Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Backbase, BLUERUSH, Coinbase, DoubleNet Pay, ID.me, Larky, Ripple, SBDA Group, Temenos

On Finovate.com

  • Backbase 6 Features New Digital Banking Backend, Open Banking and PSD2 Readiness
  • DoubleNet Pay to Power Cash Flow Management Tool for T. Rowe Price
  • SBDA Group Closes Series A Investment Round
  • ID.me Reaches 5 Million Users, Appoints C-Level Execs
  • BLUERUSH Introduces New CEO and Director Steve Taylor

Around the web

  • Filene interviews Larky CEO Gregg Hammerman on the company’s recent VISA partnership.
  • PR Savings Bank in APAC signs with Temenos.
  • Ripple completes XRP Lockup to create certainty of XRP supply at any given time.
  • ACI Worldwide receives SWIFT gpi certification for itsUniversal Payments (UP) Real-Time Payments solution.
  • Facebook Messenger chief David Marcus joins Coinbase board.

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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Simility Adds PayPal as Strategic Investor in Latest $17.5 Million Fundraising

Simility Adds PayPal as Strategic Investor in Latest $17.5 Million Fundraising
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Simility

Fraud and risk management innovator Simility locked in $17.5 million in new funding today. The Series B was led by Accel and featured a strategic investment from fellow Finovate alum, PayPal. “This latest funding round will enable us to enter our next phase of growth by bolstering our world-class team of industry veterans in sales, customer success and data science to meet market demand,” Simility co-founder and CEO Rahul Pangam said.

Current investors The Valley Fund and Trinity Ventures also participated in the round, which brings Simility’s total capital to $25 million. Team members from Simility shared their thoughts on the funding and the future of the company in a blog post this morning.

“My team has helped turn our visionary idea into leads among banking customers,” Head of Latin America Sales Paulo Moura wrote. “This second round of funding means more to us than money; it’s also the touching realization that we’ve earned investors’ confidence in our viability as a company, not just a promising startup.”

Above: Simility Head of Engineering Ravi Sandepudi (left) and CTO/Co-Founder Kedar Samant (right) during their presentation “Fraud Mutates – Detect, Understand, and Block It” at FinDEVr London 2017.

“Everything follows from a great team, I’ve learned,” Simility co-founder and CTO Kedar Samant added. “This new funding round will empower Simility to grow our teams and scale up our operations so that more enterprises can better manage fraud and risk.”

Recent news from Simility only underscores the company’s commitment to adding talent. Simility hired Mick Martin as VP of Sales, named Glenn Cobb as VP of Solution Engineering in August, and brought onboard Lynn Strand as VP of Marketing – all in Q3 of this year. The company noted that today’s investment will enable it to grow its sales operations in the U.S., Brazil, and Europe, as well as expand its data science teams in Europe, and add to partnerships in Europe and India.

Founded in 2014, Simility is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. This summer at our developers conference FinDEVr London, Simility’s Kedar Samant (co-founder and CTO) and Ravi Sandepudi (Head of Engineering) led a presentation titled Fraud Mutates – Detect, Understand and Block It which explained how feature engineering and real-time fraud detection pipelines gives businesses the ability to adapt to evolving cyber threats.

Simility’s technology was featured in Network World’s New Products of the Week in March, the same month Simility unveiled its AI-powered Adaptive 3-D Secure solution. Adaptive 3-D Secure is designed to identify high-risk transactions, leveraging machine learning to examine a wide variety of attributes in real-time, including device fingerprinting, geolocation, and in-session behavioral analytics.

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NuCypher Raises $4.3 Million from Token Sale and VC Funds

NuCypher Raises $4.3 Million from Token Sale and VC Funds
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, ICO, NuCypher

According to a report from CoinJournal, NuCypher, a platform that offers security and encryption services for distributed systems, has pulled in $4.3 million. This brings the company’s total funding to just over $5 million.

The funds come from a token pre-sale from 13 cryptofunds and venture capital firms. Leading the VC portion of the round was Polychain Capital. Michael Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital Assets Fund, FBG Capital, Compound VC, Satoshi Fund, and Blockchain Korea Partners, and others also participated.

