Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bazaarvoice, Ignite Sales, Mobeam, Narrative Science, Ripple, Temenos, Vantiv, VIX Verify

On Finovate.com

  • “Finovate Alums Help Represent Fintech Innovation in Israel”

On FinDEVr.com

  • “Mobeam Barcode Beaming Technology Gains Broader Integration with Samsung Pay”
  • “Up from Down Under: VIX Verify Chooses Atlanta’s Transaction Alley for Americas Headquarters”

Around the web

  • The American Genius interviews Gene Austin, Bazaarvoice CEO.
  • Ripple and Temenos partner to power direct, real-time, bank-to-bank settlements for Deloitte.
  • Ignite Sales wins Gold Stevie award for sales and marketing intelligence excellence for a second year in a row.
  • Vantiv and Payment Logistics team up to provide EMV payment solutions for Action Systems.
  • Strongsuit interviews Stuart Frankel, Narrative Science CEO and co-founder.

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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Fintech Fundings: 26 Companies Raised $270 Million Week Ending May 6

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Funding

Money_circuitSecond quarter’s funding pace remained strong with 26 companies raising $267 million—$55 million of that was Debt—the first week of May. The deals were widely dispersed around the world, with only 4 of the 26 companies hanging their shingles in California, although those four did account for half the dollar value.

The total number of deals YTD stands at 464, nearly double last year’s 252. Total dollars raised YTD is now $14.3 billion, more than twice the $6.6 billion raised during the same period a year ago.

Two Finovate alums scored big rounds:

——-

Fintech deals by size from 30 April to 6 May 2016:

VTS
Commercial real estate leasing and asset-management platform
Latest round: $55 million Series C
Total raised: $87.7 million
HQ: New York City
Tags: SMB, enterprise, commerical real estate, commerical mortgage, asset management
Source: Crunchbase

MobiKwik
Mobile wallet
Latest round: $50 million Series C
Total raised: $86.9 million
HQ: Gurgaon, India
Tags: Consumer, payments, banking, mobile, telecom top-ups, mobile
Source: Crunchbase

Intacct
Digital banking company
Latest round: $40 million Debt (Silcon Valley Bank)
Total raised: $125.8 million (includes $85 million Debt)
HQ: San Jose, California
Tags: SMB, accounting, payroll, bookkeeping, billing, payments, invoicing
Source: Crunchbase

Varo Money
Digital bank
Latest round: $27.4 million Private Equity
Total raised: $27.4 million
HQ: San Francisco, California
Tags: Consumer, deposits, payments, debit card, banking, mobile
Source: Crunchbase, WSJ

Zooz
Payments technology
Latest round: $24 million
Total raised: $40.5 million
HQ: Kefar Sava, Israel
Tags: SMB, payments, mobile, merchants, acquiring, security, credit/debit cards, Finovate alum
Source: Finovate

Net Element
Mobile payments
Latest round: $20 million Post-IPO Equity ($5 mil) and Debt ($15 mil)
Total raised: Unknown (NASDAQ: NETE)
HQ: Miami, Florida
Tags: Consumer, payments, brands: TOT Group, Unified Payments, Aptito, TOT Money
Source: Crunchbase

Azimo
Digital banking company
Latest round: $15 million
Total raised: $46.6 million
HQ: London, England, United Kingdom
Tags: Consumer, payments, peer-to-peer P2P funds transfers, remittances, FX, Rakuten (invester), Finovate alum
Source: Finovate

Bench
Online bookkeeping service
Latest round: $15 million
Total raised: $54.5 million
HQ: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Tags: SMB, accounting, payroll, bookkeeping, billing, payments, invoicing, omnichannel
Source: Crunchbase

Passport
Payments for transportation and parking
Latest round: $8 million Series B
Total raised: $17 million
HQ: Charlotte, North Carolina
Tags: Enterprise, SMB, payments, mobile, Finovate alum
Source: Finovate

YieldStreet
Marketplace lender
Latest round: $3.7 million Seed
Total raised: $3.7 million
HQ: New York City
Tags: Consumer, advisers, SMB, lending, credit, underwriting, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer loan marketplace, investing, P2P
Source: Crunchbase

