Five Fintechs Helping Banks Build and Launch Better Financial Products

Five Fintechs Helping Banks Build and Launch Better Financial Products
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateSpring 2026, FinovateSpring 2026 Demo Companies

Launching and scaling new products isn’t as simple as developing a new tool and making it live. There are plenty of tasks that need to be considered alongside the actual product release, including governance and compliance, marketing and social campaigns, consumer testing and surveying, finding and fixing vulnerabilities, and consumer follow-up.

At FinovateSpring 2026 in San Diego, we’re hosting five fintechs that are making this next phase of product launches possible. Check out the variety of capabilities and learn more about the companies behind them below.

PentEdge

PentEdge AIMS gives community banks and credit unions an examiner-ready AI governance platform that’s purpose-built for the $500 million to $100 billion institutions navigating federal AI risk guidance. Founded in 2025, the North Creek, New York-based company delivers a real-time scoring dashboard with a view of AI exposure across a portfolio, offers pre-built vendor AI risk profiles, and provides audit-ready PDFs for examiners.

Intention.ly

Intention.ly’s Advisor Brand Builder (ABB) helps firms build a differentiated brand, website, and content engine in a matter of days to enable advisors to attract ideal clients and outpace competitors. Among the company’s engagement options are a diagnostic assessment, a fractional CMO and COO, an outsourced marketing team, and more. Headquartered in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, Intention.ly was founded in 2021.

PwC

Customer Link by PwC offers banks a set of “synthetic customers” through which they can test products, pricing, and experiences. Firms can use results to quickly generate quant data and turn survey crosstabs into clear, segment-specific growth actions.

Founded in 1998, PwC provides clients with a wide range of capabilities, including consulting, cybersecurity, AI, audit, and more. The company is headquartered in New York.

Rezliant

Rezliant’s Maestro Pulse helps fintechs, payment providers, and small financial institutions automatically fix security vulnerabilities in their codebases, PII (Personally Identifiable Information) data flows, and API integrations. The company provides contextualized triage of fintech vulnerabilities, automates remediation of multiple critical flaws simultaneously, and delivers effortless two-click fixes directly from email notifications.

Headquartered in Mesa, Arizona, Rezliant was founded in 2023.

Kato

Founded in 2024, Kato helps lenders scale with compliance-first automation. The San Francisco-based company’s technology helps firms reduce servicing costs up to 80%, increasing recoveries by 1%, and freeing agents to focus on high-value work.

Why banks should care

While it seems like the hard work of a new product launch is the planning and development phase, the reality is that execution is where most initiatives succeed or fail. Banks are expected to move faster, create and develop more frequently, and deliver better customer experiences. Doing so, however, requires navigating compliance requirements, validating product-market fit, securing systems, and effectively bringing products to market.

Platforms that support these adjacent functions help reduce the friction that often slows product launches. They enable banks to move from idea to execution more efficiently, while minimizing risk and ensuring alignment with regulatory expectations. In an environment where speed and precision both matter, having the right infrastructure around product launches can be the saving grace that changes a product from a failure into a success.

Want to attend? Now is the time to lock it in. Get 40% off this week only with code FKV2794ART (ends April 17): https://informaconnect.com/finovatespring/purchase/select-package/?vip_code=FKV2794ART

Photo by Monstera Production

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Airwallex Launches Physical Point of Sale Device

Airwallex Launches Physical Point of Sale Device
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news
  • Airwallex launched Airwallex POS Payments, a physical point-of-sale device.
  • The device will enable physical, in-store payments that integrate with Airwallex’s broader commerce stack.
  • The new launch helps Airwallex compete with Square and Stripe, but Airwallex has an advantage in regions where it holds banking licenses.

While the rest of the payments world is racing toward agentic payments, Airwallex is bringing its focus back to the physical world. The Singapore-based company announced this week that it has launched Airwallex POS Payments, a physical point-of-sale (POS) device.

The new, physical device integrates with the company’s commerce stack to unify online and in-store payments. Bringing everything together will help merchants offer consistent payment flows, reporting, and customer experiences across multiple channels. Enterprise retailers will gain more visibility and control across channels, while SaaS platforms will gain the ability to embed in-store payments directly into their products.

“By extending our global financial platform to the physical countertop, we’re bringing online and in-store payments together, reducing the fragmentation that has long held in-store payments back, and giving enterprises a truly global foundation for growth,” the company said in its announcement.

