Finovate Global Germany: Funding for Startups and Financing for Sellers

Finovate Global Germany: Funding for Startups and Financing for Sellers
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Finovate Global, Temenos, WorldPay

This week’s edition of Finovate Global showcases fintech news from companies operating in Germany.

Aufinity raised $26 million in Series C funding

A specialist in the field of payment management for the automotive market, Aufinity Group announced this week that it has successfully completed a $26 million Series C round of funding. The round was led by BlackFin Capital Partners, and featured re-investments from current investors PayPal Ventures and Seaya Ventures. The German fintech will use the funds to power its European expansion and to help forge partnerships with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).

“With this round, we are focusing on accelerating our growth across Europe even further, “Aufinity Group Co-Founder and CEO Lasse Diener said. “Through new strategic partnerships with leading OEMs and by continuing our focus on dealerships, we are preparing to redefine the industry standard for the whole of Europe.”

Aufinity Group’s eponymous platform offers car dealers and OEMs a digital payment management solution that is optimized and white-label-capable. The technology serves both vehicle sales and after-sales, and features optimized payment processes to provide faster incoming payments, greater liquidity and efficiency, and a superior customer experience. Founded in 2018, Aufinity Group is headquartered in Cologne; the company pointed to growing demand for its technology and a successful expansion to Italy and Spain in 2024 in explaining its goal to pursue more international markets in 2025.

“Our core business in Germany is already solidly positioned,” Diener added. “However, the high level of interest from the international market has prompted us to push ahead with our expansion into more countries earlier than planned, which is a great market confirmation for our business and platform.”

YouLend and eBay Germany team up to help finance marketplace sellers

Embedded financing platform YouLend has partnered with eBay Germany to provide integrated financing to sellers on the platform. Part of the eBay Seller Capital Program, the partnership will enable German eBay sellers to access pre-approved financing of up to €2 million ($2.26 million). Financing is based on the sellers’ performance data, and does not require an additional, separate application process.

“Sellers benefit from a chain reaction: quicker inventory restocks, improved product listing, or targeted marketing leading to greater visibility, higher sales, and more growth opportunities—all of which can be financed through YouLend,” Leonard Strigel, YouLend General Manager Germany, said. “This cycle of funding, growth, and reinvestment helps increase seller revenues.”

The partnership will give sellers personalized, pre-approved financing offers, informing them of exactly how much capital they are eligible for before they apply for funding. Direct integration of YouLend’s technology into the eBay platform supports a seamless application process that is “simple, digital, and reliable,” Strigel added.

Founded in 2016, YouLend launched in the UK and Ireland in 2018, entered Europe in 2022, and went live in the US the following year. In 2024, YouLend announced a £4 billion financing investment from J.P. Morgan.

eBay has maintained a presence in Germany since the company’s 1999 takeover of auction platform Alando. eBay Germany currently has more than 150 million visits per month.

German expense management platform Circula secured €15 million

An extended Series A round has given Berlin-based, AI-powered expense management platform Circula €15 million ($17 million) to help bring autonomous finance workflows to medium-sized business in Germany and beyond. The investment will enable the firm to boost its AI capabilities and offer additional automation features for finance teams.

Participating in the funding were existing investors Alstin Capital, Capnamic Ventures, Peak Capital, Wenvest Capital, and Storm Ventures. CIBC Innovation Banking also participated in the investment.

“We have a clear goal: to become Germany’s AI-based champion in expense and spend management for small and medium-sized businesses,” Circula CEO Nikolai Skatchkov said. “With hundreds of millions of euros in transaction volume, hundreds of thousands of active users, and the trust of countless tax advisory firms, we are in an ideal position to realize our vision of a seamless workday for finance teams in the coming years.”

Circula, founded in 2017, counts firms such as Aston Martin, DATEV, and Securitas among its customers. The company’s modular SaaS platform streamlines business expense management with features including AI-powered receipt capture, automated tax-compliant data extraction, and real-time booking verification. More than 150,000 workers throughout Europe rely on Circula’s technology to manage their business travel expenses, credit card transactions, employee benefits, and more.

Circula’s announcement comes at a time when less than 9% of medium-sized businesses in Germany report fully automating their expense workflows, according to research from ERP firm Diamant. In contrast, Circula captures 70%+ of employee expenses when they happen, and enables companies to reduce manual work by 80% and reduce monthly closing cycles.

“Circula is transforming traditional paperwork into smart, AI-powered processes—setting new standards in digital expense management,” CIBC Innovation Banking Director Charlotte Goggin said. “We are excited to support this growth.”

