BankBazaar Receives $30 Million in Funding Round Led by Experian

BankBazaar Receives $30 Million in Funding Round Led by Experian
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: BankBazaar, Funding

India-based online credit processing platform BankBazaar is sure to have a happy Diwali this year. That’s because the company has landed $30 million in a Series D funding round led by Experian.

The company didn’t name other contributors to today’s round, but cited existing backers Amazon, Sequoia, Eight Roads (Fidelity Growth Partners) and Walden International, who have helped boost BankBazaar’s total funding to $110 million. “The funds from this round will be used to further strengthen our position as the leader in secure paperless access to loans, cards, and Mutual Funds,” said BankBazaar CEO Adhil Shetty. The company also noted that it will use the funds to support international expansion efforts. BankBazaar has already made inroads into Singapore and is considering further expanding into Asia, the Middle East, Malaysia, Australia, Hong Kong, UAE, and the Philippines.

Founded in 2008, BankBazaar serves as a single platform where users can shop for and access a variety of financial products, including mortgages, personal loans, car loans, credit cards, fixed deposit accounts, and insurance offered by more than 75 financial institutions. The company began focusing on paperless finance last year, when it introduced paperless loan applications. Shetty expects Experian to help it “accelerate towards [its] vision of paperless access to all financial products.”

Ben Elliott, CEO of Experian Asia Pacific, said, “We believe that consumer adoption of fully digital experiences coupled with paperless access to financial products will push customer acquisition 10X by 2020. With e-commerce shoppers growing significantly over the next few years, companies with paperless technology platforms are well-positioned to leverage the latest trends in consumer technology and help millions of Indians gain access to formal banking and finance products, further enabling financial inclusion for millions of underserved consumers.”

BankBazaar demoed its real-time credit processing platform at FinovateAsia 2012 in Singapore. The company recently partnered with Experian to offer users access to view their credit score for free. Last year, BankBazaar was awarded the ‘Emerging Brand of the Year’ and ‘CEO of the Year’ awards at the 7th CMO Asia Awards in Singapore for Excellence in Branding and Marketing.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

FinovateAsia Sneak Peek: CASHOFF

FinovateAsia Sneak Peek: CASHOFF
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: CASHOFF, FinovateAsia 2017, FinovateAsia 2017 Sneak Peek

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.

CASHOFF provides innovative solutions for banks by collecting and analyzing their consumers’ financial flows.

Features

  • Accurate forecasting of consumer buying behavior through itemization of receipts and predictive models
  • Customized loyalty
  • Data collection from different sources (banks, e-wallets, etc.)

Why it’s great
CASHOFF’s white-label analytical engine inside your e-banking system is a source of deep customer understanding. By integrating it, a variety of options to generate profit will be revealed.

Presenters

Dmitry Gorkov, CEO & Founder

Yulia Clarke, Marketing Director

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

FinovateAsia Sneak Peek: Harborx

FinovateAsia Sneak Peek: Harborx
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateAsia 2017, FinovateAsia 2017 Sneak Peek, Harborx

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.

Harborx is a fintech company created with the mission to simplify currency trading (forex), making it fun and accessible to anyone with a mobile.

Features

  • Simplifies FX trading through an intuitive mobile interface
  • Supports beginners with recommendations from Harborx pro traders
  • Provides gaming features like competitions, achievements, and missions to make trading fun

Why it’s great
Harborx is a simplified forex trading app that combines guidance from professionals with fun gamification features, where users have fun while enjoying multiple revenue channels.

Presenters

Cyrus Wen, Director
Wen has over 9 years of experience in investment, merger and acquisition, asset management, corporate finance, and business management and development.
LinkedIn

 

David Sung, Technical Manager
During his years at Harborx, Sung had the privilege of building the tech team which takes leading-edge technology to its extreme.
LinkedIn

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

FinovateAsia Sneak Peek: WeInvest

FinovateAsia Sneak Peek: WeInvest
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateAsia 2017, FinovateAsia 2017 Sneak Peek, WeInvest

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.

WeInvest is a digital wealth management solutions provider for banks, wealth and asset managers, insurance companies, and independent financial advisors.

Features

  • Drill down to any client’s portfolio with comprehensive analytics across performance, exposures, and risk
  • Generate ideas which could be relevant for the client across products
  • Manage, trade, and advise

Why it’s great
The RM Workbench is a capability built to deliver a holistic picture to the relationship managers about their clients, client communications, product information along with the ability to precision-service clients.

