Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finastra, Finovate Global, Ripple, Sberbank, Temenos

As Finovate goes increasingly global, so does our coverage of financial technology. Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World is our weekly look at fintech innovation in developing economies in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe.

Central and South Asia

  • Pakistan joins Emirates Islamic QuickRemit online fund transfer service.
  • The State Bank of Mauritius picks Miles Software’s Moneyware platform for wealth management and banking operations.
  • DBS India joins SWIFT Global Payments Innovation (gpi) to bring better cash flow visibility via real-time cross border payment tracking for the firm’s corporate clients in India.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Payments Journal highlights Boom Credit, a Miami, Florida-based fintech with a focus on the Mexican market.
  • Pequenas Empresas & Grades Negocios interviews Creditas founder Sergio Furio. (In Portuguese).
  • Central banks of Curacao and St. Maarten partner with blockchain company Bitt to investigate the creation of a digital currency.

Asia-Pacific

  • Singapore’s Association of Banks makes its P2P funds transfer app, PayNow, available for business use.
  • Singapore-based international money transfer startup InstaReM announces new Chief Technical Officer, Niles Pathak.
  • CNBC reports that Ripple is looking to enter the Chinese cross-border payments market.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Nigerian digital lending platform Mines picks up $13 million investment.
  • Postbank Kenya launches mobile banking service, M-chama.
  • United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) teams up with the International Financial Corporation and Ant Financial to support digital financial inclusion in Africa.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Sberbank sees a cashless payments boom in Russia.
  • Crimea’s largest bank replaces Visa and Mastercard as part of transition to Russia’s MIR payment system.
  • Forbes interviews Olga Feldmeier, CEO of Ukraine-based Smart Valor.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Temenos to collaborate with the Venture Lab at The American University in Cairo.
  • National Bank of Egypt chooses Fusion Treasury and Fusion Risk from Finastra in upgrade of its treasury and risk management operations.
  • Agricultural Bank of Sudan goes live on ICS Banks Islamic from ICS Financial Systems.
  • Attijariwafa Bank to deploy Path Solutions’ Sharia-compliant, iMAL core banking solution.

Top image designed by Freepik

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Cardlytics Hooks Wells Fargo as Partner

Cardlytics Hooks Wells Fargo as Partner
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Cardlytics

According to data-driven marketing company Cardlytics, every purchase tells a story. And it turns out that every partnership tells a story, too. During its earnings call this week, the Atlanta-based company announced a deal with Wells Fargo under which Cardlytics will power the bank’s cash-back rewards program.

“We are happy to announce the signing of an agreement with Wells Fargo to launch Cardlytics Direct nationally and across all digital channels,” said Lynne Laube, Cardlytics COO and co-founder. Cardlytics Direct leverages the Purchase Intelligence platform, which processes trillions of dollars of raw purchase data from millions of accounts across thousands of financial institutions. The company uses algorithms and machine learning to make it useful for marketing and analytics, developing insights for smarter business decisions.

While Purchase Intelligence will boost Wells Fargo’s cash-back rewards program, it will also benefit Cardlytics, which will receive access to a new wealth of customer data. “Adding Wells Fargo to the Cardlytics Purchase Intelligence platform will further strengthen our ability to provide actionable insights for our marketing clients. Marketers can act on these insights, reaching a scaled audience inside banks’ secure digital channels – where consumers are already thinking about their money,” said Laube.

(above) Cardlytics’ Purchase Intelligence platform breaks down customers’ purchase data to offer banks insights.

Additionally, Cardlytics released its Q2 earnings report, highlighting a handful of growth metrics:

  • Total revenue was $35.6 million
  • Revenue increased 8% year-over-year, up from $32.8 million in the second quarter of 2017
  • Cardlytics Direct revenue was $35.1 million

At FinovateFall 2013, Cardlytics demoed its geolocation application, a solution that sends bank customers ads and offers based on their location.The company was the first fintech to go public early this year, now boasting a market capitalization of $408 million. Cardlytics also inked a deal with J.P. Morgan Chase and today announced it was listed on the Inc. 5,000 list for the fourth consecutive year. This year, Inc. ranked the company 2886 with revenue of $130.4 million and revenue growth of 142% from 2014 to 2017.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Cardlytics, Daon, Entersekt, Figure Eight, FreeAgent, Infosys, Q2, Temenos, Trunomi

On Finovate.com

  • Cardlytics Hooks Wells Fargo as Partner.
  • Daon Helps New Zealanders Create Digital Identities.

