Finzly Unveils AI Assurance Layer Assure

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Finzly
Banking transformation company Finzly has launched its AI-powered security and assurance layer Assure. Assure provides banks and other financial institutions using Finzly's BankOS with AI-powered security, compliance monitoring, and operational resilience that is native to the infrastructure they rely on. Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Finzly is a two-time Best of Show winner. The company most recently demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2022. The latest product launch from banking transformation company Finzly weaves security and continuous assurance natively into the infrastructure its banking customers rely on. Assure, Finzly's newly released security and assurance layer, is part of the company's Agentic Galaxy suite of AI capabilities, which powers BankOS, its modern operating system for banks. Financial institutions using BankOS will benefit from Assure's AI-powered security, compliance monitoring, and operational resilience that is native to the infrastructure they are currently using. "Banking is entering a new era where attacks happen at machine…

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Cross Border Money Transfer Outfit Félix Raises $200 Million

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Félix, Funding
Cross-border money transfer and top-up firm Félix Pago (Félix) has raised $200 million in combined equity and debt funding. The equity component, in the amount of $87 million, was led by Andreessen Horowitz. The General Catalyst Customer Value Fund provided a $113 million credit facility. Félix will use the funding to scale its existing remittance business and to support the expansion of its product suite to include lending and savings. The Miami, Florida-based company made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego, California. Cross-border money transfer startup Félix Pago has secured $200 million in Series C funding for its technology, which leverages WhatsApp to offer a conversational remittance experience for Latinos and Hispanics living in the US. The round consists of $87 million in equity funding led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and a $113 million credit facility from the General Catalyst Customer Value Fund. The equity portion also…

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Tyfone Acquires ATTUNE for Account Opening and Loan Origination Solutions 

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, Tyfone
Tyfone is acquiring ATTUNE to add consumer and business account opening, deposit funding, loan origination, and servicing capabilities to its digital banking platform. The deal gives Tyfone a role earlier in the customer lifecycle, allowing it to support financial institutions from acquisition and onboarding through lending, payments, servicing, and ongoing digital banking. The acquisition advances Tyfone’s evolution into a broader end-to-end banking technology provider, building on its history in mobile banking, payments, and multichannel digital banking. Digital banking solutions company Tyfone is doubling down on its account opening and loan origination operations with the acquisition of New York-based ATTUNE. Tyfone anticipates the acquisition will expand its platform with consumer and business account opening, deposit funding, loan origination, and servicing capabilities. Overall, the acquisition will allow the Oregon-based company to extend its digital experience from the first interaction through the entire, lifelong engagement. Additionally, Tyfone will use ATTUNE to help it…

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Lenvi Launches ALVIN to Fight Double Pledging Fraud

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, Lenvi
UK-based lending technology provider Lenvi has unveiled its new automated loan verification software, ALVIN, designed to combat fraud risks such as double pledging. The launch follows a series of high-profile fraud cases involving MFS, Tricolor, and First Brands Group. Double pledging takes place when a borrower uses the same asset as collateral to secure multiple loans from different lenders simultaneously—without informing the lenders that the collateral has already been pledged as security for other loans. This fraud tactic drew significant public attention this year when a number of high-profile fraud cases involved double pledging. For example, Market Financial Solutions was a UK property lending company that collapsed in February 2026 as a result of a £1.3 billion fraud and double pledging scandal. Executives at Tricolor Holdings were accused of running a massive fraud scheme—also using double pledging—around subprime automobile loans and were charged by the SEC in August in connection…

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SettleMint Integrates Ripple Custody into Digital Asset Lifecycle Platform

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Ripple
SettleMint has partnered with Ripple to integrate Ripple Custody into its Digital Asset Lifecycle Platform (DALP), bringing custody, issuance, compliance, settlement, and servicing together on one platform. The partnership expands Ripple’s institutional digital asset footprint while strengthening SettleMint’s ability to offer financial institutions an end-to-end platform for managing tokenized assets. The tie-up reflects tokenization’s shift from experimentation to implementation, as banks increasingly need integrated infrastructure to move digital asset initiatives into production. Digital asset lifecycle management company SettleMint has entered a strategic partnership with blockchain solutions company Ripple to help banks custody, issue, and manage tokenized assets. SettleMint will integrate Ripple Custody, Ripple’s institutional-grade digital asset custody infrastructure, with its own Digital Asset Lifecycle Platform (DALP), a composable digital asset lifecycle platform built for financial institutions, market infrastructure operators, and sovereign entities. DALP brings issuance, compliance, custody, settlement, and servicing onto a single platform, allowing financial institutions to manage the…

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MeridianLink Acquires Credit Mountain

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Credit Mountain, Mergers & Acquisitions
MeridianLink announced its acquisition of financial wellness platform Credit Mountain. Financial terms were not disclosed. The acquisition will help MeridianLink launch its Pathway solution, which helps community financial institutions provide declined borrowers with a personalized pathway to loan approval. Credit Mountain won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2024 in New York. As FinovateFall 2026 approaches, we're sharing news from FinovateFall alumni to give you a sense of the kind of companies that will be demoing their latest innovations live on stage September 9 through 11. Consider Credit Mountain, a financial wellness platform that won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2024. Earlier this month, MeridianLink, a software platform provider for financial institutions and consumer reporting agencies, announced its acquisition of the company. In a statement, MeridianLink said that the acquisition will support the launch of its MeridianLink Pathway, which enables community financial institutions…

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What’s Trending at FinovateFall 2026?

