Bento for Business Introduces New Solutions, Partners, and APIs

Bento for Business Introduces New Solutions, Partners, and APIs
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bento for Business

US-based expense management solution provider Bento for Business has onboarded new partners and expanded its product line, reports Tanya Andreasyan of Banking Technology (Finovate’s sister publication).

Bento now offers debit and virtual cards for companies and their employees. Its banking solutions are now supported by The Bancorp Bank and CFSB as well as processors Marketa and 12C, the company said, “making it the most robust solution of its kind”.

It has also forged co-branded partnerships with The Brink’s Company and Fleetcor to offer its solution to their small business customers.

Furthermore, Bento has opened its APIs “to simplify how companies work with their clients and customers”.

“We are building a modern banking platform for small businesses that brings everything under one umbrella,” said Farhan Ahmad, CEO of Bento (pictured). “Our approach is unique in this industry because we see value in the platform, rather than a single stand-alone product. By offering multiple products on the same platform and allowing our customers to use our APIs to develop better, more useful, and customisable experiences, we can fully address all of their pain points.

“Soon any business owner will be able to curate and access the financial products, services, and integrations they need through Bento.”

According to Bento, applicants for its services get approved online in real-time.

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in San Francisco, Bento for Business demonstrated its platform at FinovateSpring 2015. Last month, the company appointed Jeff Pomeroy as Vice President of Product, and earlier this year, Bento added Lou Friedmann as Chief Revenue Officer. The company has raised more than $9 million in funding, and includes Comcast Ventures and Anthemis Group among its investors.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Compass Plus, Gusto, Nubank, PaySimple, Personal Capital, Ping Identity, Vantiv, Xero

On Finovate.com

  • Nubank Reaches Out to Brazil’s Underbanked with Addition of Digital Accounts.

Around the web

  • Built In Colorado names Gusto, Ping Identity, Personal Capital, Xero, PaySimple, Vantiv in its list of Top 100 digital tech companies in Colorado.
  • Compass Plus among the first software vendors to connect to the MirAccept 2.0 platform from NSPC.

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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Two-Time Best of Show Winner Finn.ai Raises $3 Million in New Funding

Two-Time Best of Show Winner Finn.ai Raises $3 Million in New Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Finn.ai, Funding

In a round led by Yaletown Partners, Flying Fish Partners, and former CEO and Chairman of Absolute Software John Livingston, virtual banking assistant developer Finn.ai has raised $3 million in funding. The company will use the funding to add to its team – especially data scientists, engineers, and banking industry experts – as well as to support Finn.ai’s expansion in the U.S., and around the world.

“Finn.ai is built from the ground up specifically to help banks and credit unions transform the way they engage with customers,” Co-Founder and CEO Jake Tyler said. “(This) makes banking simpler, more accessible, more human, and ultimately (helps) to build trust and engagement between banks and their customers.

The funding for Finn.ai, which also featured the participation of an “experienced angel syndicate … of senior technology and banking executives,” coincides with news of the company’s partnership with ATB Financial. In this deal, announced earlier this week, Finn.ai’s technology will enable ATB Financial to provide the first, fully-featured, AI-powered virtual banking assistant on Facebook Messenger to its 700,000 customers.

In addition to the funding, Finn.ai announced that banking veteran Carrie Russell will join the company as Strategic Executive Adviser. Russell was formerly Chief Marketing Officer at D+H (now Finastra) and served as SVP for Retail Banking Products at TD Bank. Citing a need for banks to “move beyond transactional banking to build deeper, more personal relationships with customers,” Russell said, “I believe Finn.ai is the right partner to do this, acting as a proactive virtual assistant to help customers understand, plan, and take action to improve their financial lives.”

Finn.ai won Best of Show in its FinovateAsia debut last year in Hong Kong, and took home top honors again when the company demoed its virtual banking assistant last month at FinovateFall. Finn.ai has earned recognition from both Capegemini’s global InnovatorsRace and the VivaTech conference in Paris. The company was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

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FinovateAsia Sneak Peek: Jscrambler

FinovateAsia Sneak Peek: Jscrambler
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateAsia 2017, FinovateAsia 2017 Sneak Peek, Jscrambler

A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateAsia on November 7 and 8 in Hong Kong. Pick up your tickets today and save your spot.

Jscrambler, leader in JavaScript Application Security, trusted by more than 30,000 companies and individuals, gives now unparalleled visibility on the client-side of web applications to prevent fraud.

Features

  • Protect your website against fraudsters and malicious injections
  • Prevent loss of credentials, private data, credit card information
  • Detect defacing and tampering of your users’ experience

Why it’s great
Jscrambler presents an innovative solution tailored to financial services allowing organizations to spot fraud in websites. No more stolen data, tampered transactions or hijacked content.

