FinovateFall Best of Show Winners: Fundraising, Acquisitions, New Partnerships, and More!

FinovateFall Best of Show Winners: Fundraising, Acquisitions, New Partnerships, and More!
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Debbie, FinovateFall 2023, Horizn, LemonadeLXP, Quilo, Stratifyd, Themis

The only thing more exciting than being chosen to demo your latest innovation at a Finovate conference is winning the accolades our attendees and taking home a Best of Show award. With FinovateFall right around the corner, we wanted to take a look at the companies that won Best of Show at last year’s event and give you the latest on what they’ve been up to in the year since.

Remember that early bird savings for FinovateFall – September 11 through 13 – end this weekend! Visit our FinovateFall registration hub and save your spot today!

Debbie

  • HQ: Miami, Florida, U.S.
  • Founded: 2021
  • CEO: Frida Leibowitz
Left to right: Frida Leibowitz, CEO | Rachel Lauren, COO

Demoed its technology that leverages behavioral psychology and rewards to help users pay off debt faster. Demo video.

Latest update

  • Secured seed funding from Geek Ventures.

Horizn

  • HQ: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • Founded: 2012
  • CEO: Janice Diner
Left to right: Horizn’s Colm Bermingham, Sr. Director Sales | Steve Frook, CRO

Demoed its platform that helps financial institutions maximize their investments in digital technology. Demo video.

Latest update

  • Acquired by conversational AI company Inbenta.

LemonadeLXP

  • HQ: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
  • Founded: 2021
  • CEO: John Findlay
 Lemonade CEO John Findlay

Demoed its digital growth platform that helps financial institutions and fintechs turn staff into digital customer service experts. Demo video.

Latest update

  • Partnered with Newburyport Bank to facilitate staff and customer transition to digital banking.

Quilo

  • HQ: New York City, New York, U.S.
  • Founded: 2020
  • CEO: Boris Fuzayloff
Left to right: Don Shafer, Co-founder & Chief Evangelist | Boris Fuzayloff, Co-founder & CEO

Demoed its technology that empowers lenders to syndicate individual personal loans at the time of underwriting. Demo video.

Latest update

Stratyfy

  • HQ: New York City, New York, U.S.
  • Founded: 2017
  • CEO: Laura Kornhauser
Left to right: Dmitry Lesnik, Chief Data Scientist | Laura Kornhauser, CEO and Co-Founder

Demoed its technology that helps FIs leverage AI-based decision making to boost access to financial services. Demo video.

Latest update

  • Teamed up with Beneficial State Foundation to help combat racial disparities in lending.

Themis

  • HQ: New York City, New York, U.S.
  • Founded: 2021
  • CEO: Neepa Patel
Themis’ Founder and CEO Neepa Patel

Demoed its collaboration platform to help support and encourage partnerships between banks and fintechs. Demo video.

Latest update

  • Named a finalist in multiple categories including “Startup of the Year” by the U.S. Fintech Awards.

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FICO and LigaData Bring Decision-as-a-Service to Telcos

FICO and LigaData Bring Decision-as-a-Service to Telcos
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, FICO
  • FICO and LigaData have partnered on a decision-as-a-service tool.
  • The two will make the new capabilities available to telecommunications firms in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
  • The decision-as-a-service solutions suite includes mobile lending, price optimization, collections optimization, subscriber segmentation, and fraud detection for communications service providers.

Data and analytics firm FICO and big data analytics company LigaData have come together in a move to bring decision-as-a-service capabilities to telecommunications firms in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

The two California-based companies will offer solutions that leverage data to help telcos increase revenues, decrease costs, and expand their offerings. Tools included in the decision-as-a-service solutions suite are mobile lending, price optimization, collections optimization, subscriber segmentation, and fraud detection for communications service providers.

“Together we plan to also help communications service providers grant loans in emerging markets, making it easier for consumers while increasing the digitization of the economy,” said FICO Vice President of Global Partners & Alliances Alexandre Graff.

FICO and LigaData envision that the tool will help telcos add new revenue streams and ultimately expand financial inclusion in emerging markets. “Our partnership with FICO will give communications service providers new tools to expand and compete in a data-driven marketplace,” explained LigaData CEO Bassel Ojjeh. “In addition, we will be bringing to market new solutions that can help communications service providers serve the large number of unbanked and underbanked communities in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.”

LigaData’s name follows the naming convention of major soccer teams such as Bundesliga, La Liga, and Liga MX and is a reference to the company’s league of data experts. LigaData offers two main products, Data Fabric, which helps telcos leverage data better understand their customers by breaking down silos, and Flare, which serves as a decisioning engine that breaks down the data to provide operational and subscriber insights. These solutions are used by over 30 mobile network operators, supporting over 350 million subscribers around the world.

Founded in 1956 and headquartered in California, FICO offers decisioning tools used by more than 650 clients, including nine of the top 10 U.S. banks and eight of the top 10 EMEA banks. The company was recently named Best Technology Provider for Data Analytics at the 2022 Credit Awards, and was identified as a leader in The Forrester Wave: AI Decisioning Platforms, Q2 2023 report.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto

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Cybercrime Analytics Platform SpyCloud Raises $110 Million in Series D Funding

Cybercrime Analytics Platform SpyCloud Raises $110 Million in Series D Funding
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, SpyCloud
  • Cybercrime analytics platform SpyCloud raised $110 million in Series D funding last week.
  • The funding will help the company accelerate innovation in key use cases, as well as grow its database of recaptured data.
  • Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, SpyCloud won Best of Show in its Finovate debut in 2017.

Cybercrime analytics platform company SpyCloud has secured a $110 million growth round commitment of primary and secondary capital. The round, a Series D, was led by Riverwood Capital and featured participation from Silverton Partners. New valuation information was not provided. The investment takes the company’s total equity funding to more than $168 million, according to Crunchbase.

SpyCloud offers technology that enables the discovery and recapture of data from the Dark Web in order to better protect businesses from identity-based cyberattacks. Cybercriminals use these stolen employee credentials and consumer session data to attack businesses, individuals, and networks. SpyCloud’s approach to fighting cybercrime differs from traditional threat intelligence strategies by offering a credential monitoring and alert service that directly and proactively finds and recovers stolen assets from threat actors and other sources.

To date, SpyCloud has recaptured more than 450 billion assets, more than 31 billion passwords, and more than 33 billion email addresses. The company’s most recent platform enhancement, unveiled in January, provides what it calls “Post-Infection Remediation.” This protocol gives companies a framework to reset application credentials and invalidate session cookies in the wake of a cyberattack or breach.

In a statement, SpyCloud listed a number of ways the new capital will help fuel the company’s growth. The funding, for example, will enable SpyCloud to accelerate innovation across a number of use cases, including consumer risk and enterprise protection. The company will also be able to grow its database of recaptured malware assets, further develop its analytic capabilities, and add to its list of integrations. The platform is currently integrated with Active Director, Okta, and Tines.

“For the last seven years, we have proven that reacting quickly to identity and authentication exposures is the crucial factor in stopping the cycle of cybercrime,” SpyCloud CEO and co-founder Ted Ross said. “As authentication methods improve, businesses need to adjust their defenses to keep up with criminals’ new behavior. SpyCloud allows you to do just that – and we will continue to illuminate and resolve the most critical risks facing security teams today, stopping attacks they haven’t been able to see coming.”

SpyCloud won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall in 2017. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, the company was founded in 2016. More than 500 corporations – including half of the Fortune 10 – leverage SpyCloud’s technology to combat ransomware, account takeover, session hijacking, online fraud, and other cybercrimes.

Photo by Aleksandar Pasaric

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Finovate Global Hong Kong: A Roadmap to the Future of AI and DLT

Finovate Global Hong Kong: A Roadmap to the Future of AI and DLT
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Feedzai, Finovate Global, MasterCard

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) unveiled its Fintech Promotion Roadmap today. The goal of the document is to provide a strategic outlook for the coming year to promote fintech adoption and innovation across Hong Kong’s diverse financial services ecosystem.

The top takeaways? The Roadmap highlights three business verticals: wealthtech, insurtech, and greentech – as primary. The planning document also underscores both artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed ledger technology (DLT) as a pair of enabling, if not revolutionary, technologies that will play a major role in future innovation in financial services.

Critically, the Roadmap shows the eagerness of the HKMA to take a proactive, hands-on approach to fintech adoption and innovation in Hong Kong. To this end, the HKMA has announced a range of initiatives it plans to adopt over the next 12 months. These efforts include a fintech knowledge hub; sponsored events, roundtable discussions, and dialogues to foster collaboration; as well as seminars and training sessions to provide cross-sectoral information exchange and the opportunity for continuous learning. The HKMA will also facilitate educational content creation, including use-case videos and research reports, to help broaden understanding of the opportunities of fintech adoption.

