Alumni News

Lloyds Bank Taps Moneyhub for Data Categorization

Lloyds Bank Taps Moneyhub for Data Categorization
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Moneyhub
  • Lloyds Banking Group has partnered with Moneyhub to enhance transaction categorization and personalization across its brands, including Lloyds, Halifax, and Bank of Scotland.
  • Moneyhub’s AI-driven platform uses consumer-permissioned data and a decade of user training to deliver highly accurate transaction insights, supporting Lloyds Banking Group’s digital strategy.
  • While open banking accelerates in the UK and Europe, the US faces regulatory uncertainty, with recent legal challenges casting doubt on the future of the CFPB’s Section 1033 rule.

UK-based Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) announced this week that it has selected open data platform Moneyhub to help categorize and enrich transaction data across its brands, including Lloyds, Halifax, Scottish Widows, and Bank of Scotland.

LBG expects that partnering with Moneyhub will enhance the personalization of its digital banking services and help customers gain deeper insights into their spending. Moneyhub categorizes customer transactions such as card payments, direct debits, standing orders, and transfers. The company uses both direct API integrations and indirect methods like screen scraping to gather the consumer-permissioned data, then uses its AI-driven categorization engine that has been refined over more than a decade with user input, resulting in highly accurate transaction insights.

“Partnering with Moneyhub will allow us to rapidly deliver far richer and more valuable insights for our customers,” said LBG Group Chief Data and Analytics Officer Ranil Boteju. “By combining Moneyhub’s advanced categorization technology with our in-house GenAI expertise, we’ll improve the time and accuracy of transaction classifications, unlocking new products and services for our customers and providing real-time insights so they can make more informed financial decisions.”

Moneyhub was founded in 2014 and offers personal finance technology tools, open data APIs, decisioning solutions, and payments capabilities. Its platform is designed to empower financial institutions, employers, and technology providers to deliver more tailored financial experiences through real-time data access and intelligent analysis. Regulated by the FCA, Moneyhub’s infrastructure supports a wide range of use cases, including budgeting tools, affordability assessments, wealth insights, and financial wellness programs.

“We are delighted to be chosen by Lloyds Banking Group as their categorization partner,” said Moneyhub CCO Dan Scholey. “Our extensive experience in transaction categorization has enabled us to develop a highly accurate engine that will benefit LBG and its customers. We look forward to enabling the many use cases this partnership offers, helping LBG become more efficient, profitable, compliant, and customer-centric.”

This move comes amid growing adoption of open banking frameworks across the UK and Europe, where regulatory support and consumer demand for data portability are facilitating innovation among fintechs and banks. At the same time, in the US, the open banking movement is still waiting to take off. The CFPB’s Section 1033 rule was put into place last October to grant consumers the right to access and share their financial data with third parties. However, the rule has faced legal challenges and potential revisions. Earlier this month, the CFPB indicated plans to ask a court to vacate the rule, citing procedural concerns and industry pushback over provisions such as the prohibition on data access fees and the lack of clear liability standards for third-party data handlers. This uncertainty has left the future of open banking in the US in flux, even as other markets continue to advance.

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Best of Show Winner Solda.AI Raises $4 Million

Best of Show Winner Solda.AI Raises $4 Million
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Funding, Solda.ai
  • AI-powered sales technology provider Solda.AI has raised $4 million in seed funding.
  • The round was led by Accel and included participation from AltaIR Capital.
  • Solda.AI won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego, California.

Solda.AI, an innovator in AI sales for fintech that won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring last week, has announced $4 million in new funding. The seed round was led by Accel and featured participation from AltaIR Capital. The company will use the capital to further develop its fleet of AI agents, forge partnerships with more businesses around the world, and continue to transform international sales processes.

“At Solda.AI, we believe that the future of telesales is AI,” Solda.AI CEO and Co-Founder Sergey Shalaev said. “Our vision is for voice agent-powered sales that generate revenue and provide real ROI, and we believe that we’re the first and only company to deliver this. We have already seamlessly integrated our agents into 20 partners’ sales channels, and are delighted to announce this seed funding led by Accel to help us collaborate with more businesses and take phone sales into the age of AI.”

Solda.AI offers fully autonomous, AI-powered voice agents that can operate a business’s entire telesales cycle at scale, processing 10,000 leads a day to make sales calls, follow-up calls, return calls, and close deals. The agents can engage leads after two weeks of sales call and script training, which compares favorably with human call center agents, only 10% of whom achieve proficiency in less than two months.

Solda.AI’s agents have a 1% AI detection rate and, at peak hours, can manage 100 phone lines simultaneously. The agents are multilingual, and can currently conduct sales-based conversations in both US and UK English, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. The agents can even distinguish between European and Latin American versions of Spanish (as spoken in Mexico, for example) and Portuguese (as spoken in Brazil). Companies deploying Solda.AI’s technology have benefited from a 30% cost efficiency gain compared to call centers. Solda.AI reports that its agents generated $7 million in incremental revenue for clients last year and are on target to deliver $30 million in 2025.

“When we first met Sergey and the Solda.AI team, we were blown away by the AI voice agents’ human-like attributes and ability to not only handle complex conversations, but also close deals on the spot,” Accel partner Zhenya Loginov said. “Solda.AI’s technology has the potential to completely revolutionize the telesales market, with the team using AI to redefine sales automation from scratch.”

Headquartered in Middletown, Delaware, Solda.AI demoed its technology at FinovateSpring 2025 in May, winning Best of Show. At the conference, the company showed how its AI sales agents automate the sales process while delivering human-like, personalized, on-brand interactions that produce conversion rates up to twice those of traditional methods. Solda.AI’s technology helps fintechs and banks automate onboarding, upsell, KYC, and retention calls with less than 1% AI detection at 60% of the cost.

Photo by Petr Macháček on Unsplash

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Mastercard Taps MoonPay to Bring Stablecoin Payments Mainstream

Mastercard Taps MoonPay to Bring Stablecoin Payments Mainstream
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, MasterCard
  • Mastercard and MoonPay are partnering to launch stablecoin-powered cards, enabling users to spend crypto at over 150 million merchants worldwide.
  • MoonPay is leveraging its acquisition of Iron to provide API infrastructure that lets businesses manage stablecoin payouts, disbursements, and cross-border transactions.
  • This move signals growing mainstream adoption of stablecoins, with Mastercard aiming to make crypto wallets function like traditional bank accounts.

Mastercard announced today that it has teamed up with stablecoin infrastructure provider MoonPay to enable people and businesses to pay using stablecoins.

Under the partnership, businesses will leverage Mastercard-branded cards linked to users’ stablecoin balances. Mastercard will allow cardholders to spend their stablecoins, which MoonPay will convert to fiat currency, at the 150+ million locations where Mastercard is accepted.  

MoonPay is using API-driven stablecoin infrastructure from Iron, which it acquired in March of this year. Iron will facilitate stablecoin-powered payments for businesses, which will turn crypto wallets into digital bank accounts for global transactions. The API will allow businesses, neobanks, and payment players to manage payouts, facilitate disbursements, improve cross-border money transfers, and offer stablecoin-based payouts to gig workers, contractors, and creators. 

 “By providing solutions that unlock stablecoin utility and ubiquity, we are redefining how money moves globally and driving a shift in payments as we know it,” said Mastercard EVP of Global Partnerships at Mastercard Scott Abrahams. “Together with MoonPay, we’re building innovative and secure connectivity between crypto and mainstream finance ecosystems, grounded by trust and driven by scale.”

Founded in 2019, MoonPay provides the infrastructure needed to buy cryptocurrencies using traditional payment methods like credit cards, Apple Pay, and bank transfers. It enables individuals around the world to easily convert fiat currency into digital assets without needing to navigate complex exchanges. MoonPay primarily serves consumers new to crypto, as well as fintechs offering wallets, NFT platforms, and decentralized apps seeking to simplify the crypto purchasing experience for their users.

“MoonPay serves the largest crypto wallets in the industry, and with Mastercard, we’re bringing convenient, trusted stablecoin-enabled cards to crypto users around the world,” said MoonPay CEO and Founder Ivan Soto-Wright. “Our acquisition of Iron and long-standing relationship with Mastercard allow us to power a new era of payments made with stablecoins at more than 150 million merchant locations worldwide.”

The partnership comes as stablecoins are growing at an incredible rate across the globe. According to the World Economic Forum, global stablecoin transaction volume surpassed $27.6 trillion in 2024, partially because they have emerged as a viable use case to bridge the speed of crypto and the trust of traditional finance. Mastercard’s move into stablecoin spending, backed by MoonPay’s infrastructure, could accelerate mainstream adoption by turning crypto wallets into practical spending tools for real-world purchases.

While Mastercard is leading the charge in stablecoin payments, it is not alone. Visa has been piloting USDC settlement on Solana, and PayPal recently launched its own stablecoin, PYUSD. Mastercard, however, has placed its focus on spendability via legacy rails, which may give it a unique head start in usability.

What remains to be seen, however, is how regulatory bodies will respond. With looser regulatory pressures in the US, now is an ideal time to launch a stablecoin-focused payments tool. However, if and when the regulatory pendulum swings in the other direction, fintechs may find themselves scrambling to sort out the compliance aspects of stablecoins.

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Credit Risk Analytics Provider Carrington Labs Partners with Decisioning Platform Oscilar

Credit Risk Analytics Provider Carrington Labs Partners with Decisioning Platform Oscilar
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Carrington Labs
  • Credit risk analytics provider Carrington Labs teamed up with real-time decisioning infrastructure company Oscilar.
  • The partnership will make Carrington Labs’ explainable AI-powered, advanced credit risk and cash flow underwriting models available via Oscilar’s decisioning platform.
  • Headquartered in Sydney, NSW, Australia, Carrington Labs made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2024 in New York.

Credit risk analytics provider Carrington Labs has announced a new partnership with real-time decisioning infrastructure company Oscilar. The partnership will shorten integration times for lenders and enhance credit risk workflows for banks, credit unions, and fintechs alike.

“Lenders want to improve how they assess credit risk, but many are limited by legacy systems and long implementation cycles,” Carrington Labs CEO Jamie Twiss said. “Partnering with Oscilar makes it significantly easier for lenders to access and act on better credit risk insights and improve their underwriting using infrastructure they already have.”

Courtesy of the partnership, Carrington Labs’ advanced credit risk and cash flow underwriting models will be accessible via Oscilar’s real-time decisioning platform. Carrington Labs’ models leverage a combination of transaction level data, credit bureau data, and behavioral insights to provide smarter credit risk insights. Combined with Oscilar’s no-code platform, the models promote broader inclusivity in lending by more accurately assessing the creditworthiness of thin-file borrowers and borrowers with non-traditional incomes.

“Carrington Labs brings a strong capability in credit risk analytics and alternative data,” Oscilar CEO and Co-Founder Neha Narkhede said. “Together, we’re helping lenders build a more complete picture of creditworthiness, without adding complexity.”

Founded in 2021, Oscilar emerged from stealth two years ago with its AI-powered technology to help businesses better defend online transactions from fraud. The Palo Alto, California-based company uses real-time data, AI, and decisioning to create an advanced credit and fraud detection platform that enables firms to assess the risk of every online transaction in a matter of minutes. The company values the market for risk protection at more than $200 billion and noted that credit and fraud risk currently cost businesses more than $48 billion a year. For their part, consumers are on the hook for $8 billion a year due to credit and fraud risk.

“During my time leading engineering teams at Meta, I found that data and AI played a huge role for making risk decisions—but this technology was hard to build and not easily accessible to our business teams,” Oscilar Co-Founder and CTO Sachin Kulkarni said. “We built Oscilar so that companies could have a thorough risk decisioning solution but wouldn’t have to use their engineering teams’ valuable time to achieve that.”

Carrington Labs empowers lenders to be more inclusive while at the same time boosting revenues, lowering default rates, and improving margins. Founded in 2024, Carrington Labs made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2024 in New York. At the conference, the Sydney, Australia-based company demoed its technology that leverages explainable AI to provide alternative credit risk assessments and loan limit recommendations based on the lender’s unique loan products. Carrington Labs’ credit risk models have been trained on more than one billion data points to provide precise insights; the company boasts that it can pilot a tailored risk model for a lender in days and onboard a new lender in weeks.

The company’s partnership announcement comes as it unveiled new research that underscored the importance of identifying behavioral changes in loan applications. The study showed how behavioral changes can predict loan risk and supported Carrington Labs’ decision to adjust the behavioral factor weighting in its risk model to 36%, a record weighting for the firm’s model.

“While we’ve always looked at a range of behavioral factors, this latest generation of cash flow underwriting models tests a wider range of attributes than ever before, and we were surprised to see how many behavioral elements ended up in this particular model,” Twiss said. “This finding underlines the value of behavioral data in assessing a loan applicant’s risk levels.”

Photo by Road Trip with Raj on Unsplash

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Zopa Raises $106 Million Before Launching Flagship Bank Account

Zopa Raises $106 Million Before Launching Flagship Bank Account
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Daily news, Zopa
  • Zopa raised $106 million in AT1 capital to bolster its balance sheet ahead of launching its flagship bank account.
  • The UK digital bank has raised $1.2 billion, and has doubled its profits to $45 million in 2024.
  • Zopa’s bank account is currently in a beta phase with a limited number of customers.

UK-based digital bank Zopa has raised $106 million (£80 million) in Additional Tier 1 (AT1) capital from existing and new investors. The new funds come five months after the company brought in $87 million in funding, boosting Zopa’s funding to $1.2 billion.

Zopa plans to use today’s funds to prepare for the launch of its flagship bank account. The AT1 capital will offer a regulatory buffer, helping Zopa meet regulatory capital requirements that ensure it has enough capital to absorb losses and continue operating during periods of financial stress. Because the funds come in the form of perpetual bonds or hybrid securities, they do not dilute existing shareholders’ equity stakes, and they can also be written down or converted to equity if the bank’s capital falls below a certain threshold.

Zopa has been working toward launching its full bank account since receiving its banking license from the Financial Conduct Authority in 2020. The company currently offers a range of lending, savings, and pension products, with $7.29 billion (£5.5 billion) in deposits and over $4 billion (£3 billion) in loans on its balance sheet. Zopa has yet to launch any payment tools, but it is currently in a beta phase with a limited number of customers.

With 850 employees, Zopa has doubled its profits, reaching $45 million (£34 million) last year. That same year, the company also partnered with Britain electricity supplier Octopus Energy and with retailer John Lewis to offer personal loans to its 23 million customers.

While Zopa hinted at plans for a public debut in 2021, the company announced last year that it has no current plans to pursue an IPO, saying it wants to wait for the markets “to revive and be more positive.” This is currently a common sentiment among fintechs, including Klarna, which delayed its IPO because of economic uncertainty. However, we may be seeing early signs of positivity, as investing platform eToro hit the public markets today, popping as high as 34% at the open before settling back to a 28% gain in recent trading. Additionally, US challenger bank Chime filed its S-1 yesterday afternoon in preparation for its own IPO.

Photo by Public Domain Pictures

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Investing App Stash Raises $146 Million

Investing App Stash Raises $146 Million
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Funding, Stash
  • Investing app Stash has raised $146 million in Series H funding. The oversubscribed round was led by Goodwater Capital.
  • Stash will use the funds to drive subscriber growth, accelerate product innovation, and enhance the firm’s AI capabilities.
  • Founded in 2015, New York-based Stash made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2017.

Investing platform Stash secured $146 million in Series H funding. The oversubscribed round was led by Goodwater Capital and featured participation from existing investors Union Square Ventures, StepStone Group, Serengeti, and the University of Illinois Foundation. Funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Inc, were also involved in the round.

The investment will help the New York-based fintech bring its financial guidance to a broader range of customers and boost the firm’s investment in AI to enhance its advisory capabilities.

“This new funding is a resounding vote of confidence in Stash’s vision for the future of personal finance,” Stash Co-Founder and Co-CEO Ed Robinson said. “For a decade, Stash has helped millions take control of their financial futures. Now, we’re doubling down—transforming how people save, invest, and build long-term wealth with AI-powered intelligence at the core. We’re just getting started.”

The centerpiece of Stash’s growth strategy is Money Coach AI, the company’s advanced financial guidance platform. Money Coach AI converts investing strategies into real-time, personalized recommendations for investors. Stash reports that the offering already has 2.2 million users who have put Money Coach AI to work helping select their first investments, generating personalized diversification suggestions, and more. Further, Stash notes that one in four Money Coach AI customers have taken proactive steps—making an investment, depositing funds, diversifying, or initiating Auto-Stash automatic payments—within 10 minutes of interaction with the platform.

“For too long, financial advice has been out of reach for everyday people. Stash’s mission has always been to change that,” Co-Founder and Co-CEO Brandon Krieg said. “Now, by leveraging the power of AI, Stash is helping people take control of their money, understand their options, build real wealth, and secure their financial future, no matter where they’re starting from.”

Celebrating its 10-year anniversary this year, Stash made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2017. At the conference, the company unveiled its low-fee, self-directed Roth IRA accounts as part of its Stash Retire offering. Today, Stash has 1.3 million paying subscribers and $4.3 billion in assets under management. The company’s funding announcement follows the launch of its Learn & Earn initiative, which offers users short, actionable financial lessons combined with stock rewards and personalized next-step guidance. Stash also reported recently that the platform has added the AIS ETF from Jon McNeill and Adam Patti VistaShares. The exchange-traded fund provides exposure to 80 public stocks that reflect the entire AI supply chain, from chip manufacturers and data centers to storage and high-voltage electrical equipment providers.

“For our community of Stashers this means participating in the AI revolution the Stash way—regularly investing small amounts into a diversified portfolio for long-term growth,” Krieg noted in a LinkedIn post last month. “Tech advances should create opportunities for all of us, not just the privileged few. The AIS ETF is one other way we’re making that happen, letting our community build wealth by being part of the AI supercycle.”

Photo by Yashowardhan Singh on Unsplash

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Clearwater Analytics Acquires Risk Analytics Firm Beacon

Clearwater Analytics Acquires Risk Analytics Firm Beacon
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Beacon Technology, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Clearwater Analytics has completed its acquisition of risk analytics and developer infrastructure company Beacon.
  • The acquisition will boost Clearwater’s capabilities in complex portfolio management for both public and private markets.
  • Beacon made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia in Hong Kong in 2018. The company is headquartered in New York.

First announced in March, investment management technology platform Clearwater Analytics reported this week that it has completed its acquisition of enterprise risk analytics and developer infrastructure company Beacon. Clearwater acquired the company for approximately $560 million. The company paid 60% of the purchase price in cash and the balance in shares of Clearwater Class A common stock.

The acquisition enhances Clearwater’s capabilities in complex portfolio management—including structured products, private credit, and derivatives—for both public and private markets. Clearwater will integrate Beacon’s cross-asset risk modeling with the front-office capabilities and alternative asset intelligence from its acquisitions of Enfusion Inc. and Blackstone’s Bistro platform, respectively.

This will enable Clearwater to offer a unified platform that covers the entire investment lifecycle from trading and modeling to accounting and regulatory reporting. The platform eliminates front-, middle-, and back-office siloes to provide real-time data, transparency, and scale without the hindrance of legacy software and infrastructure.

“With Beacon, we’ve expanded our platform to deliver end-to-end support across the entire investment lifecycle—from front-office modeling to middle- and back-office operations,” Clearwater CEO Sandeep Sahai said. “Together, along with Enfusion and Bistro, we’re transforming a fragmented industry landscape with a unified platform built for today’s institutional investors—streamlining complexity, accelerating decision-making, and driving performance across public and private markets.”

Founded in 2014, Beacon provides a unified, cross-asset trading and risk management solution for investment and risk management teams. The company’s platform offers pre-built trading and risk applications, as well as the flexibility to build and scale custom analytics and models quickly and efficiently. Beacon’s technology is used by banks to improve risk management and visibility, by investment managers to optimize position and portfolio management, and by energy and commodities firms, as well as alternative asset management firms, to adapt to new markets and more efficiently operate in illiquid markets.

“Beacon’s mission has always been to bring transparency and control to the most complex parts of financial markets,” former CEO and Co-Founder of Beacon Kirat Singh said. Singh is now President, Risk & Performance at Clearwater. “By joining Clearwater, we can now deliver these capabilities at scale. Together, we’re helping investors move beyond reporting to real-time action, with the infrastructure global institutions need to succeed.”

Headquartered in New York, Beacon made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia 2018 in Hong Kong. The company secured its first banking clients the following year, forging partnerships with Commonwealth Bank of Australia, SMBC Capital Markets, and others. Beacon announced its first European energy clients in 2020 and, in 2021, secured Series C funding in a round led by Warburg Pincus. More recently, Beacon reported that UK-based long-term savings and retirement firm Phoenix Group had deployed Beacon as its first quantitative development platform.

Photo by energepic.com

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Backbase Unveils AI-Powered Banking Platform

Backbase Unveils AI-Powered Banking Platform
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Backbase
  • Backbase unveiled its new, AI-powered banking platform this week.
  • The new offering combines Backbase’s unified data foundation, Intelligence Fabric, with Agentic AI technology.
  • Headquartered in Amsterdam, Backbase is a four-time Finovate Best of Show winner. The company most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2021.

Calling the launch of its new, AI-powered banking platform “the next phase” of its vision, Backbase pledged that its latest offering will help bankers take advantage of the opportunities in technologies like Agentic AI.

Backbase’s banking platform enhances customer engagement with AI-powered self-service and real-time support, and hardwires AI into employees’ daily operations to maximize productivity and improve decision-making. The technology streamlines and helps scale sales efforts thanks to intelligent activation and end-to-end automation, and provides up-sell and cross-sell pathways, driven by AI, that can grow revenues and deepen customer relationships.

“This isn’t proof-of-concept AI,” Backbase CEO and Founder Jouk Pleiter said. “This is a packaged, production-ready, operating model to move banks from experimentation to execution, fast. AI waits for no bank. It’s not a wait-and-see—it’s here, now, and it’s rewriting the rules of the industry. The time to act is now.”

Backbase’s platform combines the company’s unified data foundation, Intelligence Fabric, with Agentic AI. Intelligence Fabric converts behavioral signals, transactional data, and operational insights into real-time, actionable intelligence. Agentic AI delivers modular, intelligent, purpose-built agents designed specifically for banking and financial services. These agents embed into a variety of operations to automate tasks, indicate next-best actions, and increase productivity.

Backbase also announced the availability of AI Factory, an embedded delivery model to help financial institutions bridge gaps in their AI skills. AI Factory integrates Backbase’s AI experts directly into development teams, enabling them to quickly co-create and then execute innovative use cases and solutions.

“Banks do not need more pilots—they need outcomes,” Pleiter added. “With our AI-powered Banking Platform, we’re going all-in on the AI opportunity and empower banks to boost productivity, automate intelligently, and unlock unprecedented growth faster than ever.”

Founded in 2003, Backbase is headquartered in Amsterdam and maintains offices in Atlanta, Singapore, London, Sydney, Toronto, Dubai, Kraków, Cardiff, Hyderabad, and Mexico City. The company has been a Finovate alum since 2009, has won Best of Show four times, and most recently demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2021 in New York.

Backbase’s announcement comes one month after the company teamed up with fellow Finovate alum Salt Edge in a strategic partnership designed to help banks accelerate compliance with open banking regulations and pursue new revenue opportunities. Also in March, Backbase forged partnerships with Albania-based Tirana Bank and with financial services consulting firm Synpulse.

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

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Mastercard Launches Stablecoin Acceptance and Payments Capabilities

Mastercard Launches Stablecoin Acceptance and Payments Capabilities
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, MasterCard
  • Mastercard is enabling global stablecoin payments, allowing consumers and merchants to use stablecoins like cash using Mastercard’s network of merchant locations.
  • The launch is powered by Mastercard Crypto Credential and Mastercard Move, ensuring secure, compliant blockchain transactions and seamless conversion between stablecoins and bank accounts.
  • The new stablecoin payments capabilities are made possible by partnerships with major crypto partners like MetaMask, Binance, and OKX.

Stablecoins are going mainstream, and Mastercard wants to lead the charge. The payments company announced this week that it is launching global stablecoin acceptance and payments capabilities in order to allow consumers and businesses to use stablecoins as easily as the money in their bank accounts.

The new capabilities will allow Mastercard to ensure that people can make and receive stablecoin payments at any time of day, in any geography. Key to this launch is Mastercard Crypto Credential, which ensures secure, compliant, and user-friendly blockchain transactions by verifying user identities and metadata.

“When it comes to blockchain and digital assets, the benefits for mainstream use cases are clear,” said Mastercard Chief Product Officer Jorn Lambert. “To realize its potential, we need to make it as easy for merchants to receive stablecoin payments and for consumers to use them. We believe in the potential of stablecoins to streamline payments and commerce across the value chain. Unlocking this is core to how we navigate the rapidly changing world, giving people and businesses the freedom they want by providing the choices they deserve.”

The payments company is leveraging partnerships with MetaMask, Kraken, Gemini, Bybit, Crypto.com, Binance, Monavate, and Bleap to offer consumers many of the same benefits they enjoy when paying with their credit cards. For example, customers in the crypto ecosystem can earn rewards, pay, and spend the stablecoins in their crypto wallets using their traditional payment cards at the over 150 million merchant locations that accept Mastercard payments across the globe. Customers can also withdraw stablecoins into their bank accounts with Mastercard Move.   

Mastercard Move is the company’s comprehensive suite of money movement solutions designed to facilitate fast, secure, and flexible payments across channels. It enables individuals and businesses to send and receive funds globally through methods such as person-to-person transfers, business disbursements, and cross-border payments. Mastercard Move is particularly beneficial for crypto users as it allows them to seamlessly withdraw stablecoins into traditional bank accounts, bridging the gap between digital assets and traditional financial systems.

Mastercard is also partnering with crypto exchange platform OKX to launch the OKX Card, as well as with Nuvei, Circle, and Paxos to give merchants the option to receive their payments in stablecoins.

“OKX is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the world of digital assets,” said OKX Chief Marketing Officer Haider Rafique. “Our strategic partnership with Mastercard to launch the OKX Card reflects our commitment to making digital finance more accessible, practical, and relevant to everyday life. Together, we’re taking a significant step toward integrating stablecoins into daily transactions and creating richer experiences—while bringing new users on-chain through OKX’s leadership in crypto trading and our growing Web3 ecosystem.”

The stablecoin scene has been erupting this year. Not only have stablecoins been granted more regulatory clarity in the US, but they have also seen more mainstream institutional adoption, retail integration, and cross-chain interoperability, making them more easily transferrable across ecosystems. Additionally, they are used as a payments rail for smart contracts and tokenized assets, both of which have experienced recent growth.

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Pinwheel Integrates with Q2’s Digital Banking Platform

Pinwheel Integrates with Q2’s Digital Banking Platform
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Q2
  • Account activation company Pinwheel announced an integration with Q2’s Digital Banking Platform.
  • The integration will make it easier for Q2 customers to facilitate direct deposit switching as part of the account onboarding process.
  • Q2 won Best of Show at Finovate’s all-digital FinovateSpring event in 2021.

Frictionless account activation and engagement product provider Pinwheel announced an integration with Q2‘s Digital Banking Platform. The integration comes courtesy of Pinwheel’s participation in Q2’s Partner Acceleration Program, and will enable financial institutions to access income and employment data from Pinwheel’s data network of payroll providers. This coverage includes 1,800 platforms, representing up to 100% of US workers paid through direct deposit. The integration will empower banks and credit unions to offer their customers and members instant direct deposit switching as part of the account onboarding process.

“Removing friction from the deposit switching process is critical for financial institutions to boost activation rates and secure primacy,” Pinwheel Head of Revenue Brian Karimi-Pashaki said. “We’re thrilled to help Q2 customers take advantage of Pinwheel Deposit Switch by making it available through Q2’s Partner Acceleration Program. We are committed to helping credit unions and banks offer the best possible customer experience.”

In a statement, the companies highlighted research that indicated that 40% of newly opened accounts are never activated. One reason for this, according to the study by veteran banking analyst Jim Marous, was friction in the direct deposit switching process. By contrast, integrating Pinwheel’s technology with the Q2 Digital Banking Platform will give all Q2 customers the ability to embed one-click deposit switching.

Pinwheel began the year teaming up with digital banking provider Narmi to help Berkshire Bank launch its new service that enables customers reroute their direct deposits to their Berkshire accounts. Last month, Pinwheel partnered with human capital management software solutions provider Paychex to expand its PreMatch coverage to 45 million Americans.

Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, Q2 made its Finovate debut in 2011, won Best of Show at our all-digital conference in 2020, and most recently demoed their technology on the Finovate stage at our all-digital FinovateSpring event in 2021. The company provides digital transformation solutions for banks, credit unions, fintechs, and other financial services companies in the US as well as around the world.

Earlier this month, Q2 announced that Signature Bank had selected the company as its new digital banking partner. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Illinois, the bank went live with Q2’s Digital Banking Platform as part of its overall digital banking transformation. In March, United Federal Credit Union reported that it had tripled member engagement within 12 months of deploying Q2 Composable Dashboard. Part of Q2 Engage, the company’s suite of consumer banking solutions, Q2 Composable Dashboard gives financial institutions curated dashboards and the ability to build personalized experiences.

Q2 is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker QTWO. The company has a market capitalization of $4.9 billion. Matthew Flake is CEO.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

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BILL Launches New Procurement Capabilities for Small Businesses

BILL Launches New Procurement Capabilities for Small Businesses
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Bill.com, Daily news
  • BILL is expanding beyond payments by launching new procurement tools that unify accounts payable, receivable, expense management, forecasting, and payments into one centralized platform for small businesses.
  • The new release offers features like advanced approval routing, invoice matching, and bulk payments.
  • With the launch, BILL positions itself as a financial command center for SMBs, offering a holistic alternative to point solutions like Ramp by delivering integrated, customizable, and scalable cash flow management.

Small business financial software provider BILL unveiled new procurement capabilities this week. The California-based company is releasing new tools to help businesses and accountants take control of their cash flow. Adding this well-rounded set of procurement capabilities signals BILL’s intent to move beyond payments into a broader role as a small business financial command center.

BILL is enhancing its platform with new procure-to-pay capabilities, and bringing accounts payable, accounts receivable, payment cards, expense management, insights, and forecasting in a single solution. The additional procurement tools will enable businesses to efficiently manage, approve, and track purchase orders with greater accuracy. Features like advanced approval routing and automated invoice matching will help reduce fraud risk and payment errors, while streamlining workflows to minimize manual effort and increase operational efficiency.

While other platforms, such as Ramp, focus on specific elements of small business financial operations, BILL differentiates itself with a holistic approach that combines procurement, payments, and forecasting in one platform. Consolidating all of a business’ needs into one platform not only streamlines operations but also reduces the need for third-party add-ons and disjointed data reconciliation between systems.

“Our expansion into procurement reinforces how BILL is driving innovation and setting new standards for helping businesses and accountants to manage and control their cash flow, eliminate ‘busy work’, and make strategic decisions that drive long-term growth and success,” said BILL Founder and CEO René Lacerte.

The three new capabilities BILL is releasing include BILL Multi-Entity, which enables businesses and accounting firms to manage payments across multiple organizations from a single, centralized platform; the BILL API Platform, which allows businesses and accountants to tailor financial workflows to meet their own needs; and a bulk payments option that will save businesses time and money by paying thousands of bills at a time.

The new capabilities will allow, for example, a multi-location accounting firm to route purchase approvals through custom rules for each entity while managing all payments from a single dashboard. This reduces manual tracking, improves compliance, and frees up teams to focus on higher-value tasks.

“In an uncertain environment, control and visibility of cash flow is not only key to efficiency—it’s one of the most powerful levers a business has to be more resilient. Legacy spreadsheets and disparate tools are costing American businesses time, money and opportunity, and BILL is the only technology partner delivering more control, more value and more innovation SMBs need and deserve,” added Lacerte.

Founded in 2006, BILL helps 460,000 businesses automate their financial operations and has processed $266 billion in payments volume. The company, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker BILL, went public in 2019 and has a market capitalization of $4.55 billion.

Photo by Amina Filkins

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BehaviorQuant and Quantlake Forge Strategic Partnership to Enhance Investment Decision-Making

BehaviorQuant and Quantlake Forge Strategic Partnership to Enhance Investment Decision-Making
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, BehaviorQuant
  • BehavioralQuant, a company that puts behavioral analytics to work helping individuals make better investment decisions, announced a strategic partnership with Quantlake.
  • The partnership combines BehavioralQuant’s Advisory analytics with Quantlake’s personalized ETF portfolios.
  • Headquartered in Austria, BehaviorQuant made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023.

A newly announced strategic partnership between BehaviorQuant and Quantlake is designed to bridge the gap between research and investor expectations. The partnership integrates BehaviorQuant’s Advisory analytics into Quantlake’s platform to give individual investors the ability to leverage behavioral intelligence to enhance their investing decisions.

“This collaboration marks the first time that personalized ETF portfolios are generated based on each investor’s actual behavioral risk profile—not just financial data or standard risk scoring,” BehaviorQuant COO and Co-Founder Gerlinde Berghofer wrote on the company’s website. “By embedding BehaviorQuant’s analytics into the Quantlake platform, this partnership introduces a new level of personalization and intelligence into the investment journey.”

BehaviorQuant’s Advisory solution leverages the fact that behavior plays a major role in investment decision-making and success. The technology incorporates how investors think, feel, and act under uncertainty. This allows for investment recommendations that are psychologically aligned with and financially sound for the investor. Once investors complete a short BehaviorQuant assessment, they receive personalized portfolio recommendations that are based on their behavioral risk profile and their financial status.

The partnership will give investors access to scientifically-validated risk profiles, leveraging the same behavioral finance tools used by financial institutions on Wall Street. Investors will also benefit from personalized portfolio selection. The integration between BehaviorQuant and Quantlake will connect investor behavioral assessments with systematic ETF model portfolios to limit emotional decision-making while at the same time ensuring investors remain within their risk preferences. This combination, both firms assert, will help investors remain committed to their investment plans during times of market volatility when the temptation to make emotionally based investing decisions is greatest.

“For too long, research providers have delivered investment insights without considering how they’ll be interpreted and used by actual investors,” Quantlake CEO Romain Gandon said. “This partnership fundamentally changes that approach by starting with the investor’s behavioral profile and connecting the investment strategy with it. We’re not just offering research—we’re creating a complete solution that works with, rather than against, natural human psychology.”

Quantlake helps retail investors access professional-grade, systematic strategies for long-term investing. The platform emphasizes data-driven approaches that enable investors to overcome emotional biases. Quantlake simplifies ETF selection and provides cost-effective investment solutions that make investing in the financial markets more accessible for individual investors.

Headquartered in Austria and founded in 2018, BehaviorQuant made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023. At the event, the company demonstrated how its technology brings behavioral science and machine learning to bear in improving investment decision-making. Check out my Finovate Global interview with BehaviorQuant CEO Thomas Oberlechner in which he discusses how his company’s technology also has helped financial institutions learn more about the financial advisors who guide their investment decisions.

Photo by Hrayr Movsisyan

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