Mitek Acquires A2iA for $49.7 Million

Mitek Acquires A2iA for $49.7 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Mitek

Digital identity verification company Mitek is bolstering its capabilities this week with the acquisition of A2iA, an artificial intelligence and image analysis company, for $49.7 million. This is Mitek’s second acquisition in under a year– last October the company acquired ICAR for $15 million.

A2iA leverages AI and machine learning to create algorithms that process millions of checks, IDs and documents daily for financial services companies, retailers, mobile operators, healthcare providers, and governments. The company, which pulled in revenues of more than $15 million last year, works in more than 42 countries and 11 languages. A2iA’s software is used by top U.S. banks as well as all banks in the U.K., 90% of French banks, and 90% of Brazilian banks. It is leveraged by more than 75,000 ATMs worldwide.

In the press release, James B. DeBello, CEO and Chairman of Mitek said that he anticipates the acquisition to help Mitek get ahead in the industry. He added, “Mitek’s Mobile Verify product will be able to read government-issued identity documents even more accurately and quickly than today, and authenticate them using A2iA’s advanced AI algorithms, thereby increasing companies’ trust that their customers are who they say they are.” The move will also double the size of Mitek’s Labs team, a group that has been behind each of Mitek’s 39 patents.

Mitek software is deployed in 6,100 U.S. banks, including all 10 of the largest U.S. financial institutions, and is used by more than 80 million end consumers. The company is publicly traded on NASDAQ under the ticker “MITK” with a market cap of $305 million. Mitek was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in San Diego, California. The company most recently demoed its MobileVerify solution at FinovateFall 2017. Earlier this month, Mitek made headlines when it agreed to deliver digital KYC for cryptocurrency broker BTCDirect.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Avaloq, ID.me, Klarna, Mitek, Moneyhub, PaySend, Revolut, Sberbank, Temenos, Tinkoff Credit Systems, WeInvest

On Finovate.com

  • Mitek Acquires A2iA for $49.7 Million.
  • WeInvest Raises $12.3 Million for its WealthTech Platform.
  • Finovate Alums Take Top Honors at FinTech Breakthrough Awards.
  • PaySend Adds KYC and Risk Management Technology from 4Stop..

Around the web

  • Deutsche Bank Luxembourg to deploy Avaloq Banking Suite.
  • Temenos unveils new digital onboarding and origination platform, Temenos Origination.
  • Revolut announces support for XRP and Bitcoin Cash.
  • Moneyhub integrates with Intelliflo to enable real-time, two-way sharing between financial advisors and clients.
  • Klarna acquires e-commerce shopping cart, Shop.co.
  • Sberbank to test ICO technology issued by Level One.
  • Tinkoff Bank to launch a new Development Hub in Sochi.
  • ID.me teams with LinkedIn to provide one year of LinkedIn Premium for free to U.S. service members and veterans.

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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GoodData Launches GoodData Spectrum UI Tools

GoodData Launches GoodData Spectrum UI Tools
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: GoodData

Data analytics and insights company GoodData has launched a new tool today that will help businesses transform their user interface. GoodData Spectrum is a set of three user interaction frameworks that deliver insights to help support decision-making and change how organizations use analytics.

GoodData Spectrum consists of three frameworks:

  • GoodData.UI offers turnkey, commercial, open source, and custom components organizations can use to build their own custom apps.
  • KPI Dashboards helps organizations track KPI changes over time and receive alerts when KPIs reach a certain threshold.
  • Analytic Designer allows organizations to explore curated datasets and discover insights.

“Analytics within organizations today is no longer about one-size-fits-all with low adoption rather, analytics is now critical to everyday business success,” said Roman Stanek, CEO at GoodData. “With GoodData Spectrum, we now enable data and insights to support the complete range of business decisions.”

In the press release, Cody Alton from GoodData client Zalando said that the new tools help his organization design with end users in mind. He added, “With GoodData Spectrum we can roll out customized features based on our product vision and roadmap to ensure we exceed the needs of our customers.”

Founded in 2007, GoodData works with 70,000 companies across the globe, including 8 of the 10 largest brands. The company’s business intelligence solutions reach more than 1 million end users. At FinovateFall 2017, GoodData showcased its Insights PaaS. Last month, the company made its first foray into insuretech with the launch of two new solutions, Underwriting Insights and Claims Insights

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identitii Forges New Partnership with Robot Automation Specialist Blue Prism

identitii Forges New Partnership with Robot Automation Specialist Blue Prism
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: identitii

Secure information sharing specialist identitii has joined forces with robotic process automation specialist Blue Prism. Together, the two will design technology to help FIs securely digitize and automate corporate payment and trade transaction processes – including a detailed audit trail – in an effort to better detect fraud.

identitii will integrate its verification engine, Integrity, and its permission data sharing capabilities into Blue Prism’s Digital Workforce, which is used by businesses to automate complex work processes. This will help businesses better organize and verify the data required in typically manual, time-consuming processes like cross-border corporate transactions, as well as provide for needed AML review and financial crimes sanctions checking.

“By combining our core strengths, we will enable our customers to achieve enhanced transparency and a complete audit trail of the provenance of information from Blue Prism’s digital workforce,” identitii CEO and co-founder Nick Armstrong said. “This will allow users to share information more securely, reduce the risk of information being tampered with and allow for detailed reporting.”

Blue Prism’s Digital Workforce enables businesses to automate tasks such as collection and management of documentation across multiple legacy systems. Businesses using the platform can leverage AI, machine learning, intelligent automation, and sentiment analysis to improve processes, share information more securely, and provide clearer, more detailed reporting for compliance purposes.

“Security, auditability and compliance can’t be an afterthought when thinking of automation,” David Moss, CTO and co-founder of Blue Prism said. “Working with identitii bolsters our ecosystem of security partners while providing our joint customers with the Digital Workforce they need to complete their digital transformation programs, which helps ensure that every transaction is safe and accounted for.”

Founded in 2014, identitii demonstrated its identitii Serra solution at FinovateFall 2017. identitii Serra is a permissioned, append-only, federated database designed for the financial industry. Using distributed ledger technology and relational and graph databases, identitii Serra enables FIs to exchange information in a way that is both secure and auditable.

identitii raised an undisclosed amount from The Lind Partners in January 2017. The company supports offices in Sydney, Australia, and in Singapore.

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ShopKeep Launches on Android to Broaden Hardware Options

ShopKeep Launches on Android to Broaden Hardware Options
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: ShopKeep POS

Point of sale technology provider ShopKeep is offering its small business clients more options this week. That’s because the company launched an Android version of its software.

The company’s plan with the new Android version of the ShopKeep Register app is to broaden the hardware choices for small and independent business owners. ShopKeep currently serves more than 25,000 independent retailers and restaurants and aims to lower startup costs for entrepreneurs, who can now buy a turnkey hardware solution for $499.

Until today’s announcement, the New York-based company had deployed its app exclusively on Apple’s iOS platform. ShopKeep, which originally partnered with First Data in Q1 2017, is piloting the Android launch on First Data’s Clover Mini device. It will be available on the larger Clover Station in the third quarter of this year. ShopKeep also plans to leverage additional partnerships to deploy its Register app on other devices later this year.

“Extending ShopKeep to Android-based hardware platforms ensures that both our customers and partners have access to the full range of device options available in the market,” said Michael DeSimone, ShopKeep CEO. “We are very excited to deploy our solution on the Clover platform as a first step in expanding the availability of ShopKeep in the market, and plan to extend our reach onto several hardware platforms through the back half of 2018.”

ShopKeep founder Jason Richelson demoed the point-of-sale platform at FinovateSpring 2012. The company supports more than 289 million transactions annually and has processed $7 billion in transaction volume since it was founded in 2008. Last month, ShopKeep expanded its payment processing capabilities to include TSYS‘ ProPay.

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Conversation.one Among U.S. Fintechs to Join Finastra’s FusionFabric.cloud Platform

Conversation.one Among U.S. Fintechs to Join Finastra’s FusionFabric.cloud Platform
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Conversation.one, Finastra

FinovateSpring Best of Show winner Conversation.one is among four U.S.-based fintechs that are joining Finastra’s FusionFabric.cloud open platform. Conversation.one, which offers a voice banking and chatbot building solution for banks and credit unions, will leverage FusionFabric.cloud’s developer environment to boost its technology’s deep learning capabilities.

“Accessing Finastra technology and APIs through the FusionFabric.cloud platform is extremely efficient. It brings additional value to our solutions and, importantly, to our clients,” Conversation.one CRO and co-founder Rachel Batish explained. “The platform gives us access to more than 9,000 financial institutions across the globe. Our goal over the next two years is to deliver the capability to build cross-channel conversational solutions in minutes to close to 30% of Finastra’s clients, so they become our customers as well.”

Also among FusionFabric.cloud’s latest round of early adopters this week were Tradle, a blockchain-based KYC solutions provider; Active Allocator, a digital asset allocation platform; and regtech solution provider for banks and insurance companies, GreenPoint Financial.

Chief Cloud Officer for Finastra Natalie Gammon pointed to the “broad financial service spectrum” available to fintechs via FusionFabric.cloud. “It means fintechs and developers can dramatically reduce build time for apps, bringing them to market faster. We see FusionFabric.cloud gathering significant pace, championing a collaborative ecosystem and changing the way the financial services industry develops and deploys software for the better,” Gammon said.

The news comes just days after Conversation.one announced that First Abilene Federal Credit Union, a Texas-based credit union with $71 million in assets and nearly 11,000 members, had leveraged Conversation.one’s technology to launch its Amazon Alexa Skills and Google Home Action offerings.

Conversation.one CEO Chen Levkovich credited First Abilene FCU with recognizing the potential of voice and chat technology to improve customer engagement. “First Abilene can now provide their members with a wider range of services, from multiple digital touch-points,” Levkovich said. “We are extremely excited to work with such an innovative team and we are looking forward to their expansion into additional channels.”

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Conversation.one demonstrated its build-once-deploy-anywhere platform for conversation apps at FinovateSpring 2018, winning Best of Show honors. Conversation.one’s solution enables banks and credit unions to build, deploy, and enhance Alexa Skills, Google Home Actions, FB Messenger Bots, as well as phone and texting intelligent assistants in a single process that takes as little as a few minutes.

Finastra, which formed via a merger between Misys (FinovateEurope 2017) and D+H last summer, has been gaining early adopters to its FusionFabric cloud open architecture since the fall and began 2018 with a trio of new platform users, as well as a partnership with Thomson Reuters as a data provider. A strategic alliance with Microsoft announced in March meant that the company’s enterprise-ready trusted cloud platform, Microsoft Azure, would underpin FusionFabric.cloud. Shortly afterward, Finastra announced another trio of APAC fintech companies that would leverage its solution to develop and deploy their apps.

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Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Entersekt, Finovate Global, Revolut

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.

MENA

  • Dubai’s mobile-only, millennial-focused digital bank Liv celebrates acquiring more than 10,000 new customers every month in its first year of operation.
  • Islamic banking technology provider Path Solutions recognized as vendor of choice for Sharia-based core banking platforms by IBS Intelligence.
  • Dubai-based insurtech startup Aqeed raises $18 million in fuding one month after launch.

Africa

  • Africa-based digital payments solution company Cellulant has raised $47.5 million in Series C funding.
  • Hypepotamous profiles South African authentication specialist Entersekt.
  • Wala, which leverages blockchain technology to power its mobile money solution, goes live for Android users in Uganda, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.

LATAM

  • Kyriba announces plans to boost investment in Latin America and help CFOs and treasurers modernize cash, risk, payments, and working capital optimization.
  • Morgan Stanley to buy $14 million  (50 million reais) in bonds from Brazilian online lender Geru Tecnologia e Servicos.
  • Forbes.com looks at the future of financial technology in Mexico

CEE

  • Polish Credit Office, the largest credit bureau in Central and Eastern Europe, to use blockchain technology from Billon to store and access credit histories of more than one million businesses and 24 million people.
  • Mirror, mirror, on the wall, which CEE country has the most fintech companies of all? According to Unicredit, Bulgaria wins the top spot with 70 registered and working firms.
  • Revolut hires former Lead Marketing Manager of Uber Romania, Irina Scarlat, as its new Country Manager for Revolt Romania.

Asia

  • EY Asean markets managing partner Liew Nam Soon discusses the growth of Vietnam’s fintech industry.
  • Singapore Business Review looks at how blockchain technology could revive Thailand’s trade finance sector.
  • Hong Kong’s fintech unicorn WeLab plans to be among the first companies to apply for a virtual banking license from Hong Kong Monetary Authority.

Top image designed by Freepik

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Bluefin Payment Systems, Conversation.one, GoodData, identitii, Interactions, QuantConnect, ShopKeep POS, Temenos

On Finovate.com

  • Conversation.one Among U.S. Fintechs to Join Finastra’s FusionFabric.cloud Platform.
  • ShopKeep Launches on Android to Broaden Hardware Options.
  • GoodData Launches GoodData Spectrum UI Tools.
  • identitii Forges New Partnership with Robot Automation Specialist Blue Prism.

Around the web

  • Interactions unveils enhanced IVA platform to deliver the omnichannel intelligent virtual assistant capabilities.
  • QuantConnect users now have access to Algorithm Framework, a tool that breaks down algorithmic trading strategies into core modules to make code reusable in the QuantConnect community.
  • Temenos announces launch of its Front Office Suite.
  • Bluefin partners with Paya to provide PCI-validated point-to-point encryption.

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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Personal Capital Exceeds $7 Billion AUM, Lands $15 Million Credit Extension

Personal Capital Exceeds $7 Billion AUM, Lands $15 Million Credit Extension
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Personal Capital

Wealth tech player Personal Capital surpassed a growth milestone this week, reaching $7 billion in assets under management. The company also announced it received a $15 million credit extension from Silicon Valley Bank, adding to the $25 million credit the bank offered Personal Capital in 2016.

Personal Capital balances its high-touch digital advisory services with freemium tools that help users track all of their investments in one place and measure their progress against their retirement goals. The company also offers access to registered personal financial advisors who offer tailored investment advice for a fee. While this model seems to have scaled relatively well since Personal Capital’s launch in 2009, the company’s assets under management have not grown as quickly as its competitors Betterment, which currently has $13.5 billion under management, and Wealthfront, which has $10 billion under management.

This news comes as the company wraps up one year of operation under new CEO, Jay Shah, who took over operations from the company’s founder and original CEO, Bill Harris. Before his appointment, Shah served in the roles of Personal Capital’s chief information officer and chief operating officer.

“Personal Capital was built on the idea that transparency and a consumer’s ability to have a holistic view of their finances can transform their financial life,” said Shah. “Our team has worked hard to make sure Americans have the visibility that is necessary to realize their investing, spending and saving goals. As Registered Investment Advisors, we remain committed to putting clients first and advocating for an industry-wide fiduciary standard. Clearly, that is resonating.”

Founded in 2009, Personal Capital most recently presented at FinovateSpring 2014 where it debuted One Click Investment Portfolios. Earlier this spring, the company began offering socially responsible tools that make it easy for investors to put money into causes that matter to them. Personal Capital has raised $240 million.

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Plaid Goes International

Plaid Goes International
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Plaid

Plaid, a company that has been called the plumbing of fintech, offers technology that allows apps to connect to users’ bank accounts. Today, the San Francisco-based company is making its first move to international territory– Plaid is launching in Canada.

Not only is Plaid’s full API suite available to Canadian developers, the company also added coverage for the region’s largest financial institutions, including Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, TD Canada Trust, Bank of Montreal, CIBC, and Tangerine. It also supports cross-border institutions such as American Express and Capital One.

This announcement comes after the company underwent a months-long beta test with a handful of its Canadian customers, including Drop and Wave. Access is now available to developers looking to launch in Canada and to U.S. developers seeking to expand their services to Canadian citizens.

Plaid has 100+ employees and offers 6 products, including Auth, an account authentication tool; Balance, which pulls account balance information in real-time; Identity, which leverages bank data to verify consumer identity; Transactions, which pulls bank statement data across banks; Assets, a verification of assets tool; and Income, a tool that validates a consumer’s income and verifies direct deposit data. Since it was founded in 2012, Plaid has analyzed more than 10 billion transactions.

Plaid has raised $59.3 million to date. At FinDEVr San Fransisco 2014, the company’s founder Zach Perret gave a presentation about leveraging the Plaid API for financial infrastructure. Plaid has been listed as a Forbes Fintech 50 honoree for three consecutive years and was named to CB Insights’ Fintech 250 list in June of last year.

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Tango Card Receives $35 Million

Tango Card Receives $35 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Tango Card

Digital rewards-as-a-service platform Tango Card may be doing a little dance today. That’s because the Seattle-based company just closed a $35 million round of funding, bringing its total funding to $54.8 million.

The growth equity investment comes from FTV Capital. Tango Card plans to use the funding to grow its Reward Delivery Platform and Rewards as a Service API, scale its Rewards Genius dashboard, offer new integrations, expand internationally, and boost hiring at its Seattle headquarters.

“Our mission is clear – make rewards easy to send and awesome to receive,” said David Leeds, CEO and founder of Tango Card. “In the past, incentive programs were highly manual and the results were difficult to track. Tango Card delivers an enterprise-friendly solution that is easy to integrate, customizable, and expansive in its catalog of rewards and incentive offerings, serving over 2,000 satisfied customers that trust and rely on us to help them scale their business.”

Founded in 2009, Tango Card helps companies recognize and reward employees, engage with existing customers, and motivate potential customers. The company demoed its Rewards-as-a-Service (RaaS) API at FinovateFall 2016. RaaS is comprised of multiple elements, including customer creation, account creation, funding, catalog support, ordering, and reporting. With these methods, customers can integrate a full rewards program into their app to incentivize consumer and employee behavior.

Leeds said that the company began searching for a growth equity partner last year. Given FTV’s similar vision and 20-year track record, Leeds said the firm was “the number one partner” on its list. Tango Card will also benefit from FTV’s Global Partner Network, which offers Tango Card a list of potential enterprise customers. As a part of today’s transaction, FTV’s Chris Winship and Robert Anderson will join Tango Card’s board of directors.

In the press release, Winship described the B2B prepaid space as “a $100 billion global market opportunity,” adding, “Tango Card provides an industry-leading solution that capitalizes on this shift to digital, enabling its enterprise clients to efficiently use rewards and incentives for numerous use cases and to achieve business goals such as driving employee engagement and retention, improving employee culture and wellness, and incentivizing customer activities.”

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Market EarlyBird Unveils Mobile App

Market EarlyBird Unveils Mobile App
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Market EarlyBird

Late last year, Market EarlyBird made its web app available as a desktop app in a secure wrapper on Windows. Less than six months later, the London-based fintech is unveiling a new mobile client for its “Safe, Smart Twitter for Finance” platform.

“More than 90% of our users run EarlyBird on their desktop,” Market EarlyBird CEO Danny Watkins explained. “However a recent industry survey has shown increasing numbers of traders are using their smartphones to conduct foreign exchange deals and we have also seen a significant demand from our customers, particularly some of the buy-side firms, for a mobile client.”

“So now users have access to their favorite features of EarlyBird such as extensive search, filtering, and alerting capabilities – wherever they are and with no compromise to any of the extensive compliance and privacy features,” Watkins said.

Market EarlyBird offers a read-only, anonymized Twitter service designed for financial markets professionals that enables them to spot trading opportunities and quickly identify potentially market-moving news before it makes the headlines. The platform helps satisfy compliance requirements by recording, logging, and timestamping Tweets as they appear – as well as including them in MiFiD II Transaction Reconstruction where appropriate. And by blocking users from tweeting and direct messaging, the platform satisfies one of the principal challenges for financial professionals using Twitter.

“We have heard anecdotally of traders using their mobile phones, or having an iPad alongside their trading terminal with public Twitter on it,” the company noted in a recent blog post titled, Why Twitter’s of little value to financial firms. “Almost certainly this breaches the bank’s rules,” the post read.

Available on both iOS and Android, Market EarlyBird’s mobile app maintains the same functionality as the desktop version, including Tweet curation tools, alerts for priority Tweets and Tweet monitoring for compliance purposes. The mobile app also readily syncs with the desktop version to provide a seamless customer experience wherever they are.

Founded in 2012, Market EarlyBird demonstrated its cloud-based Twitter platform at FinovateEurope 2017. The company’s platform is currently in use or being piloted by nearly half of the top 20 banks in the world, as well as several buy-side firms. Check out our profile of the company from last spring.

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