Adding physical POS devices places Airwallex directly in competition with Square, a pioneer in the mobile POS hardware space, and Stripe, which offered to acquire Airwallex in 2019 for $1.2 billion. Airwallex has an advantage over these two legacy players in certain regions, however. In Japan, for instance, where the company holds a banking license, the fintech owns both the backend banking infrastructure, as well as the front-facing software. So when a merchant is paid, Airwallex can hold the funds instead of having to transfer them to the merchant’s primary bank account.

Founded in 2015, Airwallex holds nearly 90 regulatory licenses and permits across 50 markets that enable customers to operate in 200+ countries and regions and support multi-currency checkout at scale. In 2025 alone, the company extended its regulated and local capabilities across 12 new markets, securing licenses and launching products in France, the Netherlands, Israel, Canada, Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brazil, Mexico, and the UAE.

The new POS payments device is now available across the UK, Europe, Hong Kong, and Singapore, with plans to launch in Australia and the US, where it currently serves 46,000 businesses.

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Backbase and Ninth Wave Team Up to Bring Open Finance to Commercial Banking

Backbase and Ninth Wave Team Up to Bring Open Finance to Commercial Banking
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Backbase, Ninth Wave
  • Backbase and Ninth Wave have announced a strategic partnership to enable banks to connect their business clients ERP and accounting systems to their banking data.
  • The partnership follows research from Ninth Wave that indicated that an overwhelming number of Chief Financial Officers and their teams would consider switching banks in order to access open finance capabilities.
  • Amsterdam-based Backbase was founded in 2003 and is a four-time Finovate Best of Show winner. Ninth Wave, headquartered in New York and launched in 2018, most recently demoed its technology at FinovateWest 2020.

Banking technology provider Backbase has announced a strategic partnership with open finance connectivity specialist Ninth Wave. The two companies will work together to enable banks to offer a seamless connection between their business customers’ ERP and accounting systems and their banking data. This will enhance the customer experience by providing better cash flow visibility, improved reconciliation, faster payment execution, and more efficient banking operations.

Courtesy of the partnership, Backbase’s bank customers can offer their corporate clients direct, permissioned access to banking data used by their financial systems, while Ninth Wave’s connectivity layer serves as a bridge between the bank and the corporate client’s ERP or accounting software. Managing consent, activity logs, and API governance within a single platform, the solution provides accurate, real-time data transfer with comprehensive audit trails and integrated compliance controls. The technology also eliminates the need for manual workarounds, batch uploads, and unreliable data scraping.

“Commercial clients prefer not to log into a portal and re-enter data that their ERP system already has,” Backbase Global VP for Marketplace Mayank Somaiya said. “By partnering with Ninth Wave, we give banks a direct integration path into how their corporate clients actually operate. That’s what keeps relationships sticky and opens the door to real value-added services.”

The partnership between Backbase and Ninth Wave comes in the wake of research conducted by Ninth Wave that pointed to growing interest in Open Finance functionality among Chief Financial Officers and their finance teams. In 2025, Ninth Wave research noted that 86% of those surveyed would consider changing banks in order to access open finance features. Those surveyed who were connected reported saving more than five hours a week due to the greater efficiency of direct bank access.

Going forward, Backbase and Ninth Wave will expand ERP connectivity features, support multi-country corporate payments, and develop real-time cash management dashboards for international businesses.

“Backbase offers a robust, modern foundation for commercial banking, and Ninth Wave simplifies connectivity by managing API connections, ensuring strong security, and providing a management hub to oversee their open finance operations,” Ninth Wave VP of Strategic Partnerships Joe Fiorillo said. “Together, we are delivering the modern banking services that business clients require.”

A Finovate alum since 2009, Backbase is a four-time Finovate Best of Show winner. Headquartered in Amsterdam and founded in 2003, the company offers an AI-native banking operating system that transforms fragmented banking operations into a unified front line. This enables customers, employees, and AI agents to work as one across digital channels, front office, and operations. More than 120 banks around the world use Backbase’s technology across retail, small business, commercial, and private banking, as well as wealth management.

Founded in 2018 and headquartered in New York, Ninth Wave most recently demonstrated its technology on the Finovate stage at our all-digital event, FinovateWest 2020. The company provides secure data connectivity between financial institutions and third-party applications such as aggregators, fintechs, accounting and ERP systems, and other business tools. Ninth Wave works with financial institutions throughout North America, offering an open finance Hub that links more than 120 bank accounts via secure, reliable, and scalable connections to the open finance ecosystem.

Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash

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Revolutionizing Fintech: How AI is Transforming Investing

Revolutionizing Fintech: How AI is Transforming Investing
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateEurope 2026, Speaker series

AI is making a major impact on all aspects of banking, fintech, and financial services, and the world of investing is no exception. From helping investors better understand the volumes of financial, economic, and market data available to them to creating more personalized investment strategies, AI is empowering average retail investors to make smarter decisions and take greater control over their financial futures.

At FinovateEurope 2026 in London this year, I sat down with Nitzan Nachum, Chief Revenue Officer at BridgeWise to talk about the company’s mission to make investing more accessible to a greater range of investors. We also discussed the key role AI is currently playing in helping investors find the information they need and ensure it is accurate and from trusted sources.

“When BridgeWise was founded, it was about filling the gap of financial information asymmetry in the market. For years, for decades, information has been owned only by professionals or by people that are really early adopters of technology and know how to find the right information. But for many, and for most retail investors, most of them couldn’t find information about their portfolios except through the news or through a professional such as their relationship manager or wealth advisor …

We wanted to make this (information) accessible to everyone, so that everyone would have the same information when they are in the process of decision-making about whether they want to invest in a certain stock, fund, or any financial asset.”

Chief Revenue Officer at BridgeWise, Nitzan Nachum has more than eight years of experience leading fintech growth and revenue operations. With degrees from Tel Aviv University, Nachum has demonstrated expertise in global sales, international expansion, and go-to-market strategy across multiple markets.

BridgeWise is a technological research company that leverages AI-based analysis and large language models (LLMs) to offer comprehensive insights into global stocks. The company’s solutions are designed to bridge the knowledge gap in the investment world to empower investors of all types to become “super investors.” Integrated into brokerage platforms and the infrastructures of other financial institutions, BridgeWise provides instant fundamental analysis of stocks around the world, as well as bespoke investment strategies, to enable millions of investors to make informed investment decisions.

Headquartered in New York and founded in 2019. BridgeWise recently published its inaugural State of AI for Wealth report. The report is a comprehensive review of international sentiment towards using AI for investment information and surveyed 2,100 individuals across 19 countries.

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eToro Acquires Crypto Wallet Zengo

eToro Acquires Crypto Wallet Zengo
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, eToro, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • eToro has acquired self-custodial wallet provider Zengo to deepen its digital asset capabilities and expand into on-chain finance.
  • The deal brings keyless wallet infrastructure in-house, positioning eToro to move beyond trading into custody, authentication, and transaction control.
  • As crypto evolves into infrastructure, owning the wallet layer could determine who controls the customer relationship.

Social trading and investment network eToro announced it has acquired self-custodial crypto wallet provider Zengo for an undisclosed amount. eToro plans to leverage the acquisition to deepen its digital asset capabilities and bridge traditional finance with on-chain infrastructure.

Zengo was founded in 2018 and offers a crypto wallet with buy, sell, and swap capabilities to both individual and commercial users. The Israel-based company positions itself as a secure crypto wallet, offering Bitcoin vaults, theft protection, a Web3 firewall, and enterprise-grade compliance and controls for commercial users. Notably, Zengo is a pioneer in multi-party computation cryptography and is known for its keyless wallet architecture.

“We believe the future of finance will be increasingly digital, decentralized, and user-controlled, with self-custody playing an important role in that evolution,” said eToro Co-founder and CEO Yoni Assia. “Zengo has built an innovative and secure wallet experience, and this acquisition will enable us to accelerate its growth while continuing to provide users with choice in how they access digital assets.”

eToro will combine its multi-asset platform with Zengo’s non-custodial wallet technology to expand on its own digital asset capabilities while growing Zengo’s platform. “From day one, Zengo has focused on making self-custody simple and secure for everyday users,” said Zengo Co-founder and CEO Ouriel Ohayon. “Joining eToro allows us to accelerate that mission at a global scale. Together, we can expand access to self-custody and on-chain finance while connecting it to a broader investing ecosystem that bridges traditional and on-chain finance.”

Founded in 2007, eToro launched Bitcoin trading capabilities in 2013, but didn’t launch a dedicated crypto trading platform in the US until 2019. Today’s acquisition will help eToro expand into tokenized assets and emerging decentralized trading models such as prediction markets and perpetuals.

