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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
International banking technology company Veritran announced a collaboration with financial messaging services company Swift.
As part of the collaboration, Veritran has joined the Swift Partner Programme.
Headquartered in Argentina, Veritran made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2021.
A new collaboration between Veritran and financial messaging services innovator Swift will empower financial institutions to provide an enhanced and streamlined cross-border payments experience for customers. As part of the collaboration, Veritran has joined the Swift Partner Programme, which will give its customers access to a variety of Swift solutions to increase the transparency and security of cross-border payments.
“Collaborations such as this are improving the experience for those sending payments cross-border, while also increasing transparency and security to improve the ecosystem as a whole,” Swift Global Head of API Acceleration Juan Carlos Botrán said. “It’s vital that industry players work together in this way to overcome increasing fragmentation in the cross-border payments landscape.”
An international banking technology company, Veritran will benefit from access to Swift solutions such as the Swift GPI Tracker, Payment Pre-validation, and SwiftRef. Swift GPI Tracker enables users to check the status of cross-border payments. Payment Pre-validation validates beneficiary data before the payment is sent. SwiftRef is Swift’s payments reference data solution, which streamlines payment operations and helps users easily find the data sets they need in a single location.
“This agreement is designed to align with the changing market demands, prioritizing the need for speed and flexibility with a more transparent and consistent pricing structure for users, the retail sector, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large corporates,” Veritran CCO Marcelo Fondacaro said. “At Veritran, we’re fully committed to leading the charge towards an innovative future in international payments.”
Founded in 2005, Veritran made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2019 in New York. The company returned to the Finovate stage two years later for FinovateFall 2021. At the conference, Veritran demonstrated how to leverage its enterprise low-code platform to build solutions like its white-label digital wallet. The platform provides optimum time-to-market, boosting development times by 33%; a memorable UX; unlimited integration and scalability; and bank grade security.
Veritran maintains headquarters in Spain and the U.S., as well as in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The company has a major presence in Latin America, with offices in Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, and Paraguay.
White-label tokenization platform for real estate DigiShares has partnered with Czech online real estate investing platform InvestBay.
InvestBay will leverage DigiShares’ technology to tokenize real estate.
Headquartered in Denmark, DigiShares made its Finovate debut at our online fintech conference in the spring of 2021.
Denmark-based white-label tokenization platform for real estate DigiShares has partnered with Czech online real estate investing platform InvestBay. Courtesy of the partnership, InvestBay will integrate DigiShares’ white label, real estate tokenization technology with its own platform that facilitates fractional property investments.
“We build InvestBay in such a way that it is similar to real ownership but in smaller fractions,” InvestBay CEO and Founder Daniel Rajnoch explained. “Investors benefit from two potential revenue streams: rental income and capital value growth over time. It is also hassle-free ownership, because InvestBay will take care of everything with their partners. This includes finding guests, maintenance, cleaning, checking guests in and out – all the usual headaches of fully owning a property.”
InvestBay’s “crowd-owning” model enables investment properties to be co-owned by tens or even hundreds of micro-investors. Geared toward holiday properties in Europe, investors can participate with as little as $107 (€100) and enjoy the use of the properties on preferential terms. Adding tokenization, according to Rajnoch, creates a “vehicle for enabling liquidity and creating equal opportunity access to this investment sector for smaller retail investors.”
Founded in 2018, DigiShares made its Finovate debut at our online fintech conference in the spring of 2021. At the event, the company demoed its white-label tokenization platform that digitizes and automates the processes involved in the financing of real estate projects. The platform enables users to fractionalize assets, companies, and funds down to $107 (€100); allows investors to pay in both fiat and stablecoin; and facilitates P2P and wallet-to-wallet trading without counterparty risk.
“We are very excited about collaborating with InvestBay on democratization of real estate investment and happy that they see our white label tokenization platform as a good fit for their requirements,” DigiShares CEO and Co-Founder Claus Skaaning said. “Together with InvestBay we share the vision that one day everyone will be able to invest in attractive real estate assets to longer term help close the global wealth gap.”
DigiShares’ partnership with InvestBay is the company’s sixth collaboration this year. DigiShares began 2024 teaming up with Danish real estate developer Coreestate and urban mobility solutions provider Custowner Mobility. Also this year, the company expanded its partnership with public permissioned blockchain network Polymesh (first announced in December), teamed up with Spanish proptech startup Equito App, and announced that it was collaborating with Polygon to create a decentralized ID framework for tokenization.
Paystand is acquiring Teampay. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Following the acquisition, Paystand will serve more than one million business customers.
Teampay will continue to serve its existing customers under the same brand, and things will be business as usual “in the near term.”
Cloud-based billing and payment platform Paystandannounced this week it has agreed to acquire expense management platform Teampay. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
The strategic move marks the California-based company’s second acquisition. Paystand purchased procurement platform Yaydoo in 2022. Now, the company services more than one million companies.
Teampay was founded in 2016 to offer spend management, accounts payable automation, purchasing assistant, spend approval tools, accounting automation, and more to help small-to-mid-market businesses and enterprises automate their spending without sacrificing control.
Paystand, which leverages the blockchain and cloud technology to digitize and automate businesses’ cash lifecycle, will use Teampay to scale its services. “With the fusion of Paystand and Teampay we significantly expanded our network, which now touches over one million businesses,” Paystand said in a blog post announcement.
Logistically, Teampay will continue to serve its existing customers under the same brand, and things will be business as usual “in the near term.” The companies did not specify whether Paystand planned to dissolve the Teampay brand and bring the customers under its own platform.
Paystand was founded in 2013 to help businesses digitize receivables, automate processing, reduce time-to-cash, eliminate transaction fees, and enable new revenue. In addition to its B2B payments and billing capabilities, the company also helps businesses leverage the blockchain to securely record their payment history by certifying and notarizing payments on the blockchain. Paystand has raised a total of $98 million. Jeremy Almond is Co-Founder and CEO.
Impact asset manager Finance in Motion has teamed up with financial crime compliance specialist Napier AI.
Finance in Motion will deploy Napier AI Continuum as its anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing (AML/CTF) platform.
London-based Napier AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2018.
Financial crime compliance company Napier AIannounced a partnership with impact asset manager Finance in Motion this week. The partnership calls for Finance in Motion to deploy Napier AI Continuum as its anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing (AML/CTF) platform.
Additionally, Napier AI will include its Client Screening solution and Client Risk Assessment module as part of the Napier AI Continuum platform deployment. The objective is to provide Finance in Motion with the tools it needs to continue driving public and private capital toward impact investments in emerging markets – while ensuring that capital does not end up financing illicit or criminal activity.
Finance in Motion Managing Director Sylvia Wisniwski explained: “Like any institution, we have a duty to ensure that the public and private capital raised is used exclusively for the intended objectives, in our case impact investments in emerging markets. Accordingly, regulation requires effective measures to prevent funds from being used to finance criminal activities. The collaboration with Napier AI allows us to efficiently query data through automated processes and integrated systems.”
Napier AI Continuum will provide Finance in Motion with API-enabled, cloud native, automated client screening, and supports transliteration of 22 languages. The platform also offers AI fuzzy matching and secondary scoring capabilities. Finance in Motion will benefit from customizable workflows, a sandbox environment for optimizing screening configurations, and configurable dashboards with no-code rule binding and AI insights to drive efficient decisioning.
“The key to dismantling criminal networks lies in cutting off their sources of revenue entirely by correctly identifying accounts, transactions, and behavioural patterns associated with financial crime,” Napier AI CEO Greg Watson said. “Napier AI’s cutting edge compliance solutions supercharge Finance in Motion’s mission to generate positive change in emerging markets with automated client screening.”
Headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany and founded in 2009, Finance in Motion specializes in development finance. An impact asset manager, the company structures, advises, and manage both private debt and equity investments in emerging markets. The company supports financing of projects ranging from sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, and biodiversity, to micro-finance, natural capital, and affordable housing.
Finance in Motion has $2.8 billion (€3.6 billion) in assets under management or advisory, and has active investments in 39 countries. Last month, the company was featured in the ImpactAssets 50 roster of the top 50 impact managers in the world. The recognition was the eighth consecutive listing for Finance in Motion, which was named “Emeritus Impact Manager.”
Founded in 2015, Napier made its Finovate debut three years later at FinovateEurope 2018. At the conference, the company demonstrated how its Customer Screening and Transaction Monitoring Enhancement tools help improve AML oversight. The technology reduces false positives by up to 80%, and can be used to supplement or replace existing customer screening systems.
Napier began 2024 announcing a partnership with Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) digital banking provider Satchel. The following month, Napier unveiled its Napier Continuum Live and Napier Continuum Flow services to facilitate the deployment of its AML platform. Napier Continuum Live is a plug-and-play hosted offering. Napier Continuum Flow is a headless API service.
Also in February Napier secured $56 million (£45 million) in funding from private equity firm Crestline Investors. The company said that the investment will help power business expansion over the coming years. The funds will also support Napier AI’s development of new NextGen screening and monitoring solutions powered by Explainable AI.
All three financial institutions announced this month that they are teaming up with small business lending platform JUDI.AI.
In a series of blog posts at the company’s website, JUDI.AI’s Director of Marketing Kyle Thom welcomed the three credit unions to what he called “our growing group of 35+ forward-thinking community lenders who are on a mission to reinvent small business lending.”
JUDI.AI offers credit unions and community banks an alternative approach to helping small and medium sized businesses secure the funding they need. The company enables financial institutions to digitally transform their credit decisioning and underwriting operations to assess the financial health of their small business customers and members on a continuous basis.
In addition to instant cash flow analysis, automated underwriting, continuous monitoring, and real-time portfolio reporting, JUDI.AI adds automated analysis of current banking data to supplement traditional financial data sources such as credit scores and financial statements.
Here’s a look at JUDI’s new partners:
Apple Federal Credit Union. $4.3 billion in assets. 240,000+ members, Twenty-one locations across northern Virginia.
Carter Credit Union. $722 million in assets. 55,000+ members. Eleven locations in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Fort Worth, Texas.
SCU Credit Union. $1.1 billion in assets. 67,000+ members. Eight locations in southern California and southern Nevada.
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada, JUDI.AI made its Finovate debut at our all-digital fintech conference, FinovateWest 2020. Most recently, the company demoed its technology at FinovateSpring 2022. At the event, Thom and JUDI.AI Chief Product Officer Su Ning Strube, demonstrated how the platform enables lenders to process 50% more SME loan applications without committing any additional resources, and approve 20% more loans with no added risk.
“What makes JUDI.AI unique in that we identify cash flow metrics that are predictive and correlated to future defaults, and we combine that information in our proprietary small business model with traditional credit scores to calculate the creditworthiness of any borrower,” Su Ning Strube explained from the Finovate stage.
In addition to the credit unions signed in April, JUDI.AI this year has also welcomed Canadian alternative lender Glasslake Funding and Hawaii’s Kauai Federal Credit Union to its client roster. Kauai FCU is the first and only certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) on the island of Kauai.
Data privacy vault Skyflow has raised $30 million in an extension Series B round led by Khosla Ventures.
The investment comes amid growth in the market for sensitive data protection for Large Language Models (LLMs).
Founded in 2019, Skyflow made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022.
Data privacy vault Skyflow raised $30 million in an extension of its Series B funding round. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, and featured participation from existing investors Mouro Capital, Foundation Capital, and Canvas Ventures. The investment takes the company’s total equity capital to $100 million, according to Crunchbase. Valuation information was not immediately available.
The investment in Skyflow arrives as the proliferation of Large Language Models (LLMs) raises the stakes when it comes to protecting sensitive data. Skyflow’s global network of data privacy vaults enables businesses to isolate, protect, and manage sensitive customer data across any app, data cloud, or LLM. Skyflow supports nearly a billion records of user data for its customers and processes more than two billion API calls a quarter.
“We see an urgent need for companies to make privacy a core part of their technology stack as LLMs and AI hurdle forward, ingesting more and more personal data,” Skyflow Co-founder and CEO Anshu Sharma said. “Skyflow is the only solution that allows companies to build privacy by design into their technological infrastructure without overhauling anything – anywhere in the world.”
Skyflow credits a proprietary technology – polymorphic encryption – for its ability to protect data without inhibiting its usability for critical business tasks. Skyflow’s technology serves as a “privacy trust layer,” blocking sensitive information from entering AI models, and making adoption of AI technology safer. Companies can personalize their own definition of “sensitive data” as needed, providing additional protection beyond PII, intellectual property, or other categories of critical information.
“With the advent of enterprise applications powered by AI, the need for trust and privacy infrastructure is key to protecting sensitive data,” Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla said. “Skyflow is rethinking how data can be managed and protected across any app, cloud, or LLM, making it a company that will be vital for every enterprise business.”
Founded in 2019, Skyflow made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022. At the conference, the company showed how its technology helps financial services companies securely orchestrate sensitive data and exchange it with third party providers without having to directly handle the data itself.
Interested in demoing at FinovateSpring in San Francisco in May? We are happy to read applications from innovative companies with new solutions that are ready to show. Visit our FinovateSpring hub today to learn more.
TabaPay will use Synapse’s assets to bolster its selection of financial services for fintech firms and financial institutions. Both TabaPay and Synapse offer payouts and payments processing technologies. Synapse, however, also provides neobanking, gig economy, lending, credit, wealth management, and embedded finance tools.
“The addition of the Synapse features is an acceleration of our TabaPay story, one dedicated to delivering great solutions that help our clients rapidly innovate, save money, and offer great financial products to their customers,” said TabaPay Co-founder and CEO Rodney Robinson. “The Synapse assets are a great and natural fit to our existing services to grow our offerings in tandem with providing continuity to Synapse clients and banks.”
TabaPay was founded in 2017 to help clients disburse and collect one million transactions daily– and in real time– on behalf of more than 2,500 clients in the U.S. and Canada. The company’s API offers direct access to 15 banking partners, 16 network connections, and full-stack payment processing. Last March, we spoke to the company’s VP of Strategic Partnerships Maggie O’Toole on her role in the industry.
Both TabaPay and Synapse were listed on Deloitte’s 2023 Fast 500. Synapse has seen a 650%+ growth over the past five years. That growth is now come to a halt, however, since Synapse has today revealed it filed a voluntary bankruptcy petition under Chapter 11. The bankruptcy comes after Synapse’s partner bank Lineage received a consent order from the FDIC earlier this year. The California-based company also signaled trouble when it laid off 40% of its staff last October after losing its client, Mercury, to its partner, Evolve Bank & Trust. Synapse was founded in 2014 and had raised $50.7 million.
TabaPay’s acquisition is pending approval by the bankruptcy court.
Happy Earth Day! Partnerships in payments and fundraising in the international investment/wealth management space are dominating fintech news headlines as the week begins.
Subscription management and billing platform Recurlyintroduces new dashboards with built-in benchmarks.
Klarnasells Hero, the virtual shopping platform it acquired in 2021, for $1.3 million (€1.3 million).
SplititunveilsFI-PayLater to empower banks to provide in-checkout installments for existing customers.
Identity verification
Financial crime risk data and fraud detection technology company ComplyAdvantageacquires knowledge graph builder Golden.
AU10TIXannounces $18 billion in business fraud prevented since 2021.
Small Business Tools
BaswareintroducesAP Protect, an AI-powered solution that empowers finance teams to protect their organizations against profit loss, invoice errors, and fraud.
Marqetapartners with OakNorth to offer commercial cards in the U.K.
Payroll
Ripplingraises $200 million in new financing with $13.5 billion valuation.
U.K.-based core banking platform 10x Banking announced a strategic alliance agreement with Deloitte.
As part of the agreement, 10x will build a series of Centres of Excellence in the U.S., U.K., and India to facilitate collaboration between the two firms.
10x Banking won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023.
SaaS core banking platform 10x Banking has inked a strategic alliance agreement with Deloitte. Effective in both the U.S. and the U.K., the agreement will power greater cooperation when it comes to helping financial institutions around the world access transformative technologies.
As part of the strategic alliance, the two firms will launch a series of 10x Centres of Excellence in the U.S., the U.K., and India. The centers will facilitate collaboration between 10x Banking and Deloitte, and should be fully-staffed with their initial 100-member teams by the end of the year.
Courtesy of the alliance, the 10x platform will also be fully integrated into BankingSuite from Converge by Deloitte. BankingSuite is a modern composable platform that enables banks to build new digital capabilities at pace. Introduced in 2022, Converge combines Deloitte’s software, industry expertise, and partner ecosystem to help Deloitte’s clients maximize the opportunities of digital transformation and emergent technologies. This collaboration, between 10x and Converge, will focus initially on serving credit unions, building societies, and mutual banks to help them fulfill their digital transformation goals faster and with less cost.
“By working with Deloitte, we will enable banks and mutuals across the U.S., U.K., and beyond to modernise their legacy tech and deliver financial products and services fit for the 21st century,” 10x Banking Founder, Chair, and CEO Antony Jenkins said. “With Deloitte’s global experience and our leading technological solutions, we have a strategy in place to enact widespread change in the pursuit of making banking ten times better.”
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in London, U.K., 10x Banking made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023. The company won Best of Show for its demo of its 10x Bank Manager, which offers a no-code interface to enable product teams to “build products, offerings, brands, and even enter new markets at speed,” as Product Marketing Manager Nicole Sanders explained at the conference. “Code less. Innovate more.”
10x Banking began 2024 partnering with mortgage origination platform Mast. The partnership will enable real-time connectivity between the two platforms, giving lenders streamlined data exchange and real-time mortgage servicing. Mast CEO Joy Abisaab said that working with 10x would “empower U.K. lenders to unlock new levels of operational efficiency and enable the delivery of exceptional customer experiences.”
10x Banking has raised $297 million in funding. The company includes JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock among its investors.
This week’s edition of Finovate Global reviews the latest fintech developments in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).
This region features a diverse range of countries including Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia. More than 250 million people live in the CEE, which has a combined GDP of $2.6 trillion.
Romania’s Salt goes live with Starling’s SaaS platform
Romania’s Salt Banklaunched this month, giving the country its first 100% digital bank. Salt Bank reported that more than 80,000 people signed up in less than three weeks to be a part of the new financial institution.
“By launching Salt, we are not only bringing the first 100% Romanian neobank to the Romanian market, but we are also offering a unique perspective that combines technology and finance,” Salt Bank CEO Gabriela Nistor said.
Salt Bank currently offers 3% yearly interest on current accounts as well as on Spaces, Salt Bank’s savings account offering, as long as customers make payments of 1,000 lei/month or more (equivalent to $215). Customers also get a multi-currency card that enables transactions in 17 currencies around the world. Users of the Salt banking app can take advantage of money management tools, in-app card controls, as well as Apple and Google Pay in-app provisioning.
Headquartered in Bucharest, Salt Bank is owned by the Banca Transilvania Financial Group. The institution also offers its customers the opportunity to become founders of Salt Bank and, ultimately, shareholders in the event that the institution goes public. Salt Bank notes that its Salt Founders Community currently has 2,200 members.
Powering the launch is Starling’s SaaS platform Engine, which helped the digital bank onboard 100,000 customers in the first two weeks of operation. And although AMP Bank in Australia has also announced that it will deploy Engine, the institution is not scheduled to do so until 2025, making Salt Bank the first bank to go live with the technology.
“Our work with Salt Bank shows just what our platform is capable of,” Engine by Starling CEO Sam Everington said, “Starling’s feature rich and highly personalizable banking products can be deployed around the world to attract impressive customer volumes, while our operational experience and cloud-expertise can help build, launch, and run a bank in less than 12 months.”
Latvian fintech inGain raises EUR 650,000
inGain, a no-code SaaS loan management system based in Latvia, has raised $692,000 (EUR 650,000) in funding. Participating in the investment were VC funds Trind VC and Fiedler Capital. The Latvian Business Angels network and other business angels were also involved in the round.
The funding announcement marked the first publicly announced investment in a Latvian startup in 2024. The company will use the capital to complete work on its SaaS-based loan management system that helps facilitate lending for products that banks traditionally have been reluctant to finance. inGain Co-founder and CEO Armands Liseks explained how inGain works, using the example of a family trying to decide whether or not to commit to their child’s efforts to become the next Mozart.
“Some parents are ready to buy a piano, but what happens if they spend several months trying to persuade their kids to play the piano, but their kids still refuse to play it?” Liseks asked. “It is with this kind of situation in mind that the seller would like to offer piano leasing. For parents, this means that the payment for the musical instrument will be higher. However, this also gives them two options: either the piano is eventually purchased in full or can be returned to the seller at any time.”
Liseks added that inGain’s solution even benefits those who know they are ready to buy. “How can the bank offer leasing for the piano?” he said. “Most likely it will advise the customer to use a credit card or take out a consumer loan with 20% interest, which makes no sense whatsoever.”
inGain is headquartered in Riga. The company was founded in 2011.
Bulgaria’s Paynetics acquires UK neobank Novus
Here is some CEE-based acquisition news in the payments space that slipped beneath our radar this spring. Bulgaria’s Paynetics has acquired Novus, a neobank based in the U.K., for an undisclosed sum.
A B-corp certified digital bank – and self-described “impact neobank” – Novus enables customers to monitor their carbon footprint and get cashback when they make sustainable purchases via the app. Additionally, Novus automatically directs a portion of revenue from every transaction to an NGO of the customer’s choice.
For Paynetics, the acquisition will enable the company to offer carbon- and climate-conscious solutions to customers as well as expand “the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ecosystem across Europe.” Paynetics will also leverage the acquisition to help its clients achieve their social and environmental goals via its own embedded finance solution.
“This deal not only reinforces our dedication to ESG but also marks a significant leap forward in revolutionizing the financial sector with our cutting-edge embedded finance suite,” Paynetics noted in a post on LinkedIn.
Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria, Paynetics acquisition news comes a year after the firm was granted an electronic money institution (EMI) license from the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Last month, the company announced that it had promoted Hana Rolles from Chief Revenue Officer to U.K. Chief Executive Officer.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Latin America and the Caribbean
U.S.-based recurring payments platform Toku raised $93 million in funding to power its expansion in Mexico, Brazil, and Chile.
Core banking software provider Tuumannounced its expansion to the Middle East and the establishment of a regional headquarters at ADGM.
Israel’s central bank reported that it will launch a sandbox to enable private sector entities to experiment with central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
UAE-based digital fintech infrastructure firm Fils teamed up with digital banking solutions company Aion to advanced ESG in the MENA region.
Central and Southern Asia
Amazon Pay introduced credit services to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform in partnership with the National Payments Corporation of India.
Bankjoy, a digital banking provider for banks and credit unions, announced a partnership with Pinwheel this week.
Bankjoy will help its more than 70 bank and credit union customers integrate Pinwheel’s digital deposit switching (DDS) solution, Pinwheel Prime.
Pinwheel Prime has been credited with increasing direct deposit enrollment by 32%.
Digital banking provider Bankjoy has partnered with Pinwheel to help financial institutions remove friction from the account activation process.
Via the partnership, Bankjoy will enable its 70+ bank and credit union customers to integrate Pinwheel’s digital deposit switching (DDS) solution, Pinwheel Prime. Pinwheel Prime offers a two-click deposit switch that enables customers to set up their direct deposit in seconds rather than dealing with a multi-step process that requires customers to exit the banking experience.
“By seamlessly integrating from Bankjoy online account opening through various tightly-knit third-party integrations like Pinwheel, we can equip our clients to excel in the competitive deposit market,” Bankjoy COO Weiwei Duncan said. “Our goal is clear: to ensure that our clients not only compete but win the deposit war, leveraging technology to streamline processes and enhance user engagement.”
According to research from Pinwheel, solutions that make deposit switching faster and easier can significantly impact deposit growth. Pinwheel’s own deposit switching technology can enable FIs to boost direct deposit enrollment by 32%, and reduce the amount of time before a customer makes their first direct deposit by 65%.
“With this collaboration, we can bring the ability to easily switch direct deposit settings to an even wider set of consumers, facilitating a fairer financial systems with greater choice and portability,” Pinwheel Co-founder and CEO Kurtis Lin said.
Headquartered in New York and founded in 2018, Pinwheel began the year teaming up with Finovate alum Jack Henry to imbed its direct deposit switching (DDS) solution into Jack Henry’s Banno Digital Toolkit. Pinwheel has raised $77 million in funding according to Crunchbase, and includes Indeed and Franklin Templeton among its investors.
A Finovate alum since 2016 , Bankjoy most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall last year. At the conference, the company, in partnership with Panacea Financial, showing how the fintech helped the digital neobank provide financial services to medical professionals.
So far this year, Bankjoy has added two new financial institutions to its customer base: Oregon State Credit Union, which teamed up with Bankjoy in February, and Emporia State Federal Credit Union, which partnered with Bankjoy in March. Oregon State CU ($2+ billion in assets; 142,000+ members) will deploy Bankjoy’s online account opening solution as part of its strategy to fuel new member acquisition and grow deposits. Emporia State FCU, headquartered in Emporia, Kansas, launched its online and mobile banking app in March courtesy of its partnership with Bankjoy. Emporia State FCU has more than $130 million in assets and 7,800+ members.
Founded in 2015 , Bankjoy is headquartered in Royal Oak, Michigan.
Small business banking platform Rapid Finance is launching a Rapid Access Mastercard, a prepaid card through which small businesses can access their line of credit.
Rapid Finance’s card program is the first program sponsored by SoFi Bank.
Rapid Access Mastercard will be managed by Galileo, which SoFi acquired in 2020 in a deal valued at $1.2 billion
SoFi and its subsidiary Galileo are teaming up this week with small business banking platform Rapid Finance to launch the Rapid Access Mastercard. The new offering is a prepaid commercial card that allows Rapid Finance’s small business customers with a line of credit in good standing to access their funds.
The card will give companies using Rapid Finance’s line of credit a simple way to access the working capital they need, even outside of traditional banking hours. The company’s line of credit offers access to financing from $5,001 up to $250,000 with terms ranging from three to eighteen months.
“This card program underscores Rapid Finance’s commitment to empowering businesses with flexible and accessible financial solutions,” said Will Tumulty, CEO of Rapid Finance. “With the Rapid Access Mastercard, small business owners can better seize market opportunities, manage their cash flow and support their business growth in a way that is more convenient for them.”
This announcement is perhaps more notable for SoFi than it is for Rapid Finance. That’s because Rapid Finance’s card program is the first program sponsored by SoFi Bank. SoFi earned its banking license in 2022, but has since abstained from a pure-play BaaS agreement. The bank partnered with Pagaya in 2021 to offer lending-as-a-service, but the loans are underwritten by Pagaya, which means SoFi isn’t taking any credit risks.
While SoFi will serve as the sponsor bank for Rapid Finance, the prepaid card aspect will be managed by Galileo, which SoFi acquired in 2020 in a deal valued at $1.2 billion. Galileo was founded in 2001 and currently offers digital banking tools, card and lending products, cloud infrastructure, and more.
“This collaboration underscores Galileo’s commitment to helping small businesses do more with their money, faster,” said Galileo CEO Derek White. “We look forward to working together alongside SoFi Bank to help Rapid Finance quickly develop and scale this flexible payment program to support SMBs’ ability to gain swift, easy access to the funds they need to be successful.”
