Behalf Brings in Funding from Visa

Behalf Brings in Funding from Visa
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Behalf, Funding, VISA

Alternative small business lending platform Behalf has benefitted from its ties with Visa this week. The New York and Israeli-based company announced it landed an undisclosed amount of funding from the payments giant, marking Visa’s first investment in an Israeli company.

The investment will be added to Behalf’s previous total funding of $306 million in combined debt and equity. As part of today’s deal, Visa will have access to Behalf’s small business clients to market its tokenized Visa Virtual Card, a payment solution that offers businesses instant financing for business purchases. Visa will begin marketing the card in the U.S. and expand to more markets later this year.

“Our network of B2B merchants can fit Behalf seamlessly into their eCommerce flow, receive payment immediately and provide their business customers with more buying power and flexible payment options at checkout,” said Benjy Feinberg, Behalf CEO. “We are proud to partner with Visa with the goal of making purchases easier.”

The partnership is part of Visa’s strategy to promote its products through collaborations with startups and fits with the company’s commitment to invest up to $100 million in fintechs. Shahar Friedman, acting general manager for Visa in Israel, described small businesses as being “the backbone” of the global economy. “This partnership is a result of a close collaboration between the Visa Innovation Studio Tel Aviv and the dynamic Israeli start-up ecosystem to bring the power of the VisaNet global network to promising young companies in Israel such as Behalf,” he added.

Founded in 2012, Behalf offers short-term purchase financing for small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Unlike other alternative SMB lenders such as Kabbage or OnDeck, Behalf does not issue funds directly to the SMB. Instead, the startup pays the small business’ vendors on the SMB’s behalf. Having flexibility in repaying their suppliers helps merchants increase their production and ultimately grow their business.

Feinberg showcased Behalf’s vendor payment platform at FinovateFall 2014. Since then, the company has partnered with FinWise bank to offer SMB clients a broader range of financing solutions and, earlier this year, secured $150 million in debt financing.

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Finicity Inks Secure Data Exchange Agreement with Capital One

Finicity Inks Secure Data Exchange Agreement with Capital One
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finicity

More data sharing and more security are the goals of a new secure data exchange agreement signed between Capital One Financial and real-time financial data aggregation and insights specialist Finicity. The announcement follows the company’s July data sharing agreement with USAA.

“Finicity is hyper-focused on delivering the data insights our partners need to drive their services and enable their customers to make better financial decisions,” Finicity CEO Steve Smith said. He called Capital One Financial an “excellent partner in pursuing these common goals of empowering consumers to have more access to their financial data and better manage their financial health.”

The agreement leverages Capital One’s Customer Transactions API to enable Capital One customers to securely share financial data with Finicity-supported third-party solutions and services. In addition to being able to access a broader range of resources for financial management, customers also will benefit from having increased control over how and when their data is used. The partnership with Finicity, according to Capital One, was in many ways spurred by the firm’s customers, whose demand for fintech solutions encouraged the bank’s decision.

“We know many of our customers actively use and rely on third-party services to help them manage and track their finances, and we appreciate the value these services provide,” Managing VP of Enterprise Digital Products and Data Connections at Capital One Becky Heironimus said. Customer migrations are expected to begin in the first quarter of 2019. At that time, Capital One customers will be able to connect with the financial solutions that use Finicity’s financial data API.

Finicity’s real-time financial data aggregation and insights platform provides FIs with financial management, payment initiation, and credit decisioning solutions. The company seeks to empower account owners by democratizing financial event data, improving the security of data delivery, and driving innovation by making it easier for consumers to access the fintech solutions they want most.

Founded in 1999 and based in Salt Lake City, Utah, Finicity demonstrated its Credit Decisioning solution at FinovateFall 2017. The company is also an alum of our developers conference, having presented The Frictionless Aggregation Experience at FinDEVr New York 2017.

Last month, Finicity announced a pair of new partnerships. The company integrated with SimpleNexus’ enterprise digital mortgage platform and mobile app to automate the borrower asset verification process for lenders. Finicity also integrated its asset verification technology into Cre8tech’s Lender Price Digital Lending platform. Other major partnerships this year include collaborations with digital lender Blue Sage and fellow Finovate alum Mortgage Cadence.