Founded in 2016, NuCypher works to secure and encrypt big data, the blockchain, the cloud, and the internet of things (IoT). The San Francisco-based company differentiates its technology with the ability to transfer data from one public key to another without either party gaining visibility to the contents of the message.

CoinJournal reported NuCypher said that it is “part of that core infrastructure, enabling developers to store, share and manage private data on public blockchains.” The company emphasized it has been “very diligent” in building out its network ahead of its token sale to make it usable “from day one.”

Above: NuCypher CEO MacLane Wilkison (pictured left) and CTO Michael Egorov (pictured right) presenting at FinDEVr London 2017

At FinDEVr London 2017, the company’s CEO MacLane Wilkison and CTO Michael Egorov gave a presentation titled Body Armor for Big Data. The company is planning to hold its public ICO in early 2018. The token of the ICO will be used to ensure computations are correct. The company said that a year from now it will power many decentralized applications, from data exchanges and marketplaces to end-to-end encrypted databases to healthcare apps.

Earlier this summer, NuCypher introduced its decentralized key management system, NuCypher KMS. In May, the company earned finalist spots in Citi Tech’s Tech for Integrity Challenge and in TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2017’s Startup Battlefield. NuCypher also bears the honor of being a Y Combinator alum.

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Apply Now to Present at FinovateSpring 2018!

Apply Now to Present at FinovateSpring 2018!
By Erika Sanchez Posted on
Categories: Finovate Marketing, FinovateSpring 2018

With the holidays right around the corner, excitement for the new year is building and you won’t want to miss getting a headstart on opportunities available at FinovateSpring 2018. Now is the time to apply: the very early-bird deadline for presenter applications to demo is Friday, December 15.

The event will take place at the Santa Clara Convention Center on May 8 – 11, and will feature our signature seven-minute demo format. Presenters who are selected won’t just receive time up on stage — they’ll also have the opportunity to connect directly with senior-level financial executives, venture capitalists, other entrepreneurs, and influential press, analysts, and bloggers.

Competition to get on stage at Finovate events is high, with more companies applying than the demo slots we have available. And with the fintech scene continuing to grow and pave the way for new technology, now is the time to join your competitors on stage and gain the attention of new clients, investors, and potential partners.

If you’d like to learn more, please email us at spring@finovate.com and we’ll send you a presenter packet outlining the selection criteria, presenter package, demo costs, deadlines, and a link to the online application (applying is completely free and 100% confidential, so there’s nothing to lose!). Plus, if you apply by Friday, December 15, and are selected to demo, you’ll benefit from the very early-bird savings in your final demo cost. Hope to see you apply!

FinovateSpring 2018 is partners with: Aite Group, BankersHub, Banking Technology, BayPay, BeFast.TV, BigData-MadeSimple.com, Breaking Banks, Byte Academy, Celent, FemTech, Financial IT, Fintech Finance, Headcount, Holland Fintech, IBS Intelligence, Innovate Finance, Mercator Advisory Group, NexChange, The Nilson Report, Ovum, The Paypers, Plug and Play, SME Finance Forum, and Swiss Finance + Technology Association.

Raise your profile and showcase your thought leadership

Grow your business at FinovateSpring by becoming an event sponsor. We can provide flexible and tailored solutions to maximize your time at the event and ensure you meet your business goals. For more information please contact us via email.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Blackhawk Network, CashStar, Entersekt, INETCO Systems, Infosys, nCino, NuCypher, Simility, Symbiont, Tradeshift, Tuition.io

On Finovate.com

  • NuCypher Raises $4.3 Million from Token Sale and VC Funds
  • Simility Adds PayPal as Strategic Investor in Latest $17.5 Million Fundraising

Around the web:

  • INETCO adds centralized switch application performance monitoring capabilities within the INETCO Insight software platform.
  • CFCU Community Credit Union Selects nCino to Boost Operational Efficiencies.
  • Blackhawk’s CashStar powers the launch of enhanced consumer gift card ecommerce program for Chico’s FAS
  • Tuition.io to power Student Loan Debt Reduction benefit to their Educational Assistance Program for MidWestOne Financial Group.
  • VentureBurn lists Entersekt as 1 of 8 12 South African startups to watch in 2018.
  • Vanguard turns to Symbiont smart contracts to simplify index data sharing process.