As the banking world increasingly normalizes decentralized finance, it may no longer be enough for fintechs and investment firms to simply offer traditional finance investing tools, especially as crypto evolves from an asset class into infrastructure.

By acquiring Zengo, eToro is positioning itself to participate more directly in on-chain activity, rather than simply offering access to facilitate trades. The deal is another example of fintechs pushing deeper into infrastructure. Self-custody wallets are emerging as the interface layer for on-chain finance. By bringing that capability in-house, eToro is positioning itself to control digital assets, storage, authentication, and transactions.

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Acumatica Acquires CoreChain Technologies to Offer Embedded Supply Chain Financing

Acumatica Acquires CoreChain Technologies to Offer Embedded Supply Chain Financing
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, CoreChain Technologies, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Embedded payments innovator CoreChain Technologies has agreed to be acquired by business management solution provider Acumatica. Terms of the deal were not immediately available.
  • The acquisition will enable Acumatica to offer embedded supply chain financing to its customers directly from its platform instead of relying on outside partners.
  • CoreChain Technologies made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2024. The company is headquartered in New Haven, Connecticut.

Here’s Finovate alum acquisition news from earlier this year that slipped beneath our radar. CoreChain Technologies, which made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2024, has agreed to be acquired by business management solution provider Acumatica. The announcement was made in January and builds on a relationship between the two companies that extends back to 2023, when CoreChain introduced a direct, integrated solution for Acumatica users with the launch of CoreChain Pay.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

“I am tremendously excited to announce that Acumatica has acquired CoreChain Technologies,” CoreChain Technologies CEO Chris Aguas wrote on his LinkedIn page earlier this year. “CoreChain has focused on modernizing B2B payments for the past 7+ years, and embedding AP payments capabilities directly into ERP workflows has been a key focus since the very beginning of our journey.”

Since inception, CoreChain Technologies has processed more than $1 billion in B2B payments. CoreChain’s network of networks streamlines the financial supply chain by offering simple and secure digital B2B payments between buyers and suppliers—including digital payment options such as virtual cards and ACH. The acquisition will enable Acumatica to offer embedded supply chain financing directly while continuing to provide customer choice via an open marketplace.

The acquisition further transforms Acumatica’s business software into an actual fintech platform. Offering CoreChain’s blockchain-based payment system as a core part of its solution will enable Acumatica to leverage embedded finance to offer key financial tools such as supply chain finance directly instead of relying on third parties.

“We’re living in an incredibly exciting age of AI, with endless possibilities and impact that organizations are experiencing today,” Acumatica CEO John Case said. “We see it with customers who are combining new AI capabilities with human ingenuity to enhance performance and empower people to do their best work.”

Based in Bellevue, Washington, Acumatica offers a comprehensive business management solution designed to assist small and mid-market companies with connected, collaborative work environments. The company’s flagship offering, Acumatica Cloud ERP, was recently updated to include expanded AI capabilities, enhanced reporting tools, and new collaboration features. The enhancements are designed to better connect field teams with their back offices and to introduce early access to Acumatica’s AI Assistant, which facilitates a more intuitive, conversational way to access insights from their data.

Founded in 2019, CoreChain Technologies made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2024. At the conference, the New Haven, Connecticut-based company demonstrated its CoreChain Pay solution. Billed as “Venmo for Business,” CoreChain Pay enables businesses to seamlessly and securely pay vendors digitally directly from their accounting systems. The technology makes accounts payable easier and allows companies to consolidate their vendor payments in a single solution, avoiding back office expenses, payment fees, and fraud risk.

Interested in learning more about exciting new fintechs like CoreChain Technologies? Join us next month in San Diego for FinovateSpring 2026, May 5-7, featuring more than 40 demoing companies making their Finovate debuts!

Photo by Krishnan Srinivasan on Unsplash

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Heritage Family CU Partners with Quinte Financial Technologies to Enhance Operational Oversight

Heritage Family CU Partners with Quinte Financial Technologies to Enhance Operational Oversight
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Quinte Financial Technologies
  • Heritage Family Credit Union (HFCU) has announced a new partnership with Quinte Financial Technologies.
  • The Vermont-based financial institution will deploy Quinte’s ServiceDESK solution to enhance its operational risk and case management capabilities.
  • Founded in 2019, Quinte Financial Technologies made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego.

