TrueAccord Lands $22 Million to Humanize Debt Collection

TrueAccord Lands $22 Million to Humanize Debt Collection

Online debt collection service TrueAccord received $22 million in funding this week. Leading the round was Arbor Ventures. A mix of existing and new investors, including Arbor, Nyca Investment Partnership, Assurant Growth Investing, Caffeinated Capital Fund, Felicis Venture, TenOneTen and Crystal Towers, also participated. The round brings the company’s total funding to almost $34.5 million.

In an announcement, the company noted this comes after a period of “sustained and rapid growth”– between 2016 and 2017 TrueAccord grew its collection accounts by 2.5x. The funds will be used to support TrueAccord’s strategic growth initiatives, including product development, compliance functionality, client acquisition and retention, and hiring. Melissa Guzy, co-founder and managing partner of Arbor Ventures, said that TrueAccord’s “unique approach” is making a “positive impact” on the debt collections industry “by empowering many of the estimated 77 million people in debt, to get on a path to better financial health.”

TrueAccord was founded in 2013 as a debt recovery platform. The company has worked with more than 2 million people in debt by creating flexible payment solutions, helping businesses recover billions of dollars in lost revenue. TrueAccord’s clients include top 10 issuers, leading creditors, and companies such as Yelp! and LendUp. Since 2014, the company has facilitated more than $1.5 billion of debt repayment on its platform.

“It was the personal experience of dealing with a debt collector that made me realize the traditional collections industry was ripe for disruption with technology innovation and a more human approach,” said Ohad Samet, Chief Executive Officer of TrueAccord. “With changing consumer preferences, strong regulatory support for innovation, and clients who understand a customer-focus collection process is good for their business, we’re experiencing tremendous demand from the market. We are seizing this opportunity to use machine learning to humanize debt collection for good.”

Ohad Samet demoed the company’s SaaS solution at FinovateSpring 2015 along with CTO, Nadav Samet. TrueAccord landed a place on CB Insights’ Fintech 250 list this spring and contributor Jim Bruene featured TrueAccord in his piece, The Great Rewiring of Financial Services: Consumer Debt Collection.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • TrueAccord Lands $22 Million to Humanize Debt Collection
  • Rising in the East: Asian Fintech Startups Shine in Showcase
  • BOKU to Raise $60 Million Ahead of London IPO

Around the web

  • UBS Card Center leverages AI technology from FICO to lower fraud write-offs.
  • D3 Banking adds new payment options, flexible card controls to its digital banking platform.
  • Thomson Reuters introduces new set of MiFID II reference data capabilities available on its data and analytics platform, DataScope.
  • Prosper Reports Third Quarter Growth; Closes $1.5 Billion of Securitizations in 2017
  • AngelList picks Quid as a top machine learning company.
  • Lighter Capital partners with Intuit to launch $15M fund for QuickBooks developers.
  • Blackhawk Network Expands Partnership with eBay to Provide B2B Gift Card Solutions

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.

Token Forges Strategic Partnership with Envestnet | Yodlee

Token Forges Strategic Partnership with Envestnet | Yodlee

Token and Envestnet | Yodlee are combining their respective talents in PSD2-compliant payments and financial data aggregation to give banks in the EU a new, open-banking friendly, payments and data option. The partnership will leverage Token’s open banking operating system, TokenOS, which supports PSD2 compliant payments, including bill pay, e-commerce, B2B payments and money transfers, with Envestnet | Yodlee’s Financial Data Platform and Aggregation API. Via the API, banks will get access to the bank, card, investment, loan, reward and other financial account data required to support a variety of PFM, wealth, and debt management apps and services.

Making the case for the alliance, Token CEO and founder Steve Kirsch said, “When it comes to PSD2, developers are not going to support hundreds of unique bank APIs; they will only write to one common API, maybe two. This means that banks that create their own proprietary APIs risk not being able to deliver the variety of freedom that customers expect in the digital age.” Kirsch characterized the kind of open banking platform that banks should support as “easy, secure, interoperable, low cost and developer friendly.”

Envestnet | Yodlee SVP for EMEA and Australia Jason O’Shaughnessy underscored Kirsh’s observations on the importance of open banking. “Both Token and Envestnet | Yodlee believe that open data access is critical to enabling innovative tools that can help consumers improve their financial lives.”

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Token demonstrated its fully PSD2 compliant open banking solution at FinovateEurope 2017. The company also participated in our developer’s conference, presenting The Future of Payments Now at FinDEVr San Francisco 2015. Token was named to CB Insights’ Fintech 250 list in June, and began the year teaming up with information technology consulting and outsourcing company, VirtusaPolaris. Token has raised more than $18 million in funding, and includes EQT Ventures, Octopus Ventures, and OP Financial Group among its investors.

Acquired by Envestnet two years ago, Yodlee is a multiple-time Finovate Best of Show winner headquartered in Redwood City, California. The company took home top honors more recently for its demo of Financial Health Check financial wellness technology at FinovateFall 2017. A partnership with Home Credit India to digitize loan processing and an integration with Fannie Mae’s Desktop Underwriter Validation Service are among the company’s top headlines since the conference.

Envestnet’s technology and services are used by 16 of the 20 largest U.S. banks, 39 of the 50 largest wealth management and brokerage firms, and more than 500 of the largest Registered Investment Advisors. With a market capitalization of $2 billion, Envestnet trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “ENV.” The company is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Token Forges Strategic Partnership with Envestnet | Yodlee.

Around the web

  • ACI Worldwide to provide “technology backbone” for real-time payments platform designed by Payments Network Malaysia.
  • NCR partners with Samsung to launch new all-in-one POS commerce station, NCR Silver Quantum.
  • Grab chooses TransferTo to deliver real-time digital payments to its drivers in Southeast Asia.
  • Meniga wins London Design Awards for brand design experience.
  • PayPal’s TIO Networks suspends operations to protect TIO’s customers.
  • Kinecta FCU to Offer Mortgage Harmony’s CU RateReset products.
  • App Informers lists Credit Karma and Credit Sesame in list of top 5 Identity Monitoring Apps for 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.

Qumram Acquired By Digital Performance Management Firm, Dynatrace

Qumram Acquired By Digital Performance Management Firm, Dynatrace

Digital performance management company Dynatrace has acquired Qumram, a digital interaction audit solutions provider, for an undisclosed amount, reports Antony Peyton of Banking Technology (Finovate’s sister publication).

With the addition of Qumram’s technology and intellectual property, Dynatrace said it will provide the ability to visually replay a user session within its existing platform. Qumram’s product will be re-engineered and will form part of an expanded digital experience analytics offering that will be announced early next year.

Patrick Barnert, Qumram CEO, praised Dynatrace as a clear compliment to Qumram’s  technology. “Dynatrace is unique in its ability to not only monitor highly complex digital ecosystems but see every user transaction. In addition, their AI-powered analytics is amazing, The technology fit is identical to what we believe at Qumram, where every user’s experience is captured, analyzed, and able to be replayed on demand.”

Dynatrace CEO, John Van Siclen, said via the deal it will offer “advanced behavioral analytics that will combine session replay with our unique artificial intelligence (AI) analytics capabilities”.

Dynatrace also plans to double Qumram’s existing engineering team in Barcelona in the coming year.

In a recent and separate development, Dynatrace is working with Rabobank “to monitor the real-time experience of every customer and user for all services” at the bank.

The project, says Dynatrace, “supports Rabobank’s vision to centralise and optimise company-wide application performance monitoring to future-proof customer experience”.

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, Qumram demonstrated its regtech platform at FinovateFall 2016. This fall, the company announced that it would provide fully-compliant, mobile-to-mobile WhatsApp and WeChat conversation recording. In April, Qumram earned recognition as Best RegTech Company in the 2017 FinTech Breakthrough Awards, and in March, the company won Growth Stage Startup of the Year at the Swiss FinTech Awards 2017.

Tweets from the East: A Look Back at FinovateAsia 2017

Tweets from the East: A Look Back at FinovateAsia 2017

FinovateAsia 2017 was a great success. On this, our second visit to Hong Kong, we learned a great deal about the growth of fintech in Asia, the rapid developments in specific fields like artificial intelligence and the blockchain, and how an interest in new areas like real estate and insurance will reshape what we have traditionally thought of as “financial services”.

In addition to more than 30 live technology demonstrations (congratulations to our Best of Show winners!), our keynote speakers and panel discussion participants added valuable insights that helped us keep all of these innovations in context.

We’re looking forward to coming back next year. For now, stay tuned for our demo videos from the conference, which should be available in a few weeks in our video archives. In the meanwhile, here is a quick look at some of the highlights of this year’s event via Twitter (@Finovate) as captured by the tweets from our attendees.

