Alumni News

Plaid Partners with ClearBank; Announces AI-Enabled Transaction Categorization

Plaid Partners with ClearBank; Announces AI-Enabled Transaction Categorization
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Plaid
  • Financial data network Plaid and real-time clearing and embedded banking enabler ClearBank announced a new partnership this week.
  • The partnership will enable Plaid to leverage ClearBank’s virtual accounts and UK Faster Payments Service (FPS) access to enhance the sending, receiving, and reconciling of open banking payments.
  • Founded in 2013, Plaid has been a Finovate alum since its debut at our developers conference, FinDeVR Silicon Valley 2014.

A new partnership between ClearBank and Plaid will deliver faster, more secure, and friction-free Pay by Bank experiences for both businesses and customers throughout the UK. Courtesy of the collaboration, ClearBank‘s virtual accounts and direct access to the UK Faster Payments Service (FPS) will enable Plaid to enhance the sending, receiving, and reconciling of open banking payments. This includes making it easier for companies to match incoming payments to specific users or transactions, enhancing the reconciliation process and reducing reliance on manual effort.

“ClearBank and Plaid share a commitment to modernizing financial services through transparency, security, and innovation,” ClearBank Group Chief Executive Officer Mark Fairless said. “By combining ClearBank’s cloud-native infrastructure with Plaid’s open banking connectivity, we’re unlocking potential for businesses to deliver faster, more reliable, and secure payment experiences.”

An enabler of real-time clearing and embedded banking, ClearBank will provide a regulated, real-time, cloud-native infrastructure that will benefit consumers with faster, more predictable bank payments. The partnership will enable Plaid to offer faster, more reliable pay-ins and payouts that will empower companies to provide better customer experiences at checkout and during account funding.

“Pay by Bank is no longer a niche option,” Plaid Head of Product, Europe, Zak Lambert said. “Adoption is rising quickly, especially among younger consumers who expect instant, secure, and low-friction ways to pay. To meet that demand, businesses need reliable real-time payment infrastructure. ClearBank’s technology helps Plaid deliver instant, secure, and cost-efficient bank payments so companies can better serve their customers’ needs.”

Plaid’s partnership announcement with ClearBank comes as Plaid announced a new AI-enhanced transaction categorization capability that delivers up to 10% greater accuracy on primary categories and 20% greater accuracy on detailed sub-categories. The result is fewer missed transactions and more accurate data labeling. In addition to AI-assisted label generation and targeted human review, Plaid also noted that it would deploy an expanded category taxonomy with more than a dozen new subcategories to help differentiate income types, repayments, disbursements, bank fees, and transfers.

A Finovate alum for more than a decade, Plaid made its Finovate debut at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2014. Today, the San Francisco-based fintech offers a data network that covers more than 12,000 financial institutions across the US, Canada, the UK, and Europe, making it easier for people to connect their financial accounts to the products and services they want. Plaid works with thousands of companies, including Fortune 500 firms and many of the world’s largest banks.

Plaid was founded in 2013. Co-founder Zack Perret is CEO.

Photo by Tim Bish on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Insurtech Eleos Launches AI Voice Agent

Insurtech Eleos Launches AI Voice Agent
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Eleos
  • Embedded income protection and life insurance provider Eleos has launched its AI Voice Agent.
  • The new offering is designed to provide customers with always-on, around-the-clock assistance, backed by human customer service professionals.
  • Eleos made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2024 in London. Kiruba Shankar Eswaran is Co-Founder and CEO.

London-based insurtech Eleos recently unveiled its AI Voice Agent. The new solution will provide always-on, 24/7 customer service, including the ability to make outbound calls to prospective clients. The AI Voice Agent draws answers from actual Eleos policy documents to address customer queries regarding issues such as policy coverage updates, claims information, how to cancel existing policies, and more.

“We’re committed to making protection simple, accessible, and always available,” Eleos Life CEO and Co-Founder Kiruba Shankar Eswaran said. “Our voice agent extends this mission by giving customers the support they need, exactly when they need it—whether that’s at midnight or mid-afternoon. We’re removing barriers to access and empowering our customers to manage their protection with confidence.”

Eleos emphasized that its new AI Voice Agent is designed to support, not replace, human customer service professionals. Rather, the AI agent will serve customers with basic queries, as well as those who have difficulty reading online content or writing emails. In all instances, customers will have ready access to a human agent via phone, email, or WhatsApp.