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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Hyperwallet Now Supports Payouts from Amazon’s Australia Marketplace

Hyperwallet Now Supports Payouts from Amazon’s Australia Marketplace
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Hyperwallet

‘Tis the season for online shopping (and selling). Today, just weeks after the Texas-based company opened its Asia Pacific office in Sydney, Australia, mass payout platform Hyperwallet began supporting disbursements from Amazon’s Australia marketplace.

Starting today, Amazon sellers across the globe can leverage Hyperwallet’s multi-currency payout solution to accept disbursements from sales made on Amazon’s new Australia-based marketplace. Simon Banks, Hyperwallet’s Asia Pacific Managing Director, said that the company aims to extrapolate Amazon’s usability into “the supply side of marketplace transactions, streamlining the onboarding and disbursement process for independent sellers.” To register, sellers use the Login with Amazon option on Hyperwallet’s page. Once registered, users benefit from Hyperwallet’s network of banking relationships across the globe.

After noting that the new development adds to the ways Hyperwallet is supporting the international freelance community, company CEO Brent Warrington said, “Faster, more affordable cross-border disbursements is something we’re very passionate about, and we’re happy to offer that experience to sellers on the Amazon Marketplace.”

Hyperwallet most recently presented at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, where Bill Crowley, Chief Product Officer, and Blair Olynyk, Software Architect, gave a presentation titled, Pay the Planet: Implementing Frictionless Global Payout Distribution. Since it was founded in 2000, Hyperwallet has distributed billions of dollars in payouts to more than 8 million individuals worldwide. Earlier this year the company bolstered its loyalty program through an integration with Dosh. In January, Hyperwallet expanded to London to support the region’s burgeoning population of gig economy workers.

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NetGuardians Teams Up with Masaref Business & Systems Consulting

NetGuardians Teams Up with Masaref Business & Systems Consulting
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: NetGuardians

The new partnership between NetGuardians and Masaref Business & Systems Consulting (Masaref-BSC) will bring the Swiss fintech’s anti-fraud solutions to even more FIs in the Middle East, according to Director and Board member Oliver Trancart. “Fraud is a growing concern worldwide and the Middle East is no exception,” Trancart said. “So we think NetGuardians’ expertise can really make a positive impact.”

NetGuardians Middle East Business Development Manager Abdallah Djedid credited Masaref’s knowledge and experience in both Temenos’ technology and Islamic core banking systems, calling the firm “an obvious choice for a local partner.” Masaref is a major Temenos T24 implementation partner, and was awarded Best Core Banking Implementer in Egypt in 2015 by Global Banking and Finance. The firm, based in Cairo, Egypt with offices in Riyadh and Beirut, was founded in 2014 after the merger of Masaref Consulting and Business & Systems Consultancy.

Expressing his confidence in the partnership, Masaref Chariman Dr. Mohamed Goneid said, “More banks and financial institutions using T24 will finally have the peace of mind of top fraud protection. Together with NetGuardians, we will help financial institutions in the Middle East to cater for their most challenging requirements.”

NetGuardians’ technology automates compliance and enables financial institutions to more effectively combat fraud. The company’s platform leverages Big Data, dynamic profiling, pattern-based intelligence, and predictive analytics to analyze not just transaction level activity, but real-time behaviors across the entire bank system. This is key, NetGuardians believes, because out of the $67 billion in estimated banking fraud costs every year, 70% of that fraud is internal and remains undetected. During the company’s 2016 FinovateAsia demonstration of FraudGuardian, NetGuardians Digital Marketing Manager Mine Fornerod showed how the solution is able to correlate user behavior to identify even complex fraudulent behavior in real-time with 100% accuracy.

Founded in 2007, NetGuardians is headquartered in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland and has offices in Singapore, Kenya, and Poland. The company began 2017 with news that Nigeria’s Keystone Bank would deploy its real-time fraud protection platform. More recently, NetGuardians raised more than $8 million in Series C funding, taking its total capital to more than $14 million. The company was named a Gartner Cool Vendor in 2015 and was added to Planet Compliance’s RegTech 100 earlier this year. Joel Winteregg is CEO and co-founder.

Interested in fintech in the MENA region? Visit our FinovateMiddleEast page to find out more about our upcoming fintech conference in Dubai.

