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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
In last week’s Finovate Weekly newsletter, I shared some thoughts on what fintechs might hope for from President Trump’s summit meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping. While the meeting does not appear to have delivered anything of substance from a fintech or financial services perspective, Trump did sign an Executive Order (EO) shortly after returning from Beijing that actually has plenty for fintechs and financial services companies to think about—if not cheer for.
Let’s take a look at five top takeaways from the EO, titled Integrating Financial Technology Innovation into Regulatory Frameworks.
From containment to enablement
The executive order directs Federal financial regulators to review existing policies to “facilitate innovation and greater competition in the provision of financial services.” Even more directly, the order calls upon regulators to “take steps to encourage innovation by, and growth of, fintech firms and federally regulated institutions of all sizes.”
The “fintechs and friends” framing of the executive order is in and of itself telling. After years of trying to strike a balance between the needs of incumbent banks and financial services providers and insurgent fintech innovators, the EO suggests a potential shift from “containment” of fintech innovation to outright enablement.
More access to Fed payment rails
Operationally speaking, some of the biggest news in the EO might be the way it directs the Federal Reserve to review its approach to granting payment accounts and services. This includes potentially expanding access to Fed payment rails for fintechs and nonbanks. Practically speaking, this could incentivize easier access to Fed payment infrastructure, Fedwire, and settlement services typically reserved for bank intermediaries.
The EO criticizes “regulations, guidance, and policies” that it referred to as “relics of a time when financial services where predominantly provided in brick-and-mortar-centric settings.” While this potentially refers to a fairly broad range of existing directives, the tone clearly indicates a willingness to overhaul or at least revisit rules that fail to reflect our increasingly mobile, digital, and even agentic contemporary financial landscape.
Building better bank-fintech partnerships
The EO is also critical of “rules governing financial institution’s third-party risk management” which it claims unfairly favors incumbents “at the expense of innovators.” As such, the order directs regulators to examine supervisory practices, application processes, and guidance that may “unduly impede fintech firms from entering into partnerships with federally regulated institutions.”
This could positively impact opportunities for Banking-as-a-Service companies as well as sponsor bank relationships, charter applications, and more, potentially reducing some of the challenges and complexity brought on by regulatory uncertainty with regard to partnerships between banks and fintechs.
Crypto and stablecoins move toward the mainstream
With the passage of the GENIUS Act, it is clear that the administration is seeking to support, if not encourage, innovation in the digital asset space. This week’s executive order underscores that support, noting that President Trump signed an Executive Order in his first week in office that was designed to “secure” the United States’ position as the global leader in the “digital asset economy,” as well as to establish additional regulatory clarity and guidance for digital assets. Other EOs are also referenced, including the one in March 2025 that established the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and US Digital Asset Stockpile.
Specifically, this week’s executive order directs the Federal government to “update its outdated regulations to allow integration of digital assets and other novel financial technology into traditional financial services and payment systems.” Clearly and increasingly, the Trump administration sees digital assets, blockchain technology, and stablecoins as key components of US financial system infrastructure rather than as niche products, isolated technologies, or speculative instruments.
A win for regulated fintechs?
From the wave of fintechs seeking bank charters to the increased regulatory clarity provided by recent executive orders, fintechs could be on the precipice of a “best of both worlds” scenario: a financial services industry that feels deregulated and more opportunity-rich due to what mighr actually be greater regulation and guidance. While there remains much to be seen in terms of how fintechs and nonbanks take advantage of this changing regulatory environment—from pursuing bank charters to more aggressively pursuing embedded and open finance technologies—it does seem clear that the US is positioning itself to be more competitive in a shifting, global fintech and financial services landscape
Embedded payments infrastructure company NMI has acquired account-to-account (A2A) payment infrastructure innovator Dwolla.
The acquisition creates a combined entity that will process nearly $700 billion in annual transaction volume and will fortify NMI’s status as a major embedded money movement infrastructure firm.
Dwolla has been a Finovate alum since 2011, winning Best of Show honors in its appearances at FinovateSpring 2011 and FinovateSpring 2012.
Embedded payments infrastructure company NMI has acquired account-to-account (A2A) payment infrastructure provider Dwolla. The acquisition combines NMI’s payment acceptance, channel distribution, onboarding, and merchant lifecycle management with Dwolla’s capabilities in account-to-account infrastructure, real-time payments, open banking, and many-to-many funds flow. NMI will benefit from additional payment acceptance, orchestration, and money movement capabilities, enabling its ISO, ISV, and SaaS platform clients to accept, manage, and move money across a greater number of rails and use cases via a single infrastructure provider.
“This acquisition is a continuation of our strategy to build the most robust, white-label, embedded payments platform for our channel and enterprise partners,” NMI CEO Steve Pinado said. “Dwolla gives us modern, API-first, A2A infrastructure that strengthens our ability to help businesses accept, manage, and move money across more uses cases and more rails.” Pinado also noted that the acquisition will enable NMI to be a player in the emerging generation of money movement technologies and solutions including agentic payments and stablecoin-enabled settlement.
