Finovate Global: Fintech News from the Periphery

Finovate Global: Fintech News from the Periphery
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ayondo, CustomerXPs, Finovate Global, Nubank

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

Africa

  • TechCrunch profiles Africa-focused microlender, Branch, which recently picked up an investment of $70 million.
  • IT News Africa takes a look at the demand for “senior leaders” in Africa’s growing fintech industry.
  • International money transfer firm PaySend partners with Access Bank Nigeria

CEE

  • Polish Financial Supervision Authority signs MoU with Hong Kong Monetary Authority to encourage fintech collaboration.
  • U.K.-based cross border payments company Ebury opens first office in Bucharest, Hungary. (In Hungarian.)
  • Crowdfundinsider notes the surge in number of registered fintechs in Lithuania courtesy of report from Invest Lithunia.

Asia

  • ayondo celebrates being the first fintech to list in Singapore.
  • Sri Lanka’s largest bank, Bank of Ceylon, to deploy anti-money laundering solution from CustomerXP.
  • Central Bank of Malaysia establishes open API implementation group to develop standards for financial sector.

MENA

  • World Finance Magazine awards Temenos Best Islamic Banking & Finance Software Solution at 2018 Islamic Finance Awards.
  • RAKBANK, also known as The National Bank of Ras Al Khaimah, launches contactless cash withdrawal facility for its more than 170 NFC-enabled ATMs.
  • Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) signs MoU with Middle East Venture Partners to support development of the area’s capital technology ecosystem.

LATAM

  • Nubank Challenges Brazil’s Big Banks in Wake of $150 Million Funding Round.
  • Mexico enacts legislation to regulate its fintech sector.
  • Colombian roboadvisor Ualet wins honors as Latin America’s Most Innovative Startup at industry event sponsored by Finnovista.

Top image designed by Freepik

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Nubank Challenges Brazil’s Big Banks in Wake of $150 Million Funding Round

Nubank Challenges Brazil’s Big Banks in Wake of $150 Million Funding Round
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Nubank

The startup that made headlines recently for its antitrust complaint against some of its country’s largest banks is the same fintech that raked in a major investment from a group of investors earlier this month.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Nubank has charged Brazil’s big banks with hindering competition in financial services, specifically in the credit card space where Nubank has been making inroads . And now Brazil’s antitrust watchdog, Cade, is on the case. According to Reuters, the five biggest Brazilian banks hold 85 percent of assets in the country’s highly concentrated banking system.

The investigation into Nubank’s complaint is the second time this month that the company has made fintech headlines. Only a few weeks ago Nubank announced receiving $150 million in new funding in a round led by DST Global Investment Partners. Nubank founder and CEO David Velez noted at the time the company had been “cash flow positive since 2017” and that the funding would “serve to further strengthen our balance sheet to support the accelerated growth we have seen since launch.”

“In a little less than four years, more than 13 million Brazilians have applied to become a Nubank customer, a reflection of how ready consumers were to welcome new alternatives to the significantly concentrated Brazilian banking market,” he added. “We look forward to expanding our reach and product offering to many millions more in the years ahead.”

The Series E also featured participation from current investors Founders Fund, Redpoint Ventures, Ribbit Capital LP, and QED. New investors Dragoneer Investment Group and Thrive Capital Partners joined the round, as well.

In addition to its equity capital of $330 million, Nubank received a $137 million (R$455 million) line of credit from Goldman Sachs last year. The company, which won regulatory approval to operate as a bank in January, was named to the KPMG/H2 Ventures’ Fintech 100 in 2017, and also unveiled its new digital account offering to go along with its credit card business.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Nubank participated in our developers conference, FinDEVr New York 2016. At the event, Nubank co-founder and CTO Edward Wible and Lead Software Engineer Lucas Cavalcanti presented Our Money, Our Rulebook, a discussion of how the company built an accounting system in house based on data science modeling, real time customer visibility, guaranteed conservation of money, and customer account histories.

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Pindrop Introduces New Biometric Solution: Tongueprinting

Pindrop Introduces New Biometric Solution: Tongueprinting
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Pindrop Security

Update 4/2: It appears as if Pindrop got started on April Fool’s fun a little early this year. If you missed the joke, the company’s website still features their “latest biometric “solution.”

If you felt the urge to check the date to make sure today was not the first of April when reading the news of Pindrop’s latest biometric breakthrough, don’t worry. You’re probably not alone.

FinTechFuture’s Antony Peyton reports that the Atlanta-based anti-fraud and authentication specialist has unveiled Tongueprinting, a technology that analyses every person’s unique tongue as its newest biometric engine. FinTechFutures is Finovate’s sister publication.

The idea is for Tongueprinting to stop fraudsters from taking over legitimate accounts by spoofing the call centre with automated bots, social engineering, and knowledge-based authentication questions. Tongueprinting will also help companies build a “frictionless customer experience that are fun, taste good and are easy as a lick of the tongue”.

Vijay Balasubramaniyan, CEO and cofounder, Pindrop, said: “Tongueprinting not only adds an extra layer of security and authentication, it increases the opportunities to generate additional antibodies leading to a healthier user over time.”

According to the firm, the technology analyses thousands of tiny bumps called papillae, as well as factors such as shape, texture, size, spacing of buds and the behaviour of the lick.

Pindrop said it takes “only seconds” – lick your phone, and authentication is achieved. The tongue “lives in your mouth” (we know), and is a “protected unit”, that is safe from external elements avoiding challenges facing other biometrics like frostbite, pink eye and laryngitis.

The firm also cited research by scientists at the University of Arizona, which found that cell phones carry ten times more bacteria than most toilet seats.

Pindrop research shows that licking your phone on average 47 times a day to unlock it, reduces the build-up of bacteria and “ultimately leads to healthier phone owners”.

The company was founded in 2011 and is venture-backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Citi Ventures, Felicis Ventures, CapitalG, GV, and IVP. Pindrop demonstrated its Fraud Detection System at FinovateFall 2012.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BioCatch, Darwinex, Enveil, Lendio, Nubank, Palo Alto Software, Passport, Sberbank, Temenos

On Finovate.com

  • Nubank Challenges Brazil’s Big Banks in Wake of $150 Million Funding Round.

Around the web

  • West Virginia city Beckley introduces mobile parking app, Passport Parking, powered by Passport.
  • Diginomica features Temenos CTO Dharmesh Mistry in discussion on the importance of core banking renewal.
  • Darwinex launches new performance fee structure, Darwinian Dividends.
  • Lendio opens franchise in Charlotte, North Carolina.
  • The Paypers interviews BioCatch VP, Frances Zelazny.
  • Business News Daily profiles Palo Alto Software’s LivePlan.
  • Enveil wins Cybersecurity Innovator of the Year and Best of Howard County at Maryland Cyber Awards 2018.
  • Sberbank acquires 60% stake in dialog enterprise corporate messenger developer, Dialog.

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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3dcart Picks Payoneer for New Cross-Border Payments Partnership

3dcart Picks Payoneer for New Cross-Border Payments Partnership
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Payoneer

SEO-friendly e-commerce platform 3dcart will leverage technology from Payoneer to “transform” its cross-border paymenst process to merchants around the world. Through the new partnership, 3dcart will rely on the Payoneer platform’s cross-border functionality, prompt payment processing, and flexible payouts to send payments to more than 200 countries in more than 150 currencies.

“Our mission is to empower businesses to grow globally by enabling them to easily and digitally send payments to their payees all over the world,” Scott Galit, Payoneer CEO, explained, “without having to worry about the complexities and regulations of executing cross-border payments. We look forward to working with 3dcart to open up new global opportunities for their business,” Galit said.

Florida-based 3dcart provides order management software, built-in blogging, email marketing tools, more than 100 mobile-ready themes and 24×7 technical support to help retailers and internet marketers drive online traffic and sales to their stores. In choosing Payoneer, the company said it wanted a solution that would make it easier for their merchants to accept payments globally and called Payoneer “an ideal choice.”

“We’re excited to include Payoneer as an integrated payment method in the 3dcart platform, especially because we have sellers all over the world,” 3dcart COO Jimmy Rodriguez said. “Our clients need a reliable, flexible means of accepting international payments, and Payoneer aligns perfectly with that.”

Founded in 2005 and headquartered in New York City, Payoneer began the year with news that it would power local payments for social navigation specialist Waze’s Carpool service. The company, with more than four million users of its solutions, picked up an investment from China Broadband Capital back in December. Last fall, Payoneer was named to the Inc. 5,000 roster of fastest growing private companies in the U.S. In addition to the businesses that use Payoneer’s cross-border payments platform, companies like Airbnb, Amazon, Getty Images, and Google also take advantage of Payoneer’s mass payout services.

Payoneer demonstrated its Commercial Account at FinovateAsia 2013. The account enables businesses and individuals around the world to receive funds from a global network of corporate companies. Account holders can access funds via low cost withdrawals to bank accounts, prepaid debit with instant spending and ATM access, as well as through a transfer to local eWallets in certain locations.

 

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Bambu Goes Global, Launches London Office, Adds Technical Talent

Bambu Goes Global, Launches London Office, Adds Technical Talent
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bambu

The news that robo advisor Bambu has opened a new office in London and won its first American client is a reminder that, in fintech, when the going is good, the good go global.

“We would like to announce a new client project based in America that we landed recently,” the Finovate Best of Show winning company reported in its blog Thursday morning. “We are looking forward to working with them on building a robo solution for their region and will update you all with more details as we get closer to launching it.”

Bambu also announced that the company will open its new London office in April at Level39, Europe’s largest fintech accelerator space. The company said that the new offices are part of the “Bambu’s long-term growth strategy to offer our services and expertise on a global scale.”

Recently recognized as one of Singapore’s hottest startups, Bambu is a B2B robo advisor that helps businesses make wealth management services a part of their digital transformation. Bambu’s robo advisory provides users with automated, technology-augmented and algorithm-based portfolio management. The company offers Intelligent Advisor, a solution for private banks and wealth managers; a white-label robo advisory service geared toward banks, asset managers, and insurance companies; and the Bambu API developer hub, an API library of independent modules that provides developers with the tools necessary to add functionality to the robo advisor platform.

This week the company also took the time to welcome a quartet of new members to the team. In addition to a new Managing Director in Europe, Nick Wakefield, Bambu will enhance its AI, design, and front-end development efforts with the appointments of Chen Jie Yang, Hui Min Lee, and Tino Sambora, respectively.

Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Singapore, Bambu demonstrated its People Like Me machine learning model that helps users identify the financial goals and build a strategy to meet them at FinovateAsia 2017. The presentation by co-founders Ned Phillips (CEO) and Aki Ranin (COO) earned the company a Best of Show award from our audience. Bambu has raised more than $1 million in funding and includes Franklin Templeton Investments and Wavemaker Partners (part of the Draper Venture Network) among its investors.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Avaloq, Bambu, FIS, IdentityMind Global, Payoneer, SuperMoney, Thomson Reuters

On Finovate.com

  • Bambu Goes Global, Launches London Office, Adds Technical Talent.
  • 3dcart Picks Payoneer for New Cross-Border Payments Partnership.

Around the web

  • Thomson Reuters enhances the investment portfolio risk management functionality of its Eikon solution by integrating MSCI’s RiskMetrics technology.
  • Avaloq announces status as founding partner of FinTech Scotland.
  • IdentityMind Global collaborates with digital shopping platform, Fluz Fluz, to boost KYC and AML compliance.
  • CNH Industrial Capital America (CNH) chooses FIS’ asset finance solution to manage its commercial contract and lease portfolio.
  • SuperMoney surpasses $500 million in loan requests processed since launch in April 2017.

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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$500 Million Secondary Investment Boosts Credit Karma’s Valuation to $4 Billion

$500 Million Secondary Investment Boosts Credit Karma’s Valuation to $4 Billion
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Credit Karma, Funding

San Francisco-based Credit Karma received a $500 million boost today from Silver Lake. Through a secondary investment process, the technology investing company is taking a significant minority stake from existing investors in the consumer credit monitoring and financial health startup through a secondary investment process. Founder and CEO Kenneth Lin will remain the largest shareholder. Additional terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Unlike a primary funding round, Credit Karma will not receive any proceeds from the sale and will not issue new shares as a part of the deal. It will, however, benefit from a 23% increase in valuation, making it worth around $4 billion. As TechCrunch explained, the move may be beneficial in placating investors and employees who are eager to cash out their equity, as well as help postpone an IPO.

Lin, who cofounded the company in 2007, said, “As we planned for the future and our continued growth, we sought a partner that could support our growth trajectory and provide existing investors an opportunity to lock in some of the rewards they’ve earned for their support and hard work.”

Silver Lake Managing Partner, Mike Bingle, will join Credit Karma’s Board of Directors. In the press release, he cited multiple reasons for investing in Credit Karma, including the company’s “cutting-edge technology” and its “unwavering focus on long-term partnerships” with both members and financial institutions.

While it’s best known as a consumer-facing tool to help users check their credit for free, Credit Karma’s functionality extends far beyond credit scores, credit card offers, and loan comparisons. Last November, the company launched a new automotive information center where members can manage and organize their vehicle-related finances and information. And in late 2016, Credit Karma unveiled Credit Karma Tax, a free online tax filing service that, thanks to a partnership with American Express, lets users opt to receive their tax refund in advance. The company even has a tool to help return unclaimed money to users.

Credit Karma has 80 million members across North America, almost half of which are millennials and 80% of which access the service via their mobile devices. The company has originated more than $40 billion in credit products including credit cards, personal loans, mortgages, automotive financing, and student loan refinancing. At FinovateSpring 2009, Lin demonstrated the company’s platform, which offers free credit reports from Equifax and TransUnion, and seeks to serve as a hub for users to monitor their financial health.

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FreeAgent Acquired by RBS

FreeAgent Acquired by RBS
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FreeAgent, Mergers & Acquisitions

Cloud accounting platform FreeAgent has agreed to a takeover bid from the Royal Bank of Scotland this week. CEO Ed Molyneux and the rest of the board have accepted the offer, which values FreeAgent at approximately $75 million (£53 million).

In a blog post announcement, Molyneux said that the acquisition will allow the company to progress toward its vision and improve the FreeAgent platform for both customers and partners. “As part of a larger organisation we want to accelerate our growth ambitions in the micro-business and accountancy practice space, as well as significantly improve our core product,” he added.

This agreement comes just over a year after FreeAgent began working with RBS. The two formed a distribution partnership last January in which RBS offered FreeAgent’s accounting software services to its small business clients. The deal will help both parties leverage new opportunities to offer a more integrated banking and accounting experience for small businesses since, as Molyneux said, “the lines between banking, accounting and tax are becoming increasingly blurred.”

After the deal is closed, FreeAgent will continue to operate business as usual. In a Q&A, Molyneux said the company has “no intention of significantly changing the way that [it does] business with [its] customers.” FreeAgent shareholders will receive $1.70 (120 pence) per share. This represents an 86% premium to yesterday’s share price and a 43% premium to the IPO price of $1.19 (84 pence).

Founded in 2007, FreeAgent offers cloud accounting services for small businesses, an API for easy integration, and integrations with existing startups such as Basecamp, Stripe, PayPal, and Xpenditure. The company also has an offering for accountants and a fully-integrated payroll system.

Molyneux debuted FreeAgent’s Financial Health Insights at FinovateEurope 2013 in London. Since then, the company went public in 2016 and last month launched the Customer Sales Report, which allows businesses to see how much income they’ve received from each customer.

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Finicity Announces Full Integration with BeSmartee

Finicity Announces Full Integration with BeSmartee
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BeSmartee, Finicity

Digital mortgage marketplace provider BeSmartee has partnered with Finicity to make the digital loan origination process easier for lenders and borrowers alike. The agreement will integrate Finicity’s Verification of Assets (VoA) solution into BeSmartee’s point-of-sale mortgage origination platform.

“Finicity is improving the lending process through superior data access, quality, and insights,” Finicity CEO Steve Smith said. “We’re proud to be working alongside BeSmartee to accelerate the digital loan process, improving efficiency for lenders and transparency for borrowers. Finicity’s technology leverages consumer-permissioned data to improve accuracy, increase decisioning speed, and reduce fraud. This helps digitize and modernize the lending process for lenders and remove friction for prospective buyers.

Finicity’s Verification of Assets solution enables lenders to identify underwriting issues that could weigh on credit decisioning. The report includes data on multiple FIs and accounts, as well as information on account types, balances, and detailed transactions. VoA reports are delivered under the company’s Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA) framework to ensure consumer privacy and compliance with FCRA regulations.

Praising the company’s “great technology” and “great people,” BeSmartee co-founder Arvin Sahakian said the partnership was a major part of the company’s plan for growth. “Integrating with Finicity is a key step in helping us continue to provide exceptional services to our clients in the form of speed, accuracy and reliability within our best-of-breed mortgage origination point of sale platform.” Based in Huntington Beach, California and founded in 2008, BeSmartee uses big data and AI to provide a completely digital origination process. The company’s products include BeSmartee Mortgage (consumer loan POS), BeSmartee TPO (wholesale lending), and BeSmartee Solar (solar lending platform). BeSmartee demoed its technology at FinovateSpring 2017.

Finicity’s partnership with BeSmartee comes amid a flurry of news for the real-time data aggregation and insights specialist. Last week the company announced a partnership with Ellie Mae that will integrate its digital asset verification solution with Ellie Mae’s Encompass platform. Earlier this month, Finicity teamed up with MortgageHippo to streamline the company’s verification process in mortgage lending, and worked out a deal with Advanced Data to resell its verification reports as part of the company’s mortgage lending fraud prevention toolkit.

Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, Finicity demonstrated its Credit Decisioning reports, Verification of Income (VoI) and Verification of Assets (VoA), at FinovateFall 2017. The company has raised more than $50 million in funding and includes fellow Finovate alum, Experian, among its investors.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BRIDGEi2i, Credit Karma, Dynamics, Finastra, Finicity, FreeAgent, iSignthis, Jack Henry, Kabbage, Kensho, Larky, Payfone, Trusona, Zighra

On Finovate.com

  • Finicity Announces Full Integration with BeSmartee.
  • $500 Million Secondary Investment Boosts Credit Karma’s Valuation to $4 Billion.

Around the web

  • Jack Henry’s banking division announces that seven banks will implement its Core Director core processing platform.
  • FlexTrade to integrate Kensho into its FlexTRADER EMS real-time event feed.
  • Finastra hires new Chief Product and Technology Officer, Eli Rosner.
  • iSignthis subsidiary, iSignthis eMoney, forges payment aggregation agreement with American Express Australia.
  • Best of Show winner Trusona joins ForgeRock’s identity management platform.
  • Gartner recognizes BRIDGEi2i with an Honorable Mention in the Magic Quadrant for Data and Analytics Service Providers, Worldwide.
  • Kabbage shows loan growth via the mobile channel, with 17% of all SMB loans and 15% of total dollars accessed via its platform coming through mobile.
  • Find Biometrics interviews Deepak Dutt, president and CEO of Zighra.
  • Payfone on track to authenticate 19 billion transactions for Fortune 100 clients in 2018.
  • Fort Dodge Family Credit Union to implement Larky Engagement Platform.

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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Gro Solutions to Streamline Onboarding for Congressional FCU

Gro Solutions to Streamline Onboarding for Congressional FCU
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Gro Solutions

With more than $900 million in assets, Congressional FCU has selected Gro Solutions’ Gro Checkout to streamline its digital onboarding process. A feature of the company’s Digital Sales Platform, Gro Checkout helps banks and credit unions better meet the expectations of mobile-first banking customers with a simple, intuitive, and friction-free application experience.

“Reducing friction in the application process lowers abandonment and leads to a better user experience, more potential members, and ultimately more sales growth,” Gro Solutions CEO David Eads said. “With Gro, Congressional Federal Credit Union can ensure a high quality of service via the digital channel, providing its members with a great experience every time, no matter their need.”

For Congressional FCU, the adoption of Gro Checkout will help the credit union better onboard customers in general and mobile-first customers in specific. By making it easier for customers to access specifically what they want, and only requiring the minimum necessary in terms of customer data, Gro Checkout can help the financial institution better serve and grow its 47,000-strong membership.

“When our members come to us through the digital channel, their needs can be varied, and we wanted a way to serve them that didn’t require them to wait or go through unnecessary steps,” Manager of eCommerce for Congressional FCU Devin Calef said. “With Gro, we can connect our members directly to the product they’re interested in, gathering only the necessary information along the way so it doesn’t slow down the application process, providing a smooth experience for our members from beginning to end.”

The partnership with Congressional FCU is the second major headline for Gro Solutions this month. The company announced earlier in March that it was bringing its Gro Checkout solution to 4Front CU, a Michigan-area credit union with more than $488 million in assets. “We sought a true, 100 percent digital process, and we’ve found it with Gro,” 4Front CU eServices manager Bryson Wilbert said in a statement when the deal was reported. In January, Gro announced that Surety Bank, a Florida FI with $106 million in assets, was implementing Gro Checkout in support of its digital transformation efforts.

Founded in 2015, Gro Solutions demonstrated an extension of the Gro Digital Sales Platform at FinovateFall 2017. The company has raised more than $4 million in funding and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.

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