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Multiple-Time Best of Show Winner Avoka Raises $12 Million in New Funding

Multiple-Time Best of Show Winner Avoka Raises $12 Million in New Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Avoka, Funding

Digital customer acquisition technology innovator Avoka has raised $12 million (16 million AUD) in equity funding in a round managed by Moelis Australia. Investors included both existing and professional backers, and the company says the funds will be used to support growth plans already underway in Australia, North America, and Europe. “Our planned pace of growth continues across all three of our target geographies,” Avoka founder and CEO Phil Copeland said, “and this financing allows us to maintain an aggressive expansion in our technology, sales, partner and customer success organizations.”

Avoka added in a statement that the company plans also to “focus on investment and hiring to support current and projected customers.” This includes a plan to boost staff numbers by 50% by the end of the current fiscal year. This week’s funding, which echoes a similar investment from last summer, takes Avoka’s total capital to more than $24 million.

Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Denver, Colorado, Avoka most recently demonstrated its technology at FinovateEurope 2017. Hali Khan, Director of Business Development, showed how Transact Insights, a new module of Avoka’s Transact 5 platform, gives businesses the insights and analytics necessary to ensure optimization of the account opening experience. With regard to digital account opening, for example, Transact Insights reveals areas of abandonment, frequent error, as well as where users are spending the most time in order to help business analysts make specific changes and improvements.

Avoka provides solutions for a variety of industries within financial services, including retail, business, and commercial banking, wealth management, superannuation, and insurance. The company, a multiple Finovate Best of Show award-winner, includes five of the top 10 banks in Australia, four of Europe’s 10 leading banks, and eight of the top 50 banks in the United States among its customers.

In August, Avoka announced record growth for a second year in a row and in June, the company introduced its CX Design for Banking offering to help FIs decrease application abandonment and boost conversion rates. Last month, Deloitte recognized Avoka’s 1.76x revenue growth over the past three years, adding the firm to its Technology Fast 50 roster.

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Temenos to Ship WealthSuite to Latin America’s Largest Banking Group

Temenos to Ship WealthSuite to Latin America’s Largest Banking Group
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Temenos

Switzerland-based Temenos announced that it has teamed up with Latin America’s largest banking group, Itaú Unibanco Holding (Itaú).

Itaú will use Temenos’ WealthSuite as a core banking replacement of its international private banking operations. The bank will deploy WealthSuite in the cloud; a scalable approach that will enable Itaú to meet future demand and achieve a faster time-to-market for new services. Jean Michel-Hilsenkopf, Managing Director of Temenos Sales, noted that WealthSuite will not only help Itaú generate efficiencies, but also differentiate its customer proposition.

Part of Temenos’ digital banking suite, WealthSuite provides a set of holistic wealth management capabilities, including a roboadvisor service that can be packaged as a fully-automated solution, a hybrid, approach, or as a fully-advised method. With customer engagement tools and real time analytics, WealthSuite allows relationship managers to offer a compliant, personalized wealth management experience.

In a press release, Carlos Constantini, CEO of U.S. and Head of international private banking at Itaú, said he anticipates WealthSuite will “enrich the customer experience, reduce time to market for new products, generate efficiencies, and reinforce the segments’ digital strategy.” He added that the solution will help automate front, middle, and back office functions.

Itaú is one of many banks who have signed on to Temenos’ WealthSuite. Large banks such as ABN Amro, Standard Chartered, Nordea, Bank of Montreal, Bank of Montreal Asia Pacific, and others, are all leveraging the wealth management capabilities, which were formerly marketed under the brand T4.

Founded in 1993, Temenos debuted its Connect Mobile Banking application at FinovateEurope 2015 in London. The company employs 4,600+ people, operating out of 64 offices representing clients in more than 145 countries. Temenos is the fourth-largest software company in Europe, with profits of $185+ million and a market capitalization of more than $5 billion. David Arnott is CEO.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Avoka, Experian, FIS, Fiserv, Five Degrees, Hyperwallet, Kinetica, NetGuardians, Overbond, Privakey

On Finovate.com

  • NetGuardians Teams Up with Masaref Business & Systems Consulting.
  • Hyperwallet Now Supports Payouts from Amazon’s Australia Marketplace.
  • Multiple-Time Best of Show Winner Avoka Raises $12 Million in New Funding.

Around the web

  • Fiserv signs agreements with Illinois Educators CU in Illinois and Members Financial FCU in Texas.
  • ABN Amro leverages Matrix from Five Degrees to launch its wealth management solution, Prospery.
  • Overbond appoints George Harrington as new Head of U.S. Business Development.
  • FIS connects Fifth Third Bank customers to The Clearing Houses’ Real-Time Payments system.
  • Kinetica appoints Paul Appleby as CEO.
  • Experian Receives Top Workplace Honor for Fifth Consecutive Year.
  • Technical.ly: Privakey locks down patent for ‘a password-free future.’

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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YoYo Wallet Appoints Michael Rolph as CEO

YoYo Wallet Appoints Michael Rolph as CEO
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Yoyo

Mobile wallet company Yoyo announced this week it has appointed Michael Rolph, one of the company’s co-founders, as CEO. Meanwhile, former Yoyo CEO Alain Falys has shifted into the role of the company’s chairman.

Prior to the appointment, Rolph had been serving as the company’s Chief Product Officer since January of 2016 and before assuming those responsibilities he had headed up sales and marketing efforts for Yoyo. The company noted that Rolph had been “instrumental” in bringing on large clients such as Caffè Nero and Planet Organic to Yoyo’s payment and loyalty marketing platform.

In his new role, Rolph will implement Yoyo’s strategic operations as it launches into a new phase of growth. And this is not a small task. In addition to aspiring to be the loyalty marketing platform of choice, the company is aiming for a 10x increase in transaction volume in the next 18 months. He noted that he and Falys will “continue to build on Yoyo’s foundation of profitable growth, as we secure new partnerships on the high street and move into an open banking world, becoming natural leaders in omni-channel loyalty marketing, whilst helping retailers super-charge the power of their data.”

In a blog post, Falys offered high praise for Rolph, saying, “Over the past four years, Michael and I have taken Yoyo from an idea to the point where it is now recognised as the leading retailer loyalty platform in the UK and, increasingly, internationally. The Yoyo team has achieved a great deal during that time, and under Michael’s leadership as CEO, our success will only continue to grow.”

In 2013, Falys co-founded the business with Rolph and David Nicholson and has since raised $30.3 million in total funding, including a $15 million Series B round closed in June. The Yoyo platform powers almost 2 million mobile transactions every month, a figure that represents 2.5x increase in usage over the past year. Rolph debuted Yoyo on stage at FinovateEurope 2015. The company currently serves more than 2,000 retailers across the U.K. and Ireland. Last month, Yoyo partnered with Starling to enable Starling members to earn rewards when they use their payment card at retailers that are partnered with Yoyo.

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Accepting Demo Applications for FinovateMiddleEast 2018

Accepting Demo Applications for FinovateMiddleEast 2018
By Heather Stowell Posted on
Categories: Finovate Marketing, FinovateMiddleEast 2018

Last week, Finovate teamed up with the UAE Ministry of Finance. The partnership aims to drive awareness and support for fintech innovation in the Middle East. As part of this collaboration, FinovateMiddleEast will join the UAE Innovation Month celebration in February 2018.

For over 10 years, Finovate has been the leading showcase of financial, banking and payments technologies. And we’ve been there from the start: New York in 2007, Bay Area in 2008, London in 2010, Singapore in 2012, Hong Kong in 2016, and now Dubai in 2018.

Finovate events focus on innovative fintech showcased via 7-minute live product demonstrations. The conferences consistently attract high-impact audiences of senior-level financial and banking executives, press and industry analysts, venture capitalists, regulators, and technology entrepreneurs. FinovateMiddleEast will be no different with fintech from across the MENA region and 300+ attendees.

Join us on February 26 & 27 if you’re looking to:

  • Drive product adoption of the latest and most innovative solutions in fintech
  • Showcase new, high-impact technology in front of an influential audience
  • Generate press recognition, find customers, network with peers, raise capital, and discover partners

For more information on applying to demo, please review the brochure for prospective demoing companies, then fill out the online application by December 31 at the latest. We’ll be in touch within a few days of receiving your application.

If you have any questions, please email middleeast@finovate.com. And if you’re unfamiliar with Finovate events, take a look at videos from the past 40+ events.

FinovateMiddleEast 2018 is sponsored by Temenos, UAE Exchange, and Loxon.

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