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Asia-Pacific

  • CIMB Bank, Malaysia’s second largest financial services provider, teamed up with payments technology innovator ACI Worldwide.
  • Singapore-based payments platform Airwallex raised $300 million in Series F funding at a valuation of $6.2 billion.
  • Philippine-based universal bank EastWest Bank turned to Temenos to modernize its core.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Payment infrastructure company areeba and digital banking solutions provider Foo forge strategic partnership to enhance digital payments in the Middle East.
  • Zawya looked at how the Qi card is bringing greater digitization to Iraq’s financial services industry.
  • Egyptian-based digital lending marketplace Qardy agreed to be acquired by Catalyst Partners Middle East (CPME) via SPAC.

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Photo by anna-m. w.

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R3 and Solana Team Up, Merging TradFi and DeFi 

R3 and Solana Team Up, Merging TradFi and DeFi 
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, R3
  • R3 and Solana have partnered to bring regulated financial institutions and real-world assets (RWAs) onto Solana’s public blockchain, aiming to bridge TradFi and DeFi ecosystems.
  • The integration enables native interoperability between R3’s Corda platform, private networks, and Solana, supporting tokenized assets, stablecoin settlement, and compliance.
  • R3 announced that Solana Foundation President Lily Liu is joining its board.

Traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi) are slowly beginning to merge. Today’s partnership between distributed ledger technology company R3 and Web3 infrastructure player Solana is a step in this direction. The two have teamed up to bring financial institutions and their real-world assets onto Solana’s public blockchain.

R3 was founded in 2014 to offer real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and interoperability solutions. Today, R3 is helping digitize markets by bridging its on-chain RWA ecosystem with DeFi. Today, the company has over $10 billion in regulated assets on-chain across its platforms.

“After years of laying the groundwork, R3 is ready to bring our experience and our network of regulated financial institutions towards a new public future with one of the best and most trusted public ecosystems—Solana,” said R3 CEO David E. Rutter. “This is more than a milestone; it’s a strategic realignment for the entire industry. We know DeFi isn’t coming to TradFi, so it’s up to us to build the connective infrastructure that links these two ecosystems. This is about adapting to deliver real-world utility, institutional-grade readiness, and shaping the long-term future of regulated markets.”

As one of the most used public blockchains, Solana boasts low transaction fees, speed, scalability, and a global ecosystem. With favorable regulation and increased investor confidence, the companies have seen financial institutions become increasingly comfortable leveraging public networks.

Integrating with Solana’s blockchain will enable R3’s on-chain assets to meet the growing demand on public networks and unlock new settlement options like stablecoins. Unlike traditional approaches, R3’s tokenized RWAs can be confirmed directly on Solana Mainnet.

Additionally, Solana and R3 will enable native interoperability between its existing Corda platform, other private networks, and Solana. This will help bridge the gap between permissioned and public blockchain ecosystems, ultimately enabling regulated financial institutions to benefit from the openness and efficiency of Solana while maintaining compliance, security, and control of their assets.  

As part of today’s announcement, Solana Foundation President Lily Liu will join R3’s Board of Directors.

“This is a major step forward for the institutional adoption of public blockchain,” said Liu. “R3’s decision to bring its regulated financial network onto Solana is powerful validation that public blockchains have reached institutional readiness. With Solana’s unmatched performance, enterprise-grade permissioning, and growing roster of regulated assets, we’re not just witnessing convergence between TradFi and DeFi—we’re enabling it. This collaboration signifies that the future of capital markets will be built on public infrastructure. We’re thrilled that the Solana ecosystem is leading the way.”

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Talking Fintech: A Preview of Interviews, Q&As and Conversations from FinovateSpring

Talking Fintech: A Preview of Interviews, Q&As and Conversations from FinovateSpring
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateSpring 2025, Interview, Streamly

Over the three days of FinovateSpring earlier this month, Finovate analysts and their partners hosted a number of off-stage interviews with CEOs of demoing companies, keynote speakers, event sponsors, and more. Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll begin rolling out these conversations here on the Finovate blog as part of our Streamly Speaker Series interviews.

For now, here’s a quick preview of what we’ve got in store for you:

Senior Research Analyst Julie Muhn in conversation with:

John Iannarelli, The Voice of Cyber & Security, FBI John

Rob Thatcher, Founder and CEO, BankShift

Yamini Sagar, CEO and Founder, Instarails

Javier Pérez García, Global Director, VASS Financial Services

Research Analyst David Penn in conversation with:

Bhoomika Ghosh, Senior Tech Product Lead, Amazon Prime

Jim McCarthy, Founder and Chairman, McCarthy Hatch

Jackie Wylie, Head of Marketing, Middesk

Brandon Min, Founder and CEO, Herd Security

Will Dolan, President, TAPP Engine

Aman Kaur, Corporate Sales Manager, Americas, DataSniper

Mohammad Rashid, SVP, Head of Fintech Innovation, Tavant

William Mills, CEO and Creative Director, William Mills Agency, in conversation with:

Adrian Nazari, CEO, Sesame

Christy Wong and Michael Larson, VP of Business Development and COO, covet.life

Sharon Gai, Author, Culture Fluid

Steven Ramirez, CEO of Beyond the Arc, in conversation with:

Christopher Hollins, Global Head of Product Sales and Design, SVB, a division of First Citizens Bank

Alisa Rusanoff, Head of Credit / Trade Finance, Crescendo Asset Management

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Circle Goes Live with the Circle Payments Network

Circle Goes Live with the Circle Payments Network
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • Circle has launched the Circle Payments Network (CPN) to modernize the $190 trillion cross-border payments market with blockchain-based, near-instant settlement.
  • CPN enables financial institutions to securely exchange payment instructions and settle transactions using USDC on public blockchains.
  • Circle’s initial focus with CPN is on high-value, underserved global trade corridors.

Stablecoin issuer and infrastructure company Circle unveiled this week that the Circle Payments Network (CPN) mainnet is now live. With CPN, Circle is hoping to disrupt the $190 trillion cross-border market and bring stablecoins mainstream for cross-border payments.

“The launch of CPN represents a leap forward for global payments infrastructure toward an architecture where interoperability, compliance, speed, and cost-efficiency are emphasized,” said Circle VP of Product Management Sunil Sharma. “We are just getting started. As more institutions integrate with CPN, we look forward to powering new use cases, and advancing this new standard for global value exchange.”

Cross-border payments currently depend on legacy infrastructure that is fragmented, slow, and manual. With CPN’s compliance-first payments coordination protocol, financial institutions can exchange payment instructions securely while settling transactions on open, public blockchains in near-real-time.

According to the World Bank, cross-border payments can take up to five days to settle and cost an average of 6.3% per transaction. CPN’s near-instant settlement and cost-efficiency could significantly reduce both time and expense, especially for businesses operating across emerging markets.

CPN combines the reliability of traditional payment systems with the benefits of blockchain rails, which adds openness and speed. With CPN, Circle hopes to bring the benefits of blockchain settlement in global commercial payments. Network participants can enroll as originating financial institutions (OFIs) and/or beneficiary financial institutions (BFIs) for:

  • B2B supplier payments
  • Cross-border remittances
  • Treasury and global cash consolidations
  • Recurring enterprise payments, including subscriptions 
  • Payroll and mass disbursements

CPN hinges on demand for dollar-backed stablecoins from international markets in which access to fiat dollars is expensive and slow. Because of this, Circle is currently focusing CPN on serving organizations transacting in high-value, underserved global trade corridors that rely on fiat dollars. Active partners in the CPN mainnet include Alfred Pay, Tazapay, Redotpay, and Conduit.

“Throughout 2025,” added Sharma, “we will continue to explore and focus on providers who can serve additional markets that could potentially include Nigeria, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Colombia, India, the United Arab Emirates, China, Turkey, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Argentina.”

Circle was founded in 2013 and is best known for launching USDC, a fully reserved, dollar-backed stablecoin that has facilitated over $28 trillion in on-chain settlement volume since launching in 2018.

With the launch of CPN, Circle is positioning itself not just as a stablecoin issuer, but as a global payments infrastructure provider. As adoption grows and more institutions join the network, Circle’s compliance-first, blockchain-native approach could help to bring stablecoins into the traditional financial system.

Photo by Jimmy Chan

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Stratyfy Teams Up with Parlay to Help SMEs Access Capital

Stratyfy Teams Up with Parlay to Help SMEs Access Capital
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Stratyfy
  • New York-based credit decisioning company Stratyfy forged a strategic partnership with loan intelligence system Parlay Finance.
  • Together the two companies will help banks and other financial institutions provide a more seamless onboarding and underwriting experience for their small business borrowers.
  • Stratyfy won Best of Show in its most recent Finovate appearance at FinovateFall 2022. Parlay demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2024.

Credit decisioning specialist Stratyfy and loan intelligence system Parlay Finance announced a strategic partnership this week. The alliance will offer frictionless onboarding and underwriting experiences that enable more banks to serve a larger number of qualified small business borrowers. The combination of Stratyfy and Parlay’s technology will also give small businesses actionable insights they need in order to more easily secure funding.

“Our technology is designed to help lenders make better credit decisions by uncovering signals often overlooked by traditional approaches,” Stratyfy CEO Laura Kornhauser said. “Combining that with Parlay’s strength in surfacing opportunities and accelerating small businesses through the loan application process is a powerful match.”

