • CREALOGIX announces the departure of CFO Philippe Wirth, who has served in this capacity since April 2017.
  • Ascend FCU ($2.5 billion in assets) to deploy Jack Henry & Associates’ Symitar Episys 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.

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HackerOne to Help Keep Facebook’s Libra Bug-Free

HackerOne to Help Keep Facebook’s Libra Bug-Free
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: HackerOne

By this point, you already know about Libra, Facebook’s cryptocurrency, and the corresponding Calibra Wallet (if you don’t, check out TechCrunch’s deep dive).

There has been plenty of controversy about the new currency, from privacy concerns to complaints about the “decentralized” model giving too many big players too much power. But one of the public’s concerns, security, is in good hands.

That’s because bug bounty and vulnerability disclosure platform HackerOne is working with Facebook to find security vulnerabilities in the code of Move, the cryptocurrency’s open-source programming language. The bug bounty is being conducted in addition to the Libra Association’s testnet available on GitHub.

“The Libra Association is a global effort and so is the Libra Bug Bounty Program. We will be globally inclusive as we promote researcher contributions from all over the world and host bug bounty events in diverse locations,” said the Libra association.

HackerOne offers a platform that recruits security researchers and white hat hackers to identify security weaknesses for its clients, including Twitter, Airbnb, Uber, Yelp, and the U.S. Department of Defense. Since it was founded in 2012, 1,300+ organizations have partnered with HackerOne to find over 120,000 vulnerabilities and award over $51 million in bug bounties.

The California-based company has offices in London, New York, Singapore, and the Netherlands. In 2017, HackerOne earned the Favorite FinDEVr Debut award for its presentation at FinDEVr New York and won the Crowd Favorite award at its FinDEVr London presentation. Mårten Mickos is CEO.

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Tieto Buys EVRY in $1.5 Billion Deal

Tieto Buys EVRY in $1.5 Billion Deal
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: EVRY, Mergers & Acquisitions

Nordic IT company EVRY announced this week it is planning to sell to Finnish IT company Tieto in a deal worth $1.5 billion.

Tieto’s goal in the deal is to create a Nordic digital consultancy software offering, cloud solutions, robotics, and other services. The new group is slated to have 24,000 employees and annual revenues of $3.4 billion (€3 billion).

“This combination announced today will create a company well positioned to be a leading provider of digital transformation across the Nordics for the benefit of our customers, employees, shareholders and the society,” said Kimmo Alkio, President and CEO of Tieto. “I believe we will create exciting opportunities for professional and personal growth for employees in both companies – and a strong value proposition for our customers. I foresee a very exciting journey ahead.”

In order to close, the deal requires support from two-thirds of the shareholders in each firm. The deal is expected to close in the last quarter of this year but negotiations may drag into the first quarter of 2020.

The new company will be called TietoEVRY and will serve thousands of clients across 90 countries. Alkio will be CEO of the combined company, while EVRY’s current CEO Per Hove will continue in his role until the deal closes. TietoEVRY will be headquartered in Espoo, Finland.

EVRY certainly has lots of promise. This week’s announcement comes six months after the company landed an eight year, $75 million contract with Handelsbanken in Finland, and seven months after partnering with Bankgirot in a seven-year deal worth $77 million.

EVRY demonstrated its PFM solution, Spendific, at FinovateEurope 2015. EVRY arrives at today’s deal with more than 10,000 customers across the private and public sectors and 8,800 employees across nine countries. The company is listed on the Oslo stock exchange under the ticker “EVRY AS” and has a market capitalization of $1.2 billion.

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CUNA Partners with Switch to Offer Card Updating App

CUNA Partners with Switch to Offer Card Updating App
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: SWITCH

CUNA Strategic Services has partnered with Seattle-based fintech Switch to bring instant card updating to credit unions across the country. The two firms have announced a market feasibility pilot involving Switch’s CardUpdatr app which updates merchant websites with credit union cards in real time to get new cards into circulation faster, boost transaction volumes, and increase customer loyalty.