Presenters

Pedro Fortuna, Co-Founder and CTO
Fortuna is Co-Founder and CTO of Jscrambler, leading the technical vision for the product and R&D activities. Has more than a decade of experience and knowledge working in the cybersecurity field.
LinkedIn

Carlos M. Gonçalves, Head of Marketing & Sales
Gonçalves, responsible for marketing and sales at Jscrambler, leads a team of professionals from both business and technical backgrounds. His role also includes managing several deals and partnerships.
LinkedIn

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FinovateAsia Sneak Peek: Hyper Anna

FinovateAsia Sneak Peek: Hyper Anna
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateAsia 2017, FinovateAsia 2017 Sneak Peek, Hyper Anna

A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateAsia on November 7 and 8 in Hong Kong. Pick up your tickets today and save your spot.

Hyper Anna wants you to meet Anna, your artificial intelligence-powered data analyst.

Features

  • Real-time business insight
  • Insight recommendations
  • Natural language interactions

Why it’s great
Hyper Anna offers 24/7 business intelligence.

Presenters

Natalie Nguyen, CEO

Sam Zheng, CTO

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FinovateAsia Sneak Peek: Kript

FinovateAsia Sneak Peek: Kript
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateAsia 2017, FinovateAsia 2017 Sneak Peek, Kript

A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateAsia on November 7 and 8 in Hong Kong. Pick up your tickets today and save your spot.

Kript is a decentralized mobile application designed to help invest in crypto assets.

Features

  • Investment in cryptocurrencies and ICOs
  • Personalized insights about the crypto-market and the potential price of the crypto-assets
  • Building and management of the crypto-portfolio

Why it’s great
Kript is a multi-blockchain platform that implements a service function — a community for like-minded people, informational services, personalized support, and advice.

Presenters

Philip Joslin, Director
Joslin has been working in the financial services industry– brokerage and exchange and risk management– for over 20 years in Europe and Asia Pacific.
LinkedIn

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Persado Unveils Persado One, Lands $30 Million Credit Facility from Silicon Valley Bank

Persado Unveils Persado One, Lands $30 Million Credit Facility from Silicon Valley Bank
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Persado

Artificial intelligence (AI) -generated marketing campaign company Persado unveiled a new product this week, along with a fresh $30 million credit facility to fuel even more expansion.

Persado One

Persado One, the new offering, provides personalized emotional engagement at scale. The company says the new development represents the “most significant advancement to date” of Persado’s AI platform. Available through the company’s Enterprise Level of service, Persado One uses deep learning algorithms to deliver personalized messaging to a customer based on their emotional profile.

The company is also launching a professional class of tools to help marketers predict response rates, generate higher performing campaigns, and refine language according to a brand’s style. At launch, the tools will be available for email and social media channels.

“The debut of Persado One and the expansion of Persado’s marketing language cloud solutions mark an important milestone for our company as we continue to reach a broader audience of marketers with tools to directly impact their business,” said Assaf Baciu, Co-Founder and SVP Product & Engineering at Persado. “These innovations are reflective of Persado’s success in generating ROI for the world’s leading brands and increasing marketplace demand.”

Financing

Silicon Valley Bank provided the credit facility, which Persado will use to “fuel the expansion of the Persado Marketing Language Cloud and further the rapid growth of the business.” Alex Vratskides, Persado Co-Founder and CEO said, “As a bank built around supporting innovation, Silicon Valley Bank is the ideal partner in our drive to challenge what’s possible in applying an industry-leading AI technology to marketing and beyond.”

Persado was founded in 2012 to offer brands insight into how consumers respond to their messages in different channels and scenarios. At FinovateEurope 2016, the company’s Chief Revenue Officer Lawrence Whittle launched Persado Go, an automated solution that offers business customers persuasive messaging in real-time via a self-service interface. In the demo, Whittle showed how a bank can create a marketing email to persuade dormant credit card clients to resume their relationship with the bank.

Since 2016, the company has seen a 3.6x increase in user numbers. Pesado counts Oracle, Salesforce, Cheetah Digital, and Oracle+Bronto, as clients and has expanded globally to Europe, Australia, Mexico, Japan, and the Republic of Korea.

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Personetics Leverages AI to Help Chip Away at Student Loan Crisis

Personetics Leverages AI to Help Chip Away at Student Loan Crisis
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Personetics

Cognitive analytics company Personetics announced this week it is using its AI technology in a new way. The Israel-based company launched Personetics Act this week to offer banks a way to help customers repay their student loans ahead of schedule.

The new service uses the Nudge Theory to incentivize the 44 million U.S. student loan borrowers who owe more than $1.4 trillion in student loan debt to pay down their loans early and avoid paying thousands in interest. The Nudge Theory was demonstrated by 2017 Nobel Prize winner Professor Richard Thaler, who noted that people make better decisions to improve their financial health when the choice is made easy for them.

Personetics Act puts the Nudge Theory to work by helping banks identify consumers that 1) have a student loan and 2) can afford to pay it off faster. The program offers these consumer a tailored, automated service that adjusts to changes in their spending behavior and continually analyzes their financial picture to find unused funds that can be applied toward the existing loan balance. This can be set to automatically make payments on the customer’s behalf or to appear as a suggested recommendation. The company notes that applying an additional $50 per week towards a $40,000 student loan that bears a 5% interest rate can allow a customer to pay off the loan 3.5 years faster and save over $4,000 in interest payments.

“Existing bank plans are limited in scope and therefore unlikely to make a visible dent in any customer’s outstanding loan balance,” said David Sosna, Personetics’ Co-founder and CEO. “By applying AI algorithms to analyze individual customer cash flows, we’re able to identify windows of opportunity for customers to make these extra payments with no effort on their end.”

At FinovateFall 2016, Personetics demonstrated its Personetics Anywhere chatbot solution. The company was founded in 2011 and has received $18 million in total funding. Personetics recently onboarded Royal Bank of Canada to pilot an AI-powered financial guidance solution, NOMI Insights, and an automated savings platform, NOMI Find & Save. Last month, the company’s VP of New Markets and Solutions, Sudharshan Krishnan, authored a guest post titled, “Enabled by AI, Self-Service Is the Future of Banking.”

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Swych Unveils Themed, Multi-Currency Digital Gifting Options

Swych Unveils Themed, Multi-Currency Digital Gifting Options
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Swych

FinovateFall Best of Show winner Swych has introduced a new set of themed, e-gifting options. The new switchable Occasion, Category, and Event-themed e-gift cards are automatically redeemable in either U.S. dollars or Indian Rupees (depending on location) at retailers matching the category theme. A U.S. shopper who receives a Fashion e-gift card could “swych” it in order to make purchases at a retailer or speciality clothing boutique in the States, while the same card received by a shopper in India could be redeemed at a popular Indian retailer such as Shopper’s Stop.

“We are re-envisioning gifting between consumers by thinking about it in a social and fun way,” Swych founder and CEO Deepak Jain said. “Swych’s value proposition is to make every gift a perfect one; and now we are taking it further by making the gifting transaction between consumers located in two different parts of the planet as seamless and easy as sharing a video or having a chat conversation.” He added, “our launch of a multi-currency, global category gifting portfolio is a step in this direction.”

Examples of the category-themed e-gift cards include Birthday, Anniversary, Graduation, Wedding, New Baby, and Thank You products. The company is also planning to add special events and holiday-themed universal e-gift cards for Diwali, Christmas, and other occasions.

Swych’s e-gift cards are unique insofar as there are no other multi-currency, multi-retailer gift products available on the market that do not also incur interchange or foreign exchange fees when used. In the same way that e-gift cards have made gifting easier within countries and regions, Swych’s new offering makes it easy for consumers to send gifts to friends and family abroad, as well as for businesses and institutions looking to provide rewards and incentives to employees working in more than one country. Swych’s e-gifting solutions have no transaction fees, can be used at the recipient’s preferred merchant, and integrate readily within remittance, mobile banking, messaging, conversational commerce, and loyalty programs.

Headquartered in Plano, Texas, Swych demonstrated its Mobile Gifting Platform at FinovateFall 2016, winning Best of Show. The company has more than 130 U.S. retailers in its network and is partnering with 100 retailers from India, the Philippines, and other countries. Last month, the company announced a “major strategic investment” from UAE Exchange Group through which the two will jointly develop digital gifting services for consumers in emerging markets. In February, Swych released the beta version of its P2P gifting bot. The Swych mobile app is available to U.S. consumers on both iOS and Android.

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Turning the Tables: AI Will Help Consumers Fight Bank Fees & Penalties

Turning the Tables: AI Will Help Consumers Fight Bank Fees & Penalties
By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: A.I., Legal, Service

There’s an interesting article in today’s WSJ about DoNotPay, a free AI-powered chat-based service that was built to help London residents automatically fight parking tickets.  That service has now assisted 400,000 consumers fight off $11 million in fines (more background at TechCrunch).

It’s the brainchild of then 17-year old Joshua Browder (who is now 19, and of course, studying CS at Stanford). But Browder is not content beating the meter reader. He is now gearing up to equip everyone with free AI-powered law tools to take on bigger injustices and issues (see DoNotPay overview video above). His latest work, a tool to make it easy to process a no-fault divorce, something that typically can cost $10,000.

The article mentioned a few more areas ripe for this type of tool: airline restitution for delays and lost luggage and battling telemarketers and landlords.

But one area that’s sure to attract multiple consumer AI startups: bank fees, penalties, credit decisions, and more. What are you going to do when you start receiving hundreds, if not thousands, of cease & desist letters challenging NSF charges, late payment fees, and so on? Or worse, suing you in small claims court or threatening arbitration (see the current default “problem” at DoNotPay, how to sue Equifax for $25,000, inset).

You are not going to be able to afford the legal expense to fight for a $35 NSF fee. Eventually, you’ll have your own AI to fight their AI, but that’s a ways away (though if you saw Tim Huber’s AI talk at FF, it may be closer than we think).

An even bigger issue are all those sketchy charges on bank credit and debit card. It’s not a stretch to imaging the consumer’s AI routinely filing disputes and following up over and over again until you and/or the merchant capitulate.

Bottom line: Make sure your penalty fees are appropriate, well communicated, and understood by customers. And you might want to pay a bit more attention to new technologies available to answer customer queries, and even legal threats, in a semi-automated fashion.

Author: Jim Bruene (@netbanker) is Founder & Senior Advisor to Finovate as well as Principal of BUX Advisors, a financial services user-experience consultancy. 

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Actiance, Finn.ai, Hyper Anna, Jscrambler, Klarna, Kript, Mitek, PayNearMe, Persado, Personetics, Revolut, Swych, Yoyo, Zafin

On Finovate.com

  • Swych Introduces Themed, Multi-Currency, Digital Gifting Options.
  • Persado Unveils Persado One, Lands $30 Million Credit Facility from Silicon Valley Bank.
  • Personetics Leverages AI to Help Chip Away at Student Loan Crisis.
  • Two-Time Best of Show Winner Finn.ai Raises $3 Million in New Funding.

Around the web

  • Actiance launches Safe Landing Program to ensure continuous compliance for stranded CA data protection customers.
  • PayNearMe helps NYC residents and visitors pay parking tickets with cash.
  • Mitek partners with handwriting-based biometric authentication service Asignio to deliver IDaaS solution.
  • Revolut announces plans to expand to Singapore.
  • Zafin launches digital origination platform and partner ecosystem, Zafin Origin.
  • Klarna expands partnership with Arcadia, adding new payment solutions.
  • Yoyo Wallet reaches processing milestone of more than 1.75 million transactions per month.

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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Credit Sesame Raises More than $42 Million, Unveils Robo Advisor for Credit

Credit Sesame Raises More than $42 Million, Unveils Robo Advisor for Credit
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Credit Sesame, Funding

Credit service and financial wellness company Credit Sesame has raised more than $42 million in funding. Featuring new and existing investors such as Menlo Ventures, Inventus Capital, Globespan Capital, IA Capital, and SF Capital, the combined equity ($26.6 million) and venture debt ($15.5 million) financing will take Credit Sesame’s total capital to more than $77 million. The funding will help speed Credit Sesame’s growth, enable the company to hire more than 100 new employees over the next 12 months, and “advance its analytics, robo advisor and machine learning technologies.”

That’s right. Robo advisor. In addition to the company’s funding announcement, Credit Sesame founder and CEO Adrian Nazari introduced new robo advisory technology that enables consumers to automate the management of their credit and loans. Credit Sesame sees this as “addressing the liability side of the balance sheet” rather than the asset side typically watched over by most robo advisors.

Credit Sesame CEO and founder Adrian Nazari demonstrating the company’s credit-based PFM solution at FinovateSpring 2015.

“While many companies have spent the last few years catching up to our free credit score offering for consumers, Credit Sesame has been developing and proving robo advisor technology.” Nazari said. He added, “this technology translates consumer financial and credit information into simple and actionable steps that consumers can easily understand and utilize to improve their financial profile and leverage their credit.”

Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Mountain View, California, Credit Sesame demonstrated its credit-based PFM for a co-branded environment at FinovateSpring 2015. With more than 12 million members, Credit Sesame’s mobile and online solutions give consumers free access to their credit profile, including their credit score, credit report grades and monitoring, as well as interactive tools and tips for securing better borrowing options such as low or no-balance credit card offers and debt consolidation loans.

Credit Sesame has achieved 100% annual growth for the past three years, reaching profitability earlier this year. This spring, the company launched a new service to pre-qualify members for credit cards. In February, Nazari was named to the Entrepreneur’s List of Most Inspirational Leaders in 2017, one month after earning similar recognition from Inc.com.

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