Braintree’s New Tool Facilitates Integrated Payments

Braintree’s New Tool Facilitates Integrated Payments
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Braintree

PayPal-owned Braintree is stepping up its game this week. The company has launched Braintree Extend, a solution that allows merchants to offer a more integrated payment experience across multiple partners.

This means that merchants who want to partner with transaction services firms, rewards and loyalty providers, and contextual commerce companies can do so while maintaining a seamless user experience. And because Braintree Extend works with Braintree Vault, merchants can tokenize and store payment information without putting their clients’ data at risk.

In a blog post announcement, Azita Habibi Sr. Manager of Braintree Development described the new release as the “next phase” in the company’s mission “to become the Commerce Operating System for… merchants and partners.”

Braintree is already working with Yelp on its card-linked loyalty program, Yelp Cash Back, which is used by thousands of merchants. Leveraging Braintree Extend, Yelp is able to give users real-time cash rebates at the point of sale after making a purchase at a participating merchant. And Bandsintown, a music performance and discovery platform, is leveraging Braintree Extend for contextual commerce. The platform enables users to discover and select shows and purchase tickets without leaving the Bandsintown platform.

PayPal acquired Braintree in 2013 for $800 million. Braintree most recently showcased Venmo Touch at FinovateSpring 2013. Last week, the company unveiled Transaction-Level Fee Reports, a new reporting capability to help merchants understand and analyze processing fees at a per-transaction level. And last September, the company celebrated four years of operation under PayPal.

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Peoples Trust Company Picks Finastra for Commercial and Consumer Lending

Peoples Trust Company Picks Finastra for Commercial and Consumer Lending
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finastra

Peoples Trust Company of Saint Albans, Vermont has picked Finastra’s Total Lending solution to better manage its commercial and consumer lending processes. The solution includes Finastra’s Fusion LaserPro, Fusion DecisionPro, and Fusion CreditQuest products, and will help Peoples Trust Company increase efficiency and improve the customer experience from origination through booking. Integrated into the bank’s core system, Finastra’s technology will speed the lending process for borrowers and give the bank improved compliance and risk management.

“Finastra’s suite of integrated lending products provides a comprehensive and flexible platform that spans the entire lending workflow, from start to finish,” Finastra CEO Nadeem Syed explained. “By automating once manual processes and cutting out complexity, the Peoples Trust Company will be able to offer an improved experience to their borrowers and focus greater attention on what matters: building deeper customer relationships.”

Angela M. Poirier, CRCM SVP, Chief Loan Specialist for Peoples Trust Company emphasized customer engagement in her statement as well, noting that a service that kept customer needs front and center was key to the decision to choose Finastra. “When it came to replacing our current lending platform, we knew we needed a partner that could also deliver on that promise,” Poirier said.

Formed last year as the result of a merger between Misys and D+H, Finastra is one of the largest financial services technology companies in the world with more than 10,000 employees and more than 9,000 customers in 130 countries. With more than $2 billion in revenues, Finastra is headquartered in London, and is partnered with 48 of the top 50 global banks.

Earlier this month, Finastra announced that the Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade for Vietnam (Vietcombank) had selected its technology to drive its digital transformation. In February, the company unveiled its tailored Fusion Treasury solution for Russia and the CIS, and announced that South Africa’s Absa Bank would go live with its CLS platform, PAYplus. Finastra began 2018 with the acquisition of FX e-trading platform, Olfa Soft SA, and the launch of the Future of Banking Center of Excellence at Cyberport in Hong Kong.

Prior to forming Finastra, Misys demonstrated its FusionFabric.cloud development environment at FinovateEurope 2017. The company has since welcomed a number of early adopters to its open architecture ecosystem including APAC-based InfoTrie, HedgeSPA, and Paretix. The company’s FusionFabric.cloud received a technological boost from Microsoft earlier this month, when the Redmond, WA software company announced that its cloud platform, Microsoft Azure, will underpin Finastra’s solution.

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FinovateEurope Demo Videos Live

FinovateEurope Demo Videos Live
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateEurope 2018

Did you miss out on all of the fun at FinovateEurope earlier this month? Don’t worry, we’ve got your back. We’ve just released all of the videos from the 68 companies that demoed their fintech on stage.

All of the 7-minute demos are available to stream and download for free at Finovate.com. And if you don’t know where to begin, we’ll get you started with the seven demos that won Best of Show at the event.

Backbase

Be-IQ

CREALOGIX

iProov

Meniga

Microblink

W.UP

Ready for more? Be sure to register for FinovateSpring, happening May 8 through 11 in Santa Clara, California.

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ActivePath Acquired by Broadridge

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

Email engagement company ActivePath will soon broaden the scope of how it transforms customer engagement. That’s because the New York-based company has been acquired by Broadridge Financial Solutions, a communications, technology, and data analytics firm. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 2007, ActivePath originally offered its flagship ActiveMail solution but created a more robust email banking offering after merging with PowerInbox in late 2012. The company allows banks, brokers, and other billers to quickly compose and send website-like, interactive experiences via emails created using HTML. Under the new agreement with Broadridge, ActivePath will offer omni-channel capabilities including SMS, social, audio UI, chatbots, and personal cloud solutions.

(above) With ActivePath, organizations can edit mass emails using drag and drop editing

In the press release, President of Broadridge Customer Communications, Doug DeSchutter commented on how the company would benefit from bringing on ActivePath. “In ActivePath, we gain a founding management team with rich entrepreneurial experience and a proven track record of innovation, and we are delighted they are joining the Broadridge family,” DeSchutter said.

Broadridge began as the brokerage services division of ADP in 1962 and became independent in 2007. The company is headquartered in New York and employs approximately 10,000 people in 16 countries.

ActivePath debuted ActiveMail at FinovateFall 2010. Before today’s acquisition, the company had raised $13.3 million. Avi Weiss is CEO.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: ActivePath, Braintree, Compass Plus, Finastra, Gro Solutions, Insuritas, Klarna, Pindrop Security, Temenos, Thomson Reuters

On Finovate.com

  • Peoples Trust Company Picks Finastra for Commercial and Consumer Lending.
  • Gro Solutions to Streamline Onboarding for Congressional FCU.
  • Braintree’s New Tool Facilitates Integrated Payments.

Around the web

  • Nabil Bank chooses Compass Plus Processing Centre.
  • Thomson Reuters collaborates with Salesforce to help fight financial crime.
  • World Finance Magazine awards Temenos “Best Islamic Banking & Finance Software Solution” at 2018 Islamic Finance Awards.
  • Klarna and MyOnlineStore partner up to offer all-in-one online commerce solution.
  • Pindrop to provide Phoneprinting for online retailer Shop Direct.
  • St. Paul FCU teams up with Insuritas to launch member-owned, digital insurance agency.

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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Malauzai to Power Mobile Banking Tech for Axiom

Malauzai to Power Mobile Banking Tech for Axiom
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Malauzai

Community banking app provider Malauzai announced today it has been tapped by Florida’s second-largest community bank.

Under the agreement, the Austin-based company will design and deploy a mobile app for Axiom Bank’s AxiomGo, a platform that serves the underbanked community. The digital, checkless checking account provides a bilingual alternative to prepaid cards and traditional checking. AxiomGo is a low-fee way for users to pay bills, pay a friend, deposit checks, and transfer funds on a mobile-first user interface.

The bank’s goal is to give users an app to manage all banking activity from their mobile phone. As Ron Strand-Sorrell, executive vice president and chief operating officer for Axiom Bank explained, “essentially we wanted to give them the bank in the palm of their hand.” He added, “For many of our customers, this is their first experience with the U.S. banking system and we wanted to ensure the app was intuitive and brought value to their daily lives.”

Upon launching the app, Axiom expanded the capacity of its call center to accommodate an increase in call center activity. However, while users of AxiomGo have increased 300% since launching last December, the number of calls to the call center have significantly decreased because of the robust in-app help capabilities.

“It’s important that underserved markets gain access to traditional banking services, said Robb Gaynor, chief product officer for Malauzai. “The bank designed the app to eliminate many of the barriers that often make it more difficult for this market to take advantage of banking services, and in turn has enabled Axiom to better serve its current customers, while also reaching a new audience and expanding its footprint.”

Founded in 2009, Malauzai last demoed at FinovateSpring 2016, where it debuted MOX Pay powered by Visual App Builder. In May of last year, the company teamed with Vantiv to leverage the company’s Ondot CardControl tool.

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TESOBE’s Open Bank Project Powers API for Banking Startup

TESOBE’s Open Bank Project Powers API for Banking Startup
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Open Bank Project

The Open Bank Project, an open source API solution, announced this week it will power an API for a London-based banking startup.

This week, the bank, who requested to be unnamed, released the first version of its API to give developers access to its infrastructure. This allows developers to take advantage of the bank’s compliance, risk management, and customer service offerings. The bank currently has 24 new apps eligible for its internal app store.

Thanks to the Open Bank Project, the bank’s API is PSD2 compliant– a key to taking advantage of financial services opportunities in Europe.

Headquartered in Germany, the Open Bank Project was founded in 2005. The company’s CEO Simon Redfern, along with COO Ismail Chaib, demoed the API engine at FinovateEurope a few weeks ago in London. In late January, The Open Bank Project announced it was powering Santander’s first hackathon and in May of last year, the company partnered with Societe Generale to launch the bank’s internal hackathon.

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Endor Raises $45 Million in ICO

Endor Raises $45 Million in ICO
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Endor, Funding

Predictive analytics specialist Endor has raised $45 million in an initial coin offering that was launched just last month. This fast funding is a reminder that ICOs as a funding source for startups will be one of the big fintech stories of 2018.

“During the pre-sale we received a staggering amount of participation requests,” the company’s homepage reads. “Our motivation was to allow as many contributors as possible to participate, which was achieved by significantly limiting the individual contribution amounts, This torrent of support allowed us to reach our pre-defined cap of $45 million.”

More than a funding source, Endor’s ICO will also be the key to accessing the company’s predictive analytics platform. Known as “Google for predictive analytics,” Endor combines massive computing and MIT-developed proprietary social physics technology to create a predictive analytics platform that responds to questions asked in plain language with automated accurate predictions. This is accomplished without requiring coding experience or expertise in data science. And after the company’s successful ICO, all that businesses will need in order to take advantage of the new technology is a pocket full of EDR, the company’s cryptocurrency tokens.

Left to right: Endor Chairman Doron Alter and COO Inbal Tirosh demonstrating the company’s predictive analytics platform at FinovateFall 2017.

The company has developed the ENDOR.coin protocol to help “democratize data science,” specifically by making predictive analytics more accessible to SMEs. Endor issued 1.5 billion EDR tokens, with 20% of the total available as part of the ICO. The company says that 40% of the tokens generated will be used to finance R&D efforts. The tokens were initially priced at $0.27 USD. In his review of the offering at CryptoCompare, Ricardo Bago points out that companies will pay in tokens for prediction analysis of their data and are compensated with EDR token “when insights derived from their data are being used for predictions.” This, Bago suggests, helps “incentivize the contribution and maintenance of high-quality data streams.”

For a deep dive into the data science behind, social physics and the Endor protocol, check out the white paper from Altshuler and Pentland published earlier this year. The technology promises:

  • Constantly-expanding catalogue of predictions
  • Do-it-yourself API for advanced users
  • Automatic fusion of private and public data
  • Guaranteed data privacy
  • “Predictions by the people for the people”

Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, Endor demonstrated the company’s predictive analytics platform at FinovateFall 2017. Endor was named a Cool Vendor in 2017 by Gartner, and a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. The company was featured earlier this month in a profile on UTB (Use the Bitcoin). Yaniv Altshuler is co-founder and CEO, having taken the helm from Doron Alter who transitioned to the position of company Chairman at the beginning of the year. Endor includes Coca-Cola, Twitter, and Mastercard among its clients and is partnered with fellow Finovate alum, Market Prophit.

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TD Bank to Deploy nCino’s Bank Operating System

TD Bank to Deploy nCino’s Bank Operating System
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: nCino

Chalk up another big win for nCino. The Wilmington, North Carolina-based fintech has signed a deal with TD Bank that will put nCino’s Bank Operating System to work for the bank’s corporate and commercial lending divisions.

The technology, demonstrated at FinovateEurope 2017 last year, is already live with employees in TD Bank’s TD Equipment Finance department. nCino’s platform will give prospective business borrowers faster decisions on their loan requests, as well as add transparency to the loan process. The Bank Operating System will also enable the bank’s credit risk management, sales, and underwriting professionals to benefit from insights into TD Bank’s commercial lending portfolio and better collaborate on deals. Built on top of Salesforce.com, nCino’s Bank Operating system features CRM, loan origination, account opening, workflow, content management, business process management, customer engagement, and instant reporting all on a single platform.

“It’s great to see employees at TD Bank already experiencing many of the benefits of the nCino Bank Operating System – from greater efficiency to increased productivity to an elevated customer experience,” nCino CEO Pierre Naudé said. “We see this collaboration between our organizations as a natural fit and are very excited to continue strengthening and expanding our partnership with this innovative top 10 U.S. bank.”

Anthony Sasso, president of TD Equipment Finance, added, “As the bank continues to deliver on its vision to transform commercial lending, it’s essential that we have the best tools and technology to help our customers achieve their financial objectives.” TD Bank has more than nine million customers and 1,200+ locations in the American northeast and mid-Atlantic regions, as well as in metropolitan D.C., the Carolinas, and Florida. Headquartered in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, TD Bank is a member of TD Bank Group and is a subsidiary of The Toronto-Dominion Bank of Toronto, Canada.

News of nCino’s partnership with TD Bank is the company’s second major announcement in March. Earlier this month, the fintech partnered with the Yorkshire Building Society in the U.K., which will use nCino’s Bank Operating System to enhance its corporate lending efforts. Also this month, nCino announced that it was teaming up with consulting firm, Enforce, to help community-based FIs adopt cloud-based solutions. The company began 2018 with a pair of big headlines: an investment round led by Salesforce Ventures that took nCino’s total capital to more than $81 million, and a deal with the world’s largest credit union, Navy CU, with more than $87 billion in assets.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: ayondo, CustomerXPs, Endor, Malauzai, nCino, Open Bank Project, PayActiv

On Finovate.com

  • TESOBE’s Open Bank Project Powers API for Forty Seven Bank.
  • TD Bank to Deploy nCino’s Bank Operating System.
  • Malauzai to Power Mobile Banking Tech for Axiom.
  • Endor Raises $45 Million in ICO.

Around the web

  • ayondo celebrates being the first fintech to list in Singapore.
  • TD Bank leverages nCino’s Bank Operating System across corporate and commercial lending divisions.
  • CustomerXPs‘ Clari5 to power real-time AML solution for Bank of Ceylon.
  • PayActiv appoints COO.

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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FinovateMiddleEast Demo Videos Now Live

FinovateMiddleEast Demo Videos Now Live
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateMiddleEast 2018

Just a few weeks after returning from FinovateMiddleEast in Dubai, we’re ready to reveal the demo videos from the 14 presenting companies at the inaugural event in the Middle East region.

So if you are looking to re-live the action from your experience at the show, or see what you missed out on, now is a great opportunity to check out the demos to see what’s hot in fintech in the Middle East.

To get started, here’s a look at the demos from the three Best of Show winners from the event.

APPICS

Electronic IDentification

Ondot Systems

And, because FinovateMiddleEast was more than just demoes, check out this as bonus content of Jim Marous’ keynote presentation at the event:

As always, thanks to all the companies that demonstrated their technologies live on stage at FinovateMiddleEast 2018. We’ll see you next year!

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NetGuardians Bolsters Cybersecurity for Steward Bank

NetGuardians Bolsters Cybersecurity for Steward Bank
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: NetGuardians

Swiss cybersecurity specialist NetGuardians will bring its fraud fighting solutions to Zimbabwe’s Steward Bank.

“By signing up with NetGuardians, Steward Bank will not only benefit from our real-time fraud mitigation solution, but will also become part of the NetGuardians’ global community, sharing fraud mitigation best practice(s),” NetGuardians CEO Joël Winteregg said. “Together, they put Steward Bank at the forefront of fraud prevention, helping to keep its customers’ balances safe and its reputation sound.”

With NetGuardians’ technology Steward Bank will be able to monitor all user behavior in real-time for both its ebanking and mobile banking channels. The platform blocks atypical and suspicious behavior and sends alerts to the appropriate monitoring personnel. NetGuardians says their technology reduces the number of false positives by 80% and reduces fraud management time by 93%.

Steward Bank CEO Lance Mambondini pointed to the integration of Netguardians’ technology as an example of the promise and challenge for banks undergoing digital transformation. “Digitization opened up new channels for the bank and helped us grow. We needed a more effective and proactive system to monitor the subsequent increase in transactions and complexiy of the bank to prevent fraud,” Steward Bank CEO Lance Mambondiani said. “We picked NetGuardians because it is a solution made specifically for banks and is proven to cut fraud across all channels.” Steward Bank will integrate NetGuardians’ platform into its core banking system, T24, from Temenos.

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Yverdon-les-bains, Vaud, Switzerland, NetGuardians demonstrated its FraudGuardian solution at FinovateAsia 2016. FraudGuardian helps banks and FIs spot and identify fraudsters, and is especially effective in helping FIs limit the 70% of fraud that is internal. The solution monitors user activity across all channels, IT layers, and transactions and uses dynamic profiling, pattern-based intelligence, and predictive analytics to detect anomalous behavior and provide banks with the opportunity to take proactive steps.

Last month, NetGuardians announced an agreement with FirstOntario CU, integrating its anti-fraud solution with the credit union’s Temenos T24 core banking system. Back in December, NetGuardians kicked off a partnership with Masaref Business & Systems Consulting. This deal will make NetGuardian’s cybersecurity solutions more accessible to financial institutions in the Middle East.

Named to the Chartis RiskTech 100, NetGuardians has raised more than $14 million in funding (CHF 13.5 million) and includes Freemont Management, Swissom Ventures, Polytech Ecosystem Ventures, and MoneyTime Ventures among its investors.

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