Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, AutoGravity, Betterment, Check Point, eMoney Advisor, First Data, FIS, Geezeo, Pindrop Security, Ripple, Risk Ident, Roostify, Signicat

On Finovate.com

  • AutoGravity Tops $2 Billion in Financing Requested Milestone.
  • Geezeo Powers PFM Platform for F&M Bank of Virginia.
  • Signicat Raises $2 Million to Build Out its Identity Assurance as a Service Technology.

Around the web

  • Forbes: Atlanta Startup Pindrop Makes Its Push To Power Security For The Voice Economy.
  • Chevy Chase Trust selects FIS for Unified Wealth Management Technology Platform and Services.
  • eMoney Advisor and Capital One announce new API data sharing agreement.
  • Check Point Technologies announces Infinity Total Protection, a new security model to prevent ‘Gen V’ threats and attacks
  • Investment News: Betterment beefs up 401(k) advisory board with ex-Vanguard expert.
  • BMO Financial Group chooses Up Real -Time Payments solution from ACI Worldwide.
  • Global payment providers IDT and Mercury FX to use Ripple’s XRP.
  • The Paypers interviews Roberto Valerio, CEO of Risk Ident, on getting the best from fraud prevention solutions.
  • First Data expands agreement with SBI Card.

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.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Payfone Teams Up with U.K. Mobile Network Operator

Payfone Teams Up with U.K. Mobile Network Operator
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Payfone

Digital identity authentication company Payfone has partnered with O2, a U.K.-based mobile network operator. The initiative aims to protect mobile users from digital fraud, including cyber-hacks, account takeover attacks, SIM swap attacks, and other forms of fraud.

The two are collaborating on Payfone’s Instant Authentication for Mobile, a behind-the-scenes, identity verification solution that enables enterprises to authenticate their clients quickly and securely by using a Trust Score that is generated by analyzing millions of digital signals against multiple authentication factors. One of those factors is real-time authentication from O2, which relies on a mobile phone and does not require the user to switch between channels, such as in two-factor authentication.

Payfone CEO Rodger Desai said, “Payfone is already on track to authenticate 50,000,000 transactions per day in the United States, and extending our capabilities into the United Kingdom is a major milestone for us as we continue our expansion into 35 worldwide markets.”

Originally a mobile payments company, Payfone was founded in 2008. The New York-based company has since pivoted to focus on authentication solutions, adopting the motto, “Delight users. Defeat hackers.” Payfone, whose technologies are currently used by six of the top 10 U.S. banks, processes millions of signals per day to authenticate and score transactions; the company currently authenticates 10 million transactions per day. Last spring, Payfone announced it would power mobile ID authentication for Zelle.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Tradeshift Launches Innovation Lab to Bring the Blockchain to Business Commerce

Tradeshift Launches Innovation Lab to Bring the Blockchain to Business Commerce
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Tradeshift

Business commerce platform Tradeshift announced today the launch of Tradeshift Frontiers, an innovation lab and incubator designed to apply emerging technologies like AI, distributed ledgers, and IoT to business networks, supply chains, and global trade.

“Our goal is simple and singular: To significantly impact B2B commerce and global supply chains in the next 5 years,” co-founder and GM of Tradeshift Frontiers Gert Sylvest said. “We will leverage emerging technologies to make trade more inclusive, empowering, transparent, and sustainable.”

Applying blockchain technology to areas such as supply chain financing, asset liquidity, and supply chain transparency is one of the initial goals of Tradeshift Frontiers. In a press release, the company pointed to its role as a governing member with the Hyperledger project as one reason the company will be positioned to make an “industry-wide impact” in terms of using blockchains to “enable new incentive models to collaborate across the supply chain.”

“With Frontiers, we aim to bring the transformative potential of these technologies into the hands of every company in the network, no matter their size or role in the supply chain,” Sylvest said. “That also means unlocking greater value for small businesses and their trading partners to bring them on equal footing with the companies that dominate the digital supply chains today.”

Tradeshift connects more than 1.5 million companies in 190 countries, and is on course to process more than $500 billion in transaction value. The company offers procure-to-pay, supplier engagement, and financial services to its business clients, and enables its partners to leverage its business commerce platform to build their own apps. The company is off to a strong start in 2018: partnering with fellow Finovate alum Infosys to digitize its clients’ supply chain management and, a few weeks later, announcing that Panalpina World Transport had selected Tradeshift to support the digitization of its procure-to-pay process.