HKMA Deputy Chief Executive Arthur Yuen called the Roadmap “a beacon for the entire financial services industry.” He added, “We’re looking beyond banking, casting a wide net to encompass sectors like insurance, wealth management, and capital market activities. Through synergies with our financial regulators and continuous engagement with stakeholders, our vision is a resilient, inclusive fintech ecosystem for Hong Kong.”

Yuen said that the underpinning philosophy of the Roadmap is “collaboration”.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority is the region’s central banking institution. Founded in 1993, the HKMA is the product of the merger between two agencies – the Office of the Exchange Fund and the Office of the Commissioner of Banking. A key enabler of innovation in fintech and financial services in the region, the HKMA developed and launched a Faster Payments System in 2018 and began offering virtual banking licenses in 2019. Eddie Yue Wai-man was appointed Chief Executive in that year; he is the third CEO in the HKMA’s 30-year history.

In more good news for the region, Hong Kong has a new fintech unicorn. Micro Connect, a fintech that facilitates institutional investments in Chinese micro- and small businesses, raised $458 million in funding earlier this month. The Series C round gives the startup $578 million in total capital raised, and a brand new valuation of $1.7 billion.

Micro Connect’s statement did not list the investors involved in the funding. However, according to Forbes Asia, Baillie Gifford – a Scottish investment company – as well as returning investors Sequoia China, Lenovo Capital, Vectr Fintech, and Dara Holdings, were among those who participated.

Micro Connect will use the capital to enhance the market structure of its Micro Connect Financial Asset Exchange (MCEX) platform. MCEX leverages blockchain technology to enable small businesses to access financing in return for an agreed-upon percentage of the business’s daily revenue over a specified period of time. The scheme helps growing businesses secure the capital they need without having to take on additional debt. MCEX is scheduled to go live in August.

Micro Connect has facilitated investment in more than 2,400 stores and 169 brands across China. Charles Li (Chairman) and Gary Zhang (CEO) founded the company in 2021.

Finovate has brought its international fintech conference to Hong Kong three times: in 2016, 2017, and 2018. Here are some of the local companies that demoed their technology live on stage at FinovateAsia in Hong Kong.

  • AApay Technology
  • Chekk
  • Peakford Electronics
  • Proximiti
  • Velotrade

That said, Finovate has been hosting fintech conferences for audiences in the region since 2012. Here are a few more Hong Kong-based Finovate alums that demoed at our FinovateAsia events in Singapore and online.

  • Advanced Merchant Payments
  • Matchi.Biz
  • Mobexo
  • Modtris

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Photo by Nitin Sharma

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Getting in Gear by Asking the Right Questions

Getting in Gear by Asking the Right Questions
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Marketing

Fall is coming, and with the changing of the season comes an increase in activity in the fintech world as organizations work to launch their latest initiatives before the end of the year.

Fortunately, our friends at FintechFutures have asked all the right questions in their latest video interview series. The clips below cover the current economic climate, fintech trends, and future industry technologies. These are all worth watching as you prepare your fourth quarter initiatives.

Photo by Shane Aldendorff

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Fiserv and Akoya Team Up for Consumer-Permissioned Data

Fiserv and Akoya Team Up for Consumer-Permissioned Data
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Fiserv
  • Fiserv and Akoya announced a partnership this week.
  • Fiserv will have API access to consumer data from Akoya’s network of financial organizations.
  • Akoya will utilize Fiserv’s AllData Connect to access consumer data held at financial institutions.

Digital banking and payments solutions company Fiserv has partnered with consumer-permissioned data company Akoya this week. Under the agreement, the two will facilitate financial data sharing among banks, their end customers, and the third party apps the customers engage with.

Fiserv will have API access to consumer data from Akoya’s network of financial institutions and brokerage firms, while Akoya will utilize Fiserv’s AllData Connect to access consumer data from more than 2,800 financial institutions.

“Fiserv and Akoya are empowering consumers to share their data by creating a broader and more secure data access network,” said Fiserv President of Digital Payments Matt Wilcox. “Direct access to data facilitates more integrated digital experiences for consumers and improves the security of the financial ecosystem.”

Akoya’s APIs can create secure, permissioned access to consumers’ account data across Fiserv’s client base of banks, fintechs, and merchants. This free flow of information across the network can help reduce risk related to account opening, funding, and account-to-account transfers. On the merchant side, consumers can opt to transact using a Pay by Bank option in which consumers link their bank account to the merchant’s wallet or app to make direct payments to the merchant.

Ultimately, the partnership will help consumers choose what financial data from their bank they want to share with third party providers.

“This will help consumers manage exactly who they give their data to and understand how their data will be accessed and used,” said Akoya CEO Paul LaRusso. “100% of Akoya’s traffic to financial institutions goes through APIs. Akoya doesn’t ask for consumers’ passwords, and it doesn’t screen-scrape. All consumers deserve this protection and control.”

In the U.S., where open banking regulations do not exist, partnerships like these are key to empowering consumers with control over their financial data. In addition to helping end customers, this open structure also creates efficiencies by empowering organizations with more data, reduces fraud by eliminating screen scraping, and reduces errors that come with manual data entry.

Founded in 1984, Fiserv’s solutions are used in nearly six million merchant locations and almost 10,000 financial insitution clients. The company powers 12,000 financial transactions each second. Fiserv is listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker FI and has a market capitalization of $73.6 billion.

Photo by Google DeepMind

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The Impact of AI in Fintech and Financial Services: Our Experts Weigh In

The Impact of AI in Fintech and Financial Services: Our Experts Weigh In
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateSpring 2023

How will artificial intelligence – AI – drive innovation in fintech and financial services? This year at FinovateSpring we checked in with our experts to find out how AI will impact everything from the financial services workforce to the way customers interact with their bank or credit union.

Featuring insights and observations from:

  • Rocio Wu – Principal, F-Prime Capital
  • Alexander Hagerup – CEO & Co-founder, Vic.ai
  • Lawrence Lin Murata – CEO & Co-founder, Slope
  • Barb Maclean – SVP, Head of Technology Operations and Implementation, Coastal Community Bank
  • Ben Maxim – Chief Digital Strategy & Innovation Officer, MSU Federal Credit Union
  • Sarah Hinkfuss – Partner, Bain Capital Ventures
  • Daniel Latimore – Chief Research Officer, Member of the Leadership Team, Celent
  • Malia Lazu – CEO, The Lazu Group
  • Greg Palmer – Vice President, Finovate
  • Jas Randhawa – Global Head of Financial Crime Compliance, Airwallex

Photo by Google DeepMind

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Yahoo Finance Acquires Commonstock to Add Investor Insights

Yahoo Finance Acquires Commonstock to Add Investor Insights
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • Yahoo has acquired social investing platform, Commonstock. Terms were not disclosed.
  • The acquisition will bring investor insights to the company’s Yahoo Finance brand.
  • Launched in 1997, Yahoo Finance has more than 150 million monthly users.

Yahoo has acquired Commonstock, a San Francisco, California-based social investing network. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Yahoo Finance president Tapan Bhat said that the purchase would help create a “singular destination for all our customer’s financial needs.” He praised Commonstock for creating a “trusted community” and for “sharing high-quality insights and knowledge that help everyday investors create wealth.”

Specifically, the acquisition will add investor insights to the Yahoo Finance platform. Commonstock offers a social network, integrated with brokerages, where retail investors and traders can discuss trading and investing strategies, portfolio performance, and more. Commonstock provides features such as real-time alerts to let users know when investors they are following are making trades. This helps facilitate the exchange of investment strategies, fostering a collaborative investing climate. The network has more than $10 billion in connected assets.

David McDonough, Commonstock founder and CEO, said the acquisition was an opportunity to “build community and products on the largest consumer finance stage.” Note that Yahoo Finance currently has more than 150 million monthly users. McDonough added, “This acquisition will allow us to accelerate our mission at scale, emphasizing community-driven knowledge and ensuring the amplification of quality insights to separate signal from noise.”

The acquisition was personal for McDonough, who said that Yahoo Finance made a major impact on his career trajectory. In his statement, he credited the company’s message boards for helping him learn about the stock market during the financial crisis. He said that the combination of Yahoo’s reach and Commonstock’s expertise would be a significant value for investors.

Launched in 2020, Commonstock has raised more than $34 million in funding. The company includes Coatue, QED, Floodgate, Upside Ventures, Resolute Ventures, and Abstract Ventures among its investors. Individual investors ranging from Bill Ackman and Ari Emanuel to Turner Novak and Jill Carson also have backed the startup.

Yahoo Finance offers free stock quotes, timely business news, and portfolio management resources. Additionally, the platform provides mortgage rate data and other information to help individuals better manage their finances. Launched in 1997, Yahoo Finance is among the top 20 largest news and media websites. The platform began covering cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency news in 2017.

Photo by Anna Nekrashevich

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FinovateFall 2023 Sneak Peek: Mahalo Banking

FinovateFall 2023 Sneak Peek: Mahalo Banking
By Madeline Clines Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2023, FinovateFall 2023 Sneak Peek, Mahalo Banking

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 11 and 12. Register today and save your spot.

Mahalo Banking offers the industry’s first and only online banking solution to fully integrate comprehensive neurodiverse functionality directly into its platform. This inclusive approach allows credit unions to be truly member-centric.

Why it’s great

Mahalo Banking is at the forefront of bringing full inclusivity into digital banking, allowing the 20% of the population with neurodiverse traits who have trouble using banking apps to have a great experience.

Presenters

Denny Howell, Co-Founder & COO
Howell is an experienced tech and entrepreneurial professional with a demonstrated 25+ year history of working in technology, services, financial and fintech industries.
LinkedIn

Dan Domek, Co-Founder & CTO
Domek is an experienced leader in software design, system analysis, problem-solving, and process optimization.
LinkedIn

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FinovateFall 2023 Sneak Peek: Flybits

FinovateFall 2023 Sneak Peek: Flybits
By Madeline Clines Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2023, FinovateFall 2023 Sneak Peek, Flybits

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 11 and 12. Register today and save your spot.

Flybits is an award-winning personalization platform, enabling financial institutions to deliver best-in-class personalized digital banking experiences across mobile, web, and the metaverse.

Features

  • Deliver hyper-personalized experiences
  • Bring the person back into personalization by contextualizing digital touchpoints and interactions
  • Become a leader by creating interactive VR experiences

Why it’s great

The Flybits Cardholder Lifecycle Management Solution is an always-on solution that elevates cardholder experiences at every lifecycle stage, personalized for every moment while driving business results.

Presenters

Hossein Rahnama, CEO & Founder
Rahnama is a visiting MIT professor, co-founded the DMZ, and has 40+ publications/patents.
LinkedIn

Chris Pinkerton, CGO
Pinkerton has over 15 years of experience working with companies like Google, 3M, and Microsoft to apply insight to their acquisition and monetization models.
LinkedIn

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FinovateFall 2023 Sneak Peek: DataVisor

FinovateFall 2023 Sneak Peek: DataVisor
By Madeline Clines Posted on
Categories: DataVisor, FinovateFall 2023, FinovateFall 2023 Sneak Peek

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 11 and 12. Register today and save your spot.

DataVisor delivers sophisticated AI-powered solutions to keep companies and their customers safe from fraud and abuse.

Features

DataVisor’s Real-Time Payments Fraud Solution is

  • Designed for real-time payments fraud scenarios
  • Provides real-time alerts and mitigates threats without delays
  • Includes generative AI powered automation

Why it’s great

The only fraud platform with embedded generative AI powered automation.

Presenter

Ryan Nichols, Solutions Engineer
Nichols is grounded in software development and cloud solutions architecture. His expertise lies in crafting solutions for Cybersecurity, AML, and Fraud SaaS platforms.
LinkedIn

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FinovateFall 2023 Sneak Peek: Bankjoy

FinovateFall 2023 Sneak Peek: Bankjoy
By Madeline Clines Posted on
Categories: Bankjoy, FinovateFall 2023, FinovateFall 2023 Sneak Peek

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 11 and 12. Register today and save your spot.

Through its digital banking platform, Bankjoy empowers Panacea Financial, a neobank serving medical professionals, to offer more value for customers.

Features

  • Enables digital banks and neobanks to target specific markets with a superior digital banking experience
  • Integrates with a variety of core platforms and third-parties for a feature-rich UX

Why it’s great

Bankjoy’s intuitive digital banking platform, which integrates with a variety of core platforms and third-parties, is an excellent fit for neobanks aiming to offer more value to their customers.

Presenters

Michael Duncan, Co-Founder & CEO, Bankjoy
Before founding Bankjoy, Duncan managed software development for a large credit union in Michigan, including the development of their mobile banking app.
LinkedIn

Dr. Ned Palmer, Co-Founder & COO, Panacea Financial
In addition to founding Panacea Financial in 2020, Palmer is an Instructor at Harvard Medical School and an Attending Physician at Boston Children’s Hospital.
LinkedIn

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