A new partnership with Quinte Financial Technologies will enable Vermont-based Heritage Family Credit Union (HFCU) to boost its policy-driven oversight and reinforce operational consistency throughout the credit union. The community financial institution has selected Quinte’s ServiceDESK model, which combines review and refinement with structured workflows designed to integrate with HFCU’s current systems and operational environment.

“As our operations continue to grow and evolve, it is critical that our risk oversight processes remain structured, consistent, and well-coordinated,” HFCU EVP and Chief Financial Officer Christine Messer said. “Quinte’s model strengthens our operational framework while giving our teams the clarity and support needed to manage risk effectively. By streamlining workflows and improving coordination across our case management activities, we are ensuring our processes remain aligned with how we intend to operate, strengthening our ability to protect our members and maintain their trust.”

Quinte’s ServiceDESK provides experienced operations teams, policy expertise, and structured workflows designed to orchestrate and streamline credit union operations. ServiceDESK helps community financial institutions like HFCU bridge the gap between policy design on the one hand, and day-to-day execution on the other. This ensures that governance, risk, and compliance frameworks are consistently implemented and able to scale. ServiceDESK integrates seamlessly with Quinte’s flagship CaseHUB platform, an intelligent dispute and fraud case management solution that helps financial institutions manage regulated case activity within a single policy-controlled system, embedding regulatory timelines, compliance controls, and workflow automation directly into operational execution.

“HFCU’s approach to risk oversight reflects its commitment to strong operational controls and disciplined decision making,” Quinte President Sriram Natarajan said. “Implementing structured case management workflows enables the credit union to improve oversight across case activities and evolve with regulatory expectations.”

Based in Vermont and serving members in New Hampshire, New York, and Massachusetts, HFCU is a member-owned, member-first, not-for-profit cooperative. With more than 54,000 members, HFCU offers a range of comprehensive financial services such as personal and business accounts, loans, and credit cards, as well as investment services through Heritage Way Financial Services. Established in 1956, HFCU has total assets of more than $832 million.

Founded in 2019, Quinte Financial Technologies made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego. At the conference, the New York-based fintech demonstrated its Advanced Dispute Manager (ADM) solution that automates dispute management across ACH, POS, ATM, checks, wire transfers, and Zelle. ADM provides full Reg E compliance courtesy of seamless case documentation and communications, reducing risk, controlling losses, and supporting regulatory adherence.

Quinte’s partnership news comes just a few weeks after the company announced the launch of its compliance controls platform, QiDesk. Featuring AI automation and built-in compliance controls, QiDesk embeds intelligent automation leveraging large language models directly into workflows that demand strong governance and oversight. Enabling financial institutions to deliver faster, more consistent responses across email, chat, and voice while also facilitating easier customer document management, QiDesk is designed to enhance compliant customer support and ease document discovery for financial institutions.

“QiDesk represents the next phase of our platform strategy,” Quinte SVP of Strategic Growth Ankit Maharaj Singh said. “CaseHUB created a strong foundation for governed case management. With QiDesk, we are extending that foundation to help institutions coordinate execution across systems and channels, so they can move faster while maintaining the control and auditability required in regulated environments.”

Photo by Paulita Fysh on Unsplash

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Five Fintechs Helping Banks Manage Risk, Compliance, and Governance

Five Fintechs Helping Banks Manage Risk, Compliance, and Governance
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: FinovateSpring 2026 Demo Companies

Financial services are growing more complex, which means that risk, compliance, and governance are no longer simply back-office functions. These services, which were once considered “boring” aspects of fintech, are now core to how banks and fintechs operate, compete, and scale. From evolving regulatory expectations to increasingly sophisticated fraud and operational risks, financial institutions are under constant pressure to maintain control while continuing to innovate.

At FinovateSpring 2026, a new group of companies is demonstrating how banks can modernize governance, streamline compliance, and better manage risk across the organization. Below are five companies helping banks move toward a more proactive, automated, and scalable approach to risk, compliance, and governance.

CRIF

CRIF delivers a broad suite of credit bureau services, analytics, and decisioning platforms that help financial institutions make smarter, faster, and more transparent lending decisions. Its technology enables banks and lenders to design, test, and deploy credit strategies with greater speed and control, combining data, analytics, and governance into a single framework.

The platform offers no-code strategy design for business users, real-time simulations with KPI validation, and embedded AI agents that support compliant and explainable decisioning. Headquartered in Italy and founded in 1988, CRIF serves banks, credit unions, fintechs, and lenders globally, helping them modernize credit risk management while maintaining regulatory confidence.

