Alumni News

Summer Partnerships: Infinant Teams up with Vantage, Deepens Alliance with Customers

Summer Partnerships: Infinant Teams up with Vantage, Deepens Alliance with Customers
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Infinant
  • Digital banking solutions provider Infinant has partnered with Vantage Bank and announced an extension of its collaboration with Customers Bank.
  • Vantage Bank leveraged Infinant’s platform to power its embedded banking business, Vantage Collabs. Customers Bank has worked with Infinant to automate balance mirroring with its deposit partners.
  • Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina and founded in 2020, Infinant made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2024.

When we last heard from digital banking solutions provider Infinant, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based fintech had just secured $15 million in Series A funding.

Six months later, we are picking up the thread with word that the company has recently inked a partnership with Vantage Bank and announced an extension of its collaboration with Customers Bank.

First, Vantage Bank has teamed up with Infinant for its Interlace Platform, which it will use to power its embedded banking business, Vantage Collabs. The bank’s new offering provides embedded banking services to fintech brands, payment infrastructure providers, and other financial institutions.

“We have seen the expansion of banks finding success in the embedded finance space to grow deposits, lending, and fee income while reducing their operating expenses driven by legacy systems,” Infinant CEO Riaz Syed said. “We are motivated about the partnership we have with Vantage Bank and our aligned strategies to advance the banking market in a responsible and sustainable manner.”

Infinant provides financial institutions with technology that enables them to launch and scale their own digital channels, embedded banking programs, and embedded payments. Infinant’s platform gives banks operational and regulatory control over their programs, enabling institutions to keep control of the ledger, operations, and compliance. The company’s APIs will facilitate fast integrations between Vantage and third-party services including Visa DPS for card issuance and processing, Sardine for KYC/KYB and AML, NICE Actimize for fraud management, and Cable for automated control testing.

“Infinant and the Interlace platform is strategic to Vantage Bank,” Vantage Bank CEO Jeff Sinnott said. “Riaz and the team at Infinant have the vision and expertise to enable Vantage to innovate to meet customer expectations.”

With $4.5 billion in assets, Vantage Bank serves businesses, families, and financial institutions in diverse communities throughout Texas. The family-owned bank is headquartered in San Antonio and maintains regional operation centers in Fort Worth and McAllen.

Second, Infinant recently reported that Customers Bank is deepening its partnership in order to automate balance mirroring with deposit partners such as Raisin US. The move will enable full, end-to-end automation, improved partner reporting, and enhanced oversight. The partnership will also help ensure that Customers Bank has technology that is flexible enough to accommodate deposit and fee income growth while also providing the necessary regulatory controls.

Founded in 2009, Pennsylvania-based Customers Bank is a self-described “super-community bank.” The institution provides banking and lending services to professionals, individuals, and families in Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Texas. Customers Bank has more than $22 billion in assets, making it one of the largest US bank holding companies.

Infinant made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2024 in New York. At the event, the company showed how its Interlace platform and launch-acceleration tools empower banks to distribute financial products via non-financial institution providers as well as products and services from fintechs through their banking channels.

Photo by Daniel Weiss on Unsplash

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MDOTM Partners with WealthAI, Issues Report with EY on AI

MDOTM Partners with WealthAI, Issues Report with EY on AI
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, MDOTM Ltd, Report series

A new partnership between WealthAI and AI-driven investment solutions provider MDOTM will bring new portfolio construction, rebalancing, and automated reporting capabilities to financial advisors and wealth managers.

Courtesy of the partnership, MDOTM’s AI platform Sphere will be offered via the WealthAI Marketplace as a seamless integration into the WealthAI platform. This will enable wealth managers and financial advisors to access Sphere’s advanced AI tools for both portfolio construction and optimization from directly within their current WealthAI workflows.

“This partnership with WealthAI is a natural step in our mission to empower investment professionals with the most advanced technology available,” MDOTM Ltd. Chief Operating Officer Federico Invernizzi said. “By integrating Sphere into the WealthAI ecosystem, we are expanding access to our AI-driven investment platform, enabling a broader range of advisors and wealth managers to benefit from its capabilities. This collaboration reinforces our commitment to helping institutional clients make impactful, data-driven investment decisions at scale.”

Sphere enhances the investment process for wealth managers and financial advisors with three primary solutions. First, the platform delivers unbiased, AI-driven investment insights that transform complex market inputs into actionable ideas for portfolio and risk alignment. Second, Sphere’s Portfolio Studio offers mass customization and scalable portfolio rebalancing. Based on the manager’s or advisor’s strategies and objectives, Portfolio Studio enables users to scale the creation, personalization, and rebalancing of thousands of portfolios with controlled tracking error. Third, the platform’s StoryFolio capability allows managers and advisors to generate automated, portfolio-specific commentaries and reports that leverage Gen AI in order to turn complex information into customized investment narratives.

“We are thrilled to partner with MDOTM Ltd to bring Sphere’s powerful AI capabilities to our clients,” WealthAI Chief Executive Officer Jason Nabi said. “This partnership reinforces our commitment to providing wealth managers with the most advanced AI tools to deliver personalized, compliant, and efficient investment solutions.”

WealthAI offers an AI operating system for wealth managers, family offices, private banks, and asset managers. The company’s WealthAI Assistant is an agentic front-end that works like an intelligent co-pilot, using reasoning skills and the ability to adapt and take initiative to help relationship managers, portfolio managers, operations managers, and compliance officers become more productive and perform better. Founded in 2023, WealthAI is headquartered in London.

Based in London and maintaining offices in both New York and Milan, Italy, MDOTM made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025. At the conference, the company demonstrated how Sphere enables users to access AI-driven insights and build and manage portfolios at scale. Sphere also provides personalized, easy-to-understand portfolio commentaries and reports featuring both macro and market analysis on the current financial environment.

Speaking of reports, this spring MDOTM teamed up with EY to produce a report that examined the impact and value of AI in the wealth and asset management sector. The report Artificial Intelligence: The Value is in Scale, reviews the primary use cases for AI in wealth management and highlights deployment of the technology for document analysis, back-office automation, advanced search, personalized advisory, and market forecasting.

The report notes that wealth managers and financial advisors have been slow to embrace AI. A 2024 survey by EY European Financial Services indicated that more than 40% of investment managers believed they were “lagging behind” when it came to using AI, with only 5% referring to themselves as “at the forefront” in terms of AI use in their daily operations. In response to this, the report encourages firms to move from an “experimental” approach to AI and instead embrace a “continuous learning mindset.”

“Operators must build the infrastructural foundations, AI governance, and recognition of the value generated to base their transformation journey,” EY Wealth & Asset Management Leader, Italy, Giovanni Andrea Incarnato said. “Furthermore, it is of fundamental importance to recognize the value of external partners in creating these foundations in an ecosystem logic in order to accelerate adoption and leverage the economies of scale and experience already gained, proceeding with progressive internalization.”

Interestingly, the report reinforces findings from other European experts in AI implementation in financial services. This includes the “experimentation to execution” transition many see as key to successful and evolving use of AI in wealth management specifically and in financial services in general.

Photo by Lianhao Qu on Unsplash

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BioCatch Unveils Scam Detection Tool Scams360

BioCatch Unveils Scam Detection Tool Scams360
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, BioCatch
  • Financial crime prevention innovator BioCatch has launched its behavior-based scam-fighting solution, BioCatch Scams360.
  • The new offering helps financial institutions deal with social engineering-based scams such as authorized push payment (APP) fraud.
  • Founded in 2011, BioCatch made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2014 in New York.

Financial crime prevention company BioCatch recently unveiled the latest edition of its behavior-based scam-fighting solution: BioCatch Scams360. Designed especially to deal with the challenge of authorized push payment (APP) fraud, BioCatch Scams360 enables financial institutions to spot and stop most APP fraud in real time.

APP fraud leverages psychological manipulation to entice victims into transferring their funds to accounts owned by fraudsters. These sophisticated social engineering-based scams can range in tactics from romantic overtures and investment pitches to business email compromise and impersonation of friends or loved ones. To fight this, BioCatch Scams360 uses behavioral and device intelligence to give financial institutions the contextual knowledge they need to distinguish legitimate user behavior from indications that the user may be under some form of manipulation by a nefarious party.

Examples of this can include the rate of the user’s typing, the speed with which they respond to prompts, prolonged periods of in-session inactivity, and/or making a phone call during an online banking session. BioCatch is able to track up to 3,000 different behavioral and device-based datapoints to help distinguish behavior that is genuine from behavior that may be criminally manipulated.

“Already we’re seeing a 50% improvement in our ability to detect non-impersonation scams,” BioCatch Chief Product Officer Ayelet Eliezer said. “Scams360’s current alert rate—the percentage of total transactions requiring banks to intervene—is also best-in-class, helping banks deploying Scams360 to keep their operational costs low while stopping more scams in real time, before any money leaves the would-be victim’s account.”

The new offering builds on the company’s previous success in combatting impersonation-based scams; BioCatch noted that it had helped a regional bank stop $100 million in impersonation scam payments in 2024 alone. BioCatch recently teamed up with The Knoble, a Tennessee-based alliance of financial service professionals, law enforcement, and regulators dedicated to fighting crimes such as human trafficking, financial scams, child sexual exploitation, and elder exploitation. Together, the two organizations launched an anti-scam guide and cost calculator that underscores the fact that the cost of fraud often exceeds direct financial losses to include customer churn, reputational risk, compliance exposure, and more.

“We are excited to see more innovation out of BioCatch to combat the global increase in scams,” The Knoble Founder and Board Chair Ian Mitchell said. “BioCatch is leading a growing list of solution providers working to protect banking customers and communities from the increased complexity of scams.”

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in New York, BioCatch made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2014. Today, the company counts more than 250 financial institutions—including 34 of the world’s largest banks—among its customers. BioCatch’s technology analyzes 15+ billion user sessions every month, helping more than 525 million people worldwide defend themselves against fraud and cybercrime.

BioCatch’s product news comes at the same time that the firm reported topping $160 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in Q2 of this year, the best second quarter in the company’s history. In May, BioCatch announced that it was partnering with identity and fraud prevention platform provider Alloy to integrate its account opening solution into Alloy’s platform. Alloy is an alum of Finovate’s developer conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016.

Photo by Shannon Potter on Unsplash

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RegTech CyberUpgrade Introduces DORA Self-Assessment Tool

RegTech CyberUpgrade Introduces DORA Self-Assessment Tool
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, CyberUpgrade
  • Lithuanian ICT security and compliance automation platform CyberUpgrade has introduced its free DORA self-assessment tool.
  • The new offering provides two ways for firms to assess their DORA readiness and make the necessary changes in order to comply with the new EU regulations on financial resilience.
  • CyberUpgrade made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025 in London.

Lithuania-based regtech CyberUpgrade recently launched a free DORA self-assessment tool designed to help fintechs meet the European Union regulatory requirements of the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA). DORA is a new EU-based mandate designed to ensure the security and operational resilience of companies in the financial sector, specifically by focusing on the networks and information systems that financial operations rely on. The regulation impacts not only banks, investment companies, and insurers, but also third-party ICT providers, as well.

“DORA has introduced a complex and urgent set of requirements that many financial institutions and their third-party providers have been struggling with,” CyberUpgrade CEO and Co-Founder Aurimas Bakas said. “Our tool helps organizations get clarity on where they stand and what actions they need to prioritize—without needing prior in-depth DORA knowledge.”

DORA mandates that companies must maintain essential operations even during major disruptions; provide robust defense against fraud and cyber threats; and log, monitor, and report major ICT incidents. Although DORA was enacted in January 2023 and went into effect at the beginning of this year, only 1% of EU companies are fully DORA-compliant. Reasons for this vary from a lack of in-house expertise on regulatory requirements to simple uncertainty and confusion as to how to begin the process.

In response, CyberUpgrade DORA Self-Assessment Tool is free, anonymized, and helps everyone from technical cybersecurity and compliance specialists to executives and managers quickly assess their DORA readiness. The solution is available in two modalities: firms can choose a Fast Track Mode that provides a five-minute, high-level snapshot of their current DORA readiness status, or a Full Scope Mode that includes a 25-minute “deep dive” that spots compliance gaps and produces a detailed readiness score, along with actionable insights.

Using the tool is straightforward. Firms only need to go to the CyberUpgrade DORA Self-Assessment Tool website, select a mode (Fast Track or Full Scope), complete the assessment questionnaire, and download the resulting report that details DORA readiness, any compliance gaps, and recommended next steps. There is no sign-up required and there are no hidden fees or obligations.

“Financial institutions falling short of DORA’s standards face serious regulatory risks, including administrative fines, business restrictions, or even losing operating licenses,” CyberUpgrade General Counsel Nojus Bendoraitis wrote on the company’s blog. “The risks are even sharper for third-party ICT service providers, who are directly supervised by European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) and face strict oversight and penalties.”

CyberUpgrade made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2025 in London. At the conference, the ICT security and compliance automation platform demonstrated how its AI-driven co-pilot CoreGuardian works with its vendor management solution VendorGuard to provide comprehensive cybersecurity and compliance. CoreGuardian engages workers one-on-one through channels like Slack and Teams to provide real-time education, assessment, and alerts. VendorGuard streamlines vendor management by handling risk assessments, incident planning, and prioritization.

CyberUpgrade’s technology automates up to 80% of compliance tasks, reduces compliance costs by more than €60,000 each year, and keeps companies audit-ready around the clock. Founded in 2023, CyberUpgrade is headquartered in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Photo by Vitalijs Barilo on Unsplash

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Embedded Finance Platform Highnote Launches Instant Payments

Embedded Finance Platform Highnote Launches Instant Payments
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Highnote
  • San Francisco, California-based embedded finance platform Highnote has launched its Instant Payments capability.
  • The new addition to its unified product platform will enable businesses to provide near real-time payments from Highnote-issued cards to eligible debit and prepaid cards.
  • Founded in 2021, Highnote made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022.

Embedded finance platform Highnote, which began the year with a $90 million Series B funding round led by Adams Street Partners, has announced the latest addition to its unified product platform. The company launched its Instant Payments capability this week to empower businesses to provide near real-time payouts from Highnote-issued cards to eligible external debit and prepaid cards.

Instant Payments enables businesses to push funds to debit and prepaid cards in the US. This not only gives users faster access to their earned wages, but also boosts liquidity and enhances payout operations. By embedding instant payments functionality directly into its product platform, Highnote believes its solution compares favorably to “stitched together” legacy infrastructures by giving users built-in access to seamless, intelligent money movement. Use cases for the technology include gig worker payouts, employee tips, insurance reimbursements, merchant settlements, refunds, and more.

“Instant Payments reflects both where our subscribers are today and where the market is headed,” Highnote CTO Kin Kee said. “By embedding on-demand disbursements directly into our issuing stack, we are helping businesses move money faster and more intelligently, all within a single, unified product experience.”

Highnote’s Instant Payments is supported by Mastercard’s portfolio of money transfer solutions, Mastercard Move, as well as by Visa Direct, and is currently available to all Highnote’s US subscribers.

Visa SVP for Money Movement North America Yanilsa Gonzalez-Ore underscored the ability of the technology to help businesses “leverage Visa’s scale and robust security infrastructure to deliver faster and more reliable payouts.” Stefany Bello, SVP for Digital Partnerships, Fintech & Enablers for Mastercard, North America, highlighted the company’s “longstanding relationship with Highnote” and the importance of the collaboration in ensuring “businesses can securely access critical funds in near real-time to keep their operations up and running.”

Headquartered in San Francisco, Highnote made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2022. The company offers a unified, embedded finance platform, designed for modern card issuance, acquiring, credit, and real-time money movement. The platform features built-in ledgering, integrated payment capabilities and complete program management to help fintechs, vertical SaaS providers, and businesses launch their own embedded payments experiences.

Highnote has raised more than $140 million in funding courtesy of a Seed and Series A round in 2021 and a Series B round at the beginning of 2025. John MacIlwaine is Co-Founder and CEO.

Photo by Maria Orlova

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Crux Analytics and Bankwell Forge Strategic Partnership

Crux Analytics and Bankwell Forge Strategic Partnership
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Crux Analytics
  • Small business intelligence platform Crux Analytics has forged a strategic partnership with commercial bank Bankwell.
  • The partnership will integrate Crux Analytics’ automated platform into Bankwell’s business banking services to enable the bank to provide more personalized and proactive solutions.
  • Based in New York, Crux Analytics made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego.

A strategic partnership between small business intelligence platform Crux Analytics and commercial bank Bankwell will boost Bankwell’s ability to deliver personalized and proactive solutions and services to its business customers. The integration will enable Bankwell to leverage Crux Analytics’ automated platform that offers enhanced lead targeting and prioritization, as well as active relationship monitoring to spot potential business opportunities as they develop.

“Bankwell’s commitment to digital solutions that support personalized service makes them an ideal partner,” Crux Analytics Co-Founder and CEO Jacob Bennett said. “Our platform enhances the human element of banking by giving bankers tools to be a more effective partner to their business clients while helping to drive institutional growth.”

The partnership between Crux Analytics and Bankwell comes at a time when small businesses are expressing a “disconnect” between their stated level of trust in their bank, the actual services their bank offers, and some of the tools and solutions that small businesses need. In response to this challenge, recently noted in research by American Banker, Crux’s intelligence platform helps financial institutions use data to both recognize what their small business customers might need as well as provide those solutions in a personalized, tailored way.

“In today’s competitive landscape, businesses need a financial partner who understands their specific challenges and opportunities,” Bankwell Chief Innovation Officer Ryan Hildebrand said. “Crux’s technology augments our bankers’ expertise with powerful automation and business-specific intelligence, allowing them to spend more time delivering value to clients.”

Connecticut-based Bankwell is a commercial bank with more than $3 billion in assets. The institution was founded in 2002 and serves communities in Southern Connecticut from its headquarters in New Canaan. The bank’s holding company, Bankwell Financial Group, is a publicly traded firm on the NASDAQ—ticker symbol BWFG—and has a market capitalization of $300 million. Christopher Gruseke is Bankwell’s Chief Executive Officer.

Founded in 2023 and headquartered in New York, Crux Analytics made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego. At the event, the company showed how its flagship platform sources, qualifies, and engages small business leads. The technology uses personalized outreach on behalf of the banker to remove many of the logistical burdens financial institutions face when forming and maintaining small business relationships.

Crux Analytics’ partnership announcement with Bankwell came at the same time that the firm reported that it would be a part of the incoming cohort for credit union collective CURQL’s accelerator program. Crux joins two fellow Finovate alums—Fingoal and Themis—as well as earned wage access specialist Reset and scam defense platform Charm Security.

Photo by Pixabay

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Signicat Acquires Digital ID Verification Company

Signicat Acquires Digital ID Verification Company
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, Signicat
  • Signicat has acquired Dutch identity verification provider Inverid for an undisclosed amount.
  • Inverid’s flagship product, ReadID, uses NFC on smartphones to securely verify ID documents, making it ideal for high-assurance use cases like banking, government, and cross-border compliance.
  • The acquisition positions Signicat to meet growing regulatory and fraud prevention demands across Europe.

Fraud prevention solutions provider Signicat announced this week that it is bolstering its identity authentication and orchestration tools with the acquisition of the Netherlands-based Inverid.

Signicat is purchasing Inverid from its founders and the company’s majority shareholder, Main Capital, both of which have agreed to reinvest a portion of what they receive back into Signicat. This indicates that they believe in the potential of the combined company and want to retain a financial stake in its future.

Inverid (formerly known as InnoValor) was founded in 2013 and has a team of 75 developers working on solutions that increase digital trust. The company’s flagship solution, ReadID, helps organizations verify identity documents leveraging NFC on users’ smartphones. Inverid counts 50 clients, including Rabobank, the UK and Danish governments, and the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex).

NFC-based document verification is one of the most accurate and tamper-resistant ways to validate identity documents. This is because it pulls data directly from the chip inside a passport or ID, rather than relying on OCR or a camera scan. This makes ReadID a powerful addition for high-assurance use cases like onboarding for banks, insurers, or government services.

Signicat will integrate the ReadID capabilities into its own set of solutions, which include identity proofing, trust orchestration, authentication, and electronic signing.

“By adding Inverid’s unique NFC-based solution to our platform, we can offer our customers the best possible document verification technology and unmatched identity solutions,” said Signicat CEO Asger Hattel. “This transaction demonstrates our commitment to remaining at the forefront of digital identity innovation, constantly striving to offer our customers still more effective tools to fight fraud while improving digitization journeys for their end users.”

Signicat has been in the identity industry for nearly two decades, having launched its identity verification tools in 2006. Today, the Norway-based company supports 240+ data sources to identify businesses and individuals. Signicat offers national eID and biometric verification, ID document scanning, data verification AML/KYC checks, and more. In 2019, Signicat was acquired by private equity investor Nordic Capital for an undisclosed amount.

“The acquisition of Inverid is an important step to further strengthen Signicat’s offering to deliver even better digital identity solutions to the market,” said Nordic Capital Advisors Managing Director Rolf Torsøe. “Building on a successful partnership between the companies and a strong cultural fit, this transaction will unlock immediate synergies. Nordic Capital is enthusiastic about supporting Signicat’s continued growth journey in Europe.”

This acquisition comes at a time when fraud is evolving rapidly, and governments and financial institutions across Europe are doubling down on strong identity verification. By integrating NFC-based document checks, Signicat is closing a key gap for high-assurance use cases like government onboarding and cross-border compliance. This is especially true in an era when regulations surrounding identity verification are shifting, creating a moving target for organizations.

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Clarity AI Acquires Sustainability Fintech ecolytiq

Clarity AI Acquires Sustainability Fintech ecolytiq
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, ecolytiq, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Clarity AI has announced its acquisition of Sustainability-as-a-Service fintech ecolytiq. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
  • The acquisition will add to Clarity AI’s suite of sustainability solutions and enhance the firm’s ability to embed sustainability intelligence into financial decision-making.
  • ecolytiq introduced itself to Finovate audiences in 2021 as part of our developers conference FinDEVr.

German Sustainability-as-a-Service innovator ecolytiq has agreed to be acquired by Clarity AI. The company helps financial institutions, public organizations, and individuals boost sustainability by calculating the environmental impacts of payment transactions. Terms of the acquisition were not immediately available. As part of the acquisition, Visa—which has had a longstanding strategic partnership with ecolytiq—has become an investor and strategic partner of Clarity AI.

“ecolytiq was founded with the idea that banking can be a powerful catalyst for climate action,” ecolytiq Co-Founder and Managing Director David Lais said. “The mission has always been to empower individuals to drive positive climate impact at scale through their everyday purchasing decisions. By joining forces with Clarity AI, we’re taking that vision to the next level—combining our behavioral science-based climate engagement technology with a world-class, AI-driven sustainability platform. Together, we’re accelerating the transition to a greener future—powered by the best available data and backed by purpose.”

The acquisition will bring additional climate engagement technology to Clarity AI’s platform, which is designed to embed sustainability intelligence into decision-making at scale, turning complex data into actionable insights that support responsible consumption and investment. ecolytiq’s technology leverages behavioral science to analyze transaction data in real-time and quantify environmental impacts. This information is delivered as high-impact sustainability content that has helped encourage climate-positive activity for millions of consumers and businesses throughout Europe and beyond.

Clarity AI Founder and CEO Rebeca Minguela called the acquisition “a declaration of intent,” noting that ecolytiq’s platform “aligns perfectly with our mission to embed sustainability intelligence into every decision—from multi-billion-dollar portfolios to everyday purchases. Together, we’re setting a new standard for how financial institutions engage customers with data that drives meaningful change.”

Recognized by Forrester as a Leading Provider in the field of sustainability intelligence, Clarity AI serves a network of clients managing a combined $70 trillion in assets. These clients include companies such as Invesco, Nordea, Lazard Asset Management, and Santander. From its inception in 2017, Clarity AI has put AI technology to work to support its suite of data solutions, analytics capabilities, and tools for portfolio management, corporate research and engagement, regulatory reporting, online banking, and more. Headquartered in New York, Clarity AI maintains offices in Europe and the Middle East, as well.

Headquartered in Berlin, Germany, and founded in 2020, ecolytiq has teamed up with the likes of Mashreq, HSBC, and Piraeus—as well as with fellow Finovate alums like Tink and TSYS—to provide solutions that help individuals and organizations understand the impact of their transactions on the environment and make adjustments to lower their carbon footprint. A Certified B Corporation, ecolytiq has approximately 14,500 financial institution clients worldwide.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

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Jumio and Prometeo Partner to Launch ID Verification Solution

Jumio and Prometeo Partner to Launch ID Verification Solution
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Jumio
  • Jumio and Prometeo have partnered to streamline identity and bank account verification across Latin America.
  • The integration combines biometric authentication, AI, and Prometeo’s banking network to improve security, reduce operational time, and enhance user experience for fintechs and digital platforms.
  • The two are aiming to help organizations meet regulatory requirements while scaling to meet growing demand for secure, digital financial services.

Digital identity solutions company Jumio announced this week that it has partnered with fintech infrastructure company Prometeo to create a solution for identity authentication and bank account validation across Latin America.

Integrating Jumio’s identity verification platform with Prometeo’s account validation will provide Prometeo’s clients with access to a single solution that simplifies processes including onboarding and payment reconciliation while reducing operational times, preventing fraud, and delivering a better user experience.

“This alliance allows us to offer stronger bank account validation, a key element in any authentication process. We’re no longer just confirming whether an account exists — we’re also verifying who’s behind it, which redefines how fintechs and digital companies build fast and efficient onboarding processes,” said Prometeo Commercial Director Roberto Gaudelli. “We’re proud to reach this milestone, which adds an extra layer of security and trust for our clients.”

Founded in 2018, Prometeo’s financial infrastructure allows businesses to integrate seamlessly with the financial system in Latin America and the US. The company offers an embedded banking platform and multi-banking solution to offer fintechs, digital banks, payment gateways, online gaming platforms, and e-commerce companies automated access to financial information and transactions through a single API. Prometeo’s network consists of more than 1,500 connections to 1,200 financial institutions across 11 countries.

Jumio’s platform offers an identity intelligence platform that uses biometric authentication, automation, and data-driven insights to help its clients know and trust their online users. The company was founded in 2010 and came close to collapse when it filed for bankruptcy in 2016. After restructuring, Jumio sold to Centana Venture Partners, which acquired the company for $850,000 two months after its bankruptcy filing. Since its acquisition, Jumio has processed over one billion transactions from over 200 countries and territories.

“Connecting our best-in-class biometric verification technology with the largest banking network in Latin America not only delivers a more complete solution to the market, it also raises the bar for security and efficiency,” said Jumio Strategic Alliances Manager for Latin America Pilar Pereira. “This alliance integrates advanced AI capabilities, data analytics, and user behavior interpretation, elements that truly make a difference and allow us to offer a robust, intelligent solution designed to tackle one of the region’s biggest challenges.”

Prometeo and Jumio anticipate that their alliance will improve verification in Latin America. By joining forces, they’re aiming to make digital onboarding smoother and more secure by helping organizations verify a person’s identity and bank account at the same time. Their integrated, modular solution tackles real pain points like fraud prevention, compliance with local and global regulations, and it is scalable for businesses of all sizes.

Photo by Alexandre Lima

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Anonybit Partners with SmartUp to Introduce Digital Identity Solution for AI Agents

Anonybit Partners with SmartUp to Introduce Digital Identity Solution for AI Agents
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Anonybit
  • Decentralized biometrics solutions company Anonybit announced a partnership with AI-native no-code platform SmartUp.
  • Courtesy of the partnership, the two companies are introducing what they call the first privacy-preserving digital identity solution for AI agents.
  • Founded in 2018, Anonybit made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego.

Decentralized biometrics solutions provider Anonybit has teamed up with AI-native no-code platform SmartUp to launch what the two companies are calling the first privacy-preserving digital identity solution for AI agents. The solution brings secure, identity-bound agentic automation to enterprise workflows in payments, supply chain, and order management, and marks a pioneering implementation of agentic commerce secured by decentralized biometrics.

“Agentic commerce holds incredible promise for efficiency and scale, but without identity, it also introduces serious risks around trust, fraud, and control,” Anonybit Co-Founder and CEO Frances Zelazny said. “We’re proud to be the first to bring a real-world solution to market that delivers secure, ethical, and scalable agentic workflows. With SmartUp, we’re proving that identity-bound agents can operate in production, not just in theory. Our decentralized biometric cloud, data vault, and token management system form the missing identity layer the enterprise needs to build trust, ensure accountability, and future-proof agent-driven automation.”

The partnership comes at a time when use of agentic systems has grown dramatically. According to research by Gartner, by 2026, 80% of digital workers will rely on AI agents in order to complete routine customer service operations. McKinsey anticipates that agent-driven automation could be a major boon to productivity in the enterprise.

But as agentic AI does more of the work, who (or what) is truly operating on behalf of the user and where does accountability actually lie? Anonybit answers this question with a decentralized infrastructure that binds identity to agents: authenticating users, authorizing actions, and providing cryptographically secure identity tokens across the lifecycle of the agentic flow.

Anonybit’s decentralized biometric cloud supports all major biometric modalities (face, voice, finger, iris, and palm) for both authentication and step-up verification. The solution avoids storing biometric data in a single location, and leverages its decentralized data vault to protect the sensitive data collected by agents and ensure data residency, compliance, and quantum-resistant security. Anonybit also features an identity token management system that enables agents to operate on behalf of users with precise authorization that is auditable and works across any workflow—online, in-person, or automated. Via the partnership with SmartUp, identity-bound agents are authenticating business users and customers, using biometrics and privacy-preserving credentials to bind agents to these identities, authorizing specific tasks by way of scoped identity tokens and integrations with orchestration platforms, and providing real-time auditability and zero-trust across workflows.

“SmartUp is pioneering agentic automation in core business functions like order management and supply chain management, and our customers are already seeing the benefits of secure, identity-bound agents,” SmartUp Co-Founder and Country Manager Moishe Shemtov said. “With Anonybit’s identity infrastructure, we ensure our agents are not only autonomous, but accountable. This is the foundation for the next generation of secure enterprise AI.”

Founded in 2018 and headquartered in New York, Anonybit made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego. At the conference, the company showed how its technology integrates with Q2 and other digital banking platforms to enable passwordless login, step-up authentication, and account recovery with no requirement to download an app or use a dedicated device.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

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AutoRek Unveils Reconciliation and Data Management Solution for Crypto, AutoRek Mion

AutoRek Unveils Reconciliation and Data Management Solution for Crypto, AutoRek Mion
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, AutoRek
  • Automated reconciliation and financial controls company AutoRek recently unveiled its AutoRek Mion platform.
  • AutoRek Mion provides data management and reconciliation capabilities for cryptocurrency and digital asset operations at a time when adoption of these assets is growing rapidly.
  • Headquartered in Glasgow, Scotland, AutoRek made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2013 in London. Chris Livesey is CEO.

Automated reconciliation and financial control solutions provider AutoRek has launched its AutoRek Mion solution. The new platform provides data management and reconciliation capabilities for cryptocurrency and digital asset operations. AutoRek Mion works where traditional reconciliation systems often fail by processing up to 20 digits before and 18 digits after the decimal point to provide accuracy and scale.

“The financial services industry is at an inflection point with cryptocurrency adoption,” AutoRek CEO Chris Livesey said. “When our client came to us with their challenge, it became clear that this wasn’t just one client’s problem—it was an industry-wide issue that needed solving. Traditional reconciliation systems cannot handle the precision requirements of these assets. AutoRek Mion solves this fundamental problem, enabling institutions to maintain the same rigorous financial controls for crypto that they’ve relied on for traditional assets for decades.”

With a digital asset like Ethereum, for example, which operates at 18 decimal places, existing reconciliation systems are simply not precise enough. AutoRek Mion, in contrast, can handle both high precision numbers and very large numbers at high precision. This comes as new regulatory frameworks on cryptocurrencies and digital assets from the Financial Conduct Authority and the European Union are putting additional compliance pressures on financial institutions. Specifically, both the FCA’s discussion paper DP 23/4 and the EU’s Market in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) underscore the importance of proper reconciliation controls for digital assets on behalf of clients.

“The challenge wasn’t just about displaying more decimal places—we had to create custom code to overcome fundamental database technology limitations,” AutoRek Chief Product, Technology and Operations Officer Jim Sadler said. “The platform features specialized proprietary functions that ensure mathematical calculations can be processed at these new levels of precision, enabling accurate valuations, currency calculations, and data aggregation for digital assets.”

Headquartered in Glasgow, Scotland, AutoRek made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023 in London. At the conference, the company showed how its intuitive, configurable dashboards and machine intelligence monitor the reconciliations process—from categorizing outstanding transactions to highlighting escalation points—giving financial institutions more control and efficiency and less reliance on spreadsheets and manual processes. Founded in 1994, AutoRek partners with companies in banking, payments, asset management, insurance, and other sectors to help them leverage intelligent automation to better manage their data. The firm’s technology has been implemented by more than 100 companies.

Earlier this year, AutoRek announced a partnership with bank integration solutions provider AccessPay to help streamline the retrieval, reconciliation, and reporting of banking data. The company began the year with news that leading UK insurance, wealth, and retirement firm Aviva had selected AutoRek as its reconciliation and CASS tool.

Photo by Artur Kraft on Unsplash

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Tink and Chip Forge Open Banking Partnership

Tink and Chip Forge Open Banking Partnership
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Tink
  • Payment services and data enrichment platform Tink announced an open banking partnership with wealth app Chip.
  • Chip will leverage Tink’s Pay by Bank solution to enable its users to securely and seamlessly top up their saving and investing accounts.
  • Tink won Best of Show in its first two Finovate appearances in 2014 and 2017. The Stockholm, Sweden-based company most recently demoed at FinovateEurope 2019.

A new partnership between open banking pioneer Tink and Chip will bring open banking capabilities to the Chip app. Tink’s Pay by Bank solution will help Chip provide open-banking powered money transfers for its users when they seek to top up their savings and investment accounts on the company’s app. Pay by Bank reduces friction and costs, while enhancing the user experience with secure, seamless connectivity. Additionally, the partnership with Tink will give Chip users access to account insights in real-time, bringing greater visibility to the savings and investment process.

“It’s brilliant to partner with Tink, whose open banking solutions provide a fast and secure option for our users adding money to their savings on the Chip app,” Chip Co-Founder Alex Latham said. “We’re looking forward to working with the Tink team to promote these payment options, with a few more exciting updates coming soon.”

Tink’s Pay by Bank enables Chip customers to launch payments directly from their accounts on their banking apps. This reduces the amount of cumbersome and potentially error-prone manual entry and avoids the inconvenience of waiting for funds to clear when transferring money. The seamlessness of the process helps ensure that users complete their transactions before dropping off in frustration, and empowers Chip to offer its customers a variety of ways to fund their accounts.

“Chip has been on a tremendous growth journey in recent years, and we’re delighted to become a part of their success story by bringing more payment options to their user base,” Tink Head of Payments Ian Morrin said. “The Tink Chip partnership highlights how open banking APIs are powering smarter saving tools and reshaping the personal finance ecosystem.”

Chip offers an automatic savings and investing “wealth app” that enables users to build, manage, and grow their long-term wealth. The company’s Chip Cash ISA allows users to earn tax-free interest on their savings, with new customers earning 4.33% AER (annual equivalent rate) for the first 12 months. For investing, Chip customers can choose between a free plan that allows users to begin buying and selling funds, stocks, and shares with a platform fee of 0.25%, and the company’s ChipX account that offers a full curated range of funds with 0% platform fees. Founded in 2016, London-based Chip announced its first profitable quarter in Q4 2024, assets under administration of £5.2 billion, and 327,000 customers.

Tink won Best of Show in its first two appearances on the Finovate stage in 2014 and 2017. The company most recently demoed its technology at FinovateEurope 2019. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, Tink makes its open banking solutions available in 20 markets around the world and boasts 13,000 connections to financial institutions. The company was acquired by Visa in 2021.

Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash

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