An issuer-branded solution, CardUpdatr supports activation, reissuance, and card use promotion marketing programs. The app can be deployed and used without requiring the involvement of in-house development teams to make the card updating process easier and smoother for issuers and cardholders alike. The technology is powered by Switch’s CardSavr platform, a scalable, cloud-based solution that uses advanced autonomous broswer technology fueled by machine learning and AI-powered algorithms to place new or reissued cards on any online account.

“CSS recognizes that tech-sophisticated financial organizations who apply easily integrated solutions to directly address member experience problems are in a better position to win on member loyalty and long-term growth,” Switch co-founder and CEO Chris Hopen explained. He warned that because many cardholders do not update their online accounts when they receive newly-issued cards, issuers often do not see the ROI that they should. “Switch looks forward to witnessing the positive impact CardUpdatr will have on credit unions and their members.”

Switch issued its CardUpdatr app this spring. The app leverages the power of the company’s payment provisioning platform to keep cards-on-file updated where cardholders shop and make online payments. Cardholders simply enter their card and billing information, choose the websites of the online merchants where cards-on-file need to be updated, and provide login details for those selected sites. The updating process takes seconds and does not involve reading, pulling, or scraping personally identifiable information (PII).

“The CardUpdatr solution is uniquely positioned to propel credit unions to the frontline of innovation to increase cardholder satisfaction and differentiate themselves from other financial institutions,” CUNA Strategic Services (CSS) President Eric Gelly said. “(Switch) offers a powerful solution that is in complete alignment with our organization’s mission of helping credit unions improve their bottom line and enhance their relationships. CSS is thrilled to bring the breakthrough capabilities of the Switch technology to our credit unions.”

Founded in 2014, Switch demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2016. The company picked up $2 million in funding late last year, bringing its total capital to more than $2.3 million.

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Xero Partners with Stripe to Help SMBs Get Paid Faster

Xero Partners with Stripe to Help SMBs Get Paid Faster
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Xero

Cloud accounting firm Xero announced a champion move for small businesses today that will not only help businesses get paid faster, but also give them more options on how they get paid.

“Small businesses are fundamental to the growth of major and developing economies around the world; ensuring that they get paid on time is vital to their survival and growth,” said Craig Walker, Founding CTO and Executive General Manager Platform Business Technologies at Xero. “We built the Xero platform to help small businesses grow with better tools, smarter insights and comprehensive connections to the information they need to run their business. Our partnership with Stripe today brings us even closer to helping small businesses spend less time chasing payments, and more time focusing on doing what they love.”

The two are working on solutions to make client invoicing more efficient and to offer more insight into business performance. The first two tools being launched under the partnership are the Stripe Feed and Auto Pay.

The new data feed from Stripe makes it easy for businesses to receive transaction data on sales and invoices in the Xero platform. Prior to today’s integration, Xero facilitated Stripe reconciliation for credit card payments processed through Stripe. The partnership will automatically integrate every payment processed through Stripe, from online invoices to Shopify purchases and processing charges, as individual line items in Xero.

Xero will use machine learning to automatically reconcile transactions. The company said that the new Stripe Feed will be available “in the next few months.”

With Auto Pay, businesses can set up and receive recurring payments for repeat billing customers in Xero. This will come in handy for a multitude of businesses, as Xero reports that more than 1.6 million repeating invoices are paid in Xero month-over-month. This feature will soon be available to customers in the U.S. and eventually roll out across the globe.

The companies have found that small businesses using Stripe payments in Xero invoices, when compared to those without a payment gateway, are already paid up to 15 days faster globally, and up to 16 days faster in North America.

Xero offers its 1.8 million subscribers access to an ecosystem of 700+ third party apps and 200+ bank connections. The company most recently presented at FinDEVr San Francisco 2014 when the company’s Head of U.S. Partnerships David Pollock spoke about building an API-driven ecosystem for small businesses. At FinovateSpring 2011, CEO Rod Drury debuted the company’s Business Identification solution. 

Founded in 2006, Xero listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX) in 2007 and the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) in 2012. In January of 2018, the company consolidated to list solely on the ASX and now boasts a market capitalization of $5.9 billion ($8.6 billion AUD). Xero has raised more than $319 million (NZ$470 million) in funding, including $1.4 million pre-IPO; $10.2 million at its IPO; and follow-on rounds from investors including Peter Thiel, Matrix Capital Management, and Accel Partners.

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Expensify Teams Up with Bookkeeping Franchise Supporting Strategies

Expensify Teams Up with Bookkeeping Franchise Supporting Strategies
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Expensify

Expense management solution provider Expensify announced today that it is teaming up with Supporting Strategies, one of the biggest bookkeeping franchises in the U.S. The partnership will make Expensify the expense reporting app for thousands of Supporting Strategies’ small business clients across the country.

With this announcement, Supporting Strategies is the latest company to join the ExpensifyApproved! Partner Program. The program, which features companies such as CLA, Wipfli, and BPM among its members, provides discounts, co-marketing, and access to client onboarding resources, as well as opportunities to participate in networking events such as Expensify’s ExpensiCon.

“Expensify has greatly increased our ability to provide great customer service to our clients,” Supporting Strategies CEO and founder Leslie Jorgensen said. “With Expensify, we have a one stop shop for all company expenses that syncs directly to QuickBooks.” Jorgensen praised the platform’s one-click ability to approve and pay expense reports, as well as code company credit card transactions – all in the same app.

Founded in 2004, Supporting Strategies offers outsourced bookkeeping services and operational support to small businesses. The company leverages “best-of-breed” technology to offer a range of services including accounts payable and receivable, bookkeeping, financial reporting, and payroll administration. The company has been in a growth phase of late, announcing expansions in Florida and New Jersey in June; in Minneapolis, Minnesota in May; and Charlotte, North Carolina in March. Earlier this year, Supporting Strategies was named Top 50 Franchise Based on Franchisee Satisfaction by Franchise Business Review for the fourth consecutive year.

Expensify presented Bedrock: Expensify’s Open Sourced Infrastructure Secret Weapon at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley in 2016. Company founder and CEO David Barrett discussed how the company leveraged Bedrock, its geo-redundant database technology, to help it maintain its position as the fastest growing ERP software in the world. Expensify is also an alum of our demo-only event, having demonstrated its Expensify Invoices solution at FinovateSpring in 2013.

Headquartered in San Francisco, California, and founded in 2008, Expensify has raised $38.2 million in funding from investors including OpenView Venture Partners, CIBC, PJC, and Redpoint. The company made international fintech headlines this spring with the news of its partnership with Southeast Asia ridesharing company Grab.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: EVRY, Expensify, HackerOne, Insuritas, Plaid, SWITCH, Voleo, Xero

On Finovate.com

  • Expensify Teams Up with Bookkeeping Franchise Supporting Strategies.
  • Xero Partners with Stripe to Help SMBs Get Paid Faster.
  • HackerOne to Help Keep Facebook’s Libra Bug-Free.
  • Tieto Buys EVRY in $1.5 Billion Deal.

Around the web

  • Insuritas to launch insurance ecosystem platform to disrupt insurance delivery while creating new sources of recurring fee income for banks.
  • TechCrunch reports on the leadership shift at Plaid in which co-founder, CTO, and president William Hockey will step down.

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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Token Lands $16.5 Million

Token Lands $16.5 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Token

Open banking expert Token received $16.5 million in a round of funding led by Opera Tech Ventures, the venture arm of BNP Paribas. The investment brings the company’s total funding to $35 million.

Also participating in today’s round are two banks headquartered in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, as well as existing investors Octopus Ventures and EQT Ventures. California-based Token will use the funds to build on its TokenOS open banking platform and develop new payment solutions with digital money and identity technology.

“As the emerging category leader in open banking infrastructure, Token gives banks a fast track to deliver great open banking customer experiences,” said Token Founder and CEO Steve Kirsch. “For banks, establishing an early position in this new hyper-connected market is a competitive advantage; a new wave of independent financial apps and services will soon be available to their customers, so banks need to be clear about their future roles. By solving the infrastructure problem, Token enables them to focus on service innovation and delivery earlier than the competition.”

Founded in 2015, Token was built on the mission to create the next generation of payment capabilities. The company has 4,000 bank clients in its ecosystem in which participating online merchants to connect to the bank to allow the customer to make purchases directly from their bank accounts. Among Token’s clients are Tandem Bank, Think Money Group, An Post, Sberbank Croatia and Slovenia, and Khaleeji Commercial Bank.

Token showcased its PSD2 compliant solution at FinovateEurope 2017 in London. Last month, the company partnered with Omni Group to provide open banking and PSD2 compliance solutions to the group’s bank partners. This year, Token won Best Payments Newcomer in the 2019 Card and Payments Awards as well as Fintech Start Up of the Year in the 2019 FStech Awards.

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ABBYY Unveils New SDK for Mobile Web Capture

ABBYY Unveils New SDK for Mobile Web Capture
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ABBYY

Content IQ technology solution provider ABBYY has launched a new SDK that gives developers the ability to add real-time image and data capture to their mobile onboarding process. ABBYY Mobile Web Capture, available on both iOS and Android, makes it easier for institutions to leverage the popularity of the mobile channel while eliminating one of its main pain points – manual data entry.

Once integrated, the technology enables a faster, smoother onboarding process by letting new customers photograph required documents for account opening. The SDK leverages the web browser on the mobile device to capture high-quality, text recognition ready, images in real time. Mobile Web Capture helps lower error rates while making the data delivery process less of a hassle for the user.

SVP for Product Marketing at ABBYY Bruce Orcutt added a streamlined customer journey, greater profitability, and market differentiation as further reasons why companies can benefit from the new SDK. “The new devkit closes the gap in mobile onboarding for enterprises, providing the same experience as a native app, without the need to install one,” Orcutt explained.

ABBYY provides a wide range of AI-based solutions that help businesses better understand, manage, and act on enterprise data. The company is a specialist in Content IQ, a new kind of enabling technology that helps businesses maximize their digital transformation by empowering digital workers to transform unstructured content into actionable information. This technology has been deployed to complement intelligent automation platforms like robotic process automation (RPA) and business process management (BPM). In fact, the company notes that more than one-third of the Forbes 100 companies that are engaged in RPA for intelligent automation use ABBYY’s solutions and services.

ABBYY participated in our developers conference FinDEVr SiliconValley 2016, presenting How Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are Creating New Revenue with Mobile Solutions. The company showed how new technologies like machine learning and AI are being used to provide real-time mobile data recognition and capture.

A global corporation with offices in 11 countries including Germany, Russia, and the United States, ABBYY was founded in 1989 by David Yang and Dean Tang. Last month, the company announced that it had strengthened its technology partnership with intelligent information management firm, M-Files. Also in May, ABBYY unveiled its FineScanner AI, an AI-enabled mobile scanner that leverages neural networks to sort and find text recognition worthy images.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: ABBYY, Finastra, Fiserv, identitii, Lending Club, OneSpan, PaySend, SmartX

On Finovate.com

  • ABBYY Unveils New SDK for Mobile Web Capture.

Around the web

  • Identitii’s tokenization technology powers HSBC’s Digital Accounts Receivable Tool (HSBC DART).
  • Fiserv’s FlexWage now allows earners to receive their salary on their own schedule.
  •  LendingClub extends balance transfer to more borrowers.
  • Berkshire Bank partners with Finastra to launch real-time payments.
  • Belgian online lender Buy Way deploys e-signature solution from OneSpan.

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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