Rulebase

Rulebase helps financial institutions scale compliance by automating testing and quality assurance across customer interactions and internal workflows. Its platform continuously monitors activity, detects potential violations, and generates audit-ready evidence, enabling teams to move beyond manual reviews and point-in-time checks.

By improving speed and accuracy while reducing regulatory risk, Rulebase allows organizations to focus on high value activity while maintaining compliance. Founded in 2025 and headquartered in New York, the company offers a modern approach to embedding compliance directly into day-to-day operations.

Winnow

Winnow helps financial institutions simplify and streamline compliance by replacing manual research and fragmented processes with a centralized, easy-to-use platform. Its solution delivers tailored, attorney-reviewed regulatory guidance, enabling organizations to quickly understand and meet their compliance obligations without the time and cost of traditional methods.

By reducing complexity and improving accuracy, Winnow allows teams to spend less time interpreting regulations and more time executing against them. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Anaheim, California, Winnow provides a more efficient path to staying compliant in a complex regulatory environment.

The Electronic Guardian

The Electronic Guardian offers a secure digital repository designed to help individuals organize, protect, and transfer critical financial and personal information. Its platform, The Coop, consolidates important documents and assets into a centralized system that evolves into a comprehensive estate inventory, supporting legacy planning and asset continuity.

Built with private encryption and “at rest” recoverability, The Coop ensures sensitive information remains both secure and accessible when it matters most. Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Pittsburgh, The Electronic Guardian enables banks, credit unions, and insurance providers to offer added value through estate organization and long-term asset protection solutions.

Model IQ by Kevin D. Oden & Associates

Model IQ, developed by Kevin D. Oden and Associates, is an automated platform designed to help financial institutions manage model risk and meet stringent regulatory requirements. Built by quants, the solution streamlines compliance with SR 11-7, FDIC, and NCUA guidelines by bringing structure, speed, and consistency to the model risk management process.

The platform automates the entire model lifecycle to accelerate review timelines while improving accuracy and audit readiness. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in San Francisco, Model IQ serves financial institutions ranging from community credit unions to regional banks and fintechs, offering a scalable approach to governance in an increasingly model-driven industry.

Why banks should care

Risk, compliance, and governance are central to a bank’s operations, directly impacting an organization’s ability to scale. As banks adopt AI, expand digital channels, and operate across increasingly complex regulatory environments, the volume and velocity of risk has increased to a point where manual processes and siloed systems can’t keep up.

Platforms that automate compliance testing, improve decision transparency, and streamline model risk management offer banks a way to stay ahead of regulators while operating more efficiently. Just as importantly, they reduce the operational burden on internal teams.

For end users, having a place to store and manage their key documents can be crucial for both security and organization. Financial institutions that offer tools like this as a benefit will not only add a revenue stream, but will also give clients another reason to associate them with safety and security.

Photo by Ilkauri Scheer

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Synctera Acquires Compliance Fintech Cable

Synctera Acquires Compliance Fintech Cable
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Cable, Mergers & Acquisitions, Synctera
  • Synctera has acquired Cable to add real-time compliance monitoring and automated control testing to its BaaS platform.
  • Cable enables continuous, end-to-end oversight of fintech programs, replacing traditional point-in-time compliance checks.
  • Financial terms of the deal were undisclosed.

In the BaaS world, compliance is quickly moving from a box-checking exercise to a continuous, provable requirement. That’s why embedded finance and BaaS fintech Synctera has acquired financial risk control platform Cable.

From Finovate’s perspective, this is a fun announcement to see, as both companies have demoed at Finovate in the past. Cable showcased its Automated Assurance product at FinovateFall 2022. Two years later, Synctera demoed its platform at FinovateFall 2024.

UK-based Cable was founded in 2020 to offer a financial risk control platform with automated testing and real-time alerts that help clients manage, track, and have full oversight of the controls. Cable works in conjunction with a firm’s existing compliance infrastructure to test whether controls, such as KYC, transaction monitoring rules, AML, and other workflows are functioning as designed.

“Synctera has always focused on helping banks and fintechs build and scale responsibly,” said Synctera Co-founder and CEO Peter Hazlehurst. “But execution alone isn’t enough. Banks need visibility into how those systems are performing in real time. Cable provides that missing observability layer, giving our partners confidence that controls are working as intended across their entire fintech ecosystem. Most solutions in this space are theater. Cable isn’t.”