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2026
We officially have 72 demos on stage at this year’s FinovateFall conference, taking place September 9 through 11 at the Marriott Marquis in New York (book now!). This year's lineup is a nice mix of startups with established players, and with all demos running on a single track, you won't miss a thing. This concentrated format makes it easy to spot the patterns shaping bank roadmaps for the next 12 to 18 months. Here's a look at what trends lie ahead, based on what we're seeing across this year’s demo companies. AI gets to work It will come as no surprise that AI is the most prominent enabling technology on the FinovateFall stage this year. What's more interesting is that this year's demo companies are showing that the industry has evolved its use of AI to tackle specific jobs that are expensive, repetitive, time consuming, or difficult to scale. In wealth management,…

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Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, Appli, Expensify, Experian, Fintech Rundown, FIS, Thought Machine, Vertice AI, VISA
There are still a few weeks left of summer, but the final day of August often serves as the unofficial end of summer for many—with kids returning to school and Labor Day around the corner. As the week begins, Finovate's Fintech Rundown is highlighting a handful of fintech funding announcements in payments, wealth management, and capital markets, as well as interesting partnership news in DeFi and identity verification involving fintechs from Singapore and South Korea. Fraud prevention Nasdaq Verafin teams up with Q6 Cyber, combining dark web fraud intelligence with consortium data insights. Digital banking Deutsche Bank's Private Bank partners with Thought Machine for its core banking overhaul. Vertice AI launches Vertice OPTIMIZE growth engine. OnePay launches My Garage to offer users a full picture of vehicle ownership into one place. Capital markets Clearing and custody firm RQD* Clearing raises $74 million in a round led by Bain Capital. Payments…

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Exit-Readiness and Underwriting Performance: Isabelle Freidheim of Athena Capital

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: CEO Interview, Women in Fintech
How do companies get priced? What variables are involved in determining the true value of a firm, especially as it moves closer to leaving the private market and becoming a publicly traded entity? We caught up with Isabelle Freidheim, founder of Athena Capital, to answer these and other questions about the current investment landscape, especially for fintech companies. In this extensive conversation Freidheim shares her insights into the challenge of helping profitable technology companies navigate the runway to an IPO or strategic sale. We learn how the commoditization of the core technology layer is driving investment trends in fintech, the consequences of companies staying private longer, and how she leveraged talent "mispricings" to build a team of exceptional operating partners—sitting and former CEOs, Fortune 500 directors—that give Athena Capital a "sourcing and diligence advantage." "The stage is our thesis. At 12 to 36 months out, the diligence question changes character.…

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Big Questions, Big Ideas: Meet the FinovateFall 2026 Keynotes

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2026
FinovateFall returns to New York September 9 through 11, bringing more than 100 industry experts to the Marriott Marquis Times Square to discuss the forces reshaping banking and fintech. This year's keynote lineup reflects just how much is changing at once. Banks and fintechs are navigating an uncertain economic and geopolitical environment while determining where AI can create real value, how to defend against increasingly sophisticated financial crime, what stablecoins mean for payments, and who will control customer relationships as financial data moves into AI-powered interfaces. With that in mind, here are some of the keynote sessions worth adding to your FinovateFall agenda. Manas Chawla, Founder and Chief Executive, London Politica The Global Economic and Geopolitical Outlook and The Direction Of Travel For The US EconomyWednesday, September 9 Fintech doesn't operate in a vacuum. Interest rates, geopolitical tensions, trade policy, economic growth, and shifting global alliances ultimately influence everything from…

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Stripe Acquires Clerky to Offer Legal Infrastructure for Startups

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions
Stripe has acquired startup legal infrastructure provider Clerky, expanding beyond payments into startup formation and ongoing corporate operations. The deal could help Stripe bring companies into its ecosystem earlier, establishing relationships during incorporation, fundraising, and hiring before startups ever need payment processing. Clerky complements Stripe Atlas with deeper legal workflows and attorney relationships, strengthening Stripe’s push to become a broader operating infrastructure layer for startups. Payment infrastructure fintech Stripe is getting into a new infrastructure layer this week. The California-based company has acquired Clerky, a company that offers legal infrastructure that startups need during and after formation. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Clerky was founded in 2011 to help startups with legal paperwork surrounding incorporation and post-incorporation documentation, board actions, SAFEs and convertible notes, hiring documentation, stock and option issuances, and ongoing corporate maintenance. It also offers startup attorneys a private workspace that makes it easy to work…

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Socure Secures New Investment, Acquires Fraud Platform Fravity

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Fravity, Funding, Mergers & Acquisitions, Socure
Trust infrastructure for global identity and risk intelligence, Socure, has secured a strategic growth investment of $156 million, boosting the firm's valuation to $5.2 billion. In addition to the funding announcement, Socure announced that it is acquiring Fravity, an agentic AI platform for risk and compliance. Socure has been a Finovate alum since 2013. Fravity made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall 2025 in New York. Socure, which offers trust infrastructure for global identity and risk intelligence, has received a $156 million strategic growth investment that gives the firm a valuation of $5.2 billion. The investment was led by Summit Partners and included participation from Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Wells Fargo, and Docusign, among others. The funding also included both primary capital and an existing employee secondary tender offer. "What stands out to us about Socure is the combination of durable growth and disciplined execution at this scale. We have…

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