Founded in 2010, San Francisco-based Tradeshift demoed Tradeshift Instant Payments at FinovateEurope 2012. With more than $182 million in funding, Tradeshift includes Wipro Ventures, Data Collective, Scentan Ventures, Kite Ventures, ru-Net Holdings, Notion Capital, and PayPal among its investors.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Expensify Reports More than 1 Million New Users and Double the Partnerships in 2017

Expensify Reports More than 1 Million New Users and Double the Partnerships in 2017
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Expensify

Travel and expense management company Expensify released strong growth figures this week, summarizing a successful 2017. So successful, in fact, the company ended the year with the highest growth rate in its 10-year history.

Here are the highlights:

  • Surpassed $100 billion processed
  • Exceeded 660 million expenses created (more than 180 million expenses were created in 2017 alone)
  • Ended the year with more than 50,000 customers and five million end users across 170 countries
  • Doubled the number of companies in its partner program
  • Received Xero’s App Partner of the Year Award

The San Francisco-based company also enhanced its expense reporting product by adding new features. Expensify improved its report approval workflow and has added the ability to automatically export approved reports in real time. Additionally, at the start of 2018, the company introduced a new user interface and a friendlier user experience.

“The past year has been full of tremendous progress and learnings, and we’re deeply grateful to our customers old and new for their enthusiasm along the way,” said David Barrett, founder and CEO of Expensify. “We have ambitious dreams for 2018 and will continue doing everything we can to make life easier for everyone out there who has better things to do than keep track of receipts.”

At FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, Expensify presented Bedrock, an open sourced relational database management system. The company last demoed at FinovateSpring 2013, where the company showed off its integrated invoicing technology. Last month, CB Insights featured Expensify in its list of four apps every executive should download now. In November of last year, the company arranged a data sharing agreement with Wells Fargo.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

RealtyMogul Introduces New President Aaron Halfacre

RealtyMogul Introduces New President Aaron Halfacre
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Realty Mogul

Real estate crowdfunding platform RealtyMogul announced today that REIT industry veteran Aaron Halfacre will be joining the company as its new president.

“I am excited to be joining the RealtyMogul team and contributing to the continued success of the company,” Halfacre said in a statement. “I believe my industry experience across real estate and alternatives, debt and equity, retail and institutional, and both public and private markets is a perfect fit for RealtyMogul’s future.”

Halfacre (pictured) brings more than 20 years of experience in the investing industry, including five years as Head of Real Estate New Product Development for BlackRock. In addition to serving as Head of Strategic Relations for Cole Capital and Strategic Consultant for GMH Associates, Halfacre was also President and Chief Investment Officer for Campus Crest, a publicly traded student housing REIT. He has a BA in Accounting from College of Santa Fe and earned an MBA in Finance from the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University.

Jilliene Helman, RealtyMogul CEO praised Halfacre’s “stellar track record and incredible depth of real estate and capital market industry expertise.” She said, “We will benefit immensely from his experience, and I am confident he will help the company reach new heights.” Halfacre will be tasked with developing company-wide strategy as well as leveraging his direct oversight of capital markets activity to grow assets under management and real estate transaction volume.

The addition of Halfacre is only the latest executive acquisition from the Beverly Hills, California-based real estate crowdfunding platform. Earlier this month, the company announced that it had appointed interim Chief Investment Officer Chris Fraley as its official CIO. In December, the company hired Soley Van Lokeren as its first “Chief People Officer.”

RealtyMogul launched its second REIT offering, MogulREIT II, last fall, giving investors the opportunity to finance multi-family apartment communities. The company’s first REIT offering, MogulREIT I, was introduced in 2016. More than $318 million has been invested across RealtyMogul’s platform, with $70 million paid out to RealtyMogul’s 150,000 members. More than $1 billion in property value has been financed since inception.

Ranked in the top 100 of real estate crowdfunding sites by The Real Estate Crowdfunding Review, and the winner of a Gold Stevie Award for Company of the Year last November, RealtyMogul demonstrated its crowdfunding for real estate platform at FinovateSpring 2014. The company was founded in 2012 and has raised more than $46 million in funding. Sorenson Capital and Canaan Partners are among RealtyMogul’s investors.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Japanese Telecom NTT to Distribute Trusona Technology in Japan

Japanese Telecom NTT to Distribute Trusona Technology in Japan
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Trusona

Identity authentication company Trusona has formed a distribution partnership with NTT Advanced Technology Corp. (NTT-AT), a large Japanese telecommunications company. This follows the Arizona-based company’s Asia Pacific launch last August, when it opened offices in Japan.

Through the partnership, NTT-AT will offer Trusona’s frictionless, password-less login solution to its enterprise customers across Japan. NTT-AT clients will have access to Trusona’s Identity Authentication Suite, a solution that replaces passwords with a dynamic, multi-factor login solution. The authentication technology is built with anti-replay technology and can be used to access any digital channel– from web, to mobile, to IoT.

“The opportunity to distribute Trusona’s technology will enable NTT-AT to offer our customers a safer and more secure identity authentication solution that completely gets rid of passwords,” said Eiji Kuwana, SVP of NTT Advanced Technology Corp. “Our company is committed to providing excellent user experience and the best possible security for our customers.”

In the press release, Kazunari Tanaka, APAC Managing Director of Trusona said that Trusona’s password-free authentication solution is “a solution that millions of consumers in Japan have been craving.” Tanaka continued, “Businesses have a responsibility to assure the security of millions of online consumers without complicating user experience.”

Founded in 2015, Trusona is used across a variety of sectors, including government, education, and financial services. The company’s CEO and founder, Ori Eisen, demonstrated Trusona’s Cloud Identity Suite at FinovateFall 2016. The Cloud Identity Suite allows end users to authenticate themselves by using the Trusona app on their smartphone to photograph a QR code on a website login page, then selecting accept on their mobile device.

In November of last year, KPMG and H2 Ventures named Trusona on the list of Emerging Stars on its Fintech 100 rankings. Earlier that year, analyst David Penn highlighted Trusona in his piece The Best Authenticators, Verifiers, and Fraud Fighters.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: AutoGravity, Clinc, Expensify, Geezeo, IdentityMind Global, Kabbage, Kantox, Mitek, Payfone, Realty Mogul, Tradeshift, Trusona, Zopa

On Finovate.com

  • Japanese Telecom NTT to Distribute Trusona Technology in Japan.
  • RealtyMogul Introduces new President, Aaron Halfacre.
  • Tradeshift Launches Innovation Center to Bring the Blockchain to Business Commerce.
  • Payfone Teams Up with U.K. Mobile Network Operator.
  • Expensify Reports More than 1 Million New Users and Double the Partnerships in 2017.

Around the web

  • Auto Finance Excellence talks with AutoGravity CTO Sheng Wang, who discusses the company’s new security features.
  • Sam Maule talks with Kabbage founder Rob Frohwein.
  • F&M Bank selects Geezeo to enhance digital banking.
  • Kantox partners with BELLIN to help support SMEs expanding globally.
  • Mitek and IdentityMind announce integration to enhance their digital ID verification capacities.
  • Zopa re-opens its platform for new customers.

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.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

SoFi’s Choice: Former Twitter COO Anthony Noto to Take Helm as New CEO

SoFi’s Choice: Former Twitter COO Anthony Noto to Take Helm as New CEO
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: SoFi

Social media’s loss is social finance’s big gain.

Anthony Noto, Chief Operating Officer for Twitter, has stepped down from his post at the popular social networking platform. His destination? A job as Chief Executive Officer for lending and wealth management firm, SoFi.

“We are simply thrilled to have found someone of Anthony’s expertise and knowledge to lead SoFi,” interim CEO Tom Hutton said. “The SoFi board unanimously agrees that Anthony’s deep understanding of technology, consumer, and financial businesses make him the perfect fit to be SoFi’s CEO. We could not be more excited to have someone of his caliber on board.”

Starting at Twitter as Chief Financial Officer in 2014, Noto became COO in November 2016. He came to Twitter after serving as co-head of global TMT investment banking at Goldman Sachs, a firm he first joined in 1999, and where he was named partner in 2004. From 2008 to 2010, Noto was CFO for the National Football League. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, and has an MBA from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.

“SoFi has a significant opportunity to build on its leadership position in student and personal loans to revolutionize consumer finance and build a next-generation financial services company,” Noto said. “I’m excited to work with Tom and the rest of the SoFi team.”

Noto arrives at a time of significant growth for the company. SoFi announced surpassing $25 billion in funded loans last year, and reported that its student loan refinancing products helped borrowers save more than $2 billion. The company said that in the fourth quarter of 2017 it completed its largest securitizations to date for refinanced student loans ($776 million) and personal loans ($727 million). For the full year, SoFi’s total issuance was $6.9 billion.

A financing innovator, SoFi provides student loan refinancing, as well as mortgages and personal loans. The company looks beyond credit scores and debt-to-income ratios to consider factors such as cashflow, career, and education to offer lower rates to borrowers it refers to as “members.” This underscores another unique aspect of SoFi, which stands for Social Finance. The company proactively supports timely repayment of loans through a variety of tools, resources, and strategies including temporarily suspending payments in the event of job loss.