While Cable initially launched to help firms manage financial crime, Cable has since doubled down on helping partner banks, including Axiom Bank, Quaint Oak Bank, and Griffin, manage their fintech programs. Instead of taking a sampling-based approach that only offers a snapshot in time, Cable helps sponsor banks approach compliance with continuous, end-to-end oversight of their fintech programs.

“Banks are being asked to stand behind the performance of increasingly complex fintech ecosystems,” said Natasha Vernier, co-founder of Cable. “That requires a fundamentally different approach: one that is continuous, data-driven, and verifiable. We built Cable to meet that need, and joining Synctera allows us to bring that capability to a much broader market.”

Once the acquisition is finalized, the Cable team will join Synctera to build out the compliance infrastructure banks and fintechs need to operate responsibly. Cable will also continue to serve its existing client base and will be available as a standalone offering.

As partner bank–fintech relationships scale, traditional oversight that only offers a point-in-time snapshot is no longer sufficient to meet regulatory expectations. Instead, banks are being pushed toward continuous, real-time visibility into how controls are performing across their ecosystems. By integrating Cable’s automated testing and monitoring capabilities, Synctera is positioning itself as not just execution infrastructure, but also as a built-in verification tool.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

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Best of Show Winner BlytzPay Unveils New Intelligent Payments Platform

Best of Show Winner BlytzPay Unveils New Intelligent Payments Platform
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, BlytzPay
  • Utah-based payments and collections platform BlytzPay announced an “evolution” of its platform and the launch of Blytz, which connects payments, customer engagement, and automation in a single layer.
  • Blytz consists of three components: BlytzPay, a text-first billpay solution; BlytzCollect, which uses text-based payment links to enhance outreach; and BlytzCash, which facilitates in-person cash payments via a network of 88,000+ retailers around the US.
  • Founded in 2017, BlytzPay won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2019 and again later that year at FinovateFall 2019 in New York. Robyn Burkinshaw is Founder and CEO.

BlytzPay, which won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2019 and again later that year at FinovateFall, has announced an “evolution” of its platform and the launch of Blytz. Blytz represents a new iteration of the company’s intelligent payments and collections platform that connects payments, AI-powered customer engagement, and automation into a single operational layer.

The announcement reflects the company’s growth from a modern automotive payments solution into a comprehensive platform that supports automobile financing, property management, and consumer finance. BlytzPay helps companies enhance the way they communicate with customers, collect payments, and manage revenue operations.

“We didn’t just build a payments product; we built what actually happens around a payment,” Blytz CEO and Founder Robyn Burkinshaw said. “Conversations. Follow-ups. Real outcomes. The industry keeps pretending payments are just transactions, but they’re not. Blytz is payments and collections in one motion, which is the way it should have been all along.”

The Blytz platform includes three elements—BlytzPay, BlytzCollect, and BlytzCash—that connect payments, engagement, and automation into a single operational layer. BlytzPay supports modern, text-first, Bankless Bill Pay payment experiences to make it easier for customers to pay and for businesses to collect. BlytzCollect enables finance teams to leverage AI-driven voice and BlytzPay’s instant, text payment links to automate outreach and improve recency via on-time payments. BlytzCash delivers payment accessibility that allows customers to pay with cash in-person at any one of BlytzPay’s national network of more than 88,000 retailers. The platform helps turn data into automated conversations, frictionless payments, and real-time visibility resulting in faster payments, lighter workloads, and stronger customer engagement.

“Most payment providers are focused on processing transactions as cheaply as possible,” Burkinshaw said. “But businesses don’t just need transactions; they need better outcomes, because getting paid isn’t just about moving money—it’s about how you engage the customer before, during, and after the payment.”

The company noted that Blytz will be introduced across its website, product interfaces, and marketing materials over the next few weeks. Existing customers will be able to continue using the same products and services they are currently using within the broader Blytz platform and ecosystem.

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Lehi, Utah, BlytzPay made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2019 where it won Best of Show. The company returned to the Finovate stage later that same year for FinovateFall in New York, where BlytzPay again took home Best of Show honors. An innovator in the field of pay-by-text, the company offers a payments and collections management platform that boosts collections efficiency by up to 50% in as little as three months. BlytzPay boasts a 53% chargeback dispute win rate and notes that collection teams working for BlytzPay’s automobile dealership partners have reported time savings of 30%.