Eleos’ AI Voice Agent is the latest iteration of the company’s ongoing investment in AI-powered technology. In August, Eleos unveiled Theea, an intelligent chatbot that guides customers through their insurance application with step-by-step instructions and personalized coverage calculations.

“Life insurance is one of the most important financial decisions people can make, but too often it feels out of reach,” Eswaran said when Theea was launched. “With Theea, we’re changing that by building awareness through clear, jargon-free guidance, improving access with on-demand, multilingual support, and driving engagement by giving people the confidence to explore and choose coverage in their own time. Our mission has always been to make protection simple and inclusive, and Theea is a powerful step in that direction.”

An insurtech specializing in embedded term life insurance, disability insurance, and income protection in both the US and UK, Eleos made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2024. At the conference, the company showed how it partnered with consumer brands to embed life insurance and income protection into their online journeys. Eleos demonstrated how the company leverages partner data to raise awareness of the importance of life insurance and income protection, provide quotes on various insurance products, and expedite the application process.

Photo by Peter Spencer

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Fidelity International Taps Tink for Account Top-Ups via Pay by Bank

Fidelity International Taps Tink for Account Top-Ups via Pay by Bank
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Tink
  • Fidelity International is partnering with Visa-owned Tink to offer pay by bank account top-ups, giving investors a faster, more seamless way to fund ISAs, SIPPs, cash management accounts, and general investment accounts.
  • Tink’s pay by bank enables real-time, secure bank-to-bank transfers, settling in under 40 seconds and reducing friction, fraud risk, and costs associated with manual transfers or card-based payments.
  • Pay by bank adoption is accelerating across Europe, driven by lower fees, faster settlement, and open banking growth.

Global asset manager and retirement savings firm Fidelity International has teamed up with Visa’s open banking platform Tink. Fidelity will leverage Tink’s pay by bank tool to enable account top-ups for its personal investing customers and advised clients.

Adding the account top-up capability will allow Fidelity International users to quickly add funds to their ISAs, SIPPs, cash management accounts, and general investment accounts. With Tink’s pay by bank, users can send funds directly from their bank accounts using their secure bank log-in details. The funds are sent on fast rails that settle the transaction in less than 40 seconds on average and offer real-time payment confirmation.

“Fidelity’s focus is always on making investing as accessible and straightforward as possible. Partnering with Tink to offer pay by bank gives both our personal investors and our advised clients a fast, convenient way to fund accounts—reducing friction and improving the overall customer experience,” said Fidelity International Chief Digital Officer, Global Platform Solutions, Ian Hood. “By integrating pay by bank, we’re expanding our digital payments infrastructure to offer a modern, secure alternative to traditional methods like manual bank transfers, helping users move money quickly and safely.”

Founded in 2012, Tink was an early player in Europe’s open banking ecosystem. The Sweden-based company was acquired by Visa in 2022 for $2 billion and today offers a wide variety of products ranging from payments to account data to risk decisioning and finance management. With 3,000+ connections to all major banks across Europe, Tink processes 10 billion transactions per year across 19 geographical markets.

Pay by bank is one of Europe’s fastest-growing payment methods, driven by lower transaction costs, faster settlement times, and a shift toward open banking–powered digital payments. For merchants, direct bank-to-bank transfers eliminate interchange fees and reduce chargeback risk, making the payment experience both cheaper and less prone to fraud. Consumers benefit from a smoother checkout flow, fewer authentication steps, and greater security due to strong customer authentication.

According to Juniper Research, there are currently 183 million open banking users worldwide, a number expected to surpass 645 million by 2029. The combination of cost efficiency, real-time settlement, higher authorization rates, and improved fraud controls positions it as one of the most strategically important payment innovations in the market today and offers the potential for it to become a mainstream payment option.

For Tink, Fidelity’s rollout is another signal that pay by bank is moving from early adoption into mainstream financial services. As Tink Head of Payments Ian Morrin noted, “Pay by bank represents the next evolution of open banking payments, delivering a fast, secure way to pay directly from your bank account. As adoption accelerates, we’re thrilled to see leading institutions like Fidelity put open banking at the heart of their payments experiences to make topping up investment accounts more seamless.”