SoFi also provides wealth management and insurance services. The company’s investment management solution combines both live advisors and automated rebalancing to give investors comprehensive and low-cost advice and support for their long-term financial planning. The company has also partnered with Protective Life to offer life insurance coverage up to $1 million for online applicants and up to $5 million for applicants with a medical exam.

SoFi partnered with Quovo to present How Quovo and SoFi Perfected Bank Authentication at FinDEVr New York 2017, winning the Favorite FinDEVr Alum award. The company has raised more than $2 billion in funding, and has an estimated valuation of $4 billion based on its most recent $500 million fundraising in February 2017.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Trulioo Launches KYC Tool to Connect MNOs

Trulioo Launches KYC Tool to Connect MNOs
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Trulioo

Identity verification company Trulioo is extrapolating the use of its know your customer (KYC) solution to Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). Available via Trulioo’s Global Gateway ID verification platform, the new authentication will be used in tandem with more than 200 data sources to help verify consumers’ identities during the onboarding process.

Specifically, Trulioo will work with 24 MNOs from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., China, India, Spain, France, and Switzerland, all of which will offer data to help Global Gateway customers meet KYC compliance for mobile identity verification. Through this expansion, financial services providers can leverage mobile network carrier data combined with existing KYC data sources to meet KYC regulations. This will be especially helpful for businesses with clients in China, Spain, and France, three markets where it is particularly challenging to fulfill KYC compliance because of limited access to data.

Trulioo CEO Stephen Ufford said the company has “long been heavily investing in MNO relationships” to grow the list of identity verification partners on its platform. He added, “We are very excited to be the first platform to offer the market services from dozens of MNOs through a single contract and API.”

Founded in 2011, Trulioo leverages 400 data sources to offer verification of 4.5 billion personal identities and 250 businesses in 80+ countries. The Canada-based company also offers a data exchange platform that allows data partners to provide access to consumer data for electronic identity verification purposes, allowing them to set bid prices for electronic ID verification on a region-by-region basis.

At FinovateFall 2016, Trulioo’s Head of Growth, Anatoly Kvitnitsky, demonstrated how GlobalGateway blocks fraudulent users from onboarding in real time. Last May, the company teamed up with Mitek to add a layer of biometric authentication to its identity verification tool. Most recently, Trulioo expanded its services to add business verification in October of 2017.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Zopa Boosts Executive Ranks with Trio of C-Level Hires

Zopa Boosts Executive Ranks with Trio of C-Level Hires
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Zopa

En route to its launch of a next generation challenger bank later this year, P2P lender Zopa is staffing up its executive ranks. The company announced today that it was appointing a new Chief Financial Officer, Chief Risk Officer, and Chief Customer Officer.

At the post of CFO, Steve Hulme comes to Zopa after a stint as CFO for Tandem Money. Previous to Tandem Money, Hulme was CFO for PayPal’s global credit business and CFO for Capital One’s business in the U.K. and Canada. He was educated at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, earning a BA in Geography.

Taking the helm as Chief Risk Officer is Phillip Dransfield. With a Masters in Commerce, Finance, and Banking from UNSW and a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Wollongong, Dransfield held executive positions at TSB Bank and Lloyds Banking Group.

Zopa also hired a new Chief Customer Officer to start the new year. Clare Gambardella previously worked in a number of capacities for Virgin Active, and ended her tenure at the health club, gym, and spa network as Chief Marketing Officer. Also a veteran of the Boston Consulting Group, Gambardella was educated at the University of Cambridge, where she earned a degree in English Literature.

“We’re delighted to have three high profile and exceptionally talented people join the business,” Zopa CEO Jaidev Janardana said. “Our people are our biggest competitive advantage and these additions further strengthen our position.”

Along with the $41 million (£32 million) investment the company picked up last summer, the new hires are part of the preparation for the launch of Zopa Bank. The challenger bank will offer customers personal and auto loans, flat rate credit cards, and savings and investment products. “We’re uniquely placed to make the next generation bank a leader in consumer finance combining our customer-centric culture, agile technology and data excellence with a track record of loan origination and risk management,” Janardana wrote in a blog post last fall. “No other provider has this combination of attributes.”

Zopa made its Finovate debut in 2008. The London-based company* was founded in 2005 and has raised more than $112 million in funding. Named to the European Fintech 100 and ranked in the Inc. 5000, Zopa partnered with fellow Finovate alum Aire last fall and opened a new development center in Barcelona, Spain last summer.