Awarded API World’s 2016 Finance API of the Year and named to the 2018 HousingWire Tech100, Finicity has developed more than 16,000 bank integrations. The company has raised more than $50 million in funding, and includes fellow Finovate alum Experian and Bridge Bank among its investors.

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Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Cryperium, Finovate Global, Infosys, Sberbank, Temenos, Worldline

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.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Turkey’s Albaraka Turk introduces interest-free digital banking app designed for Europe’s Muslim community.
  • National Bank of Bahrain launches digital payment and trade finance portal.
  • Ziraat Bankası KSA, a Saudi Arabian subsidiary of Turkish banking Group Ziraat, upgrades its core banking system to Temenos T24.

Central and South Asia

  • JP Morgan establishes Financial Inclusion Lab in partnership with the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE).
  • India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) scheduled for August launch with core banking technology from Infosys Finacle.
  • City Bank unveils end-to-end digital supply chain finance facility in Bangladesh.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • EBANX and Wordline partner to launch new debit card payment option for Spotify Brazil.
  • Brazil’s Zen Finance to offer $1 billion in working capital to SMEs courtesy of funding from BRL Trust and BRZ Investments. In Portuguese.
  • Crypto Insider sees a lot to like in Mexico’s fintech industry.

Asia-Pacific

  • United Overseas Bank plans digital-only bank to appeal to South East Asia’s mobile-first consumers.
  • Australian challenger bank Judo Capital raises $140 million in funding.
  • Singapore Ministry of Education launches IBF Careers Connect to help train and retrain financial professionals.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) develops risk-based cyber security framework for banks and PSPs.
  • Absa Group of South Africa launches WhatsApp banking.
  • Nigeria’s Paylater reaches one million download milestone for its financial services app.
  • Pan-African banking group Ecobank names finalists for its annual fintech challenge competition.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Cryperium Releases Crypto-Fiat Solution.
  • Sberbank Group CTO David Rafalovsky selected to lead Sberbank’s Technology Block.
  • IBM Ukraine wins bid to develop information technology for NJSC Naftogaz Ukrainy.
  • Google Pay arrives in Croatia, making it the third CEE country to gain support for the technology.

Top image designed by Freepik

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Behalf, Bluefin Payment Systems, CurrencyFair, Entersekt, Five Degrees, Lendio, Onfido

On Finovate.com

Around the web

  • Dutch fintech Five Degrees purchases core banking IT systems provider, Libra.
  • QuickBridge to participate in Lendio’s turndown lending program.
  • PasswordPing announces new Chief Executive Officer, Michael Greene. See PasswordPing at FinovateFall next month.
  • Identity-as-a-service specialist Onfido forges partnership with Claim Technology.
  • Alphacomm Solutions to deploy ACI Worldwide’s UP eCommerce Payments technology.
  • CurrencyFair acquires Hong Kong-based Convoy Payments.
  • PYMNTS.com interviews Entersekt SVP of engineering, Richard Bailey.
  • Bluefin and payment service provider Anderson Zaks partner to provide Bluefin’s PCI-validated Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE) security solution to merchants and retailers.

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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Feedzai Brings Automated Machine Learning to the Fraud Fight

Feedzai Brings Automated Machine Learning to the Fraud Fight
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Feedzai

Feedzai is deploying its AutoML machine learning technology to automate many of the most tedious and time-consuming processes for fraud-fighting data scientists. AutoML enables these professionals to create fraud prevention solutions 50x faster than they could using traditional data science workflows. This also gives data scientists more time to work on emergent and more complex fraud challenges.

“We’ve proven that Feedzai AutoML can get virtually the same results in a few hours, that would normally take a team of data scientists weeks to achieve,” co-founder and Chief Science Officer Pedro Bizarro said. “This is a ground-breaking advancement for Feedzai, but even more so, it’s something that will provide a substantial competitive advantage to our customers.”

Feedzai co-founder and CEO Nuno Sebastiaõ credited those customers as the inspiration behind Feedzai’s latest innovations. These include OpenML, a solution launched this spring that enabled data scientists to integrate open source third party tools to the Feedzai Risk engine.

“Our customers spoke, and we listened,” Sebastiaõ said. “AutoML and OpenML are the two latest examples of Feedzai’s dedication to bringing the market the best possible fraud prevention solutions. In the months to come, you can expect to see more and more of these kinds of innovations.”

Founded in 2008 and headquartered in San Mateo, California, Feedzai demonstrated its platform at FinovateEurope 2014. Last month, the company announced that it was partnering with Credorax to help the merchant acquisition specialist better protect its merchants against fraud. The company began the year with its first appearance on the Forbes Fintech 50 of top privately-owned fintechs.

Feedzai has raised more than $52 million in funding. The company’s investors include Data Collective, Sapphire Ventures, Citi Ventures, and Oak HC/FT.

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DriveWealth and Bambu Join Forces on Roboadvisory Tool

DriveWealth and Bambu Join Forces on Roboadvisory Tool
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Bambu, DriveWealth

Two wealthtech companies from opposite sides of the globe have built upon their partnership this week. New Jersey-based DriveWealth and Singapore-based Bambu have collaborated on the launch of a white-label, roboadvisory platform for U.S. wealth managers.

While the two have worked together for the past three years on products for overseas markets, this is their first joint offering in the U.S. Robert Cortright, DriveWealth CEO, described the new platform as “a streamlined product for wealth managers seeking to offer a unique, easy-to-use investing platform directly to their retail customers.”

The solution is the result of an integration between DriveWealth’s suite of wealth management APIs, which facilitate everything from customer onboarding to U.S. stock market ordering and reporting; and Bambu’s roboadvisory software, which automates financial planning, saving, and investing for end consumers. More simply, the new offering pairs DriveWealth’s fractional share technology with Bambu’s front-end user interface.

The new platform has three major components:

  • An advisor dashboard that provides an overview of client activities and alerts, and tracks invested capital and cash balances.
  • A CIO dashboard with portfolio-building capabilities that assist in simulating, creating, and rebalancing portfolios.
  • A client application that allows them to adjust investment goals, access investments, and perform investment analyses.

Ned Phillips, CEO of Bambu said, “We are confident that this end-to-end service for financial institutions in the U.S. will be a game changer in simplifying investing.”

Founded in 2012, DriveWealth’s clients include MoneyLion, a lending and wealth management app, and INVSTR, a U.K.-based stock trading application. At FinovateAsia 2016, the company released a new API to enable partners to offer a roboadvisory product suite and a self-directed equity investing platform. Earlier this year, DriveWealth closed a $21 million investment, bringing its total funding to $30 million.

At FinovateAsia 2017, Bambu won Best of Show for its demo of People Like Me, a tool that leverages machine learning to help users define their financial goals. Last month, the company raised $3 million in funding and earlier this year it expanded into London.

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PayStand Announces Integration with Xero

PayStand Announces Integration with Xero
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: PayStand, Xero

Business financial management just got a lot easier for small businesses. B2B payments platform Paystand is teaming up with Xero to enable the cloud accounting firm’s customers to accept bank and card payments directly in sales orders and invoices. This will give Xero users a seamless, automated way to capture payments and reconcile them directly into their accounting systems. Paystand’s Xero plug-in, now available at the Xero Marketplace, will accelerate time to cash and help save SMEs money.

“Our goal is to transform commercial finance by automating the enterprise cash life cycle,” Paystand CEO Jeremy Almond said. He called the partnership “another step closer toward a frictionless payments infrastructure.” Paystand’s Xero plug-in provides support for ACH and Smart ACH/eCheck bank payments, as well as both debit and credit card payments – the only one of Xero’s plug-ins to do so.

The integration enables customers to make digital payments within the invoice which, once cleared, are reconciled in real-time. Payment information is tokenized and encrypted. And because the data is “saved without being visible”, the solution provides both security and seamless future transactions for the customer.

Blockchain-based B2B payments innovator PayStand participated in our developers conference FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2014. CEO Almond led a presentation titled Comparing the Strengths and Weaknesses of Different Payment Types, which looked at the relative advantages and disadvantages of card networks, eChecks/ACH, and digital currencies as payment options.

Last month, Paystand reported that it would participate in the fintech accelerator, Commerce.Innovated. In June, the company announced that it was expanding to Canada. Named one of The Silicon Review’s 50 Smartest Companies for 2017 at the beginning of the year, Paystand has raised more than $8 million in funding. The company includes BlueRun Ventures and LEAP Global Partners among its investors. Paystand was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Scotts Valley, California.

Cloud accounting platform provider Xero also participated in our Silicon Valley developers conference in 2014. The company’s Head of U.S. Partnerships, David Pollack, presented Building an API-Driven Ecosystem for Small Business, and led a workshop and discussion on how Xero has grown its marketplace to more than 300 integrated applications. The company previously demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2011.

Based in Wellington, New Zealand, Xero made headlines earlier this month with its acquisition of paperless accounting firm, Hubdoc, and the news that it would partner with U.K.-based GoCardless. In July, Xero announced a strategic alliance with fellow Finovate alum Gusto, an innovator in payroll, benefits, and HR management technology. A publicly traded company on the Australian Stock Exchange under the ticker “XRO”, Xero has a market capitalization of $3.7 billion (AUD$5 billion). Rod Drury is CEO.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bambu, Coinbase, DriveWealth, Feedzai, Fiserv, Jack Henry, MasterCard, OurCrowd, PayStand, Quantopian, The ID Co., Xero

On Finovate.com

  • Feedzai Brings Automated Machine Learning to the Fraud Fight.
  • DriveWealth and Bambu Join Forces on Roboadvisory Tool.

Around the web

  • Your Legacy Federal Credit Union to deploy core account processing technology from Fiserv.
  • CYBG (Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank) partners with The ID Co. to integrate DirectID into CYBG’s B mobile banking app.
  • Coinbase unveils crypto plugin to make it easier for e-commerce merchants to accept cryptocurrency payments.
  • Bloomberg: Quantopian makes $50 million allocation to one of its quants.
  • OurCrowd named Most Active Venture Investor in Israel by PitchBook.
  • Jack Henry & Associates and Mastercard deliver Priceless Surprises campaign to 1.8 million cardholders.

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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Blend Launches Insurance Agency

Blend Launches Insurance Agency
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Blend

Mortgagetech company Blend is venturing into insurance. The San Francisco-based company launched Blend Insurance Agency, an extension of its digital mortgage platform that offers borrowers a range of options for homeowners insurance.

Homeowners insurance is required to be in place before the borrower closes on their home, and since Blend already has data about the home, borrower, and loan on file, the company is in a unique position to offer a streamlined application process. Blend said that offering insurance felt like a “natural extension” of its mission to bring transparency into the home buying process.

“We see our new insurance agency as an exciting step forward to further remove friction from the home buying process and improve customer satisfaction. We believe it will be better for our lenders, their borrowers, and the insurance providers we work with and will help to make the process of buying a home a little less daunting,” said Greg Isaacs, an insurtech expert Blend hired earlier this year to launch Blend Insurance Agency.

To support this new offering, Blend is building an office in Los Angeles that will be staffed with insurance professionals able to help borrowers find a product that fits their needs. At launch, the company has partnered with six U.S. insurance providers, including MetLife, Stillwater Insurance, and Swyfft, with plans to add more. The insurance option is presented to the borrower early on in the home buying process to offer them plenty of time to shop and to give loan processors time to verify insurance before closing the loan. Having more time on the front-end of the process helps the loan close faster.

Blend demoed its data-driven mortgage at FinovateSpring 2016. Earlier this year, Blend teamed up with Ellie Mae to leverage Ellie Mae’s electronic disclosure delivery. And in June, the company introduced Blend Vision, an advanced OCR solution with built-in quality control. Blend’s most recent round of funding brought its total capital to more than $160 million. Nima Ghamsari is CEO and co-founder.

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TransUnion Teams Up with EXL for CECL Compliance

TransUnion Teams Up with EXL for CECL Compliance
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: TransUnion

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Credit reporting agency and risk solutions provider TransUnion is taking steps to help lenders to comply with the new Current Expected Credit Loss (CECL) accounting rule. The company is partnering with operations management and analytics company EXL to facilitate the change.

The partnership will allow TransUnion to create a CECL Credit Loss Calculator to help lenders forecast losses under CECL, since the new guidelines change the methodology used to calculate loan loss allowances. The tool combines EXL’s analytics capabilities with TransUnion’s de-personalized credit data to create a platform that complies with all CECL reporting guidelines, which alter how banks calculate loan loss.

“Many players in the industry are describing CECL as the biggest change to bank accounting standards in years,” said Jason Laky, SVP and consumer lending business leader at TransUnion. “While large banks have more resources at their disposal to adapt, we believe the majority of small to mid-sized lenders will not have the ability or capacity to comply internally and may face challenges as they prepare for the rollout of this new rule.”

Using the Credit Loss Calculator, lenders can leverage their own portfolio data or automatically import data reported by TransUnion. The tool allows lenders to adjust for macroeconomic scenarios, apply overlays, and adjust the models for different credit products, including mortgages, auto loans, and revolving credit.

Founded in 1968, TransUnion is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois with office locations in Hong Kong, Mumbai, Toronto, Johannesburg, Colombia, and Brazil. At FinovateFall 2016, TransUnion showcased Prama, a suite of analytics tools that helps lenders gain market intelligence and acts on insights to drive growth and build a risk policy. Last month, the company acquired device intelligence firm iovation. TransUnion is a public company with a market capitalization of $13.4 billion, trading on the NYSE under the ticker “TRU.”

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RightCapital Adds Student Loan Functionality to its Advisory Platform

RightCapital Adds Student Loan Functionality to its Advisory Platform
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: RightCapital

Back to school season is getting started a little early at RightCapital. The company, which demonstrated its financial planning platform for advisors at FinovateFall 2016, announced this week that its platform will now enable advisors to see the impact of different student loan repayment strategies on their client’s finances. This is designed to both provide clients with a more holistic view of their finances, as well as to help them choose the most appropriate way to retire the debt.

The solution helps advisors and clients to work together to determine the best way to repay student loans by leveraging insights into the client’s income, loan timing, and options for loan consolidation. Repayment options ranging from IBR, PAYE, REPAY, and Public Service Loan Forgiveness are among those included.

“With more than 44 million Americans owing close to $1.5 trillion dollars in Student Loan debt, those dealing with Student Loan repayment is currently an underserved market,” RightCapital CEO and co-founder Shuang Chen said. “Our new capabilities will help fill the void in the planning space, allowing advisors to easily assist their clients with their debt issues.”

RightCapital provides financial advisors with an integrated financial and tax planning solution including tax projections and tax-efficient distribution strategies. The technology features tools for social security optimization, sequencing of return risk, stress testing, budgeting, managing cash flows, insurance, and more. With interactive and intuitive modules, the RightCapital platform helps advisors more deeply engage with their clients, providing actionable financial plans that are easy to understand.

“We are extremely excited to be a disrupter in the financial planning industry,” Chen said. “Our goal is to help financial advisors do more planning in less time with our innovative features, which means we will continue to develop technology that meets the evolving needs of our advisors while looking for new ways to improve the financial planning process.”

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in New York City, RightCapital has raised $2.6 million in funding, and includes Camellia Venture Capital among  its investors. MorningStar featured RightCapital in its list of the Best Advisor Technology Tools for 2018. The company had a successful and busy 2017, forging partnerships with Shareholders Service Group in December, Envestnet Tamarac in November, Trust Company of America in July, and Interactive Brokers in March.

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Wonga Raises $13 Million in New Funding

Wonga Raises $13 Million in New Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Wonga

 

Accel Partners and Balderton Capital have pitched in to help U.K.-based payday lender Wonga with a cash infusion of nearly $13 million (£10 million). The capital will be used to help Wonga satisfy what the company’s spokesperson called a “marked increase” in compensation claims for legacy loans from claims management companies.

“Wonga continues to make progress against the transformation plan set out for the business,” a spokesperson for the company said in a statement to Sky News. However, a rise in the number of claims on old loans, those taken out before the current management team took over in 2014, encouraged the company to seek additional financing.

“As a result,” the Wonga spokesperson explained, “the team has raised £10m of new capital from existing shareholders, who remain fully supportive of management’s plans for the business.”

Before the new capital, Wonga had an estimated valuation of $30 million (£23 million). In 2014, Wonga wrote off £220 million in debt for 330,000 customers as part of a review of its lending practices and the implementation of new affordability checks. The company has since attempted to diversify its business to include more flexible loan solutions such as its three- and six-month Flexi Loans. Rates remain high for Wonga products, with published representative rates north of 1,286% APR. Last year, Wonga also launched its Cash Smart personal finance education portal, which provides free information on debt and borrowing, savings, and budgeting.

To help shore up its balance sheet, Wonga has sold assets like its Everline business to small business lender Ezbob. Last year, the company sold Billpay, the German online payment provider it acquired in 2013, to Klarna for $75 million.

Founded in 2006, Wonga demonstrated its iPhone app at FinovateFall 2010. Tara Kneafsey is CEO.

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