Around the web

  • FreeAgent earns status as an official Account Information Services Provider (AISP) from the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority.
  • Two-time Best of Show winner Trunomi teams up with Shyft and BurstIQ to provide an eIdentification solution for online and offline authentication.
  • Temenos partners with Luxhub to help ensure PSD2 compliance for Fortuna Banque.
  • The Australian Military Bank becomes the first FI in the country to commit to SaaS cloud banking with their deployment of Infosys’ Finacle solution.
  • Q2 releases Caliper SDK to enable customers to customize and extend the Q2 platform
  • Figure Eight launches machine learning assisted video object tracking solution to accelerate the creation of training data.
  • CWG to launch Entersekt product line into Nigerian market.

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.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

TradeIt Teams Up with IBM Cloud for Financial Services

TradeIt Teams Up with IBM Cloud for Financial Services
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: TradeIt, Trading Ticket

Thanks to a new partnership between TradeIt and IBM Cloud for Financial Services, developers will find it that much easier to add universal brokerage functionality to financial apps, platforms, and websites. TradeIt announced this week that developers would be able to use TradeIt’s instant order management solution TradingTicket and its portfolio management product PortfolioView on the IBM Cloud in order to synchronize data and trading with most online U.S. brokers.

TradeIt’s technology connects retail investors to their brokers via the myriad financial services they interact with every day in their mobile banking apps and even social media. By enabling consumers to go seamlessly from reading a stock quote on a watchlist in their PFM app’s dashboard to making an actual investment with their online broker, TradeIt removes friction from the trading and investing process, improving the customer experience.

And by leveraging APIs, TradeIt is able to make these connections securely, maintaining the privacy of the user’s financial information. “Not only do APIs offer a more tailored solution where you essentially get only what you need,” TradeIt CEO Nathan Richardson said in an interview with eWEEK, “(but also) they create a huge potential for innovation.”

TradeIt demonstrated its universal mobile brokerage app at FinovateFall 2015. The app features a quick onboarding process that lets customers fill out an application using information from their government-issued identification and their LinkedIn profile. Online brokers then bid for the customer’s application, with the winning broker completing the application process. This gives trading and investing consumers choice, while online brokers benefit from signing on the accounts that are best fits for their businesses.

TradeIt has raised $12 million in funding and includes Valar Ventures and Newfund Capital among its investors. Founded in 2014, the company is headquartered in New York City. TradeIt’s partners include TheStreet, Marketwatch, Motley Fool, StockTracker, and iStockAlerts.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

HackerOne to U.S. Marine Corps: We’ve Got Your Six

HackerOne to U.S. Marine Corps: We’ve Got Your Six
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: HackerOne

Who defends the defenders? When it comes to the U.S. Marine Corps and the challenge of cybersecurity, the U.S. Department of Defense goes with the white hackers of HackerOne.

“Success in cybersecurity is about harnessing human ingenuity,” HackerOne CEO Marten Mickos explained. “There is no tool, scanner, or software that detects critical security vulnerabilities faster or more completely than hackers. The Marine Corps, one of the most secure organizations in the world, is the latest government agency to benefit from diverse hacker perspectives to protect Americans on and off the battlefield.”

For its sixth bug bounty program, Hack the Marine Corps, the Defense Department has again enlisted hacker-powered cybersecurity firm, HackerOne, to improve security on the public-facing websites of the Marine Corps Enterprise Network (MCEN). The program began with a live hacking event in Las Vegas, Nevada on Sunday. This kickoff event featured nearly 100 white hat hackers who spent nine hours testing and probing the Marine Corps’ public-facing websites for security vulnerabilities. The hackers filed 75 unique valid security vulnerability reports that day, winning more than $80,000 in prize money for their efforts. The bug bounty program continues until August 26th.