Presenters

Bhaskar Prabhakara, CEO
Prabhakara co-founded WeInvest and TrackWealth with the vision to help everyone take control of their finances, make better investment decisions and gain access to simpler, smarter, and transparent investing.
LinkedIn

 

Aananth Solaiyappan, CTO
Solaiyappan is a passionate technologist and a firm believer in the transformative power of design lead innovation. He is an accomplished executive and a serial entrepreneur.
LinkedIn

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Zafin Unveils New Pricing and Governance Solution for Corporate Banking

Zafin Unveils New Pricing and Governance Solution for Corporate Banking
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Zafin

In the words of Adam Nanjee, SVP for Digital Banking at Zafin, today’s announcement on the launch of Zafin Client Offer Management is the product of “fifteen years of domain expertise and collaboration” with the company’s clients and partners. “We are proud to release another avenue for our corporate banking clients to drive more revenue, create operational efficiencies, and expedite digital deployments,” Nanjee said.

Designed for Relationship Managers at Tier 1 banks, Zafin Client Offer Management enables them to test and analyze “what-if” pricing models in real-time without needing technical expertise or IT involvement. The cloud-based platform automates manual, often spreadsheet-based processes and works seamlessly with legacy banking systems to create efficiencies and reduce costs for banks.

Adam Nanjee, Zafin SVP for Digital Banking, demonstrating miRevenue Enterprise Banking Platform.

“Zafin’s platform is trusted by several Tier 1 corporate banks to enhance revenue and service their clients effectively,” Dinesh Krishnan, MD of Global Product Development at Zafin said, adding that the platform has been designed “from the ground up to suit the needs of our corporate banking clients.” Client Offer Manager, which helps FIs ensure profitability by linking pricing to specific performance metrics, is currently deployed with a Tier 1 bank, according to Zafin’s announcement.

Founded in 2002, Zafin demonstrated its miRevenue Enterprise Banking platform at FinovateFall 2017. Earlier this year, the company was a finalist for PwC’s Vision to Reality Innovator of the Year competition. Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and with offices around the world, Zafin’s global banking customers include HSBC, Barclays, Standard Chartered, TD, and National Bank of Abu Dhabi.  The company has raised $30 million in total funding and includes Vistara Capital Partners, Kayne Partners, and Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors among its investors.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Mitek Acquires ICAR for $15 Million

Mitek Acquires ICAR for $15 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Mitek

Mobile capture and identity solutions company Mitek Systems scored a win for its identity verification arm this week. The company has acquired Barcelona-based ICAR for $15 million (€12.75 million).

In addition to strengthening Mitek’s position in the consumer identity and access management market, the move is expected to bolster the company’s stance overall in the industry. The acquisition will enable Mitek to offer extensive identity document coverage in North America, Europe, and Latin America and will increase Mitek’s capabilities with several new factors of authentication. Additionally, Mitek can now enable customer onboarding and authentication on both web and mobile interfaces.

“The technical and cultural fit between ICAR and Mitek is a tremendous opportunity to maximize value for shareholders, while expanding our mission to bring the highest quality user experience and digital identity verification solutions to our customers globally,” said James B. DeBello, Chief Executive Officer of Mitek and Chairman of the Mitek Board of Directors.

ICAR was founded in 2002 and facilitates more than 20 million identity validations per year. The company is headquartered in Barcelona with offices in Madrid, São Paulo, and Mexico City. ICAR is a spin-off of Computer Vision Center of the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona which, combined with researchers from Mitek Labs, will boost Mitek’s expertise in how machine learning and computer vision enhance digital identity verification.

At FinovateEurope 2017, ICAR’s CEO Xavier Codó and CMO Mariona Campmany demonstrated the company’s IDMobile solution that analyzes factors such as the consumer’s geolocation, email address, social networks and compares them with the user’s selfie and ID photo. Check out an interview we conducted with Campmany earlier this year.

Mitek recently demoed its MobileVerify solution at FinovateFall 2017. The company is publicly traded on NASDAQ under the ticker “MITK”. Mitek was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in San Diego, California. Last month, the company began leveraging near field communication (NFC) technology to add another factor of authentication by reading data held on RFID chips embedded into documents.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BankBazaar, Entersekt, Feedzai, ICAR, Mitek, Narrative Science, PayPal, Sensibill, TransCard, Venmo, VISA

On Finovate.com

  • BankBazaar Receives $30 Million in Funding Round Led by Experian.
  • Feedzai Secures $50 Million in New Funding.
  • BlueVine Lands $130 Million in Debt Financing.
  • Sensibill Brings Receipt Management to Royal Bank of Scotland’s Business Banking Customers.

Around the web

  • Entersekt hires Sherif Samy as SVP for North American operations.
  • Visa and Billtrust team up to streamline B2B payment reconciliation and support automation of virtual card payments.
  • PayPal announces Vemno is now payment option at more than two million U.S. retailers.
  • Narrative Science wins Microsoft Office 2017 App Award for Best Business Value.
  • TransCard partners with ExpenseAnywhere to Deliver Automated Payment Process Management 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.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to Launch UnderBanked Service in Partnership with Dwolla, Ripple, and Others

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to Launch UnderBanked Service in Partnership with Dwolla, Ripple, and Others
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Dwolla, Ripple

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced the launch of a service today that it created with in partnership with Dwolla, along with collaboration with Ripple, Crosslake Technologies, ModusBox, and Software Group. The new tool is an open-source code for creating a payments infrastructure intended for unbanked populations.

Called Mojaloop, the system is named after the Swahili word for “one.” The program is aimed to empower local, unbanked communities by offering a single, secure, digital payment method that replaces the use of cash, which is inconvenient and often insecure. The code is secure and interoperable and can be used at scale to serve an entire country or region, and the open-source nature enables developers to build, enhance, or adapt the code to suit specific needs.

“Imagine your life without banking. How would you pay your bills? Or store your money for safe-keeping? For two billion people around the world, these challenges are very real,” the launch video for Mojaloop begins. It goes on to explain that the service helps users spend and save money easily and securely, while offering financial providers access to a group of new clients. Mojaloop has three main layers:

  1. An interoperability layer, which facilitates payments made among various services, including bank accounts, and mobile money accounts.
  2. A directory service layer, which is responsible for routing each payment to the correct provider
  3. A transaction settlement layer, which records each transaction in each provider’s master ledger

Before creating Mojaloop, Dwolla undertook market research that took “countless calls, work-sessions, and meetings” to curate. The company described Mojaloop as “a true victory for the development of global payments” and said that the project “evens the playing field, so everyone can benefit from the sophistication of a ubiquitous payments infrastructure.”

Participating in the Mojaloop project, Dwolla said it drew from its experience in creating FiSync, and leveraged ideas from its Fast Payments Proposal. In a blog post announcing the launch, the company said, “As an organization, we are excited to see where the Gates Foundation and the open-source community, continues to strive to find a payments solution for the betterment of the global economy.”

Dwolla, which most recently demoed FiSync at FinovateSpring 2015, was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa. Earlier this summer, the company added a multi-user feature to its Access API dashboard. In May, Dwolla teamed up with Plaid to offer a fully tokenized ACH payment integration. Ben Milne is founder and CEO.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

KlickEx and IBM Leverage Blockchain Technology to Improve Cross-Border Payments in the South Pacific

KlickEx and IBM Leverage Blockchain Technology to Improve Cross-Border Payments in the South Pacific
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: IBM, KlickEx

FinovateAsia alum KlickEx is partnering with public blockchain network builder, Stellar, and fellow Finovate alum, IBM, to improve cross-border payments for emerging markets, particularly in the South Pacific. Already processing live transactions in 12 currency corridors in the region, the solution will use IBM Blockchain to accelerate clearing and settlement on a single network in near real-time for consumers and merchants in countries like Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji.

“This is the first time anyone has made blockchain work at an institutionally viable scale,” KlickEx Group founder and CEO Robert Bell said. Underscoring KlickEx’s experience in facilitating inexpensive, real time, multi-currency payments in the area, Bell said, “this project was a natural next step following our work to create seamless and borderless payments across the Pacific.”

More than 12 banks from Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, and Thailand are participating in the development and deployment process. Stellar.org’s network enables near real time settlement by issuing digital assets that serve as a foreign exchange bridge. KlickEx is the partnership’s founding financial institution for the area, supporting FIs and retail customers on the network. Planners believe that up to 60% of all cross-border payments in the South Pacific’s retail foreign exchange corridors could be processed by the network by early 2018.

In a post at the KlickEx blog, Bell put this week’s announcement in the context of his company’s long-term focus on bringing better payments processes to regions “outside our major global banking corridors.” He wrote: “In the 90s I saw first-hand the need to help Pacific Island nations including Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu improve their financial infrastructure.” He added, “We have pioneered the use of mobile apps and other emerging technologies to provide convenient, low-cost and accessible solutions to help Pacific communities with banking transactions.”