The acquisition creates a combined entity that will processes nearly $700 billion in annual transaction volume and fortify NMI’s status as a major embedded money movement infrastructure firm. NMI currently supports more than 6,000 technology partners with its modular, white-label platform, enabling them to provide seamless, scalable payment experiences across online, in-app, brick-and-mortar, mobile, and unattended channels. Courtesy of the Dwolla acquisition, NMI’s partners will be able to build on NMI’s capabilities to offer bank and real-time payments, and other sophisticated payment flows such as marketplace seller payouts, loan disbursements, payroll, supplier payments, and more. This will enable these companies to serve firms in industries ranging from insurance and lending to property management and healthcare.
In a statement, Dwolla CEO Dave Glaser noted how Dwolla has helped companies operate bank payments at scale thanks to an API-first infrastructure layer that unifies ACH and real-time rails while standardizing status, exception handling, and reporting. He also outlined how he thinks the combination of Dwolla and NMI will improve the payments process for businesses. “By joining NMI, we can bring those capabilities to a broader ecosystem of partners, while giving Dwolla customers access to NMI’s omnichannel payment acceptance capabilities through a single, flexible, white-label platform. Together, we can help software companies, payment professionals, and fintech innovators deliver more ways to pay and move money with less complexity.”
Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa, Dwolla has been a Finovate alum since winning Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2011. A pioneer in peer-to-peer (P2P) and account-to-account (A2A) payments, Dwolla was among the first fintechs to offer lower-cost money transfers, direct ACH connectivity, and a developer-friendly, API-first strategy that enabled companies to embed payment capabilities into their platforms. Ahead of its time then, Dwolla has since benefitted from a surge in interest in account-to-account payments and embedded finance, facilitating more than 126 million transactions a year with an annual transaction value of more than $82 billion.
Schaumburg, Illinois-based NMI was founded in 2000. The company offers a modular payment acceptance platform and gateway that enables SaaS platforms, ISOs, banks, and other financial institutions to leverage payments to boost growth, drive loyalty, and develop new revenue streams. NMI’s technology serves more than 1.2 million active merchants, more than 235,000 connected devices, and features 150+ processor connections to give its partners flexibility to design the payment experiences that best suit their unique needs and business models. Dwolla is NMI’s most recent acquisition, having acquired Sphere Commercial Division in 2023 and Finovate alum Agreement Express in 2022.
Eisen, a fintech that specializes in end-to-end escheatment and unclaimed property compliance automation, has secured $18.5 million in funding. The capital comes in the form of a $10 million Series A led by MissionOG and a previously unannounced $8.5 seed round led by Index Ventures. Cowboy Ventures, First Round Capital, Homebrew, and Restive Ventures also participated in the investment.
Eisen innovates in an often-overlooked area of financial services: escheatment and the recovery of unclaimed property. State law requires that abandoned funds eventually be turned over to the government in a legal process called escheatment. While each state has its own rules regarding dormancy periods, notice requirements, and remittance deadlines, the concept of escheatment is designed to help protect consumers when financial institutions lose track of them. Nevertheless, the process of retrieving those assets can be both complex and cumbersome. As such, it is little surprise that more than 30 million Americans have unclaimed property in state custody, with states holding a combined $70 billion in consumer assets: from retirement accounts and life insurance proceeds to forgotten savings accounts and emergency funds. Out of all of this, only $4.5 billion was returned to owners in 2024.
In response, Eisen’s technology streamlines the compliance lifecycle from dormancy tracking and due diligence through to state reporting, remittance, and audit defense. The company offers a Tax Compliance Suite to support 1099 filing, TIN matching, and B-notice handling, as well as disbursement services. This reflects the firm’s evolution beyond improving the escheatment process and a recognition that many of the same issues that plague escheatment also impact other compliance operations.
“We started with escheatment because the gap there is the widest, but the same operational pattern shows up across the compliance stack,” Eisen Co-founder and CEO Allen Osgood wrote in a blog post announcing the investment. “Eisen’s platform now covers escheatment, disbursement, and 1099 reporting. Operational teams use Eisen to replace manual work and prevent dormant-account risk. Executives use it to reduce regulatory exposure, retain customer assets, and protect customer trust.”
Last year, Eisen prevented more than 31% of at-risk assets from being lost to state custody. The company monitors nearly $16 billion in balances across tens of millions of accounts at firms including Adyen, Binance.US, BitGo, and PeoplesBank. Eisen’s platform integrates state-by-state requirements directly into account operations, enabling financial institutions to identify dormancy risk earlier, reduce manual compliance work, and keep more customer assets in customer accounts.
“Every dollar in state custody represents a real person who never expected their money to disappear,” Osgood added. “The rules governing dormant assets weren’t built for crypto wallets, fintech platforms, or digital-first banking. Most institutions are sitting on 5x to 10x more liability than they realize. Eisen prevents that loss before it happens.”
Founded in 2021, Eisen made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2024 and returned to the Finovate stage earlier this year at FinovateSpring 2026 in San Diego. At the conference, the company demonstrated its Eisen Dashboard, a real-time compliance command center that features account-level detail views with state-specific rules, eligibility and due diligence tracking by reporting year, a disbursement hub with daily reconciliation and fraud protection, and an outreach hub to manage owner communications. Eisen is headquartered in New York.
This month marks the launch of a new series of interviews with companies that recently made their debuts on the Finovate stage. I had a great opportunity earlier this month to catch up with a number of companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Diego, and am looking forward to introducing our blog readers to these innovative fintechs!
First up, we checked in with Joe Steuter, Partner and Chief of Client Strategy with Intention.ly. Founded in 2021 and headquartered in King of Prussia, Intention.ly is a growth consultancy and marketing agency for financial services companies. At FinovateSpring this year, Intention.y demoed its Advisor Brand Builder platform that enables breakaway advisors, fast-evolving firms, and acquiring enterprises to build professional, high-impact brand identities and brand stories.
What problem does Intention.ly solve and who does it solve it for?
Joe Steuter: Intention.ly helps financial services firms grow by solving one of the industry’s most persistent challenges: brand differentiation. Beyond that, the challenge of differentiation with speed to market and thoughtful measurement to trace ROI to marketing efforts. Advisors, RIAs, enterprises, fintechs, bank managers, insurance reps, and asset managers are all competing in a market that can feel like a sea of sameness, where firms often sound alike, look alike, and struggle to clearly articulate why they are different.
That problem becomes especially acute for financial advisors and advisor enterprises. Building a strong brand has traditionally required a long, labor-intensive process with an outside partner that may not deeply understand the financial services industry. The alternative is often a fast, templated website build or brand message that saves time but leaves firms looking, sounding, and positioning themselves like everyone else.
Advisor Brand Builder (ABB) was created by Intention.ly to eliminate that tradeoff. It gives advisors and enterprises a faster, smarter way to build authentic, differentiated brands grounded in who they are, who they serve, and why they matter.
More broadly, Intention.ly solves growth challenges for financial services companies by combining strategy, brand, marketing, technology, content, and execution. We help firms move from ambiguity to clarity, from disconnected marketing efforts to cohesive growth systems, and from generic positioning to a brand presence that can actually support business development.
How does Intention.ly solve this problem better than other companies?
Steuter: Intention.ly solves this problem differently because we combine deep financial services expertise with technology, creative strategy, and execution. We are not a generalist agency learning the industry from the outside. Our team has spent decades building brands, shaping narratives, and helping financial services firms differentiate in a highly complex, highly regulated, and often highly commoditized market.
Advisor Brand Builder, which was the experience shown to the crowd at FinovateSpring 2026, is a strong example of how we approach innovation. The traditional branding process can take months or even years, especially when multiple stakeholders, decision-makers, and rounds of discovery are involved. ABB condenses that process into a guided, AI-backed experience that can build a brand foundation in weeks.
But speed is only part of the story. ABB is not just an automated template. It combines guided discovery, industry-specific intelligence, AI-assisted brand development, and human expertise from strategists, writers, designers, and marketers. The result is faster, but still substantive.
The platform captures the advisor’s authentic story, creates messaging and visual identity, builds a cohesive brand guide, generates assets, and extends that foundation into digital presence and website direction.
That combination of executional speed with truly differentiated campaigns and messaging is where our team stands out. We help firms move faster without sacrificing authenticity, quality, or differentiation. And in an industry that is evolving at a faster pace than ever before, this couldn’t be more crucial to a firm’s growth.
Who are Intention.ly’s primary customers? How do you reach them?
Steuter: Intention.ly’s primary customers are growth-minded financial services firms. That includes independent RIAs, breakaway advisors, hybrid firms, broker-dealers, custodians, asset managers, fintechs, banks, large insurance companies, and innovative enterprises that support advisor communities.
With Advisor Brand Builder specifically, we are solving for both individual advisor firms and the enterprises that serve them. For an advisor or breakaway team, ABB provides a faster path to a credible, differentiated brand, complete with messaging, visual identity, brand assets, and website direction. For larger enterprises, ABB creates a scalable way to support many advisors without forcing every firm through a slow, custom, one-off branding process.
We reach our customers through a combination of relationships, industry presence, referrals, thought leadership, partnerships, events, and direct engagement with firms that are actively trying to grow. Because Intention.ly is deeply embedded in the financial industry, many of our conversations begin with trust and shared context.
The firms that come to us are usually facing a transition point: launching, rebranding, going independent, entering a new market, scaling advisor support, or trying to create a more modern growth engine. Our value is helping them move from intention to execution with clarity, speed, and confidence.
Can you tell us about a favorite implementation of your technology, or a particularly valuable partnership experience?
Steuter: One recent example is Brick by Brick Wealth Management, a firm moving from a large wirehouse environment into the independent space. That kind of transition requires much more than a new name or logo. The team needed to create a complete brand identity, clarify its value proposition, reframe the value they brought to clients, develop a differentiated story, and launch a digital presence that could support the next stage of the business.
Through Advisor Brand Builder, we helped bring that work together in roughly six weeks. The process started with the concept for the firm’s name and evolved into a full brand story, visual identity, messaging system, brand assets, and website presence.
What made the implementation special was the balance between speed and authenticity. Brick by Brick needed to move quickly, but they also needed a brand that felt real, personal, and credible. ABB allowed us to capture the firm’s underlying story and translate it into something polished, differentiated, and usable.
That is exactly the kind of moment Advisor Brand Builder was built for. We’ve taken more than 25 firms of every size through this system, and it often works most effectively when advisors need to make a major business move, but they cannot afford to spend months stuck in an identity crisis. They need a brand that gives them clarity, confidence, and momentum.
What in your background gave you the confidence to respond to this challenge?
Steuter: My confidence comes from the team I surround myself with and the more than two decades I’ve spent helping financial services firms and startups tell their story. Collectively, as an organization, our confidence comes from having spent decades inside the financial services industry, working directly on the same challenges our clients face. Our CEO, Kelly Waltrich, built the firm to respond to the challenge she saw as most prevalent in financial services: a lack of purpose-led strategy and growth driven by disciplined execution and measurable goals. Every member of our team carries that same extensive industry experience where they’re drawing on years of having built brands, shaped messaging, led marketing strategies, supported advisor growth, launched campaigns, guided firms through transitions, and helped financial services companies tell more compelling stories.
Advisor Brand Builder is just one product of that experience. We have seen firsthand how difficult it can be for advisors to differentiate themselves. Many firms have a powerful story, but they struggle to articulate it. Others know they need a more modern brand, but the traditional process feels too slow, too expensive, or too disconnected from the realities of their business.
Over time, we saw the same pattern again and again: advisors needed both strategic depth and speed. They needed industry expertise, not generic branding exercises. They needed a process that could uncover what made them different and turn it into messaging, design, assets, and a digital presence.
We were not starting from theory. We were translating years of real financial services brand-building experience into a more scalable, technology-enabled process.
Left to right: Joe Steuter, Partner, Chief of Client Strategy, Intention.ly, and Jamie Recio, Head of Social Media, Intention.ly
You recently opened new offices in Omaha, Nebraska. How does the opening of a Midwest hub drive Intention.ly’s mission?
Steuter: Opening a Midwest hub in Omaha is an strategic step in Intention.ly’s growth and mission. It was also a very personal endeavor for me, as I live in Omaha and understand just how much of a financial hub the city is to this industry. Omaha has a deep connection to financial services, wealth management, fintech, and advisor platforms, and it gives us a strong presence in a market with exceptional industry talent.
Our mission is to help financial services firms grow with more clarity, intention, and impact. To do that well, we need to stay close to the firms, advisors, platforms, and people shaping the future of the industry. Omaha gives us another center of gravity for that work, located in the middle of everywhere.
It also reflects a belief I’ve always held: innovation in financial services is not limited to the coasts. Some of the most important companies, platforms, and advisor communities in our space have been built right here. Having a hub that is centrally located allows us to deepen relationships, expand our team, and support clients from a place that understands the advisor ecosystem.
You demoed at FinovateSpring in May of this year. How was the experience?
Steuter: FinovateSpring was a great experience because it gave us the opportunity to show Advisor Brand Builder in action to an entirely new corner of the industry. The conference brought together firms in accounting, banking, credit unions, private capital, insurance tech, and other sectors outside our normal realm of exposure (wealth management). Branding can feel abstract when described conceptually, but the demo allowed us to walk the audience through the actual experience: guided discovery, AI-assisted brand development, messaging, visual identity, brand assets, and website direction.
The format was especially valuable because ABB is designed to solve a very specific tension in the market. We were able to demonstrate that there is a better path—one that provides speed without losing substance.
The demo also helped us tell the broader Intention.ly story. We are a branding and marketing growth engine design firm with decades of financial services experience, and ABB represents how we are turning that expertise into scalable technology.
The conversations after the demo were energizing. The feedback reinforced what we already believed: advisor differentiation is a real problem, enterprises need scalable ways to support it, and the market is ready for solutions that combine AI with human expertise.
What are your goals for Intention.ly?
Steuter: Our goal is to become the leading marketing and growth partner for the industry’s top 100 companies. We want to help ambitious firms build stronger brands, clearer strategies, better marketing systems, and more effective paths to sustainable growth.
For Advisor Brand Builder, our goal is to change the equation around advisor brand development. We believe advisors should not have to choose between a long, expensive branding engagement and a generic template that makes them look and sound like everyone else. ABB gives them another option: a guided, AI-backed, human-refined process that creates a differentiated brand foundation in weeks.
At the enterprise level, our goal is to make differentiated branding scalable—quite a contradiction traditionally. Large wealth management organizations need ways to support many advisors efficiently, but without stripping away individuality. ABB gives enterprises a framework for helping advisors show up with more clarity, consistency, and authenticity.
More broadly, Intention.ly is focused on helping financial services firms spend less time stuck in identity, messaging, and execution challenges, and more time earning new business. Stronger brands create more confidence. More confidence creates better growth conversations. And better growth conversations create stronger firms and better-served clients.
The second half of May begins with raft of announcements highlighting continued innovation with—and investment in—both stablecoins and AI. Be sure to check back here at Finovate’s Fintech Rundown for the latest in fintech news and headlines.
Payments
National Australia Bank acquires account-to-account payments platform Banked.
Embedded BNPL provider equipifi has raised $34 million in Series B funding to help banks and credit unions offer pay-over-time options directly within their own platforms.
equipifi’s infrastructure enables consumers to access BNPL through their existing banking app and debit card without opening a new account, filling out an application, or using a third-party provider.
equipifi’s growth reflects a broader shift in BNPL from a standalone fintech product into embedded financial infrastructure.
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) infrastructure company equipifi has raised $34 million in Series B funding. The new round boosts the Arizona-based company’s total funding to $49 million.
The investment was led by Left Lane, with participation from existing investors Curql, PHX Ventures, New Stack Ventures, SixThirty Fund, Baleon Capital, Rise of the Rest, and SaaS Ventures. New strategic partners, SWBC and the Bankers Helping Bankers Fund, also contributed.
equipifi was founded in 2021 to offer consumers access to pay-over-time solutions from their preferred banking provider, not through a third party. The company’s solution helps banks and credit unions compete in an era when consumers have begun to expect BNPL as an option and crave flexibility without the need for a credit card. equipifi powers BNPL for millions of checking accounts with its tool that natively embeds BNPL options inside the bank’s own platform without requiring the user to fill out an application or undergo a credit check.
“A consumer opens their banking app,” the company explained on its website. “There’s a flexible payment option waiting for them. On the debit card already in their wallet. No new account. No application. No third-party service. They select their preferred term, tap accept, and they’re done. The institution just created a loan in real time, kept the relationship at the top, and gave the consumer something they didn’t think their bank could do.”
equipifi views its embedded BNPL offering as an infrastructure play. The company calls it “infrastructure for modern credit” that places flexible payments options inside financial institutions’ existing platforms. equipifi plans to use today’s $34 million round to bring flexible payments to every financial institution in the country.
The BNPL trend is interesting because when it first emerged over a decade ago, it wasn’t necessarily something customers were looking for. Now, however, BNPL tools have almost become table stakes. equipifi has proven that BNPL is no longer just a standalone fintech product competing against banks. Instead, it can work as embedded infrastructure that banks themselves want to own and integrate directly into their existing customer relationships. In this case, equipifi is positioning itself less as a consumer brand and more as an infrastructure provider powering the next generation of flexible payments behind the scenes.
Small business management and accounting platform Xero has launched its live integration with Anthropic’s AI assistant Claude.
The integration comes less than a month after Xero announced its multi-year partnership with Anthropic. It will enable users to leverage real-time financial intelligence to gain insights into revenue, profit, contacts, receivables, as well as financial health and cash position.
Founded in 2006, Xero has been a Finovate alum since 2011. Sukhinder Singh Cassidy is CEO.
The live integration follows the company’s multi-year partnership announced in March. The goal of the partnership is to integrate Claude’s AI directly into Xero and to bring Xero’s financial data and tools into Claude.ai. The partnership will give small businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping teams the ability to put real-time financial intelligence to work managing their company’s finances.
“Every day, millions of small business owners ask the same questions: Why is cash tight this month? Which invoices are overdue? Can I afford to hire?” Xero Chief Product & Technology Officer Diya Jolly said. “To run their business efficiently, small business owners and their accountants and bookkeepers need to be able to answer these questions and act on them in real time, whether using Xero or Claude. This partnership delivers on that.”
The integration marks the first time that Xero customers will be able to work with their financial data inside an AI platform. It will reduce the amount of time spent doing manual work, from pursuing invoices to compiling cash flow across multiple reports, and will proactively surface insights that would otherwise be time-consuming to discover. The integration will also provide a new way for Claude to power financial workflows for small businesses at scale.
Users with active Xero subscriptions can take advantage of the integration immediately, bringing their financial data directly into their Claude discussions without having to change tools. Insights generated by Claude are delivered directly to Xero customers, enabling them to take actions such as reviewing the complete report or invoice detail to uncover total earnings, discover outstanding payments, and gain visibility into business health via insights into assets, liabilities, and cash flow.
“When customers engage in wide-ranging conversations with Claude about their business strategy or day-to-day operations, they can now use Claude to instantly pull up their cash position, check overdue invoices, or see how profit is tracking, all without breaking their flow of work,” Jolly added. “That’s what it means to have Xero wherever you work, and it’s part of our commitment to ensuring customers can leverage Xero at every point in their decision-making process.”
A Finovate alum since 2011, Xero serves more than 4.9 million customers around the world with its small business accounting platform. The company’s technology offers all-in-one paperless record-keeping, automated bank reconciliation and invoice reminders, as well as smart data and insights such as trend analysis and customizable reporting. The platform connects to more than 1,000 third-party apps to deliver an integrated, streamlined business solution. Sukhinder Singh Cassidy is CEO.
We recently commemorated Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month with a feature highlighting the Asian American and Pacific Islander fintech innovators that introduced their companies to our FinovateSpring 2026 audience.
Today, as part of our continued commemoration, we turn our attention—and our thanks—to the Asian American and Pacific Islander mainstage speakers and panelists who shared their insights and experiences with us at last week’s event in San Diego.
Theodora Lau is the founder of boutique consulting firm, Unconventional Ventures. She is a public speaker, an advisor, the author of Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (2025), and co-author of The Metaverse Economy (2023) and Beyond Good (2021). Lau also hosts One Vision, a podcast on fintech and innovation.
At FinovateSpring this year, Lau participated in a number of executive briefings and power panels on AI in financial services.
Kristie Han, Principal, Canapi Ventures
Kristie Han is a Principal at Canapi Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in early to growth-stage software and fintech companies. Han brings a decade of experience investing in AI and software companies and leading Series B to pre-IPO opportunities across AI apps.
At FinovateSpring, Han participated in our power panel on the role of collaboration and co-creation in bank-fintech partnerships.
Kevin Lee, Chief Technology Officer & Key Pursuits Leader, NICE
Kevin Lee serves as Chief Technology Officer and Key Pursuits Leader at NICE, where he leads the company’s technology vision and its most strategic customer engagements by aligning platform capabilities, AI strategy, and architectural vision to deliver differentiated outcomes.
At FinovateSpring this year, he delivered a special address on AI agents in financial services.
Huyen Tran, VP of Innovations, U.S. Bank, and Founder, Elys Ventures
Huyen is a fintech product and strategy leader at U.S. Bank and founder of Elys Ventures, with two decades of experience building and scaling global digital platforms and financial services solutions. She is the founder of Elys Ventures, through which she invests in early-stage fintech and health tech companies with a product-driven investment approach.
This year at FinovateSpring, she participated in our Women in Fintech Briefing: How Can We All Make Sure We Are Moving the Needle?
Huong Tran, Founder and Managing Partner, 6igma Ventures
Huong Tran is the Founder & Managing Partner of 6igma Ventures, an early-stage venture fund focused on fintech infrastructure and applied AI platforms bridging Asia and the United States. She founded 6igma Ventures to connect high-growth Asian markets with the US technology ecosystem, investing in structural opportunities shaping the next generation of financial and technology infrastructure.
At FinovateSpring, Tran participated in our Impact+ Investor Power Panel for fintech startups.
Sherry Wu, Chief Technology Officer, University of Michigan Credit Union
Sherry Wu is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at the University of Michigan Credit Union (UMCU), where she aligns IT strategy with the credit union’s mission. With over 25 years of experience in IT leadership at IBM, Ford, and HPE, Wu also served on the board of People Driven CU and currently advises Algebrik AI and CU 2.0.
At FinovateSpring, she participated in our power panels on AI and how credit unions can thrive without big bank budgets.
Gary Fan, Chief Operating Officer, RBB
Gary Fan is the Chief Operating Officer of RBB, a publicly traded bank with over $4 billion in assets. As COO, Gary leads enterprise-wide growth initiatives, digital transformation, product and service innovation, and strategic M&A activity. He is also responsible for optimizing cross-functional operations and driving continuous business model evolution to stay ahead in a rapidly changing financial landscape.
This year at FinovateSpring, Fan participated in our panel discussion on the current challenges and opportunities facing community banks.
The US Senate Banking Committee unveiled the latest version of the CLARITY Act this week. The Act aims to establish a clear regulatory framework for digital assets.
The CLARITY Act offers enforceable guardrails for digital asset markets in an effort to protect consumers and investors, counter illicit finance and security threats, and support innovation in the US.
The bill is controversial, as it includes provisions to limit liability for decentralized software developers and enters an ongoing debate around whether stablecoins should be permitted to offer yield or yield-like rewards. After more than 10 months of bipartisan negotiations, the Senate Banking Committee is preparing for a key procedural markup. Here are five things you need to know about the new version of the CLARITY Act.
More than crypto regulation
While crypto regulation is making headlines, the Act comes with broader stakes as it also attempts to define who controls the future infrastructure of digital finance in the US. Supporters argue the Act helps preserve a more market-driven and decentralized approach by defining the boundaries of governmental power while protecting the autonomy of private developers and individual users.
This debate extends beyond crypto trading and will ultimately determine who will own and govern the next generation of financial rails. Stablecoins, tokenized assets, and AI-driven financial agents are on the rise, and the rules governing those future financial rails are yet to be settled. The companies and platforms controlling the new infrastructure could hold influence similar to what cloud providers, mobile operating systems, and card networks hold today.
Delineates between securities and commodities
The debate over whether digital assets are considered securities has been around for about a decade. That’s why determining when a token is treated like a security and when it can transition into a commodity is one of the biggest goals of the CLARITY Act. The determination will dictate how exchanges and platforms operate, which regulator oversees it, and what disclosures are required.
Yield is a battlefield
The debate over whether or not stablecoins can pay yield (or yield-like rewards) has been a major sticking point between banks and crypto firms. While banks argue that stablecoin yield products could compete directly with deposits and pull money out of the traditional banking system, crypto companies argue that restrictions would hurt innovation and competitiveness.
