A year ago, an Oregon-based fintech called Facteus made its debut at FinovateFall 2021.
“Finovate was started with the idea of showcasing new and exciting innovation in financial services,” Facteus VP Steve Shaw said as he began his company’s demo. “And we’ve seen a lot of great ideas in technology over the past couple of days.”
“But what’s that one thing that ties all of this innovation together and really makes it work?” he asked. “It’s the data behind all this innovation. If you don’t have access to the right data, a lot of this innovation is just for show.”
Founded in 2010, Facteus leverages a massive debit and credit card transaction data set to offer hedge funds, researchers, marketing professionals and others unique insights into the consumer economy. With more than eight years of historical data and 42 billion transactions processed – representing $1.3 trillion in consumer spending – Facteus provides insights into consumer segments, such as youth and the underbanked, whose financial behavior is often overlooked or underappreciated by other data sets.
At FinovateFall 2021, Facteus demoed its MIMIC synthetic data engine, which leverages machine learning to create an artificial copy of sensitive data, removing personally identifiable information (PII). The synthetic copy can be used for analytics, machine learning and AI, segmentation activities, and other data operations, but cannot be reverse engineered back to the original transaction or organization.
“Data is really the fuel for all the innovation we are seeing,” Shaw said. “We truly believe that and we have examples to show that synthetic data is really the key to unlocking the value of your sensitive data.”
Facteus began this year teaming up with 1010data to provide enhanced transaction data insights and analytics to companies in the investment, retail, and consumer brands businesses. As part of the strategic agreement, Facteus acquired 101data’s Equity Intelligence business, enhancing its ability to provide transaction data insights and analysis to the investment services industry. In return, 1010data gained access to Facteus’ U.S. Consumer Payments data panels to help its retail and consumer brand clients.
“Facteus data provides deep insights into the drivers behind consumer spending behavior and business trends not available in other transactional data panels,” Facetus CEO Chris Marsh said. “(Facteus offers) enhanced company analysis and investment strategies for 1010data clients and the investment services industry as a whole.”
By spring, Facteus was in the fintech headlines again, this time announcing an investment of $10 million from Curql Fund, the investment arm for more than 75 credit unions in the U.S. The company said it would use the funding to support the growth of its analytics and insights platform Quantamatics, as well as fuel continued innovation on its platform and expand into new industry verticals. The company’s investment from Curql Fund also gives Facteus access to the significant data assets of Curql Collective owners, representing tens of millions of new consumer debit and credit cards.
In May, the Beaverton-based company launched Pulse, a new consumer transaction data solution it called the most comprehensive in the alternative data industry. With Pulse, Facteus is able to capture up to 5% of all U.S. consumer spending, more than 500 tickers and 1,000+ private companies, and deliver accurate company KPI forecasts with the industry’s lowest forecast errors. A month later, Facteus’ Pulse earned its first official vote of confidence: topping the latest rankings in predictive accuracy in the KPIs of more than 65 public consumer companies.
“This accomplishment is a testament to our commitment to directly acquiring transaction datasets to build the most holistic and stable view of consumer spending across income cohorts and demographics,” Facteus Head of Product and Strategy Lorn Davis said.