Photo by Michael Beener on Unsplash

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London-Based Round Raises $6 Million to Automate Treasury Management

London-Based Round Raises $6 Million to Automate Treasury Management
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Funding
  • Round has raised $6 million and announced the launch of agentic workflow and autonomous payroll tools to automate treasury, AP, and payroll.
  • The company combines AI-driven automation with owned payment infrastructure to fully execute finance teams’ money movement commands.
  • By sitting in the flow of funds, Round introduces new competition for banks, treasury management system providers, and fintechs.

Treasury management company Round has closed $6 million in seed funding this week, boosting its total funding to $8.1 million. The London-based fintech is also unveiling two new products: Agentic Workflow Builder and Autonomous Payroll. 

Today’s round was led by Alstin Capital. Existing investors including Passion Capital, along with new investors Backed VC and Love Ventures, as well as angel investors, also contributed. Uniquely, Round’s own clients also invested. Around 10% of the company’s customer base contributed to today’s round.

“We are building for the finance team of the future, one that understands the importance of automation to keep up with the pace of modern companies. AI tools are rapidly being deployed across the industry and finance teams do not need to be left behind,” said Round Cofounder Hayyaan Ahmad.

The company will use today’s funding to accelerate product development, expand its engineering and go-to-market teams, deepen integrations across banks and accounting systems, and scale its existing infrastructure. Round also has plans to launch community-focused events such as hackathons, hands-on workshops, and webinars.

Round’s new Agentic Workflow Builder, which is currently in early access, builds a workflow based on a natural language description. It allows finance teams to run workflows autonomously that previously required an employee. The Agentic Workflow Builder can run 24/7 and notify teams via Slack, WhatsApp, or email if something needs attention.

Similarly, Autonomous Payroll essentially helps payroll run itself, autonomously pulling funds and executing the payment on schedule. It eliminates the need for finance teams to log into multiple systems to make payroll each month.

Treasury, payroll, and accounts payable have historically been fragmented across banks, ERP systems, and manual workflows. By combining agentic AI with owned payment infrastructure, Round is aiming to collapse those layers into a single, autonomous system.

Round was founded in 2023 to reduce the manual work involved in treasury management by automating workflows. The company automates treasury, accounts payable, and payroll to save finance teams the manual, repetitive work involved in moving funds around to optimize yield.

Round differentiates itself from other automated workflow platforms because it owns and manages the infrastructure involved, such as wallets and payment rails. Clients can leverage that infrastructure, along with Round’s machine learning and intelligence to set rules for approval thresholds, payment schedules, and cash minimums, to ensure payroll obligations are met, and that idle cash is invested appropriately. Since launching its first automated workflows less than a year ago, Round has processed over $500 million.

With Round owning the infrastructure, banks, legacy treasury providers, and even fintechs face a new type of competition. Traditional treasury management systems such as Kyriba offer visibility and controls, but often rely on integrations with external banks and require manual execution. Newer fintechs like Ramp, Brex, and Airbase offer spend management and accounts payable tools, but do not offer full autonomous fund movement.

Moving forward, Round’s challenge will be client trust and regulatory oversight. While finance teams may be willing to automate workflows, they may be less willing to fully automate money movement, especially when it comes to payroll.

Photo by Jan van der Wolf

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Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News

Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Fintech Rundown

There may be April showers out your window, but the fintech landscape is all flowers this week. Take a look at all of the highlights from fintech funding, product developments, partnerships, and more below. We’ll continue to add more announcements as the week progresses.

Payments

Gr4vy supports agentic payments through orchestration and launches development kit to prepare merchants for AI commerce.

Adyen launches Intelligent Money Movement to unify enterprise payments, liquidity management, and payouts.

GoCardless grows 22% in 2025, records first quarter of profitability.

Wise plans to move public listing from London to Nasdaq in May.

Icon Solutions appoints Anders Olofsson as EMEA Sales Director.

Investing and wealth management

Vested crossed $1 billion in assets under administration.

Small business tools

Remote expands its global employment infrastructure with acquisition of Bravas.

Round raises $6 million to automate treasury management.

InvoiceCloud unveils AI-powered billing experience.

Yooz introduces intelligent Line‑Level Matching to bring item-level automation and accuracy to invoice reconciliation.

Digital banking platforms

Nymbus launches secure MCP server for AI-driven core banking actions.

Beforepay appoints Kasey Kaplan as Deputy CEO.

Physical banking tools

Founders Federal Credit Union selects NCR Atleos for ATMaaS to modernize member self-service experience.

Photo by wal_ 172619

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