PayPal in Argentina; Temenos Backs African Challenger Bank

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, ArthaYantra, Bluefin Payment Systems, BLUERUSH, Experian, Finovate Global, iSignthis, NCR Corporation, PayPal, Sberbank, Temenos, ThreatMetrix, Tinkoff Bank

Finovate Global is our weekly look at fintech innovation in developing economies in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • PayPal invests $750 million in Argentina-based e-commerce company MercadoLibre.
  • First Data to acquire Brazilian electronic funds transfer (EFT) solution provider Software Express.
  • NCR, Bluefin, and Powertranz team up to support POS card processing for Caribbean quick serve restaurants.
  • BlueRush deploys its Individeo platform with a large Colombian bank courtesy of a partnership with Bee Concept.
  • The Wall Street Journal looks at how global FIs are gaining interest in the Latin American alternative lending market.

Asia-Pacific

  • Experian launches Singapore-based incubator, Experian X Labs.
  • South Korean crypto company Kakao raises $90 million via private coin offering.
  • Thai Stock Exchange to launch a digital asset exchange next year.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Front office and core banking technology from Temenos to drive digital revamp for African challenger bank, Vista Bank.
  • Financial Software and Systems takes 46% stake in South Africa’s Ecentric Payment Systems.
  • South Africa’s second largest retail bank, Capitec, extends its partnership with ACI Worldwide.
  • ThreatMetrix teams up with Blue Turtle Technologies to help market its fraud prevention solution to customers in Africa.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Tinkoff Bank reports 2018 highlights including launch of new mortgage app, a joint P2P money transfer offering with Sberbank, and more than 2.7 million new active credit customers.
  • iSignthis Inks Banking and Payments Deal with Ibanera.
  • Bulgaria-based Software Group scores €18 million loan from Europe Investment Bank.
  • EU Startups features lending platform Inlock its look at 10 Hungarian startups to look out for in 2019.
  • Bulgaria’s Municipal Bank to deploy new core and payments solutions from Oracle.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC) launches $10 million fund for fintech startups in the MENA region.
  • Commercial Bank of Qatar joins R3.
  • Credit scoring solution provider Creditinfo opens regional hub in Muscat following new strategic partnership with the Central Bank of Oman.

Central and South Asia

  • ArthaYantra wins Fintech of the Year (India) at The Asset Triple A Digital Awards.
  • Africa’s Naspers plans to spend $1 billion on investments in Indian fintechs.
  • Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures division to launch digital platform for Indian SMEs.

Top image designed by Freepik

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Biometric Signature ID, Envestnet, Finanteq, HooYu, IBM, PayPal, Temenos, wipro, WorldPay

On Finovate.com

  • IBM Debuts Blockchain Network for Cross-Border Payments.
  • Finovate Global: PayPal in Argentina; Temenos Backs African Challenger Bank.

Around the web

  • Envestnet to acquire PIEtech, maker of MoneyGuide, in $500 million deal.
  • HooYu partners with online lottery betting operator, Lottomart, to help the Gibraltar-based firm meet AML requirements.
  • Wipro launches its AI and machine learning-powered accounts payable, KYC, and other solutions on Amazon Web Services.
  • Polish neo bank Nest Bank unveils new lifestyle services module, Finanteq’s SuperWallet, to its mobile banking app.
  • FindBiometrics interviews Biometric Signature ID CEO, President, and founder, Jeff Maynard.

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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InComm Acquires Linq3 Technologies

InComm Acquires Linq3 Technologies
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: InComm, Mergers & Acquisitions

Prepaid payments technology firm InComm marked its eighth acquisition this week with the purchase of Linq3 Technologies, an Atlanta, Georgia-based digital lottery company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The deal gives InComm access to Linq3’s suite of lottery products that leverage consumer interaction at retailers’ point of sales systems. Brooks Smith, InComm founder and CEO, noted that incorporating the new technology will enable InComm “to deliver new product solutions to create experiences that will engage the consumer – right at the retailer’s point of sale.”

Smith also noted that this week’s purchase extends beyond technology and into Linq3’s human resources, offering InComm lottery industry intelligence. “This transaction brings us an experienced management team with a great deal of industry knowledge that can be leveraged to transform and grow lottery business across North America.”

In anticipation of the acquisition, InComm has already integrated with central gaming system vendors in the U.S. In fact, the company plans to launch lottery products including point of sale-activated draw games, prize payouts and validations, and prepaid state lottery gift cards for its retail clients.

Tom Spiegel, CEO of Linq3, noted that InComm will especially benefit from state lotteries. “Today, state lotteries face many challenges tied to retailer expansion, new player acquisition, and product innovation in an increasingly digital world. Through InComm’s acquisition of Linq3, state lotteries will now have the ability to reach more players through new and current retailers, retailers can realize more revenue by driving new consumer traffic to their locations, and lottery players will benefit from easy, simple and new ways to purchase and play lottery products.”

InComm offers more than 500,000 points of retail distribution with 1,000+ brand partners in more than 30 countries. The company debuted CorFire Mobile Commerce at FinovateFall 2011. More recently, InComm showed off the Cashtie API at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2014. Last June, the Atlanta-based company teamed up with Fiserv to make it easier for consumers to pay their bills using cash at retailers’ physical point of sale systems.

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LendingFront, Veridium, Voca.ai Join Mastercard’s Start Path

LendingFront, Veridium, Voca.ai Join Mastercard’s Start Path
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: LendingFront, MasterCard, Veridium, Voca.ai

LendingFront, Veridium, and Voca.ai are three of the seven companies recently selected to participate in Mastercard’s startup engagement program, Start Path. The accelerator program works with startups from a variety of fields ranging from banking and biometrics to data intelligence and security. Participating companies will access Mastercard’s worldwide ecosystem and leverage their new relationship with Mastercard and its customers to expand into new markets.

“After searching around its presence in 210 geographies and beyond,” a statement from Mastercard Start Path read, “Mastercard and seven startups are descending upon Dublin this week to ignite their collaboration.”

Start Path begins with a kick-off event that helps the program administrators get to know the companies, define goals and introduce startups to Mastercard’s partners, as well as future channels and customers. The majority of the program consists of a six-month virtual engagement that companies participate in from their home location.

Upon successful completion of the Start Path program, companies that have produced what the program referred to as “tangible value” for Mastercard’s partners will be eligible for potential strategic investment.

“The diverse technologies comprising the latest Start Path wave is a snapshot of the nearly 10,000 startups and fintechs connected to Start Path since its founding in 2014,” the program announcement noted. “It also shows how, through Mastercard Labs, we partner successfully to explore new technologies, accelerate new concepts and deliver transformative growth and change to the commerce landscape.”

The full roster of companies also includes Fligoo, mfarmPay, Monsoon CreditTech, and Segasec.

LendingFront demonstrated its Small Business Platform at FinovateFall 2016. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in New York City, the company offers an automated lending platform that consolidates processes typically conducted by disparate systems. The technology features application workflow for loan processing, a data engine, decision engine, offer screens, documentation and booking functionality, as well as servicing. LendingFront raised $4 million in Series A funding at the beginning of the year.

Massachusetts-based identity and access management solution provider Veridium demonstrated its VeridiumID with 4Fingers Touchless ID technology at FinovateEurope 2017. Earlier this month, the company unveiled its InMotion solution that leverages user behavior analytics to help secure online identities and prevent cyberfraud. Also this spring, Veridium partnered with Blue Turtle Technologies to drive adoption of biometric technology in Africa.

Best of Show winner Voca.ai demonstrated its intelligent virtual agent for call centers at FinovateEurope 2019 in February. It was the second Best of Show win for the company, which made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia last fall. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Herzliya, Israel, the company’s technology provides a flexible, natural-sounding, automated human voice system that improves customer satisfaction, and helps businesses convert and qualify more leads.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Finastra, InComm, Kinetica, Larky, LendingFront, MasterCard, Tango Card, Veridium, Voca.ai

On Finovate.com

  • LendingFront, Veridium, Voca.ai Join Mastercard’s Start Path.

Around the web

  • Kinetica releases active analytics platform to simplify architecture and deliver analytical applications at scale
  • Tango Card partners with StatementGames to deliver e-gift cards as a redemption option for StatementGames players.
  • Larky wins big at Finastra’s Innovation Challenge

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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Doxo to Provide Electronic Billpay Solution to R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company

Doxo to Provide Electronic Billpay Solution to R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Doxo

Billpay solutions company doxo announced a new partnership with R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company (RRD) recently that will offer the marketing and communications solutions provider’s clients access to doxo’s electronic billpay solutions.

Tim Reedy, president of RRD Business Communications Solutions said, “We partnered with doxo because consumers are increasingly seeking a seamless, digital bill pay experience, and doxo has developed a capability that delivers that experience.” doxo’s secure payment solution enables customers to access and pay bills from more than 45,000 providers using a single set of login credentials. “Like our other business communications solutions, doxo integrates easily into our clients’ current workflows and processes to further enhance their communications program without any down time,” Reedy added.

doxo is compatible with existing billing systems and allows billers to electronically connect for free. The platform offers a simplified experience for end users and provides a complete online payment system for billers who have yet to go digital. Among the company’s list of billing partners are AT&T, National Grid, Puget Sound Energy, Kansas City Light, and more providers across finance, utilities, healthcare, telecom, banking, and insurance sectors.

Founded in 2008, doxo debuted its Control Panel at FinovateSpring 2011. The Seattle-based startup is among the companies that will take the Finovate stage at FinovateSpring to demo its newest technology. doxo has raised $18.8 million and counts Mohr Davidow Ventures, Sigma Partners, and Bezos Expeditions as investors.

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Once SaleMove, Glia Raises $20 Million in Post-Rebrand Funding

Once SaleMove, Glia Raises $20 Million in Post-Rebrand Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Glia, SaleMove

Omnichannel digital customer engagement platform for financial services Glia has raised $20 million in new funding. The Series B round for the Best of Show winning company formerly known as SaleMove was led by Insight Venture Partners, and takes Glia’s total capital to $29 million.

The company will use the funds to get bigger, adding to its product development, sales, solutions, and marketing organizations and infrastructure. Glia co-founder and CEO Dan Michaeli praised Insight’s record of collaborating with “best-in-class SaaS companies” and made a direct connection between the firm’s investment with Glia’s growth plans.

“By adding an investor as strong and experienced as Insight, we are poised to rapidly expand Glia’s market reach,” Michaeli said.

Left to right: Glia’s Jordan Christopher (SVP Sales) and Patrick Yoon (Account Executive) demonstrating Omniguide at FinovateEurope 2019.

Glia specializes in helping companies maximize the way they engage with their customers. Its digital communications platform enables businesses to leverage messaging, video, co-browsing, AI, and voice to communicate with their customers the way they want to communicate and via the channel of their choice – whether between sessions or in the middle of a session.

“Almost every interaction between businesses and customers today involves a screen, yet the main method of getting in touch is still an old-school phone call,” Michaeli explained. “Over the next 3-5 years, the move from phone-first to digital-first communication will define the businesses that win customer experience in their category.”

With Glia, a customer service conversation can begin on a smartphone, transition seamlessly to co-browsing, and then move on to conversational AI with an intelligent agent or live chat with a human representative. And while the technology has strong application for sales teams (hence the company’s original name, SaleMove), the evolution of the technology has led to an evolution in the way the technology can be deployed.

“As we’ve built on (our) initial vision, our customers have found many ingenious uses for our functionality that we didn’t imagine at the time,” Michaeli said. “We realize now that the platform does so much more than move sales, so we’ve made the decision to build a brand which supports that wider vision of the value our customers are achieving.”

A four-time Best of Show winner as SaleMove, Glia picked up a fifth Best of Show award for its live demo at FinovateEurope earlier this year. At the conference, the company showed how its new solution, OmniGuide, enables companies to deploy one or more conversational AI engines across the enterprise.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: CallVU, Doxo, Finastra, Glia, Kony, NICE Systems, OurCrowd, Outsystems, Vera

On Finovate.com

  • Once SaleMove, Glia Raises $20 Million in Post-Rebrand Funding.
  • Doxo to Provide Electronic Billpay Solution to R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company.

Around the web

  • Low code development platform OutSystems reports record revenues for 2018.
  • NICE Robotic Process Automation (RPA) teams up with CallVU.
  • Finastra named a leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide End-to-End Corporate Banking Solution Providers 2019 Vendor Assessment report.
  • Kony named a leader for low-code development platforms by independent research firm.
  • OurCrowd announces it has raised $1 billion to date.

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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Stash Scores $65 Million; Launches Stock-Back Rewards

Stash Scores $65 Million; Launches Stock-Back Rewards
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Stash

With the stock market in rally mode and up significantly from the Christmas Eve lows, micro-investing fintech startup Stash is celebrating the occasion with a $65 million fundraising.

The Series E was led by an unnamed private institutional investor and featured participation from current investors including Union Square Ventures and Breyer Capital. The new capital takes Stash’s total funding to $181.3 million. The company said it will use it to drive product growth as well as marketing.

Stash also announced this week that it was launching a new rewards program, leveraging its Stash debit card, that will provide users with fractional shares of stock whenever qualified purchases at publicly-held companies are made. The Stock-Back rewards program gives consumers a micro-investment in companies like Amazon and Chipotle every time they shop using the Stash card. For privately-held companies that do not have stock available, consumers will get their Stock-Back rewards in the form of fractional shares in a broad-based, global equity exchange-traded fund (ETF).

“During the testing period, we saw an overwhelming positive response from users as they pay ordinary bills like Netflix, and in returned received Netflix stock as well as access to dividends, educational resources and financial advice,” Stash co-founder and president Ed Robinson said.

Stash demonstrated the Stash Retire feature of its mobile-first, micro-investing platform at FinovateFall 2017. Stash Retire offers users a low-fee, self-directed Roth IRA account that can be invested in for as little as $100 to start. Users of Stash Retire can take advantage of all of the options available in their Stash Invest accounts, such as auto-invest and $5 investment minimums.

Named to the Forbes Fintech 50 last month and honored by the FinTech Breakthrough Awards in the Best Robo Advisory Platform category last spring, Stash was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in New York City.

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TickSmith Teams Up with CanDeal to Power DataVault Innovations

TickSmith Teams Up with CanDeal to Power DataVault Innovations
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: TickSmith

TickSmith will power the new market data platform for institutional electronic marketplace for Canadian debt and derivatives trading, CanDeal. The company will leverage the TickSmith Data Pooling Platform in order to support the launch of its DataVault Innovations data-as-a-service (DaaS) offering.

DataVault Innovations aggregates over-the-counter (OTC) data on multiple Canadian assets classes from banks and other sources and distributes it to end users and third-party providers. The DaaS technology also provides pricing, risk, and analytics features to help market participants bolster internal risk modeling and remain compliant with relevant regulations.

“TickSmith provides the well-tuned engine that DataVault Innovations needs for peak performance,” Head of DataVault Innovations Andre Craig said. “As an industry service, DataVault Innovations will not only provide the premium data to fuel more impactful product development; it will lead to more reliable benchmarks, expanded access to quality OTC data, and vastly improved risk management and regulatory compliance for FRTB and other mandates.”

Francis Wenzel, TickSmith CEO, complimented CanDeal’s consolidation of OTC multi-asset class data, and underscored TickSmith’s experience in capital markets. “We’re confident that we can deliver and unmatched service to DataVault Innovations, that will be robust enough to support an array of data, services, and clients for years to come.”

TickSmith demonstrated its TickVault and FIXVault financial big data platforms at FinovateFall 2014. More recently, the Montreal, Quebec, Canada-based company introduced its transaction cost analysis (TCA) solution, and announced a partnership with trading and market access technology provider Vela. TickSmith began the year with news that it had achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Financial Services Competency status.

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First Wave of Demoing Companies for FinovateSpring Revealed!

First Wave of Demoing Companies for FinovateSpring Revealed!
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateSpring 2019

FinovateSpring returns to San Francisco, California, May 7 through 10. With more than 1,300 attendees, 60+ demoing companies, and 120+ speakers anticipated, we are excited to host some of the most innovative fintechs and insightful industry leaders at our upcoming event.

To whet your appetite, here’s a look at the first wave of demoing companies for FinovateSpring. Whether you are a global financial services provider, a community bank, a fresh new fintech startup or an established tech firm looking for new opportunities, FinovateSpring is for you!

Stay tuned for more information about FinovateSpring in the weeks to come. Our Sneak Peek series, with details about the demoing companies, their innovations, and their presenters, will launch soon here on the Finovate blog.

And remember that FinovateSpring will also feature a pair of special Summit Days on May 7 and May 10. The sessions on these days will feature deep dives and extended conversations on topics such as AI, customer engagement, community and digital banking, as well as payments and lending. Check out our FinovateSpring agenda for more.

Visit our registration page and save your seat today. Discounts are available for for tickets purchased before March 29.

We’ll  see you in San Francisco!

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Aerospike, Dwolla, Fenergo, Gusto, identitii, IdentityMind Global, Insuritas, Onfido, PayPal, Stash, TickSmith

On Finovate.com

  • Stash Scores $65 Million; Launches Stock-Back Rewards.
  • TickSmith Teams Up with CanDeal to Power DataVault Innovations.
  • First Wave of Demoing Companies for FinovateSpring Revealed.

Around the web

  • Aerospike launches suite of add-on modules, Aerospike Connect, to make it easier for businesses to integrate the company’s database.
  • Identitii renews its partnership with HSBC Global Services (UK).
  • Onfido appointed to the FIDO Alliance Board of Directors.
  • ACI Worldwide announces the extension of its partnership with South Africa’s Capitec Bank.
  • IdentityMind Global to support Koi Trading’s AML Compliance-as-a-Service offering.
  • Gusto appoints Square’s former Head of Information Security Fredrick Lee as its new Chief Security Officer.
  • PayPal adds instant transfer feature for bank accounts.
  • Insuritas and ReliaQuote partner to offer ID theft protection to 10 million consumers.
  • Fenergo enables financial firms to digitally visualize risk in fight against financial crime.
  • GroundFloor partners with Dwolla to make payments more efficient for borrowers and investors.

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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