 

Finovate Alumni News

Around the web

  • ACI Worldwide supports cross-border e-commerce in Brazil with integration of payment processor and gateway, PagBrasil.
  • Revolut is the latest fintech to apply for a European banking license.
  • Fenergo teams up with Opus to improve integration of risk-relevant information in the KYC process.
  • KAMCO Investment Company chooses Fusion Invest from Finastra to accelerate growth.
  • Bluefin Payment Systems unveils PCI P2PE sub-listing option for users of its Decryptions as a Service (DaaS) offering, Decryptx.
  • Ping Identity adds support for companies seeking PSD2, open banking compliance.
  • Trustly tops €10 billion in total payment processing volume since inception.
  • Q2 Holdings named to Deloitte Technology Fast 500 for second consecutive year.
  • Stratumn completes a blockchain experimentation connecting 14 insurance companies in France.
  • nCino debuts in top half of Deloitte’s 2017 Technology Fast 500.
  • Scalable Capital hits €500 million in assets.
  • Checkbook.io disrupts class action payments.
  • Compass Plus assists Almazergienbank to support the issuing and acquiring of JCB cards.
  • NetGuardians and Swisscom launch fraud prevention service.

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.

Finovate Alumni News

Around the web

  • eToro taps George Verbitsky as managing director for Russia.
  • Stratumn tests use of blockchain technology in enhancing information flows for French insurers.
  • Xero and Worldpay partner to make invoicing easier for SMEs.

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.

FinovateAsia 2017 Best of Show Winners Announced

FinovateAsia 2017 Best of Show Winners Announced

FinovateAsia 2017 is in the books. And after two days of live fintech demos from 32 innovative companies from around the world, our Finovate attendees have made their preferences known as to which companies should win Best of Show trophies.

One of the most interesting aspects of our Best of Show awards is how they provide an insight into which technologies are truly being put to work to solve real-world financial problems for financial institutions, merchants, and consumers alike.  Whether the challenge is making payments safer and easier, helping individuals and families meet their financial goals, or fighting fraud and cybercrime, the companies that earn Best of Show at Finovate conferences are the ones that have shown our attendees that they have the solutions that the rest of the competition is still searching for.

This is why it is no surprise that so many of the companies that have earned the title of Best of Show have made such a significant impact in fintech – either as an emerging industry leader in their chosen field or as the sought-after acquisition from a larger firm eager to leverage a specific set of skills to broaden their own ability to serve a wider range of customers.

So with no further ado, let’s take a look at the award winners for Best of Show at FinovateAsia 2017 (in alphabetic order):

AApay Technology for its unique payment app that enables consumers to automatically split bills and gives businesses access to multiple payment methods to better manage all of their electronic transactions.

 

 

 

Bambu for its machine learning model, People Like Me, that goes beyond traditional roboadvisory to help users better identify and reach their financial goals.

 

OCR Labs for its Orbit ID SDK that enables enterprises to stop fraud, reduce friction during the onboarding process, and help manage KYC/AML obligations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

YUKKA Lab for its technology that leverages natural language programming and machine learning to provide real-time analytics into the financial markets.

 

 

 

 

We hope you enjoyed FinovateAsia 2017 and our new expanded format including panel discussions and keynote speeches from major fintech thought leaders. We had a great time bringing our fintech conference to Hong Kong for a second year in a row, and are looking forward to being back again next year. As always, a thousand thanks to all those who attended, sponsored, partnered with, and demoed their latest and greatest innovations live on stage. We’ll see you again in 2018!


Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their three favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The four companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 and 2016 conferences are below:
FinovateEurope 2015
FinovateSpring 2015
FinovateFall 2015
FinovateEurope 2016
FinovateSpring 2016
FinovateFall 2016
FinovateAsia 2016
FinovateEurope 2017
FinovateSpring 2017
FinovateFall 2017

Welcome to Day Two of FinovateAsia!

FinovateAsia yesterday was packed full of the newest fintech and we’re excited to continue the excitement today with another day showcasing the newest in fintech. We’ll be intermixing our demo-only format with keynotes, panel discussions, and an accelerator showcase.

We’ll have coat and bag check available at registration today and don’t forget to download our mobile app in the app store to find the full agenda and more. Here’s an overview of today’s agenda:

Registration begins at 08:00

08:00 – 09:00: Registration & Breakfast

08:45 – 09:10: Welcome Remarks

09:10 – 10:10: Accelerator showcase
A showcase of the leading accelerators and incubators in Asia. Each accelerators will have a one minute intro and each startup will have a three minute pitch.