The Act does not explicitly use the term “yield” in relation to stablecoins. However, it does establish a regulatory framework that distinguishes between different types of digital assets based on whether they provide a financial return, such as interest. The CLARITY Act implies that if a digital asset provides a right to interest, it would likely fall under the jurisdiction of securities laws rather than being treated as a digital commodity or a permitted payment stablecoin.
While separate stablecoin legislation continues to evolve in parallel in the form of the GENIUS Act, the CLARITY Act intersects with those debates because of how digital assets offering financial return may ultimately be categorized.
About global competitiveness
Supporters of the Act argue that it is less about embracing crypto speculation and more about preventing the next generation of financial infrastructure from being built outside the US. Europe, Hong Kong, the UAE, and Singapore have already moved ahead with digital asset frameworks, and if the US does not create a set of regulatory guardrails within this arena, banks, fintechs, and crypto firms will feel less safe innovating in the digital asset space.
Even if it passes, the debate is far from over
The legislation does not resolve every concern. In fact, there are still ongoing debates around AML protections, DeFi oversight, systemic risk, political conflicts of interest, and consumer protection. So while the CLARITY Act brings more regulatory transparency to crypto, it also accelerates a broader debate about who will govern the future infrastructure of digital finance as stablecoins, tokenized assets, and AI-driven financial systems become more integrated into commerce and payments.
Apex Fintech Solutions and Plaid have teamed up to streamline account transfers and boost digital capabilities for brokerage firms.
The partnership combines Plaid’s secure connectivity and data validation with Apex Fintech Solutions’ ACATS infrastructure and risk engine to bring greater efficiency to the fund transfer process.
Apex Fintech Solutions’ subsidiary Apex Clearing made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2015. Plaid has been a Finovate alum since 2014.
A new partnership between Apex Fintech Solutions and Plaid will enable Apex to offer Plaid’s suite of financial data products to streamline account transfers and help brokerage firms improve their digital capabilities. The partnership combines Plaid’s secure connectivity and data validation with Apex’s ACATS infrastructure and risk engine to reduce the number of errors and delays in the fund transfer process while also boosting efficiency for brokerages and their customers.
ACATS stands for Automated Customer Account Transfer Service, a system managed by the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) that automates and standardizes asset transfers from one account to another. Apex’s ACATS infrastructure delivers reliable processing and conformity with ever-changing industry protocols and, together with Plaid’s expertise in financial data connectivity, supports an account transfer experience that is more comprehensive than either company would produce on their own.
“For too long, account transfers have been a source of frustration for investors and a missed opportunity for firms to grow,” Apex Chief Customer Officer Connor Coughlin said. “Plaid brings world-class account connectivity, and we bring proven ACATS infrastructure—together we’re delivering something neither of us could build alone. Now firms can offer a transfer experience as modern as the rest of their platform—and focus on building relationships with investors instead of chasing down paperwork.”
Key capabilities of the integration include automated account linking via Plaid with secure connections that eliminate manual data entry errors and common rejection triggers, and real-time processing and event-driven updates to provide status updates as soon as changes are announced. The integration will also deliver simplified infrastructure that consolidates multiple endpoints into a single API endpoint, unified audit trail interface and operational visibility, and day-one alignment with new protocols, including a fully configured simulator environment to facilitate transfer testing before going live.
“Transferring assets between investment accounts is still far too manual, slow, and error-prone for investors,” Plaid Head of Partnerships Adam Yoxtheimer said. “By integrating Plaid’s Investments Move with Apex’s clearing infrastructure, we’re delivering a first-of-a-kind, end-to-end ACATS solution. The solution can deliver a better transfer experience that gets investors’ assets into their new accounts faster with reduced error rates. We’re excited about what we can continue to build together.”
Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Apex Fintech Solutions enables hundreds of clients to launch, scale, and support digital investing for tens of millions of investors. The company provides infrastructure and an ecosystem of cloud-based solutions to enable and streamline trading, wealth management, tax reporting, and more. The firm serves wealth management firms, full-service broker-dealers, startups, banks and credit unions, cryptocurrency trading platforms, corporate treasury managers, and through its subsidiary Apex Clearing, also offers custody and clearing services.
Apex’s partnership with Plaid comes less than a month after the firm announced that it had forged a new data relationship with real-time financial news and market data provider Benzinga. Apex is making Benzinga APIs available to its network of financial platforms, brokerages, and developers, enabling them to integrate real-time market intelligence structured financial datasets directly into their offerings.
A Finovate alum since 2014, Plaid offers a data network that enables users to connect their financial accounts to the apps and services that help them manage and improve their financial lives. The company’s network covers more than 12,000 financial institutions across the US, Canada, the UK, and Europe. Plaid’s partnership announcement with Apex is just one of a number of announcements the San Francisco-based company has made in recent weeks. Plaid recently announced an expansion of its Bank Intelligence solution with four new capabilities across two areas: Fraud Insights and Loyalty Insights. The enhanced offering will bring stronger fraud defense to the open finance channel and enable firms to better understand where their customers are in their financial lives.
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. May was officially established as “Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month” by President George H. W. Bush in 1990, expanding on a joint resolution signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1978 that had designated the week of May 4-10 as “Asian/Pacific American Heritage Week.” The name of the commemoration was changed to “Asian American and Pacific Island Heritage Month” in 1997 in an effort to make the occasion both more accurate and inclusive.
Here at Finovate, we are happy to celebrate the achievements of our alums who share Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage. Today, we highlight six of these fintech leaders whose companies made their Finovate debuts last month at FinovateSpring 2026.
Anna Joo Fee, Founder/CEO, Goodfin
Goodfin is an AI-native wealth platform that unlocks access to private market investing and accelerates wealth for a new generation of investors. Goodfin’s AI delivers on-demand intelligent analysis and expert-level guidance to accredited investors looking to invest in top pre-IPO companies.
Educated at Harvard University and Harvard Law School, Anna Joo Fee founded Goodfin in 2022. Previously, she was Chief Operations Officer and Chief Legal Officer for Liquidly, a company she co-founded in 2017.
Victor Fu, Co-Founder/CTO, Level
Level is a venture-backed technology company that helps automotive lenders resolve insurance claims more effectively, delivering better outcomes for both lenders and borrowers.
With degrees from the University of Southern California and UCLA, Victor Fu has interned with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Tesla. He co-founded Level in August 2023.
Wye Yew Ho, Co-Founder/CEO and Zi Zhang, Co-Founder/CTO, Proximitty
Proximitty helps build autonomous business loan servicing teams for fintechs and banks. Their AI agents monitor loan portfolios and collect commercial loans autonomously with their proprietary agent studio.
Wye Yew Ho was educated at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He previously worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Company and as a fincrime team leader with Taptap Send. He is currently CEO of Proximitty.
A graduate of the University of Minnesota, Zi Zhang was previously Head of Engineering at ACI.dev and a Platform Security Tech Lead with Bloomberg. Zhang is Proximitty’s Chief Technology Officer.
Marco Ma, Co-Founder/CEO, Ventus AI
Ventus AItransforms raw banking transactions into semantic customer intelligence, enabling personalized experiences, smarter analytics, and human-centered digital banking without changing core infrastructure.
Marco Ma was educated at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business and at Brown University, where he was Entrepreneur in Residence for six years. He co-founded Ventus AI in October 2025.
Caitlyn Truong, CEO, Zengines
Zengines transforms how organizations handle data migrations and legacy system modernization by empowering business users and technical specialists with AI-powered tools. The company won Best of Show at FinovateSpring 2026.
Caitlyn Truong co-founded Zengines in May 2021. Previously, she worked as a Managing Director with Accenture and as Vice President and Partner with Strategy&, formerly Booz & Company. Truong is a graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Kraken parent company Payward has applied for a national trust charter from the OCC to launch a federally regulated digital asset custody entity called Payward National Trust Company (PNTC).
The move would help Payward expand its institutional business by offering bank-level custody and trust services to clients that require a regulated qualified custodian.
The company also announced plans to raise funds at a reported $20 billion valuation.
Kraken parent company Payward is seeking a national trust charter from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). If approved, Payward would be able to establish the Payward National Trust Company (PNTC), which would offer custody and related services for digital assets.
With PNTC, Payward plans to serve institutional clients and individual customers seeking regulated, bank-level custody and trust services for digital assets. The charter will leverage Payward’s existing infrastructure, risk management, compliance programs, and subsidiaries to establish a federally regulated custody offering under OCC oversight. The regulated offering will expand access for institutional clients who require a federally regulated qualified custodian, broadening Payward’s client base in the US.
“Our long-held belief has always been that the right path forward for digital assets runs through robust, transparent regulation,” said Payward and Kraken Co-CEO Arjun Sethi. “A national trust company provides the certainty institutions require and establishes the infrastructure to build the next generation of custody. This is not about being first; it is about getting the framework right so markets can scale with clarity, interoperability, and long-term vision for what clients will demand as these systems mature.”
Along with its national trust charter announcement, Payward also disclosed that it is seeking to raise capital at a $20 billion valuation. While Payward did not comment on the matter, experts speculate the funds will be used to fuel acquisitions. The Wyoming-based company acquired stablecoin payments company Reap for $600 million earlier this month and bought digital asset derivatives platform Bitnomial for $550 million in April. These deals follow Payward’s 2025 mega deal to purchase NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion.
Taken together, the trust charter application, funding, and ramp-up in acquisition activity are preparing Payward for its IPO. However, while the company filed its S-1 in November of 2025, it halted IPO plans in March, citing unfavorable market conditions.
For Kraken, the trust charter could help deepen its role in institutional finance without becoming a traditional bank. Instead of pursuing a full banking charter, Payward appears focused on building regulated custody and trust capabilities around digital assets, potentially allowing it to expand relationships with institutional investors, asset managers, and enterprises seeking compliant crypto infrastructure.
