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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Identity verification provider Telesign, a Proximus Global company, has teamed up with SaaS-based secure payments provider PCI Pal.
The two companies will offer a Fraud Management Suite that uses Telesign Intelligence to provide fraud teams and AI bots with real-time risk intelligence before potentially fraudulent transactions occur.
Headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, Telesign made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2023.
A new partnership between identity verification innovator Telesign, a Proximus Global company, and SaaS-based secure payments provider PCI Pal will create a Fraud Management Suite to help international businesses leverage AI to identify fraudulent payments before they occur.
The new solution is designed to be especially effective against Card-Not-Present (CNP) attacks that are easy for fraudsters to use and difficult for fraud prevention teams to stop before they make their impact. Because fraudsters only need the expiration date and three-digit CVV number in order to assume another person’s identity over the phone and make fraudulent transactions, this type of fraud can be especially difficult for contact center workers to detect.
The new offering from Telesign and PCI Pal provides agents and AI bots with real-time risk insights before the transaction begins. This reduces chargebacks and revenue loss, but does not add friction to the customer experience. The solution leverages Telesign Intelligence, an AI-powered tool that identifies fraudulent activity by scoring the level of transaction risk associated with the phone number being used for the transaction. This score can be used to determine whether or not the transaction should be allowed to go through, blocked, or flagged for further review and additional verification.
“AI is transforming how we approach security—not just in detecting fraud, but in anticipating it,” PCI Pal CTO Mufti Monim said. “This launch lays the groundwork for a more intelligent and adaptive platform, that secures payments across all channels while enhancing both customer and agent experiences. It’s the first step in a broader roadmap to unify fraud prevention, compliance, and customer experience into one seamless, scalable platform.”
The partnership comes as Juniper Research reports that the cost of payment fraud to consumers and businesses is expected to grow from $44 billion in 2024 to $109 billion in 2029. Further, Juniper Research notes that 79% of companies reported being victims of payment fraud attacks in 2024.
“Payment card fraud is a significant challenge for contact centers, and this partnership addresses that issue by making voice-based interactions with enterprise more trusted, seamless and secure,” Proximus Global Business Lead Rajdip Gupta said. “Our work with PCI Pal aligns with our ongoing commitment to protect enterprises from evolving threats, without disrupting the customer experience.”
Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, Telesign made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2023. At the conference, the company introduced a new tool that depicts risks inherent in the onboarding process and showed how firms can mitigate the risk via intelligent phone number analysis and insight.
We’ll have 60+ demos on stage at this year’s FinovateFall conference, taking place September 8 through 10 at the Marriott Marquis in New York. As always, the lineup blends first-time startups with established players, with all demos running on a single track. That concentrated view makes it easy to spot the patterns shaping bank roadmaps for the next 12 to 18 months.
To get a pulse on what trends lie ahead, we distilled common threads across this year’s demo companies. Below are the big themes to watch.
Agentic AI moves from pilots to production
If 2024 was about AI leveraging LLMs, 2025 is about agents that actually do the work. At FinovateFall 2025, we can expect live demos of AI agents that triage alerts, auto-draft responses, and fetch context across systems, with guardrails for compliance and trust. Look for Lyzr AI’s autonomous agents, WNSTN’s human-in-the-loop agents, Castellum.AI’s agents that clear L1 AML alerts, LemonadeLXP’sInsightAI for training and knowledge at scale, and Clarista’s productivity push.
Identity, authentication, and scam defense sharpen
Identity verification and step-up authentication continue to improve, especially now that they are paired with real-time scam and dispute tooling. Watch for ID-Pal, which combines identity verification and AML; Keyless, which offers passwordless biometrics replacing legacy OTP MFA; and LexisNexis Risk Solutions that will be showcasing IDVerse. AirKey leverages card rails to secure high-value transactions, while Charm Security and Quavo spotlight dynamic risk profiling and faster, more transparent dispute resolution.
Personalization and customer experience now come with measurable ROI
Technology to improve the customer experience is getting more predictive and robust. Vertice AI translates data into next-best-product recommendations, Mall IQ uses location intent for hyper-personalized engagement, WaveCX brings AI-powered support and documentation flows, and CollaborationRoom.ai re-creates the contact center virtually. Expect demos to quantify the increase in acquisition and retention.