*Updated to reflect Zopa headquarters in London.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Juvo Receives Investment from Samsung to Boost Smartphone Usage Among Underbanked

Juvo Receives Investment from Samsung to Boost Smartphone Usage Among Underbanked
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Juvo

Mobile identity company Juvo has received an investment from Samsung NEXT, an off-shoot of Samsung that launched in 2013 to create new software and foster a startup culture at Samsung. The amount of the investment was undisclosed and adds to the San Francisco-based company’s $54 million in equity funding.

The bigger story here is that the investment is a strategic one. Samsung will bring Juvo access to billions of underbanked prepaid users across the globe. This will help Juvo enable MNOs to increase smartphone adoption among prepaid mobile subscribers.

Juvo was founded in 2014 with a mission to “establish financial identities for the billions of people worldwide who are creditworthy, yet financially excluded.” The company’s tag-line sums this up as, “access for all.”

In today’s press release, Steve Polsky, founder and CEO of Juvo, explained that the investment and alignment with Samsung NEXT is important because it allows Juvo “to further realize our vision by being among the first to integrate financial identity into a hardware device and, with it, offer unprecedented access to greater financial services.” He added, “Samsung opens a critical piece of the ecosystem for Juvo, and its world class organization, market expertise, and reach will accelerate the Juvo mission, putting sophisticated technology in the hands of unbanked people and provide financial access to those who need it most.”

“At Samsung NEXT, we’re focused on working with entrepreneurs and startups that are creating truly impactful software and services–software and services that will transform the way we, as humans, interact with our devices, each other and the world,” said Patrick Chang, Principal at Samsung NEXT Ventures. “Juvo’s impressive traction from mobile operators and consumers offers an opportunity for us to tap into the next billion customers through more comprehensive financial inclusion and accessibility.”

Polsky demoed Juvo’s Identity Scoring at FinovateFall 2016. The company empowers underbanked consumers by offering them a single identity with which to access financial services across the globe. Juvo also incentivizes financially underserved consumers to build credit and access financial services by extending microloans.

Since launch, the company has attained a reach of more than 500 million subscribers across four continents and is deployed in 25 countries. Last fall, Juvo partnered with Malaysian mobile virtual network operator, Tune Talk.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Xero Teams with DBS on Small Business Account Feeds

Xero Teams with DBS on Small Business Account Feeds
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Xero

Cloud accounting platform Xero has added the Development Bank of Singapore (DBS) as a bank partner this week. By teaming up, the two aim to help their mutual small business clients manage their finances.

The partnership will allow small business customers who use DBS IDEAL, DBS’s online business banking platform, to opt in to have their bank transactions imported automatically into their Xero account every day. This automatic transaction data feed enables businesses to gain a holistic view of their financial standing while avoiding manual data entry.

This bank partnership is one of many the New Zealand-based company has undertaken. Xero is currently integrated with more than 80 Australian banks, 20 New Zealand banks, eight banks in the U.K., four banks in the U.S., five banks in Asia, and one bank in South Africa. Rod Drury, Xero CEO and Founder said, “We are working with more than 140 financial and fintech organizations around the world to establish a global financial web which securely opens up data flows that can help de-risk lending and enable small businesses to access much-needed capital so that they can prosper.”

DBS has more than 280 branches across 18 markets. This expanded reach will help Xero access more small business clients in the region, which experiences particular difficulty arranging direct bank feeds. Singapore requires businesses to apply via paper forms that can take up to 10 days to set up. In fact, the region seems to have a particular difficulty in this area. A recent survey of 150 non-Xero SMEs in Singapore found that small business owners:

  • Spend an average of 15+ hours a month manually importing and reconciling their bank statements
  • Almost 30% spend between 20 and 40 hours a month manually reconciling
  • More than 67% cited manual bank statement reconciliation as a challenge in managing operations

Joyce Tee, DBS Group Head of SME Banking said, “By enabling SMEs to manage their finances in a much more efficient manner, we hope that they can better manage their business and make more informed decisions.”

Xero most recently presented at FinDEVr San Francisco 2014 when the company’s Head of U.S. Partnerships David Pollock spoke about building an API-driven ecosystem for small businesses. At FinovateSpring 2011, CEO Rod Drury debuted the company’s Business Identification solution. The company recently ranked number 16 on the KPMG and H2 Ventures Fintech 100 list. In November of last year, Xero partnered with Worldpay to facilitate e-invoicing for small businesses.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook