Alumni News

AKUVO Partners with Eltropy to Help Credit Unions Leverage Text to Improve Collections

AKUVO Partners with Eltropy to Help Credit Unions Leverage Text to Improve Collections
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Eltropy
  • Digital communications platform Eltropy and collections platform provider AKUVO announced a new partnership, integrating Eltropy’s texting functionality into AKUVO’s Aperture solution.
  • The integration will enhance the collections process for community financial institutions (CFIs).
  • Eltropy made its Finovate debut in 2017 and returned to the Finovate stage last year for FinovateFall in New York.

A newly-announced partnership between digital communications platform Eltropy and cloud-based collections platform provider AKUVO will enable credit unions to leverage the texting capabilities of Eltropy’s platform to enhance collections operations. Now, credit unions, community banks, and other community financial institutions (CFIs) will be able to access Eltropy’s texting communications platform from AKUVO’s Aperture solution.

“Integration between Eltropy and AKUVO’s Aperture will provide collectors with a powerful texting platform to guide their account holders through a proactive, effective collections experience,” AKUVO Chief Revenue and Operating Officer Steve Castagna said.

Headquartered in California and founded in 2014, Eltropy made its Finovate debut in 2017 and most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2022 last September. At the conference, Eltropy demoed its Eltropy One offering, an all-in-one omni channel solution that lets financial institutions manage both inbound and outbound member and customer communications from a single console. Text, secure chat, video, voice, co-browse, chatbot, and secure file exchange are among the functionalities Eltropy provides – all in a secure and compliant fashion.

In addition to facilitating the delivering of seamless omnichannel customer experiences, Eltropy’s platform leverages AI to help CFIs better resolve issues and consumer inquiries. The technology detects both subjective conditions like consumer sentiment and mood as well as objective data like specific relevant keywords and phrases to provide real-time guidance and personalized recommendations. The company’s partnership with AKUVO, according to Castagna, underscores a shared “visionary approach” to using both data and analytics to help enhance the financial wellness of members and customers.

“One of our primary goals in 2023 is to build stronger integrations with vendors who have strengths in areas of need from our CFI customers, so we look forward to partnering with AKUVO who is making waves in the collection industry with their Aperture platform,” Eltropy VP of Strategic Partnerships Jason Smith said.

With $25 million in funding, Eltropy closed out 2022 with new partnership announcements with digital banking solutions provider Tyfone and credit union lending technology company Origence. Also last year, Eltropy acquired both video banking company POPi/o and AI conversational intelligence platform Marsview.ai. Ashish Garg is Eltropy’s founder and CEO.

Learn more about Eltropy in its upcoming Finovate webinar, 7 trends for community financial services in 2023.

Photo by Lukas

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Marqeta Acquires Fintech Infrastructure Company Power Finance for $275 Million

Marqeta Acquires Fintech Infrastructure Company Power Finance for $275 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Marqeta, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Marqeta is acquiring credit card program management platform Power Finance.
  • The company will add Power Finance’s credit card program management capabilities to its own card issuing platform.
  • Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Global card issuer Marqeta agreed to acquire credit card program management platform Power Finance. Terms of the deal, which is scheduled to close in the first quarter of this year, were not disclosed.

Power Finance was founded in 2021 by CEO Randy Fernando and CFO Andrew Dust to offer credit card program management services to companies seeking to create new credit card programs. The company’s platform takes care of credit card management, customer experience, application decisioning, transaction processing, and more. And because Power Finance is pre-integrated with third-party data vendors, it saves companies time when setting up KYC and underwriting processes.

“Companies like ours were made possible because of the path Marqeta blazed in modern card issuing, demonstrating the possibilities in payments with flexible and modern payment infrastructure,” said Fernando. “At Power, we built a full-stack, cloud-native credit card issuance platform, and by becoming a part of Marqeta we have the ability now to bring this innovation to a much larger market at global scale.”

Once the deal is finalized, Fernando will lead the product management of the Marqeta credit card platform.

Marqeta will leverage the acquisition by adding Power Finance’s credit card program management capabilities to its own card issuing platform. “It will allow us to accelerate processing revenue derived from credit programs, and improve our competitive positioning when competing for new deals, offering our customers a holistic credit card program management solution,” Marqeta said in a blog post announcement.

Marqeta launched its card issuing platform in 2010 to enable clients to manage their own card programs. The company offers configurable and flexible payment tools and customizes payment cards for their end customers. Earlier this month, Marqeta launched a Web Push Provisioning Solution to enable consumers to transact from their mobile wallets without having to download a separate mobile app.

Marqeta is a publicly traded company listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker MQ. The company has a market capitalization of $3.54 billion.

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich

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Hawk AI Scores $17 Million to Help Banks Fight Money Laundering and Fraud

Hawk AI Scores $17 Million to Help Banks Fight Money Laundering and Fraud
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, Hawk:AI
  • Germany-based fraud prevention and AML solution provider Hawk AI has raised $17 million in Series B funding this week.
  • The round was led by Sands Capital and featured participation from DN Capital, Coalition, BlackFin Capital Partners, and Picus Capital, and adds to the $10 million Hawk AI raised in 2021.
  • Hawk AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022.

In a round led by Sands Capital and featuring participation from DN Capital, Coalition, BlackFin Capital Partners, and Picus Capital, Germany-based fraud prevention and anti-money laundering solution provider Hawk AI has raised $17 million in Series B financing. The capital adds to the $10 million in Series A funding the company raised in June of 2021, and will be used to help fuel both product development and global expansion.

“My co-founder Wolfgang Berner and I started this business based on the strong belief that only leading edge, real-time surveillance technology can deliver the change needed to fight financial crime,” Hawk AI CEO and co-founder Tobias Schweiger said. “This contrasts (with) the obvious, drastic deficiencies in legacy technology. Hawk AI’s growth will continue to be fueled by industry-wide demand for AI, cloud outsourcing, and a convergence of fraud and AML technology.” Schweiger added that this week’s investment would help Hawk AI “become the leading global surveillance platform faster.”

Founded in 2018, Hawk AI made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateSpring in San Francisco. At the conference, the company demoed its AML Surveillance Suite, which combines explainable AI with traditional rule-based strategies to monitor transactions for fraud and evidence of potential money laundering in real time. The technology alerts financial crime specialists when suspicious behavior is detected while at the same time significantly limiting the number of false positives – by more than 70% – compared to legacy systems.

In its funding announcement, Hawk AI noted that more than $2 trillion is laundered every year, with U.S. fraud losses in 2022 topping $41 billion. Additionally, for what the company referred to as “high-growth markets,” fraud increased by more than 37% over the past 12 months. This has put additional pressure on institutions as both the volume and sophistication of financial crime continue to grow. Complicating matters further are an ever-changing array of regulations which Sands Capital’s Chris Eng said has made fighting financial crime “historically” challenging. To this end, Eng noted that, “Hawk AI’s sophisticated technology and use of explainable artificial intelligence present critically needed straightforward solutions for institutions across the payments landscape.”

Hawk AI’s funding news comes in the wake of a year in which the company realized year-over-year revenue growth of nearly 3x. Hawk AI also expanded its operations to Singapore last year, and now operates in more than 60 countries across Europe, North America, Asia, and Latin America. Hawk AI includes fellow Finovate alums VISA, Diebold Nixdorf, and Mambu among its partners.

Photo by Frans van Heerden

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Finovate Alums Raised More Than $380 Million in Q4; $2.7 Billion in 2022

Finovate Alums Raised More Than $380 Million in Q4; $2.7 Billion in 2022
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Funding, Fundings, Quarterly Funding

Finovate alums raised more than $2.7 billion in equity funding in 2022. The sum makes the $8.4 billion raised in 2021 seem all the more an outlier as our alumni funding levels return to those common in 2020 and before.

Previous Annual Comparisons

The fourth quarter of 2022 saw Finovate alums secure more than $380 million in funding. This amount recalls the relatively modest fundraising haul from Q4 2020, with a comparable number of alums raising capital.

Previous Quarterly Comparisons

  • Q4 2021: More than $1.2 billion raised by seven alums
  • Q4 2020: More than $472 million raised by 17 alums
  • Q4 2019: More than $876 million raised by 21 alums
  • Q4 2018: More than $800 million raised by 19 alums
  • Q4 2017: More than $730 million raised by 23 alums

Outsystems’ $228.4 million fundraising was easily the quarter’s standout investment. Also raising sizable amounts in the final three months of 2022 were Moneyhub, which raised more than $61 million over the course of the quarter, and Banyan, which secured $28 million in funding.

Top Quarterly Equity Investments

  • Outsystems: $228.4 million
  • Moneyhub: $61.6 million
  • Banyan: $28 million
  • Cinchy: $14.5 million
  • Buckzy: $14.5 million

Here is our detailed alum funding report for Q4 2022.

October 2022: More than $316 million raised by eight alums

November 2022: $13 million raised by two alums

December 2022: More than $52 million raised by five alums

If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the fourth quarter of 2022, and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at research@finovate.com. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum not included.

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Bold Commerce and PayPal Partner to Create a More Flexible Checkout Experience

Bold Commerce and PayPal Partner to Create a More Flexible Checkout Experience
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, PayPal
  • Bold Commerce and PayPal struck up a partnership that will better integrate payments into more checkout experiences.
  • Using Bold Commerce’s headless checkout tool, retailers can place a point-of-sale wherever shoppers interact, including on blogs, within social media, and even on the packaging of a physical good.
  • The new solution is available in Bold Commerce’s Checkout Experience Suite.

Customizable commerce company Bold Commerce announced today it is collaborating with PayPal to better integrate payments into the checkout experience. Because, as Bold Commerce Co-Founder Yvan Boisjoli puts it, “The checkout experience needs to extend to everywhere shoppers are today, which also means that a full range of payment options need to be available to shoppers wherever they are.”

Using Bold Commerce’s PayPal-enabled tool, retailers can put the checkout wherever shoppers interact. A point of sale can be placed on blogs, within social media, and even on the packaging of a physical good with a QR code printed on the label. Upon checkout, consumers can use a range of payment options, including PayPal, Venmo, PayPal Pay Later, credit and debit cards, and multiple local payment methods.

“Payment choice and flexibility have always been a critical part of a successful commerce experience – but it’s only one part of the equation. Retailers today need to also offer a tailored checkout experience to help drive increased conversion,” said PayPal VP, Global Head of Channel Partnerships David Bruce. “It’s a powerful combination for a composable checkout to plug into any tech stack, and we’re excited to deepen our commerce capabilities with Bold Commerce.”

The new, flexible checkout method is expected to increase checkout conversion on merchant websites and what Bold Commerce is calling “shoppable touchpoints,” which will drive more revenue by decreasing friction. The headless, all-in-one payments and checkout solution is available in Bold Commerce’s Checkout Experience Suite.

“Through this new integration we’re making it easy and accessible to power checkout anywhere, with any payment method. We’re looking forward to working with PayPal as they make this move into headless commerce,” added Boisjoli.

Bold Commerce was founded in 2012. The Canada-based company’s Checkout Experience Suite offers a customizable headless checkout tool with built-in subscription and pricing capabilities. Bold Commerce counts more that 9,000 brands and retailers as clients, including Pepsi, Mars, and Williams Sonoma.

Bold Commerce has raised $44 million and has been named to Deloitte’s Tech Fast 50, E&Y’s Entrepreneur of the Year, and CBInsights’ Retail Tech 100.

Photo by Adrien Delforge on Unsplash

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Quantum Metric Launches Atlas to Help Enterprises Turn Digital Opportunities into Solutions

Quantum Metric Launches Atlas to Help Enterprises Turn Digital Opportunities into Solutions
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Quantum Metric
  • Continuous product design platform company Quantum Metric launched its Atlas solution this week.
  • Atlas provides enterprises with a library of pre-built industry guides to help them turn digital opportunities into new products and solutions for customers.
  • Quantum Metric won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope n 2021.

Quantum Metric, the continuous product design platform company that won Best of Show in its Finovate debut in 2021, unveiled its latest solution this week. The Colorado Springs, Colorado-based firm announced the launch of Atlas, a structured and accelerated solution to help organizations respond to “critical business questions” with “outcome-driven insights.” Atlas provides companies with a comprehensive library of pre-built industry guides that give businesses a tailored set of dashboards, metrics, anomaly detection, and alerts, providing them with a stepwise approach to improving digital use cases.

“Organizations consistently struggle to know if their teams are asking the right business questions and working hard to drive their experience forward to the benefit of both their business and their customer,” Quantum Metric CEO Mario Ciabarra said. “With Atlas, we are empowering every member of digital teams to focus on what matters most, winning the hearts of their customers.” Ciabarra called the launch “a defining day” for the company.

Quantum Metric helps enterprises negotiate the distance between recognizing new digital opportunities and turning those opportunities into revenue-generating, customer-engaging products and services. The company estimates that the average enterprise “leaves up to $220 million on the table per year in inefficiencies” and suggests that, by using Atlas, these companies can boost efficiency by up to 90%. “Atlas completely reimagines what we know about building and optimizing digital experiences today,” Ciabarra said.

At present, the Atlas library consists of 90 guides, and includes customized use cases for verticals such as consumer banking, insurance, telecommunications, travel, and retail. Quantum Metric indicated that it will offer cross-industry guides to common digital use cases in the future.

Founded in 2015, Quantum Metric offers businesses a way to recognize customer needs, quantify the financial impact, and assess priorities based on both customer impact and meeting business objectives. The launch of Atlas comes just days after Quantum Metric announced a year of “record-breaking” growth, including a 98% customer retention rate and customer base growth of 41%. The company today captures experiences from 40% of the world’s Internet users and offers insights from more than four billion user sessions each month. Quantum Metric includes 20% of the Fortune 500 among its customers.

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Trustly Forges Strategic Partnership with Nordnet to Bring Instant Deposits to Nordic Investors

Trustly Forges Strategic Partnership with Nordnet to Bring Instant Deposits to Nordic Investors
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Trustly
  • Payments platform Trustly announced a strategic partnership with Sweden’s Nordnet.
  • The partnership will enable Nordnet customers to easily and securely deposit funds using Trustly pay-ins.
  • Trustly, which made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2013, was acquired by Nordic Capital in 2018.

A new strategic partnership between open banking, account-to-account (A2A) payments platform Trustly and Nordnet will enable customers of the Swedish savings and investment solution to easily and securely deposit funds in their accounts. The pact brings instant deposits to the whole Nordic region, including markets where instant payments are not yet available.

The new service is going live in Sweden initially, and will be available to all new customers who sign up for a Nordnet account. The service will launch in Norway in the first quarter of this year, and in Denmark and Finland later in 2023.

“Trustly’s technology and customer focus made them a natural choice and good fit for Nordnet in our ongoing work to build the best platform for savings and investments,” Nordnet Chief Product Officer and Deputy CEO Rasmus Järborg said. “With Trustly, our customers are able to fund their accounts instantly and start discovering what stocks or funds they want to buy.”

Founded in 1996 as Sweden’s first Internet broker, Nordnet currently provides savings, investment, lending, and pension services to customers in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland. Nordnet operates the region’s largest social investment network, Shareville, which boasts more than 300,000 members.

The company also offers margin lending, residential mortgages, and unsecured personal loans both under its own brand and under the subsidiary Konsumentkredit. As a pension solutions provider, Nordnet offers endowment insurance in Sweden and Norway and, for Swedish customers, provides a digital pension management service. Headquartered in Stockholm, the firm reported total assets of more than $22.8 billion in 2021.

Trustly made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in London in 2013 and returned to the Finovate stage four years later for FinovateEurope 2017. The company was acquired by Nordic Capital for an undisclosed sum in 2018, and has since forged partnerships with companies ranging from Alibaba.com to NACHA to IKEA. Last year, Trustly acquired U.K. open banking vendor Ecospend (terms not disclosed). In November, the company welcomed back Alex Gontheir as CEO of its Americas division. Gontheir founded and led PayWithMyBank as CEO. PayWithMyBank merged with Trustly in 2019 and Gontheir became Executive Chairman in 2021.

Photo by Jan Židlický

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Sandstone Technology Appoints New CTO

Sandstone Technology Appoints New CTO
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Sandstone

Banking technology company Sandstone Technology appointed a new CTO this month. The company unveiled today it has selected Anthony McKew to fill the role.

With more than 35 years of experience in banking and technology, McKew has worked for companies including Linkly, Premier Technologies, and SecurePay. He has expertise in designing and managing enterprise-grade platforms for major retailers, government agencies, and digital operations for vendors and service providers.

“I am extremely pleased with the addition of Anthony to our Leadership team as our Chief Technology Officer,” said Sandstone CEO Abhish Saha. “This is an essential role, supporting our customers across the globe and being a key driver of our ongoing business strategy and growth. Anthony’s intimate understanding of Financial Institutions and their security and technology needs will be of great value to both our customers and our staff.”

McKew, who began his appointment on January 9th of this year, fills the shoes of Sandstone’s former CTO Chaitanya Pinnamaneni.

Sandstone was founded in 1996 and currently offers a suite of tools for loan origination, its BankFast mobile app that offers end users a seamless experience between web and mobile channels, and intelligent document processing tools that enable banks to capture, classify, and extract data stored in borrower-submitted documents.

The Australia-based company formed its most recent partnership with Bendigo and Adelaide Bank to offer a single platform that covers all its third party origination channels and limits exposure to legacy systems. In March of last year, Sandstone launched an innovation hub to capture emerging opportunities from new enabling technologies.

“At Sandstone we pride ourselves on our longstanding strategic partnerships with our customers, where we look to solve business problems together, not just provide a service,” said Sandstone CEO Michael Phillipou. “As the banking landscape continues to evolve apace, we’re excited to start working alongside our customers to develop solutions that grasp tomorrow’s opportunities, as well as today’s.”

Photo by Scott Webb

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Ping Identity Partners with Device Identification Platform Fingerprint

Ping Identity Partners with Device Identification Platform Fingerprint
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Ping Identity
  • Ping Identity has forged a partnership with device identification platform Fingerprint.
  • The partnership will integrate Fingerprint’s device identification technology into Ping Identity’s identity orchestration service, DaVinci.
  • Ping Identity made its Finovate debut in 2016 at FinovateEurope in London.

Ping Identity, which made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2016, announced a partnership with U.S.-based identity tech innovator Fingerprint. The collaboration will integrate Fingerprint’s device identification technology with Ping Identity’s DaVinci no-code identity orchestration service to enable users of DaVinci to accurately identify devices and stop fraud.

Fingerprint’s device identification platform provides 99.5% accuracy and, upon integration with PingOne DaVinci, will enable companies to enhance the customer experience by reducing the need for friction-producing multi-factor authentication for known users. The integration will enhance onboarding for new customers, as well. “Our mission is to empower developers to build safe and seamless Internet services,” Fingerprint CEO Dan Pinto said. He said that the partnership with Ping Identity would help show the effectiveness of the company’s device identity technology in a broad range of digital user journeys.

Fingerprint teamed up with Ping Identity as part of the latter’s Global Technology Partner Program. Growing the program and adding companies like Fingerprint is part of Ping Identity’s goal of delivering “better, more frictionless customer experiences” according to company SVP of Product Management Loren Russon. “Our partnership with Fingerprint leverages PingOne DaVinci’s seamless orchestration to ensure dynamic user journeys are delivered quickly and efficiently at every stage of the user journey,” Russon said.

PingOne DaVinci enables users to design secure and seamless customer experiences across an entire technology ecosystem. The platform’s no-code orchestration and drag-and-drop interface mean that anyone who can whiteboard an experience can orchestrate it using DaVinci. Users build, design, and refine workflows, and then easily optimize these workflows with A/B testing and, where necessary, quickly deploy fixes and changes.

Named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Access Management for the sixth consecutive year, Ping One was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Denver, Colorado. The company was acquired by Thoma Bravo last year in an all-cash $2.8 billion transaction. When the deal was closed in October, Ping Identity founder and CEO Andre Durand credited the way that “identity security and frictionless user experiences have become essential in the digital-first economy.” Durand added that, “with the support of Thoma Bravo, Ping Identity can further accelerate innovation to deliver the easy and secure digital experiences customers demand from every industry.”

Photo by Mediamodifier

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Finovate Global Israel: Earnix Introduces New CEO, 40Seas Raises $111 Million, and a Look at Early Stage Startups

Finovate Global Israel: Earnix Introduces New CEO, 40Seas Raises $111 Million, and a Look at Early Stage Startups
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Earnix, Finovate Global, Nubank, Salt Edge

Earnix, an Israel-based company that provides insurers and banks with real-time, dynamic pricing and rating solutions, introduced a new Chief Executive Officer this week. Robin Gilthorpe will take over the top spot at the firm effective February 1st, replacing outgoing CEO Udi Ziv, who served as Earnix’s CEO for six years.

“Today’s end-customer demands unparalleled experience, alongside highly personalized and customizable solutions,” Gilthorpe said in a statement. “Earnix solutions serve as the go-to platform for financial services companies to address the growing demands of the world’s leading financial and insurance companies.”

Gilthorpe is a finance and insurance industry veteran with more than 25 years of experience at firms such as TIBCO, Vertexone, and Watersmart Software. He was most recently Chief Operating Officer at insurtech company Salty where he helped generate a “nine-figure outcome” in the firm’s sale to CDK Global.

Founded in 2001, Earnix made its Finovate debut in 2016 at FinovateSpring in San Francisco. In the years since then, the company has forged partnerships with companies like AI cloud platform DataRobot, cloud insurance software company Majesco and, last fall, J.D. Power. Also last fall, Earnix unveiled its Underwrite-It solution which helps businesses build and manage rules and decision logic to enhance decision-making during the underwriting process.

Earnix has raised more than $100 million in funding. The company includes Insight Partners, Israel Growth Partners, and Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) among its investors.

Israel-based cross-border trade financing company 40Seas secured $111 million in financing this week. The total includes $11 million in seed funding and a $100 million credit facility.

The seed funding round was led by Team8 and featured participation from ZIM Integrated Shipping Services. ZIM also was the entity behind the $100 million credit facility 40Seas received this week. The agreement comes with an option to extend the credit facility to $200 million.

40Seas leverages AI and data analytics to determine creditworthiness, and offers flexible payment arrangements to provide small importers and exporters, freight forwarders, and sourcing agencies with critical working capital. The company made its soft launch in October of last year and says that it already has financed transactions for “dozens of SMEs.”

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports that small businesses represent more than 40% of all cross-border trade volume. Nevertheless, compared to large, multinational corporations, SMEs are “seven times more likely to be denied trade financing,” according to the World Trade Organization. Among the obstacles to these firms are siloed banking jurisdictions, working capital constraints, legacy processes, and more. To this end, 40Seas helps exporters get paid as quickly as possible and gives importers payment options that enable them to grow their businesses without incurring sizable additional debt.

“Given today’s harsh macroeconomic conditions, now more than ever, SMEs need easy access to financing to have the best chance of survival,” 40Seas co-founder and CEO Eyal Moldovan said.

40Seas is headquartered in Tel Aviv and has offices in New York City, Toronto, and Shenzhen.

Last month CTech published a short list of what it called the “five most promising early-stage fintech startups” in Israel. The list was based on the opinions of “prominent investors in the Israeli market” and looked at both “business potential” and “managerial depth.”

The businesses represented included travel insurance (Faye), an automated accounting platform (Trullion), a compliance platform (Sedric), a loan exchange for SMEs (Lama AI), and a payments workflow automation company (Nilus). Combined, the five companies have raised more than $47 million in funding from investors including Viola Ventures, F2, Third Point Ventures, Greycroft, Homeward Ventures, StageOne, Foundational Capital, and Bessemer Venture Partners.

We’ll keep an eye on these and other innovative fintechs that are helping build Israel’s unique fintech ecosystem.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Southern Asia

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Photo by Haley Black

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Union Credit Emerges from Stealth to Deliver Perpetual Credit Approval

Union Credit Emerges from Stealth to Deliver Perpetual Credit Approval
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, CUneXus, Daily news, Funding
  • Union Credit is launching out of stealth mode with $5 million in Seed funding led by CMFG Ventures.
  • The startup is launching in an exclusive partnership with CuneXus, leveraging the company’s continuous credit approval that facilitates loans in one click.
  • The partnership with CuneXus will offer Union Credit access to CuneXus’ 250 credit existing clients in the credit union space.

Embedded lending startup Union Credit emerged from stealth today and is launching with an extra $5 million, thanks to a fresh round of seed funding led by CMFG Ventures.

Facilitating today’s launch is a partnership with CuneXus, a company that helps credit unions and community financial institutions offer potential borrowers perpetual loan approval, making it possible for customers to take out pre-approved loans in one click. CuneXus was acquired by CUNA Mutual Group in 2020 for an undisclosed amount. The entity now produces more than $27 billion in loans each year.

“Ending the guesswork of lending and financing is an important step towards financial health,” said CMFG Ventures President and Managing Director Brian Kaas. “Union Credit can create real transparency via perpetual credit access. It’s a model that has the potential to completely change the way credit unions grow, allowing them to compete with fintechs and large financial institutions in their communities during the purchase experience.”

Union Credit’s aim is to help credit unions enter into new markets with a tool that offers borrowers front-end financing via merchant relationships. The company leverages CuneXus’ continuous credit approval that facilitates loans in one click. The company will use today’s investment to “focus on building out its digital lending marketplace, SDK, and a direct-to-consumer app where consumers can manage perpetual offers of credit from local lenders that want to serve them.”

California-based Union Credit was launched by CuneXus Co-founder Dave Buerger and former SVP Barry Kirby, who now serve as Union Credit CEO and CRO, respectively. Because of this tie-in, the company benefits from an exclusive partnership with CuneXus. What’s more, the newly found company will have access to CuneXus’ 250 credit existing clients, which represent 37 million end users.

“Credit unions thrive on their long-lasting member relationships, but acquiring new relationships has always been a challenge,” said Buerger. “Today that ends. Union Credit advocates for credit unions on a national scale, putting them in front of consumers at their point of need. It combines the local, competitive, and advantageous offers that credit unions are known for and gives them the sophisticated platform they need to amplify existing digital services and reach new audiences.”

Union Credit’s continuous credit approval will compete on the same level as buy now, pay later (BNPL) transactions that allow consumers to make purchases and pay for them over time rather than all at once. The company’s approach using CuneXus’ continuous credit approval technology is similar to BNPL purchases in that it makes pre-approved loans available to customers in one click, making it easy for them to access credit when they need it.

Photo by Moe Magners

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Marqeta Unveils its Web Push Provisioning Solution as Mobile Wallet Adoption Rises

Marqeta Unveils its Web Push Provisioning Solution as Mobile Wallet Adoption Rises
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Marqeta
  • Card issuing platform Marqeta launched its new web push provisioning solution.
  • The new offering will enable consumers to pay for products directly from their mobile wallets without having to first download a mobile app – that may be rarely used again.
  • The web push provisioning solution was inspired in part during Marqeta’s Hack Week event back in October 2021.

Modern card issuing platform Marqeta launched its new web push provisioning product this week. The new offering will reduce friction at the point-of-sale by enabling users to pay for purchases directly from their mobile wallets without having to download a mobile app first.

The new web push provisioning product is designed to address a major pain point for consumers: having to download an app – that may be rarely, if ever, used again – in order to complete a given transaction. Marqeta’s solution can help boost conversion rates by eliminating this requirement and thus streamlining the customer experience. Combined with Marqeta’s instant issuance capabilities, this week’s announcement reinforces and adds to the company’s leadership in the payment card tokenization space.

“Growing familiarity with digital wallets created demand for a solution that enables Marqeta customers to quickly and easily provision virtual cards and digital wallet tokens from the web for use with both Apple Pay and Google Pay,” Marqeta Chief Product Officer Simon Khalaf explained. “Our web push provisioning product meets that need and helps enable our customers to deliver a streamlined checkout experience to their end users.”

Marqeta’s offering comes as consumer adoption of digital wallets continues to show strength. According to Juniper Research, global digital wallet transactions are expected to grow 60% by 2026. Additionally, 71% of U.S. consumers in 2022 say that they have used a mobile wallet in the previous 12 months compared to 64% in 2020. Nevertheless, 75% of consumers admit to having abandoned a transaction after being prompted to download a mobile app in order to complete the purchase.

Marqeta’s web push provisioning solution, currently in beta and expected to be generally available later this year, was specifically designed to address this problem. The technology has its origins in a Hack Week event from last year, as members of Marqeta’s team realized the value of enabling brands to provision tokens from a mobile web browser. Built in partnership with both Apple and Google, the web push provisioning technology has been deployed by Bread Financial, which praised the way the product enabled the company to “offer flexible payment options that will keep the merchant’s brand at the forefront a deliver a better experience for the customer,” according to Bread Financial EVP and Chief Commercial Officer Val Greer.

An alumni of Finovate’s developer conference, FinDEVr SiliconValley 2016, Marqeta today is certified to operate in 40 countries around the world. Last fall, the company announced the launch of its Marqeta for Banking offering, which brought new banking capabilities to the company’s card issuing platform. Marqeta has forged partnerships in recent months with Raiffeisen Centrobank to power the institution’s new digital banking brand for customers in Poland and Romania – and with Blockchain.com, to power the cryptocurrency platform’s crypto-based Visa Card.

Headquartered in Oakland, California, Marqeta was founded in 2010. The firm is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ under the ticker MQ, and has a market capitalization of $3.4 billion. Jason Gardner is CEO.

Photo by Porapak Apichodilok

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