Stratyfy provides AI-powered solutions for credit, compliance, and fraud teams to help them modernize lending. A specialist in decision optimization for financial institutions, Stratyfy helps lenders access new markets, reduce costs, and encourage growth with less risk. Parlay’s AI-powered platform streamlines digital onboarding, verification, and qualification to enable lenders to more efficiently provide Small Business Administration (SBA) and small business loans. The company’s technology integrates with loan origination systems to increase both volume and profitability.

Combined, the two solutions provide an underwriting solution that automates workflows, boosts performance, and enhances risk-adjusted returns. The partnership has already yielded results with teams from Stratyfy and Parlay collaborating on a joint client engagement: a community lender seeking to increase success rates for entrepreneurs who have been historically underbanked.

“Parlay empowers lenders to digitally onboard and verify small business information while providing applicants with personalized financial insights,” Parlay Finance CEO Alex McLeod said. “Teaming up with Stratyfy extends that value through the full credit lifecycle, helping lenders match with and support the businesses they’re best suited to serve.”

Headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, Parlay Finance demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2024 in San Francisco. The company showed how its embedded fintech software, Parlay Protocol, helps financial institutions generate more high-quality loans and provides technical assistance to small business applicants. Lenders working with Parlay have benefited from a 64% boost in approved loans and an 87% reduction in manual, underwriting workloads. Most recently, Parlay announced a partnership with Mastercard and JAM FINTOP to expand its services nationwide.

New York-based Stratyfy won Best of Show in its most recent Finovate appearance at FinovateFall 2022. At the conference, the company demonstrated its UnBias technology that enables financial institutions and fintechs to discover and undo bias in complex financial decisions including during the underwriting process.

Photo by Chevanon Photography

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4 Companies Bringing Agentic AI to Checkout

4 Companies Bringing Agentic AI to Checkout
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: List series, Thought Leadership

Agentic AI agents, autonomous agents that act on behalf of users with minimal input, are not just coming to financial services. They’re already here. One of the most compelling use cases for Agentic AI is at checkout, where commerce, AI, and payments converge at the point where consumers make their purchase decisions.

In the past few weeks, three Agentic AI shopping and checkout announcements from major payments and technology players have made news headlines. So far, Google, Visa, and Mastercard are leading the Agentic AI payments charge, with PayPal and Perplexity not far behind. Here’s a look at what each company is doing.

Google’s AI-powered shopping agents

Google announced its AI Shopping Mode yesterday, a new online shopping experience that allows users to browse 50 billion product listings and buy the item they want using Google’s new agentic checkout at a price that fits their budget. Shoppers set their preferences by selecting “track price” on a preferred product listing and set the right size, color, and the amount they want to spend. If the item’s price drops into the user’s pre-selected price range, they receive a push notification and can have the agentic shopping agent buy the item for them with the push of a button.

Google is embedding an AI assistant into every step of the purchasing process, from browsing to payment, and is making the checkout experience hyper-personal, with less friction.

Visa’s intelligent commerce and agentic AI

Visa unveiled its Visa Intelligent Commerce tool last month. The new initiative will empower AI agents to deliver personalized and secure shopping experiences for consumers at scale. The program will equip AI agents to seamlessly manage key phases of the shopping journey, from product discovery, to purchasing, to post-purchase product management.

Unlike Google, Visa will offer APIs and SDKs that will provide third parties a suite of payments tools, including tokenization, authentication, and transaction controls, to embed into their own apps. In this sense, Visa is not just planning to launch a new checkout tool, it is building infrastructure for a world where the AI agent is the end customer.

Mastercard’s agentic payments through Agent Pay

Mastercard announced Agent Pay, a payment framework for agent-driven commerce, 24 hours before Visa’s agentic AI announcement hit the wires. Mastercard’s tool aims to make payments smarter, more secure, and more personal by embedding them directly into the product recommendations generated by GenAI platforms.

When paired with Mastercard’s tokenization technology, Agent Pay will not only add security, but will also help retailers identify and validate customers to offer a more meaningful and consistent shopping experience. Overall, Mastercard is pioneering a payment model where AI, not the consumer, initiates the purchase.

Perplexity x PayPal

Earlier this month, GenAI-powered search engine Perplexity partnered with PayPal to enable in-chat shopping. Shoppers will be able to check out instantly with PayPal or Venmo when they ask Perplexity to find a product, book travel, or buy tickets. The entire process will be powered by PayPal’s account linking, secure tokenized wallet, and emerging passkey checkout flows, which could eliminate the need for passwords.

While it is not a formal “agentic” platform, the move shows that large language models (LLMs) are starting to transact directly and the partnership is a good example of how chat interfaces are evolving into commerce platforms. The announcement serves as a preview of agentic commerce where LLMs initiate and complete purchases in a single conversational flow.

Overall, these announcements signal a major shift in ecommerce. The online point-of-sale is moving from a consumer-initiated process to an AI-initiated transaction. At the outset, regulation, identity, fraud, and explainability will be a large challenge. Still, the shift to agentic commerce is well underway, and the companies building today’s infrastructure are setting the rules and structure for how agentic AI commerce will work in the future.

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Quadient and Nuvei Forge Strategic Technology Partnership

Quadient and Nuvei Forge Strategic Technology Partnership
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Quadient
  • Business automation platform Quadient has inked a strategic partnership with payments company Nuvei.
  • The partnership will integrate Nuvei’s advanced payment processing technology into Quadient’s cloud-based Accounts Receivable (AR) and Accounts Payable (AP) automation solutions.
  • Headquartered in France, Quadient most recently demoed its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateEurope 2018.

France-based business automation platform Quadient has announced a strategic partnership with payments company Nuvei. The collaboration is designed to enhance cloud payment capabilities for businesses around the world, and will integrate Nuvei’s advanced payment processing technology into Quadient’s cloud-based Accounts Receivable (AR) and Accounts Payable (AP) automation solutions.

“We’re empowering businesses to modernize and take control of their financial processes,” Quadient Chief Solution Officer, Digital, Chris Hartigan said. “With our cloud platform, we’re helping businesses streamline workflows, gain deeper financial insights, and build stronger relationships with customers and suppliers, driving efficiency and sustainable growth to succeed in an increasingly digital and regulated marketplace.”

Integrating advanced global payment capabilities with customer onboarding, pay-ins and payouts, and risk management, Quadient helps businesses better manage cash flow, align payment terms, and move away from manual and siloed processes to streamlined, more efficient workflows. This is a challenge for more than half of small- and medium-sized businesses that rely on fragmented processes to handle their finances. To address this, Quadient offers a unified, scalable, cloud-based platform that automates accounts receivable and accounts payable over multiple currencies, payment options, and geographic regions.

“By integrating our advanced payment processing technology into Quadient’s cloud platform, we’re enabling businesses to seamlessly manage transactions across multiple currencies and payment methods through a single, unified solution,” Nuvei Chair and CEO Philip Fayer said. “We look forward to supporting Quadient as it empowers its customers with customized solutions to accelerate their growth.”

Founded in 2003, Nuvei offers modular, flexible, and scalable technologies that enable companies to accept next-generation payments, provide pay-outs, and take advantage of card issuing, banking, risk, and fraud management services. Headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Nuvei supports 150+ currencies, more than 700 payment methods, and operates in 50+ local markets and 200+ global markets. Philip Fayer is Chair and CEO.

Quadient made its Finovate debut in 2013, as GMC Software. The company rebranded to Quadient in 2017 and returned to the Finovate stage that year and again in 2018. Quadient’s partnership news comes just days after the company reported that it was working with Stasher, a UK-based luggage storage platform. The partnership will help significantly expand Stasher’s network in the UK, giving travelers in major UK cities such as London, Birmingham, York, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Cardiff, and Manchester secure and accessible luggage storage via 1,640+ Parcel Pending by Quadient smart lockers.

Quadient currently has more than 25,700 smart locker units installed in the US, Japan, and Europe. The company hopes to deploy 40,000 units by 2030.

Photo by Maël BALLAND

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Greenlite AI Lands $15 Million in Series A Funding

Greenlite AI Lands $15 Million in Series A Funding
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • Greenlite AI raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Greylock to expand its agentic AI platform for compliance automation in financial services.
  • The company’s AI agents automate KYC, AML, and sanctions workflows while embedding regulatory guidance into every process via its proprietary Trust Infrastructure.
  • Customers like Ramp, Betterment, and Mercury report 3x to 4x ROI within 12 weeks, as Greenlite helps them scale compliance efforts without adding headcount.

Agentic AI platform for financial services Greenlite AI has raised $15 million in Series A funding this week. Led by Greylock, the investment brings the San Francisco-based company’s total raised to $20 million. Thomson Reuters, Canvas Prime, Y Combinator, and other angel investors also participated.

Greenlite was founded in 2023 to help financial services companies automate manual work. The company’s screening alerts, transaction monitoring alerts, customer due diligence, and enhanced due diligence tools help automate Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML), and sanctions compliance. Greenlite’s AI agents also manage alert triage, customer risk scoring, and transaction monitoring to free up compliance teams to focus on proactive risk management, regulatory strategy, and customer insight.

These solutions are built around its Trust Infrastructure, a system that embeds US federal banking regulatory guidance into every AI agent. The system enables automated workflows to meet strict requirements for validation, testing, and accuracy, which allows firms to scale their AI-based staff members.

“With regulatory pressure mounting and margins tightening, compliance teams can’t keep throwing headcount at the problem,” said Greenlite AI CEO and Co-Founder Will Lawrence. “They need automation that’s not just powerful, but accountable. That’s exactly what Greenlite AI delivers—AI agents built on a foundation of regulatory trust, ready to take on the front lines of financial crime and compliance.”

Greenlite will use the new funding to scale its Trust Infrastructure, which it anticipates will become the industry standard for generative AI accuracy and model validation. The funds will also be used to invest in new agent archetypes, expand the company’s regulatory presence, and grow its teams to onboard more clients.

With Greylock’s backing, Greenlite will be among a portfolio of fresh AI and infrastructure startups. The investment underscores current investor confidence in agentic AI’s role in enterprise compliance. “Greenlite AI’s agents are reducing the manual burden on compliance teams, and their unparalleled accuracy is helping organizations scale without adding headcount,” said Greylock Partner and Greenlite AI Board Member Seth Rosenberg. “It is a privilege to be partners to Will and team, and we’re proud to double down on our support of the company as they raise the bar for what trustworthy compliance looks like in today’s AI era.”

As financial institutions face rising regulatory scrutiny, evolving typologies of financial crime, and a shortage of qualified compliance staff, many are overwhelmed by the volume of alerts and manual review requirements. Greenlite AI aims to address this operational strain by embedding intelligence directly into compliance workflows. The company reports that its clients see a 3x to 4x return on investment within just 12 weeks, driven by reduced manual workload and faster case resolution. Among Greenlite’s customers are Ramp, Mercury, Betterment, Gusto, RSM UK, and multiple US banks.

Photo by Davis Sánchez

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Temenos: New Partnership, New CTO, and Helping Banks Launch New Products Faster with Gen AI

Temenos: New Partnership, New CTO, and Helping Banks Launch New Products Faster with Gen AI
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Temenos

Temenos has been all over the fintech headlines in recent days. Here’s a look at what’s put them—and kept them—above the fold.

First up, the company announced that UK-based international payments provider Moneycorp has chosen Temenos SaaS to boost operational efficiency and launch new offerings faster—a theme in this roundup of news from the Swiss fintech. Moneycorp will leverage Temenos SaaS for core banking and payments and is specifically looking to take advantage of the technology’s advanced wallet and payments capabilities as it focuses on expanding its products and services globally. Moneycorp currently operates in Europe, North America, South America, and Asia.

“Best-in-class technology is key to delivering the seamless client experience and personalized service that Moneycorp is known for, so we’re delighted to partner with Temenos, an established global leader in banking technology,” Moneycorp Group Chief Technology Officer Srini Kasturi said. Kasturi praised the company’s multi-geographic support and localization, as well as the SaaS nature of the platform, which he said would help Moneycorp quickly go to market globally and better serve its international customers.

Moneycorp handled £71 billion in trading volume in 2023, serving 11,000 B2B clients, 250 financial institutions, and 23,000+ individual customers. The firm processes more than one million payments a year, reaching 190 countries.

In addition to the new partnership, Temenos also announced new personnel in its C-suite. The company introduced Rohit Chauhan as its new Chief Technology Officer earlier this month. Chauhan will lead development of the company’s overall technology strategy, innovation, research, and development. In this role, he will be tasked with boosting the flexibility of the Temenos platform to advance the company’s core banking and modular solutions for financial institutions large and small. Chauhan was most recently Managing Director and Global Head of Digital Channels Technology at JPMorgan, where he held various leadership positions for more than 12 years.

Accompanying Chauhan’s announcement was the appointment of Eugene Khmelevsky in the newly created role of Temenos Global Head of Architecture and Data. Formerly Chief Mobile Architect at JCPenney, Khmelevsky in his new role will ensure Temenos’ architecture and data foundation support a product strategy that is modular and flexible.

Both Chauhan and Khmelevsky will be based out of the US and report to Temenos’ Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO) Barb Morgan.

Lastly, Temenos launched its Temenos Product Manager Copilot this week. The new offering empowers banks to use Generative AI to design, launch, test, and optimize financial products faster. The solution is a Gen AI assistant that is integrated into Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and embedded within the Temenos retail core banking solution. The Copilot provides a straightforward, conversational interface for product, IT, and customer service managers, who can use the technology to review the range of Temenos’ core banking capabilities and insights.

The new offering announcement was accompanied by a report from a recent Temenos study that indicated that 75% of banks are investigating Gen AI deployment. Of those surveyed, 36% had already deployed the technology or were in the process of deploying it. The study also revealed that 73% of those surveyed believed that Agentic AI will be “transformative for the banking industry.”

“Temenos Product Manager Copilot unlocks the full innovation potential of Temenos core banking using Generative AI to help banks deliver better products faster to their customers,” Temenos CPTO Barb Morgan said. “We are excited to bring this game-changing technology to financial institutions globally. In an area where fintechs and neobanks can launch new offerings within weeks, it is critical for banks to accelerate innovation or risk losing relevance in an increasingly competitive landscape.”

Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, Temenos has been a Finovate alum since its debut at FinovateEurope 2013. The company is also an alum of Finovate’s developer conference, participating in FinDEVr Silicon Valley in 2015. Temenos offers core banking, digital banking, payments, and wealth management services, as well as financial crime mitigation solutions. Temenos has more than 950 core banking and 600 digital banking clients around the world, and is among the largest software companies in Europe. Jean-Pierre Brulard is CEO.

Photo by Anokhi De Silva on Unsplash

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Klarna’s Growth and Losses Send Mixed Signals

Klarna’s Growth and Losses Send Mixed Signals
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Klarna
  • Klarna hit a major milestone with 100 million active users and 724,000 merchants in the first quarter of this year.
  • Despite the fresh momentum, Klarna reported a $99 million pretax loss, which is more than double that of the previous year.
  • Amid its customer wins and financial losses, Klarna continues to postpone its IPO.

Buy now pay later (BNPL) and global commerce platform Klarna has both good and bad to report this week. The Sweden-based company recently unveiled its Q1 2025 results, which revealed customer growth and revenue loss.

The good

Klarna announced that it reached 100 million active consumers in April 2025. The company reports that this is the fastest growth rate it has seen in two years, thanks in part to the integration of users from Stocard, a payments company Klarna acquired in 2021. In addition to customer growth, the company also experienced merchant growth, which was boosted by 27%, as Klarna reached 724,000 merchants and welcomed 150,000 new retail partners in the first quarter, which was more than double the previous period.

“The momentum is undeniable—and this is just Q1,” said Klarna CoFounder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski. “Klarna has reached 100 million consumers and secured exclusive partnerships with major retailers like Walmart through OnePay, teamed up with DoorDash, and expanded our partnership with eBay to the US after multiple successful European launches. Our AI-first strategy is driving exceptional returns, we’re outpacing competitors, our merchant network is scaling rapidly, and our next-gen products are reshaping money management for millions.”

Klarna is known for its momentum in leveraging AI. In fact, 87% of its staff uses its Generative AI engine, Kiki in their daily work activities. Additionally, beginning in 2022, the company notoriously cut its workforce by 40% to replace human employees with AI efficiency.

The bad

On the negative side, Klarna also reported $99 million in pretax losses in the first quarter. This loss is up from $47 million a year ago. The company attributes the loss to one-off costs, including depreciation, share-based payments, and restructuring. However, the losses may also be a result of customers defaulting on their BNPL agreements. The company recorded $136 million in customer credit losses, reflecting a 17% increase year-on-year. Despite this, the credit loss rate as a percentage of Klarna’s total payment volumes sits relatively low at 0.54%, which is up from 0.51% a year ago.

Interestingly, Klarna appears to be walking back the workforce reduction it initiated a few years back. Seeing the need for human-in-the-loop when it comes to leveraging AI for customer service, the company plans to use an Uber-like approach to hiring customer service workers, allowing them to log on and off as spikes in demand for customer service rises and falls.

IPO or no?

Despite Klarna’s impressive customer and merchant growth in the first quarter of 2025, its financial challenges, combined with an uncertain economic environment, have cast a shadow over its IPO plans. Originally eyeing a public debut in 2025, Klarna has postponed its IPO amid continued losses, ongoing restructuring efforts, market uncertainty in the US, and increased regulatory scrutiny in the UK. As the company navigates rising credit losses and reevaluates its balance between AI-driven efficiency and human customer service, the delay signals a cautious approach to market timing.

Photo by Annamaria Kupo on Unsplash

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Entersekt Inks Payments Partnership with Stanchion

Entersekt Inks Payments Partnership with Stanchion
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Entersekt

Atlanta, Georgia-based Entersekt announced a new strategic partnership with paytech solutions provider Stanchion. The partnership will combine Entersekt’s 3-D Secure payment authentication solution with Stanchion’s Payment Fabric Technology. Stanchion’s technology provides advanced integration capabilities that enable issuers to offer new functionalities to help them modernize, transform, and accelerate innovation and improve operational efficiency.

“We are excited to partner with innovative fintech leaders like Stanchion,” Entersekt Chief Revenue Officer Marty Overman said. “This collaboration aligns perfectly with Entersekt’s commitment to delivering secure, seamless payment solutions that empower financial institutions and protect consumers globally.”

Entersekt’s 3-D Secure payment authentication solution provides end-to-end transaction authentication across the merchant acquirer domain, the card issuer domain, and the interoperability domain. The company reports that its access control server (ACS) has delivered a 70% reduction in card-not-present (CNP) fraud within one month, and a 54% increase in conversion rates over six months. Additionally, Entersekt’s ACS provided a 149% growth in transaction value within the first year. The technology leverages out-of-band, biometric, and silent authentication to enhance the customer experience with reliable authentication and adaptive risk intelligence. Entersekt acquired the 3-D Secure software technology business from Modirum, a Finland-based security technology firm, in 2023. The move was designed to position Entersekt as an international leader in authentication solutions for financial services companies.

“We are delighted to partner with Entersekt, one of the world’s foremost 3-D Secure providers,” Stanchion Chief Commercial Officer Chris Pappas said. “This collaboration will enable us to offer enhanced capabilities and deliver even greater value to our clients, reinforcing our position as a leader in payment integration solutions.”

Headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa, Stanchion offers a range of solutions and services to help firms integrate, manage, optimize, and secure their payment systems. Founded in 2001 and maintaining offices in Australia, the UK, the UAE, and the US, as well as in South Africa, Stanchion’s solutions include Verto, a next-generation integration and orchestration platform for banks and payment providers; and SwitchCare, a proactive monitoring and observability solution. Stanchion also offers Professional Services in the form of platform-agnostic advice and support during the development and integration of new payment environments. Steven Kirrage is CEO.

Entersekt made its Finovate debut at our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2014. In the decade-plus since then, Entersekt has grown into a leading fraud prevention and payment security solution provider for banks and other financial institutions. Founded in 2010, the company processes more than 2.5 billion transactions for 250+ million cardholders and 450,000+ merchants from nearly 900 banks in more than 70 countries. Entersekt’s flagship solution, its cross-channel Context Aware Authentication platform, secures digital transactions and helps optimize the user experience.

Earlier this year, Entersekt announced that Clare Conway had joined the company as Chief Integration Officer. Conway comes to Entersekt after serving as Chief Operating Officer for partnership automation platform, Partnerize. Also this year, Entersekt announced a new collaboration with Africa-based payment services provider enza. The paytech will leverage Entersekt’s 3-D Secure authentication to bring stronger security, fewer false declines, and seamless payment experiences to banking customers in Africa. Banks in the region will benefit from greater competitiveness, and the ability to expand to new markets and pursue new revenue sources. Schalk Nolte is Entersekt CEO.

Photo by Joey Kyber on Unsplash

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Finastra Sells Off Treasury and Capital Markets Division

Finastra Sells Off Treasury and Capital Markets Division
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Finastra, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Finastra is selling its Treasury and Capital Markets (TCM) division to an affiliate of private equity firm Apax Partners.
  • TCM will become a standalone company under Apax ownership and will receive investment to accelerate product innovation, enhance cloud capabilities, and improve the customer experience.
  • The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2026.

UK-based financial services software provider Finastra announced that it is selling its Treasury and Capital Markets (TCM) business unit to an affiliate of private equity firm Apax Partners. Once the transaction closes in the first half of 2026, Apax will rebrand TCM and operate it as a standalone business.

The deal gives Finastra room to double down on its core banking software, while TCM gains the backing to modernize and grow under independent ownership.

Finastra’s TCM facilitates risk management, regulatory compliance, and capital markets operations with its suite of software products, which include Kondor, Summit, and Opics. The business unit has more than 340 financial institution clients.

Under the ownership of Apax, TCM will be able to invest further in new product development, marketing, and technology infrastructure. Additionally, Apax will help TCM sharpen its strategic and operational focus, enhance its customer experience, and accelerate its cloud technology offering.

“We’re excited to partner with the TCM team as the business begins a new chapter as an independent organization,” said Apax Partner Gabriele Cipparrone. “With the backing of the Apax Funds, we expect TCM to benefit from accelerated innovation and enhanced operations, delivering even greater value to its clients.”

In addition to TCM, Apax has invested in other companies in the application software industry. Some of the firm’s more notable investments include Paycor HCM, Zellis Group, ECi Software, OCS / Finwave, Azentio, EcoOnline, and IBS Software.

Finastra anticipates that selling TCM will streamline its product portfolio and free up cash to reinvest in the business.

“This sale marks an important milestone for Finastra that will help further launch our next phase of growth with a focused suite of mission-critical financial services software,” said Finastra CEO Chris Walters. “It will provide capital to accelerate our strategy and reinvest in our core business, while providing our award-winning TCM platform with the backing of an experienced, long-term technology investor to support its continued success moving forward.”

With customers in 135 countries, Finastra serves 8,100 financial institutions with its software applications across lending, payments, and retail banking. The company was founded in 2017 as a combination of Misys and D+H. Earlier this year, Finastra appointed Chris Walters as CEO.

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