IBM presented its blockchain-based technology at our developer’s conference last year, discussing Implementation of the Hyperledger Project at IBM with Blockchain As A Service at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016. The company is also a Finovate alum, having recently demonstrated its Customer Insight for Banking solution at FinovateFall 2016, while the company’s security division introduced its cognitive approach to fraud detection, IBM Trusteer Rapport, at FinovateSpring 2017.

Founded in 2009 and headquartered in New Zealand, KlickEx demonstrated Crypto-Currency 2.0, a new global asset-backed currency for central banks, at FinovateAsia 2013. Remember Finovate returns to Asia next month for FinovateAsia 2017. To learn more about joining us in Hong Kong, November 7 and 8, visit our FinovateAsia page today.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

ACI Launches Payments Risk Management Solution to Boost Fraud Protection

ACI Launches Payments Risk Management Solution to Boost Fraud Protection
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide

Electronic payments company ACI Worldwide announced it will enhance its fraud protection efforts today. The Florida-based company launched the UP Payments Risk Management Solution, which Andreas Suma, vice president of ACI Worldwide said “combines fraud and transaction data from the payment universe and insights from ACI’s global fraud experts—stopping fraud and improving every customer experience across the payments ecosystem.”

The solution offers cloud-based, real-time fraud management services to protect payments, regardless of a number of circumstances. The payment can be card-present or card-not-present; initiated using ACI’s or a third-party’s payment engine; or conducted by a bank, intermediary, or merchant. By leveraging machine learning, Up Payments Risk Management can react and adapt to new fraud signals, then use fraud and payment data through modeling and analytic systems. “The necessity for universal fraud management services in the cloud continues to increase, and banks, intermediaries, merchants and telcos seek to outsource everything from payments, fraud, compliance and security-related tasks,” Suma said.

Founded in 1975, ACI Worldwide has been delivering fraud protection and prevention for more than 20 years and draws on more than 40 years of payments experience. The company executes more than $14 trillion in payments and securities each day for more than 5,100 organizations across the globe, including more than 1,000 of the largest financial institutions.

At FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, the company gave a presentation titled, Simple, Global, and Secure eCommerce Payments with ACI Worldwide’s Next-Generation API. The presentation showcased ACI’s COPYandPAY solution, an SAQ-A compliant JavaScript payment-form solution. Earlier this month, the company partnered with STET, a European clearing and settlement system, to serve payment service providers across Europe. In July, ACI Worldwide expanded its operations by opening a new office in Romania. The company has 4,100 employees in 31 offices across the globe and is publicly traded on the NASDAQ under the ticker ACIW.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

IBM Partners with Dream Payments on mPOS, B2B Payments

IBM Partners with Dream Payments on mPOS, B2B Payments
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Dream Payments, IBM

IBM has teamed up with Toronto-based firm Dream Payments, bringing its cloud and security capabilities to help the firm offer mobile point of sale solutions and business-to-business (B2B) payments, reports Antony Peyton of Banking Technology (Finovate’s sister publication).

Chad Whittaker, CIO Dream Payments, said: “The combination of IBM’s banking and financial services expertise along with the IBM Cloud has allowed Dream Payments to build and scale its cloud infrastructure, right down to bare metal hardware access, maintain bank grade security, PCI compliance, and data sovereignty.”

Dream Payments will also be protected using IBM Managed Security Services, including IBM QRadar on Cloud, a network security intelligence and analytics offering, to detect and take action against cybersecurity attacks and network breaches.

According to IBM, the technology will establish cloud intelligence with Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) as a Service to defend the organization’s security infrastructure from threats.

Dream is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and has operations in Stamford, Connecticut. Founded in 2014, the company demonstrated its mPOS solution at FinovateSpring 2015. Dream Payments has raised $15 million in funding – including a $10 million Series A this spring – and counts Fair Ventures, Connecticut Innovations, and Real Ventures among its investors. Learn more about Dream Payments in our Finovate Debut profile.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, IBM, identitii, iSignthis, Jack Henry, KlickEx, TSYS

On Finovate.com

  • KlickEx and IBM Leverage Blockchain Technology to Improve Cross-Border Payments in the South Pacific.
  • Dwolla on Designing a New System for Financial Inclusion: Mojaloop.
  • ACI Launches Payments Risk Management Solution to Boost Fraud Protection.

Around the web

  • TSYS introduces its merchant services company ProPay in Australia.
  • Jack Henry & Associates partners with SAS to bring its cloud-based analytics solution to regional and community banks.
  • iSignthis announces integration of Tradefinancial.com.au into its ISCPay transactional banking platform.
  • Identitii’s Software-as-a-Serice offering goes live on Microsoft Azure cloud.

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