  • Mark Wales – Co-Founder, Galileo Platforms / Cyberport
  • Bass Chiu – Marketing Manager, InstaReM / Cyberport
  • Vivek Mohindra – Co-Founder & Responsible Officer, Kristal.AI / Cyberport
  • Erich Hoefer – Co-founder & Head of Growth and Strategy, Starling Trust Sciences / Cyberport
  • Ovidiu (Ovi) Olea – Founder & CEO, Valoot Technologies Ltd. / Cyberport
  • Shan Luo – Program Instructor, FinTechBase Taiwan
  • Anson Suen – CEO & Co-Founder, FundPark / FinTechBase Taiwan
  • Chao-Yueh Liu – C-Founder & General Manager, Quanffett Financial Technology Company / FinTechBase
  • Taiwan
  • Joanna Yang – Founder & CEO, Robo Web Tech Co., Ltd. / FinTechBase Taiwan
  • Zac Yang – Co-Founder & UX Director, TOZZI / FinTechBase Taiwan
  • Veronika Kuznetsova – Managing Director, SuperCharger
  • Brian Elders – Director, KYC-Chain / SuperCharger
  • David Rosa – Co-founder & CEO, Neat Ltd. / SuperCharger
  • William Bao Bean – Managing Director and SOSV partner, Chinaccelerator
  • Adrian Pollard – Chief Creative Officer, bitHolla / Chinaccelerator
  • Sebastien Gaudin – Co-founder & CEO, The CareVoice / Chinaccelerator
  • Colin Bogar – CEO, Property Passbook / Chinaccelerator

10:10 – 10:40: Keynote: How and Why China has pulled ahead of the US in the AI battle Royale
Paul Schulte – Founder & Editor, Schulte Research

10:40 – 11:10: Refreshment and networking break

11:10 – 12:00: Demo session #3

12:00 – 13:00: Lunch and Networking

13:00 – 13:30: Panel: Are Consumers Ready to Embrace P2P Payments?

13:30 – 14:40: Demo session #4

14:40 – 15:10: Refreshment and networking break

15:10 – 15:30: Panel: The AI Advantage

15:30 – 16:00: Panel: New Opportunities in Asia with Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Technologies

16:00 – 17:30: Reception and networking

Welcome to Day One of FinovateAsia!

Welcome to Day One of FinovateAsia!

FinovateAsia is back in Hong Kong for two days of live demonstrations and deep-dive keynotes and panel discussions on the themes that are driving innovation in fintech today. Whether you are interested in mobile banking or P2P lending, wealth management or banking for the unbanked, artificial intelligence or the blockchain, FinovateAsia is a great opportunity to see how the region’s most innovative and insightful companies are leveraging technology to help businesses and consumers better manage their financial lives.

With 17 demos, four panel discussions, a pair of keynote addresses, and a 90-minute end-of-day networking session, our schedule for Day One of FinovateAsia promises to be a great start to our annual, late autumn event. Whether you are here with us in person in Hong Kong, or catching up with all the action via Twitter @Finovate, we think you’re going to like what you see and here from our FinovateAsia 2017 innovators.

Here is the agenda for today.

Registration begins at 08:00

08:00 – 09:00: Registration & Breakfast

09:00 – 09:20: Welcome Remarks

09:20 – 09:50: Keynote: P2P Lending in China

09:50 – 10:10: Panel Discussion: The Future of Peer Lending

10:10 – 10:40: Networking Break with Refreshments

10:40 – 12:00 Demo Session #1

12:00 – 13:00: Lunch and Networking

13:00 – 13:20: Keynote: A Glimpse into Hong Kong’s Fintech Scene

13:30 – 14:50: Demo Session #2

14:50 – 15:20: Networking with Refreshments

15:20 – 15:50: Panel Discussion: Mobile Banking is Booming

15:50 – 16:10: Panel Discussion: Revolutionizing the Insurance Industry

16:10 – 16:30: Panel Discussion: Transforming Investment and Wealth Management

16:30 – 18:00: Reception and Networking
Best of Show winners will be announced tomorrow

All demo videos will be available for free in a few weeks in our video archives.

Finovate Alumni News

Around the web

  • Leondrino Exchange launches its own digital currency, XLEO.
  • BBVA forges global strategic agreement with Telefónica.
  • Revolut announces plans to build its own in-house processor.
  • Cybersecurity specialist DefenseStorm hires Terrie O’Hanlon as Chief Marketing Officer.
  • Expensify and Wells Fargo ink data exchange agreement.

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.