Product launch without rip-and-replace
Banks want speed without having to completely take out their core. FintechOS will show how to create products and modernize experiences without swapping their core, ebankIT focuses on omni-channel orchestration, Chimney aligns data and automation to loan growth and digital engagement, and Appli adds AI-driven approvals and payment estimates.
Small business lending, portfolio growth, and risk ops
Small business lending remains a battleground in today’s post-COVID environment. Kaaj AI helps institutions deeply understand small-business needs and grow portfolios; Abacus unlocks the power of enterprise search to offer lenders valuable time savings and loan asset growth; and Conductiv uses data combined with AI to detect fraud, predict charge-offs, and safely increase approvals without lowering standards.
From wellness to wealth: deposits, planning, and advice
The wealthtech industry has accelerated from PFM technologies into engagement engines that grow not only balances, but also trust. Eko helps banks bring digital investing to everyone, BankingON’sBoucoup funnels parents and teens into new accounts, Gentreo meets families where they are with estate planning, and Zeplyn streamlines advisor workflows to help reduce manual tasks and surface growth opportunities.
What’s missing?
Two once-hot categories feel comparatively quieter on the demo stage this year:
Standalone AI as a theme Companies are no longer touting AI as a feature. This is not because the technology is absent, but because it’s everywhere. It’s baked into identity, customer experience, lending, operations, and training. This year, it is assumed that most solutions out there use AI. Companies now need to differentiate themselves by how outcomes are measured.
Consumer BNPL While BNPL is still growing, it is no longer cutting edge. These point-of-sale installments aren’t front-and-center like they were a few years ago.
FinovateFall isn’t just demos, but the demos offer a good preview of the storylines you’ll hear on stage: cybersecurity and financial crime, data-driven personalization, agentic AI in production, faster product launch without core swaps, and practical growth plays in deposits and SMB. We’ll see you in New York!
Over the weekend we learned that fintech investment in the UK reached $7.2 billion in the first half of 2025. That figure is down slightly from last year’s total of $7.6 billion, according to KPMG’s Pulse of Fintech report. Meanwhile, here in the US, President Trump has signed an executive order enabling investors to buy alternative assets, including cryptocurrencies, for their 401(k) retirement savings plans.
Be sure to check back for more fintech news headlines all week long here at Finovate’s Fintech Rundown!
Digital banking
New Zealand-based Co-operative Bank partners with 10x Banking for core replacement.
This week’s edition of Finovate Global features news on recent fintech developments in Pakistan.
Fintech Deal Draws Bazaar Technologies Closer to Profitability
A report in Bloomberg indicates that Pakistan’s most well-funded startup, Bazaar Technologies, is closing in on profitability. The company, which was founded in 2020, offers a B2B e-commerce platform that connects small retailers with suppliers. This digitization of traditional supply chains has been credited with empowering thousands of smaller merchants, known as “kiryana” shops, to participate in the digital economy.
It is the company’s recent acquisition of digital payments platform Keenu that has observers believing that Bazaar could achieve profitability in the coming quarters. Keenu offers payment services, including point-of-sale (POS) solutions, an online payment gateway, and a mobile wallet app, via a merchant acquiring network that spans more than 150 cities throughout Pakistan. A licensed Electronic Money Institution (EMI), Keenu processes more than $1 billion in annual payments.
The acquisition marked the first time a major Pakistan-based e-commerce company integrated payments into its operations, and has been seen as part of the State Bank of Pakistan’s National Payment Strategy to advance digital transformation and financial inclusion in the country.
“This is more than an acquisition—it’s a strategic alignment that redefines what it means to serve households and businesses in Pakistan,” Bazaar Technologies Co-Founder Saad Jangda said.
Bazaar has raised more than $100 million in funding from investors including Dragoneer Investment Group, Tiger Global, and Indus Valley Capital. The company is headquartered in Karachi.
Logistics Fintech Trukkr Secures Funding from UAE’s Yango Group
Via its investment arm, Yango Ventures, UAE-based technology company Yango Group announced an investment in Trukkr, a fintech platform in Pakistan that provides financial services to companies in the trucking business. The amount of the investment was not disclosed, but the funding does represent the first Pakistan-based investment for Yango Ventures. The investment will also provide Trukkr with Yango Group’s product expertise and insights from its operations in more than 30 markets around the world.
“We are excited to partner with Yango Group, in addition to their strategic equity investment, we find that their experience in building state-of-the-art logistics tech and deploying it in over 30 countries will allow us to strengthen our offerings in Pakistan and beyond,” Trukkr CEO Sheryar Bawany said.
Founded in 2019 by Hisham Adamjee, Mishal Adamjee, Kasra Zunnaiyyer, and Ali Haji, Trukkr is digitizing and modernizing Pakistan’s logistics market—a market alued at more than $35 billion. The company’s integrated SaaS platform and embedded finance solutions help trucking companies better conduct fleet management, trip coordination, invoicing, and lending operations. Recently securing a Non-Banking Finance Company (NBFC) license from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), Trukkr also provides working capital and fleet financing solutions, as well as a robust loan management suite.
“Pakistan’s logistics sector is full of potential, and Trukkr is helping move it forward—by giving operators the financial tools they need to scale and succeed in a competitive market,” Yango Group CEO Daniil Shuleyko said. “We’re here to support that transformation with our experience and technology. This is the kind of local innovation we want to help grow, and it’s just the start of our work in Pakistan.”
Pakistan Bolsters Cybersecurity in Fintech as NIBAF Teams Up with Risk Associates
In a bid to enhance cybersecurity for the financial sector, the National Institute of Banking and Finance-Pakistan (NIBAF Pakistan) partnered with Risk Associates to deliver training on the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). The training featured cybersecurity professionals and representatives from leading Pakistan-based banks and financial institutions, and was led by Risk Associates, an internationally recognized certification body and PCI Qualified Security Assessor (QSA).
The training included discussion on payment security architecture, cardholder data protection, and compliance lifecycle management. The partnership between NIBAF Pakistan and Risk Associates was made official via a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in June.
“Together with NIBAF Pakistan, we are delivering forward-looking training that empowers banking professionals to anticipate, adapt, and respond to dynamic threats with operational precision and confidence,” Risk Associates CEO Aftab Rizvi said in a statement. NIBAF Pakistan Co-CEO Lubna Farooq Malik noted that insofar as the financial industry is at the “forefront of profound digital transformation,” it must also lead the way in developing solutions that keep the financial industry and its customers safe.
Headquartered in Bella Vista, NSW, Australia and founded in 2004, Risk Associates assess and certifies businesses in order to establish their commitment to maintaining high security standards and complying with regulatory requirements. The company offers a variety of robust preventive, detective, and corrective cybersecurity solutions, and is a specialist in cybersecurity, risk, compliance, information governance, strategy, and training.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Deutsche WertpapierService Bank (dwpbank) agreed to acquire Berlin-based brokerage-as-a-service platform lemon.markets.
Dutch paytech Mollie launched in Hungary, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic.
Middle East and Northern Africa
Alaan, an AI-powered corporate spend management platform based in the UAE, secured $48 million in Series A funding.
Israel-based startup QuamCore raised $26 million to build one million qubit quantum computer.
Open banking and embedded finance platform Tarabut secured in-principle approval from the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates (CBUAE).
Central and Southern Asia
Uzbekistan-based fintech and digital bank Uzum locked in $70 million in equity financing at a valuation of $1.5 billion.
Logistics fintech Trukkr secured investment from UAE-based tech company Yango Group.
Indian debt collections platform DPDzero raised $7 million in Series A funding.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Mexican fintech platform Finsus acquired the technology of merchant cash advance platform Anticipa.
Stablecoin-based financial infrastructure company VelaFi forged a strategic partnership with stablecoin-powered payment network Noah.
Clip launched its all-in-one (AIO) point-of-sale (POS) device in Mexico.
Cross-border payment platform dLocal unveiled its SmartPix solution that enable merchants to process tokenized Pix payments including recurring and on-demand charges.
This week’s Streamly Snapshot features our final interview from FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego, California.
What does it take for a startup to be successful? In today’s innovation ecosystem, one increasingly important skill is not just building innovative solutions, but also managing the finances—the investment capital, the debt financing, the cash flow—that support a growing enterprise. In this interview, Christopher Hollins, Global Head of Product Sales and Design at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a Division of First Citizens Bank, talks about the challenges that startups face when it comes to optimizing financial operations, scaling businesses, and managing cash flow. Hollins also shares his insights on the digital tools and platforms that are available to startups to help them grow and scale their businesses.
“Even in this environment, which is short on IPO exits, the innovation is not showing that it’s short of anything other than tremendous creativity, driving for positive results, and actually managing through all of the change that is happening in the macro economy and within the innovation ecosystem, itself.”
In his role at SVB, Hollins has been instrumental in transforming the platform’s solution delivery model to ensure that SVB’s Commercial Bank innovation economy clients can access the best partners and solutions to solve their challenges as they grow. Hollins joined SVB in May 2021, bringing more than 20 years of international marketing, sales, and strategy experience in financial services, mobile telecom, and technology to the firm.
Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, SVB was founded in 1983. Acquired by First Citizens Bank in 2023, the firm today is the bank of choice for many of the world’s most innovative technology companies and investors. SVB provides commercial and private banking services to individuals and companies in technology, life sciences, healthcare, private equity, venture capital, and premium wine industries. The institution reports $99 billion in total client funds and counts 40% of the Forbes 2025 AI list among its customers.
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateFall in New York on September 8 – 10. Register today using this link and save 20%.
LemonadeLXP
LemonadeLXP is an all-in-one learning and knowledge platform built specifically for banks and credit unions.
Features
Automates training from existing resources
Delivers instant answers to staff
Cuts costs by streamlining content creation and knowledge sharing so that teams work smarter, faster
Who’s it for?
Banks and credit unions.
LendAPI
LendAPIis a venture-backed fintech infrastructure empowering banks and fintechs to launch products in minutes.
Features
LendAPI’s all-in-one platform—featuring Product Studio, Rules Studio, Pricing Engine, and Integrated Partners—makes banking and lending innovation seamless.
Who’s it for?
Banks, credit unions, e-commerce companies, and fintechs.
Quavo Fraud & Disputes
Quavo Fraud & Disputes’s QFD® platform delivers real-time fraud decisioning and automation, empowering issuers to stop friendly fraud and resolve disputes within the first 48 hours.
Features
Deflects friendly fraud instantly with enriched merchant data
Flags abuse and resolves cases with AI trained on 20M+ disputes
Provides real-time decisioning using Investigation AI’s 18-point framework
Who’s it for?
Issuing banks, fintechs, processors, and credit unions of all sizes and anyone subject to Regulation E/Z dispute requirements or serving institutions subject to it.
TurmaFinTech
TurmaFinTech is an AI-driven fintech company. TFT’s product RedBee is an AI platform that empowers banks to enhance client engagement, improve retention, prevent defaults, and promote growth.
Features
Provides AI-powered insights for smarter client engagement – upsell and cross-sell
Offers early risk detection to reduce loan defaults
Delivers real-time hyper personalization to boost retention and growth
Who’s it for?
Community banks, regional banks, and credit unions.
WNSTN AI
With Compliant, an AI-driven investment assistant, WNSTN AI delivers a superior user experience through personalized engagement—boosting retention and increasing LTV for investment platforms and brokers.
Features
Offers a multi-AI-agent system for personalization at scale
Provides a back-office intelligence tool for actionable insights
Includes a built-in compliance module aligned with global regulations
Who’s it for?
Online brokerages, trading platforms, wealth managers, advisors, institutional investors, financial information platforms, and publishers.
AI-powered financial services platform Uptiq has forged a strategic partnership with and received a minority investment from Broadridge Financial Solutions. The amount of the investment was not disclosed.
Courtesy of the partnership, Uptiq will integrate its technology into Broadridge’s Wealth Lending Network (WLN) to give financial advisors access to AI-automated, securities-based lending workflows.
As Cion Digital, Uptiq made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022. The company rebranded the following year.
AI platform for financial services, Uptiq, announced a new strategic partnership with and a minority investment from Broadridge Financial Solutions. The company, which made its Finovate debut as Cion Digital at FinovateSpring 2022, will integrate its technology into Broadridge’s Wealth Lending Network (WLN). This will give financial advisors and banks working with Broadridge access to turnkey, agentic AI applications to automate securities-based lending workflows. The amount of the minority investment was not disclosed.
“Uptiq was purpose-built to remove the heavy lifting from lending,” Uptiq CEO and Founder Snehal Fulzele said. “Our AI-driven platform surfaces the most relevant loan options, actively guiding advisors so they can focus on serving clients instead of wrestling with process complexities. By connecting directly with Broadridge’s Wealth Lending Network banks, we’re making it easier than ever to provide securities-based lending as a compelling and compliant liquidity solution.”
Via its Wealth Lending Network, Broadridge provides a digital platform that connects wealth managers, financial advisors and their clients with a network of lenders that offer securities-based lines of credit. This streamlines access to securities-based lending solutions, especially for those financial advisors and wealth management firms that are not affiliated with a bank. The Uptiq integration will make it easier for financial advisors to source and compare loan options, as well as automate a range of manual tasks including referral submission, loan processing, and covenant tracking. The partnership helps financial advisors provide more credit options for clients, enhances client service and compliance, and streamlines the process of providing lending solutions to wealth management customers.
“This strategic partnership helps modernize wealth management, addressing the growing demand for artificial intelligence in financial services, as well as a need to develop a better wealth lending process that is efficient, compliant, and personalized,” Broadridge President of Wealth Management Mike Alexander said. “With Uptiq’s AI-powered tools and Broadridge’s Wealth Lending Network, we’re enabling advisors to deliver smarter lending recommendations, save time, and ultimately help their clients access the liquidity needed to achieve their financial goals. Our investment demonstrates our commitment to driving innovation in the wealth lending ecosystem.”
Broadridge serves clients in asset management, capital markets, wealth management, and related industries. The company’s technology and operations platforms process and generate more than seven billion communications a year, and support the trading of more than $10 trillion of securities internationally. Broadridge was founded in 1962 as a part of Automatic Data Processing (ADP), and was spun off as an independent company in 2007. Headquartered in Lake Success, New York, Broadridge employs more than 14,000 associates in 21 countries, and is publicly traded on the NYSE under the ticker BR. The company has a market capitalization of $31 billion.
Making its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022 as Cion Digital, Uptiq rebranded the following year in an effort to underscore the company’s commitment to serving wealth managers and financial advisors. The company’s platform combines deep domain expertise with AI to streamline operations and produce better outcomes across financial workflows. Uptiq’s agentic AI-powered apps automate lending, banking, and wealth management workflows, while the firm’s AI Workbench provides a no-code platform to facilitate both workflow deployment and future growth.
This year at FinovateFall 2025, our Sustainability & Inclusion Scholarship program will bring five female-led fintechs to the Finovate stage. Designed to help expand the Finovate demo line-up to feature more voices, more perspectives, and more cutting-edge innovation within fintech, our Sustainability & Inclusion Scholarship program helps shine a light on the next generation of fintech founders and startups.
Below are five companies, all female-founded and/or owned, that earned Sustainability & Inclusion Scholarships for this year’s autumn conference in the “Female Owned/Founded” category. Be sure to check them out live on stage next month at FinovateFall in New York, September 8 through 10.
Gentreo
Headquartered in Quincy, Massachusetts, and founded in 2018, Gentreo meets customers where they are and helps them get to where they want to be to create non-balance sheet recurring revenue. The company offers comprehensive life and estate planning to help families plan for life’s inflection points with accessible, affordable digital life and estate planning solutions. Renee Fry is Founder and CEO. LinkedIn.
Kaaj AI
Founded in 2024 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Kaaj AI empowers banks and credit unions to deeply understand small business needs, serve them faster, grow their loan portfolio, and manage risk more effectively. The company provides an AI-powered platform to help lenders and brokers close more small business loans. Shivi Sharma is Co-Founder and President. LinkedIn.
Krida
Based in New York and founded in 2024, Krida reduces cycle times, manual tasks, and borrower drop-off, thereby giving banks a faster path to funded loans, higher throughput, and stronger community relationships. Krida automates application data intake, insights, and document generation to enable bankers to focus on building their businesses. Shivangi Khannais is Co-Founder.
MoneyPlanned
Launched in 2021, MoneyPlanned is headquartered in Bengaluru, India. The company empowers institutions to offer intelligent, automated financial planning—boosting advisor efficiency, reducing cost-to-serve, and delivering personalized client experiences at scale. MoneyPlanned’s end-to-end system uses automation, behavioral modeling, and machine learning to provide personalized financial planning in real time. Nikhila Putcha is Co-Founder. LinkedIn.
Warrant
Headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, and founded in 2024, Warrant accelerates compliant marketing, reducing review cycles from days to minutes. The company helps financial institutions see 3x gains in marketing revenue opportunities and reduce churn with faster customer communications. Austin Carroll is Founder and CEO. LinkedIn.
Grasshopper Bank raised $46.6 million in a funding round led by Patriot Financial Partners to support its April merger with Auto Club Trust SDB and expand its digital banking platform.
The investment was led by Patriot Financial Partners LP with additional participation from Glendon Capital Management.
The bank plans to scale its tech and broaden offerings, adding four new board members to help guide its next phase.
Digital small business bank Grasshopper Bank announced it landed a $46.6 million round of funding. The investment was led by Patriot Financial Partners LP with additional participation from Glendon Capital Management.
The digital bank will use the funds to support its merger with Auto Club Trust SDB, completed in April of this year. Following the deal, Grasshopper’s total assets grew 53% to $1.33 billion, its total deposits increased 81% to $2.37 billion, and its $961.8 million in loans were up 49% from December 31, 2024 to June 30, 2025.
The New York-based company also plans to use the investment to scale its technology and expand its product offerings to create digital banking solutions that meet its clients’ evolving needs.
“The backing from this seasoned group of investors is a powerful vote of confidence in our mission, our strategy, and our team,” said Grasshopper CEO Mike Butler. “We’re incredibly proud of the momentum we’ve built, and we’re just getting started. This capital gives us the opportunity to continue pushing boundaries, broaden our reach, and unlock new possibilities in how we deliver meaningful, future-ready digital banking experiences that meet people where they are and anticipate where they’re headed next.”
Grasshopper Bank was founded in 2016 as a full-service digital bank that tailors its products and services to specific industries, including small businesses, startups, venture capital, private equity firms, BaaS and commercial API platforms, lending, and white-labeled consumer banking.
“From the beginning, our vision has been to redefine what digital banking can do for entrepreneurs, modern businesses, and the ecosystem that supports them. With our recent acquisition, we are excited to expand that vision to serve consumers through our affinity banking partnership with The Auto Club Group,” added Butler.
In addition to the funding announcement, Grasshopper also revealed that it has added four new members to its board, including James Fitzgerald, retired former Chief Administrative and Chief Financial Officer of Eastern Bankshares Inc. and Eastern Bank; Brian Graham, co-founder and partner in the Klaros Group; Karen Solomon, a bank regulatory lawyer with more than three decades of experience spanning the public and private sectors; and John M. Surgent, Founder of GMS Surgent CPAs, Surgent Professional Education, and JM Surgent Capital.
Payment and data security company Bluefin has teamed up with Cassa Centrale Raiffeisen, ICIT, and Worldline to enhance payment and data security to All-in-One (AIO) payment devices.
The partnership will focus initially on serving businesses in Italy’s prosperous South Tyrol region.
Bluefin demonstrated its technology at Finovate’s developer’s conference, FinDEVR, in 2014.
Payment and data security innovator Bluefinannounced a strategic partnership with Cassa Centrale Raiffeisen, ICIT, and Worldline. The partnership is designed to deliver enhanced payment and data security to All-In-One (AIO) payment devices throughout Italy’s South Tyrol region.
“At Bluefin, we are excited to collaborate with leading players and ISVs to deliver validated P2PE solutions across Europe and all global regions,” Bluefin SVP for Europe, Cheng Chieh Chen said. “Together with Cassa Centrale Raiffeisen, ICIT, and Worldline, we are committed to transforming the payment landscape in South Tyrol by delivering payment innovation, security, and enhanced customer experiences to this vibrant market.”
South Tyrol is Italy’s northernmost province—with Austria to the north and Switzerland to the west. With an official title of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano—South Tyrol, the province has a significant degree of self-governance and is among the wealthiest provinces in the EU, to say nothing of being the wealthiest province in Italy. Located in the Italian Alps mountain range, South Tyrol is a major regional tourist destination, and its growing hospitality and retail sectors make it an increasingly compelling environment for innovative payment solutions.
“As the main provider of banking services for Raiffeisen Banks in South Tyrol and as corporate banking experts, we are constantly trying to find new products and solutions to better meet the needs and requirements of our corporate clients and to optimize their work processes,” Cassa Centrale Raiffeisen General Director Simon Ladurner said. “Thanks to our partnership with Bluefin, ICIT, and Worldline we provide innovative and state-of-the-art payment systems to gastronomic businesses in South Tyrol. Thus, we contribute to the economic development of our province.”
Cassa Centrale Raiffeisen (officially known as Cassa Centrale Raiffeisen dell’Alto Adige) is headquartered in South Tyrol’s capital, Bolzano. The organization is the central banking institute for the 39 independent cooperative banks in the South Tyrolean Raiffeisen Group. The partnership, which also includes Independent Software Vendor (ISV) ICIT and payment services giant Worldline, will not only facilitate the rollout of AIO devices, but will also support future innovation in the unattended and e-commerce payment solutions space.
“This ISV partnership, in which Worldline is providing secure and robust payment processing services, will enhance the delivery of an expanded, competitive, and innovative payment offering tailored to the Italian market,” Worldline Head of SMB Central Sales Management Julia Rachor said. “Thanks to the partner’s combined international experience and local Italian expertise, merchants are ensured to receive payment solutions that effectively meet their needs.”
Founded in 2007, Bluefin introduced itself to Finovate audiences as part of our developers conference, FinDEVr in 2014. Today, the company has a network of more than 300 partners and secures more than 2.5 billion records a year. Bluefin serves 35,000 clients in 60 countries, protecting cardholder data, personally-identifiable information, and more. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. John Perry is CEO.
The finalists are in! We have just announced the finalists of our 2025Finovate Awards! Now in its seventh year, the Finovate Awards celebrate the best in fintech across a wide range of categories—from digital banking and payments to sustainability, AI, and consumer lending. The awards aim to spotlight the companies and individuals driving the future of financial services.
This year’s finalists represent a diverse mix of startups, established players, and forward-thinking financial institutions and individuals. There are 30 categories in this year’s awards, including Best Embedded Finance Solution, Executive of the Year, Most Impactful AI-Based Solution, Best Banking-as-a-Service Provider, plus many more.
Winners will be chosen by a panel of esteemed industry judges who will spend the next month deliberating. The winners will be unveiled on September 9 at FinovateFall in New York City. If you’re attending FinovateFall, you won’t want to miss it!
If you have any questions about the awards, please let us know [email protected].
AI risk classification platform EverCrevealed today that it is joining forces with G2 Risk Solutions (G2RS). The two are combining to pursue a collective mission to protect global digital payments and defend e-commerce from threats. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of this year.
Moving forward, the two will leverage EverC’s AI capabilities and bring G2RS’s risk and compliance capabilities to the payments risk ecosystem. When the deal is finalized, the two companies will collectively serve most major payment providers across the globe, including banks, merchant acquirers, marketplaces, and online platforms.
EverC was founded in 2015 to help marketplaces and online sellers grow by bringing trust and security to the ecommerce ecosystem. The company combines AI with its expertise in risk intelligence, data science, fintech, payments, and financial risk. In addition to its Risk Insights solution, EverC also offers two products, MerchantView, a merchant onboarding and monitoring platform; and MaketView, an automated, AI-driven solution that identifies and eliminates hazardous, counterfeit, and illicit products in online marketplaces.
G2RS offers risk and compliance management for financial institutions and online platforms. The California-based company offers a suite of solutions covering merchant risk, digital commerce monitoring, transaction laundering detection, identity verification, bankruptcy risk, and regulatory data services. Founded in 1989, G2RS leverages data, analytics, and human-curated insights to help its clients navigate evolving regulatory landscapes and complex risk challenges. Today’s deal isn’t G2RS’s only change to its operations this year. In the first quarter, the company acquiredWebShield owner ZignSec AB for an undisclosed amount.
“G2RS and EverC have long traveled toward the same North Star, safeguarding digital commerce and the people who depend on it,” said G2RS CEO Brian Longe. “We move forward as one team with a shared vision to redefine what market leadership looks like in the merchant risk space. Leveraging each other’s strengths as a unified force on a singular track, we will accelerate to deliver faster, smarter business outcomes and solutions for our clients and the global digital economy. We’re poised to achieve more together than we ever could apart, aligned in our commitment to root out fraud and illegal activities and help our customers grow with confidence and integrity.”
Logistically, Longe will serve as CEO of the combined company, while EverC CEO Ariel Tiger will serve as an adviser through the end of the year as the companies transition into a single entity. Employees of both companies will continue to operate globally with offices in the US, Europe, India, and Israel.
“We share a purpose to stop the increasingly sophisticated global threats from bad actors who seek to exploit the payments ecosystem,” said Tiger. “With our two teams working together, our impact can be exponential. This elevates our game in every facet of the business, pushing the envelope technologically and setting new standards for merchant portfolio performance.”
At FinovateFall 2021, EverC demoed how MerchantView helps mitigate transaction laundering by identifying illicit activity in order to help clients reduce and avoid fines, maintain regulatory compliance, and protect their brand.