HackerOne co-founder Michiel Prins during his presentation “Tapping Hackers to Improve Security” at FinDEVr London 2017.

Hack the Marine Corps is part of the Hack the Pentagon crowdsourced cybersecurity program initially launched by the Department of Defense’s Defense Digital Service (DDS) and HackerOne in 2016. The Marine Corps commitment to improving cybersecurity has grown since then to include the creation of a cyberspace career track for service members. In fact, during the Vegas event, members of the U.S. Marine Corps Cyberspace Command (MARFORCYBER) worked alongside the invited security professionals on both offensive and defensive cyber teams.

“Information security is a challenge unlike any other for our military,” DDS Director Chris Lynch said. “Our adversaries are working to exploit networks and cripple our operations without ever firing a weapon. Sometimes, the best line of defense is a skilled hacker working together with our men and women in uniform to better secure our systems.” More than 5,000 vulnerabilities have been reported in government systems since Hack the Pentagon was launched.

In addition to Hack the Pentagon and Hack the Marine Corps, bug bounty challenges have also been launched with the Army (December 2016), the Air Force (April 2017), and, this spring, the Defense Travel System.

Founded in 2012, San Francisco, California-based HackerOne participated in our developers conference, FinDEVr London, last summer. The company’s presentation, Tapping Hackers to Improve Security, underscored the role and value of bug bounty programs as part of a comprehensive strategy to develop an effective cybervulnerability disclosure program.

More than 1,000 organizations including Google, Nintendo, Lufthansa, and Starbucks have leveraged HackerOne’s white hat hackers to find and fix vulnerabilities before they are discovered by cybercriminals. HackerOne has helped companies resolve more than 76,000 vulnerabilities, resulting in the awarding of more than $32 million in bug bounties to ethical hackers.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: aixigo

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: aixigo
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: aixigo, FinovateFall 2018, FinovateFall 2018 Sneak Peek

FinovateFallA look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 24 through 26, 2018 in New York. Register today and save your spot.

aixigo offers the fastest wealth management technology. The company enables innovation leaders to digitalize all aspects of the personal investment business.

Features

  • Offers the fastest wealth management platform
  • Manages millions of portfolios
  • Sends millisecond responses combined with big data scalability

Why it’s great
aixigo’s wealth management technology is the fastest available. It will manage millions of portfolios your way.

Presenters

Mario Alves, Head of Sales and Partner Management
Alves is a proven expert in retail and private banking, with a special focus on investment and advisory in MiFID related markets and products.
LinkedIn

Marcus Gründler, Head of Portfolio Management Systems
Gruendler is head of portfolio management systems at aixigo with international project experience and develops aixigo’s high performance wealth management platform.
LinkedIn

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Relay

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Relay
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2018, FinovateFall 2018 Sneak Peek, Relay

FinovateFallA look at the companies demoing live at FinovateFall on September 24 through 26, 2018 in New York. Register today and save your spot.

Relay is solving the billion-dollar customer engagement challenge. Its new CX Builder gives businesses the power to create the easiest and most convenient customer interactions.

Features

  • Establishes a direct line to customers for personalized, proactive engagement
  • Offers drag-and-drop tools to create app-like experiences in minutes
  • Automatically sends solutions when customers need them

Why it’s great
Self-service tools don’t work if customers aren’t engaged. Relay proactively engages customers with personalized, simplified support in their neediest moments. The company calls it guided service.

Presenters

Matt Gillin, CEO and Co-founder
Gillin is a three-time tech entrepreneur. Prior to Relay, he founded Ecount, the recognized leader in the prepaid card industry, which he sold to Citigroup in 2007.
LinkedIn

Brie Tascione, CMO
Tascione is CMO and founding member of Relay. Previously she was VP of Global Marketing for Citigroup’s fastest-growing electronic payments division where she led market expansion.
LinkedIn

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Payworks to Fuel New Point of Sale Tool for Bambora

Payworks to Fuel New Point of Sale Tool for Bambora
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: payworks

Point-of-sale technology provider Payworks announced a partnership with multi-channel payment solutions company and Ingenico subsidiary Bambora.

Payworks and Bambora are partnering to launch Bambora Connect, an international solution for POS software providers and merchants. Connect leverages the expertise of both Bambora, which offers merchant sales expertise, and Payworks, which provides advanced payment technologies and integration capabilities. Bambora Connect will work with multiple mobile and stationary card terminals, enabling merchants to accept Visa, Mastercard, and American Express payments in six currencies across Europe.

Christian Deger, CEO and co-founder at Payworks said, “From our own experience working with POS software vendors, we saw and understood the opening in the market for an integrated POS solution which offered powerful infrastructure with advanced tools and processes for onboarding and management. We’re extremely proud of Bambora Connect and look forward to our future collaborations with Bambora and Ingenico.”

Through their collaboration, Bambora, which processes more than $62 billion (€55 billion) per year and serves merchants in 70 markets, and Payworks will facilitate software integration for Bambora’s customers without the need for technical expertise. Connect will be available in the fall of this year; Bambora’s existing clients can begin onboarding their merchants now.

“Bambora is successfully working to make payment acceptance for merchants as simple as possible,” said Johan Tjärnberg, CEO at Bambora and EVP of the retail business unit at Ingenico. “Partnering with Payworks on Bambora Connect…. has ensured a fantastic product for in-store payment acceptance. The POS software market is growing at a rapid pace on a global scale and we see plenty of opportunity to collaborate beyond the SME space as well.”

Payworks provides three payment technology offerings: Pulse, a set of SDKs and APIs that allow developers to offer their merchants EMV certified, PCI compliant, and P2PE ready POS solutions; Accept, a white-label mPOS solution that enables merchants to quickly and easily accept card payments; and Engage, which enables developers using Pulse to build customer engagement solutions.

At FinovateEurope 2014, Payworks showed how its platform makes integration easy for developers, allowing them to focus on building value-added merchant solutions. Founded in 2012, the company’s partners include First Data, TSYS, Stripe, and American Express. Earlier this spring, Payworks partnered with Hubtel to enable merchants in Ghana to accept payments. Payworks has raised $19 million and has offices in Munich, New York, London, and Barcelona.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Roostify Enhances Customization with New Adapt Tool

Roostify Enhances Customization with New Adapt Tool
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Roostify

Mortgagetech company Roostify announced the launch of Adapt, a tool for mortgage lenders, this week.

Adapt helps lenders who have complex workflows achieve process management without disrupting their primary and secondary digital lending accounts. The feature enhances Roostify’s hierarchy tools, allowing lenders to create child accounts that follow a business unit structure, while at the same time allowing others on the mortgage team to maintain productivity across those business units.

Sarah Boultinghouse, business architect and process improvement manager at Roostify client, Colonial National Mortgage, said that the feature simplifies implementation on one of the mortgage company’s most complex business channels. “In an account structure that supports hundreds of accounts, this enhancement has been a critical factor in our continued implementation success, providing both user and admin friendly functionality to navigate through accounts with ease, further enabling our ability to deliver a superior customer experience,” she explained.

Adapt is available as a part of Roostify’s enterprise lending platform. The tool increases flexibility, helping streamline the lending process increase collaboration, ultimately decreasing costs and time-to-close.

Roostify presented at FinovateSpring 2016 where the company demoed account aggregation capabilities for asset verification, as well as integrations with TurboTax and Equifax. The California-based company started off the year by raising $25 million, bringing its total funding to $33 million.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: AlphaPoint, Bankjoy, Diebold, LendUp, payworks, Roostify, Telenor banka, Trulioo, Verifone Holdings Inc.

On Finovate.com

  • Payworks to Fuel New Point of Sale Tool for Bambora.
  • Roostify Enhances Customization with New Adapt Tool
  • Check out today’s FinovateFall Sneak Peeks:

Around the web

  • Seasons FCU selects online and mobile banking technology from Bankjoy.
  • Customer experience specialist Truphone partners with Verifone.
  • AlphaPoint taps Sri Manda as its new Chief Information Security Officer.
  • RegTech Supplier Performance Report ranks Trulioo’s GlobalGateway as top ID verification tool for third consecutive year.
  • Telenor pioneers Norwegian Open AI Lab.
  • WSJ features LendUp’s focus on subprime lending.
  • Diebold Nixdorf hires advisers to seek a sale.

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.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Holvi Helps Uber Drivers Manage Finances with New Partnership

Holvi Helps Uber Drivers Manage Finances with New Partnership
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Holvi

BBVA-owned Holvi announced this week it has teamed up with ridesharing company Uber. The two have joined forces in an effort to help Uber’s drivers manage their finances more efficiently.

Holvi has long been known for supporting workers in the gig economy, and has been referred to as the neobank for the self-employed. The company will enable Uber drivers in Helsinki to quickly open business and checking accounts. “We at Holvi want to support also this new form of entrepreneurship and make it easier for all entrepreneurs to manage their entrepreneurial responsibilities. In the future we will see more examples of platform economy and a decrease in traditional employment – we will develop Holvi to support these new forms of work,” said Antti-Jussi Suominen, Holvi CEO.

Drivers also have access to Holvi’s small business banking tools, such as bookkeeping, expense management, tax reporting, and automatic invoice management. Additionally, Holvi’s accounting services offer drivers access to its partner accountant network.

“Our collaboration with Holvi enables us to simplify entrepreneurs’ routine tasks so that our partner drivers can focus only on driving and serving their customers,” said Joel Järvinen, Uber’s country manager for Finland and Sweden.

Founded in 2011, one of Holvi’s co-founders, Kristoffer Lawson, demoed the company’s small business accounting tools at FinovateEurope 2013. In 2016, and with $4.9 million in funding, Holvi was acquired by BBVA for an undisclosed amount. Later that year, the company appointed Suominen as CEO.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Moneyhub Expands Platform with Payment Initiation Services

Moneyhub Expands Platform with Payment Initiation Services
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Moneyhub

When the going gets tough, the tough add payment initiation services to their offering in order to make it easier for users to initiate payments from multiple accounts with a single platform.

That’s the plan of account aggregation specialist Moneyhub, which announced today that it has secured PISP authorization from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). This will enable the Bristol, U.K.-based firm to more readily integrate with its bank partners – including new partners Starling and Monzo – and to support payment initiation from bank accounts via the Moneyhub platform. The company is currently linking to additional bank APIs and has launched an API gateway to support data sharing and product development with third party firms.

“The introduction of Open Banking has been transformative for people’s relationships with their finances but its potential is only just being realized,” Moneyhub CEO Samantha Seaton said. “The end of tedious financial administration on the journey to ever increasing financial wellbeing starts here.”

Already operating as an Account Information Services Provider (AISP), Moneyhub aggregates data from multiple accounts and makes the data available in a single location. This makes it easier for consumers to get a holistic view of their finances – from current accounts and credit cards to loans and pensions. PISP authorization adds direct payment functionality to the platform, leading Seaton to announce “frictionless finance has arrived.”

Moneyhub demonstrated its Moneyhub Enterprise SmartAssist solution at FinovateEurope 2017. SmartAssist is an AI-powered, proactive intelligent messenger that helps consumers manage their finances through personalized savings, investment, and borrowing recommendations. Founded in 2009, Moneyhub was acquired by South African insurance company, MMI Holdings in 2014.

Earlier this year, Moneyhub announced an integration with Intelliflo, enabling two-way sharing between financial advisors and their clients. Also this year, the company was shortlisted for the Best Fintech Health and Well Being Innovation Award from the Corporate Advisor Awards 2018.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook