This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.
Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Mobile-first payment innovator Twisto closed a Series B funding round this week totaling $15.7 million (€14 million). The investment brings Twisto’s total funding to $38.7 million (€34.5 million), which is comprised of $23.6 million (€21 million) in equity and $16.8 million (€15 million) in debt.
The round was led by Finch Capital and includes support from existing investors UNIQA Ventures and ING Bank, as well as newcomers Velocity Capital Private Equity and ING Ventures.
The company, which is based in the Czech Republic and Poland, will use the funds to expand further into Europe. Twisto aims to have two million app users in the Central and Eastern European region in the next two years.
Founded in 2013, Twisto offers a simple financing solution to European retail banking customers. The company is best known for its Buy Now, Pay Later tool, which gives consumers an online point of sale financing option, offering instant credit that can be activated in a single click.
The company’s payment card features a favorable exchange rate, is compatible with Apple Pay, and offers 5% more cashback than competitors. The app offers a bill-splitting capability and OCR-powered bill payments that allow customers to pay bills by uploading a photo of the paper statement.
Launched in Prague, Twisto expanded to Poland in the first quarter of last year. Today, the company’s app has been used by more than 500,000 customers. The company’s CEO and Founder Michal Smida demoed the Twisto account at FinovateEurope 2018.
For its first partnership in the U.K., Swedish open banking startup Tink inked a deal this week with major U.K. bank NatWest.
NatWest will integrate Tink’s PFM capabilities and Data Enrichment offering, a tool that cleans and syncs data to categorize transactions for data-driven sales and decision-making optimization. These two enhancements will offer NatWest consumers better insight into their personal spending habits.
NatWest, which joins Tink’s other bank customers BNP Paribas Fortis, Nordea, ABN Amro, SEB, and Klarna, will offer the new PFM capabilities to customers starting in the fourth quarter of this year.
“The partnership with NatWest is a great testament to the quality of our technology — and to the dedication to improve the digital offering and customer experience,” said Tink co-founder and CEO Daniel Kjellen. “We believe there are massive opportunities for those who choose to leverage new technology to build greater engagement with their customers. This partnership is proof of just that.”
In addition to its PFM and Data Enrichment products, Tink also offers Account Aggregation, which connects to 2,500+ banks and is live in 10 markets, with coverage across Europe coming by the end of this year. The company also offers Payment Initiation, which allows customers to make payments from a bank’s website or mobile app. In addition to money transfers, Payment Initiation allows customers to transact online and pay bills and invoices.
Tink’s Senior Business Manager, Rudolf Bergslycka and Developer David Frenkel demo the Tink API at FinovateEurope 2019
Founded in 2012, Tink counts more than 500,000 app users and has 150 employees across two offices. The two-time Best of Show-winning company most recently demoed at FinovateEurope 2019 in London.
The final day of FinovateSpring’s four-day fintech fest has arrived. After a Summit Day focused on the customer experience and artificial intelligence, and two days of live fintech demos, Friday is a day of deep dives and insightful discussions into the present and future of fintech innovation.
We’ve provided an overview of what we’ve got in store for you below. Remember that registration opens at 8am on Friday. So be sure to arrive early, grab a little breakfast, and visit with our sponsors and partners in the networking area before we begin.
8:35am Expert Insight: Review of the FinovateSpring Demos – What Do They Tell Us About Fintech’s Cutting Edge
8:50am Keynote Address: The Rise of the Machines – The Artificial Intelligence and the Road to Superintelligence. What Will AI Mean for the Future of Financial Services – And the Future of Work?
9:30am Power Panel: Which Artificial Intelligence Technologies Will Really Change Financial Services?
10:00am Morning Coffee & Networking
10:30am Fireside Chat: Improving the Financial Health of America’s 100 Million Credit Underserved Consumers
10:45am C-Suite Digital Change Leaders Debate: How Can Financial Institutions Capture the Fintech Opportunity & Collaborate with New Players to Transform Customer Experience
11:20am Special Address: Simplifying & Securing Digital Commerce through Tokenization
11:35am Fireside Chat: How Are Regulators Approaching Cryptocurrencies?
11:50am Strategy Roundtable: The Evolving Role of Cybersecurity – Are Banks Treating Technology Risks as Extensions of Their Businesses?
Analyst Insight: Next Generation Banking – What is the Next Phase of the Digital Banking Revolution
Fireside Chat: Open Banking is Coming! How Will it Change Banking Forever?
Leaders Debate: How New Players, New Platforms, and New Technologies Will Transform Digital Banking. Is There a Role for the Branch in the Digital World?
Cornèr and NDGITpartner to provide direct access to third-party service providers under PSD2 regulation.
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.
After yesterday’s demos we’re ready for four more today. The day begins with one of our favorite sessions, Analyst All Stars, and concludes with a crowd-favorite, the crowning of the Best of Show winners.
Registration opens at 8 a.m. and the first session begins at 9 a.m. Come early for some pre-show networking or catch up on email with a hot cup of coffee before the show.
Here’s an overview of what the agenda looks like today:
Global payments platform Flywire is extending its agreement with China’s UnionPay, the Massachusetts-based company announced today.
The two are re-launching a program that discounts foreign exchange rates on cross-border tuition and healthcare transactions. The initiative, which first launched last spring, is available to all UnionPay cardholders making payments originating in China. The rate on foreign exchange payments made to participating education and healthcare facilities will be the same as a local bank transfer.
“We strive to offer our clients’ payers the most convenient and secure payment options in each international market they serve,” said Ryan Frere, vice president of global payments for Flywire. “For Chinese students and patients making cross-border payments, UnionPay is the most preferred and trusted brand. We’re pleased to expand this program and bring valuable savings to more payers and institutions.”
UnionPay is a smart partner pick for Flywire. The bank’s home country is the number one origination of students studying abroad. More than 662,000 Chinese citizens studied abroad last year, a figure up 9% from 2017. Medical tourism is also popular among Chinese citizens; more than 630,000 Chinese patients traveled abroad for medical care in 2018.
Flywire originally launched as peerTransfer in 2011, when the company debuted its college tuition payment platform at FinovateSpring 2011. Flywire’s platform processes billions of dollars in payments every year in over 120 different local currencies, connecting more than 1,400 businesses and universities with their customers.
In addition to its Boston headquarters, the company has offices in Chicago, London, Manchester, Valencia, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, Cluj, and Sydney.
Bahrain’s Electronic Network for Financial Transactions (Benefit) is designing and implementing a Know Your Customer (KYC) utility that incorporates blockchain technology, in partnership with Fenergo, a provider of digital Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) solutions, reports Henry Vilar of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).
The utility platform will support sectors including retail and corporate banking and asset management, as well as insurance and telecommunications in the future. Fenergo says it deployed the first phase of the eKYC implementation project in four weeks.
Financial institutions that subscribe to Benefit can instantly complete KYC and anti-money laundering (AML) compliance procedures when onboarding new individual and corporate customers through the Fenergo’s eKYC hub and rules engine utilising blockchain.
The centralisation of customer data removes the need for duplicate requests for information, while the elimination of manual processes reduces costs and improves operational efficiencies.
The Fenergo API-first solution enables financial institutions to verify customer identity via biometric identity and verification (ID&V) technology, which links to Bahrain national identity card data before instantly connecting to the eKYC hub.
This will prompt Fenergo’s rules engine to determine the required KYC and AML data and documentation for customer due diligence (CDD) as subscribed by Central Bank of Bahrain. Once the customer is quickly and successfully onboarded, Fenergo will write data attestations to the blockchain for reuse by other financial institutions within the Bahrain ecosystem.
Fenergo CEO Marc Murphy said, “Regulatory mandated KYC utilities represent a massive opportunity to enable significant efficiency, improve customer experience and help drive regulatory certainty. In a digital economy, where open banking and customer choice are at the forefront, making the KYC process digital is a huge enabler for any digital transformation initiative.”
Fenergo is developing the cloud-based utility as part of an initiative mandated by the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) to enable financial institutions to seamlessly perform CDD checks for enhanced customer experiences and regulatory certainty. The initiative is part of a wider government scheme, Economic Vision 2030, to improve the kingdom’s economy.
Online and mobile billpay innovator doxo has announced a new integration with financial services data and insights network – and fellow Finovate alum – Plaid – that will help consumers avoid overdraft charges when paying bills via doxo’s service.
“doxo’s mission is to massively simplify bill payment and reduce anxiety of failed payments and overdraft fees,” doxo CEO and co-founder and Steve Shivers said. “Through this new integration with Plaid, we’re now providing real-time bank balance, at the time of every payment, to help our users avoid those fees. Now users can better time their payments to align with their bank balance, or switch to alternative payment accounts like credit cards when needed.”
In addition to providing transparency, better organization, and less stress for consumers, doxo believes billers will benefit from the improved confidence they will have for each incoming payment. Billers who join doxo’s payment network will be able to add the overdraft protection feature as a user benefit easily, without complexity or expense.
doxo will make the new solution available initially as a beta offering for a limited group. The company anticipates expanding access to all of its customers beginning in June.
“Account overdraft is a huge problem in the U.S. that could be solved in part with more tools that provide real-time insight into consumers’ own bank accounts,” Plaid Head of Sales Paul Williamson said. “Solutions that give people transparency into their financial life are a real win for consumers and can make a serious impact on their ability to understand and manage money.”
doxo made its first Finovate appearance in 2011, demonstrating the web-based Control Panel interface of its technology, and returned to the Finovate stage this week as part of FinovateSpring. Plaid is an alum of our developers conference, presentingPlaid: API for Financial Infrastructure at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2014.
San Francisco, California-based Plaid was founded in 2013. The company began 2019 with a major acquisition, purchasing rival and fellow Finovate/FinDEVr alum Quovo for $200 million. Named to the Forbes Fintech 50 in February, Plaid has raised more than $309 million in funding from investors including New Enterprise Associates, Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Spark Capital, and Goldman Sachs Investment Partners.
Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, doxo launched itsdoxoINSIGHTS report last month. DoxoINSIGHTS is an anonymized, crowdsourced report on household expense data from the largest 25 metropolitan areas of the U.S.
In March, doxo added Apple Pay as a billpay option for its customers – the same month the company announced a partnership with R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company to provide the firm’s clients with access to doxo’s electronic billpay solutions. Winner of a Gold Stevie award from the American Business Awards last year, doxo serves more than 2.5 million users who make payments to more than 45,000 local and national businesses.
doxo has raised $18.8 million in funding, and includes Sigma Partners, Bezos Expeditions, and Mohr Davidow Ventures among its investors.
U.S. challenger bank-turned BBVA subsidiary Simplehas a surprising new offering for its mostly millennial client base. The bank wants its customers to start using paper checks.
The Portland-based bank unveiled the news in an email to members yesterday. “We heard you: sometimes you just gotta write a check, even if you do your banking online. So here they are in all their glory—Simple paper checks,” the email read.
The checkbooks are available for $5 for a book of 25 checks and, as Simple noted, “they work just like regular checks (Cursive not required.)” For its clients who may not be familiar with checks, Simple included a special section in its FAQ on paper checks, including a subsection titled, “writing a check” that offers step-by-step instructions.
So why checks, and why now? Simple’s addition of paper checks is likely a patch of sorts. That’s because, along with today’s announcement, the bank also told clients that it is shutting down its billpay service. Starting July 9, users will need to use paper checks to pay bills.
It’s also possible that Simple truly did receive pressure from customers requesting the service. If this is the case, it says two things about the state of fintech. First, it’s a downvote for cash. It’s also a humble reminder that, despite all of the tech available, fintech still lacks proper digital channels that connect consumers with the right recipients. The checks aren’t a substitute for peer-to-peer payment apps such as Venmo and Zelle. Instead, Simple’s customers will likely use the paper checks to pay bills and small contractors who do not accept credit cards.
Founded in 2009 and launched two years later under the name BankSimple, Simple debuted at FinovateFall 2011. In 2014, BBVA purchased the challenger bank for $117 million. In September of 2018, Simple announced it will pay 2.2% interest on savings accounts with balances of more than $2,000. Late last year, seven months after Simple’s CEO and Co-Founder Josh Reich announced plans to leave, the digital bank appointed David Hijirida, a former executive at Amazon, as CEO.
Insuritas and Tower Hill Specialty partner to bring Tower Hill’s property products to market through Insuritas’ bank partner network.
NIIT Technologiespartners with Blue Chip to bring its wealth management application to Blue Chip’s IBM POWER.
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.
While some of the audience got a head start yesterday with the Summit Day discussions, today is the start of our mainstage event.
As a reminder, we’ve moved the event to the Hilton Union Square in San Francisco. And tickets are available at the registration desk so there’s still time to take part in the action.
Registration opens at 8:30 a.m. Be sure to come early to grab your badge and enjoy a cup of coffee and breakfast while you network. The demos will start at 9:30 a.m., so give yourself enough time to find a good seat in the auditorium.
Here’s an outline of the rest of today’s schedule:
Prepaid payments innovator InComm is expanding into wearables this week. The Georgia-based company announced its MyVanilla Prepaid Mastercard is compatible with Fitbit Pay and Garmin Pay.
This is the first prepaid card to work with Fitbit and Garmin; prior to today’s announcement both were limited to debit and credit cards.
“The payments industry is steadily moving toward a digital ecosystem, and we are ensuring both consumers and our retail partners are ready for this change,” said Michael Parlotto, Vice President of Emerging Technologies at InComm. “Bringing MyVanilla to Fitbit Pay and Garmin Pay allows consumers to quickly and confidently use their prepaid cards on the go.”
With the launch, consumers using the MyVanilla general purpose reloadable (GPR) prepaid card can make payments using Fitbit’s and Garmin’s mobile wallets at locations where Mastercard prepaid payments are accepted. Compatible devices include the Fitbit Charge 3, Fitbit Ionic, and Fitbit Versa; as well as the Garmin D2 Delta, Garmin fenix 5, Garmin Forerunner 645, and Garmin vivoactive 3.
The consumer’s card number is never stored on their wearable device. Rather, the device generates a unique token to process the transaction, ensuring card number secrecy in the event the watch is lost or stolen.
Along with the wearables announcement, InComm unveiled it will bring NFC capabilities to retailers in its payment network. This update will allow InComm prepaid cardholders to reload Vanilla Prepaid cards that are connected to mobile wallets by tapping their NFC-capable phone. “[O]ur launch of tap-to-reload capabilities expands our suite of payment processing tools to include full lifecycle management of the mobile payments ecosystem, from provisioning capabilities to reload processing,” said Parlotto.