Love Will Inc.
Blockchain-based financial applications
Latest round: $2.51 million
Total raised: $2.61 million
HQ: St. Louis, Missouri
Tags: Consumer, payments, blockchain, crypto-currency, bitcoin, peer-to-peer funds transfers, remittances
Source: Crunchbase

Earny
Purchase protection tool for cardholders
Latest round: $1.2 million Seed
Total raised: $1.2 million
HQ: Santa Monica, California
Tags: Consumer, lending, credit, underwriting, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer loan marketplace, investing, P2P
Source: Crunchbase

BrightFlag
Invoice analytics
Latest round: $1.1 million
Total raised: $1.47 million
HQ: Dublin, Ireland
Tags: SMB, accounting, accounts receivables, billpay, analytics, machine learning
Source: Crunchbase

T2P (iBaht)
Prepaid debit card
Latest round: $1.1 million
Total raised: $1.1 million
HQ: Bangkok, Thailand
Tags: Consumer, payments, debit cards, prepaid
Source: Crunchbase

Monera
Personal finance portal
Latest round: $550,000
Total raised: $550,000
HQ: Copenhagen, Denmark
Tags: Consumer, price comparisons, insurance, mortgage, banking, lead gen, discovery, quotes
Source: Crunchbase

Dynamis Software
Sales tools for health insurance brokers
Latest round: $520,000
Total raised: $2.62 million
HQ: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Tags: SMB, enterprise, healthcare, health insurance, CDHC plans, sales, marketing
Source: FT Partners

Active.ai
Banking and wealth-management platform
Latest round: $500,000 Seed
Total raised: $500,000
HQ: India
Accelerator: Kstart
Tags: Banks, advisers, banking, wealth management, investing
Source: Crunchbase

Affordplan
Payments plan for emergency health services
Latest round: $500,000 Seed
Total raised: $500,000
HQ: New Delhi, India
Accelerator: Kstart
Tags: Healthcare providers, payments, credit, short-term loans, payments plans, underwriting
Source: Crunchbase

PoshBerry
Blockchain-based loyalty wallet
Latest round: $250,000 Seed
Total raised: $250,000
HQ: Glarus, Switzerland
Tags: Enterprise (B2B2C), payments, loyalty, debit/credit cards, rewards, blockchain, crypto-currency
Source: Crunchbase

PFITR (Public Funds Investment Tracking and Report)
Porftfolio management for institutional investors
Latest round: $200,000 Convertible Note
Total raised: $1.02 million
HQ: St. Louis, Missouri
Accelerator: VC Fintech Accelerator (Little Rock, Arkansas)
Tags: Investing
Source: Crunchbase

TruckPay
Payment services in the construction industry
Latest round: $200,000 Convertible Note
Total raised: $200,000
HQ: Tenafly, New Jersey
Tags: SMB, payments, logistics, merchants
Source: Crunchbase

Bonop
Micropayments
Latest round: $58,000 Seed
Total raised: $58,000
HQ: Marbella, Spain
Tags: Consumer, payments, content
Source: Crunchbase

Digitzs
Payments provider for digital services
Latest round: Not disclosed Seed
Total raised: $2.55 million
HQ: Santa Monica, California
Tags: SMB, merchants, payments, point-of-sale, mobile, credit/debit card aquiring
Source: Crunchbase

EPG (Easy Payment Gateway)
Payment management 
Latest round: Undisclosed
Total raised: $1.8 million
HQ: Gibraltar
Tags: SMB, merchants, payments, point-of-sale, mobile, credit/debit card aquiring
Source: Crunchbase

Hishab Ltd. 
Voice-based mobile POS
Latest round: Not disclosed
Total raised: Unknown
HQ: Tokyo, Japan
Tags: SMB, merchants, payments, point-of-sale, mobile, credit/debit card aquiring
Source: Crunchbase

Paylike
Payment platform
Latest round: Not disclosed
Total raised: Unkonwn
HQ: Aarhus, Denmark
Tags: SMB, merchants, payments, point-of-sale, mobile, credit/debit card aquiring mobile, APIs, developers
Source: Crunchbase

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Ormsby Street Partners with Deutsche Bank to Launch CreditHQ in Germany

Ormsby Street Partners with Deutsche Bank to Launch CreditHQ in Germany
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Ormsby Street

OrmsbyStreet_homepage_May2016

London-based Ormsby Street is bringing its credit checking tool for SMEs to Germany. The fintech startup will partner with Deutsche Bank, who make the solution available to its small business customers. The move into Germany is part of a larger expansion for Ormsby Street; the company plans to enter markets in the United States, Australia, Poland, and other European markets within a year.

Ormsby Street Managing Director Martin Campbell pointed to the problem of “late payment culture,” which he called a major problem that impacts cash-flow for German small businesses. “There is a growing need in Germany for an easy way to check the credit status and payment performance of customers, and CreditHQ meets that requirement head-on,” Campbell said.

OrmsbyStreet_stage_FS2016

Pictured: Ormsby Street Managing Director Martin Campbell demonstrated CreditHQ at FinovateSpring 2016 in San Jose.

“Three things are needed for a business to run optimal cash flow,” Campbell explained from the Finovate stage earlier this year. “Good data about customers and their financial health, insight and understanding to know what to do with that data and how to recognize problems, and finally, the tools to act effectively when those problems arise.”

This is where CreditHQ comes in, helping small businesses manage their cash flow and credit risk. The solution pulls data from credit-reference agencies and displays this information to the business with a simple “traffic light” type of indicator that makes it easy to recognize which companies are most likely to pay invoices promptly and which are not. And when integrated with the company’s accounting software, CreditHQ’s risk management feature takes raw data and provides a graphic overview of which invoices are the most problematic (i.e., most expensive, the most overdue, or the greatest credit risk). Further, CreditHQ makes it easy for the business owner to take action. Emails and letters can be sent directly from the CreditHQ platform, and business owners can even set up a fully automated CreditHQ debt-collection process.

Campbell said that small-business failure-rates drop by 30% for companies using CreditHQ. “If you’re a bank and you’re looking at your small-business failure-rate, just imagine the impact a 30% reduction of that failure-rate would have on your bottom line,” he said. Moreover, Campbell added that the technology also helps build relationships between banks and their small business partners, including giving the bank insight into potential financing needs of the small business. “At the point when a customer becomes aware that they may need invoice financing, or an overdraft, or a particular kind of insurance,” Campbell explained, “the bank can be right there, can put that offer right in front of the customer, and can generate the lead directly back to a telephone or in-branch team who can then use that data to engage with their customers.”

Headquartered in London and founded in 2014, Ormsby Street demonstrated CreditHQ at FinovateSpring 2016. The company has a staff of 14; forecasts 2016 revenues of more than £2 million; and 27,000 users. In 2015, Ormsby Street was a finalist at the Vendor Excellence Awards and the CreditToday Awards, and it was recognized as one of 100 best startups that same year.

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TWINO’s First Year: 2,500 Investors Fund $24.6 Million in Loans

TWINO’s First Year: 2,500 Investors Fund $24.6 Million in Loans
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: TWINO

TWINOHomepage

European marketplace lending startup TWINO today turns one-year-old and has some impressive metrics to celebrate its first birthday.

Since launch, $24.6 million in loans have been funded through the Latvia-based company’s platform, which boasts a 13.92% average rate of return. TWINO has paid out $363,000 in interest to its community of investors, which currently totals 2,500 active users based in 29 countries.

TWINO debuted its marketplace that offers investors access to unsecured consumer loans from Denmark, Poland, and Georgia at FinovateEurope 2016 in London. The company differentiates its platform by promising to buy back the principal and interest of a loan if it is delinquent for 30 days or more.

TWINO released the following infographic detailing the metrics of its year-one successes:

TWINO_TURNS_1_EN

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Trustly Goes Live with P2P Payments at Avanza Bank

Trustly Goes Live with P2P Payments at Avanza Bank
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Trustly

TrustlyHomepage2016

Here in the United States we’re still dreaming about bank settlements that occur a few times each business day; however, in Sweden, this increased frequency is already a reality, and customers want transfers to be even faster.

That’s why Stockholm-based Trustly announced today it has partnered with Avanza Bank. With the Trustly integration, bank-to-bank transfers occur in seconds and, as Avanza CEO Martin Tivéus explains, “even in the evenings and on weekends when the ordinary clearing system is closed.”

The agreement went live in December 2015 to offer the bank’s 500,000+ customers real-time direct-deposits over the web. Since then, Trustly has facilitated 115,000 transfers worth $240 million (2 billion Swedish Krona). Last month the bank added mobile capability and today almost 20% of Avanza’s deposits are made using Trustly. The average time for money transfers has dropped from 14,000 seconds to 10 seconds.

Founded in 2008, Trustly launched an alternative ecommerce payments solution at FinovateEurope 2013. In the demo, COO Carl-Henrik Somp demonstrates how the company facilitates payments over Sweden’s largest marketplace, Blocket.se.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Blockchain, Cachet Financial Solutions, Cloud Lending, EyeVerify, FIS, Moven, Ormsby Street, PayPal, Ripple, SafetyPay, Trustly, TWINO

On Finovate.com

  • “Trustly Goes Live with P2P Payments at Avanza Bank”
  • “TWINO’s First Year: 2,500 Investors Fund $24.6 Million in Loans”
  • “Ormsby Street Partners with Deutsche Bank to Launch CreditHQ in Germany”

On FinDEVr.com

  • “Speed of Lightning, Roar of Thunder: Blockchain Unveils Off-Chain Bitcoin Payments Network”

Around the web

  • Version 6.0 of PayPal app discontinues support for Amazon Fire, Windows, and Blackberry phones.
  • Neyber selects Cloud Lending Solutions for loan automation.
  • Mircea Mihaescu’s blog features Moven.
  • SafetyPay partners with online travel agency ViajaNet.
  • Santander to build international payments app using blockchain technology from Ripple.
  • Technology from Cachet Financial Solutions to power mobile deposit solution for LCNB National Bank.
  • Credit Suisse chooses FIS Derivatives Utility for post-trade futures and cleared OTC derivatives operations and technology.

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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Presenter Application Deadline for FinDEVr Silicon Valley — Apply Now!

By Heather Stowell Posted on
Categories: FinDEVr 2016 Silicon Valley, FinDEVr Marketing

iContactHeaderFindevrSV

Summer is on the way, but FinDEVr is already feeling the heat. With the first deadline two days away, we’re receiving presenter applications from dozens of awesome organizations, confirming this will be our most competitive selection process yet. Interested in joining the fray? Read on.

FinDEVr is the only conference focused on the technology side of fintech. Its mission is to serve the financial services developer community. Showcasing the latest tools, technologies, APIs, platforms, case studies and tutorials, we help CTOs, developers, software architects, UX designers, engineers, product managers and other technologists create the next wave of fintech innovation.

For presenters, FinDEVr is a powerful platform to:

  • Drive product adoption of APIs/platforms/SDKs
  • Showcase new technology and the inspiration behind it
  • Establish technical leadership of the industry while educating the market
  • Garner press recognition and gather feedback on innovations

We’re now accepting applications for our third annual West Coast event: FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016. Last year the event attracted nearly 600, and we’re expecting many more this year. The early application deadline is Friday, May 27.

As a first step, please email [email protected] and we’ll send you a presenter packet with content criteria, the presenter package, costs, deadlines, and a link to online application. Once you’re ready to move forward, submit the online application. We’ll review applications later this summer and hope to see yours! We’ll be in touch in July.

FinDEVr16StageIMG

FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016 is sponsored by The Bancorp. 

FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016 is partnered with Acuity, Bank Innovators Council,BankersHub, The BayPay Forum, BiometricUpdate.com, Bitcoin Magazine, Bitcoinist.net, Breaking Banks, Byte Academy, California Bankers Association,Celent, Cointelegraph, Colloquy, Emerging Payments, Empire Startups, FIDO Alliance, Global Platform, Juniper Research, Mercator Advisory Group, Payment Week, Payments & Cards Network, SecuritySolutionsWatch.com, SIMalliance, Swiss Finance + Technology Association, and Women Who Code.

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A Double-Edged Sword: Prosper Increases Rates to Attract Lenders

A Double-Edged Sword: Prosper Increases Rates to Attract Lenders
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Prosper

PropserHomepage2016.2

Peer-to-peer lending platforms serve two masters. Prosper, one of the largest, made an announcement today that favors one over the other.

The San Francisco-based company raised borrower rates in an effort to attract investors amid waning confidence in the industry. Rates have increased by a weighted average of 0.29% and only impact borrowers with a Prosper rating of C or below.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Prosper had to slow its lending volume by 12% earlier this year due to lack of lender funds. Today’s move is an effort to maintain the critical balance. “The rate increase demonstrates our commitment to operating a marketplace that balances the economic incentives for both our borrower and investor communities,” said Brad Pennington, the company’s chief risk officer.

This marks the second time this year Prosper raised rates (after raising them 142 basis points in February) and is stated to be in an effort to keep up with the Fed—anticipated to raise rates next month—and to match the “risk-reward tradeoff of investing in newly originated loans.”

It has been a rough quarter for the marketplace-lending industry and for Prosper in particular. The company lost a securitization deal with Citigroup in April and cut 28% of its staff earlier this month.* But Prosper has had recent successes: In March, the lending platform teamed up with HomeAdvisor to improve access to home improvement financing and bolstered its consumer-facing mobile app to appeal to rejected borrowers.

Prosper presented at FinovateSpring 2009 as well as the inaugural Finovate in 2007.

* The layoff is not as dramatic as it might seem. Prosper doubled its workforce in 2015 after acquiring BillGuard.

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Mitek and Avoka Team Up to Provide New Mobile Onboarding Solution

Mitek and Avoka Team Up to Provide New Mobile Onboarding Solution
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Avoka, Mitek

Avoka_Transact_homepage_May2016

A new partnership will integrate Mobile Fill from Mitek with the digital sales-platform Transact from Avoka. The goal is to make it easier for financial institutions to acquire new customers, originate loans, and onboard customers.

Calling Mitek a “perfect fit” for its strategy to improve its sales platform, Avoka’s Chief Experience Officer Derek Corcoran said that license capture was a “huge step” in the direction of reducing friction during the account-opening process. Mitek chairman and CEO James B. DeBello added that the solution is being introduced by a “top 10 global bank” for retail account opening. “The pre-built integration will make it easy for this and other financial institutions to quickly deploy a comprehensive account-opening solution that will exceed customers’ expectations for a simple, easy-to-use, mobile onboarding experience,” DeBello said.

Mitek_MobileFill_homepage_May2016

Recent headlines for Avoka include providing Beyond Bank with the customer-engagement platform that enabled it to win the Celent Model Bank Award for 2016, and an April partnership with eSignLive that gives financial services companies the ability to completely digitize the customer-acquisition process. The company was named one of the top ten fintech companies worldwide by KPMG in February, and was featured by bobsguide in its “Australian fintech startups to watch” in January.  Founded 2002 in Broomfield, Colorado, Avoka demonstrated its Transaction Effort Score (TES) solution this February at FinovateEurope 2016. At FinDEVr 2016 in New York, Avoka discussed its Transact platform in a presentation, “Agile Design for Customer Acquisition.”  Philip Copeland is CEO.

Mitek was last on the Finovate stage in May for FinovateSpring 2016 where they demoed Mobile Verify. The company added Stephen Ritter* at its new CTO in March, and announced a partnership with Harland Clarke to improve remote deposit-capture security in January. In addition to Finovate, Mitek demoed its technology at FinDEVr 2015 in the presentation: “Amazing Mobile Capture Experiences, Made Easy by Mitek.”

*Ritter is former Emotient SVP of engineering and research.

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Dashlane’s $22.5 Million in New Funding Comes with a Strategic Partner

Dashlane’s $22.5 Million in New Funding Comes with a Strategic Partner
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Dashlane, Funding

DashlaneHomepage2016.2

Password-management company Dashlane closed on $22.5 million in a round led by TransUnion, which has joined the company as a strategic partner. Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital, and Rho Ventures also contributed to today’s round, which brings Dashlane’s total funding to $52.5 million since its 2009 launch.

CEO Emmanuel Schalit says of the milestone: “This new round of funding—combined with the strategic relationship with TransUnion—will strengthen our ability to achieve our vision by giving us the capital to accelerate our roadmap, as well as the ability to further integrate new and powerful services for our users.”

The strategic partnership with TransUnion comes at a time when consumers are at an increasingly high risk for account breaches. Together with TransUnion, Dashlane will create integrated services focused on credit monitoring, identity and fraud protection, credit information, and breaches. Additionally, Dashlane will use TransUnion as a channel partner to expand its distribution across the globe.

President of TransUnion Consumer Interactive, John Danaher, says, “We feel TransUnion, with its vast array of credit- and identity-protection services and its global consumer reach, can help accelerate Dashlane’s growth even further.” Danaher will join Dashlane’s advisory board along with Carl Pascarella, former CEO of Visa.

Dashlane, which presented at FinovateEurope 2013, has focused primarily on the direct-to-consumer market, helping more than 5 million consumers in 150 countries manage their identities. However, the company has recently broadened its focus to partner with banks. The New York-based company is currently working with the largest bank in Mexico, Banamex, and will announce more partnerships with large banks and payment networks this year.

TransUnion took the stage at FinovateSpring 2010 to demo ZenDough, an interactive tool that displays an organization’s finances and credit scores in an easy-to-read visual.

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FinDEVr APIntelligence

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: CardFlight, FinDEVr APIntelligence, Kabbage, Markit, On Deck Capital, Personal Capital, Plaid, Trulioo, Twilio

FinDEVrSV16-LogoV2(wdate)Our FinDEVr New York developer showcase last week was a success! FinDEVr Silicon Valley will be held October 18 & 19 in Santa Clara. Register today and save.

Developer news

  • Magic Leap to give 10 Twilio developers early access to its SDK.

On FinDEVr.com

  • “Fintech Developers, Lock in Presale Savings for FinDEVr Silicon Valley”

The latest from FinDEVr New York 2016 presenters

  • OnDeck adds to credit offerings available to Canadian small businesses.
  • Markit unveils compliance solution to help meet new FRTB, market-risk capital requirements.

Alumni updates

  • “Trulioo’s GlobalGateway Available in BRIC Countries”
  • “Kabbage Reaches $2 Billion in Loans in 5 Years”
  • TechCrunch column on APIs features Plaid, and Twilio.
  • “CardFlight Adds Global Payments as EMV Processor”
  • “New Investment for Personal Capital Takes Valuation to $500 Million”

Stay current on daily news from the fintech developer community! Follow FinDEVr on Twitter.

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TransferWise Lands $26 Million, Crossing into Unicorn Territory

TransferWise Lands $26 Million, Crossing into Unicorn Territory
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, TransferWise

Foreign Exchange platform TransferWise, which announced geographic expansions last month, today reports an expansion of a different nature. The London-based company pulled in $26 million, bringing its total funding to $117 million and burgeoning its valuation to $1.1 billion (according to TechCrunch), thereby making it a fintech unicorn.

The round, which the company plans to use to fuel future growth, was led by Baillie Gifford. Existing investors, which include Andreessen Horowitz and Sir Richard Branson, also participated.

At FinovateEurope 2013, TransferWise co-founders Taavet Hinrikus and Kristo Kaarmann stood up in front of an audience of bankers with a decidedly non-bank-friendly message. There, the company announced its mission to reduce foreign exchange fees by circumventing financial institutions. Today, the company transfers $750 million each month on its platform.

TransferWise employs a workforce of more than 600 across its offices in United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States, where a separate money-transfer license is required for all 50 states. The company recently received heat after one of its U.S. banking partners was scrutinized by regulators for “unsafe and unsound banking practices,” though co-founder Hinrikus states that he is confident TransferWise is in compliance.

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