Photo by Karola G

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Backbase and Unblu Transform Self-Service Banking into Human-Connected Experiences

Backbase and Unblu Transform Self-Service Banking into Human-Connected Experiences
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Backbase, unblu
  • Backbase and Unblu have forged a new strategic partnership to transform self-service banking into a trusted, human-connected experience that combines the best of both worlds.
  • The partnership will integrate Unblu’s Conversational Engagement Platform with Backbase’s AI-powered banking solution, adding features such as live chat, voice and video calling, and AI-powered chatbots.
  • Both Unblu and Backbase most recently appeared on the Finovate stage at FinovateFall 2021 in New York. Backbase is a four-time Best of Show winner that first demoed on the Finovate stage in 2009.

A new strategic partnership between Backbase and Unblu is designed to help transform self-service banking into a trusted, human-connected experience. The two companies will offer a joint solution that combines Unblu’s Conversational Engagement Platform with Backbase’s banking platform, adding features such as live chat, voice and video calling, co-browsing, and AI-powered chatbots.

“Digital banking should never come at the expense of human connection,” Backbase Global VP of Marketplace Mayank Somaiya said. “By embedding Unblu’s collaboration tools into our ecosystem, banks can deliver effortless transitions from automated service to expert guidance, helping customers feel supported throughout their digital journey.”

The goal is to enable customers to transition seamlessly from digital self-service to human-assisted interactions in a single engagement. The solution will enable relationship managers, case workers, and frontline service agents to access the customer’s individual context in order to better serve them. A unified employee workbench connects capabilities that were previously isolated across the bank’s tech stack. This empowers bank employees to deliver seamless human-digital interaction within the Backbase platform, benefit from AI-enhanced productivity that automates routine tasks and produces real-time insights, and maintain complete regulatory compliance via encrypted communications, audit trails, and built-in data residency controls.

Use cases for the joint offering include onboarding and account opening, wealth management, customer service, and enabling hybrid branch experiences. The pre-integrated solution will be available to Backbase customers around the world in early 2026.

“We’re excited to partner with Backbase to help financial institutions deliver the kind of personal, frictionless customer experiences today’s users expect,” Unblu Co-CEO Jens Rabe said. “By bringing our digital interaction tools directly into the Backbase platform, we’re enabling banks to build deeper relationships while maintaining the compliance and security standards they can’t compromise on.”

A Finovate alum since 2009, Backbase is a four-time Finovate Best of Show winner. Based in Amsterdam, Backbase offers an AI-powered banking platform that helps banks modernize their operations across retail, SME, commercial, and private banking, as well as wealth management. Backbase has enabled financial institutions to achieve year-over-year increases in retail transactions by 51%, customer satisfaction rates of 78%, and app onboarding in less than five minutes. Founded in 2003, Backbase forged a partnership with Facilization, a consulting, system integration, and financial services software firm, in October. The company also teamed up with Akkuro, a core banking technology provider, and Prove, a digital identity company, in September. Founder Jouk Pleiter is Backbase’s CEO.

Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Unblu most recently demoed its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateFall 2021. At the conference, the company showed how its technology helps 170+ financial institutions around the world deliver an “in-person” experience online. The company’s customers include UBS, Deutsche Bank, and Intesa Sanpaolo, and the firm has forged partnerships with fintechs—and fellow Finovate alums—such as Temenos, Avaloq, Q2, and ebankIT.

Just days after the company announced its partnership with Backbase, Unblu reported that founder and Co-CEO Luc Haldimann would be transitioning into the newly created role of Chief Strategy Officer. Rabe, who joined the company as Chief Marketing Officer and later served as the firm’s Chief Operating Officer, has been serving as Co-CEO and will become the company’s sole CEO as of January 2026.

“Luc built Unblu from the ground up and shaped it into an internationally respected technology leader,” Rabe said. “As CEO, I look forward to continuing the collaboration with Luc in his new strategic role to ensure Unblu remains at the forefront of secure, human-centered digital engagement.”

Photo by Javier M. on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Credolab Unveils Income Prediction Model

Credolab Unveils Income Prediction Model
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, CredoLab
  • Behavioral and device metadata analytics innovator Credolab has unveiled its Income Prediction Model.
  • The new offering will enable lenders to estimate applicant income using privacy-consented smartphone metadata. This will help them serve would-be borrowers with limited credit histories and proof-of-income.
  • Founded in 2016, Credolab made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia 2018 in Singapore. Peter Barcak is Co-Founder and CEO.

One of the biggest challenges for lenders seeking to expand into new markets—especially emerging, underbanked, and digital-first markets—is accessing accurate proof-of-income and credit history information. Even in a world in which open banking is embraced—making financial data more accessible overall—customers who have little data to share will remain on the outside, unable to benefit from a growing range of critical banking and financial services.

To meet this challenge, behavioral and device metadata analytics company Credolab has launched its Income Prediction Model. The new offering leverages machine learning to enable lenders to estimate applicant income by using privacy-consented smartphone metadata. The solution analyzes thousands of anonymized behavioral signals that, put together, correlate with income levels. These signals include app ownership patterns, device model and age, and interaction habits. Individual client institutions can train models on their own specific datasets and customize them based on the unique characteristics of their local populations. Importantly, Credolab’s Income Prediction Model never accesses personally identifiable information (PII) or demographic data like age, gender, or education.

Credolab uses proprietary feature engineering to convert raw metadata—collected with explicit user consent via its SDK—into more than 11 million behavioral features. The technology uses selection strategies based on information value, correlation filtering, and gradient boosting to narrow these features into a few dozen highly predictive indicators. The models use elastic-net logistic regression and tree-based ensemble techniques and validate them with out-of-time and out-of-sample testing to ensure both robustness and explainability.

“In many markets, a lack of verified income data is the biggest barrier to financial inclusion,” Credolab Co-founder and CEO Peter Barcak said. “Our new model gives lenders a privacy-safe and statistically sound way to infer income levels using only device behavior. It’s a powerful step toward fairer, faster, and more inclusive credit decisions, especially among populations for whom traditional data simply doesn’t exist.”

Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Singapore, Credolab made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia 2018. Since then, the company has become the device and behavioral data partner for more than 150 banks, financial services companies, and fintechs around the world. The company’s solutions for risk management, fraud prevention, and insight-driven marketing have delivered decreases of up to 21.9% in the cost of risk and fraud, increases of up to 32% in applicant approval rates, and decreases of up to 28% in the cost of acquisition.

Photo by Christian Dubovan on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Klarna Debuts KlarnaUSD Stablecoin

Klarna Debuts KlarnaUSD Stablecoin
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Klarna
  • Klarna revealed plans to launch KlarnaUSD, a new stablecoin built on Stripe and Paradigm’s Tempo blockchain.
  • Set to debut on the Tempo mainnet in 2026, KlarnaUSD will leverage early access to Tempo for testing and integration.
  • The move positions Klarna to capture value in the $120 billion cross-border payments market, using stablecoins to cut costs for both consumers and merchants as stablecoin usage surpasses $27 trillion annually.

Two months after reaching one million card sign-ups in the US, BNPL leader Klarna has revealed plans to launch its own stablecoin, KlarnaUSD.

Klarna is launching its new stablecoin on the Tempo blockchain. Launched in September 2025, Tempo is an independent, layer-1 blockchain created by Stripe and Paradigm that’s built for payments. KlarnaUSD is built on Open Issuance by stablecoin infrastructure platform Bridge.

“With 114 million customers and $118 billion in annual GMV, Klarna has the scale to change payments globally: with Klarna’s scale and Tempo’s infrastructure, we can challenge old networks and make payments faster and cheaper for everyone,” said Klarna Co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski. “Crypto is finally at a stage where it is fast, low-cost, secure, and built for scale. This is the beginning of Klarna in crypto, and I’m excited to work with Stripe and Tempo to continue to shape the future of payments.”

Klarna will launch its stablecoin on the Tempo mainnet in 2026. Tempo has granted Klarna early access to its infrastructure in advance of the KlarnaUSD launch to allow the fintech to conduct advanced testing, prototyping, and integration.

Klarna and Stripe first teamed up in 2021 when they partnered to allow Stripe users in 20 countries to offer Klarna’s BNPL option, with Stripe as the preferred payments partner in the US and Canada. The partnership between Klarna and Stripe’s blockchain, Tempo, deepens the relationship between the two players.

Today’s announcement comes as cross-border payments are estimated to generate $120 billion in transaction fees annually, and as stablecoin transactions top $27 trillion a year. Launching its own stablecoin isn’t just a way for Klarna to jump on a recent trend. The company will leverage the benefits of stablecoins to reduce costs for both consumers and merchants.

Photo by appshunter.io on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Superannuation Fund Brighter Super Selects Napier AI to Upgrade Compliance Infrastructure

Superannuation Fund Brighter Super Selects Napier AI to Upgrade Compliance Infrastructure
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Napier
  • Superannuation fund Brighter Super is upgrading its compliance infrastructure courtesy of a partnership with Napier AI.
  • Migrating to Napier AI’s Continuum platform enables Brighter Super to benefit from Kubernetes-based scalability and intuitive rule-testing capabilities, helping compliance teams adapt to changing regulations.
  • Headquartered in London, Napier AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2018.

One of the largest superannuation funds in Queensland, Australia, Brighter Super, has partnered with financial crime prevention platform Napier AI. The fund will leverage Napier AI’s Continuum solution to improve scalability, increase regulatory preparedness, and boost operational efficiency.

“Brighter Super is an excellent example of how a forward-looking institution can use technology to drive compliance transformation,” Napier AI CEO Greg Watson said. “By adopting Napier AI Continuum, Brighter Super has built a scalable, future-ready compliance operation that not only meets today’s regulatory expectations, but also positions them for continued growth.”

Based in Queensland, Australia, Brighter Super migrated from an on-premise system to Napier AI’s hosted environment. The fund now features streamlined post-merger integration, Kubernetes-based scalability, and intuitive rule-testing capabilities that will help future-proof compliance teams, enabling them to better adapt to ever-evolving regulations.

“Napier AI has been instrumental in helping us modernize and scale our compliance operations to keep pace with an evolving superannuation industry,” Brighter Super Chief Risk Officer Shawn Chan said. “As we integrated multiple funds and transitioned to a cloud-based environment, Napier’s platform gave us the flexibility and control we needed—without added complexity. The user-friendly interface meant our team could adapt quickly, even during structural changes.”

Brighter Super manages more than A$36 billion ($23.3 billion) in retirement savings for more than 348,000 members. The fund has experienced significant, M&A-related growth in recent years, merging with Energy Super in 2021 and acquiring Suncorp Portfolio Services Limited in 2022. This fall, Brighter Super announced that it had chosen SuperChoice as its clearing house partner ahead of the new Payday Super regulations that go into effect in July 2026. Also this fall, Brighter Super extended its partnership with MATES in Energy. MATES is a construction industry charity created in 2008 to help reduce the high suicide rate among construction workers. The charity has since been expanded to include workers from other industries, such as energy.

Headquartered in London, and founded in 2015, Napier AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2018. The company began this year securing a majority growth investment from Marlin Equity Partners, which took the company’s total funding to more than $55 million. The past few months have been especially busy for Napier AI. The company appointed Noel King as Chief Technology Officer in June, Kenneth Paqvalén as Chief Financial Officer in July, and Adam Flowers as new Chief Revenue Officer in September. Napier AI partnered with UAE-based lottery operator Game LLC in October and, earlier this month, was selected for FCA Supercharged Sandbox launch—supported by fellow Finovate alum NayaOne.

“When deployed in specialist areas such as financial crime, AI can drive billions in cost savings,” Napier AI Chief Product Officer Will Monk said. “The Napier AI / AML Index showed that UK financial institutions could save £2.5 billion annually through AI-driven AML solutions, and the FCA’s Supercharged Sandbox is the perfect platform to streamline this development and deployment to put this cost saving into action.”

Photo by City of Gold Coast on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

ebankIT and Alogent Forge Digital Banking and Payments Partnership

ebankIT and Alogent Forge Digital Banking and Payments Partnership
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, ebankIT
  • Digital banking solutions provider ebankIT has forged a strategic partnership with banking and financial services software company Alogent.
  • The partnership integrates ebanktIT’s omnichannel digital banking platform with Alogent’s advanced remote deposit capture (RDC) and item processing technologies.
  • Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Porto, Portugal, ebankIT won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2015.

Digital banking solutions provider for community financial institutions (CFIs), ebankIT, has announced a strategic partnership with banking and financial services software firm Alogent. The partnership integrates ebankIT’s omnichannel digital banking platform with Alogent’s advanced remote deposit capture (RDC) and item processing technologies. This will create a unified experience that enables financial institutions to accelerate digital transformations, boost security, and enhance customer journeys.

“Our partnership with ebankIT delivers secure, seamless experiences that build trust and keep users engaged across every channel, helping financial institutions modernize faster and smarter,” Alogent VP of Business Development Chris Wilson said. “The combined strengths of both organizations empower banks and credit unions to provide consistent, digital experiences that enhance customer engagement and meet evolving market demands.”

The partnership combines Alogent’s expertise in image capture, deposit automation, and fraud mitigation with ebankIT’s omnichannel capabilities, responding to a demand from community financial institutions, including credit unions, for greater integration between digital banking and payments technologies. This collaboration facilitates flexibility, speed-to-market, and greater customer engagement, and the integrated solution delivers robust compliance, reduced implementation time, and continuous innovation with AI-driven insights and personalized financial tools.

“This partnership is a natural fit,” ebankIT VP of US Market Development Paul Provenzano said. “Alogent’s deep expertise in payments and deposit automation perfectly complements ebankIT’s vision for a flexible and scalable digital banking ecosystem. Together, we’re helping financial institutions deliver seamless journeys, from deposits to payments, within a single, intuitive interface.”

Headquartered in Peachtree Corners, Georgia, Alogent offers solutions for check payment processing, enterprise content and information management, and loan and exception tracking. Serving financial institutions of all sizes—from global banks to credit unions—Alogent helps companies lower costs, boost processing efficiency, mitigate fraud, generate revenue, and enhance the customer experience across channels. The company announced a number of new partnerships last month, including collaborations with lending accelerator for banks and credit unions Vine, Georgia-based Embassy National Bank ($285 million in assets), and Pennsylvania’s First Capital Federal Credit Union ($350 million in assets). Company co-founder Dede Wakefield is CEO.

A Finovate alum for more than a decade, ebankIT won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2015 in London. The company demonstrated its technology most recently at FinovateFall 2025, showing how it is leveraging Agentic AI to bring automation and intelligence to a growing number of operations from payments to fraud detection.

Photo by Linda Gerbec on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

FreeAgent and Pleo Team Up to Help Small Businesses Manage Expenses, Cash Flow

FreeAgent and Pleo Team Up to Help Small Businesses Manage Expenses, Cash Flow
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, FreeAgent
  • Accounting software provider FreeAgent has partnered with spend management platform Pleo.
  • The partnership makes Pleo FreeAgent’s preferred expense management partner, enabling seamless, automated syncing of data from Pleo into FreeAgent.
  • Headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland, FreeAgent made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2013 in London.

A new partnership between accounting software provider FreeAgent and spend management platform Pleo will help small businesses in the UK better manage both day-to-day expenses as well as cash flow.

As part of the alliance, Pleo will now serve as FreeAgent’s preferred expense management partner. This will enable seamless syncing of expenses, card transactions, receipts, and attachments—as well as categories and VAT—from Pleo into FreeAgent. Automated syncing removes the reliance on error-prone and cumbersome manual entry, makes it easier for employees to complete their expense reporting responsibilities, and provides for more accurate, up-to-date bookkeeping for small businesses.

“We know how frustrating and time-consuming it can be for small businesses to keep track of spending, especially when lots of different people are making purchases,” FreeAgent CEO and Co-Founder Roan Lavery said. “This partnership with Pleo takes a huge amount of that stress away. Expenses are recorded and sent straight into FreeAgent without the usual chasing around for receipts or spreadsheets. It just works in the background, so business owners can focus on running their business, not wrestling with their books.”

Pleo provides small businesses with smart virtual or physical company cards that enable complete control over spending limits and policies. The technology automatically tracks, categorizes, and matches all transactions with a receipt in Pleo, then syncs directly into FreeAgent. This integration will provide business owners and finance teams with comprehensive, real-time visibility of company spending, from one-off purchases to recurring expenses.

“Pleo is thrilled to launch our integration with FreeAgent, two partners with a shared vision of empowering SMBs with seamless financial tools,” Pleo SVP Haresh Bajaj said. “This partnership is a step forward in simplifying workflows and unlocking greater value for our customers, and we’re excited about the impact we’ll achieve together.”

Headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, Pleo offers solutions for expense management, accounts payable, reimbursements, and vendor management, as well as smart business expense cards with individual spending limits. With more than 40,000 business users of its technology, Pleo notes that 75% of administrators using Pleo have said its solutions have made their companies more productive. Pleo recently announced its Cash Management solution which combines spend and cash management to give businesses full visibility over all accounts, lower FX costs, and earn on idle cash in a single resource.

Founded in 2007, FreeAgent offers accounting software and support for small businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping teams. The Edinburgh, Scotland-based fintech made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2013, and was acquired by NatWest Group in 2018. With more than 200,000 users, FreeAgent also recently announced a partnership with Australian corporate performance management (CPM) software provider Fathom.

Photo by Adam Wilson on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Agentic AI Compliance Specialist Kodex AI Announces Acquisition by Regtech CUBE

Agentic AI Compliance Specialist Kodex AI Announces Acquisition by Regtech CUBE
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Kodex AI, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Automated regulatory intelligence company CUBE has agreed to acquire agentic AI compliance specialist Kodex AI. Terms of the acquisition were not immediately available.
  • The acquisition will enable CUBE to leverage Kodex AI’s agentic AI technology to offer “co-worker functionality” for compliance teams to help them keep up with ever-evolving regulations.
  • Headquartered in Berlin, Germany and founded in 2022, Kodex AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2024 in London.

Agentic AI compliance specialist Kodex AI has agreed to be acquired by automated regulatory intelligence company CUBE. Calling the agreement “more than an acquisition,” Kodex AI framed the deal as the “beginning of a new era for regulatory technology” in a statement on the company’s website. The acquisition combines CUBE’s regulatory data and risk capabilities with Kodex AI’s agentic AI technology to offer an AI that is more co-worker than tool to assist compliance teams as they seek to implement ever-evolving regulations. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“Combining Kodex AI’s technology leadership with CUBE’s market-leading regulatory and risk data is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to redefine the compliance and risk space,” Kodex AI Co-Founder Thomas Kaiser said. “This is the perfect use case for advanced AI, and together we’ll push the boundaries of what’s possible.”

The technology integration, specifically the introduction of co-worker functionality, will automate complex processes, reduce operational costs, and leverage continuous monitoring and proactive updates. This will promote better—and easier—adherence to regulatory requirements. The addition of Kodex AI’s technology will also enable access to richer data sources and broader coverage across jurisdictions.

“Thomas and Claus (Lang) have built an exceptional and disruptive European technology business, pioneering the use of agentic AI through an agent-based architecture to solve regulatory complexities,” CUBE Founder and CEO Ben Richmond said. “Kodex AI is a natural next step in CUBE’s strategy, allowing us to instantly deliver enhanced, AI-based compliance and risk capabilities to our global customers.”

With 1,000 customers in banking, insurance, payments, asset and investment management, and more, CUBE specializes in Automated Regulatory Intelligence (ARI) and Regulatory Change Management (RCM). Founded in 2011, the London-based regtech offers a RegPlatform product portfolio powered by its regulatory AI engine (RegBrain). The technology tracks, analyzes, and monitors laws and regulations in every country to provide always-up-to-date regulatory insights.

Based in Berlin, Kodex AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2024 in London. At the conference, the company showed how its AI-powered solution empowers financial professionals to find information, analyze data, and instantly draft reports in minutes rather than days. The company’s specialized Large Language Model (LLM) and Generative AI Agents are designed for financial data, providing a targeted approach that ensures factual intelligence without “hallucinations.” Kodex AI was co-founded in 2022 by Thomas Kaiser (CEO) and Claus Lang (CTO).

Photo by Adam Tamasi on Unsplash

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Trulioo Expands into Credit Decisioning

Trulioo Expands into Credit Decisioning
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Trulioo
  • Trulioo is launching a new credit decisioning tool, adding financial, credit, and risk insights to its global identity platform.
  • The update unifies identity, fraud, risk, and credit intelligence into one workflow, enabling faster, more accurate onboarding powered by AI-driven models.
  • With this expansion, Trulioo shifts from ID verification to full-stack onboarding and risk assessment, putting it in direct competition with Alloy, Prove, Experian, Equifax, and Bureau.

Digital identity platform Trulioo is launching credit decisioning this week. The new capability offers financial, credit, and risk insights through Trulioo’s global identity platform, its tool that connects to hundreds of international data sources to instantly verify people and businesses in nearly every country.

Trulioo’s credit decisioning tool will facilitate smarter evaluation, routing, and decision-making during the onboarding process by bringing identity, fraud, risk, and credit intelligence into a single workflow. The company will leverage its global identity platform to bring these insights into AI-driven models that not only accelerate onboarding but also improve decision accuracy.

“Trulioo is the only solution global enterprises need for KYB,” said Trulioo Chief Product Officer Zac Cohen. “We continue to push the boundaries of innovation, building the most sophisticated engine for onboarding businesses, understanding their risk profiles and driving faster, more confident growth. With credit decisioning, we’re uniting identity, fraud, and credit intelligence to redefine what streamlined, trusted onboarding looks like on a global scale.”

Adding credit decisioning to its identity and fraud intelligence suite, Trulioo is extending itself beyond identity verification. It’s positioning itself as an end-to-end onboarding and risk-assessment platform. This move pushes Trulioo into more direct competition with global decisioning and underwriting players such as Alloy, Prove, Experian, Equifax, and Bureau, while differentiating itself through its broad international coverage.

The credit decisioning tool sits alongside Trulioo’s existing identity verification and fraud intelligence solutions that cover 195 countries and can verify more than 14,000 identity documents and 700 million business entities while checking against more than 6,000 watchlists.

Headquartered in Canada and founded in 2011, Trulioo has raised $475 million. The company has demoed at 10 Finovate events, most recently showcasing its identity platform at FinovateEurope 2023.

Photo by cottonbro studio

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

LiquidTrust Helps Businesses Move Money Safely and Efficiently

LiquidTrust Helps Businesses Move Money Safely and Efficiently
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, LiquidTrust
  • B2B payments solutions company LiquidTrust announced the availability of its LiquidTrust platform featuring Protected Pay and Simple Pay.
  • The offering will help companies secure high-value and first-time transactions and enable fast, verified payments.
  • Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, and founded in 2019, LiquidTrust made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2024. Saujin Yi is Founder and CEO.

B2B payments solutions provider LiquidTrust announced the formal availability of its LiquidTrust platform featuring both the company’s Protected Pay and Simple Pay solutions. The offering is designed to facilitate secure high-value transactions and provide for fast, verified payments.

LiquidTrust helps platforms—including document management systems, supply chain companies, and marketplaces—embed configurable payment and escrow flows directly into their environments. This enables a faster, more streamlined launch that avoids the massive effort typically involved in building secure payment infrastructures.

“Most platforms focus on the matchmaking, but solving the complexities of what happens after the sale or match is both a risk and an opportunity,” LiquidTrust Founder and CEO Saujin Yi said. “LiquidTrust helps them close the loop by turning trust into a growth lever, enabling platforms to increase transaction volume, reduce disputes, and strengthen user confidence. By embedding structural trust directly into payments, platforms can transform what was once a compliance burden into a competitive advantage. In a time of tariffs and uncertainty, trust is the foundation that keeps commerce moving.”

LiquidTrust provides two ways for businesses to move money safely and efficiently. Powered by the company’s proprietary Micro Escrow technology, LiquidTrust’s Protected Pay secures high-value and first-time transactions by holding funds until specific, verifiable conditions—such as shipment, delivery, or document upload—are satisfied. LiquidTrust’s Simple Pay offering provides fast, verified payments to 200+ countries. Together, the two solutions give companies control over how their funds move, providing both flexible protection and instant visibility over every transaction.

Platforms deploying the solution will benefit from easy-to-launch payment flows that are customized for their individual use cases; built-in KYC/KYB, AML, transaction monitoring, and subledgering; SOC 2 certification and secure infrastructure powered by JP Morgan’s global treasury and payment rails; and the opportunity to generate new revenues from monetized protection features or payment fees.

Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Los Angeles, California, LiquidTrust made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2024. At the conference, the company showed how its technology enables businesses to hold payments in third-party micro escrow accounts to guard against delays, default, and fraud. In the year since then, the company has raised $4 million in seed funding, and earned recognition from Datos Insights and the PayTech Awards USA.

Check out our extended conversation with Saujin Yi from earlier this year.

Photo by Roberto Nickson

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook